Still Go Crazy (Swoon Series Book 5)

by J. H. Croix

  “I just need to lay down. I don’t need anything else. I took my migraine medication.” My words were an effort, but I got them out through gritted teeth.

  Boone was quiet, but he nodded quickly, leaning over to scoop up my keys. Whether he used his key or mine, the door magically opened, and then he was walking me up the stairs. He didn’t even ask which key to use to open my door. He simply tried a few. In another moment, my door was opening, and he was walking me in.

  Wayne greeted us by circling our feet and purring.

  “Hey, Wayne,” Boone said softly as I felt him sliding my purse off my shoulder and setting it down. Seeing as this side of the duplex was a mirrored layout of his side, Boone obviously knew where the bedroom was and walked me to it, his hand warm on my lower back.

  I shuffled over and collapsed on the bed. “Do you need anything?” I heard him asking, his voice sounding distant through the fog of pain clouding my mind.

  “Just want to get out of these clothes,” I mumbled.

  When I attempted to take off my shirt, Boone took over. I couldn’t bring myself to care. The thing about migraines was that once they set in, they had a hold of you like a vise.

  Boone got me out of my clothes quickly and efficiently. I didn’t know how much time passed, but it wasn’t much before my bra was blessedly off, along with my black slacks and shoes, and a clean T-shirt fell over my head.

  I sighed as I curled up against the pillow, and he pulled the cool sheets over me. My down quilt was soft and light. I felt him tucking it over my shoulders, his weight dipping the mattress beside me as his hand rested on my shoulder.

  “I’ll check on Wayne and make sure he’s good for the night,” was the last thing I remembered Boone saying as I tumbled into sleep.

  Chapter Ten

  Boone

  I sat on the bed, listening as Grace’s breathing slowed into the steady rhythm of sleep. I hated seeing her like this. Now, I knew why I’d heard the worried comments from friends. I certainly figured migraines were painful, but witnessing her in this much pain was actually frightening. If there was one thing I knew about Grace, it was that she didn’t like to ask for help. That she even let me help at all was a glaring sign of just how much she was hurting.

  Once I knew for certain she was asleep, I rose carefully, making sure not to wake her. Then, I walked quietly out into the living room and kitchen area, closing her bedroom door behind me. Wayne eyed me balefully when I returned to the living room. His tail flicked slowly as he walked across the room to leap onto the couch. Pausing beside him, I rubbed my knuckles under his chin and got a little purr in return.

  With a long sigh, he rested his head on his favorite pillow and closed his eyes. Crossing into the kitchen, I checked on his food. After getting him fresh water and scouting out his food in the cabinet below the sink, I contemplated what to do.

  The smart answer would be to leave and go back to my own place. Surely, she would be fine. But then, I’d never been smart when it came to Grace. I told myself I just wanted to make sure she was okay when she woke up. I told myself I wanted to be here in case she needed anything.

  While both of those facts were quite true, more than that, I was simply worried about her. I couldn’t bring myself to leave. I toed my shoes off by the door and hung up the jacket I’d tossed on the floor when we came in. I crossed back to Grace’s bedroom, quietly opening the door.

  I didn’t let myself think much as I quickly stripped down to my boxers. Grace’s breathing didn’t even shift as I slipped under the covers beside her. She let out a soft sigh after a moment and rolled toward me. Her soft body pressed against mine, and she murmured something in her sleep. For a second, I thought she had woken, but she hadn’t. I carefully curled my arm around her back as she nestled into my shoulder.

  I lay still for a while, savoring every beat of her heart against my ribs and the feel of her in my arms again. I finally fell asleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  Grace

  I was warm, more relaxed than I could recall feeling in years when my consciousness flickered awake in the darkness. For a moment, I was confused. Then, I realized the body behind me belonged to Boone.

  My eyes flew open, staring into the darkness. I was on my side, curled up with him spooned behind me, his knees tucked into mine at the bend. I knew it was Boone because I knew his scent. The way he held me was achingly familiar. His heavy arm was draped over my hip with his palm splayed on my belly.

  I took a breath, my mind spinning back to the night before as recollections came in fragments. I recalled my migraine peaking on my drive home from work and dropping my keys again and again before Boone got me inside. I didn’t remember much else. My last memory was of him saying something as he tugged the covers over me.

  Taking stock, I discovered I was wearing nothing but my panties and a T-shirt. Moving carefully, I lifted the fabric to my nose, inhaling the unmistakable scent. He must’ve put me in his shirt last night. I couldn’t help the curl of my lips in the darkness.

  When I shifted slightly again, my hips encountered Boone’s quite obvious arousal. His breathing sounded as if he were asleep. A dash of joy spun around my heart to realize I had this affect on him when he wasn’t even conscious.

  My skin prickled all over, heat pooling low in my belly as I instinctively pressed back against him. My own body told the same tale as his when I felt the slick arousal between my thighs.

  My unsuccessful attempts at dating had definitely reinforced one detail—the chemistry I felt with Boone was a far cry from anything else I had experienced.

  I shimmied my bottom again and felt it the second Boone came awake. His body tensed slightly, and his abdomen rippled when he took a breath. His palm, which had been relaxed on my belly, stiffened for a few seconds before it softened again.

  “Grace.” His voice was frayed around the edges, gruff and velvety from sleep.

  “Yeah?” I punctuated my question with another wiggle of my hips. I honestly couldn’t help it. I hadn’t been properly fucked in years. To be quite precise, I hadn’t had an orgasm with anyone other than myself and my trusty vibrator since the last time Boone had mapped my body and driven me wild with his hands.

  Speaking of hands, his palm shifted, sliding up slightly, just enough to tease the underside of my breast and make me want more, oh-so-much more.

  “Are you feeling okay? How’s your headache?”

  “Gone.”

  I felt him rise up on his elbow behind me, peering over my shoulder toward the clock on my nightstand. The digital clock read three a.m.

  “You sure?” he asked, his palm shifting again to slide up and down my side in a soothing stroke.

  The thing was, I didn’t want to be soothed. I knew what I wanted. Or rather, who. Boone.

  I knew we had a complicated past, one marked with a rather spectacular misunderstanding and gut-wrenching pain based on said misunderstanding. I didn’t quite know if I was ready to trust any man. However, now that I knew the whole story, at least I could try to take care of this.

  This being the headlong and fierce desire that swept through me, lighting up and sending that heat pooled in my belly spiraling in hot sparks throughout my entire body.

  I rolled onto my back, staying close to Boone. There wasn’t much light in my bedroom, just the silvery light from the moon falling through my bedroom window and casting Boone in a pearly, shimmering light.

  Looking into his eyes, I nodded. “Of course I’m sure. Once I take my medicine, it usually only takes a few hours.”

  Boone’s concerned gaze coasted over my face as he brushed my tangled hair off my cheeks. I didn’t want concern. Although, having his warm gaze encompass me like that made my heart squeeze, emotion jolting me.

  I hadn’t felt cared for in far too long. Boone had always taken good care of me when we were together. He’d been the kind of boyfriend every girl hoped for—not particularly sweet because that just wasn’t his personality, but always making
sure I was comfortable, always there to help me if I had a bad day. He was like fire between the sheets.

  “I promise,” I insisted. I shifted my legs slightly, needing to relieve the ache building to a throb between my thighs.

  “Grace—” he began.

  I so wasn’t up for a discussion about this. “I want you,” I interjected forcefully.

  “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

  Reaching down as I angled toward him, I curled my palm over the hard, hot length of his cock. His breath hissed sharply through his teeth. “You want me too. Don’t even try to lie.”

  Boone’s hips arched into my touch, a low groan escaping. He heaved a breath, closing his eyes and opening them as he let it out. The look in his eyes was anguished.

  “Grace, I don’t know if this is the best idea—”

  I stroked my palm up and down his shaft, savoring the hitch in his breath and effectively cutting off his words. “I thought you wanted us to have another shot,” I murmured.

  “Yeah, but I don’t want to screw things up.”

  “It’s just sex,” I cajoled, as I gave him another stroke.

  “There’s no such thing as just sex with you.”

  My pulse stuttered and lunged ahead as I rolled closer to him, reveling in the feel of his hard muscled chest. I pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses along his jawline.

  Enveloped in the haze of darkness, I wanted to lose myself in Boone and remember the fierce simplicity of our connection. While part of me understood his hesitance, in a way, it only reinforced just how much I wanted him. With all that had gone so spectacularly wrong in the aftermath of our bungled and confusing break-up, Boone’s return and our tentative reconciliation had shined a bright light on one undeniable fact.

  We had never lost the magic, that indescribable ability to drive each other wild by simply being close to each other.

  “Grace,” Boone murmured my name, almost a plea in his tone.

  Letting my head fall back into the pillows, I lifted my hand, tracing along the arch of one of his brows and letting my finger trail down over the clean angle of his cheekbone.

  “Boone, I appreciate you trying to be a gentleman. But I haven’t been fucked properly in far too long. I know we have things to figure out. But let’s not pretend that we don’t want each other. That’s the one thing we always got right.”

  My heartbeat was tripping and stumbling over itself, racing along with such force, my breath came in shallow pants.

  Boone held my gaze in the silvery moonlight, his look fierce, warm, and encompassing. When he looked at me like that, it felt as if we were the only two people in the whole wide world, as if nothing existed outside of this tiny space holding us within its embrace.

  “I never was very good at saying no to you,” he said, a little laugh escaping.

  Rocking my hips into his arousal, I said, “Make me forget.”

  In a fiery second, his mouth was on mine, and our kiss went wild instantly—a rough, messy tangle of tongues. Boone’s hands, his knowing, strong hands, mapped my body. One slid across the plane of my abdomen to cup my mound, and the other cupped my breast, his thumb teasing back and forth over my peaked nipple through the thin cotton of his T-shirt.

  When his lips broke free from mine, I gasped a question. “How did I end up in your T-shirt?”

  His mouth was on my neck, sending shivers chasing in its wake as he blazed a trail over the sensitive skin. His lips pressed a hot kiss right at the dip at the base of my throat. I trembled under the feel of his lips moving against my skin as he shifted over me, his tongue trailing down to the valley between my breasts as he dragged the collar of his shirt out of the way.

  “You needed something to sleep in, so I gave you my shirt,” he rasped when he lifted his head.

  Somehow, that simple answer and how straightforward it was—so like Boone—cinched the strings that had frayed between us tighter together. For a moment, my breath caught as the implications of this moment became clear.

  He muttered something else before lifting his head. “Time for it to come off.”

  At his blunt words and the kick of his lips at one corner, the look in his eyes nothing but wicked, my belly fluttered, and my heart thumped rapidly. He splayed one large palm on my belly before leaning back and catching the hem of his T-shirt with the other hand as he tugged it up.

  I helpfully lifted my head and arms before tossing the T-shirt to the floor. Boone let out a strangled laugh. “Oh, Grace. You are so fucking beautiful, so fucking sexy.”

  I felt flushed all over as his eyes swept up and down my body. I couldn’t place exactly how long it had been since I’d had sex—it was that distant—but I knew no man had ever made me feel quite the way Boone did. He had this way of making me feel amazing in the dirtiest way possible.

  As if to prove my point, his palm slid up, the calloused surface sending streaks of fire over my skin as his touch made its way up to cup a breast. In a flash, he dipped his head, his teeth grazing my nipple as he sucked on it lightly, sending a sharp, piercing jolt of pleasure straight through me.

  “Boone!” I gasped.

  “Yeah, baby?”

  Something about the common endearment slipping through his lips, said just the way only Boone said it, tugged at my heartstrings. It laced me closer and closer to him, and spun me into this shimmering web of intimacy that only he could weave around us.

  I didn’t even know what he was asking, but I tried to reply, only to have whatever I attempted to say morph into a moan as his tongue swirled around my nipple. He shifted to the other and gave it a hard suck as his palm slid back down over my belly and between my thighs, his fingers teasing over the damp silk there.

  “My girl is all wet,” he murmured against my skin.

  “It’s all your fault,” I gasped in between moans.

  “Missed you, Grace.” His mouth was blazing a hot trail over my belly, the slight scrape of his stubble yet another sensation spinning into all the rest as the intensity overtook me.

  I barely recognized myself when my hips bumped into his touch as he pressed lightly over my swollen clit through my panties. My words came out broken but true. “Missed—” Gasp. “—you—” A sharp cry escaped when he hooked a finger over the edge of my panties and dipped into my slick arousal. “—too.”

  “Ah, so this is what I gotta do to get the truth out of you.”

  There was a hint of teasing in his tone, but a wave of emotion crashed through me at his words. Tossed asunder on the tumultuous waves of need rocking me, I didn’t even try to deny it.

  “Boone…” His name was a broken, ragged plea.

  “I got you,” he murmured, the motion of his lips on my belly sending goosebumps chasing all over my skin.

  I felt his fingers curl over the side of my panties and yank them down my legs. His eyes were dark on mine when he lifted his head, light gilding his broad shoulders as I looked back at him. My heart tumbled wildly, need rushing through me with such force I could hardly breathe.

  I knew only one thing. Every beat of my heart was chanting—Boone, Boone, Boone.

  I felt his palms sliding up my calves to push my knees apart. His lips dusted across the tops of my breasts. There was a swirl of a tongue around a nipple, the graze of his teeth over the other, a few more fiery hot kisses on the sensitive skin on my belly, and then the sweet, piercing pleasure of his fingers sliding into my slick folds.

  He sank one finger inside, slow enough to feel like a form of sweet torture. When I cried out, my hips bucked into his hand. Another thick finger joined the first, and then Boone’s mouth came down to further the madness.

  Since Boone, I’d come to the conclusion I wasn’t the biggest fan of a man going down on me. I’d apparently forgotten just how mind-blowing it could be when it was Boone in charge. He knew just how to do it, his fingers fucking me slowly, his tongue exploring every inch of me—slow licks, light suction on my clit, and I felt stars exploding throughout my entire b
ody.

  I lost all sense of time, drifting in an intense pleasure propelling through me again and again. The intensity gathered, a wave curling into itself until I was desperate for it to break loose.

  I distantly heard my cries, the frayed sound of my voice as I pleaded with him to give me what I needed. His fingers drove deep just as his tongue swirled around my swollen clit, giving it a little more suction. The wave finally broke, the pressure crashing over me and pulling me under.

  Boone stayed with me, not drawing away until my body’s shudders were tiny tremors running through me from head to toe. He dusted kisses over my belly as he made his way back up. Every touch felt like a little spark, the heat radiating outward. I started to curl my legs around his hips and pull him into the cradle of mine, but he rolled to my side. One palm rested on my belly with the other brushing my hair away from my face as he propped himself up on an elbow.

  It was an effort, but I opened my heavy-lidded eyes. His gaze snagged mine and held it. I languidly lifted a calf, trying to nudge him closer, but he shook his head. “Not tonight.”

  “Why?” I demanded.

  “Because that was already rushing more than I wanted.”

  Reaching between us, I boldly dragged my palm over his hard arousal, feeling the heat of it through his cotton boxer briefs.

  “Not fair,” I muttered.

  “Oh?” he countered.

  “You don’t always get to be in control.”

  Moving swiftly, I rose up, pushing him back and straddling him. Boone’s low laugh squeezed my heart. “If you’re going to be all bossy and insist we technically don’t have sex, then I’m going to do this.”

  With a saucy grin, I shimmied back quickly, dragging the waistband of his boxers down as I did. His cock sprang free, and I curled my palm around it, the silky skin warm under my touch.