Frayed (Connections, #4)(58)

A few stray tears trickle down her face. “You called me Bell.”

“That’s your name.”

“I know but you’ve never called me that.”

I shrug and carefully wipe her tears away. I pull myself up on the bed and lean against the headboard. Patting my stomach, I say, “Come here.”

She moves over to me.

I understand where her sadness is coming from. Where we started is complicated, confusing even. I was with Dahl then and there’s nothing I could say to make what we did right, no, what I did, right. I try to calm her by combing my fingers through her hair. I would hold her, hug her, if I could. When her sobbing eases I lean over and kiss her head. After a few long silent minutes I say, “Sit up. Let’s put this aloe on you.”

She slides across the sheets before settling with her back to me and I lean over to whisper softly in her ear, “Lift your hair.”

I take a moment to collect myself, trying to control the impact she’s having on me. She’s barely dressed and it’s hard to control my desire. I open the bottle and rub the cool liquid in my hands. “This is going to tingle at first, but you’ll feel much better, I promise.” I carefully pat it on her shoulders and just feeling her smooth skin makes me want to do so much more.

She screams, “Ouch,” and I can hear a sob and with that any sexual thoughts I had disappear. Fuck, I hate this. I don’t want her to cry. “I’m sorry, baby. Almost done.” I pat her shoulders, her back, her chest. She’s beyond sunburned everywhere. When I’m done I stand up. “I’ll be right back.”

She nods, taking another sip of water.

I leave the bathroom with a washcloth soaked in cold water. I place it on her forehead and she grabs it. Her fingers touch mine and an electrical current exchanges between us. Emptying my pockets, I lie down next to her and she moves to my chest. She fits perfectly there. She rubs her fingers over the buttons of my shirt and I resist the urge to touch her. I settle for running my fingers through her silky-smooth strands of hair and breathing in her lemon scent.

Exhaustion hits quickly and just as I start to drift off she softly says, “Ben.”

“Yeah,” I mumble.

“You can call me S’belle.”

I kiss her head one last time and grin before closing my eyes.





CHAPTER 18


Dirty Laundry

Bell

A tingle radiates all the way from my head to my toes as a vision of his lean and sinewy muscled body standing behind me on his surfboard with his very erect penis pressing into my back awakens me from my dreamlike sleep and I float back to earth.

“Hmm . . .” The noise escapes me involuntarily.

I knew I was a goner yesterday the minute he strode out of the water. There he was—a vision of utter perfection with his tight stomach muscles on display. He has stunned me into silence many times over the past weeks with his charm, the funny things he says, and his utter good looks, but when I saw him on the beach—his lean form, the faint line of hair that disappears into the waistband of his shorts, the dips and ridges of his half-naked body, then when his laugh dipped from his throat, everything just seemed so right. And lying here knowing he shared my bed last night for the first time, I can’t contain my glee.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I can’t help feeling amazed that the man I dream about is the one I’m waking up next to this morning. But then a sudden fit of anxiety bounces through me. I’m still a little scared. That hasn’t changed. It’s not a frightened kind of scared, though. It’s the same feeling I got when he first looked at me across the room almost a month ago. It was the same way he looked at me the night we were together so long ago and it thrills me, excites me, and scares me at the same time.

We are different people now than we were when our bodies first collided into a passion that consumed us. Sure, we’ve fooled around twice since, but it wasn’t like that night. I know he wants me in that way again, I can tell, and I want the same thing. But so much has happened—and there are still things that need to happen, truths to be told, for this to mean something. I am afraid it might be too much for him, or maybe too much for me. Yet the past few weeks have shown me that the pull between us is too strong to deny . . . I have to give us a try.

Deciding to wake up, I let my fingers creep across the sheets, inching their way around so I can feel him. But he’s not anywhere in the bed. Last night we hadn’t had sex, but it was still somehow unforgettable. The way he took care of me, how sweet he was, his concern for how I was feeling. The way my head fit perfectly in the crook of his neck and how I fell asleep in his arms. It all felt so real, so right . . . there was nothing wrong about any of it.

With the light streaming through the blinds, my eyes slowly blink open. I look around my room for him. My lips curl into a smile when I spot his sneakers on the carpet. As the smile spreads across my lips, my hand flies to my mouth, and although a few small bumps remain, they don’t hurt. Thoughts of my feelings for him bubble back to the surface. I locked them away for a long time, but no matter how hard I tried to forget him I couldn’t let him go.

I ached for him when I saw him in my brother’s house last year. Having no idea who he was, I felt hope cascading through me. I thought it was finally our time. Memories of how he’d brought me to climax over and over were all I could think of. I’d blocked out everything else. But when I found out he was Dahlia’s Ben, her long-lost fiancé thought dead, I was sickened, horrified even that she had been the one whose boyfriend I had taken without regard and I knew the flame he had lit inside me needed to be doused. Thank God Dahlia didn’t hold on to angry feelings. Thank God she couldn’t see inside my head. But she was in love with my brother and nothing else mattered. She was willing to move forward. She accepted what I had done, what Ben and I had done, and I was so very thankful