On Sale for Christmas (3 page)

And that was Ben White's fault.

Ben
. The boy next door. The kid who once had an Honest-to-God paper-route. The guy whose churchgoing mom said
gosh
, and
golly
, and—if she was really mad—
fudge
. In fact, his mom made fudge! The Whites and their fudge were sweet enough to give sane people a toothache. Unfortunately, Ben's mom was also my mom's best friend—which was always surprising because they were so different. My mom was a divorcee with fairly indifferent parenting skills, whereas Ben's mom was a widowed happy homemaker. I never really got their friendship, but maybe when your town is so small that it's zip code ought to be a fraction, you don't have a lot of options.

That's why I got out of Geece Grove the first chance I got. In a town where dancing was still thought to be a bit scandalous, I'd never fit in here. But Ben had always fit in perfectly. He was wholesome as a glass of milk. Or at least, he
had
been…now he was the kind of guy who could rattle off every kink imaginable and unearth my secrets in a way no other guy ever had.

And he'd also agreed to play my pimp…

Still buzzing by the time we turned off the twinkling lights of the tree, I made my way up to my old room, which was now a shrine of adolescent folly with band posters tacked to the wall. I found myself staring out the window at Ben's icicle-covered house. We hadn't been close as kids; hadn't rode our bikes together or strung paper cups on a string between our bedroom windows to chat late at night.

But now I kind of wished we had.

Staring at his frosty window and its drawn shade, I waited for the lights to flick out. Ten o'clock sharp. That'd been his annoyingly predictable routine. But maybe we'd both changed, because his shade suddenly lifted. There, across the short but snowy distance between his house and mine was Ben, in the window, wearing an army green undershirt and jeans.

He looked up at my house, our eyes met, and my breath caught. Slowly, he grinned and shook something in his hand. I squinted trying to make it out. Then I realized it was a cell phone. Oh.
Crap
.

He wanted me to call him?

Ping
.

The text message startled me. I went scrambling for my phone in my pocket, then grinned at Ben's message.

WANNA MAKE THIS A NOT-SO-SILENT NIGHT?

We ought to have been ashamed of ourselves. It was Christmastime. Children were dreaming about sugar plums. Stockings were being hung with care. But all I could think about was how well-hung Ben might or might not be…

So I dialed the number.

"Hey," he answered, leaning casually against the frame of his window—the view obscured only a little bit from the old oak tree.

"Thinking better of having turned me down?" I asked, suggestively. "I might still be game if you want to take me for a ride on your sleigh…"

Ben laughed but didn't jump at the chance.

"So what was that today anyway?" I asked.

"A perfectly executed mission," he said, a little smugly.

"Your mission was to convince me that you're all talk?"

"It was to prove that I'm
not
all talk. Which you'll only believe after the commencement of our reindeer game."

"You're not serious about that," I said, my throat swelling a little at the idea. Both with fear and excitement.

"Totally serious," he answered. "Or are you the one who is all talk?"

"
Ben
," I said, more sharply than I intended.

"Yes?"

I wet my bottom lip. I wanted to tell him that we'd taken that part of our flirtation too far. That I didn't want to do it. That all I wanted right now was to fuck him and get this insane fling out of my system before going back to college. But the truth was, my whole body was on fire thinking of playing out my naughty call-girl fantasy, with him helping me to do it.

Besides, after all my trash talking, I couldn't be the one to chicken out, so I blurted into the phone, "Have you always been this way?"

"What way? Handsome, charming, and irresistible?"

That made me laugh. "You know what I mean…" Grabbing a fuzzy knitted blanket from the bed, I tucked myself in the window seat. "Kinky, I guess?"

He breathed a puff of air into the phone, and I watched him settle into his own window seat across the way. "You're my biggest kink."

I groaned. "Lame."

"But sweet?"

"Enough to give me a toothache. If I believed you. Which I don't."

"Ouch. I thought you said I was trustworthy? I told you, Becca. I've been crushing on you since forever. And I tried a lot of crazy things to get your attention—"

"If you count the parade of bubbly blond cheerleaders you brought home."

"That was to make you jealous."

I curled tighter into the blanket. "Bullshit."

"Making out with bubbly blond cheerleaders was just a
fantastic
consolation prize."

I rolled my eyes. "So this is just another crazy thing you're doing to get my attention?"

"I've already got your attention," Ben said, just cocky enough to pull it off. "I'm doing this to
keep
your attention. Because you've got me running so goddamned hot that I feel like I need to roll in a drift of snow just hearing your voice. It's a winter wonderland out there and I'm walking around the house in an undershirt because every time I remember how it felt to have my hand in your panties, it makes me want to spontaneously combust."

Little spirals of arousal sparked and burst into flames inside me at me as I remembered, too. "You have surprisingly dextrous fingers, Ben."

"My basketball practice pays off at long last…"

I grinned. "I'm never going to look at my mom's garage the same way."

"I'm not seriously the first guy you've fooled around with there, am I?"

"Yeah, but the rest of the house is already christened. I was a wild child."

"I remember," he said with a chuckle. "And just for the record, I really didn't rat you out when you climbed out of your window and down that tree at night. But I was jealous of every one of those huge losers you used to date."

"Those guys
were
losers, but you couldn't have handled me back then…"

"Maybe not," he admitted. "But I can handle you now."

"Remains to be seen," I shot back. "So what's your fantasy?"

"Hmm?"

I wrapped the blanket tighter round me. "I told you mine. I wanna know yours."

"I've got too many to count, but at the moment I'm fantasizing about watching you bring yourself off. Think you could do that for me?"

My mouth actually dropped open a little bit. One glance at the window told me he was deadly earnest. "Wow, give you an opening and you just smash right through it."

"That's what I do."

"Since when?"

"It's kinda my job in the military. Look for openings. Exploit them ruthlessly. Turns out, it's good practice for women, too. See, in ten years of living next to you, I never once peeped in your window to get a glimpse of anything you didn't want me to see. Because I'm a gentleman. But now I've got the opportunity to
ask
you to show me, and I'm taking it, because I'm a gentleman who wants to fuck you."

Every time he dropped the F bomb in that deep voice, it made me shiver. And this time, that shiver made my toes curl. "Mmm. Okay, I'll show you if you show me."

I loved hearing that intake of breath on his end of the line, but he recovered quickly. "You want to watch me stroke my cock and see how hard I am for you? Is that what you're saying, Becca?"

I let the blanket slip playfully from my shoulders. "Or you could just come over and let me stroke it for you…"

"You're one of those impatient girls who opens her presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day, aren't you?"

"Busted
. I'm not big on delayed gratification."

"Do you always come as easy as you did today?"

Should I be embarrassed about that? Maybe I should play it cool and act like it was no big deal. But, in truth, he'd taken me from zero to sixty in no time flat, so I had to throw him a bone. "Not quite that easy, but I'm pretty responsive."

"Great, then let's up the stakes," he suggested, peeling his undershirt off to show off a finely sculpted chest. And I gulped. God, he was built. When did that happen? The military had been seriously good for him. "I touch," he suggested. "And you touch. But neither of us gets off until I say so."

"Why do you get to say so?" I asked, but truthfully, I liked this new, slightly bossy Ben. The military had been good for more than his looks. "Nevermind. It's fine. It's a deal," I said, stripping down to my tank top and panties with another little shiver that had nothing to do with the cold.

"Niiiice," Ben said into the phone as he watched me undress. "I could stare at you for hours. Wanna show me that tramp stamp you mentioned?"

I turned with a saucy grin, showing him the pretty tattoo at the base of my spine. And was rewarded with a groan. "I want to kiss you right there…you were so slippery and smooth under my fingers today. Are you still wet? Touch yourself and tell me."

One hand trailed down my body, and slipped into the soft warmth of my soaking panties. "Yeah. I am."

Ben growled with approval into the phone.

"Now you," I whispered. "I want you to touch too."

He angled himself in the window, one foot up on the ledge, a hand reaching to unzip and pull himself free. I silently cursed at the distance that kept me from seeing clearly. But I could see enough to confirm that he was more than a handful. Which meant it was my turn to growl with approval. "You're not bad looking, Ben."

"Are you kidding? I'm a sexy beast. And you like seeing what you do to me."

"I'd like to do more than see," I murmured, aching to touch him.

"And I'd love to taste you, Becca. I wanna lay you down, and put your legs over my shoulders, and lick you like candy. I want to tongue your slit, and nibble your clit until you're screaming my name."

Oh
. More words I never thought to hear uttered by the Ben White. Words that went straight to the core of me and made me melt. I watched him stroke, up and down, his breath hitching into the phone.

And my fingers danced in answer.

None of this seemed so ridiculous anymore.

"Ben," I panted.

"Say my name, again," he pleaded. "Because I love the way you say my name."

"Ben," I breathed.

"Your voice is so sexy. Everything about you is sexy, Becca, and I think you'd be even sexier, if you did everything I told you to."

My fingers paused. "I rebel against authority…"

"Don't worry. I can find ways to make you behave."

Huh
. I'd experimented a few times with boyfriends who wanted to tie me up or be tied up. But all that BDSM play didn't seem as real as this suddenly was. With my pulse pounding in my ears, I asked, "Are you a
dom
, Ben?"

"Little bit," was his answer. "Or a control freak. Take your pick."

"Don't do that. Don't use your wit and charm to make us both too embarrassed to follow through."

He chuckled. "I'm using my wit and charm to seduce you." Then, perhaps understanding that I was testing his resolve—that I
had
to test it—he said, "We're doing this, Becca. So, pinch your clit. Just a little bit…"

Yep. That was totally working for me. I did what he said, then let out a little moan as my body responded. My thighs tensed, my nipples hardened, and my breath steamed up the window.

"I'm so hard for you, Becca. There's already a few drops glistening at the tip as I imagine pushing slowly inside you. All the way inside you."

I groaned. "Where, inside me?"

"Everywhere there's an opening to exploit!"

That thrilled me and made me laugh at the same time. "I do have a very sweet ass…"

Ben whistled low and appreciatively. "I want to do incredibly filthy things to you and your sweet ass. So tell me more about this call-girl fantasy. Fancy hotel or the back of a car in an alleyway?"

Every breath I drew deepened as my body reacted to his voice and my own fingertips. "No fancy hotel. High class escorts are just fronting. In my fantasy, it's always cheap and dirty."

"What would you wear?" Ben asked, stroking slowly—very slowly.

"Something slutty," I replied, then paused to gasp and arch my neck as I brought myself nearer and nearer to the edge.

"
Slutty
." He said it as if he were playing with the word on his tongue. What I really wanted was for him to use that tongue on me.

Right now. Anywhere.

"I'm close," I whispered, pressing my back against the window seat.

"Me too," he said, voice dropping another sexy octave. "But I don't want you to come yet."

"Why not?" I whined, gyrating my hips.

"Because I need to extort a promise first."

"
What
?" I said, sure I'd do just about anything or him in this state.

"You have to promise that tomorrow, you'll let me take you out to dinner."

"I'm not going on a dinner date with you! Or any date." Even the
word
dating sounded antiquated and childish to my jaded ears.

"We can call it
hanging out
, if you want."

"People don't hang out for dinner."

"Then breakfast, lunch or coffee, that's the price," Ben said, and somehow made his eyes burn into me all the way from his window to mine.

God
, I wanted to come. Worse, I wanted his permission to do it. Damn it. I also wanted to see him finish. Sweat dripped down the back of my neck and every time I pressed against the glass, I melted the ice on it. "Fine. It's a deal. Now talk dirty to me again."

"I'd love to rub the head of my cock on your clit and bring you off just before sliding into you—"

"Oh, God," I cried out, tilting my head back.

"Becca, the sounds you're making are killing me."

"Please," I whimpered.

Which triggered the permission I needed. "Gonna come for me again?"

"Yessssss," I hissed, my thighs clamping around my own hand. "Ohhhhh." Another few shuddering breaths, the ripples of orgasm spread from my center, all through me, my belly trembling as I cried out his name.