If You Want Me Read online

  “And your mother is sure?”

  “She says she is.”

  “But she never asked Kenton for a DNA test?”

  “No, she said he accepted I was his child and paid my way.”

  “Paying for your college is nothing to a billionaire like Kenton Ashford. He owes you a lot more than a little tuition, Sara. You need to ask him for a DNA test.”

  “Never. Not in a million years.”

  “Holy shit.” Ben ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t believe Kyle didn’t tell me this. Talk about keeping things from each other. And he’s my best friend.”

  “He doesn’t know. I haven’t said anything to him or Carolyn.”

  “Don’t you think they have a right to know you’re their sister?”

  “Half-sister—maybe. And Kenton barely acknowledges Carolyn is his daughter. I can’t imagine he’d be too eager to offer his DNA sample to reunite us ‘sisters’.”

  “Then use Kyle’s. He’d give it to you in a heartbeat.”

  She squeezed his hand tighter and pressed closer to his side as they started walking again. “Oh God, can you imagine? Kyle has always treated me like part of the family, and I can’t ruin his life like that. And I can’t disgrace my mother the year after my father died. What would Javier think? How many people would I hurt?”

  “First of all, Kyle knows Kenton is a womanizing bastard, so that’s not going to be big news to him. As for the rest of it, it’s not your problem. You’re part of the Ashford family, and if you ask me, they’re damn lucky to have you.”

  She sighed deeply and shook her head. “It’s water under the bridge now.”

  “Don’t throw your legacy away with some cliché, Sara. Promise me you’ll talk to Kyle. You don’t have to ask Kenton. I know Kyle will do this for you.”

  “Well…”

  “Promise me, querida. And don’t leave Carolyn out of this. She’s been sidelined long enough in that family.”

  “Yeah, okay, okay. I’ll call him and Carolyn just as soon as I get back and arrange a meeting.” Back from where exactly, she wasn’t promising. Maybe next year’s trip to Bratislava?

  “Thank you for telling me. It means a lot that you would trust me with that.”

  “It means a lot to me to know that I can.”

  “Always.” He smiled—the kind of smile that made supermodels trip on the runway. “Come on. It’s getting dark, and we need to look in the pantry to see what we’re going to cook for dinner.”

  Emotionally, Sara felt as though she’d been through the wringer in the past couple of days—heck, even the past couple of hours. But she also felt a weight lifted off her and a lightness in her spirit that she hadn’t experienced in a very long time.

  She slipped her hand around Ben’s biceps when they traversed the rock path again, and she loved how his muscles flexed and bunched under the skin. Maybe being friends with him wasn’t so bad after all. Oh, who was she kidding? After last night and his assistance with her toy situation, she wasn’t going to pretend she didn’t want to get that man as naked as the day he was born.

  “If you’re up for it, I’d love to take you fishing in the morning,” he said. “Have you ever been fly fishing?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never been any kind of fishing. Two dads and neither were the type.”

  “Well, how about that? I might finally be useful and teach Sara Castillo something she didn’t already excel at.”

  Sara grinned at him. “Give me a couple days, and I’ll be kicking your bass.”

  He laughed. “First off, you’ll probably be kicking my brown trout—not my bass. We’ll have to wake up bright and ear—”

  “Eeep!” Sara cut him off with a squeal and grabbed his arm tighter as a black-and-white blur streaked across their path. Like a cat, only—

  “Skuuunk!” Ben shouted.

  He almost lifted her off her feet as he grasped her arm and turned to dash away, but just at that moment, Sara heard and felt the spray against the back of her jeans right before she smelled it. She slipped and started to fall in her attempt to scramble out of the way, but then Ben dragged her up by the arm and they took off toward the path to the lodge.

  She’d heard how stinky skunks were, but this was nothing like she expected. This was chemical warfare. Her nostrils burned and she couldn’t draw a full breath. “Oh my God! It sprayed me! The stench is scorching my nostrils.”

  Ben coughed and stopped by the stream, then immediately began shucking his clothes. “Take your pants off and get in the water! Try to rinse it off before it soaks in.”

  Sara unbuttoned her jeans and peeled them quickly from her legs. She splashed into the frigid stream, which was just about as fun as sniffing a direct hit of skunk spray. “Shit!” she yelped. “It’s freezing! Oh God, I can’t breathe!”

  Goose bumps stung her skin, but she pulled her shirt off next and stood there in the waning light, splashing her legs with the coldest water in God’s creation. Dressed in nothing but her bra and panties, she was knee-deep in what felt like ice water, and her nipples were so hard they hurt. “Be sure to include the authentic skunk experience for Kyle’s party,” she said through chattering teeth. “You haven’t really partied until you’ve partied with a skunk.”

  Ben scooped up a handful of water and splashed her torso, making her squeal. “I think you missed a spot,” he said.

  “Oh, you’re gonna get it,” she said, but her watery eyes and subsequent coughing and gagging probably didn’t make her look too menacing. “Oh my God, can we fight later? I’ve gotta wash this off. It’s horrible!”

  Ben finished scrubbing his hands across the backs of his legs. Sara was almost too miserable to notice the way his wet boxers clung to his muscled thighs and the amazing curve of his tight ass. Almost.

  “Leave your clothes here,” he said. “We’re gonna need to soak in tomato juice.”

  He grabbed the little ice cubes formerly known as Sara’s fingers and dragged her up toward the house. “My shoes,” she said.

  “Leave ’em. I’ll buy you new ones.”

  She hobbled barefoot beside him in her dripping bra and panties toward the lodge and tried to sneak a sideways glance at the front of his wet boxers, but given the arctic conditions, there wasn’t a whole lot to see. She tromped up the stairs beside him. “You guys keep tomato juice here?”

  “Yeah, we have a shelf in the pantry that we usually keep stocked for emergencies such as this.”

  “You do?”

  “We’d better.”

  “So this is a normal occurrence, bringing young ladies here and getting them sprayed all in an attempt to see them in their bra and panties?”

  “Heck, yeah. That skunk has better aim than Cupid and his arrows. He’s one of my best trained.”

  Despite her shivering, she laughed. Ben led her to a lush suite, straight into the bathroom, and flipped a switch along the wall discreetly labeled shower floor heater. Then he pulled shampoo, conditioner and body wash out of the cupboard and handed them to her. “Start with getting soaped up to get off as much as you can. I’ll be back with the tomato juice.”

  “Okay.” She felt only a moment’s embarrassment at the thought of getting naked in the shower when he was coming back. After all, he’d not only seen her the night before, he’d tasted her. In comparison, a quick shower was kid’s stuff. Uh-huh…

  Only the cold, wet cotton of his boxers against his cock was helping keep him in check. Seeing Sara in her lacy red bra and panties with her nipples prominently displayed was an image he would never get out of his head. When had she started wearing such sexy lingerie? Back in college, it had been mostly functional stuff. Those lacy scraps’ only function seemed to be to drive a guy crazy.

  He searched the pantry, and sure enough, on the supply shelf were several jugs of tomato juice. He grabbed them all, added more logs to the fire in the study, and made his way back to the largest guest suite’s bathroom. The smell was getting better by the minute, but he
figured that was because his olfactory receptors were fried.

  When he stepped onto the gray marble tile, the first things he noticed were the little pieces of red fabric making dainty puddles on the floor. Oh, shit. Not that he’d expected Sara to keep them on…but maybe he should have asked her to. She regretted her role in their painful past, sure, but she’d given no indication that her forgiving him meant she wanted to pick back up where they’d left off.

  As for him, if he were honest, he’d always wanted that. Even when he’d thought her engagement had been real, he would have taken her back if she’d ever come to him and asked. He figured that made him a fool and a pushover. He was both for Sara Castillo. She was the only woman he’d ever loved, and he was starting to fear she was the only woman he would ever love.

  Arms full of plastic, gallon-sized juice containers, Ben stood just out of view of the shower. This particular suite had a huge walk-in shower with three rain-style showerheads, and the bathroom mirrors were already fogged with steam. “Sara? You doing okay in there?”

  She made a happy female noise, something between a sigh and a moan. “It’s so warm in here, I’m never getting out. You have actual heaters under the tiles?”

  “Yeah. Glad it’s working for you. You’re going to need to turn off one of the showerheads and let this juice sit on your skin for a few minutes.” He put the containers next to the opening of glass wall that separated them and tried to avert his eyes. It was hard with a naked goddess only three feet away.

  “Oh gawd, you brought the smell with you,” she told him. “You’re ruining the fruity floral scent of my shampoo.”

  “That shampoo is just masking it, querida. You need to use the tomato juice, trust me.”

  “Bring them in then. Come on, there’s room for you. You can use my soap.”

  His brows rose and he looked up at her. She had one arm over her breasts and the other hand over her pubic bone. It wasn’t exactly an invitation to take her up against the wall, but he wasn’t going to refuse.

  “Leave your undershorts on,” she told him.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He set the containers down in the part of the shower that was driest, and maneuvered past her, keeping deliberate eye contact so he wouldn’t be tempted to look lower. “May I?” He pointed toward the bottle of body wash.

  The arm that had been secured across her breasts reached for the bottle behind her and Ben almost lost his balance. He’d missed those breasts. They were full and ripe, firm and lush in his mouth, better than any others he’d ever experienced. He swallowed down the saliva in his mouth.

  “Ben!”

  His gaze shot to hers. “Oh, shit. Sorry. I’m not looking.”

  But after she handed him the soap, she didn’t cover herself again, and he couldn’t not look. She closed her eyes and turned her face into the spray, and by the time she was finished rinsing off, his cock was as hard as the marble tiles under their feet.

  He soaped up fast, needing to get the hell out of there. He didn’t know how she’d feel about his hard-on. Last night he’d been able to pull off the noble-servicer-of-women’s-needs act. But now he was out of his mind with wanting her. Her hips, her ass, her breasts—she was so fucking lush. She had the shape of a fertility goddess and oh, how he wanted to worship her.

  When she turned her gaze on him, he shifted his lower half out of view. “Okay, how do I do this?” she asked. “Just pour it on?”

  He finished rinsing himself then reached down, grabbed a container of juice and uncapped the bottle. “Well, uh…you have to pour it on slowly. I can help you.” Oh, fuck, this was a bad idea. She gave him a look that said she thought so, too. “What? You want it to just run down the drain? I’m just trying to make up for my skunk’s bad aim.”

  Sara narrowed her eyes at Ben, wondering exactly what he had planned. “I thought you said he had perfect aim. Just look at how he bulls-eyed his target.”

  She couldn’t miss the huge erection straining against his wet boxers, and it made her so hot she wouldn’t be surprised if she were singlehandedly responsible for fogging the glass around them. But let him pour the damned juice on her body? Was that a good idea?

  She snuck a glance at his lower half again and she felt her pussy pulse as it swelled with blood flow.

  He stepped closer. “So where did he hit you again?”

  Her breath was coming in shallow pants now. “In the back, mostly.” But he’d been there. He knew that.

  “Hmm… Let’s see. Turn around.”

  When she felt his hand graze her ass she sucked in a breath and her pussy clenched. “Uh…yeah. Right there. I’m pretty sure that’s the spot.”

  “Put your hands against the wall and bend over.”

  Chapter Nine

  His voice was low and rough. She could have argued, but she didn’t want to. Instead she put her hands against the tile and stuck her ass out. She felt the cool liquid pouring out against her skin and his hand cupping her, guiding it over her buttocks. It mixed with the water raining from the showerhead and ran red down the drain.

  He poured more on her thighs and massaged it in, his hand rubbing up and down her legs, teasing her inner thighs. “You took the worst hit, so you’ll need a lot of it and we’ll need to let it sit a few minutes.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” When his hand slid up to the juncture of her thighs, she moved toward his touch. “Sounds like a plan.”

  One hand locked around her hip. “Keep your ass out, like this.”

  He moved her the way he wanted, and a moment later, she felt another splash of juice, saw it covering her thighs. Then he poured it on her shoulders and it ran over her sides and down her breasts. When his hands followed the flow and came around to massage her breasts, her head slumped and her muscles went lax. “I’m not sure it got around to the front,” she said.

  “You want me to stop?”

  She let out a moan and brushed her rump against his thigh. “Better safe than sorry. Keep going.”

  He laughed and opened the second container. “Stand up.”

  She rose and turned toward him, no longer trying to hide herself. At this moment, she wanted to show him every part of her. She didn’t want him to ever stop touching her.

  His eyes skimmed over her chest and stomach. He poured the liquid slowly over her breasts then squeezed her flesh in his hands. She glanced down, marveling at how his fingers left prints in the thick red juice. When his hand trailed down her stomach and brushed the small patch of hair at her center, her head fell back against the marble wall of the shower. He emptied the second bottle over her front and then tossed the container to the ground.

  “I think you’re all good now,” he whispered in a husky voice. “You smell pretty damn sweet to me.”

  She opened her eyes to find him standing close, his lips just a hairsbreadth away from hers. She leaned forward just a fraction and kissed him. God, how she’d missed these lips. Ben’s mouth had always worked some sort of magic on her.

  But even as she kissed him, reveling in the joy of tasting him again, something inside her ached. She’d never gotten over him, and having him come back into her life like this if he was just going to run again…it would kill what was left of her heart. She wanted to ask him what his intentions were, but then she didn’t want this to end by forcing him to analyze it and realize it was a mistake.

  He slipped his hand into the wet hair at her nape and pressed his body to hers. The soft, sparse hair on his chest rubbed against her nipples, creating the sweetest friction. When he placed his thigh in between hers, she rubbed herself against it and her hands came around his chiseled waist. His thick cock pressed against her belly, but he was still wearing those stupid undershorts.

  “Hey, I wasn’t the only one who got sprayed.” She pushed on his chest until he stepped back, then she grabbed the third bottle of juice. “Close your eyes,” she whispered and ran her hand along the waistband of his boxers.

  Ben let out a long, slow breath and pressed his eyes shut. Sar
a lifted the bottle and emptied half the contents on his head. “Hey!” he sputtered, his lips stained red, then he wiped his fingers across his eyes. “It didn’t get me up that far.”

  Sara laughed, all smiles when he cracked his eyelids open and regarded her. “Yeah,” she answered back, “but I had a sudden thirst for a Bloody Mary.”

  She kissed him then, putting everything she had into it, telling him with her body that she wanted more. When he crushed her to him and kissed her like he was desperate for her, she ran her hands down his rump and slid his boxers from his legs. She stopped kissing him only long enough to take a peek at what she’d missed for so long.

  “Oh, wow. Some things never change.” He was just as big and beautiful and hard as he’d been at twenty-one. He had the kind of physique that would make a woman’s pulse race and a cock that would take her breath away, preferably while she had it deep in her mouth. “Turn around.”

  He obeyed, and she emptied the remaining tomato juice over his ass and thighs, then rubbed it in, squeezing the firm globes of his ass until she was sure her pussy was dripping from more than just her earlier shower.

  “Ready to finish this?” he asked. Before she could clarify, he pulled them both into the spray of the showerheads, and she watched as their skin went from tomato red to the flushed rose of excitement. He leaned his head back and shampooed his hair then ran his soapy hands over his body. Sara just watched. She’d never seen anything as erotic as the sight of Ben scrubbing his naked skin under the warm deluge.

  A minute later, they were both clean and if they still smelled, her nose was too battered to know, and her body was too hyped to care. She ran her hands down his sides and lowered herself to her knees. He didn’t protest when she flattened her tongue against the thick crown of his cock and licked down his length. His hand tangled in her wet hair. “Holy shit, Sara. You’re killing me.”

  She looked up at him with her lips still touching the tip of him. “You want me to stop, Benji?”

  He ran his hand from the top of her head to her chin. “No. Don’t stop, querida. Your mouth is so sweet.”