Wild for Him

She concentrated on his taut abdomen, keeping her gaze cast downward while she took her trip back into the past. 'But one day I came home early from visiting a friend and heard loud voices coming from the master bedroom. My mother was accusing my father of having an affair, which he openly admitted to, and I remember him saying to her. 'Can you blame me? You won't let me touch you and we haven't had sex in over fifteen years. There's no intimacy between us, yet you've made it clear that if I file for divorce you'll make sure I can kiss my political career good-bye; Then he stormed out of the bedroom and literally ran into me. Both my mother and father knew I'd heard everything, and that's when my mother decided I was old enough to know the truth.'

Ben tucked his fingers beneath her chin and lifted her gaze back to his. 'And that was?'

Touched by the tenderness in Ben's eyes, she went on. 'My father left the house and my mother sat me down and told me that three years after I was born she got pregnant again, but five months into the pregnancy she miscarried. She ended up hemorrhaging so badly that she had to have a hysterectomy and couldn't have any more kids. After that, she said she had no interest in sex. She didn't want it, didn't need it, and she had no desire for it. And judging from what I heard, that translated into her not sleeping with my father anymore.'

Ben visibly winced. 'I can't even imagine. I'm not one to condone affairs outside of a marriage, but a part of me can understand why your father did it.'

She nodded in agreement. 'Me, too. Physically and emotionally, he wasn't getting what he needed from my mother. So, since my mother didn't want a divorce because she liked the social aspect of being married to a politician, and my father didn't want to tarnish his reputation with a nasty separation, they came to a compromise. They would stay married for my mother's sake and my father's career, and out in public they'd pretend they were a happy couple. Since my mother didn't want sex, she allowed my father to maintain his affair so long as he kept things discreet, which he has.'

Ben looked completely taken aback by her parents' elaborate cover-up. 'That's quite an arrangement.'

'I suppose it works for them for whatever reason, but it's obvious to me that neither one of them is happy. My father has been with the same woman all these years, a paralegal at a law firm here in Chicago who understands the rules, and somehow accepts them to be with my father.' She slid the soapy sponge down his thighs, then automatically worked her way back up to his chest. 'As for my mother… now that I'm no longer the main focus of her life because I have one of my own, she spends her days with her rich, affluent friends, and drinks way too much at night when she's alone. She'd never admit that she has a drinking problem, but even I can see that she's abusing alcohol in order to deal with other issues in her life. I've tried to talk to her about it, and so has my father, but she refuses to get any help.'

Reaching out, he tucked a wet strand of hair behind her ear, his touch as gentle and reverent as the look in his eyes. 'I'm sorry you've had to deal with all that.'

'It's okay.' She shrugged as she rinsed the sponge. 'I refuse to let my mother's issues become my own. I've learned to stand up to her, and live my life for myself, instead of what she envisioned for me. Now turn around so I can scrub your back.'

He did as she asked, and just when she thought they'd exhausted the topic of her mother's and father's issues, he said, 'I find it interesting that your dad was so angry about Jason's infidelity when he, himself, is having an affair.'

Adding more soap to the sponge, she started in on his shoulders and followed the strong line of his back down to the base of his spine, then up again. 'I know it seems hypocritical, but my father has always been very protective of me, and while he knows that having an affair is morally wrong, he made sure I knew that he didn't want his daughter to marry someone that wasn't one hundred percent devoted to her.'

'As it should be,' Ben replied gruffly, apparently a strong advocate of monogamy.

'My mother, on the other hand, felt quite the opposite about the whole infidelity issue, as you well know,' she added wryly. 'She told me that was just the way men were and sex wasn't important, that they could get sex anywhere, anytime, and that being a good wife was what mattered in a marriage, especially when you married a prominent man, which she fully expected me to do.'

Ben's only reply to that was a grunt of disgust.

She smiled as she stroked the sponge over the tight, muscular curve of his butt and the crevice in between that led to the crux of his thighs. 'At the time, a part of me couldn't help but wonder if she was right about sex not being important, and considering how all my sexual experiences up to that point had left me cold, I was beginning to think that I was just like my mother in that regard. That sex would never be that thrilling, exciting encounter I'd always hoped it would be.'

He turned back around to look at her, his expression sinfully sexy as water streamed over his shoulders and down his amazing body. 'Now you know differently, don't you?'

'Yeah, thanks to you,' she said as she trailed a finger down the firm line bisecting his abdomen.

'You've always been a sensual woman, Christy,' he said, then grinned much too arrogantly. 'It just took the right man to bring it out in you.'

She laughed, then sobered, her feelings for Ben suddenly overwhelming her. 'I'm glad that man was you.'

He grew just as serious. 'Me, too.'

She stared into his gorgeous eyes, wondering if he felt even a glimmer of the same emotion for her that she did for him. She knew without a doubt he cared about her, but there was something that seemed to hold him back emotionally, and she wondered if it was the loss of his fiancee in the war that kept his feelings for her insulated, unable to give himself to another woman. Then there was the fact that she was just a client he was having an affair with until their time together was over.

Wasn't that exactly what she'd asked for? A hot, temporary tryst that didn't interfere with her newfound independence and freedom. So why was she beginning to want so much more with Ben? And why did her heart feel more involved than she'd ever intended?

Unsure whether or not she was ready to face the answer to those questions when she had no idea where she stood with Ben, she instead gave him a crooked smile and teased, 'And here you thought you were the only one with a dysfunctional family and past.'

He chuckled at that and ran his thumb over her rigid nipple, making her forget everything but him and the exquisite way he made her feel. 'The water is starting to get cool. What do you say we take this party into the bedroom?'

'Mmmm,' she purred deep in her throat as she took a hold of his shaft and gave him a slow, firm stroke that made him growl like a tempted tiger. 'That all depends on what you have in mind.'

'How about making you scream with pleasure?' he suggested, looking completely, deliciously depraved.

Knowing he was a man of his word, Christine wasn't about to turn down his wicked offer. 'Oh, yeah, that definitely works for me.'

Chapter Thirteen

THE shrill sound of the phone ringing woke Ben immediately. His first instinct was to reach for the receiver to answer the call, until he realized that he was in Christine's bed and she needed to pick up the phone. A quick glance at the digital clock on her nightstand told him it was almost twenty after eleven in the evening, and calls that came that late at night usually tended to be emergencies of some sort.

Another ring, and Christine stirred beside him and sat up, momentarily disoriented from being in such a deep sleep. She pushed her disheveled hair out of her face, reached for the receiver, and answered the call with a husky, drowsy, 'Hello?'

She was quiet for a moment, then replied, 'Yes, this is she,' and grew silent once again as whoever was on the other end of the line continued to talk.

Concerned and curious, Ben came up on his arm and watched as Christine's expression gradually changed from sleepy to awake as she listened to the one-way conversation and answered with 'yes' and 'that's correct' and other short sentences that didn't give Ben any clue as to what was going on. The only thing he knew for certain was that the person she was speaking to wasn't family, which alleviated some of his worry.

Finally, she hung up the phone, switched on the bedside light, and turned toward him with a frown creasing her brows and a stunned look on her face. 'Wow,' she said with a shake of her head.

As far as explanations went, it didn't give him much to go on. 'Is everything okay?' he prompted.