Love Me Always (Top Shelf Romance Book 8)

I never hid my feelings for him years ago, and I wasn’t trying to start now. As long as those feelings stayed familiar. I was used to hating Ben. Those feelings I could deal with. Not, whatever the hell it was that I felt last night. Or didn’t feel. ‘Cause I didn’t feel anything.
“Mia, are you that same girl that used to live here? The girl that wouldn’t dare say a cuss word or wear a bikini like the one you’re currently rocking the hell out of?” She smiles and playfully wiggles her brows.
“No. I guess not,” I reply flatly. I know exactly where she’s going with this, and I don’t really want to hear it.
“Well, Ben’s not that same jerk-face loser that would pick on you every chance he got. He’s actually pretty tolerable now.” I try to roll away from her but she grabs my arm, keeping my gaze. “He’s not that guy, Mia. He hasn’t been for a while. And I think you know that deep down.” She pauses, her lips turning up into a sassy smile. “There’s no way that same guy would’ve made you feel the way you felt last night.”
“Icky? Nauseating? Because that’s how I felt.”
“Yeah, okay. Tell that to your five orgasms.”
She sounds as unconvinced as I feel.
Whatever. Even if he did own my body, I wasn’t going to admit it to Tessa. Or myself, for that matter.
“This is so not the way I was hoping to start off my summer.”
“I can’t imagine starting it off any better. Hot sex that resulted in five glorious orgasms? I’ll take, things I’d give my right arm for, for two hundred, Alex.” She bumps her shoulder against me and slides off the bed. “I know two men that would help greatly in a situation like this.”
“I’m not interested in your vibrators. We’re close, but we aren’t that close.”
I hear her chuckle as she disappears down the hallway.
This is un-freaking-believable. The man I couldn’t get out of my head since I laid eyes on him last night, turns out to be the asshole I longed to forget. It was Ben who made me feel hot and wanted for the first time in my life. It was Ben who ignited my skin and made my insides burn, and not in the STD kind of way. It was Ben who I screamed for last night and who I never wanted to leave this morning. Benjamin fucking Kelly. He made fun of my body for years, but last night, he worshipped it. Telling me how good I tasted. How amazing I felt. How he wanted to stay deep in my pussy until the day he died. And I was torn between wanting to take back everything that we’d experienced together not even twenty-four hours ago, and asking him to touch me again. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt his hands on me. His breath on my skin. His tongue on my clit. His cock in my pussy. He claimed me last night, and I hated that I loved it.
Tessa appears in the doorway, two pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in her hands. “I say we rent something nonromantic and devour the contents of these containers. You’re in desperate need of a girls’ night and I’m coming at you hard.”
“Is that Half Baked?” Damn. I haven’t had that in years. She nods and smiles wide. “You’re awesome. I’m so in for girls’ night.”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say. Get changed and plant your perky ass in front of the TV.”
She leaves me to do just that, and I don’t waste any time. I throw on a sundress and meet her in the living room, diving into my ice cream as she scrolls the movie selections.
“Wolf of Wall Street or Captain Phillips?” she asks as she flips through the On Demand section.
“Wolf of Wall Street. I don’t feel like crying, and seeing Tom Hanks held captive by pirates will probably wreck me. You know I love that man.” I’ve been hooked on Tom Hanks’ films since I watched Philadelphia. And don’t get me started on The Green Mile. I cried like a baby when Tessa and I watched that together. The electrocution scene? I can’t even.
She starts up the movie and we sit back, both digging into the meals that will surely ruin any appetite for dinner. We are halfway through the movie and our pints when Tessa’s phone rings.
“You’re interrupting girls’ night, I’ll have you know. And the penalty for your crime is death by dick removal.”
I giggle around my spoon, my eyes widening as Leonardo DiCaprio snorts coke off some chick’s ass.
“Hmm, you’re so hilarious. And that’s none of your business. I think you’ve done enough damage to warrant a lifetime of therapy.” I meet her eyes briefly before she turns her head. “Just leave her alone. If she wants to talk to you, she’ll talk to you.”
I don’t need two guesses to know who she is talking to. And a part of me that I don’t want to acknowledge, wishes she had been on a land line so I could pick up and listen in.
“I have no idea, but whatever it is, it won’t be involving you. Now leave us alone so we can watch all this coke get snorted in a way that is definitely heating up everything south of my waist.” She tosses her phone onto the coffee table. “Sorry about that. Apparently, you’re hard to forget.” She smiles coyly at me, and I brace myself for what she’s about to say. “But that wouldn’t affect you, because it’s my brother we’re talking about. Right?”
“Right,” I affirm without hesitation. I’m not falling into that trap. I keep my attention on Leonardo and far away from thoughts of Benjamin Kelly.
“I mean, it’s not like he was sweet and playful with you or anything.”
“Nope. Not at all.”
“And it’s not like he gave you this beautiful experience to treasure for the rest of your life.