Catch a Falling Star (Second Chances Book 3) (19 page)

“Ah. See, that didn’t hurt, now did it,” Jo teased him as she brought the last bag in and set to work storing all the food they’d bought.

“No, it didn’t.” He chuckled. Actually, it had been sweet rolling up and down the aisles of a regular old suburban grocery store by Jo’s side. He could have had a whole shelf of awards, but not a single one of the harried mothers with small kids or retirees who shared the store with them knew the first thing about who he was. He was pretty sure he caught one middle-aged woman eyeing him as though he were a piece of fruit she needed to squeeze before purchase, but it wasn’t the same as the sharks of Manhattan.

No, if he was being honest, he’d enjoyed himself.

That didn’t change the fact that he was a rat bastard that was about to cause irreparable harm to someone without being able to stop it.

“Do these go in the pantry or one of the shelves in here?” he asked, taking several boxes of granola bars out of one bag.

Jo paused what she was doing to consider. With her hand on her hip and her bottom lip turned out the way she did when she was thinking, Ben was reasonably certain she was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. Still no make-up, no designer clothes, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. What if the thing he’d considered to be sexy all these years was a myth and the reality was standing in front of him?

“We’d better put them in the pantry,” Jo decided, oblivious to the flush of hot and cold that raced through him, or the way his heart pounded against his ears. “They’re for the cast and crew. I know craft services provides plenty for them,” she went on before he could say something, “but my mom would roll over in her grave if I didn’t play the good hostess.”

“Remind your mom whose job it is to feed everyone.” He glanced up, as if to heaven, sounding so smooth and casual, flippant even, that there was no way she would be able to see past to the panic that inched its way through him. Enjoying grocery shopping, finding jeans and a hand knit sweater sexy, feeling more comfortable in an old family home than a ritzy penthouse.
Who are you, Benjamin?

“I know,” she said from the kitchen as he stacked the boxes on an empty shelf in the pantry. “But old habits and the memory of mothers die hard.”

An ironic grin pulled at his mouth. She was the ideal hostess, the ideal lover, the perfect woman. She’d read him the riot act in the car—every word true—and he hadn’t been able to answer the way he should have. He should have told her that he felt the same way, that it was amazing to find someone who might actually understand him, that it wasn’t her he didn’t trust, but himself.

“I’m going to check on the laundry,” he said, crossing through the kitchen where she still worked, barely glancing to her.

“Let me know if you need any help.”

He smiled at her words. Some people were beyond help. It was an even chance that he was one of them.

The sheets that he’d stripped from his bed in an effort to be a good guest were still warm and smelled of lavender meadows as he pulled them from the dryer. It was such a domestic smell. Better than thousand dollar a bottle perfume. He balled them in his arms, then marched out of the laundry room and upstairs to his guest room. In the last two weeks, he’d gotten used to the quiet of the house. In New York, he’d never noticed things like the hum that the heating system made or the slither of ice-filled air brushing against a window. You couldn’t hear any of those things over the noise of the city. You couldn’t hear the beating of your heart either.

He fanned open the fitted sheet, then spread it across his bed. For years now, he’d hired a maid to come in and do his laundry, make his bed, clean his apartment. It was a privilege of wealth. But in all those years, he’d missed out on the honest scent of fabric softener, the swish of smoothing a clean sheet over a well-worn mattress.

Would it be so bad if he let everything in New York drop? What’s the worst that could happen if he simply walked away from the Pollards, let them do their worst. The contract they’d given him for Jo was currently buried under socks and underwear in the top drawer of the guest room bureau. What would happen if he just left it there, ignored its existence? He’d never work on Broadway again, but he’d have clean sheets and winter mornings.

“Do you need some help with that?” Jo asked from the doorway.

She leaned against the door frame, arms crossed, her head tilted to the side. All this time, Ben had been telling himself that she was sweet, innocent, perfect. Well, the look in those brown eyes of hers right now was as wise as the ancients. Judging by what she’d said in the car, he would never be able to pull anything off on her.

“If you could get that side.” He edged around the bed, taking one side of the top sheet. She came all the way into the room to take the other side.

Together they lifted it up, let the air catch under it, and spread it across the top of the bed. They moved simultaneously to the foot of the bed to lift up the mattress and tuck it in, both smoothing the top to work out the wrinkles.

Three seconds and the scent of lavender, and Ben was as hard as a rock. His world was upside down.

“Where did you put the blanket when you stripped the bed?” Jo asked, practical, unsuspecting.

She stepped to the foot of the bed, stretching her neck to check the floor on his side. Ben met her at the corner, swept her into his arms, and kissed her with his eyes closed.

She melted against him with a soft exhale, her arms lifting to rest on his shoulders. It wasn’t the slinky sort of move that women who wanted something from him used. Jo’s arms around him were as comforting as sheets fresh from the drier, and just as hot. He rested his arms around her waist, sneaking his hands under her sweater and shirt and pulling her closer to him. Every problem in the world could be solved with sex, including the gaping chasm in his heart.

“Let’s put these nice clean sheets to good use,” he murmured against her ear.

She laughed, the sound filling him with light. “Ben, it’s two o’clock in the afternoon.”

“So? No one’s here. What else are we going to do with our time?”

“I still have to figure out which book would make the best musical.”

His back clenched. His kisses went from slow and deep to hard and demanding. His fingertips dug into her sides. His heart raced, and the pulsing desire making his jeans uncomfortably tight withered.

“This is more important.” He pulled her closer, nudging her arms up so that he could peel her shirt and sweater off over her head.

“Okay, you win,” she sighed, shaking her arms to help her shirt and sweater drop to the floor. “Something tells me you will always win.”

The flash in her eyes told a different story. She reached for his shirt, undoing the buttons with deft fingers, then pushing it off his shoulders. He worked at his belt and his jeans, unable to get out of them fast enough. Was this him winning? No, more like her having her way with him. Maybe that’s why he liked it so much.

They paused the heat long enough for both of them to get out of their clothes and for Ben to fetch one of the dwindling supply of condoms from his suitcase. He didn’t want to think about why he hadn’t moved them to the bureau, or even put some in her room, since they’d been sleeping there as much as here. Maybe Jo would pick up on it, call him out, and see the light.

Of course, he could fix the whole thing, end his pain and hers, by calling a time out and explaining every last piece of what was going on behind the scenes.

“You know how I said I’d never had a one-night stand before meeting you in the coffee shop?” she asked from the bed. She’d climbed atop the fresh sheets and knelt with her knees spread. His pulse ratcheted higher.

“Yes,” he answered slowly, stalking up to the side of the bed, condom in hand, heart bleeding.

She flickered an eyebrow and peeked down at his crotch. “You know what else I’ve never done?”

Before he could venture a guess, she reached for him. Her hands closing around his staff and balls was so perfect that he gasped and leaned closer to her. She stroked with the right amount of tension, making him harder by the second.

“You did that the other night,” he said with strangled intensity.

She laughed, low in her throat. “No, not this. Lay down.”

He started shaking, but did what she said. They slid together across the blank canvas of the bed. He tried to pull her close while balanced on his side, but she nudged him to his back, then straddled his legs.

“You were on top the other night too,” he pointed out, breathless, panic rising.

Her playful laugh as she spread her hands across his chest, teasing his nipples, then dragging her fingertips and nails across his belly and abdomen sent panic and lust rushing through him like an ocean current. His heart continued to pound with something far deeper than exertion. He needed her. Needed her, and she would leave as soon as she learned the truth.

“I’m a bona fide romance novelist, and I’ve never in my life done this before.”

She scooped her hand around his cock, drawing her fingers up its length and holding him straight up. Then she bent forward, a laugh fluttering in her throat, and took his tip into her mouth.

Ben’s body jolted, and it was all he could do not to arch up off the bed, pushing deeper into her throat. She was tentative, but determined, inching down and down, as if daring herself to swallow him as deeply as possible. He made fists in the loose top sheet, but couldn’t stop the growl of pleasure that her exploration raised in him. He felt her tongue caress the sensitive underside of him, the friction unbearably beautiful as she pulled up, then took a breath.

“I don’t actually know if I’m doing it right,” she whispered, panting, eyes sparkling. “I’m only going off of what I’ve read here.”

“You’re fine,” he squeaked, about three octaves higher than usual.

She laughed, then bent once more, licking him like an ice cream cone before testing how deep she could take him again.

Ben closed his eyes, jaw tight with the twin fists of pleasure and fear. He’d lost track of the number of times a woman had given him a BJ, thinking it would help them get a part or a recommendation. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t liked it. He’d also be lying if he said that every woman who’d done this for him had enjoyed it. But simply laying there, letting Jo swallow him because she wanted to, was enough to drive him out of his mind for good.

Shoe’s on the other foot now, eh, Benjamin
?

Even that bitter thought didn’t last. Jo found her rhythm, drawing him in and out, her body tense with concentration as she braced herself between his thighs. The heat and tension of orgasm was already sneaking up on him, but rather than giving in to it, he found himself thinking whether she would want him to come in her throat so she could describe that in some book later, or whether he should stop so she could have her turn.

He was thinking during sex. The world was coming to an end.

“Stop, stop,” he gasped at last, planting his hands on her shoulders to stop her from going down again.

“Am I doing it wrong?”

The earnestness of her question just about killed him. “You’re doing it very, very right.”

She burst into a smile, straightening and reaching for the condom. “Got it.”

Without waiting for him to catch his breath, she tore open the condom, tossed aside the wrapper, and rolled it onto him. Again, nothing he hadn’t had a woman do to him before, but with Jo, every movement, ever passionate peek at him, every twitch of her body as she made love to him, was so different from anything he’d ever experienced before that he felt like he was falling. She finished with the condom, then stretched her warm, supple body—her curves a little curvier, her movements a little less certain than other women—up over his. She wriggled her hips, hand slipping between them, searching to guide him into her.

It was too much. With a surge, he flipped their positions, nestled her firmly on the bottom. He leaned down to kiss her, his hands planted firmly by her shoulders. Still, he didn’t feel like he had control. He was always the one in control, always the one who could bestow blessings while the woman was the one who needed something from him. He always took what he wanted, but now what he wanted was to be someone else, to be hers.

Instead of giving back what she’d given to him, he nudged her legs apart and plunged into her without preamble. Even then, Jo gasped and hummed as if that was exactly what she’d wanted him to do all along. She wrapped her arms around him, digging her nails into his backside and urging him to take more. He did, setting what he considered a punishing pace. The slap of skin against skin and the heady friction of him inside of her, claiming what he wanted, did more to make him feel a part of her than master over her. He was already close to the edge from her explorations, and in no time, he rocketed straight over that cliff.

He didn’t usually make noise when he came, but the sound that ripped out of him when his body exploded into heated pleasure was something between a moan of ecstasy and a cry for help. He didn’t want to stop moving in her, even after the burst wrung itself out and the liquid feeling of completeness settled over him. That too was like nothing he usually felt. His heart was molten, his arms needed her inside of them. He collapsed to her side, already wanting her again, though he didn’t think his body could handle it.