Page 13 of The Stargazers of Copper County
He pulled off and wiped his chin with the back of a hand. “Move up.” He nudged me onto the bed properly until I was laid out with his long, muscled body on top of me. I wrapped my arms around him and skimmed my hands along his back while reveling in the feel of his cock pressed against mine.
I moved a hand between us to try to grip both of us together. The noise he made in his throat made my cock jerk.
“Want you,” he grumbled, reaching to help me get a better grip on our cocks. I thrust my hips frantically, wrapping a leg around his to try and keep him as close as possible.
We were a jumble of limbs and grunts, whimpers and sucked-in breaths. The feel of his hot skin, the taste of tart lemons on his tongue, and the knowledge that he wanted mewith the same desperation I wanted him were all enough to blow me apart.
Within seconds of muffling my shout into his shoulder and feeling the rush of release, I felt the addition of his spunk hit my belly. The muscles of his back contracted under my palm, and the noise he made vibrated from his chest to mine.
The sound of our ragged breathing filled the space around us as we both shifted our hands away. Bennett moved off me to fetch a towel from the bathroom. When he returned, he leaned over to clean me up with unexpected tenderness. Thankfully, he didn’t seem nervous like before. The awkwardness from earlier was entirely gone.
Instead of returning the towel to the bathroom, he dropped it on the floor and moved back onto the bed to lie next to me, caressing my face and gazing at me with a smile as soft and bright as the golden-hour light streaming in the window.
“Compatible in bed,” he murmured. “Check.”
His attention made me feel flustered, so I moved my eyes down to land on a cluster of freckles I’d noticed earlier on his shoulder. I reached out a fingertip to trace the pattern. “The Big Dipper,” I said with a laugh as I realized why it seemed familiar. “You have a constellation on your shoulder?”
I glanced back up to meet Bennett’s eyes. That spectacular gray-green I’d never seen on another person was shining at me with pleasure.
“My grandfather used to say that, but no one else has ever noticed it before,” he said softly. “Do you know much about constellations?”
He seemed so excited by the idea that I blurted out the truth.
“I do now. I, ah, may have started studying up on them since you hired me.” Since before that, really. Since I’d first noticed Bennett four years ago and become fascinated by the man in theObservatory House, but definitely more so in the past two years since I’d become desperate for him to notice me back.
Now that he finally had, I considered it time well spent.
“But…” His expression registered shock. “You’ve been working for me for over two years.”
I tried to ignore the hot flush burning my face. Tonight was my chance with Bennett Graham, and I didn’t want to waste it.
My voice came out lower and rougher than I expected. “You can learn a lot about something you like in two years.”
CHAPTER NINE
BENNETT
I searched Theo’s face,trying to figure out whether his interest in stargazing was real or an attempt to impress me.
He seemed nervous and unsure for the first time since we’d begun this flirtation.
“What do you like most about what you’ve learned?” I asked.
He tugged his lip between his teeth as he considered my question. “I guess… I guess just realizing how vast and unending the universe is? Like, too huge for my mind to grasp, really. The number of stars in the Milky Way alone is larger than the total number of humans that have ever been born.Ever, Bennett. That’s, like, mind-blowing. I can’t wrap my brain around it.”
“It’s awe-inspiring,” I agreed, smiling at his enthusiasm.
“Yeah.” Theo reached out to wrap a finger around a strand of hair falling over my eyes. “I also love that even though the universe is mind-bogglingly huge, there’s also… I dunno how to say it, really… there’s thisconnectionbetween things that makes it feel small. Did you know…” He propped himself up on one elbow. “…that there are other planets they think have diamonds on them? The hydrocarbon situation there is a lot like Earth’s. Can you imagine there are other species out there, light-years away from Copper County, reveling in the way a diamond catches the light?”
Enchanted, I turned my face to press a kiss to the inside of his wrist.
“What about you?” he asked. “What do you like most about it?”
“Hmm… well. I like that it makes me feel connected to my grandfather, for one thing. But about the stargazing itself…” I hesitated. “I suppose the aspect of discovery. Finding new things and learning about them. Noticing changes and wondering why they occurred. There’s always something new to learn, even though what we’re looking at hasn’t changed much in such a long time.”
“And the fact what we’re seeing is mostly straight-up history,” Theo added. “Light from elements that may not even exist anymore. It’s wild. Like a kind of time travel.”
We continued to talk as I traced patterns over his chest and shoulders with my fingers. From time to time, I leaned forward to taste the chlorine on his skin or the disappearing sweetness of lemonade on his tongue.
