Page 20 of Every Breath

Chapter Eleven

Benny catchesme admiring my ring a few hours later. He plants a kiss on my shoulder as he wraps his arm around me, his warm hand settling over my belly.

“You really made it official,” I whisper. “I didn’t dream it.”

“No, you didn’t,” he says, his voice thick with sleep. “And I have witnesses who heard you say yes.”

“Are you sure they’re all reliable?”

He chuckles, nuzzling the skin at the back of my neck and I giggle. “Yes, I am. A hundred percent. And a few of them might have just filmed it, too.”

I groan. “You mean there’s no changing my mind.”

His arm tightens around my waist. “Is that what you’d like?”

I roll onto my back and look at Benny, his expression serious. Suddenly I hate teasing about something so important to him, but it’s my default setting, always has been. It means I don’t have to deal with the seriousness of things like being there for my patients only because they’re dying and leaving when they’ve moved on. Years of doing that had taken its toll and I didn’t even know it. But everyone else did.

“I’m sorry, Benny. I didn’t mean to be flippant–”

“It’s alright. I know you didn’t mean to be.”

Suddenly I’m crying, the tears flowing down my cheeks and Benny pulls me closer, kissing my forehead as I tuck my face in the space between his neck and shoulder. I don’t even understand why I’m so emotional.

But why shouldn’t I be?

After I refused him the first time, I honestly thought he’d never ask me to marry him again and yet he did. And for a man as private as Benny, to do it in front of my family is a huge step.

“After my father died, Mother and I moved back to the rez,” he says quietly as he strokes my hair. “She didn’t want to, but she had nowhere else to go and she thought maybe her family would forgive her for running off with a white man. It took a while, but they did and she ended up marrying the man she’d been arranged to marry from the beginning.”

Benny pauses, his Adam’s apple bobbing against my forehead as he swallows. “She was so filled with remorse for following her heart that she said nothing when he started beating me for every little mistake, for not knowing how to speak Navajo or for not being nitsídzíkees dzizlíí, someone who can think independently even if I was still a little boy then, barely seven. It was my grandfather who finally took me in, teaching me everything I knew until my mother got pregnant two years later. That’s when my stepfather stopped beating me.”

I look at up at him. “But he left marks on you.”

“He did, yes.”

“He was cruel.”

Benny shrugs. “I wasn’t exactly a good little boy either. I don’t think I really understood my real father was dead. I kept asking my mother when we were going home, back to Roswell where we used to live and where all my friends were. I really had no idea what was happening.”

“You were too young.”

“I was only six, so yes, I was too young. But despite what my stepfather did, he taught me how not to raise my own son… and how to keep it all inside, your feelings and your weaknesses all bottled up,” he says. “And then I met you.”

I frown, waiting for the punchline but none comes. “I’m not quite sure if that’s supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing given the context of this conversation.”

“You helped me realize I can’t bottle everything up, not with you. But even when I slowly learned to open up with you, there was this. I kept this for myself.” Benny takes my hand and guides it toward his back where my fingers trace a scar, one of many he never allowed me to touch. “But I can’t do that anymore. No more secrets, Sarah.”

“No more secrets.”

He closes his eyes as I trace the indentation of one scar, one that crosses onto another… and another. My chest tightens and I kiss the hollow of his neck, needing a connection that roots me back to the present, not from his past. I lick the skin there and lower.

Benny takes my wrist again and guides it the space between us where his cock is pressing against my belly. His nostrils flare as he watches me, his breathing turning ragged when I squeeze him, hot and thick in my hand.

“Lay on your back,” I whisper, his arms wrapping around my waist to pull me with him so I’m on top of him. I don’t speak and neither does Benny as I guide his cock inside me, setting the rhythm as I make love to him, gently this time.

As his cock fills me for the second time, I know this is exactly what we both need right now. One moment it’s us coming together all rough and hard and other times, gentle and slow like right now. And through it all, there’s that connection, a bond that needs no words—only us.

His hands cup my breasts as I ride him, before moving down my waist and then my hips where they stay, guiding me, his own hips thrusting upward to meet mine until we both find our sweet release and I collapse on top of him, panting and out of breath. I might just need to start doing squats again.

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