I try to slow myself down, to delve back down into the kiss, to let my hands learn his torso, explore the mountain-ridge of his shoulders and the valleys of his abs and the thick iron of his arms. My hand slides from his shoulder to his bicep, clutches the bulging muscle, and then down his forearm, and then our hands are palm-to-palm, and then his fingers are curling between mine.
And the rightness of my hand tangled in his changes everything. It’s simple, natural, and scary. It takes my breath away, and I have to break the kiss, touch my forehead to his and gasp for oxygen, and I realize we’re both staring at our joined hands.
I pull away to look into his eyes, and I see the familiar weltering turmoil in his liquid brown gaze.
My free hand, resting on his shoulder, lifts seemingly of its own accord to touch the stubble on his cheek, and my thumb traces the shell of his ear. His gaze is intense and unwavering and indecipherable.
And then I’m attacking him, mouth hungry against his and we’re twisting and he’s falling backward onto the couch cushions, bringing me with him as we go horizontal. He’s a hard presence beneath me, and I can feel his erection thick at my stomach. His hands curl over my shoulders, hesitate, and then slide down my back, over my spine until they pause again at the swell of my ass, and I can only wonder why he’s hesitating, why he doesn’t take what I’m so obviously offering.
He breaks the kiss, his fingers digging into my skin. “Echo…wait.” There’s pain in his voice alongside the heaviness of need. He doesn’t want to wait any more than I do, but something is holding him back.
I move off him, and since he’s taking up the entire couch all I can do is slide to the floor beside him. But I can’t bring myself to break contact entirely, so I leave my hand on his chest and examine his face, hunting for clues.
“What, Ben? Did I misread the situation or something?”
He shakes his head. “No…yes.” He sits up abruptly, one foot going to the floor near me, the other, his hurt leg, extended out in front of him. He runs his hands over his scalp, through his hair. “I just…I can’t.”
“Why?” I ask.
He only shakes his head, as if he can’t or won’t explain.
I grab his hand. “Ben. Talk to me. What’s wrong?”
“Don’t ask, Echo. Just…don’t. Please. I need…I need a minute.” He scoots forward and swings his other foot to the floor, struggles forward and to his feet, hopping to keep his weight off his injured knee.
I watch him leave through the back door, one hand on his cane, the other rubbing the back of his neck and scrubbing through his hair over and over. He’s out in the long deep shadows cast by the moon and the lights from apartments and the lone orange lamp suspended from a power line over the courtyard.
What do I do? Let him go? Respect his privacy?
Fuck that.
I go after him.
SIX: How It Happened
Ben
Everything inside me is at war. My body wants one thing, my mind something else, my heart a different thing yet. And that’s all aside from the guilt.
God, the guilt.
I can still feel Echo’s lips on mine, feel her hands on my skin lifting my shirt up and off, feel her soft lush sexy body on mine, on top of me, kissing me and demanding more, attacking me and exploring me.
And holy fuck do I want her. I want her more than I’ve ever wanted anything or anyone. Or…almost anyone.
My heart aches, telling me I’m not over Kylie, telling me Echo is a rebound, telling me I’m still a fucking mess and I’m reaching out for anything to calm the furious emptiness inside of me. And my mind is telling me Echo is using me as a way to avoid dealing with her grief, and it’s telling me that if she knew what Cheyenne had been doing out at two-thirty in the morning…if she knew what had happened moments before the crash…
I have to get away from her. I can’t think when she’s right here beside me, when I can smell the shampoo on her blond hair and the soap on her skin and the beer on her breath, when I can feel the heat radiating off her tanned silky flesh. I can’t think when she kisses me, can’t manage anything but to kiss her back and kiss her hard and beg silently for more.
I find myself out in the parking lot, leaning over the hood of my truck. I’m gasping for breath because I walked too fast and the pain in my knee is excruciating.
I don’t hear Echo approach. She’s just there, behind me. I feel her hands on my back, and then she’s leaning her backside against the bumper, one hand on my shoulder, comforting me even though she had no clue why I bolted.
“Ben?” Her voice is soft and low with a musical lilt to it.
I don’t even know how to respond or where to start, because I don’t want to tell her anything. I don’t want her to know. I don’t know how to go about baring all my secrets. So I don’t respond at all, which is just shitty as hell on my part.
She waits, and then twists and leans sideways against the hood, ducking down to try and catch my eye. “Benji?”
Oh hell no. That name…it hurts so bad, but coming from her it’s new and strange and sweet and I can’t help but shift my gaze to hers. “I’m sorry, Echo.”
“What’s wrong, Ben?”
I shake my head. “It’s—just me.”
“Look, you’ve got to give me something here, dude. You can’t kiss me like that, and then just…shut down.” She sidles closer, bumps me with her hip. Her hand is warm and small on my bare back, sliding in soothing circles. “I mean, I know I didn’t imagine that. I know we don’t know each other very well, but a kiss like that…we’ve got serious chemistry, if nothing else.”
“Don’t ask, Echo. Just don’t. You don’t want to know.”
“Yeah, okay,” she says, her voice dripping thickly with sarcasm. “Let me just pretend nothing happened real quick…oh, wait, no. I can’t. So yeah, I am asking, because I do want to know.”
“What if I don’t want to tell?” I ask, my voice harsh now, unfairly so.
I pivot and walk away again, because I’m a coward, apparently. Back to my apartment, snatch my shirt and put it on, snag another beer and go out my front door and sit on the low step. A few seconds later, Echo is sitting beside me, a beer in her hand.
“Well, now I’m really curious,” she says. “So you’re gonna have to tell me something.”
I guess I might as well get it over with, let it out.