Neither of us said a word as I flipped the faucet on to rinse over the piled dirty dishes. I turned to grab a plastic container from a bottom drawer to my left. Finding the right size, I started to straighten back up, but as I did, a huge rush of blood to the head threw me off balance. Dizziness overwhelmed me; colors ran fluid across my vision. I felt myself collapsing to the left.
I was sure I was going to collide with the ground. If I were especially unlucky, I’d clip my head or neck against the counter edge on my way down. But just before I really lost it, I felt Ben’s strong hands grab me once more. He snatched me out of the air and pulled me into him.
My breath came rushing back into my lungs as the world righted itself around me. I took a deep, staggering inhale and closed my eyes for a second. When I let them flutter back open, he was staring at me with intense concern on his face.
“That’s twice,” he murmured. His voice rumbled in his chest. I could feel his vibrations in my palms, which were planted flat on either side of his torso.
“It’s a good thing I keep you around,” I said. The dizzy spell had passed as suddenly as it had come, but a whole new kind of disorientation was coming over me. We hadn’t been in this close proximity since the wedding ceremony, when he had almost-but-not-quite kissed me for the first time since our first night together. Up close and personal like this, his scent was overpowering, his breath came in gentle plumes across my face, and I could feel the strength of his arms holding me upright.
“Good for which one of us?”
“Neither. Both. I’m still deciding.”
His face was so close to mine. Just a few inches away. I could just crane my neck a little bit and my lips would meet his. They looked so plump and soft. Kissable. Bitable. Delicious. His arms were the most solid thing I’d felt in a long time. Realer than real, almost. The ink was finely detailed where it was etched into his skin. He was soft and hard, dark and light, all at the same time. He was so close. He was so close.
“What’s the make or break factor?” His voice was barely a whisper, and yet it filled my eardrums, filled my senses.
I felt numb and tingly all over, alternately hot then cold. My whole system was going bonkers in Ben’s presence. “I’m not sure of that yet either.” I couldn’t read his eyes. Was he feeling what I was feeling? Did he want me the way I wanted him? The urge was so powerful and so immediate that I was having trouble forcing words around it. All I wanted in this world was to taste Ben’s lips, to feel his hands teasing my clothes off of me one more time. I felt so hollow and there was only one thing I could think of that would be suitable enough to fill me up. It was right in front of me.
He leaned in. There, it was coming, confirmation that the same thoughts running through my brain were going through his, too. His lips were a millimeter away, just a cell’s breadth apart from actually touching mine. My eyes were half-lidded. I felt like desire incarnate, like every single inch of me was on fire with desperate need for more of Ben, as much of him as he could possibly offer and then a little more.
Just a little more. Just a little more. I closed my eyes and waited for his kiss.
But it never came. I felt his hands loosen and slide off of me. He backed away as I opened my eyes. He looked confused, more lost than I had ever seen him before. The confidence that normally rolled off of him in waves was ebbing rapidly. I could almost see him retreat inside his head as he took two steps away from me.
“I, um…I need to, to, um, to not.”
It looked like his tongue refused to cooperate with him. Mine wouldn’t either. It was all I could manage to force out a barely audible, “Okay.”
He whirled away and disappeared into the bedroom, leaving me standing by myself in the kitchen as the stream from the faucet quietly splashed across the plates in the sink.
I cleaned up in numb silence. I couldn’t form proper thoughts or even begin to process what had just happened. It had felt like an electric moment, and I knew without thinking that Ben had felt what I had felt. But he’d backed away. Damn near run away, actually, looking back on it. What was he so afraid of? What was I so afraid of?