Free In Love Again by Megan Mulry

damn him. She wanted to drive away then pull off to the side of the road and bawl her eyes out. Bronte would have known exactly how to turn this whole meeting into some sort of wild weekend of rekindled romance and no-strings-attached sexual escapades.
    Claire felt like she was the walking, talking embodiment of Every String Attached. And she had no idea what a sexual escapade even entailed. Sure, she’d spent the past week and a half dreaming about the idea of Ben, but she’d never approached anything even remotely resembling an actual fantasy . Perhaps a swing. Fragonard’s painting in the Wallace Collection sprang to mind.
    “Say my name.” Ben was staring down at her, his voice hard.
    She was shorter than he was to begin with, but Claire was still on the porch and it was a few inches lower than the front hall, where he was standing. His words knocked the wind out of her.
    “What?” She could barely speak. She wanted to cry or hit him or just bury her face in his hard, warm chest. It still felt like he was taunting her or trying to punish her, and she didn’t understand why, and the tears were so close.
    “Just say my name. I want to hear you say it.”
    Claire took a deep, fortifying breath. One syllable for a six-thousand-dollar jacket seemed like a pretty easy trade, but she wasn’t sure she could do it. She bit her lips between her teeth in the only nervous habit her mother had never been able to fully drum out of her.
    “Or just let me stare at your lips while you do that…” His voice was softer, but no less menacing. Maybe more so.
    She unclenched her lips and could feel them throbbing as he stared at her mouth. Her heart lurched into a frantic gallop, a terrible mix of fear and something so hot and eager, she wasn’t able to name it.
    Air. Air. Air . Claire couldn’t breathe properly. She might have to abandon the jacket. It had sounded like he wanted to look at her lips, but he looked so cross now, like he resented wanting to.
    Claire’s heart pounded harder as she worked up the courage to say the single word. “Ben.”

Chapter 7
     
    He stared at her lips as she said the one syllable, then he looked into her eyes. Her pupils dilated, nearly filling the pale, pale gray of her irises. He watched her feel it—desire—finally. Decades too late. It soothed his ego to see her response, but he couldn’t let it mean more than that. A physical charge, nothing more.
    Claire’s blood was so blue, Billie Holiday could have sung songs about it. Yes, she’d always appeared a bit formal, but at least Ben hadn’t imagined everything from that summer. They had shared something real, and the look in her eyes made it impossible to deny. All those years ago, whenever he had kissed her neck or reached for her hand, she would whisper his name like that, so full of desire and almost a strange disbelief. A kind of quivering hesitance that made him feel like a god.
    Now, all her quivering hesitance only served to infuriate him. As if she were intimidated by him . As if she hadn’t spent her entire life among the world’s elite.
    He turned from the door without inviting her back in, got the jacket from the laundry room, and returned to the front door. She was like a statue. He suspected she hadn’t moved a particle of air around her in the few seconds while he’d been gone.
    “Here.” He handed her the jacket.
    She reached out to take it, and he pulled it quickly back; he didn’t even know why. Maybe to make her look at him again. He couldn’t stand the way she was ignoring him, looking anywhere but in his eyes, avoiding saying his name. Something vindictive twisted inside him. “On second thought—”
    “Ben—”
    “Oh. Good. You’re getting the hang of it. I’m going to call Boppy and tell her you’re just the thing.”
    She looked terrified, and Ben almost felt sorry for her, but decided not to. “Just the person ,” he amended, “to help me wrap up this project once and for all. Who knows?