Tainted Love (Book 1) (42 page)

But I can’t tell Ben all of that. I’ve got too many secrets. Oh, how I wish I could tell him everything right this very minute. I can’t. I’ll lose him, I know it.

“There was a time in my life when I felt like I was never worthy of a woman’s love,” Ben reveals.

I turn swiftly to him, staring blankly. Ben is looking out at the river and his face looks almost pained.

“What makes you say that?” I ask, thinking his notion is ridiculous.

“When I was in college, I had this girlfriend. We had been together for a year and we decided to take our sexual relationship a little further. I had always been fascinated with BDSM since I was a teenager and saw it first hand when I was in France. I even had a, uh, sub there.” He chuckles and I smile.

This has me intrigued. So, he’s been a little Dom since his teenage years. Interesting.

“Well, my college girlfriend, she knew about my tendency to be a little…rough in the bedroom, so she agreed to submit to my fantasies. We had a great dynamic, she and I. She really had a knack for the submissive, more than a knack I believe. She started wanting to feel more pain. I was uncomfortable at first, but I loved her, you know? So as a Dom, I wanted to please her because her pleasure would be my own. So, the punishments intensified.”

Ben swallows and I see him visibly struggling with the story. I rest my hand on his chest, stroking the tattoo on his pectoral, giving him silent encouragement. He looks down at me and when I look up at him, he is smiling sadly. Leaning down, he kisses me softly, the emotion I feel for him re
surfacing and momentarily dazzling me. It is terrifying to be feeling this strongly emotional for him in such a short time. It’s dangerous. How will I break away from this relationship unscathed when that time comes?

“
One day, things got out of hand,” he continues, breaking through my thoughts. “I went too far…” he swallows.

I see a look of pain and regret in his features and I kiss his che
st. He shudders at the contact.

“I hurt her,” he reveals. “
Badly.”

I blanch at his revelation. He badly hurt this girl? I can
’t imagine Ben hurting anyone. Well, anyone who didn’t deserve it.

“
What’s worse,” he goes on. “After everything, she still wanted to be with me. I couldn’t,” he sighs, but continues, “I couldn’t get over the guilt of hurting her. She kept saying it didn’t matter, that she forgave me. When I finally decided to try again, I couldn’t be who she wanted me to be. I couldn’t be who I was comfortable being. I became the complete opposite of who I was. Instead of intense and commanding, I became cautious and gentle. She hated it. After a while we started arguing, not seeing eye to eye, and we just called it quits.

“
For years I felt like because of what had happened, I didn’t deserve a woman in my life and for a while I didn’t have one. I was scared. And even when I did have relationships, I couldn’t engage them with the same dominance as I used to,” he explains.

“
What changed?” I ask softly.

“
When I started working at Fielding House, I saw her again,” he answers. “We had dinner a few times and then decided to try again. But instead of dating, she offered to be my submissive. I was scared to jump back into that dynamic, but we took it slow. We did this for a while, her reintroducing me to something I loved, until she felt like moving on. We parted ways amicably and since then, all I’ve had are short Dom/sub relationships. My longest relationship was Molly.”

I raise an eyebrow, not knowing who he is referring to.

“Blondie,” he clarifies on a chuckle.

“
Oh,” is all I mutter, hating the mere mention of that bitch.

He tilts my face upward to see sincerity in his eyes when he says,
“But it was meaningless. All of it.” He kisses my lips softly and I shiver, reeling from what he just said. I shouldn’t be happy, but hell, I am.

“It was all play so I could get off,” he continues. “If I kept it in the Fulfi
llment Room, it was meaningless. But with you,” he pauses to stare at me, nerves fluttering in my belly at the intensity. “God, Sully, you throw me. I didn’t know what I wanted with you; I just knew I wanted you. It didn’t matter if we never did anything S and M related. I just wanted to know that whatever it was, we did it together.”

My heart swell
s with his confession and I can’t help the tears that brim in my eyes. I can’t hurt this man. I am so fucked.

“Sometimes this feels so unreal. Like you aren
’t real and at any moment I’ll be forced to wake up,” he reveals. “But I’ll take the dream if reality doesn’t have you in it.”

My heart
rate accelerates at the utterly saccharine sincerity of his words. Is it possible that he feels the same way I do? And if so, I am in so much trouble. Finding the truth about who I am will crush him.

So tell him,
a voice says. But, I know I can’t. It will be catastrophic if he finds out. He has an image and a company to protect from people like me. People with a past so dark, that you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s better this way; him not knowing who I am. It still leaves me to ponder, though. Can I break up with him if things get too serious?

As if it hasn’t
gotten there already.

“So you see, Sullivan,
” Ben speaks up, once again breaking me out of my gloomy thoughts. “You’re not the only one who struggles with feelings of worth at times. But, baby…” He stares intently into my eyes. “You make me feel worthy. When I saw you at the party, I wanted you…needed you. And now that I have you, I feel like the luckiest man God ever created.”

Ben stares at me and I see that intensity again. It scares me because now I know what it is. He loves me.

How can I not accept it? It is so real. So deep. So intense. He doesn’t even have to say it. The way he takes care of me. The way he looks at me. Every caress. Every whisper of my name. Everything he does echoes, so loudly, his love for me. I am wrapped in it. Enthralled in him. He loves me.

But am I worthy of it?

Tears pool in my eyes and I weakly push up to face him. I caress his cheek and he leans into my touch. My tears fall.

“It’s not until you
that I ever felt worthy of a woman’s love, did I ever feel worthy of her…appreciation. When I tell you that that night is my most memorable, please believe me, Sullivan. And please believe me…you’re all…
more
than I ever expected you to be,” Ben expresses.

I choke on the words I really want to say, covering my mouth with one hand and clutching my chest with the other. When I remove my hand from my m
outh, I know I’m going to say them yet again.

“Ben, I–”

But Ben pulls me in close and seals his lips over mine, silencing me, kissing me gently at first, then deeper. I whimper into his mouth, tears cascading down my cheeks. Ben shakes me to my core with every stroke of his tongue on mine. I feel his reverence, his love, and I am completely taken by him.

Ben lays my body down and hovers over me, still kissing me deeply. He breaks contact to slip his shirt over his head and returns to my lips. His hands meander down the length of my
body, caressing my thigh. My legs fall open automatically and he settles himself between them. I feel him harden and the flutters in my belly travel to my pussy where it clenches, anticipating all he will give me in short order.

“I want you,”
Ben groans.

“Then take me.”

He growls and I feel it all the way to my toes. He grips my nightgown, ripping it down the middle, exposing my breasts. The cool air hits them and I shiver, my nipples pebbling under the temperature and Ben’s intense gaze.

He swoops down and devours a breast, covering a nipple with his mouth and suckling gently.

“Oh, God,” I groan, delving my hands into his hair and gripping tightly.

Ben makes a low sound in his throat as if in pain and clamps down on my nipple. The pain sends a delicious signal to my already quivering core and I moan in response. He soothes it by laving at my nipple and releasing it, allowing the air, now co
ld when blown over the wet peak, to pass over it and soothe it further.

He starts on my other nipple and I find myself begging him to take me. I
’m dripping with need.

“
Please,” I whimper. “Oh, God, please.”

“
Please, what?” Ben mumbles around my nipple, nipping gently.

“Oh, God, just fuck me!”

“No,” he refuses.

“
Jesus, Ben. Please,” I grumble, sexual frustration reaching its peak.

Ben releases my nipple and stares at me. He bends and kisses my lips then goes back to staring at me.

“I want to make love to you, beautiful girl,” he says softly and with so much feeling that my heart swells.

“
Okay,” I answer in a tiny voice.

Ben kisses me deeper this time, reverently. He undresses me the rest of the way, while I divest him of his pants. When his erection bobs in front of me, I greedily reach for it, but he restrains me.

“No.” He shakes his head. “Let me take care of you, Sullivan. Let me appreciate you.”

Ben lays kisses from my forehead all the way down to my soaking wet slit, where
he licks, nips and sucks me with relish; moaning and groaning in appreciation.

I shoot off like a rocket when Ben coats the entrance to my anus with my wetness and inserts his middle finger into the long since been explored rosette.

Before I even recover, Ben is rocking ever so gently into me, staring into my eyes. Usually I would look away from any man trying to look into my eyes, fearing what they might see. At the moment, though, I couldn’t if I tried. Ben has captured me and I’m afraid that he will never let me go.

The rest of the week passes quickly. I hardly see Rachel and when we do get to speak on the
phone, Ryan is always there. I’m starting to accept his presence in her life; he’s good for her from what Rachel has been telling me. I’m still a far way from loving the guy, but it’s a gradual process for me. Ben thinks we should all go out on a double date. Not a bad idea.

Ben and I have had a few fights, especially with regards to how he treats his employees. The moment he said I was trying to run his life, I backed off and away. I went back to my apartment, refusing to go back to him. Needless to say, he dragged me back to his house, kicking and screaming and gave me a good spanking and left me tied to the spanking horse with a vibrator shoved
up my pussy for an hour. I didn’t talk to him for the rest of the day, which got me a mighty fine dicking that night.
Good times. Amazing times.

It’
s Saturday again, the day before we go by his parent’s house for Sunday dinner. We’re watching basketball – one of our favorite sports coincidentally. We end up arguing about who the best basketball team is.

As a Philly native he loved the 76ers, but couldn’t deny that he was a Lebron James and subsequent
Miami Heat fan. I gag on his choice, expressing that I am Knicks fan through and through but that I had a love for the Chicago Bulls, Spurs, Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder. Ben expresses his hatred of Kobe and we spend the rest of the evening looking at videos and arguing about which player is better: Kobe or Lebron.

We order in pizza and we eat like pigs as we watch
The Hangover Part II
on DVD in Ben’s mini theatre. It is a perfect day filled with, quality time and good laughs. I never imagined Ben could be so laid back or funny, but he is and that makes me fall so much deeper in love with him.