The hallway walls of the building Ben lived in had become quite familiar. There was no hesitation in my step as I made the walk from the elevator to his door, two paper cups with warm liquid in each hand. Keeping a firm grip on the cup that belonged to me, a chai tea latté that I’d been working on, I rapped my knuckles on the closed door. I took a long sip while I waited for the answer.

There were footsteps and the sound of the bolt unlocking before the door swung open.

Ben stood on the opposite side of the threshold from me. He wore a plain white t-shirt, blue jeans, and no socks. His jeans were dark-washed but not stylish in the current popular slim, skinny cut—a style that had emerged to the masses out of independent subculture in the last several years. I’d been in high school when the only people wearing straight-cut and skinny jeans were the punks and the skaters, my own crowd, and I’d been there for the fashion takeover, when my friends and I stopped having to take our jeans to the dry cleaners’ to be altered, because they became a standard cut. Anyway, Ben had no business in skinny jeans. He was wide everywhere from the waist down. He had big hips, muscular tree trunks for legs, and the biggest ass I’d ever seen on a man.

“Hey,” he greeted.

“Hi.” I held out the unopened paper cup, seal on the lid still in one piece, in front of him. “Here. This is for you.”

Ben gestured for me to enter his dwelling. “Thanks.”

I left my slip-on shoes at the door. When I got to the living room, the TV was off and Roscoe was playing with his mouse chew toy. The toy had a bell inside it, which stopped ringing when Roscoe spotted me. The kitten dropped the toy on the floor and sauntered over. I smiled. Roscoe wasn’t a fraidy cat around me. The two of us had bonded.

Sometimes, after Ben and I had sex, we would hear the kitten scratching at the door of the bedroom as we were settling down for the night. As soon as Ben opened the door, Roscoe would march in like he owned the place, tail and nose raised in the air. He would maneuver his way into my arms and stay there for however long he wanted. It was funny, Ben said, because when it was just the two of them alone in the apartment and nearing the end of the week before the sheets were changed, Roscoe would roll around on the side of the bed I always slept in, as if trying to mark the place he knew I would be with his own scent.

I set my drink on the breakfast nook before I crouched down and scooped Roscoe up into my arms. He was still small but no longer tiny; he’d grown a bit since the first time I met him. Ben was studying the cup in his hand. He discarded the lid onto the nearest counter and took one big sip before commenting. “Well, it’s not Tim Hortons, that’s for sure.”

“Nope,” I shook my head. “You like it?”

He drank from the cup again. “That’s really good actually. A little…flowery. But good.”

Even before I’d asked, I knew that it would be. In my last two years of high school, I’d worked at Second Cup. It had been the preferred chain specialty coffee shop in Canada before Starbucks took over the world. Save for the new introductions since I’d left Victoria for greener music pastures, I had the menu memorized and I’d tried all of the drinks at least once. I knew exactly what to get Ben.

On almost any day of the week, most of the selections at Tim Hortons were perfectly fine. But this wasn’t one of those days. Ben wanted relaxation and jasmine tea was just the solution.

The purpose of my visit to his place wasn’t for our usual activity. Tonight he wanted company and he wanted to relax. When he asked me what kind of tea I thought he should get, I told him not to bother, and that I would get something on the way.

I’d finally taken Parker’s advice and checked up on Ben online. He was 27 and from Ottawa. His hockey position was left wing and he wasn’t exactly what you would call a skill player in the NHL. Ben rarely played 10 minutes a game, if even that. He got into fights. He sat in the penalty box a lot. A role player was what Parker had called him. And he was definitely not a popular guy in Vancouver—although some girl had flashed him while he’d been sitting in the box there in the previous season’s playoffs.

When I asked him about the penalty box flasher, once I insinuated that I better understood who he was in his hockey life, I think it was easier for him to talk to me in general. I understood his silence better. I’d never mistaken Ben for a blockhead, but I’d never realized that a lot of his silence had to do with overthinking.

He did have a lot to worry about. He wasn’t like the majority of his teammates. He had to be “good enough” or he wasn’t going to play. And if he was going to play, he had to be willing to get into a fight. Ben had only played in two games so far, on consecutive nights. The first was an Oilers home game and the second was a quick road trip to Calgary that they’d just gotten home from 24 hours ago.

The night before the first game, I’d been with him like I was now. He’d wanted the same thing: company. I remembered one of our ground rules. No sex before game nights. I didn’t protest or try to get him to break his own rule because after all our benefits, he was slowly becoming my friend (and maybe a little bit because his big bed was way more comfortable than my lower bunk at the studio house). Later than usual he’d picked me up from the ranch. We watched the Food Network and cuddled in bed. He was thankful. He told me that having me there, and not wanting to disturb my rest forced him into relaxing and going to sleep instead of reminding himself what not to do wrong in his season debut. I wasn’t sure how much rest he’d actually gotten because when I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, he’d been tossing and turning in his sleep until I held him against my chest.

But I was back for another night before a game day, and this time I’d brought reinforcements in the form of a flowery, soothing tea. It was my hope that he would sleep how he usually slept after I got him off. Just because we weren’t emotionally invested in each other, it didn’t mean I didn’t give a shit about his well-being. I could relate to overthinking at night as a musician. It didn’t matter so much during the writing process, but being in the studio and recording, it was important to be ready to go whenever Grant said so. We didn’t have the budget to have a bad day in the studio.

“So how was your game last night?” I asked Ben. I set Roscoe down on the couch so I could take off my jacket.

“We lost.”

“Oh.” I shrugged the jacket off and dropped it onto the armrest of the couch, where Roscoe immediately relocated to thereafter. It only held his interest for a few seconds before he jumped down from the couch and went off to the open hallway closet that was his sacred area in the apartment. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Parker had told me that the Oilers team Ben played on wasn’t very good, and that any win they earned, they really earned. I wondered what that was like, being in the NHL but being on a team that lost a lot. And how exactly did someone gain the mental toughness to be in a line of work where success was based on wins and losses? The Automatic Flowers, we’d played to audiences that weren’t very receptive, but we’d never been booed offstage or told that we just couldn’t hack it with our peers. Indie fans were supportive of their artists and even appreciated seeing the evolution of a band.

Instead of continuing on with the topic of the Oilers’ loss in Calgary, Ben commented on the outfit that I revealed once my jacket was off, “Always with the polka dots.”

Everyone had a style safe haven. Polka dots were mine. Any shirt or dress with polka dots on it called out to me. I was an equal opportunity polka dot lover, appreciative of all colors and sizes. A huge chunk of the wardrobe I’d brought to Edmonton with me consisted of polka dots. Tonight it was a red mini dress adorned with white polka dots, paired with footless black tights.

“You know how I do,” I responded as I took the few steps back to the island and grabbed my drink from the counter.

Ben moved closer to me so that we were face to face and I had to tilt my chin to look up at him. “You’re like...Minnie Mouse,” he said.

“What?” I laughed.

“Your little polka dot dresses, your pin-up girl eyes,” Ben listed off, “and your perfect hourglass shape.”

The room instantly felt ten degrees warmer as I stood under Ben’s gaze. I had no idea he’d been paying so much attention to my details. I mean, most of the times we had sex I’d already wiped away all the traces of my makeup and he didn’t complain. I didn’t think he paid much attention to my material appearance because he still slept with me anyway.

He set the paper cup in his hand on the counter, then took the one I was holding and set it right beside his. He broke the boundaries of our personal spaces when his large hands settled on my hips.

“And, of course, your cute little button nose,” his voice dropped an octave. He went a step further and touched the tip of his nose to mine and shook his head from side to side—an Eskimo kiss.

When he tapped my nose with his finger, I smirked at him as I retorted, “Maybe that’s why Roscoe can’t get enough of me. Cat and mouse.”

“Maybe I’ll just start calling you Minnie from now on,” Ben teased, placing a kiss, with his lips, on my jawline. “Mins for short.”

We started kissing for real then, easing some of the sexual tension he had built in a matter of minutes. It wasn’t supposed to be a typical night. We were just supposed to sleep. But there was another way to get him relaxed—no tea needed—wasn’t there? Ben’s grip on my hips was tight, holding my body flush against his as we stood, making out. I could feel that his pants had already tightened.

Ben’s tongue roamed my mouth freely, but slowly, after that. I bit his bottom lip appreciatively after he walked us backwards to the couch, pulling me into his lap when he sat down: he was a foot taller than me and making out on my tiptoes wasn’t exactly comfortable. I kissed him hungrily when he moved his hand up my torso, over my ribs up to the underside of my right breast. He was good at that, making me want him. Ben wasn’t a selfish benefits buddy. He liked fucking me and he wanted me to enjoy being fucked.

His back was right up against the cushion of the loveseat and I was straddling him, my legs tucked underneath me and my knees on either side of his hips. The bulge in Ben’s pants was begging to be freed, pressed up against me where the skirt of my dress had bunched up at my waist. He went for the zipper down the center at the back of my dress, but the fabric it was made of didn’t stretch well, and my arms wouldn’t bend in such a way that the two of us could get it off my body without ending our skin to skin contact.

I flicked the button on Ben’s jeans undone before I stood to take off the dress. He took in the sight of me as I dropped each shoulder and stepped out of it and then removed my tights as well, leaving my polka-dot comfort in a heap on the floor. I knew he was staring at the corner where my stomach and my hip bone met—his favorite part of me, he’d said one night. I could have guessed even without him telling me. I was a petite girl, but not in a boring straight line. The running hours I put in with my bandmates kept my assets defined. My curvy hips were the perfect resting place for Ben’s hands when he pumped in and out of me when we had sex.

His jeans had joined my dress on the floor and he was down to his boxer briefs and t-shirt when I was down to my underwear straddling his lap again. My bra and panties were mismatched, black push-up and evergreen boyshorts. When Ben had told me we were just going to cuddle and sleep, I’d believed him. Anyway, he didn’t care about the logistics of my undergarments as much as he cared about what was underneath them. In one quick motion, he freed my breasts from their confines, undoing the clasp in the back and then pulling at one of the cups until the bra was out of the way and I was left bare from the waist up.

My hands landed at Ben’s broad shoulders as he took a nipple in his mouth and flicked his tongue a few times in succession. The sensation it sent through my body caused me to throw my head back and grind my hips into him, his erection pressing just under my belly. I reached between us and stroked him through his shorts. He gave some attention to my other nipple, pinching it, just barely. I stroked harder, urging him on, and he placed a kiss in the hollow between my breasts.

“Fuck,” he muttered against my skin.

I smirked and went for it, reaching beneath the fabric of the waistband and to the base of his cock. He caught my wrist and pulled my hand out of his shorts.

“Fuck.” His swear word was more prominent this time. “Delia, I…I just remembered I don’t have any more condoms. The last time we…”

The last time we’d done what we were about to do. Four nights earlier. We’d done the dirty until I was too tired to move. He played in his first game of the season two days later and, in advance, we’d just wanted to make up for what we were going to miss. We’d been so well behaved the night before his season debut, not breaking any rules.

Pressing a kiss to his temple, I restarted what I’d been doing. Maybe Ben could just forget about the tension building in his shorts, but I couldn’t. He’d gotten me worked up and horny. It was his fault for flirting with me and kissing me instead of just drinking his tea. I was practically naked already, down to my last scrap of fabric. There was just no way I was going to bed without getting off.

“No, Delia,” he forced my hand away and held it in his palm so that my fingers were locked. “I don’t want to be teased if I can’t have you tonight. I forgot to buy more and I didn’t think we were going to—”

“It’s fine,” I promised. “I’m on the pill.”

That got his attention. He leaned back into the couch, as if that would help him see the honesty on my face any better. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

The tone of his next statement was shaped as another question, “This whole time?”

“Well, you never asked,” I shrugged.

If there was an award for most considerate bed buddy of the year, Ben would win it uncontested. He’d probably have a mantle full of them. We’d never fucked drunk and we’d never done it without a condom. He stashed them in the drawer of the nightstand beside his bed. Without complaint, he did what he had to to be safe on his part. He didn’t bother to ask if I was doing my part. He didn’t know that I’d been on the pill since I was 18, when I was old enough to have true doctor-patient confidentiality without a parent’s input.

“You’re…” he trailed off. “You trust me?”

“Do I have a reason not to?” I wondered, searching his crystal eyes.

Ben hadn’t turned out to be what I expected. He was somewhere in between what I thought of him on the first night I met him and what I thought when I found out he was a hockey player. He was in the NHL but he wasn’t a star. He wasn’t a manwhore and he didn’t get all the pussy he wanted just because he was hot. I got the sense that, even though he was almost five years older than me and was thoroughly skilled in the bedroom, our arrangement was the first casual hookup that went beyond one night for both of us, not just me.

“No,” he answered my question, and I knew he wouldn’t be anything but honest.

“Well then,” I paused to remove his shirt and nip at his earlobe, “let’s get you good and relaxed.”

Ben groaned and hooked both his thumbs to the sides of my little green boyshorts. He pushed the fabric down my hips as far as it would go with me straddling him. Unceremoniously, he lifted my hips and one of my knees and got up from under me. Somehow I ended up still in the same spot on my own, facing the leather couch cushions and sinking into the top of one for support as Ben slipped my underwear past my knees and down my ankles from behind. When my legs were freed, so was Ben’s dick. His hard-on was near full size and I felt it prick against my skin when he ran his fingers up my inner thigh.

At the site of the growing heat between my legs, he ran one long finger over my slit and I bucked against his touch. He added a finger and then rubbed along the edges of my nether lips. I was wet with anticipation. I knew it and he knew it. His touch was firm but soft. He told me he didn’t want to be teased but that was exactly what he was doing to me. My ass kept backing up toward him. I was waiting for his fingers to slip inside me and offer me instant relief. They never did.

But Ben wasn’t cruel. Instead, he gave me something better. In one fluid motion, he separated my thighs further apart and entered me from behind. We both sighed with pleasure at the contact as his tip moved past my entrance. His thrusts were slow at first, each time going a little deeper until he was up to the hilt, my wetness coating him completely. He felt even bigger as he took me from behind, my pussy full of him.

He leaned over me momentarily, his torso pressed into my spine as he set his pace. I turned my cheek to look back at him and he kissed the back of my shoulder. He shifted the positioning of his hands, one flat against my diaphragm and the other cupping a breast. My body was fully engaged in the pleasure being granted, my hips moving in their own rhythmic fashion in response to his strokes. I moaned when he drew circles around my nipple, sending the sensations of sex throughout my body, spreading from between my legs up toward my stomach but also from my chest right through me to my back as well.

I felt Ben all over me. When he followed the kiss up with his teeth, biting into my shoulder gently, to let me know that it felt just as good for him, I knew I was a goner. My knuckles weren’t turning white from gripping onto the back of the couch so tightly. Actually my arms felt numb from all the pleasure coursing through my body and my hands kept slipping on the pebbled leather of the back cushion. I settled for support from the couch, because I was going to fall chin-first onto the seat cushion if Ben continued to keep up what he was doing. I leaned further forward and pulled my elbows out, bending them so that my forearms rested flat on top of the back of the couch and my temple was pressed to my fingertips.

When I shifted, so did Ben, and his cock never withdrew from me completely even though I was further forward up against the couch. With his tip just barely grazing my entrance, he stood upright and moved his hands back to my hips. His next thrust was devastatingly good, and the next, and the next. Even facing the couch, my jaw dropped and my eyelids drooped shut. My decision to gain leverage for my arms had completely changed the angle with which he entered me. Each stroke was in and up at the perfect severe angle, sliding just past my most sensitive spot.

“Ben,” I hummed his name. “Oh, God.”

My hip movement became more erratic, trying to get into the right position where he would hit the spot and send me to paradise. I should’ve known better to know that he was a step ahead. He didn’t let up on me, forcing my body to take the pleasure that had me teetering. He guided my hips up, my ass rising further in the air, and then he drove deep. My breath became ragged.

A languid sob escaped my throat. He’d done it. He was fucking me in just the right spot. I was vibrating all over. Just a few more of the same hard strokes, quickly, and I would be over the edge. But Ben had me from behind and he was in control of the fire in between my legs. When I was on the verge of seeing stars, he slowed down and thrust with much less intensity. He halted and let go of me, the perfect fit of his body leaving mine.

I scrambled on the couch to turn around and confront him. He was still there, his dick standing at attention for me. Was that it? Did he just stop me from floating off into an orgasm because he wanted a blow job? Sitting on the couch, my juices probably staining the leather, I scooted to the edge and went to touch his thigh. Before I could make contact, he was crouched in front of me so we were almost eye level. Completely confused, I raised an eyebrow at him.

He leaned in and rubbed his nose against mine, as he was so fond of doing, and whispered one word, “Bedroom.”

Before I could respond with anything sassy or complain that I’d already been so close to reaching orgasm in the spot where I was, he lifted me up from the couch. With one strong arm wrapped around my waist and the other under the back of my thigh, he stood up, bringing me with him. My weight landed centered around his palms. I wrapped my arms and legs around him to help out as he adjusted his hands, both underneath my thighs as he walked us past Roscoe’s nook and towards the bedroom. I imagined that Ben had bench pressed my weight before, but I was sure he’d never done any lifting in the gym with the distraction of an erection before.

The bed was unmade, sheets all pushed to one side. Ben set me down strategically so that my head fell against a pillow – always so considerate. It took him less than a second to turn on the lamp atop the nightstand before he was hovering over me and taking my calves in his hands. He was on his knees, much like the position I’d been in on the couch, his balls and cock pressed to my inner thigh. He pushed my legs high, so that my knees were bent at a ninety degree angle to my belly button, and then his length entered me. It was a tight fit, but he slipped past my folds without resistance. I was still completely soaked.

His gaze was concentrated on the spot where our bodies became one, watching his dick disappear inside me as he stroked out a new pace for us. I breathed out as my muscles began to readjust. Did I want to know why he had stopped fucking me from behind on the couch? Yes. But it was hard to form words, let alone think, when he had me in a frenzy again already. I watched him as his blue eyes trailed up my body, to the slight bounce of my breasts against my chest, then to my face.

The tiniest of smiles appeared on the corners of his lips. “Sorry…I wanted…” he panted an explanation as he continued to screw me, “I wanted to be…able to see you.”

He kept his gaze on me as and a chuckle escaped my throat. Wow. The reason I was on my back was so he could see his handiwork. He wanted to watch me enjoying him fucking me. He wanted to see me fall apart as he sent me over the edge.

I looked up at him for as long as I could, letting him see the pleasure in my eyes and taking in the desire in his as my hips met his thrusts. I even tried to blink back the fuzziness that crept into the corners of my vision while he rocked my entire body. But I had to succumb. My eyes fluttered shut and I bit my lip when he adjusted my right leg so that my foot was firmly planted against the bed. With my back to the mattress, he wouldn’t be able to get to my sweet spot, but now his pubic bone brushed up against my clit with each thrust.

My inner walls began to tighten around his stiffness. I was thankful when I felt his lips brush over mine, our stomachs touching, his hands leaving my body so he could support himself on his elbows. The angle of his penetration was not disturbed, just harder, just more sensation for my clit. His tongue slipped into my mouth and we both moaned as he flicked it over mine in time to his strokes. I arched my back, as if I could take him deeper, and laid my hands on the knotted muscles in the center of Ben’s lower back, pressing his body into mine with all the strength I had. I didn’t care how well he could see me anymore. I needed something to hold on to when I came.

Ben picked up our pace and I knew he was close, too. My left leg, which he’d previously held in the air, ghosted up at his side. He pulled away from my mouth and we both gasped for air, me moaning and him hissing. Our fucking was up to double time of his original strokes and that was it for me. I cried out as I clamped down around him, seeing the stars behind closed eyes. The muscles of my inner walls squeezed him and my movements were frantic as I came, my back arching into a perfect bridge and my hands clawing up his back.

I shuddered against him as I rode out the shorebreaking waves of pleasure. Ben plowed into me until he couldn’t anymore, when my walls held onto him too tight for him to pull out. He slid an arm under me to draw me closer and dropped his head. He grunted a string of vowels into my shoulder as he went limp and bottomed out, bursting inside me.

My heart thumped as heavy as our breathing once we were both sated. Damn, it felt good to let go after so much build up. We’d been sleeping with each other for a while, but he’d never done me like that, getting me close to the edge and stopping abruptly just to get me riled up again. My skin was damp with sweat after being worked so hard. When I opened my eyes, Ben was staring back at me, probably in the same way that he had when I came for him.

His irises darted in their sockets, studying my face in its post-coital glow. He didn’t say anything, just kissed me once and grinned, a token of thanks for our shared experience. He was still nestled inside me and he didn’t pull out until he’d rolled us onto our sides, facing each other and in close. I felt hazy as Ben rolled his fingers over my spine, alternating between sleepy and wide awake each time I blinked.

I would be the first to speak once I’d caught my breath. It was a smart remark and came with a smirk. “Do you feel relaxed now?”

“Oh, Mins,” I felt the rumble of Ben’s laughter against my body after he used his new found nickname for me, “now I’m way too relaxed.”

Notes

Extended Chapter Notes