Swallow Me Whole novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Workbench

I blocked Trent's number at six the next morning, between two trays of croissants.

By nine that night I had forgotten his face.

"Come out to the shop," Ashton had texted at eight. "Bring nothing."

I crossed the dark yard in bare feet, in the only dress I owned that buttoned all the way down the front.

The garage door was cracked open a foot, and warm yellow light spilled out onto the grass.

Inside, it smelled of cedar and oil and sawdust.

Work lights hung from the rafters on a string, and clamps lined one wall.

Down the middle of the room ran the workbench he had built from a single slab of white oak.

It was eight feet long and wide as a bed.

He had covered one end of it with a gray moving blanket.

He stood beside it with his sleeves rolled to his elbows, and he did not smile.

"You said lessons only downstairs," I said.

"The shop is downstairs."

"Technically."

"I'm a carpenter. I'm technical."

He held out his hand.

I put mine in it, and he led me to the bench and turned me around to face him.

He started at the top button of my dress.

He undid it, and the next, and the next, slowly, one at a time.

He watched his own fingers.

"You said you wanted all of it," he said.

"I did."

"Say it now."

"I want all of it, Ashton. I want you inside me."

His hands shook.

I felt it at the fifth button, a tremor in the big careful fingers, and I covered them with mine.

"You're shaking."

"I know."

"Why?"

"Because I'm trying to do this right," he said. "Because you only get one first time with somebody who isn't an idiot."

"I've had a first time."

"You haven't had this one."

He pushed the dress off my shoulders and it pooled on the sawdust at our feet.

I stood in front of him in my bra and underwear.

He looked at me and said nothing for such a long moment that I started to cover myself.

"No," he said. "Let me."

He unhooked my bra and slid the straps off.

He knelt and took my underwear down, and kissed my hip bone.

Then he stood up and unbuttoned his flannel.

He took it off, and the shirt under it, in one pull over his head.

I got my first look at the rest of him.

He had broad shoulders and a hard stomach.

A dusting of dark hair ran across his chest and tapered below his navel.

A long pale scar ran along his ribs.

"What happened there?"

"A table saw. I was twenty."

"Does it hurt?"

"Only when it rains."

I put my palm on it.

His skin was hot, and his heart hammered under my hand.

He lifted me by the waist and set me on the edge of the bench.

The oak was cool and smooth and smelled of lemon oil.

He laid me back on the blanket.

I felt the grain of the wood through it and the heat of the lights on my skin.

"Knees up."

I drew them up.

He stood between my feet and unzipped his jeans.

He pushed them down along with his briefs.

His cock swung free, thick and full and dark red at the head, and I licked my lips without meaning to.

"Don't look at me like that," he said.

"Like what?"

"Like you want it more than I do."

"I do."

He swore under his breath.

He stroked himself once, slowly, and a gleam of wetness ran down the length.

Then he leaned over me and put one hand flat on my stomach.

With the other he guided himself to my entrance.

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