by Skye Jordan
“As a matter of fact,” he echoed her, “I would, but this wasn’t what I had in mind.” Her face pinked up, her gaze lowered, and she pushed her hands into her back pockets. The move made Grant focus on her chest. Made him realize her T-shirt was white. White and wet. And the curves it clung to made everything inside Grant ache.
“I figured.” Faith sloshed through the water to the bottom of the stairs, rummaged in a toolbox there, and pulled out a flashlight and a pair of pliers. She handed them to Grant. “Let’s talk about that when you’re done.”
Hope bloomed through him. He grinned and took the tools. “That’s way better than Jangle punch.”
He waded into the water in search of the damaged pipe, forcing his mind to getting this pipe fixed. He clamped the end of the small flashlight between his teeth, then gripped the fitting with the pliers and twisted—a movement his shoulder didn’t like much. The metal spun a little but didn’t loosen.
“Why don’t you have a girlfriend back in DC?” Her question came out of nowhere and raised warning flags in Grant’s head. Faith was girlfriend material; it only made sense that she’d ask. It also only seemed fair that he was honest with her, even if it meant killing any chance he had of sleeping with her.
He pulled the flashlight from his mouth. “Because my life makes anything more difficult.” He glanced at her and she met his gaze, open and nonjudgmental. “And because that’s how I like it.”
When she gave a nod, he went back to work on the fitting—unsuccessfully.
He paused again. “I need another pair of pliers.”
Metal clanged against metal as she searched for more tools. Grant couldn’t keep himself from admiring the way her jeans pulled taut over her ass. “Why don’t you have a boyfriend?”
“Because I was taking care of my dad and running the store. I haven’t had time for anything else.” She offered him another pair of pliers. “Here.”
He took them, humbled again. She had to be one of the most unselfish people he’d ever met. And she really didn’t have anyone to fall back on.
“What?”
Her question made him realize he was still staring at her. Grant shook his head and turned back to the pipe. “I was just thinking what a stupid prick Dillon was to let you go. Definitely his loss.”
She remained quiet a minute, and Grant rolled the pain from his shoulder.
“Well,” she finally said, her voice softer, “when you’re in the spotlight like he was, with everyone telling you how fantastic you are all the time, I guess your feet start to lift off the ground. And when you feel a little higher and mightier than others, I guess your needs somehow seem a lot more important.”
Those words hit their mark, and Grant’s stomach dropped. He paused and glanced at her over his shoulder. “You’re right,” he said, adequately humbled. “That does happen. It’s good to be reminded we’re mortal every once in a while.”
He replaced the light between his teeth, positioned the pliers, and used all his strength to twist. Three tries later, the fitting loosened and the elbow separated from the vertical pipe.
Pain burned through Grant’s shoulder joint, and he swore and rolled out the sting.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m just sore. Between the fixes at the house and practices, I’ve used it a little too much this week.”
After loosening the attached piece, he sloshed toward her with the bad length of copper.
Faith’s body loosened in relief, and she smiled. “Oh, thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome.” He set all the tools and the pipe on shelves nearby. “Are you sure you can get the rest, or do you want me to help while I’m here?”
“No, no. I can get it.”
He gave her a nod and sloshed toward the stairs. “Well, it’s late. I should let you—”
Something tugged on his shirt. When he turned to see what he’d snagged it on, Grant found Faith’s arm extended, reaching for a fistful of his tee.
“Thank you.” She released his shirt and stepped back. “I really appreciate you coming over. This…freaked me out a little. I haven’t had anything big go wrong since my dad died.”
His heart twisted. “I can’t imagine how hard it must be to handle all this on your own.”
“Most days…” She shrugged. “I manage. But while you’re here…” She looked frazzled and vulnerable and so fucking beautiful with her bright eyes and flushed cheeks. “I was going to ask you tomorrow when you came by, but you’re here now, so…” She took a breath. “Do you want to go to dinner maybe? Or something? On a night when, you know, you don’t have practice?”
A zing of excitement coursed along his nerves, but he tamped it down. Grant planted his hands on his hips and lifted his brows. “Did you just ask me out?”
She dragged her lower lip between her teeth, fidgeted with the hem of her tee, and smiled a little. “Um, yeah.”
He grinned. “Have you ever done that before?”
She laughed. “No. Pretty obvious, huh?”
Grant pressed one hand to the cement wall and exhaled. “Is that what you really want, Faith? Dinner at a restaurant?”
She worked her lower lip some more. Then shook her head.
“What do you really want?”
She held his gaze but didn’t answer for a long time. And Grant didn’t pressure her, because he could see her working it out in her head. And because he knew this was a big step for her.
“You.” The word came out as a half whisper. She cleared her throat and said, “You. I want you. I want…” She exhaled heavily and shook her head. “I want to know what it’s like to be with you. With a man like you. Part of me wants just an hour. Part of me wants all night. I’m willing to take whatever works for you. I don’t…expect…anything more. I know you’re only going to be here a short time, and…”
She let her eyes close and all the air leak from her lungs as if the words exhausted her and she couldn’t bring herself to say more.
Grant was strung tight. Walking in, he’d known what he’d wanted—to corrupt a sweet country girl into a hot fling. Now…he still wanted that. But he wanted something else too. He just wasn’t sure what.
She was four feet away, and he needed her closer. Much closer. “Come here.”
She lifted her gaze to his, her eyes clear but confused. And she looked so fucking innocent right now Grant couldn’t believe how badly he wanted her. Couldn’t believe how hot she made him, looking like a drowned mouse. Or how those big blue eyes cut into him.
When she didn’t move he said, “Come. Here.”
She waded through the water and stopped six inches away.
He lifted his hand, stroked her cheek, and cupped her jaw, with a murmured “You are so fucking beautiful.”
Her lashes fluttered and closed. She leaned her head into his hand. And fire consumed Grant’s body. He’d always thought he preferred spunky, take-charge women. Women he didn’t have to work to get or work to please. But he couldn’t remember ever being this charged by a woman either.
“Tell me what you want, Faith.”
She opened her eyes, took the last step to close the distance between them, and reached out, taking handfuls of his tee into her fingers to twist. “I want you to take charge.”
His mind flashed back to their moment in the back room, and heat flooded his groin. His heart picked up speed.
“And I want you to do it your way,” she said, dropping his shirt and sliding her hands underneath, across his skin. Her cold fingers made him flinch but still created a sizzle in his body. One that cut straight to his cock. She curved her arms around his waist, pressed that awesome little body against his, and looked up at him with those big, trusting eyes. “I want you to talk as dirty as you fight, and I want you to fuck me as hard as you play.”
Another jolt of lust slammed through his body and hardened his cock. But he narrowed his eyes and brought his hand under her jaw to grip her face hard enough to make her draw a bre
ath. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
“I want to know.” Fire burned in her eyes, and her fingers dug into his back. “I want you to show me.”
God, he wanted to show her. Wanted to show her every carnal detail involved in fucking. But… “Baby, I’m pretty sure my definition of fucking and yours are on alternate planes of reality.”
Her eyes darkened, and her jaw tightened. One of her hands came around and pushed between them to work open the button on his jeans, then slide the zipper, all while she never took her gaze off his. “Then bring me over to the dark side. Or is your schedule too booked up to give a girl a few fucking lessons?”
He released her jaw and pressed his fingers to her lips. “Stop saying that. It’s… God, it makes me insane.”
Her small hand slipped into his jeans and beneath his boxers, then closed around his cock. The combination of cold and pressure shocked a jerk through his whole body, and he swore. Then she opened her lips and took his fingers into her warm mouth.
All the sensations overloaded his circuits.
He pulled his hand from her mouth, wrapped it around the back of her neck, and dragged her mouth to his. With the other arm at her waist, he drew her against him, tasted her deeply, and groaned with all the frustration and need that had built up over the last week. She kissed him back far more openly, more hungrily than she had the first time, and the feel of her wanting him so passionately blew a fuse.
Grant lifted her off her feet. The move dragged her hand from his jeans, and she broke the kiss on a gasp.
“Grant, your shoulder. Put me down.”
A sweet pang tugged inside him. No one but Dwayne had asked about his shoulder, not even his parents. He found her neck with his lips as he climbed the stairs and dragged her up his body until she wrapped her legs around his hips. “My shoulder can handle you.”
She was cold and wet and sent shivers over his entire body.
“You’re cold,” he muttered against her skin.
“Only on the outside.”
When he reached the top of the stairs, Grant stepped over his jacket and paused to drag at her tee, pulling it off over her head. He dropped it in a soggy clump on the floor. She wore a white bra with lace edges. Her breasts were round and plump, and he trailed his fingers over the curve of one, loving the way her puckered nipples stood out against the silk.
“Oh, man, I was so wrong.” He slid his fingers up her chest, her neck, and around to her nape again before meeting her eyes. “Fast isn’t going to work with you. I’m definitely going to have to take my time.”
7
Faith couldn’t seem to pull in enough air. Or maybe she’d lost the blood supply to her brain. All she knew was her head felt light and dizzy, and she couldn’t think straight with Grant’s erection pressed between her legs. Even with two layers of denim between them, his heat burned through, and she was dying to feel him more intimately.
With Grant carrying her, one hand supporting the middle of her back, he crossed the sales floor at a snail’s pace, preoccupied with stroking her breasts and teasing her nipples. This wasn’t what she’d expected. Faith had expected a wild flurry of wall-banging, animalistic sex once she’d told him what she wanted. But as she gripped his tee to keep from falling backward, he was focused on her breasts as if they were the Holy Grail or held the secret to the universe or something. And every slide of his finger over her nipple felt like a stroke between her legs and made her wriggle and moan.
“Sensitive,” he murmured, slipping his finger beneath the clasp between her breasts and flicking it open.
The silk fell aside, exposing her. A sudden sense of vulnerability made her shiver. He hummed with pleasure at the sight and cupped one breast with his whole hand, squeezing and stroking. Brushing her nipple with his thumb. The touch was like lightning through her core, darting straight between her legs and pushing a whimper from her throat. By the time he reached the door leading to her apartment on the opposite side of the store, Faith thought she might be on the edge of orgasm. All she could think about was the ache between her legs and the way it pulsed as quickly as her heartbeat. Knew how badly she needed to sate the need clawing deep at her core.
But instead of opening her door and taking her upstairs, Grant lifted her to the edge of the shipping counter along the back wall. Shoving tape and scissors and pens aside, he laid her back across the wide, solid wooden surface that had been a fixture at the store as long as she’d been alive. Faith had to prop herself up with her elbows to keep her head from hitting the wall, which rendered her hands useless. And when Grant straightened and stared down at her, raking her with those hot, hungry eyes, she was sure she’d never felt more exposed, more helpless, more excited, or more beautiful.
“Take me upstairs,” she told him, her voice breathy with the effort. “The door’s unlocked.”
“Not yet.” He put both hands at her waist, slid them up to her breasts, and cupped. Molded. Stroked.
“Grant, I want—”
He met her eyes and brushed both nipples with all five fingers of each hand. The shock of pleasure tingled over the flesh of her breasts first, followed a millisecond later by deep, penetrating pleasure. Pleasure that transferred directly between her legs and made her lift her hips to rub against him while a low, hungry sound vibrated in her throat and her eyes fell closed.
“What—exactly—do you want, Faith?” His voice was low, raspy, and serious, with an edge of darkness. “Because I thought I knew what I wanted when I came. And since I’ve touched you, that’s totally changed.”
She forced her eyes open and pushed up on her hands. “What…do you mean?”
“I came to hook up with a sexy country girl who knows her own mind and doesn’t take any shit.”
His fingertips brushed the opposite direction, zapping another lightning strike of pleasure through her. She whimpered, and her head fell back, just missing the wall. “Ah…God…”
A growl rolled from his throat, and he closed his hands on her breasts hard, making Faith wince.
“But just getting this tiny glimpse of your sexy side makes me want all kinds of other things. Things I haven’t wanted in years. Things I may never have wanted. Things that turn me inside out.”
He took one nipple between his fingers, pinched hard, shooting a spike of lust through her chest and sex at the same time. Then he rolled it gently, rubbing away the pain and stroking excitement back into her body until all Faith could do was arch and whimper and moan. “Grant.”
He pressed his lips to her temple and kissed her. “So tell me what you want, Faith,” he murmured, his rich, husky voice tingling down her neck and over her shoulder. “What you really want. So I know where my boundaries are.”
Boundaries? She didn’t know anything about boundaries in sex.
“I…don’t know what…you mean.” She was panting and aching, and she really just wanted to feel him inside her.
He lifted his head, pressed one hand to the table and met her gaze deliberately. “I mean you make me fucking insane,” he said from behind clenched teeth. “I mean that every little flicker of your pleasure is like a hit of my favorite drug and drives me like a fucking addict.” He brushed her nipple, and she shivered. Then he pinched it, and she gasped. Rolled it and she moaned. “I want to do whatever it takes to get those sounds out of your mouth. Whatever it takes to keep that drugged look in your eyes. Whatever it takes to get you as addicted to me as I am to you right now.”
“Yes,” she said, breathless, and leaned into one arm to lift the other and wrap it around his head. “Yes, I want that.”
“Even if that means letting me have control? Complete control?” He paused, and a shiver rattled through her chest. “Say yes, Faith.”
He made it seem so simple. And she heard herself say, “Yes.”
He pulled back and searched her eyes. His were fiery and intense. “Even if that means giving me complete, unrestricted access to every inch of your body?” Another pause, t
hen a deliberate “Say yes, Faith.”
A heat wave washed her sex. Tension pulled her muscles taut. Still, her lips formed the word, “Yes.”
His hand closed in her hair and pulled her head back. A sting radiated through her scalp. A cry of surprise rolled from her throat, and she fell back onto her elbows. Grant leaned farther over her, pushing his erection harder against the need throbbing angrily between her legs.
“You’re going to let me fuck you any way I want? Any time I want?”
She couldn’t think straight, but the way she felt right now, with him pressed against her sex even with clothes on… That was a big affirmative. “Yes.”
He used the hand braced on the table to grip her jaw, making him list forward. Making him press into her harder. His gaze darkened, hardened, and heated, but a sliver of panic still lived there. “You’re going to let me fuck you with my hands. You’re going to let me fuck you with my mouth. You’re going to let me fuck you with my cock.” He paused. “You’re going to let me fuck you with any other random thing I decide will bring you screaming orgasmic pleasure.”
Holy hell. Her body was completely wigging out on her. Lust surged through her system, almost too much to handle. “Please.”
He tightened his hand on her face and shook her. “Say. Yes. Faith.”
“Yes, yes. Please. Yes.”
“Fuck.” He jerked his hand from her face and fisted her hair again, with an angry “You’re supposed to say no.”
“Feels so good.” She exhaled, trying to control the wild need his dominant behavior pulled out of her. “I want it.”
He opened and closed the hand in her hair, restlessly, creating a fresh burn with every clench. Faith moaned and lifted her hips against his. Fire flashed in his eyes, and he rocked against her.
“Yes…” She clasped one of his forearms. The hard muscles flexed and rolled beneath her hand. “Want you so—”
He lowered his head and attacked her mouth. His hips hammered against hers, and the pressure released a shaft of ecstasy through her lower body. Her mouth went slack, and Grant drove his tongue in, found hers and stroked, circled, teased, while his hips rocked and pulsed. He sucked her lips in turn. Scraped them between his teeth until she winced. He ate at her and ate at her while she simply struggled to keep up. While the excitement in her body rose, and her back arched, and the need to find the peak intensified.
