Why don't you Stay ... Forever - Jennifer Ashley Page 0,8
party and my dance friends helped out. I was expunging my life of another person, and they knew it.
I know how to get cactus thorns out of flesh, because I’ve had the problem before. Prickly pear can be nasty, driving dozens of tiny needles into the skin. Fortunately Ben hasn’t gotten a big dose. I pour water and antiseptic on his hand, pat his skin carefully dry with a towel, and then unroll the duct tape.
“Seriously?”
“Works like a dream.” I gingerly lay the tape across the back of his hand, where the needles stand up, then lightly tap it down. “Ready?”
“No.” Ben gives me a wavering smile. “But what the hell?”
I grasp the tape, and yank. He grunts with pain. The spines come out—most of them anyway. I triumphantly fold up the tape several times and drop it into the trash.
We’re not done yet. I take up the tweezers, bend over his hand and start to gently work out the half dozen spines still in his skin.
“This is the weirdest date I’ve ever been on,” Ben says, his breath ruffling my hair.
A date? Is that what this is? My heart thumps, and I try to quiet it. No, he’s joking. Right?
“Me too.” I drop each spine down the sink. Ben’s hand is red from the duct tape, but there’s not much bleeding. “Not that I go on many. Too busy.”
“Dancing takes up a lot of time?”
“Only if you want to be good at it.”
I concentrate on the spines and the tweezers. I don’t want to talk about my failed love life with Reuben, a dancer who is almost as good as Dean but without the winning personality. Which I discovered too late.
Reuben is why I remodeled the bathroom and the rest of the house. I couldn’t afford to move to a new place once Reuben left—I inherited this house from my aunt, and I didn’t want to go anywhere anyway. This is my house, and I’d loved my aunt. She’d been my surrogate mom and my counselor after my parents moved to Ohio when I started college here. I used the excuse of replacing aging fixtures to erase the memory of Reuben from it.
Ben leans close to watch me. His hands are hard but not rough—he taps computer keyboards all day. But he isn’t frail or soft. I’ve watched him haul around heavy pieces of hardware and tear apart and replace walls to rewire the network.
His warmth distracts me. I miss a spine and have to go back for it.
Our heads almost whack together. We pull back, grinning, but now we’re an inch apart, my hands stilling.
Ben draws a finger along my jaw. I surge closer to him.
The touch of his breath, then his lips, makes me drop the tweezers, which rattle in the sink.
I let them stay there while Ben kisses me.
My body had been tired from dancing, but a new energy surges through me, one that has me pulling Ben into my arms. His lips part mine, and the kiss turns deep.
My pounding heart burns. I want to gasp for breath, but I’d have to break this phenomenal kiss to do it.
Ben pulls me closer. The sink digs into my hip, but I don’t mind as I’m now standing hard against him. I feel something else hard, sense the need in his touch.
I ease from the kiss. Ben opens his eyes, the intensity in them igniting the yearning I’ve had for weeks.
I want to move this to the bedroom, but I’m far too timid to ask. Ben doesn’t say a word, but when he looks at me, I know he feels the same.
He takes me by the hand and leads me there.
My bedroom is girly, but it’s what I wanted after Reuben departed. He’d have hated the gauzy bed hangings and all the pillows, the embroidered flower pieces my aunt had framed for the wall. It had felt good to re-hang the embroidery done by her hands once Reuben was gone.
Ben is out of place in my room, but he doesn’t appear to mind. I toss throw pillows to the floor before Ben lays me down on the bed and comes over me. He takes his time, stroking my breast with one gentle hand while he kisses me.
I slide my foot up his leg, indicating I don’t necessarily want to go slow. I’ve been lusting over Ben for a while—if this is going to happen, why wait any longer?
I try to drag him down to me, but Ben