by Serena Bell
“In—”
“In the tutoring room.”
“Um, Robbie and I should probably—”
“C’mon. Check it out.”
He could tell she was unconvinced, but she followed him to the big room, pushing Robbie ahead of her.
All the kids looked up when she came in, even Jed, who took his earbuds out. At first, Griff was sure it was Becca’s smoking body that had gotten Jed’s attention, but then he saw that the kid’s eyes were actually on Robbie.
“You want to say hi to Robbie?” he asked.
Jed hesitated, then made his way over. The hard expression on the boy’s face gave way to something much softer as he greeted the baby, who treated him to a smile.
“JoJo, Jed, this is my friend Becca.”
JoJo’s eyes got big. “Is she your girlfriend? Is this your baby?”
“No,” Griff and Becca said at the same time, then looked at each other and laughed. At least it wasn’t going to be awkward between them, which was pretty damn cool.
“What are you working on?” Becca asked JoJo.
“Math. I hate it.”
Becca smiled at her. “Yeah? I liked math okay. I was better at it than some other stuff. Writing gave me the worst time.”
Jed’s head came up.
“I suck at writing.”
Griff froze. Jed barely ever spoke. And when he did, it was barbed. Stupid fucking teachers, stupid fucking homework, stupid fucking school. His comment I suck at writing wasn’t exactly drenched in positivity, sure, but—
It was an opening, that’s what it was. Take it, take it, take it, he willed Becca.
“Yeah?” Becca said. “You probably don’t suck as much as you think.”
“Yeah, that’s what teachers always say.”
“I’m not a teacher,” Becca said. “I could never be a teacher. School was too hard for me.” She bit her lip, shot an apologetic look at Griff, then turned her attention back to Jed. “I know what you’re going through is all I meant. Maybe you just need to focus on something you care about?”
He shrugged, and for a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “I never know what to say. And if I have an idea, I don’t know how to say it.”
“Do you bring your assignments here?”
He shook his head.
“You should. I bet if you brought a writing assignment to Griff, he could help you.”
“Or Becca could,” Griff said. The words just popped out of his mouth. It was something about the way she’d described herself. Could never. Too hard.
She gave him a what-the-fuck look. “I’m not a tutor.”
“Yeah,” said JoJo to Griff. “If she did bad in high school, she’s not going to be tutoring people to do better in high school.”
“Right,” said Becca firmly. “Okay. You guys need to get back to work, and I need to get Robbie home. You coming to Friday Night Dinner?” she asked Griff.
You’ll be there? I’ll be there.
But all he said was, “Yeah.” Just like every week. Only, having seen her again, he was suddenly craving something he was sure wasn’t on the menu.
22
Griff pulled up in front of Nate and Alia’s house behind Becca’s seafoam blue Toyota Prius, and just that was enough to make him half-hard.
For a moment, Griff let himself imagine that Becca’s reason for choosing to spend her two weeks down here instead of in Seattle was because she wanted a second—make that third—helping of him. And wasn’t that a nice thought?
Maybe her right hand was worn out, too.
Oh, wow, that was an appealing visual: Becca in bed, fingers working between her thighs, recalling Operation V-Card and—Griff allowed himself to believe—his cock.
And now she was here, which meant that their plan to leave Operation V-Card behind them was going to be harder to accomplish.
He wasn’t nearly as upset about that as he should be.
The truth was, he wanted more. He wanted more of what they’d done the other night in the hotel. Lots more.
He banged his head on the steering wheel a few times in case that would help, and when it didn’t, he made his way inside.
Jake had beaten him there and was in the kitchen with Nate, Alia, and Becca.
“No Mira?” Griff asked.
“She’s got some crazy revision deadline on her book she’s trying to meet. We both decided it would be a good idea for me to get out of the house.”
Nate drained the pasta, steam rising in the sink.
“Help me set the table?” Becca asked Griff.
“Of course.”
She pulled out placemats and napkins and handed them to him, then grabbed a stack of plates and silverware. They converged at the dining room table and started laying items out. Every time her hand brushed his as she set something on the table, or they skirted each other close, shoulders or arms or hips a hair’s width apart, blood surged in his veins.
He wondered—if he leaned in and breathed an invitation in her ear, would she pull away, or turn toward him, eyes bright?
His skin felt stretched too tight all over.
Once the table was set, Alia put Robbie in his bouncy chair, and they sat down to dinner.
Griff took a bite of spaghetti. It was phenomenal, the sauce rich and meaty. He was about to praise the chef when Becca moaned. “God, Alia, you’re a genius.”
Griff’s dick chubbed up and his taste buds shut down. And he deeply regretted the one-and-done promise. He really needed to admit to himself that he was going to break the ground rules they’d set and go for round three. Three and free? Four and no more? He was hopeless.
“Thanks, sis,” Alia said.
“Yeah,” Griff said. “Really good.” Not that he could taste his food at the moment.
“You guys. Let’s do roses and thorns,” Becca said. “Alia and I used to do this at dinner every night. The best and worst thing that happened to you that day. Alia, you go first.”
“My rose is that one of my patients told me he slept all the way through the night last night for the first time since he came home,” Alia offered.
“Because of you,” Nate said, smiling at her.
She shrugged. “I like to think I had something to do with it.”
“You know you did.” Nate’s eyes were warm.
“And my thorn is that Robbie is teething again, and he bit me on the boob,” Alia said.
They all winced.
Nate twirled spaghetti. “My thorn is that I have a lot of business and finance stuff to figure out tonight. But it’s all worth it because I have a kid who just got accepted at North Coast University with a full scholarship. He dropped out his sophomore year of high school, but we got him into running—cross country and track—and he ended up lettering in both and pulling off a B average.”
“That’s terrific, Nate!” Alia said, and they all murmured echoed support.
“Bex?”
“My rose is you guys,” Becca said, beaming.
God, that smile. It was hard-wired—yep, exactly—to his dick.
“And my thorn is having to find a new job.”
“You have to find a new job?” Jake asked.
“Yeah, sadly.” She explained about the salon losing its building and the fallout.
“You looking for something in Seattle?” Jake asked. “Because I could seriously use someone on the PT office reception desk. Sibby’s basically doing two jobs right now.”
“Yeah, Seattle,” Becca said. “But if you want some help in the meantime? I could totally do that.”
“You’re around for two weeks?”
“Yup.”
“Yeah, I mean, if you could come in for the next two weeks and do, I don’t know, four hours a day? That would be huge. It’ll take a day or so for Sibby to get you up to speed, but then you could spot her at the desk and she could catch up on events stuff.”
“If you’re doing that, how are you going to have time to look for a job?”
Alia asked. She sounded like, well, a mom—and Griff watched Becca’s jaw tighten. He wanted to kick Alia under the table.
“Just half days,” Jake said quickly.
“Becca, you need to make sure you’re focused on looking for something permanent, not messing around with something temporary,” Alia said.
“I can manage both,” Becca said tightly.
“I can always have Sibby fill in for you if you need a day in Seattle for interviews. And there are long gaps at the desk when it’s quiet. You can work on job stuff then.”
Jake looked toward Alia for confirmation, which made Griff want to howl, It’s not her decision!
Alia opened her mouth to respond to Jake, but Becca’s voice cut across her sister’s. “Perfect,” she said.
Alia opened her mouth, then shut it.
“Thanks, Jake,” Becca said. “That’ll help the wallet.”
“No, thank you. That’s going to be a lifesaver.”
They smiled at each other.
“You still need to do your rose and thorn,” Becca told Jake. “And so does Griff.”
“I guess my thorn is that I’m short-staffed, and my rose is that Becca is coming to my rescue.”
“Griff?” Alia asked.
He sighed. He’d been hoping they’d get distracted before this came around to him. He’d never been a fan of these kinds of traditions, like going around the Thanksgiving table and saying what you were grateful for. “Well,” he said. “I didn’t erase the debt of any developing nations or stop nuclear war, but I will say that Jake and I did a kickass job at rearranging the dining room to make it cozier. But I think my rose is actually this dinner.”
“Aw, go on,” Alia said, flapping her hand dismissively.
Although he’d meant not just the food but the company. And especially—he admitted to himself—the pleasure of having Becca back in town. He let himself peek. At the long fall of her gorgeous hair, her straight nose with its slight upturn at the tip, and those goddamn red lips which—
He was so going in again.
“And my thorn is—I’m all out of dental floss.” It was the first thing that popped into his head.
Becca raised an eyebrow, and he shrugged. “It was a good day.”
My rose, Griff thought, as she smiled at him, is that I am going to have my hands all over Becca as soon as humanly possible. And my thorn is that “as soon as humanly possible” isn’t right this second.
23
After dinner, Jake headed home and the rest of them watched the Mariners game.
Ever since Griff had stepped into the kitchen, her sister’s house had felt way too small. At dinner, Becca’s right knee had almost touched his. Never in her life had she been that conscious of someone else’s knee. It was like now that her body knew what Griff’s could do, it couldn’t leave the idea alone.
And he kept finding new and more creative ways to unsettle her. Right now he had Robbie in his arms, and was swinging him up and rubbing the crown of his own head across Robbie’s tubby belly, making the baby chortle. He did it again, and then again, and Becca’s resolve began to crumble, in direct proportion to the fireworks going on in her ovaries. God, the two of them were so dang cute, the giggling, drooling baby and the big, tough soldier with the look of soft devotion on his face.
Robbie squirmed impatiently in Griff’s arms, reaching out for Becca. “You want the baby for a sec?”
She took him, sniffing suspiciously. “Did you just give me a baby that needs changing? Because if so, you’re a bigger asshole than I thought.”
“Does he need a change?” Griff asked innocently.
Okay, so maybe he wasn’t Future Dad of the Year quite yet. She gave him the finger with her spare hand. He grinned at her. The grin didn’t help with her resolve, either.
“Give him to me,” Alia said with a sigh. She collected him. “I’m headed to bed, anyway, and he probably needs to be, too.”
A few minutes later, Nate yawned, stretched, and looked at Becca. “You guys mind if I head upstairs? I was up three times last night and I’m falling asleep. Griff, you can stick around and watch the end of the game, I’m not kicking you out. Becca, lock up behind him?”
“Yeah, no worries,” they said at the same time.
Becca didn’t dare look at Griff.
“Parents,” Griff said scornfully, when Nate had gone. “No staying power. It’s not even time for the seventh inning stretch. I remember a time when Nate wouldn’t miss the end of a baseball game for sex.”
Becca eyed him. He was on one end of the couch, legs spread, arms crossed, all alpha male occupying an absurd amount of upholstery and looking disturbingly hot doing it. A tingle of want flared between her legs and sent warmth into her belly.
Shut up, she told her body. We’re not doing that.
He leaned toward her, narrowing his eyes. “Are we really going to pretend that what happened last weekend didn’t happen?”
She’d been determined to do so, actually, for her own self-preservation. But the look in his eyes right now was downright predatory, and—well, her best intentions were in the process of paving the path to her pussy.
That was bad.
“‘First rule of Operation V-Card is, there is no Operation V-Card,’” she reminded him.
“Right,” Griff said. Wrinkles appeared between his eyebrows.
“One and done,” she added.
“Right,” he said again, but he was frowning now.
“Besides. There’s even more reason now to stick to those ground rules. I’m going to be around a lot the next two weeks, at least as long as I’m working for Jake. Plus watching Robbie, hanging out at Friday Night Dinners. No way for us to avoid each other.”
“Right.”
“And I’m staying here, under Nate and Alia’s watchful eyes.”
“Right.”
For a second, she thought the conversation was over, and she felt a wave of relief—followed immediately by an equal and opposite wave of disappointment.
“Becca,” Griff said.
“Yes?”
“Come here.”
“No,” she said.
It was definitely the wrong answer, because Griff’s eyes gleamed with mischief and his mouth quirked at one corner. Her nipples tightened.
“No, huh?” he asked. “Is that, like, no means no? Or is that more like—?”
“We said one and done,” she said, but even she could hear the desperation in her voice as the last of her resolve vaporized.
He moved down the couch in a flash until she could feel the warmth of his body and smell the spicy goodness of whatever the fuck made him good enough to eat. “Take it back,” he commanded.
“Take what back?”
“The no.”
She closed her eyes. She had never felt anything like this. She had always sort of wondered what all the fuss was. And now she knew. She didn’t really have to give it up yet, did she?
“I take it back,” she whispered.
“Say it. Say yes.”
“Yes,” she said.
It was such a small word but it had so much power. Everything went into slow motion, so the time it took for him to move was long enough for her mouth to go dry and her body to open and melt. Then he grabbed her and pulled her leg over his so that she was straddling him. The breath whooshed out of her, which made him smile for real. He took her face in both his big hands and kissed her. The feel of his mouth—hot, knowing, and familiar—pulled a whimper out of her, and he groaned his response.
She pulled back.
“Do we need to make new ground rules?” she asked innocently.
He cupped the back of her head and drew her back into a kiss, inviting her to open and teasing her with his talented tongue until she discovered she was gripping his arms and rocking against the erection that was fully in evidence under his jeans. If he wasn’t going to make rules, she wasn’t going to either. Not with that cock between her legs. She wedged herself closer so she could
rub the seam of her jeans against the bulge in his. He cupped a hand around her breast and found her nipple through her t-shirt. The combination of the denim-on-denim friction between her legs and the spark he had set off through her center—piled on top of all the fantasizing she’d done about him since Saturday night—was potent. She was going to come just like this, rubbing off on him, in ten more seconds. And she couldn’t make herself stop.
“Don’t stop,” he said, like he could read her thoughts, and that just made it worse, the perfect friction, the building heat, the gathering tension, and she tipped right over, biting the crap out of his shoulder and pounding one fist against the couch.
“Jesus,” he said.
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” she said when she could talk.
“Nothing,” he agreed.
“I just was never with anyone who actually turned me on before.”
The orgasm had loosened her lips—what she’d said was one notch more serious than she’d meant it to be—but it was also true, and he didn’t seem to mind. He was cupping her face and exploring its terrain with his calloused fingers, and holy crap that light touch felt good. Her body was already tuned in and ready to respond to him again.
“So you’re not still hot for the prehistoric guy?” he demanded.
“Jondalar who?”
And she wasn’t kidding. If the King of First Rites himself walked through the front door right now? She’d tell him she was busy.
She eased off Griff a little, just enough that she could outline the big, hot shape of him under his jeans. He made a rough sound that reminded her that he was still waiting for his turn.
“I missed out on the whole high school hand-jobs-in-backs-of-cars thing,” she said. “Do you mind if I catch up?”
He groaned. “Are you kidding me?”
“You are a full-service operation.”
“End to end,” he quipped, as she went after the button and zipper of his jeans and freed him so he sprang up in her hand. She’d held several penises but his was definitely the winner. It was the longest and thickest she’d seen, the cut head a deep red, the slit wet with precum, and the whole thing as soft as velvet to the touch and as hard as steel underneath.
