by Cari Quinn
Shock set me back a few paces. “No.” I turned back to the piece. I hadn’t seen it in eight years. It had been one of the last stained glass panels I’d created before going off to college. In fact, the piece had been the center of my portfolio to get into the glass program. “Phil told me she’d never been able to sell it.” I laughed humorlessly. “She said she’d put it in her beach house in the Caymans because it was too beautiful to be boxed up.”
“It was the center piece of the first room I designed when I built this house. It took me five years to do the room justice, but your piece was in every apartment and house I’ve lived in since I bought it.”
I staggered back a few steps and my hip bumped into a table. A very familiar table. I frowned down at it. My box of tools.
“What is this room? And why is it hidden away?”
“It’s for me. It’s always been for me. When I need space to think, this is where I go. Except lately.”
“What?” I dragged my focus away from my worktable from the beach house. The boxes of glass that had been packed in the corners of my workshop had been meticulously packed up.
He’d taken it all.
“It’s been hard to be in this place. Facing all the feelings I’ve put aside for years is not something I’m comfortable with. Especially when I’ve made so many mistakes when it comes to us.”
He crossed to me and I rounded the table to put space between us. I couldn’t even pinpoint a single emotion right now. They were stacking up on each other until it was a jumbled mosaic of glass that couldn’t quite come clear in my head.
Love kicked hard, followed directly with confusion and rage. He’d kept me in a secret room all this time.
Well, not me, but this version of me he had. I was laid bare in that glass behind my angel.
His angel now.
“Grace. I wanted you to be a part of this room. This place. A part of me.” He swallowed hard enough that his Adam’s apple bobbed. His eyes were bleak in this nightscape of silvery light and shadow. “I’m tired of the secrets.”
“Me too,” I whispered.
Was he actually asking me to be part of his world? I wanted to believe him. Enough that my heels clicked over the tiled floor before I realized I was walking toward him.
He met me halfway. Shadows had lengthened and the clouds had dampened some of the moonlight. It didn’t stop me from climbing up onto him, wrapping my legs around him instinctively. I loved how big he was. Especially in these moments where he made me feel strong and fragile at the same time.
When his huge hands clasped me so firmly and yet gently. These were the nights that I craved to push him past the gentle and into the crazed. Sometimes he allowed it. Most of the time he held a part of himself back.
Here in the clarity of moonlight and glass I hoped for the for the wild. There was no reason to hold back here. Not now. Not if he truly wanted to share every part of him with me.
It was a gamble I was willing to take.
His fingers raked through the curls I’d painstakingly created. I groaned as his grip tightened on my ass.
I rose up, bracing myself on his shoulders. I looked down at him, my hair creating a curtain around us. “I need you. All the parts you hold back. No more secrets here.”
“None.” His voice was harsh and his eyes flashed obsidian in the shadows.
His mouth was harsh and carnal. Everything I longed to taste was here for the taking. My nails bit into his neck, as I pushed at the collar. I wanted skin.
Needed his skin against mine.
He seemed to know that. He pushed and pulled at my blouse. Frustration bloomed until he finally swung around and set me on my worktable. A box skittered across the sturdy planks.
I shifted it to the side so I had room to maneuver. I went at his buttons from the bottom, my nails tripping over the ridges of muscle and fine hairs of his belly up to the curve of his chest and nipple.
He hissed and pushed at my blouse.
Buttons skittered across tile.
Mine, his…I wasn’t sure.
I didn’t care.
Silk whispered against silk as his tie slithered over my hand to the floor. He pushed me back, his hand sliding down my breast to my ribs before he flipped my bra up. I sucked in air at the blast of coolness kissing my skin.
The night sky above me, Blake hovering over me. My heart rate kicked and white noise fuzzed between my ears as my breaths came faster.
He hooked my knee up around his shoulder as he crowded over me. Widening me, pressing down on me, covering me until there was nothing but his skin, nothing but his shoulders blocking my view. He lifted my ass, rucking up my skirt to grind against my panties.
He turned his face into my stocking-clad thigh. A growl wound through his chest and up into his throat. He tugged at my garter strap until he found the clasp and the silk receded without the elastic help.
He sucked at the skin there, leaving teeth marks and the wake of a bruise from the pressure. The cool air crashed into his hot breath as he pushed my skirt higher.
“Off.”
“No time for that,” he said against my thigh.
I nodded. Okay, I could work with that.
He lifted my other leg higher until the winter tinged air kissed my backside. He dragged me to the edge of the table, folding me in half to rock against me.
“God.”
“God better not be witnessing this,” Blake said as he jerked at his buckle.
I laughed through a groan. “Then why build a skylight like this?”
His face was in shadow, but there was a strange glitter in the darkness. Eyes the color of forest were now just glassy obsidian here and now. Dangerously intent. “I never hoped to have you here.”
I gripped his arm. “I am here.”
“Why do you think I’m so ready for you? That I’m hard as the lead-lined frames of this room? You, here in this moment…” He widened my legs so he could get to my mouth.
The kiss was open and messy. Tongues and teeth lost any hope of a graceful connection. There was only combustion.
I pushed at his suit jacket. I wanted that ink. The compass and maps of the waterways that made my mouth dry and wet at the same time.
“Skin,” I said breathlessly.
He looked down at me. His jaw was granite and his gaze intense, but he took the time to shrug off his jacket and shirt.
I sat up to help him, but he pushed me back.
“Bra,” he said darkly.
I reached around to release the clasp. His hungry eyes zeroed in on me as midnight wool and his white dress shirt whispered to the floor.
My lavender bra followed suit. I cupped my breasts against the cold. He pushed my hands away to lower his mouth to the tight tip of one nipple. I elbowed away my torch and tray of chisels then held him tight to me.
His hair sifted through my fingers as he drew on me. There was no gentleness. His mouth was hot and wild against me, moving from one breast to the other.
He cupped them together and watched me as he gave both equal attention. The abrasion of his beard and teeth shot me closer to an orgasm than it should have.
He rocked against me, but the lace of my panties and wool of his slacks halted his entrance.
The control that was always such a part of him was crumbling. I wanted the edgier parts of him he tried to hide from me. I didn’t want the perfect corporate Blake right now. I wanted the guy who knew the dark pockets of New York. Who could stand toe-to-toe with someone like Dante and not back down.
I arched under him, bumping my pelvis up against him. He bracelet my wrist and pinned it to the table. I wanted to touch. I wanted him to split me open.
I didn’t want to be a passive participant to his carefully engineered seduction. I loved that he wanted to make sure it was good for me. He never left me unsatisfied, but the more I knew, the more I wanted from him.
Every moment, every feeling that arced between us had a past and a present that had never quite met in t
he middle.
I dragged his mouth up to mine and curled my legs around his waist. We had a perfectly good bed upstairs. Even closer—the counter in the kitchen was meticulously clean and clear. God knew we’d made good use of that counter in the recent past.
But here, in the midst of my tools and glass, my metal shavings and burn scarred wood under my back—this was the perfect moment.
The truth we’d been itching and scraping to find.
The elemental piece we’d been missing was hiding here under the forest-framed sky, in a glass box of secrets and half truths. His art, my art—all of it was a calamity of love and insanity creating a perfect moment I couldn’t have imagined at the start of this night.
I hated him.
I loved him.
I was in awe of him and the emotions I didn’t even know I was capable of.
I twisted my wrist until I broke away from his dominating grip. Instead of allowing him to back up—I could see it in his posture, in the tension that suddenly infused his shoulders—I wrapped my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.
“Inside me, Blake.” I dragged my teeth over his bottom lip. “Stop treating me like glass.”
He cupped my face. “But you are.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m not. I’m as strong as you are.”
He pressed his forehead to mine. “Stronger.”
“Then treat me like I am.”
“Just because I want to be careful with you doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re strong. You know that, right? I’m careful because I couldn’t live with bringing you any more pain.”
“I want all the pieces of you. Even the ones you don’t trust.”
He frowned. “No, I—”
I cut him off with my mouth. “All of them,” I said against his lips. He breathed hard against my mouth. The hint of mint and intimate flavors of Blake melted on my tongue as I urged him to believe me. “All,” I said with an open-mouthed kiss.
He jerked at his belt and clasp of his suit pants. Instead of crowding me, and covering me, he eased back, dragging me off the table as his pants snaked down his legs. “You want all of me? Even the parts that want to slam into you until I don’t know where you end and I begin?”
“God yes.”
He turned me around and peeled down my panties. His lips and tongue trailed down the backs of my legs, stripping my stockings with the panties. When he got to my ankles, he lifted my foot out of my shoe, removing the hose before settling my foot back into my skyscraper heel.
I could wear them with him. He still towered over me, but not so much when I wore my four-inch Dior’s. And here and now, it helped for what he wanted.
I shivered as he did the same with the other leg. He gripped my hips, his fingers massaging my thigh and ass before he opened me for his mouth. I gasped at the thorough taste he took. Endlessly patient where I was not.
I bashed my knuckle on a tool case and shoved it out of the way to grip the edges of the table. My hips moved restlessly and still, he stayed back there. His clever tongue searching out every blessed inch of me.
“Blake,” I growled.
“You asked for this.”
“The time for patience is gone. Just fuck me already.”
“You need to be ready.”
My nipples scraped over the burn scars of my table. “I’m ready.” I was dripping, for God’s sake.
He lifted my knee onto the table. “Not even close.” He drew me wider and farther apart until I was on tiptoe.
The moonlight intensified as the clouds moved and the trees rustled in the breeze. The shadows of the clockface striped over my table and my arms.
As exposed to the night and the endless vistas beyond his glass house as I was, I hoped like hell he’d used that special opaque Carson glass in his design. Sweet Jesus, he’d created a 360 degree view of me.
He dragged his thumb over my slit and up to between my cheeks then my hips were jammed into the table with the force of his first thrust. I screamed.
I was ready for him, but there’d been no warming. The endless sweet touches and whisper kisses were a pale comparison to the length of him stripping me inside and out. I could feel each curve and vein of his shaft and flared head. He hollowed me out with each long, sure stroke.
I gloved every inch of him and ached for more with each bone jarring thrust. He coasted up my back to my hair and dragged my head back. My name was a feral groan as his grip intensified.
Pleasure spiked through me as he nailed me to my table. I became the hands of his clock in this silver streaked night. I reveled in every pass, accepted each frustrated and longing filled pump of his hips into my thighs.
He lifted my knee higher, pulling me taut so there was no space between us. My mind was an incoherent mess and the rush to the finish line felt like I was swimming through an underwater current.
So close.
The rocks were battering me with every thrust, and the pleasure came with each reach for the surface. His hold tightened in my hair and I arched back to him.
“Right there,” I gasped.
“No. Not yet.” He pulled out and I screamed his name as my thighs shuddered and spasmed. I needed him inside me, that fullness only he could provide.
He whirled me around and sat me on the edge. I wrapped my legs around his hips, reaching between us to get him inside my greedy body again.
I’d never been this wild for any man in my life.
It had to be this man who held the ultimate release for me time and again.
He gripped the back of my neck and our foreheads touched as he drove into me.
My nails dug into his flanks as the spike of pressure returned. The racing heat up my spine melted my brain and I tried to tip my head back to get lost in it, but he didn’t allow it.
He used the angle of the table to reach into every corner of me. My scream was swallowed by his hungry mouth. Sweat slicked between us as the friction grew.
Suddenly I was airborne again. He fumbled once before he crossed the room to the gilded stained glass. His cool grays and silvers should have clashed with my golden and green tones but they didn’t.
They merged and made something new.
Very much like us.
I gripped his shoulder and hips as he crashed me into the wall of glass. Memories disconnected in my mind. Of the first time we’d been like this, how different we’d been.
Only a couple of months ago in reality, but far more than a lifetime in the distance we’d come.
I reached above us and he met my hand with his own, lacing our fingers as tightly as our bodies. The rushing tide of my mind, the storms of my heart, the love I’d never expected to find—all of it was here.
Now.
He buried his face in my neck as I shook around him. As he trembled with me until there was nothing left but our breathing and the cool stillness of the night.
I ached to tell him, but the words lodged in my throat even as they filled my chest with light.
Thirteen
Grace
I wasn’t really sure how we ended up in his bedroom after our interlude in his atrium—our atrium. He’d actually combined the space to include me.
It was as confusing as it was inspiring.
It relayed a permanence that he’d all but ignored since I stepped foot into his house. I’d simply taken over. It truly was the only way to make the glacial man move in any way.
But he’d created that room and included my belongings on purpose. He wasn’t just letting me ghost my way into his life as I had been doing for the last few months.
I wasn’t even sure when he’d done it, but it hadn’t been in one day. Even his power and money could only make so much happen.
Blake came out of the bathroom, flicking the light off as he left. He wore only a pair of navy sleep pants, leaving his distracting torso bare, as well as his feet.
The light trapped inside me threatened my tongue again. Why it was so hard to spit out the words to h
im, I just didn’t know. I love you’s sprinkled with lies felt wrong in some way I couldn’t define.
I sat up on our bed, one of his T-shirts slipping off my shoulder. “When did you add my workshop to that room?”
“Why?” His fingers paused on the lamp beside the bed.
“Because I want to know.”
He sighed. “The day after we got the pages from Annabelle.”
I hadn’t had time to get back to the beach house to work because I’d actually been doing the brunt of Blake’s work while he went through the endless pages of data we had.
“So, you really did want to bring things out in the open?”
He sat on the side of the bed, flicking a twisting curl of hair over my shoulder. “Regardless of what you think, I do hate the secrets between us. I just didn’t know how to go about explaining myself.”
In his defense, it was a pretty incredible tale. My own selfishness was a core component of the maddening story. I’d lost time with so many people because I’d lived in my head so much.
How could I blame Blake for being so mistrustful when I wasn’t much different? He kept his own counsel, I simply shut people out by living in my art.
“I’m not quite sure I conveyed how much I loved it.”
“I believe I have the teeth and nail marks to prove it.”
I grinned up at him and rolled onto my knees before him. “Not just the sex part. Though that was particularly impressive.” I held up my fingers in a frame. “Blake Carson, sex god can be added to your door.”
“I believe we can leave that off for now.”
“It has a ring to it, doesn’t it?”
“No.”
“Hater.”
He laughed and curled his arm around my hips in a rare gesture of affection. I slipped my fingers into his hair as he leaned against my chest. We seemed to only get our fix of skin contact when we were all the way naked.
“That glass—the stained panel…”
He sighed. “It’s late, Ms. Copeland.”
“It’s important, Blake.”
“I told you I purchased it.”
“Why?”
