Ben had never brought a woman home with him and suddenly he realized he didn’t even have a condom.  He kissed her and whispered, “I don’t have a condom. We can stop if you want to.”  Even as he said it he wasn’t sure it was true.  But he needn’t have worried.  She pushed him onto his back.   “If you think we’re stopping now, you’re crazy.” And she sat up and straddled him, dropping her bra as she slid on top of him, slowly taking him inside.

Ben hadn’t had sex without a condom since he was a teenager and that, coupled with the fact that he’d been celibate for the last three months, had him reciting tort law in his head.  Dear God, he had imagined making love to her so many times over the last three months and nothing in his imagination was anything close to the reality of having her hot and wet and so very tight around him. As she rode him faster and harder, she leaned down and whispered, “Ben … I’m a … screamer … and …I …need you …to kiss me…now.”

He put his mouth over hers to take the scream and at the same time shifted their positions so that he was on top of her.

She’d screamed out his name two more times before he quit reciting tort law and finally allowed himself to go over with her.  And now they lay in each other’s arms, touching, stroking, and kissing. “That,” he kissed her “was” another kiss “amazing” another kiss.   “You were amazing.”

“I might be a little rusty,” she replied, as she ran her fingers up his abs and into his chest hair.

“If that was rusty, I can’t wait for the practiced version.”  He held her hand looking at her engagement ring.  “You haven’t said anything about your ring.”

“It’s beautiful.  Did you just have it lying around waiting for the perfect time?”

“Well, sort of, I got it six weeks ago on my way back from Italy. I had planned to give it to you for your birthday; but you freaked when you saw the Tiffany’s box that your earrings were in, so it had to wait until you were ready to say yes.”  He kissed her.

She snuggled next to him, her head on his shoulder.  “Ben?”

“Hmm?” he answered.

“I love you.  Thanks for not giving up.”

“What have I been telling you?  I love you.  I always have. I was just too stupid to know it.” And he bent and kissed her head.  “By the way, how soon can we get married?  I want to make an honest woman of you.”

“It takes time to plan a wedding. I’m thinking January.  New Year’s Day.  Will that work for you?”

“It’s four months longer than I’d like.  What’s to plan?  You need a dress, I need a tux.  We need to be sure the church is available, we need the kids and we need to invite some people.  The reception will be in the banquet room where we got engaged, and I’m sure it will be available whenever we want it.”  He kissed her.  “I’ve wasted too much time already.  I want to hold you in my arms every night while you sleep.  And just so you know, your youngest has already put me on notice that I’m not allowed to spend the night.”

Lane leaned up to look at him.  “Jamie what?  When?”

“Last night when I asked their permission to propose to you.  He told me it was fine as long as I didn’t think I was spending the night.”  He pulled her to him and kissed her.  “And it wasn’t the first time either.  We had a similar conversation the night I cooked for your birthday brunch.  Both he and Jake separately quizzed me to be sure I was really planning to crash on the couch.”

“I can’t believe...”

Ben kissed her.  “They love you and they want to protect you.  Those conversations were nothing compared to the one I had with Jess.  She called me in June, after we started dating, and told me if I hurt you she’d castrate me.”

He kissed her before she could react and kept kissing.  Until she stroked his growing erection and said, “I think I could do that again.  Feels like you could too.”

Afterward, he held her as she nestled her head on his shoulder.  “I need to tell you something,” he said, as he stroked her hair.  “I’ve never brought a woman home with me.  You’re the only woman I’ve ever made love to in this bed.”

She leaned up to look at him.  How had he known that a month ago, she’d stood in this room and wondered how many women had screamed his name in this bed.

“I don’t know why I needed you to know that.  Except that I want you to think of this as your bed too.”  They made love again.

“Seriously I want to do this every day.”  He kissed her.  “I don’t want to wait for our Friday night date to make love to you, only to have you get up and get dressed so you can go home.  Let me call Father Palmert and see when we can get married.  Jess doesn’t go back to L.A. until Saturday, right?  Maybe we can get married Friday.”

Lane laughed, she’d never heard of a man being in such a rush to get married.  “What will people thing if we rush into it?  Besides, what about Lila?  I thought it was better that she didn’t even know we were dating.  What’s she going to do to me if/when she finds out we’re engaged, let alone married?”

“I’ll take care of Lila.  Since the warrant fiasco yesterday, I think she’s going to have to pursue other suspects.  Hunter could tell it was personal.”

“Okay, call Father Palmert.”  As Ben reached for his cell phone, Lane asked, “What, you have the rectory on speed dial?”

“He’s one of my contacts from coaching little league, so yeah, I do.” He kissed her again.

While he talked with Father Palmer, explaining what he wanted, Lane got up and went into the bathroom.  She didn’t wear much makeup, but she still had mascara black eyes and she tried to clean them up.

“Father Palmert says he needs our baptismal, first communion, and confirmation records and the annulment information for your marriages.  You have those, right? Because if not, getting married in the Church isn’t that big a deal.”

“Benito Giovani Bellini, what are you talking about?  Not getting married in the Church.  Yes, both of my marriages were annulled by the Church.  Which may mean I need to confess something to you.  It’s in the annulment so you’ll find out anyway.  Phillip left me because he had decided or discovered or whatever that he was gay.  I can call the parish in Omaha tomorrow and get the records.”

Ben knew Phillip Parker was gay.  Jake had told him.  Not long after they moved to Kansas, Jake had come to Ben to talk about sex.  He told Ben his dad was gay and that he couldn’t talk to a gay man about girls and stuff.  Ben had never told Lane he’d had the sex talk with both of her sons.  There were some things that she really didn’t need to know, like whether or not her teenaged sons were having sex.  Ben had told each of them that there are three basic rules: 1. No means no and stop means stop; 2. Never have sex with a woman who’s too impaired to be able to say either no or stop; and 3. Always, always, always wear protection.

Ben had just violated the third rule, but then the main reason you wore protection was to prevent STD’s and both he and Lane were STD free and had lab results to back it up.

Lane had retrieved her dress from the floor where it had landed.  She held it up.  God it was wrinkled.  People were going to know it had been thrown on the floor hours earlier.  Ben got up and took it from her.

“Here, let me steam that.  You can’t go out in public looking like you’ve been sleeping in your clothes.  Everyone will know I’ve been ravishing you and we can’t have the kids thinking that we had sex before we were married.”

He took her dress to the bathroom, filled his hand held steamer with water and plugged it in.  Lane smiled.  Her daughter sometimes called her Felix after the neat freak in the Neil Simon play The Odd Couple.  Ben made Lane look like Oscar, but having a man who wanted to steam the wrinkles out of her clothes, she could live with a man like that.  She looked at her engagement ring and smiled.  She was going to live with a man like that.