Chapter Twenty-One

TWENTY-ONE

At my apartment, I pace from room to room, trying to burn off the restless churning sensation in my stomach. I move my night guard from the bedside table to a bathroom drawer and stuff the explosion of dirty clothes back into my half-unpacked suitcase. I debate lighting a candle and decide against it. It's what I would ordinarily do when I get home, but he doesn't know that. He'll think I'm trying to set some type of mood, and I'm definitely not.

Light on in the living room, off in the bedroom, on in the green room. Or on in the bedroom too? No, off. This place could use a dimmer switch. I curse myself for leaving my nice table lamp at Kat's apartment.

Ben drove to his place to drop some things off or pick some things up—I honestly didn't pay much attention to what he said—giving me time to get home and get ready, or at least freak out.

My Ardwyn T-shirt is making me itch, so I whip it off, but I don't know what to wear instead. I play musical chairs with my wardrobe, changing into and out of things until the buzzer rings, and I'm left with the thin tank top I wore underneath my clothes all day and a pair of cotton sleep shorts. There's not enough time to think about what this outfit says. He's here.

I buzz him in and hover by the door. A minute later he knocks, two quick raps. I fling the door open.

"Hey," he says, in a voice that's just for me. His smile is easy, but his eyes are like firewood, glowing hot and nearly crackling. He's changed too, into a soft black hoodie. Unlike me, however, he has the advantage of wearing pants. I tug my shorts down an inch to cover more of my thighs, which exposes a strip of my stomach, and then pull them back up.

"Want a tour?" I ask in a chirpy voice that doesn't sound like mine, setting off briskly down the hallway without checking to make sure he's following. "It'll only take five minutes."

"I'd love one," he says with breezy enthusiasm, as if it's the main reason he came over.

I walk him around the living room and the kitchen and point to the bathroom. It's the most unremarkable apartment ever to exist, so there's not much to say, but I show off my pictureless white walls and generic furniture with the enraptured focus of a tour guide at the Uffizi. Anything to avoid looking at him.

The bedroom is next. Why did I leave the light off again? He's right behind me as we enter the room, colliding with my back when I stop abruptly to step around the suitcase on the floor. I speed past the bed like the bogeyman is underneath.

"Wow," he says, awed, in the green room.

"This is the best part, obviously." My voice almost sounds normal, the ridiculous floor and goofy purple beanbag helping to slow my heart rate. "I always wonder if this used to be somebody's sex cave. Also, I'd like to introduce you to Mona Lisa Vito. We spend a lot of quality time together."

His laugh is relaxed. Contented. I wring my hands. "I guess it's only a three-minute tour," I say.

He's watching me carefully. "You seem nervous."

"Me? No."

He ambles over to the window, where the candles are shoved together in a jumble. "We can watch TV. Or go to sleep, if you want." He picks one up and sniffs it. "Or I can go, if you've changed your mind." Okay, his nonchalance is starting to grate.

"I'm not nervous. Maybe you're nervous," I say in a tone that belongs on the playground, snatching the candle from his hand and setting it back on the windowsill.

"I am a little nervous," he admits. And that's my absolute limit. This is supposed to be fun. It doesn't have some grand significance. Nobody should be nervous.

I pounce on him, throwing my arms around his neck. I kiss him hard, like I did the first time outside his apartment, moving my lips against his urgently, with quick passes of my tongue. And for a little while he matches me in a perfect rhythm, and it's so good, even though it doesn't settle me.

He pulls away and presses his forehead against mine. "Hey," he says, reaching up to take my shaking hands. "It's just me." And he takes my chaos and meets it with his own intent focus and transforms it into something better. I've got you, he says without words. When my teeth click against his, he soothes me with soft lips. When I retreat, searching his face, he murmurs, "Come here," in a hoarse voice and reassures me with a dizzying bite of my bottom lip. He holds the side of my face with his hand, his thumb brushing my cheek, and I press closer, our lips barely grazing each other.

No. These are all snapshots from the wrong mood board. Tonight is supposed to be celebratory. We're supposed to be flooded with the elixir of athletic triumph, on a breakneck, hasty sexual victory lap. My legs should be around his waist and he should be pinning me against the wall. Something should be knocked off a table, smashing on the floor. There should be noisemakers, and sparklers crackling. It's not supposed to be deliberate and tender, with shuddering and whispers and protracted gazes.

I throw myself onto the beanbag and thread my hands together behind my head. It's so worn out and shapeless that when I lie back I'm almost flat on the floor. "Take off your shirt," I command.

He raises his eyebrows and his mouth does that slow, lazy curl up at the corners.

I flick my hand upward, urging him on. "Come on. I'm a visual person."

He slides his T-shirt over his head and my heart almost gives out. I saw this very torso less than a week ago, but the effect is more powerful now that I'm about to touch it.

"Good, me too," I say breathlessly, peeling off my tank top and chucking it across the room. His eyes skate over my plain black bra, and his Adam's apple bobs like it's genuflecting.

He's watching me with a perceptive look like he's about to say something, and he sees my bravado and what's underneath, so I reach for him. Then I remember: This chair is burdened with history. Shane Kowalski, junior prom, a lot of fumbling and poking in not quite the right places. "No!" I say sharply, stopping in my tracks. "Wait."

"Okay," he says, bewildered.

I grab a throw blanket, spread it across the chair like a bedsheet, and tug him down on top of me. It's an awkward position, lying together on this old lump of beans, but he gives in to my chosen vibe. My bra comes off and his hands and lips are there. My mouth goes slack, and he presses up against my thigh and it's getting harder to think straight, and I love Mona Lisa but I don't want to be making eye contact with her right now, so I look away from the wall and shift positions. The floor is hard underneath me, my ass and his weight compressing the chair. "It keeps deflating," I say.

He drags himself upward, his hair tickling my throat, and meets my eyes. "Not the words I imagined you saying when I fantasized about this."

I yank him down to press his mouth against mine again, but he's smiling so my lips connect with his teeth.

"I meant the chair," I say, but he's already pulling me up. "You fantasized about this?"

He drags his knuckle across the bare skin above the waistband of my shorts. I make a throaty noise and close my eyes.

"Bed?" he suggests.

"Floor," I counter.

He follows me down, lying over me. I pull on his belt loops until his hips press against mine, his knees between my legs. He grabs my waist tightly as I touch the fly of his pants. "Okay?" I ask.

He squeezes me tighter and makes an affirmative noise.

I try to undo the button but my hands aren't working properly. "Can you?" I ask, and he helps me work his pants off. I wrap my ankles around the backs of his legs and he slides his hands around to grip my ass. A groan escapes his mouth, and he kisses me thoroughly. There's so little between us now, just my threadbare shorts and our underwear, and the rhythm we find arching into each other is addictive. I can almost quiet my mind enough to do this with him for hours, maybe forever. Almost. It's just…

"Are you comfortable?" I whisper after several minutes.

"I don't think this floor is meant for kneeling," he says. "Tomorrow when I ask the trainer how to treat my turf burn, he's going to have a lot of questions."

"What are you going to tell him?" I press harder against him, rocking.

His lips part and his eyes flutter closed. "Who?"

"The trainer."

"Why are we talking about the trainer?"

I laugh at that. I don't recall ever laughing before while dry-humping, and I never would've thought it would be so nice, but it is, and he's laughing too.

He sits back on his heels abruptly, touching my ankle and brushing little circles around the bone on the outside with his thumb. "Hey. Are you sure you want this? All I want is to spend time with you."

He can tell I'm still nervous. Of course he can. The realization lands heavy on my chest like the palm of a reassuring hand, and the mood board slips away. "No," I say forcefully. I'm reluctant to talk about anything going on in my head, but it's imperative that he understand. "I want you so much—so much it scares me. Don't you want me?"

"Annie." His voice catches. "All I think about is how much I want you."

My throat isn't working. It's stopped up with something, possibly the chemicals they used to make this floor so green thirty years ago. They're probably illegal now. I finally manage to say, "All you think about? What about basketball?"

"What's basketball?"

"What about reality TV and standard deviations? What about Wawa subs?"

"Wawa hoagies, " he says. "And no. Just you."

I reach out to pull him back toward me fiercely, but he catches my hand. He places the most delicate kiss on my palm, and then another on the inside of my wrist. I shiver.

"Let me?" he asks.

I nod. Okay. I haven't been fooling anyone but myself.

"I think about your mouth," he murmurs into my wrist. He releases my hand, leans in to whisper in my ear, his lips grazing my cheek. "Your body. This necklace." He dips his head and drags his teeth along the chain, the sensation overloading my circuits, my brain function flickering in and out. "Sometimes I catch myself staring right here, and I can't look away." He slides back up to my other ear. "I think about how much you make me laugh. I think about that terrifying look you get in your eyes when you're determined to get something you want."

"I want you," I say, dizzy.

"Yeah," he says. "Sometimes you look at me like that. And I can barely handle it. I'd give you anything you wanted when you look at me like that." He plants a hand on his knee and stands. "This room has never been, and never will be, anyone's sex cave." He nods at the doorway. "Bed."

The word shimmers in the air like the haze above hot pavement. "Bossy," I say.

"Bed, please," he amends.

"I liked it."

He squeezes my hips and presses a kiss to my shoulder as he follows me into the bedroom. I sit on the edge of the bed while he closes the door partway. His pants and shirt are in the green room, so he's in his boxer briefs. Most of his face is shadows, but I can make out his chest rising and falling and the intensity of his eyes on me. His mouth is red and wet, like he's been eating cherries. The perfect amount of light filters in from the green room, and at the optimal angle. I couldn't have lit the scene better myself.

"So beautiful," he says, which is exactly what I was thinking.

He sits next to me, takes my face in his hands, and kisses me once, softly. When he pulls away I let him guide me onto my back, and his hot eyes scrape me clean of all my armor. No worries about what my facial expression reveals about me, about what this tenderness means. Just me, melting into the mattress, and him.

He moves next to me, propping himself up on one elbow, the strong curve of his shoulder outlined in the dim light. With one hand he traces my body. Up my arm, leaving a trail of goose bumps in his wake. Across my collarbone, along my cheek and through my hair, his thumb stroking the base of my skull with the perfect amount of pressure. Down, skating across the underside of my breasts. Then he adds his mouth, leaving a trail of delicate kisses along the path from one hip bone to the other. Takes a detour to drop a single kiss on the freckle to the left of my belly button. He runs a hand lightly over my shorts and down my thigh, squeezes one knee gently and lifts it up, so my foot is flat on the bed. Shifting, he drops his mouth to the inside of my ankle and up my shin.

It's all gauzelike strokes from intent fingers and focused, worshipful kisses. His hands and lips are causing a chemical transformation of every inch of skin they touch. They must be. Electrons are moving, atoms shifting. New molecules form in the wake of his mouth, his fingertips. It's no longer the same old skin and maybe never will be again. Not after being treated as reverently as this.

Ben Callahan takes care of his people. I've known that for a while. And for the first time I'm realizing I might be one of them. A strange fluttering starts in my chest and expands outward, until it reaches my toes and leaves my head spinning.

He touches the hem of my shorts and studies my face. "Can I take these off?"

I'm practically a puddle at this point, but I manage to lift my hips. "Yes, please," I say in a scratchy voice, my throat full of anticipation.

My shorts and underwear come off and then his hand is between my legs. A greedy noise I don't recognize comes out of my mouth. My hand flies up to his shoulder and squeezes, my nails digging in.

He slides down my body, and my knees fall open. He looks up at me through his eyelashes and, well, it's a staggering image. This is why good lighting was invented. "Yeah?" he asks.

I nod, and his breath and the ghost of his stubble skim my thigh. My fingers slide into his hair and I drag the tips along his scalp. Mine. The word lights up in some primal part of my brain like marquee letters, travels down to my fingertips like an electric current.

And then his mouth is on me, and there are no words in my brain at all.

He's doing the most wonderfully obscene things in the sweetest way, erasing the entire concept of time from my blissfully blank mind. Minutes or hours or days pass—numbers aren't real—and it's all so overwhelming I grab at his shoulders, trying to pull him up, and rasp, "Ben, I need you here," and he obliges. He's there with me, his eyes soft, and all I want is to be as close to him as I can get.

This is not just for fun. I don't know what it is. But it's bigger than that.

"You sure?" he asks, running a finger across my bottom lip.

"So sure."

I help slide his boxer briefs off and then he's gone for a minute. It's like losing gravity. How quickly can you get addicted to the feeling of another person's body? A wrapper tears and then he's back, stroking my hair and kissing me. I direct him and he presses forward. The most perfect stretch overwhelms me, and we let out simultaneous shaky groans.

He whispers nice things about my body and the way I feel and that's all great, but the best part is when he says, " Fuck, Annie," because it's so not him. Take that, Father John. He presses his fingertips between us, against me. His motions get frantic and his skin is so hot and he's finally, finally starting to lose control.

That's what does it for me. "Ben." His name slips out and he brings his mouth down to mine. Not to kiss, neither of us can manage that. Instead he just inhales my panting breaths and that one final cry, like he's trying to consume what's happening to me. And that takes him over the edge too.

Afterward, we take turns using the bathroom and sprawl out limp on the bed, one of his legs tossed over mine. I push strands of sweaty hair off his face with one finger, and he strokes the spot on my neck reddened by the friction of his stubble on my skin.

"Your thighs are still shaking," he murmurs lazily.

"Your fault," I slur.

Ben has sex like he plays basketball, which is absurd but also makes complete sense. He was a point guard, so he's always been good at setting the tempo on the court. An excellent communicator. Vocal at the right times. He pays close attention to other players' body language, quickly discerning how to read them. He's a good teammate, selfless, patient, happy to make an assist rather than score himself. An excellent judge of when to attack the basket and when to step back and create space. Effective at creating pressure in passing lanes on defense—okay, maybe that one's not so relevant.

"Stay with me," he says, his voice low and sleepy.

"We're in my apartment. I don't plan on leaving."

He shakes his head. "That was not a complete thought. I'm not at my most coherent right now."

"You're welcome," I say.

He runs his thumb up and down the side of my neck. "Stay with me in the hotel. In Boston," he says, shy and eager at the same time. "One of Kyle's fraternity brothers lives there, so he's staying with him."

"Okay," I say.

"Yeah?"

I nod.

He pulls me in close and I rest my head on his chest. "You're incredible," he says.

There are a lot of things I want to tell him but they won't budge from my throat. I do my best, whispering into his skin. "The pervs on Instagram were right about you."