Hard Focus (BAE Book 1) Read online

  “Don’t need to say bye to your new friend?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “Boring women don’t interest me,” he whispered in my ear before biting my earlobe.

  A moan escaped my lips, and something hardened against my abs.

  “So much for not seeing you.”

  I was distracted by the stiffening erection against my belly.

  “Would you have preferred not seeing me?” The corners of Benji’s lips turned up dangerously, smiling threateningly. “Go home with some other man here?”

  “Are you jealous?” I teased, feeling bold. “My, my, I am seeing many faces of Benji Reed today.”

  He slipped a finger into the waistband of my skirt, stroking the skin on my back. I shuddered, suppressing another moan. Benji smirked.

  “Who’s jealous?” he said softly. “I was just wondering what you were thinking when you decided to dress like that to a bar.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a pretty little present ready to be unwrapped and eaten,” he hummed.

  I leaned into his hard crotch. “This present’s got your name on it.”

  “Keep talking like that, and I’ll unwrap you in the bathroom,” he growled, tightening his grip.

  “Maybe I’ll take you up on it,” I breathed, heady with alcohol and lust. “Come over later.”

  “To your place?”

  “Yeah.”

  As per our agreement, I initially didn’t want Benji to come over to my apartment. Mostly because I didn’t want him to see the state I was living in. But right now, I didn’t care. I needed him in my bed ASAP. Inside me ASAP.

  He nuzzled my face and bit my ear again, sending another shiver down my spine.

  “Okay,” he whispered before letting go of me.

  When we got back to the table, Brie shot me a look that said ‘you have a lot of explaining to do.’ She probably headed to the bathroom and saw Benji and me. But she didn’t ask right now, and I didn’t feel like explaining.

  A crowd of rowdy college students roared and stomped, a few tables away from us. Brie and I watched and laughed at the ruckus as we drank our cocktails. Amir and Grant were engaged in a conversation about stocks, talking across the table, while Benji fiddled on his phone.

  Ping.

  Benji

  If you keep looking at me with those “fuck me” eyes, we won’t make it to your place tonight.

  I blushed and put down my phone, squeezing it in my lap.

  Ping.

  Benji

  Does your phone insurance cover water damage?

  Even though we weren’t looking directly at each other, we kept each other in the corners of our visions. I saw Benji smirk while I scowled.

  Me: I’ll drown you when I sit on your face later.

  Benji: Don’t get your panties in a twist. I’ll be taking them off soon.

  Me: Who says I’m wearing any?

  I felt a smug smile creep onto my face when I saw him shift in his seat.

  Benji: Spread your legs.

  Me: Not right now.

  Benji: Show me.

  Me: I can’t. It’ll unleash the dam.

  Benji: We really might not make it back to your place.

  Me: I can make you wait. You like that, don’t you?

  Benji: Keep talking and I’ll bend you over the table right now and check for myself.

  I smiled and flipped my hair back, tugging my shirt lower and sliding in my seat so that my skirt rose up.

  Benji: You’re asking for it.

  Me: Want me to beg, sir?

  Benji: You’ll be begging for every orgasm you’re denied because of your fucking mouth.

  Me: You like my mouth.

  Benji: Love it. Especially when it’s wrapped around my cock buried deep in your throat.

  Me: Is that why you’ve been hard this whole time? Imagining me blowing you under the table?

  Benji: Out. Now.

  I shot up in unrestrained excitement to the surprise of everyone at the table. Benji glanced up from his phone, his hand trying to hide a smile.

  “I should get going,” I said, sheepishly. “I drank too much, and I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.”

  “Are you going to get home okay?” Amir started to get up.

  “I’ll see her home,” Benji said, clapping Amir’s shoulder forcefully down as he hoisted himself up. “After all, I have to work tomorrow too.”

  Grant looked from me to Benji, amused, with Brie incredulous and Amir confused. Benji and I quickly said our goodbyes and scurried off as nonchalantly as possible.

  We just made it around the corner, out of their sight, when Benji grabbed my waist and pulled me in for a kiss. His tongue tasted of malt with an oakiness as he penetrated my lips and explored my mouth.

  We were surrounded by hot, sweaty people in a room stenched with body odor and rancid alcohol. But all I could focus on was our lips meshing greedily. It was wet and needy, desperately fuelled by the alcohol and my craving for him.

  We ran out of the packed bar and flagged down a cab. As soon as the door closed, Benji and I were bound together, mouth to mouth and body to body. If I wasn’t drunk, I would feel guilty and embarrassed to be doing this in front of the cab driver. But I was drunk and Benji’s touch drove me to the edge, my lust just as intoxicated and raging as my liver.

  Our hands roamed and grasped at each other, ferociously touching and grabbing, barely keeping our clothes on. When we arrived at my place, Benji pulled out Ben Franklin from his wallet and muttered to the driver to keep the change before flying out of the cab.

  We barely made it through the entrance before our lips fused and our bodies slammed together. Was it really just yesterday when we fucked?

  It was more exciting than usual, like meeting a stranger at a bar and going back to one of our places to thrust away the sexual tension and alcohol enhanced desire. We couldn’t stay away from each for even one day. This was getting dangerous. There was no limit to how much I wanted him.

  I woke up to a delicious smell in the morning and walked out with a sheet wrapped around me, groggy and slightly hungover.

  Benji was standing at the stove, fully dressed. Oh, right. Those hipster glasses. It definitely wasn’t just me with drunk goggles. He was hot as hell.

  He glanced at me and scowled.

  “How do you not have anything in your fridge?”

  “Mm I’m always at the studio,” I yawned. “I hardly eat at home anymore.”

  “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat breakfast,” he grumbled.

  “I have milk and cereal.” I shrugged. “Did you go out and buy groceries?”

  “Just a few things at the convenience store down the block.”

  Benji’s eyes dropped, and he frowned. His hand flashed out, grabbing my wrist.

  “What is this?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” I said, wiggling my hand away.

  He held onto it firmly and looked at me with such severity I felt like I was going to be scolded.

  “Did someone do this to you?”

  “What? No, I was tuning my cello and the string snapped. It just hit me in a weird way. Never happened before.”

  Benji’s strained expression struggled before breaking into pained relief. I felt like comforting him. He let go and sighed, handing me a plate with an omelette on it.

  “Thanks,” I said sheepishly. “I’ll pay you back for the groceries.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He sipped from a cup of coffee. “I can afford a few groceries.”

  He looked around the small studio, and my cheeks flushed, remembering the mess I didn’t manage to clean last night.

  “I didn’t know you play cello.”

  He eyed the instrument I left out last night.

  “I don’t. I used to play.”

  “For fun?”

  “No,” I said, stabbing the omelette. “I was a professional cello player.”

  Benji raised his brow, obviously wondering how
I went from professional cello player to photography assistant. But he didn’t ask and I didn’t offer, so we ate in silence.

  After finishing breakfast, Benji looked up at the ceiling.

  “Hmm. Can you play something for me?” he asked.

  My stomach felt queasy, sloshing the digested omelette filling it. I hadn’t played in years, and I didn’t think I could play in front of Benji. Especially Benji. Not when I felt so vulnerable and pained simply from looking at a cello.

  “Something simple,” he said quickly. “Mary Had A Little Lamb. Hot Cross Buns. Twinkle Twinkle.”

  My lips tugged up. Hmm. Well. Simple enough. I think I could manage that.

  “I should change first,” I said, heading towards my bedroom. Benji pulled me in for a kiss.

  “I like what you’re wearing,” he murmured.

  “You mean, nothing?” I scoffed.

  He grinned mischievously, the glasses making him look boyish, and I rolled my eyes, hiding the childish bouncing of my heart.

  The cello was carelessly strewn on the ground from the night before. I picked it up gingerly and started tuning it. No broken strings this time. It was a familiar feeling in my hand. I picked up my bow, trying to hide my shaking hand. I took deep breaths to tame the rising anxiety coursing through my body as I raised my bow.

  I started playing Hot Cross Buns. Hot. Cross. Buns.

  But when the bow hit the strings, the music that I thought I was playing was drowned out by a different familiar song playing in my head. My body moved automatically, effortlessly, drawing the music in my mind out into the strings. It was all I could think about — the vibrations running through my bow, the cold steel wires digging into my now-uncalloused fingers, the wooden body behind my thighs.

  Moon river wider than a mile, I'm crossing you in style someday. A dream maker, my heartbreaker, wherever you're goin', I'm goin' that way.

  My mother’s voice crooned in my ears, like the last time we played. As we sat in the sun room, dad plucking and strumming his ukulele as I strung the melody with my cello and mom flitting around, singing. We always played together. But it had been their dream to bring it to the stage. Captain Von Trapp’s trio.

  And now there was only silence.

  I survived alone. I lived, but I gave my livelihood — our livelihood — up. There was no music that came from these hands anymore. And there would never be any more music that came from my parents either.

  Two drifters off to see the world. It's such a crazy world you'll see what I see, who I become. We're all chasin' after our end. Life's just around the bend, my friend, moon river and me.

  I faded to a stop, the nostalgic cloud slowly disappearing. The vivid memory was replaced by the scene of the scrappy room I lived in. And the present heartache throbbed in my chest.

  Benji’s hands cupped my face, wiping away tears I only then realized were falling. His green eyes surveyed my face, pained and sympathetic. I let myself melt into his hand, closing my eyes.

  “Sorry,” I said sheepishly, pulling away. “Must’ve gotten Hot Cross Buns mixed up.”

  Benji gave me a soft smile and then patted my shoulder. I put my cello away.

  “I’m going to head out first,” Benji said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Need to shower and change my clothes. I think Grant’s stopping by today, and it probably wouldn’t look good if I’m wearing the same thing as yesterday.”

  Benji sighed, tousling his hair.

  I walked him to the door, and he leaned down to kiss my cheek.

  “See you later.”

  Benji nodded and slipped out the door.

  The room looked the same as last night, but now, it felt empty. Cold. Lonely. Was it because I finally unlocked that barrier to my past? Was it because Benji left?

  Hope fluttered in my chest. But it ached. This wasn’t because of happiness or freedom or forgiveness. No. Hope was a fool. Hope was batting iron wings against the walls of my heart, not knowing it was only destroying itself.

  When I arrived at the studio, Grant opened the door to the lobby, dressed once again in his impeccably crisp gray suit.

  “Got home safely?” Grant asked, his head cocked with a knowing smile.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  I’d known Grant for almost as long as I’d known Brie, but we were strangers in every other regard. We occupied two different sides of Brie, two different times of her life.

  Grant had always been distant. Which wasn’t surprising considering he was a Bayer. He was the proud and celebrated epitome of the Bayers — charismatic, charming, cunning.

  But there was something about the way he carried himself, the million-dollar smile screwed onto his face, that made something inside me scream that he was dangerous — a snake wearing a lion’s skin and a rabbit’s face.

  The sole indication he was human at all was that he was in love with Brie. Not that he said so in words, but I could tell from the years of seeing how he looked at her. The soft smiles he reserved for her — full of adoration and worship — that I wasn’t even sure if Brie had seen the side of him everyone else saw. But even more telling were his gazes from afar — full of anguished loneliness and longing.

  “Did you see Brie home?” I asked him, mirroring the tilt of his head.

  His smile didn’t falter, but his jaw twitched. Did something happen with Brie? I made a mental note to ask her later.

  “My driver saw to it that she made it in her building.”

  “That’s good. Why didn’t your fiancée join us yesterday?”

  She never joined us. I never saw her again after their engagement party except in some gossip columns. The Bayers’ golden child, one of the country’s most successful businessmen and highly sought after handsome and eligible bachelors, suddenly engaged to a New York socialite. Almost everyone was thrilled.

  Brie couldn’t hide the shock and devastation on her face when they announced it. I thought there might be a day when Grant would cave in to Brie’s persistence — her own adoration and longing for him — but all those hopes were dashed once his engagement was confirmed. But that was the one day that Grant didn’t acknowledge Brie’s presence, let alone talk to her.

  Their relationship now was complicated but muted. It was obvious their feelings didn’t change. In which case, it didn’t make sense that Grant was still engaged and stringing Brie along.

  “Her schedule is always packed,” he said breezily. Right, her schedule of shopping, clubs, and gossip? “Besides, there were enough pheromones in the air last night.”

  Grant smirked as I blushed. Benji popped up around the corner with a towel over his damp hair.

  “Why are you here so early?” He sounded annoyed when he saw Grant. “We’re not supposed to meet until later.”

  “I was feeling masochistic today, so I popped on over early to be a third wheel,” Grant sang, cheerfully.

  Benji scowled. “You’re a closeted sadist through and through.”

  “Only when it comes to you, my dear.” Grant winked at Benji. “Actually, I found something interesting the other day, so I came over to show you.”

  Grant pulled out his wallet, which probably cost more than my rent, and handed me a small photograph. I took it, curious.

  It was a black-and-white film print of an older gentleman sitting on a log, reaching out to an apprehensive buck. His face looked soft and kind and sad. It was an old, worn photograph with a noticeable scrawl in the corner: BA.

  It was snatched from my hand and instantly ripped into shreds by an irritated Benji.

  “What the hell? I thought you said all the prints were destroyed,” Benji hissed.

  “No, I said they disappeared,” Grant shrugged. “Poof. Somehow appeared in my safety deposit box. Thanks for ripping that. It was my favorite photograph too. Kept it in my wallet all this time.”

  Benji rubbed his temples. I thought he was going to get explode and curse, but instead he sighed in resignation.

  “I’m not going to say sorr
y since you weren’t supposed to have it,” he said, moodily. “But fine, whatever. Keep the rest of them.”