By the time she exited the bath and had some dinner that evening, Eden still didn’t know what to do. Benson had given her his number, but she had smartly not reciprocated.Would he harass me? Or would he give me space to think?Eden would never know. Especially if she never initiated anything with him.
She sat cross-legged on her bed, towel wrapped around her shoulders until her hair dried. Yet she merely stared at her phone. At the number she had inputted into her directory without attaching a name.Bryce. Benson. Whatever.
Benson. Smith.
She opened a browser on her phone and searched for his name. With his long career, it didn’t take long to discover theman beyond LPS. Benson was frequent on the charity dinner circuit. He often attached his name to donations, both personal and on behalf of the firm he was already a senior partner at. Most of the grainy photos Eden found on her small phone screen were of a younger man who smiled more often. In the later photos, he was much more reticent.
But, you know, in a hot way…
There were some photos of him with women. One repeat customer was a willowy woman with blond hair. She often wore her hair up and bedecked herself in floor-length evening gowns. Her makeup was a blend of the very late 2000s and early 2010s, evoking the idea that the photos were old enough to have been a relationship long before La Mariposa.
Indeed, one article referred to her as “Sydney Smith,” and it didn’t take rocket science to figure out that it was Benson’s wife.Ex-wife, I’m assuming.Sydney did not show up in any photos since 2015.
There was another young woman, though. And Eden’s heart stopped when she realized how young the teenager with light brown hair and braces was when she kept popping up on Benson’s arm at charity dinners and local high-profile events.
Please be his daughter… please be his daughter…
She finally found a caption that read,“Drew Smith wows the red carpet at Saturday night’s For the Felines Gala. The self-professed cat lover is the daughter of financial advisor Benson Smith, of LPS, and Sydney Smith-Kaplan, board member of The Giving House, who sponsored the event.”
Benson didn’t just have an ex-wife and a daughter. His daughter was old enough to do what Eden had done that past weekend! Probably!
“Wow.” She fell back against her pillow and headboard, forgetting that her hair was still wet. The damp imprint left onher pillowcase wouldn’t be noticed until she went to sleep. Until then? “He has a daughter. Only a few years younger than me.”
Eden waited for that to sink in – to make her feel disgusted that this man had gone to a tropical island to fuck his way through women young enough to be his daughter.
She waited. A good bit.
“Damnit.” Every time she attempted to conjure the anger upon imagining his face, her memories went right back to what they did together that weekend. Dinner. Hot tub. Flirting by the pool. Going fuck crazy in his cottage and at the orgy where…
Neal.
Eden bit her lip as she thought of them both going at her like it was the world’s way of saying,This is what you want, right?She recalled thinking that it was too bad she couldn’t meet men like them here in the city – even with the intricate dance of dating making things more awkward and difficult. And while Eden swore she didn’t really needthosemen, exactly, her body remembered.
Good God, did it remember.
Benson’s hands on her. The way he slammed his kisses against her lips. The erotic undulation of his hips even before he fucked her.The way he fucked her.
What he said; what he did.
How open he was to things. He granted Eden the kind of new experiences she could not have found so safely elsewhere.
It won’t be the same here on the mainland.They were both under stress here. The weather sucked. There were obligations. They no longer had the responsibility-free space to do whatever they wanted while the sun shone brightly, and they barely wore any clothes.
Yet he was so quick to ask me out… even after that…
Had he really been thinking about her that much since coming back from the island? Were the memories of Eden’s cries ofpleasure haunting him as much as he lurked in the shadows of her dreams?
Benson was older, but that also meant he might be stable, like Blair insinuated. He had already been through one marriage and knew what he wanted. He had to be responsible for his kid.He has a kid…Who was an adult now. But that also meant she was only a few years younger than Eden…
Shit, she was making it sound like they were getting married! As if!
“Fuck it.” She tossed her phone to the end of her bed and pulled open the drawer beneath her bed. Within another box, she kept one of her most expensive possessions. And one of her most used.
If I still can’t stop thinking about him after this, then I’ll text him.
She pulled back her bed covers and hopped in, defiantly holding her vibrator in front of her face.
It was a simple exercise, and it hadsomuch potential for her deviant mind.I’d like to see my brain keep thinking about him after I fuck myself!Eden opened her robe and began rubbing her mound as if this were her nightly routine.Then again, it might be, if I keep getting horny like this.She hadn’t even thought about sex since getting back on Monday. Here she was, three days later, thirsty for those men who had fucked her in every direction for three more whole days.