“I haven’t talked with the doctor yet. We’ll have to be very careful not to jar that bone.”
She nodded. “I know. I can tell the brace is looser this afternoon. More of the swelling has gone down.”
Ben moved to the opposite end of the table and unfastened the boot. The nightgown, which he’d pushed out of his way, drifted sideways over the couch cushion to reveal her upper thigh. He schooled his gaze on the brace, refusing to torment himself with glimpses of flawless skin. “Wow, the swelling has gone down.” He drew each strap tighter. “I’m glad you said something. Your leg could have moved around in there too much.”
Sissy sighed. “Maybe when I get a regular cast?”
Ben met her gaze again, understanding that she was still wondering when they might glimpse small corners of heaven together. “Actually, if all else fails, a tie-down strap works great for me.”
Her brows lifted. “Really? Then run right downstairs and get it.”
Ben couldn’t help it; he laughed. “I think I’ve come up with a better plan.”
“What is it?”
He leaned forward to kiss her. “Let it be a surprise. And you have to remember one thing: What we do is going to be really tame, nothing like the sex we’ll have once the doctor gives us the go-ahead. I don’t want you to be disappointed because it isn’t romantic-movie perfect.”
“I’ll be happy with less than perfect.”
“First I need to give Drake some business. I won’t be gone that long.”
A warm twinkle lighted her eyes. “I’m craving Snickers bars like you wouldn’t believe. Someone I know once suggested that when I get these cravings, I may be wanting something else. I’m beginning to believe he’s right.”
Ben chuckled. “When I get back I’ll do my best to make sure you never crave another Snickers bar.”
“That’s a tall order.”
“I’m just the man for the job. And if you still want a Snickers bar afterward, I can run next door and get you one.”
* * *
Sissy grew nervous after Ben left. The flannel nightgown she was wearing wouldn’t do, but she had no sexy lingerie. Panties were out of the question. None of hers would fit over her brace. A T-shirt wouldn’t be very attractive, but it was all she had that was stretchy enough for him to have access to all parts of her. She didn’t want to miss out on an experience because he couldn’t uncover something.
She was shaking as she sat on the bed to change. What am I doing? she wondered. This is nuts. Then, I’ll feel better when Ben gets here. He always makes me feel safe. He knows just what to say. He touches me so gently. Why am I letting myself have a panic attack? Oh, God, I need a shower, only I can’t take one. I sponged off earlier, but that isn’t the same as bathing. What if my armpits stink?
What was taking him so long? She jumped as if she’d been stuck with a pin when she heard the apartment door open and close. The thump of Ben’s boots hailed his arrival.
“Sissy?”
Voice quaking, she called, “I’m in here!”
He appeared in the doorway, holding a bright orange strap in one hand and a white sack bearing the Pill Minder logo in the other. “Just in case my plan doesn’t work, I have a backup idea.” He took in her T-shirt. She felt pretty sure he noticed that she was shaking. She expected—well, she wasn’t sure what she expected, but it wasn’t for him to ask, “Sweetheart, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Um—well, I tried to find something to wear.” She plucked at the T-shirt. “I’m sorry it’s not sexy, but it’s stretchy. And then I was just waiting for you. I’m sorry I look so awful, but I don’t own one stitch of sexy lingerie.”
Ben’s shoulders slumped. He tossed his purchases on the bed behind her. “You don’t need sexy lingerie. It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing. Okay? Normally, whatever you put on will just come off. I want you. But for tonight, the T-shirt is a great choice. If my idea doesn’t work and you start doing a hip dance, the strap is smooth nylon web. I had to look forever to find one that isn’t rough on the edges. With the T-shirt, I don’t have to worry about it abrading your skin.”
Sissy’s eyes had filled with tears. “So why did you yell at me?”
“I didn’t yell. Okay, maybe I raised my voice. You’re sitting with your feet down. How long have you been there?”
“Since you left.”
He vanished and returned with her pillows. “Onto the bed. Get the pillow under your head. You’re not allowed to sit with your feet down except to use the toilet. Otherwise, your leg is supposed to be above your heart.”
Sissy pushed on the mattress with her hands to scoot backward and get her body fully on the bed. Ben gently lifted her leg and lowered it onto the pillows. Under his breath, he said, “I did not see that.”
“You didn’t see what?”
“It’s nothing. Never mind.”
Sissy looked toward her toes, saw that her T-shirt was stretched over her thighs to ride high on her uplifted leg, and knew what he’d seen. Only, he didn’t seem to think he’d just glimpsed heaven.
“This isn’t fun.” She shot him an accusing look. “You aren’t being romantic.”
Ben placed his hands on his hips. “Your leg comes first, romance second.” Then he rolled his eyes, tossed his Stetson onto her dresser, and bent his head. “I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right. I’m not being romantic. It’s just that right now, your well-being comes first, and you shouldn’t have kept your feet down for a half hour.” He raised his hands. “I suck at romantic when it comes to your injury.” He sat beside her at an angle so they could be face-to-face. “You’re high on drugs, and you came in here to change clothes on crutches without anyone to catch you if you got dizzy. One of us needs to think about the possibility of you falling and injuring yourself.”
Sissy hated that she had tears in her eyes. “Well, that’s just fine. But right now I don’t care about my leg. I just want the romance.”
A muscle in Ben’s cheek started to twitch. “I understand. I really do. But I need to check how tight your brace is, and I need to put ice on your leg for no less than thirty minutes. We can talk while we ice. You’re due for another dose of happy syrup, and I’ll have a glass of wine. How’s that sound? Getting relaxed together before we do anything. That can be romantic.”
Sissy folded her arms over her chest. “I knew the T-shirt was a bad choice.”
Ben stared at the ceiling. In the light coming through her upstairs window, he looked too sexy to be legal. “It’s not the T-shirt. Right now, I love you too much to think about that.” He gave her one of those direct, unwavering looks that told her he would have his way about this. “You will elevate for thirty minutes. You will endure icing your leg for an equal amount of time. If you argue with me, I’m tossing the strap and lubricant out the window, and you can just wait to glimpse bits of heaven until the doctor says you can. Got it?”
Sissy’s heart felt as if it were melting. She had encountered men all her life who never cared about her. All they’d wanted was to use her. Ben already possessed her heart and was welcome to her body. But before he found pleasure with her, he wanted to be sure her leg was okay. He was so different from all the others, someone who actually loved her. “That is romantic,” was all she could think to say.
He looked at her as if she were not a member of his species. “What?”
“It’s romantic that you’re willing to throw the strap out the window. It’s romantic that you care about me more than you care about yourself.”
He studied her for a long moment. His expression was a blend of total bewilderment and frustration. Finally, he said, “I don’t get you, Sissy, but I sure do love you. And your leg is part of you. We’re doing this against your doctor’s orders. I have to be sure nothing we do jostles that bone. If you find that romantic, great, but to me, it’s just practical. Do yo
u understand?”
In that moment, Sissy believed she understood him even better than he understood himself. This wasn’t about his needs and his desires. He was making it all about her.
That meant the world to her. Nobody else had ever put her first. Ben was doing that. It was an incredible feeling to know that she was loved. It was even more incredible that he’d just proved to her, beyond any measure of doubt, that she could trust him. A starburst of warmth filled her chest.
“So, let’s relax together. While you sip a glass of wine and my happy juice starts working, we’ll talk.”
He left the room and returned moments later with a bag of ice, her dosage cup filled with syrup, and a goblet half-full of wine. She downed her pain medicine in one gulp. He pressed the ice around her brace. Then he sat beside her to sip his wine.
“I’m worried about the strap business,” he said.
“Why?”
“A couple of reasons, the first being that I’m afraid it won’t work. Anchoring your hips won’t stop you from trying to push up.”
“I’ll just remind myself that I shouldn’t.”
His gaze locked on her face, and a tender expression softened his rugged features. “You have no idea, do you? When we do this, the last thing you’ll be thinking about is your leg. In fact, you may not be thinking about much of anything. The French call the rush of physical pleasure during sex ‘the little death.’ Everything around you can go black, and all you see is your partner, if you can even see that. It’s like the whole world evaporates, and your reality focus shrinks to a pinpoint. It becomes only about feelings and needs that build within you until you climax.”
“That sounds amazing.”
“It is.”
“Thirty minutes is a long time,” she told him. “Did you set the timer on your phone?”
He laughed and drew the device from his pocket. “Okay, all set.”
“I hope you set it for twenty-nine minutes, because I know we’ve already spent one talking.”
“Can you feel the cold through your brace yet?”
“No.”
“Then thirty minutes on the timer works.”
While they waited for the timer to go off, Ben told funny snippets about his childhood. Before she heard his device jangle, he smiled and trailed his fingertip lightly along her cheekbone and then traced the shape of her ear. Bending over her, he settled his mouth over hers, tantalizing her with light flicks of his tongue until she opened for him. He thrust deeply into her mouth, using a rhythm he’d never used before, yet Sissy instinctively recognized it and responded in kind. Her heart started to pound.
The broad canopy of his chest and shoulders sheltered and warmed her. She slid her arms around his neck, ran her fingers into his hair, and moaned as he trailed his lips to her throat to titillate her nerve endings by tickling her skin with his tongue.
“What—” Sissy gulped to find her voice. “What about the strap?”
“I told you. I have a better idea.” He reached toward the nightstand to turn off a jarring ringtone. “And my timer just went off.”
He tugged on the neckline of her oversize T-shirt to bare her breasts. Her nipples went instantly hard, and he lightly grazed each of them with his teeth, making them even harder. Sissy felt electrified.
When he drew one of her nipples into his mouth and teased it with his tongue, she cried out with pleasure. Then he treated her other breast to the same tender ministrations.
She felt his hand, large and leathery, on her stomach as he pushed up her T-shirt. When her skin was bared, he moved down to taste it. Her whole body began to tingle with every touch of his mouth.
“Ben,” she whispered.
“Lie still. If I feel you arch your back, I’ll stop.”
“No, please, don’t stop.”
He left no part of her torso unattended, and then he straddled her hips to kiss her fingertips, her palms, and then the sensitive flesh at the bend of her arms. The little death. Sissy had never felt like this. For her, nothing existed but the man above her.
Then he moved lower, tossing aside the bag of ice before he shoved her elevation pillows under her hips, and propped her injured leg on his left shoulder. Flashing a grin at her, he said, “You can push all you like with your other foot.”
Before she could collect her scattered thoughts, he began kissing her inner thigh. Sissy felt as if her nerve endings had become harp strings being plucked by a maestro. Her muscles twitched. Her body quivered.
And then she felt the moist heat of his mouth at her most private place. Shocked, she pushed up on her elbows. “Ben, that’s—” He flicked his tongue, and jolts of sensation shot through her belly. “Ben?”
All she could see were his shoulders and the top of his head. “Sissy, just trust me.”
The vibration of his voice against that supersensitive part of her sent rivulets of pleasure streaming through her. She fell back on the bed. He began teasing her there with light flicks of his tongue. A sense of urgency that soon became an ache of need made her arch up for more, using her good leg to push. He increased the pressure as he toyed with the flange of tender flesh. The ache within her became nearly unbearable. She felt her hips, as if of their own volition, pick up the rhythm. And then her muscles began to jerk, the pressure within her grew, and the next instant, it felt as if she shattered inside, every fragment exploding and electrifying her body.
Afterward Ben put the pillows beneath her braced leg again, tossed the strap and pharmacy sack on the floor, and then drew the other side of the coverlet over her. Still fully clothed except for his Stetson, he lay down and wrapped his arms around her. Sissy, feeling as if all her bones had dissolved, tried to roll toward him.
“No, honey. Leg on the pillow.”
She sighed. “But I want to hold on to you. That was so wonderful. Unbelievable. I had no idea what I was missing, and now all I want is to get as close to you as I can.”
“Next time, switch sides of the bed. You can roll toward me, put the pillows between your knees, and keep your leg up.” He tightened his hold on her. “This is the best part, snuggling afterward. I like it.”
His tone indicated that he’d never done it. Curious, Sissy asked in a sleepy voice, “You didn’t know you liked it until now?”
She felt him smile against her hair. “No. Snuggling afterward isn’t a part of my dating repertoire. Normally, I get dressed, talk a little so I won’t seem rude, and then leave. It’s just sex, and afterward it’s awkward. Even with women I dated for a while, I never stayed. I didn’t feel the inclination, and I don’t think the women did, either. Kind of like when you go to watch the fireworks on the Fourth. When the show’s over, you go home.”
Sissy twisted her neck to look up at him. “Oh, Ben. You missed the show this time.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “This time was for you. Next time we’ll worry about me.”
“But it’s not fair. Is that why you got lubricant?”
He grinned and nudged her head back down with his chin. “I don’t need lubricant. I got it for you, just in case you were nervous and stayed dry down there.”
“Oh.”
Sissy relaxed again. Sleepiness crept over her like a warm, fuzzy blanket. Blackness came next.
* * *
For dinner that night, Ben made burgers and fries in the downstairs kitchen. Trial by fire, he thought as he turned on the fryer and then entered the walk-in freezer for some ground beef patties.
While he cooked, he talked with Sissy on his cell. She guided him, step by step. When he thought the burgers were done, he sent her a picture. She pronounced them perfect. He carried their meals upstairs on a tray. Ben perched on the coffee table to eat while she lay reclined.
He watched as she took the first bite of the burger. She looked doubtful, but then her expression transformed into pure bliss. Sh
e chewed enthusiastically, swallowed, and said, “Yum. The hamburger is perfect.”
“Do you think I’m ready?” he asked.
Sissy almost choked on a fry. “To open the restaurant?”
“Joe’s coming over in the morning to make out the first order.”
“But it’s more complicated than just making burgers and fries.”
Ben told her about going over her menus and calculating the amounts of ingredients he needed. “I think I can do this. Will you let me at least try? I’d like to be open for dinner tomorrow night.”
Sissy’s eyes widened. “Bang, just like that, without even so much as a trial run?”
Ben studied her delicate countenance. “Okay, I can do a trial run. How about if I invite only friends and family and offer two menu selections?”
“That would be good. It will at least help you to familiarize yourself with the routine. It gets crazy in that kitchen.”
“Speaking of trial runs, are you by any chance craving a Snickers bar for dessert?”
Her eyes darkened to a stormy blue. “Only if you get to enjoy it, too.”
Ben could see her pulse kicking in the hollow of her throat. She was nervous because she wasn’t sure how to make it good for him, but she was still game, and that made him love her all the more. He leaned forward, slipped a hand behind her head, and angled his shoulders to touch his lips to hers. Then he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bedroom, depositing her on the left side of the mattress this time.
“For the snuggle session later,” he explained. After getting the pillows under her leg, he began unbuttoning his shirt. He saw Sissy’s eyes widen as he bared his chest. “Are you okay with this?”
She met his gaze. “I just want you to hurry so I can see the rest of you.”
That was a request Ben couldn’t deny.
“You’re beautiful,” she said softly when he was nude. As he joined her on the bed, she asked, “With my leg over your shoulder, why can’t we do it for real this time?”