Exes With Benefits
My nod had to answer for me because words weren’t coming.
“We haven’t talked about what happened yesterday.” His fingers fisted around the material of my shirt at the base of my back. “What happened? Was that okay?”
I had to swallow before I could answer. “It was okay.”
A wounded expression crossed his face. “Just okay?”
I sighed. “You know what I mean, and you were the one who went with the word okay first.”
Canaan’s forehead fell to mine as he fought a smile. “You’re still a ballbuster.”
“And your balls still need to be busted every now and again.”
Canaan’s easy chuckle rocked his chest against mine, his gaze moving from the door to me, our time running out. “Can I kiss you?”
I blinked at him. “You got me off against a wall yesterday. And you sure as hell didn’t ask for permission then.”
His hand moved to my face, his thumb tracing the seam of my lips. “Does that mean I don’t have to ask from now on? I can just do what comes naturally to me when I’m with you?”
There was a promise, paired with a warning, in his words. It excited me more than it scared me. Twenty days. I could give myself over to whatever urges or needs I had that Canaan was capable of fulfilling.
“Yes, Canaan,” I whispered. “Yes,” I repeated, just in case he needed one more confirmation.
His mouth took mine, his hand slipping around my neck to hold me to him. It was a sweet kiss. A kiss of youth and innocence. It was so much like our first kiss, I could almost imagine the sting of sunburn on my shoulders and the taste of watermelon still on our lips.
When he pulled away, I could tell it took every bit of willpower he had to let me go.
Giving myself a moment to catch my breath, I started down the stairs. “That was surprisingly sweet, Canaan Ford. Gentle even.”
“Good.” He moved to the edge of the porch, watching me leave with a glint in his eye. “Because tomorrow night, I will be surprisingly the opposite.”
We were on for eight tonight. Which was a hell of a lot of hours from now with what I guessed/hoped/knew was coming. Since I’d reached my packing threshold a couple of hours ago, I decided to head into town to see if the old craft store was still in business.
The inspiration bug had struck and I felt anxious, not having a brush in my hand and a canvas in front of me to get it all down on. I actually gave a tiny shriek when I pulled in front of the craft store to find it still there and open. It was the same store Grandma had taken me to a month after losing my parents and had me pick out my first set of paints. She said expressing with art what we couldn’t with words was good medicine.
I didn’t realize how right she’d been at the time, or how painting would one day go beyond “good medicine” to become my livelihood.
The day was overcast; the mugginess in the air was extra insistent today, which meant a storm was coming. At least it would hopefully clear out some of this sweltering heat for a couple of days. Rushing from the air conditioning in my car into the air conditioning of the shop as fast as I could, I immediately moved toward the back of the store where the canvases used to be.
Once I’d selected the size I had in mind, I made a stop in the paint aisle. Someone else was lingering in the aisle, debating between a couple sets of finger paints. It was kind of amusing to watch some tough-looking young guy with a backward ball cap go back and forth between two packages of finger paints.
He must have noticed me watching, because his head turned. At the same moment I recognized him, recognition registered on his face too.
He worked a smile into place as he moved toward me, paints still in hand. “You’re Canaan’s girl, right?”
I didn’t even try for a smile. This wasn’t someone I’d ever associate with good feelings. “Was.”
The guy shrugged at my correction like he didn’t buy it.
“And aren’t you the fighter equivalent of a pimp?”
His tongue worked in his cheek, clearly amused. “Was. I was the fighter equivalent of that.”
“I suppose it’s hard to make money when your fighters keep breaking, right?” There was a bitter bite to my words, and I didn’t hold any of it back.
“It’s hard to make money when my best fighter calls it quits.” He stepped back, the look on my face likely giving off a back-up-or-else quality. “Your boy made me a lot of money back in those days. Lost a lot of money when he got out.”
My tongue worked into my cheek, not amused. “Forgive me for not feeling sorry for you. I’m the fighter equivalent of a nurse. The one who had to put back together what you had torn apart every damn weekend.”
The man’s brows pulled together. He didn’t look any different from back then. I knew his name—he’d graduated a few years ahead of Canaan and me—but I didn’t use it. Referring to him with a name was too personal. He’d been a fighter for a couple of years too, before he jumped into the ring with a guy twice his size and left the ring on a stretcher. After that, he stuck to training and booking fighters. The one time I’d confronted him, after Canaan had come home with his first broken nose, he’d laughed at me and told me to stop pretending I was living a fairy tale.
I’d hated him for saying that to me. I hated him now for being right.
“I didn’t push Canaan in the ring,” he said, shaking his head. “I could barely keep him out of it. Fighting—for guys like him—it’s therapy. A release. Maybe not the healthiest kind there is, but back then, it was the only kind of healing Canaan would accept.”
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. I wanted to spit a hundred words of argument and outrage at him. I wanted to argue that he was the bad guy and Canaan had been young and foolish and naïve. I stayed quiet because I knew Canaan had never been any of that. The only person who could get Canaan Ford to do anything was Canaan Ford.
“I should get going. Before I do something illegal with this canvas.” My mouth worked as I pictured breaking it over his head.
The guy lifted his hands, still clutching the finger paints, like he was surrendering. That was when I noticed the band on his ring finger. The finger paints were for who I assumed was his kid or kids. God, the world had changed. I’d been so stuck in it, I felt like nothing ever would, and in five years, it seemed like everything had.
“I’ve never seen a guy give up so much for a girl,” he said at the last minute, like he hadn’t known he was going to say it at all.
My forehead creased.
“He gave up fighting and the money that came with it. The girls. He might have never so much as looked their way, but there was no end to them where he was concerned.” The man blew a low whistle, his eyes somewhere else. “And he gave up the booze when he lost you. He gave up a lot for you, Maggie.”
My feet shifted. He’d rubbed at a sore spot—one I shouldn’t still feel a sting from. “The girls? I’m not so sure about that. Toward the end . . . I don’t know.” My teeth sank into my lip, wondering why I was having this conversation with this guy I had once upon a time hated with every shred of my being.
The guy’s face lined, disbelief reading in his eyes. “Christ, you can’t be serious.”
“There were times he’d come home.” My eyes closed, transported back to that year in the garage apartment. “He’d have a different perfume clinging to him after every fight.”
He snorted. “Canaan couldn’t stop the girls from throwing themselves at him. But he could stop himself from following through. And he did. Every goddamn time.” The man pointed one of the finger paints at me. “Every girl in this town might have wanted him, but all he ever wanted was you. So don’t turn out to be that insecure girl who doesn’t deserve that kind of devotion. I’d be seriously disappointed if that was the type of woman Canaan Ford gave up legions of pussy for.”
His unexpected word choice in the midst of his tirade shocked me into a temporary stupor.
“He’s been faithful to you from the beginning to this v
ery fucking day. Don’t take a shit on that because he came home smelling like some other chick’s perfume. He also came home reeking of booze, muscle rub, and sweat. Didn’t mean he was fucking a tequila bottle.”
Goddamn I tried to help it, but I couldn’t. A smile pulled at my mouth. “Well, thank you for your testimony, but you’re wrong about one thing. You said he’s been faithful to me from the beginning, and okay, maybe I’ll believe your story about him not messing around with one of the ring sluts when we lived together.” I gave him a pointed look. “But it’s been five years since I left, and technically, we’re still married.”
He grunted, shaking his head at me. “Yeah, and technically, he’s still been faithful to you.”
“I don’t think you’re catching what I’m getting at—”
“Believe me, I really am.” The guy circled the other package of paints at me. “Let me spell it straight out for you. Canaan has not so much as looked at, touched, or fucked another woman since you.”
I stared at him to see if he was being serious. He looked like it. “I left him five years ago.”
One side of his face pulled up. “Which means Canaan’s gone half a decade without pussy. That’s your tragedy right there, not that some pissed off kid wanted to fight demons in a ring instead of the ones inside his head.”
Checking down the aisle to make sure no one else had joined us for this insanely inappropriate conversation, I cleared my throat. “You have no way of knowing he hasn’t been with anyone else.”
“No. Other than the weekly talks we have over coffee when other guys would be bragging about the girls they tagged. Instead Canaan goes on about his crusade to wait for you.” The guy rolled his eyes.
“You two still see each other?” I asked. Canaan hadn’t known him outside of the fighting world before, and they didn’t seem like the type of people who would be drawn to each other outside of a mutually beneficial situation.
“He wasn’t the only one with a drinking problem back then.” The man’s eyes dropped for a moment before lifting again. “Canaan’s my sponsor. He’s been my sponsor for a couple of years now. I drank my last drop two years ago, and thanks to him and my family, I’ll never drink another.”
My arm holding the canvas dropped. “I didn’t know he was a sponsor.”
“He’s a pretty damn good one too.” The guy finally seemed to make up his mind on which set of finger paints to go with, putting the other back. “Kind of funny how I trained him to be a fighter. And he taught me how to fight.”
My hand settled on my hip. “You were his pimp.”
He gave me a tipped smile as he moved by. “Same difference.”
As he was about to turn down the aisle, I spun around. “You’re telling the truth? About the girls? Him giving up fighting and drinking after I left?”
The guy paused long enough to look me in the eyes. “Why ask for the truth if you’re determined to never believe it?”
That was how he left it before moving to the front of the store to pay for the agonized over finger paints, leaving me standing there with a blank canvas in my hand and wondering what the hell to fill it with.
It took me a while to leave the store. It took a good five minutes before I could move from the spot that conversation had frozen me to, and another fifteen to figure out what color paints and what kinds of brushes I needed to create whatever scene I had in mind. Coming in, I’d had no end to my inspiration, but leaving, I felt more baffled than anything. I wound up going for an array of warm colors: reds, oranges, some golds and yellows thrown in too.
I didn’t have a clue what I was going to paint until I propped the canvas on an old easel Grandma had kept in my closet, set up outside under the giant willow tree. With a storm still on its way, the languid branches made the most beautiful sound when the wind swept through them, and the visual of them moving as one was just as striking.
Twilight was sinking in as the canvas started to resemble something that could have been considered art. I should have gone with only a couple of new brushes since I’d been using my fingers and the side of my hand for most of the color.
In the background, I heard my stomach rumbling from missing lunch and now dinner. I also felt the dryness from thirst coating my throat. I had half a dozen other needs and urges embedded in between, but nothing seemed more important than painting. It was the kind of feeling I lived for, and one that didn’t visit as often as a creative person would have liked. I refused to waste this visit by taking a break for something as unimportant as a sandwich.
Another hour passed and I could hear the rumble of thunder echoing in the distance as the breeze became a wind. I still wasn’t sure exactly what I was painting, but whatever it became, I knew it would be one of my favorite creations yet. The streaks of red and orange looked like flames bursting across the canvas, the golds and yellows clashing against them unapologetically.
“Maggie.”
I heard my name being called, but it felt like it was coming from the confines of a dream instead.
“Maggie.” It came again, this time accompanied with a touch that was enough to jolt me from my painting trance.
Pulling my fingers back from the canvas, I tipped my head back, knowing who I’d find. No one had ever or could ever say my name the way he did.
Canaan took one look at my face and his brows knitted together. “What is it?”
How did I even begin to explain it to him? How could I put into words for him what I still did not understand myself?
As I rose from the stool I’d been camped on for hours, the tube of gold paint fell from my fingers. He didn’t have a chance to look surprised before my arms laced behind his neck to draw his head down just enough for my lips to reach his.
His back stiffened at first, almost like he wasn’t sure if this was a trick, but the tension melted from him every second my mouth moved against his. Popping up, I wound my legs around him, and his arms automatically tied below me to hold me to him.
My fingers, still wet with paint, moved down his shirt, tugging it free from his jeans in a not-so-gentle manner. As I worked it up his chest and over his head, he seemed to catch up to what was happening. In my grandma’s front yard.
“Maggie, just a minute.” His voice was strained as I scratched my nails down the column of his spine. “Let me get you inside first.”
My hands came around his body, leaving streaks of color down the grooves of his stomach until I was working at his belt. “I don’t want to wait a minute to be with you. Not one more minute.”
Whatever he’d been about to say was silenced when my hand slipped inside of his jeans and formed around his erection. His eyes clamped closed as I touched him, feeling him harden even more in my grip.
“Fuck,” he growled right before pushing through the tangle of willow branches behind me.
Once he had me behind the thick wall of branches and leaves, all manner of hesitation vanished. His mouth became more insistent as his hands moved to free me from my tank. It had barely dropped from his hands before he pulled the clasps of my bra free, unwinding it from my arms in a frenzied rush. I was still working on his zipper by the time he dropped to the ground, spreading me out on the grass at the base of the tree.
His fingers skimmed beneath the waist of my skirt, claiming my panties at the same time as he worked them down my body. Only once I was fully naked did he slow down. His eyes soaked me in, piece by piece, until I was twisting from need. Seeing me so desperate for him only made him stare longer, his wild eyes as feral as I’d ever seen them.
His hands moved to finish the job I’d started of freeing him from his jeans. In true Canaan fashion, he wasn’t wearing anything beneath his jeans. No boxers. No briefs. No nothing to get in the way.
When he yanked the pants down, he sprung free, causing everything south of my navel to contract. I’d been with Canaan hundreds of times, probably thousands. He’d been my first, and even when I left him, I knew he’d ruined me for all other men. In my
five years of experience since, I’d been right. I’d walked away because I couldn’t watch him self-destruct and take me with him any longer. I’d left knowing he was the best I’d ever had, but possibly the worst thing for me.
Now I wasn’t sure I’d had that right at all. Maybe he wasn’t the type of guy who did calm and peaceful, but was I the type of woman who wanted that? Was I the type who fit that mold herself?
His body folded over mine as he worked himself between my legs. My back lifted from the grass to meet him, my chest spilling against his as he pressed me deeper into the ground.
Canaan’s mouth dropped outside of my ear, his breath telling me everything I needed to hear. He wanted me. He loved me. He’d waited for me.
The reminder of how long it had been since he’d been with a woman had my hips tipping to meet his. When I felt him against me, my head fell back from that faint sensation alone. My body was already starting its climb, and I knew once he was inside me, I’d be lucky to last a few strokes.
Without my knowledge, I’d craved Canaan’s body. I’d been desperate for the feel of it moving with mine. Now that we were together again, I wasn’t sure I had the willpower to walk away a second time. Not when this—us—felt so right.
Pushing inside me, he took his time, his chest rising and falling against mine. The deeper he moved, the more I wanted. The harder he pushed, the more I needed. When he could go no farther, he held there, his breath ragged and uneven.
“Maggie,” he breathed, kissing my neck.
I trembled. “I don’t think I’ll survive you.”
His fingers tangled through my hair, holding me close. “I know I can’t survive without you.”
With one hand at my hip, the other curved behind my neck, he aligned his head above mine as he started to move inside me. My eyes closed as he pushed in; they opened as he pulled away. His never left my face, the wildness in his eyes tamed for a moment from the pairing of our bodies.
“I won’t last,” he groaned, as though he was apologizing.
My head tipped back when he thrust inside me with more force than ease this time. “I can’t . . .” I sighed, feeling the spiral of release for a flash before it was upon me.