Lisa Kleypas - Give Me Tonight

Ben caught his breath as her hands moved down to his hips. Her fingertips grazed the edge of the coarse hair that feathered low across his abdomen. She hesitated, her fingers hovering near the pulsing, aroused length of him, and he knew she was uncertain. He ached for the feel of her hands on him, small, feminine hands that needed to be taught how to touch a man.

"Addie…" His hand slid to the back of hers, and she pulled away as if touched by fire. "No, no…let me show you," he said, and it was difficult to keep his voice gentle when his body was shaking with eagerness. "Make me ready for you," he urged, taking her hand in a stronger grip and shaping her palm to his aroused flesh, showing her how to pleasure him. She blushed in the darkness and followed the intimate lesson awkwardly, spurred on by the tremor of his fingers, the racing of his heart. Up and down her hand traveled, clasping loosely, pausing to test the silky texture of his skin. His breath rushed in her hair as she became bolder, and he let go of her, allowing her to touch him without guidance. She dared to whisper the same questions that he'd asked her, about what felt good, what he liked, and she was rewarded by his soft laugh.

"You're an angel," Ben murmured, kissing her possessively, lifting her hands up to his face and pressing her palms against his cheeks. "… angel…" His fingers searched through the damp tangle of hair between her legs as he continued to kiss her. Slowly, slowly, she felt the intrusion of his finger into her body, and she started, her thighs tensing.

"Don't tighten," he said huskily. "Relax. Let me inside, darlin’.” And she tried to release the inner clenching as she felt his finger slip even deeper. His touch was agile and sensitive, sliding and stroking until she arched up to him and froze with a faint sound, gripped in a surge of pleasure. The heel of his hand ground gently against the softness between her thighs, drawing out her ecstasy as long as possible.

Exhausted, Addie lay trembling in his arms, not knowing if minutes or hours passed before she lifted her lashes. He rose to his elbows above her, staring down at her face with burning green eyes. Languidly, greedily, she wrapped her arms around his neck and urged him closer, and he spread her legs with his knees, pressing into her.

The long, invasive thrust caused her to flinch in pain, but she surrendered to it instead of fighting, striving to accept the fullness of him inside her. Ben stroked the hair away from her forehead, kissed the salt scented dampness of her skin. His lungs expanded with corrugated breaths as the depths of her body held him in a velvet grip. He moved in a careful, steady rhythm. Before he could teach her more, she lifted her hips in response.

Her eyes gleamed smokily as they searched his. "What does it feel like to you?"

His dark hair fell over his forehead as he looked down at her, momentarily silent as he tried to find the words. Then he swallowed hard and shook his head. "I can't describe it," he said huskily. "What about you?"

"I feel like you're part of me," she whispered. "We're one person. And I don't want to be separate from you again."

Suddenly fierce, he pulled her hips up with his hands and drove into her. Driven by the rhythm he had set, they sought a deeper joining, loved, enchanted, until the world was shredded around them. He found her mouth with his and buried his final groan in her throat, finding the same burst of fulfillment that had just contracted her flesh around his. And then they lay together in exhaustion, suffused with wonder.

Addie was the first to move. Sleepily she threw her arm across his shoulders and pulled herself on top of him until she was lying across his chest. With her bright eyes and ruffled hair, she looked so much like a curious kitten that Ben's mouth twitched in amusement. He trailed his fingers down the curve of her back.

"Ben?"

"What?"

"Do you still visit that woman in Blue Ridge?"

He smiled ruefully and framed her face in his hands. "God knows why I should be surprised by anything you ask."

"Well?"

"I haven't seen her in a long time. I haven't been with anyone since I first realized I wanted you." Absently he played with her hair, winding it through his fingers, brushing the ends across his face, enjoying the softness of it. "You've absorbed all my interest and desire for weeks. There wasn't enough left for anyone else. "

Addie hated the thought of his being with another woman. In spite of his reassurance, she couldn't help feeling jealous. She didn't want him to have memories of other women and the pleasures they had given him. Did he think of her in a different way than he thought of them? Had making love with her been the same? Her thoughts wandered back to the woman in Blue Ridge.

"Did you care about her?"

"I didn't know her enough to care about her."

"But you and she-"

"We enjoyed each other's company in bed. But there's more to knowing a person than being familiar with her body. "

She'd never pondered deeply what it must be like to make love with someone you didn't care for. "Did you even like her?"

"I guess you could say we were friends. But neither of us wanted anything more than that. I didn't want to know what was in her heart, and she felt the same about me." He was silent then, allowing her to think over what he'd said, and he resisted the urge to pull her closer.

"How cold." Her expression was a cross between distaste and confusion.

"In some ways it was."

"In what ways?" she asked, increasingly nettled.

"After the time in bed was spent, there was always silence between us. There was nothing to talk about, nothing to share. The satisfaction from our encounters was shallow. It didn't linger. "

"Shallow or not, she obviously had something that made you come back for more. You went to her more than one time, didn't you?"

Ben paused and considered what lay at the heart of Addie's questioning. Perhaps it was uncertainty that had flared up in the form of a waspish temper. Was she afraid he would make comparisons between her and the women he'd had before her?

"Why aren't you saying anything?" Addie demanded peevishly. "Too busy counting?"

For a brief moment Ben wavered between sympathy and a strange kind of resentment. He was no knight in shining armor, nor could he ever be. He heard the disillusionment in her voice as she began to realize it. But she had to accept him for all that he was, including the imperfections.

"I've never pretended to have led a perfect life, Addie. I'm a man with all the needs any other man has. I've done my share of living, and that includes having been with a certain number of women. "

"How many? Am I the third or fourth? The twentieth? The fiftieth?"

"I don't carve notches on my belt. I've never taken a woman for the sake of adding to the number that have passed beneath me. Only when I needed to be with someone. Sometimes I knew the women, sometimes I didn't. It never made a difference. But you're the only one I've ever been in love with."

She was silent for a long time, and he couldn't begin to guess at her thoughts. Finally she spoke in a small voice, all trace of combativeness gone.

"Do you ever think about any of them?"

"No. The truth is I don't remember much about the time I spent with them."

She frowned as she traced the line of his collarbone. "If you never saw me again after tonight, how much of this would you remember?"

"Every detail," he said gravely. "Every second. Everything you said, every touch and sound, until my dying day."

Addie flushed and laid her cheek against his chest. "Ben, do you mind that I don't have experience? I didn't know what you wanted from-"

He rolled her onto her back and silenced her with a long kiss. When he lifted his head, his voice was ragged at the edges. "What happened between us a few minutes ago makes everything I've felt before pale in comparison." He paused, entranced by the sheepish smile that had begun to curve her lips. "As a mere novice, you nearly did me in. I don't know how I'll survive when you have a little more experience."