Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

THEO

The cool water helped dampen my body's desperate desire to jump the man, but it definitely didn't squash it completely. A doused Bennett Graham was just as sexy as a dry one.

"Fuck," he said when he came up sputtering.

"Forgive me, but you were standing so close to the edge. I couldn't resist."

He lunged at me and shoved me under the water before yanking me up again, wrapping his arms around me, and kissing me breathless.

The scratch of his beard was different, and the strength of his arms around me was thrilling.

I could get used to kissing this man. It had been a while since I'd been with someone, since I'd been pretty much fixated on Bennett and only Bennett since the Wing Off in April. The anticipation of seeing and touching his naked body made me hard again, despite the cool water.

"Can we go inside?" I asked between kisses.

"You sure?"

Ever the gentleman. So adorable.

Instead of responding, I shot him an incredulous look. He laughed and followed me to the stairs. We toweled off in a mad rush as we raced upstairs to his bedroom. Like the rest of his house, Bennett's bedroom managed to be both timeless and modern. I was dimly aware of muted wallpaper, a mahogany dresser with intricate carvings, a matching four-poster bed, and Art Deco lamps that probably made the place cozy and comfortable in the winter.

But I didn't care about any of that right now. I was hard again. Desperate for him. He was tall and broad, with leanly muscled arms and thighs, big hands, and long fingers. His shoulders were a work of art I wanted to worship for hours. But his eyes—God, those intense gray-green eyes—were my favorite thing ever, especially now that they were focused on me.

"What do you like?" I asked between kisses to the side of his neck and down his chest.

Bennett's hands moved down into my wet shorts and gripped my ass. I shimmied my hips as I yanked the clinging material down.

"With you?" he asked in a rough voice. "Anything. Want to put my mouth all over you. Make you feel good. Make you come."

Air seemed to be in short supply as the image of Bennett sucking me off bloomed in full color in my head. I yanked his wet T-shirt over his head. "Get this off," I begged. We stripped each other down until we were completely bare and plastered to each other's fronts. The feel of his thick cock against mine made me groan. I reached down to stroke it. "Fuck, yes."

His hands were back on my ass, lifting me into another hungry kiss. We stumbled to the bed, where he stopped kissing me long enough to nudge me down onto the side of the bed. He met my eyes and then sank to his knees on the rug.

"Please," I whispered.

His eyes shone, and the edge of his mouth quirked up. "You want me to suck you?"

I threw my head back with a groan. "You need to ask?"

His hot, wet tongue lashed up my shaft, causing me to cry out and reach for his shoulders. He quickly sucked the tip of my cock into his mouth and began working me over with his mouth. There was zero hesitation and complete ownership in his movements.

"Oh fuck. Christ. Just like that." I moved my hands up into his hair and combed the damp locks with my fingers. It had already started drying into a crazy array of flipped-up ends. I loved that there was enough for me to grab hold of as his head began to bob and his tongue made my head spin.

Bennett's wide palms moved up and down my legs. I watched the darker golden tan of his fingers in contrast to the pale skin of my upper thighs. There was something intoxicating about seeing a man's hands on my body, especially this man.

For as nervous as Bennett seemed to have been about tonight, he was completely confident now that his hands and mouth were on me.

"Bennett," I hissed when I worried I would come before I even touched his dick.

He pulled off and wiped his chin with the back of a hand. "Move up." He nudged me onto the bed properly until I was laid out with his long, muscled body on top of me. I wrapped my arms around him and skimmed my hands along his back while reveling in the feel of his cock pressed against mine.

I moved a hand between us to try to grip both of us together. The noise he made in his throat made my cock jerk.

"Want you," he grumbled, reaching to help me get a better grip on our cocks. I thrust my hips frantically, wrapping a leg around his to try and keep him as close as possible.

We were a jumble of limbs and grunts, whimpers and sucked-in breaths. The feel of his hot skin, the taste of tart lemons on his tongue, and the knowledge that he wanted me with the same desperation I wanted him were all enough to blow me apart.

Within seconds of muffling my shout into his shoulder and feeling the rush of release, I felt the addition of his spunk hit my belly. The muscles of his back contracted under my palm, and the noise he made vibrated from his chest to mine.

The sound of our ragged breathing filled the space around us as we both shifted our hands away. Bennett moved off me to fetch a towel from the bathroom. When he returned, he leaned over to clean me up with unexpected tenderness. Thankfully, he didn't seem nervous like before. The awkwardness from earlier was entirely gone.

Instead of returning the towel to the bathroom, he dropped it on the floor and moved back onto the bed to lie next to me, caressing my face and gazing at me with a smile as soft and bright as the golden-hour light streaming in the window.

"Compatible in bed," he murmured. "Check."

His attention made me feel flustered, so I moved my eyes down to land on a cluster of freckles I'd noticed earlier on his shoulder. I reached out a fingertip to trace the pattern. "The Big Dipper," I said with a laugh as I realized why it seemed familiar. "You have a constellation on your shoulder?"

I glanced back up to meet Bennett's eyes. That spectacular gray-green I'd never seen on another person was shining at me with pleasure.

"My grandfather used to say that, but no one else has ever noticed it before," he said softly. "Do you know much about constellations?"

He seemed so excited by the idea that I blurted out the truth.

"I do now. I, ah, may have started studying up on them since you hired me." Since before that, really. Since I'd first noticed Bennett four years ago and become fascinated by the man in the Observatory House, but definitely more so in the past two years since I'd become desperate for him to notice me back.

Now that he finally had, I considered it time well spent.

"But…" His expression registered shock. "You've been working for me for over two years."

I tried to ignore the hot flush burning my face. Tonight was my chance with Bennett Graham, and I didn't want to waste it.

My voice came out lower and rougher than I expected. "You can learn a lot about something you like in two years."