“Has it been six months already?” My high-pitched tone betrays me.
“You know it has been.” He takes my hand in his. “Come on. We’re going somewhere we can talk. I’ll buy you breakfast.”
“But—”
He leads me to the corner to a restaurant called Your Daily Brunch. He releases my hand to open the door for me, but I don’t move.
“I’m sure they wouldn’t like it if I took this inside.” I hold up my matcha. “Why don’t I finish drinking it while you grab a table?” I read somewhere that nodding while you speak tricks the other person into agreeing with you even if they don’t. My tactic fails miserably on him.
“And let you drive off to parts unknown? Forget it. If the staff complains about your matcha, I’ll deal with it.” His hand wraps around mine again. Less than one minute later we’re seated by a window in a cozy corner at the rear of the restaurant.
The waitress doesn’t bat an eye at my matcha. She takes our orders and leaves us alone. Meanwhile, Benji is staring a hole through my head. I can feel it. I finally look at him, but I am not letting him speak before I get in at least one preemptive strike.
I lower my voice but speak loud enough so he can hear me over the din of diners. “Let’s call yesterday a one-off. It’s already weird, and you promised if it was weird we could forget it happened and go back to normal.”
“Wrong. I told you I wouldn’t forget.”
“But you did agree to go back to normal.” I point at him. “I won’t stand in the way of you and Trish patching things up, especially when she—”
“Her mom’s dying.”
I blink. “Her—what?”
“Her mom. She’s dying. Terminal cancer. They only gave her a month. Trish doesn’t have any family in town. She found out yesterday and needed someone to talk to about it. When she called again this morning, I picked up and she was crying and asking for advice. I drove over to be here for her. I didn’t want to do it over the phone. That’s it. That’s all.”
My heart melts.
He’s such an epically kind person.
“I’m so sorry to hear that.” And I am. Truly. My mom and I may not be the most stellar example of mother-daughter camaraderie, but if she was sick and dying it would leave a scar. A deep one. “Poor Trish. Do you want me to send flowers? Or a fruit basket? Or if she’s leaving town to visit her mom, we could send a Starbucks gift card for her travels.”
When I tip my head to look up at him, he’s smiling. Soft, easy. “You’re always thinking of everyone else, aren’t you? Even when I offer to give you something, you’re worried about my pleasure more than your own.”
“It’s a habit.”
“It’s a bad one.” He’s no longer smiling. “Here’s the deal, Cris. We’re not done. We’re not remotely done. We’re not only going to do it again, we’re going to push this to the edge of what you can take. To the pinnacle of what you really want. I’m not saying you have to sleep with me, but I am saying you have to allow yourself to take and take until you can’t take any more. It’s no less than you deserve.”
I’m staring at him, my latte cooling in my hand. He’s staring at me, unblinking. The waitress sets our plates in front of us. I blink first.
“Anything else?” the young girl asks, having no idea what she walked into.
“Do you want anything else, Cris?” Benji raises his thick eyebrows. “Are you brave enough to ask for it if you do?”
His challenge is about more than breakfast accoutrements and we both know it. The waitress doesn’t, offering to bring hot sauce or their specialty house tomatillo salsa for our eggs.
“It’s up to the lady,” Benji says, his eyes glued to mine.
“You were the one laying down the law a second ago.” I fiddle with the saltshaker.
He dips his chin into a barely-there nod, and then addresses the waitress. “We’ll take both. And anything else to put this breakfast over the top. We’ve never been here before.” Eyes back on mine, his voice dips low and seductive. “We don’t want to miss a thing.”
The waitress leaves. I wrestle my gaze from Benji and take in the crowded restaurant. Not exactly the most private place for a discussion of this magnitude.
A second later he stands and moves to my side of the booth. His hip bumps mine as he scoots me over. He folds his hands on the tabletop, tips his head, and watches me. Up close he’s glorious. Perfect golden skin almost bronze in color. Dark hair I intimately know the feel of between my fingers. Eyes so expressive I’m held captive by them. Those half-open lids fringed with a million black lashes. I’ll never forget him. Never. Even if we burn our friendship to ash and I never work in this town again.
I doubt either of those things will happen, but I justify he would be worth it. One orgasm at his hand was already worth it. Touching him once more would be worth it…
“Do you know what I saw when I was on my knees in front of you yesterday?” His voice is a low rumble. Seductive. Husky.