Need Me (Broke and Beautiful #2)(45)

A groan rumbled in his throat. “Nice try, Lolita.” He tipped her chin up. “If I gave you the impression I only want to get inside you, let me clear it up. I want to be your boyfriend. I want to take all those thoughts you put on paper for class assignments and hoard them, just for me. Make you say them while you’re wrapped around me in bed. Fucking or not. I want to know your favorite movie, restaurant, and sexual position. All of it. I want it to be mine.”

What was that thing you needed to go on living? Oh, right. Oxygen. With a concentrated effort, Honey reminded herself to breathe. Never in her nearly twenty years on this earth had she ever expected to be spoken to in such a way. A way that made her bones feel like microwaved Play-Doh. He’d meant every word, too. She could see the evidence of that in the hard lines of his shoulders, the way his expression dared her to contradict him.

“My favorite movie is Bad News Bears and I like Cracker Barrel. They don’t have one in New York, and I miss the pancakes on Sunday mornings. I try to match the recipe, but it never comes out right.”

She could see his mind working behind those glasses. Receiving information and cataloguing it like the hottest librarian that ever lived. “I’m waiting on your favorite sexual position.”

“If you finish your chores by dinnertime, maybe I’ll tell you.”

He growled at her as she sauntered away, forcing her to duck her head to hide her smile.

THE DAY PASSED slowly for Ben. Not because he spent hours riding the sputtering tractor, dragging the three-furrow ridging plow through the fields, creating rows to plant potatoes and onions. Not because Honey’s father dragged him to the edge of the property to repair a damaged fence, then laughed as he literally chased down the sheep that made it through the hole. And not because a chicken had tried to peck him to death while he’d collected her eggs.

No, it moved slowly because Honey was everywhere. All the time. Reaching up to unpin a bedsheet from the laundry line, giving him a glimpse of her flat belly. Exercising the two horses they owned, tanned thighs hugging the animal’s flanks, hips moving in a hypnotic rhythm. Since this morning, he’d only been within a hundred yards of her once, when she’d brought him a glass of lemonade. She’d had her shirt twisted up and tied under her braless tits like some twenty-first-century version of Elly May, leading his thoughts into dangerous territory. Dangerous because her mother and father were watching him like a hawk, even though it had to be obvious at this point that he was patently obsessed with her. It wasn’t something he could hide. Or put into words that might reassure her parents that he wasn’t some creep with bad intentions. Why yes, I’d like to bottle your daughter’s cinnamon and sugar smell so I don’t need to go a single second without it. Probably wouldn’t be well received.

Nor would it be well received if he told Honey his cock had been rock solid since this morning when he’d walked into her room with the most honorable of intentions, hoping to give her time to sleep and recover. But she’d thrown her arms up over her head, thighs falling open as she’d whispered his name in a sleepy, sex voice. The kind he wanted to give her from screaming too much. He’d been given no choice but to dive out of the room into the hallway before he did something unforgivable, like push her thighs wider and use his mouth to wake her up the best way possible.

On cue, Honey cut across the driveway, carrying a bucket in each hand. He could practically hear saxophone music accompanying her seductive strut all the way to the barn. His instinct told him to follow her, but he couldn’t. After the day he’d spent fighting a constant erection, if he followed her into the barn, his first course of action would be pinning her to the nearest wall. But she’d thrown down the gauntlet earlier by insinuating he only wanted sex. To be honest, he wanted sex with Honey like a motherf*cker. He wanted to sink between her thighs and f*ck an orgasm out of her. And he wanted it bad. He’d meant what he said, though. All or nothing. The problem with that being the fact that he was having a hell of a time concentrating on the all when he’d been without her so long. It blew his mind that they’d only had sex once. How had he survived this long on once?

In an effort to keep from following her into the barn, Ben decided to take a break. He walked to the porch and fell onto the top step. A minute later, the screen door opened behind him. Ben turned at the sound of crutches touching down on the creaky floorboards. One look at the young guy easing into the porch swing behind him told Ben it was Honey’s brother, Teddy. After all, there was only one person in the house with two broken legs, but they hadn’t formally met yet, since he’d been sleeping when Ben arrived the night before.

“Hey, man,” Teddy greeted him affably. “Let me let you in on a little secret. When you work too hard, they keep expecting you to work up to that level. Like, every damn time.”

Ben laughed under his breath. “You’re probably right. Good thing I’m only here for a week.”

“That’s what you think.” Teddy dug in his pocket for something. “If you actually succeed in winning over my sister, you’ll be back. She can’t stay away for too long.”

His comment made Ben’s smile slip. “What do you mean?” When Teddy didn’t answer right away, Ben turned toward him. Teddy gave him the international gesture for wanna smoke? Pinching his index finger and thumb together and holding it up to his lips, eyebrows raised. Ben waved him off, so Teddy shrugged and lit up a joint, right there on his family porch, before continuing the conversation as if illegal drugs weren’t being smoked.