Free 2 Maid in the Shade by Bridget Allison

do and it’s fine. Now let’s have that picnic shall we?” He grabbed the basket and blanket and strode over to a place where the deep emerald of the trees met the lavish wildflowers. It was almost as colorful as a Kincaid painting, an artist I have never really cared for, but this was real.
    B en spread the blanket expertly while I opened the basket.
    T he picnic hamper was lovely, with little pockets for linen napkins and cutlery. Every elegant repast Delmonte’s had ever devised for a picnic was in abundance. I marveled as I quietly pulled out champagne grapes, salads in covered glass bowls tipped with silver, crystal glasses with a bottle of bubbly (alcohol removed), and a variety of tapas.
    “ Anything the matter?” Ben asked earnestly.
    “ It’s just so beautiful, and this setting, I can’t believe you did all this... How you arranged it so quickly.”
    “ I know you, perhaps better than you think. If we were living in England, and graced with such a sunny day, I would have planned something quite different for an escape. It wouldn’t be this warm. But we would go to the country house, leave London on the weekends, you remember it? We have the horses there.”
    “ Remember it? It’s hardly just a house! Do you still have the swans? And could we have wolfhounds obediently stationed on each side of the fireplace?” I asked teasingly.
    “As you wish,” he said smiling, knowing I would pick up on the quote from “The Princess Bride.”
    “Ben”-I started but he must have known I was about to quash his daydream. He put one finger over my lips and said, “Let’s see what else we have.”
    He began to pull more magic from the basket and poured our drinks.
    W e ate gingerly, and now and then he would feed me a bite of something as I tried not to hold his gaze too long. It was nothing like the nights when he had come to visit my loft downtown when he was just passing through Charlotte. There we had ordered takeout and wolfed it down at the granite bar in my small kitchen. Even in this open space the sensuality of the connection was there, no matter how hard I tried to see him again as merely the son of a lovely woman my father had been married to so briefly.
    O ur jackets had been left behind in the car but as soon as we had packed up the basket Ben pulled off his shirt. “No rush right? No harm getting a little color is there?”
    "Not at all," I said unable to keep my eyes off his taunt abdomen, made more perfect somehow by a scar just under his ribcage. “Go right ahead, as long as you don’t mind getting a little red.”
    “I don’t really burn, surprisingly,” he said, stretching out “I’m outdoors more than you would imagine. ”
    I had an idea that he would be very red in a moment. “Close your eyes.” I whispered.
    His eyebrows rose in slight surprise, and then with a pleased look, he contentedly did just that.
    I opened the basket, selected one of the remaining strawberries and straddled him.
    He opened his eyes again in consternation.
    “Closed or I stop,” I said sternly.
    He smiled and shut them again.
    I took a moment to study his patrician brow, his hint of a four-o’clock shadow his perfectly formed lips, dear God, I wanted to stop seeing him as a man again but I couldn’t seem to turn it off. To be perfectly honest what I needed was to turn me off. Teasing Jared that morning had definitely gotten my engine running.
    I took the first strawberry and brushed it against his lips. He opened his mouth and I slowly fed it to him.
    “ Gretchen,” he whispered, and opened his eyes in time to see me place one end of the next berry between my teeth. I leaned down over him and placed the other end in his mouth. He took a bite just as I removed the other end from my mouth. I squashed it all over his high cheekbones and down his neck before I scrambled off him.
    He moved quickly, grabbing my shirt, pinning me down on my back and with one arm held my arms above my head.
    “ And you? Still