His fingers skimmed my hips. I was wearing a shirt that Sloane had lent me and a pair of underwear. She’d given me some jeans, but it was too uncomfortable to sleep in them. Griffin’s hands wandered over the bare skin of my upper thighs.
I gasped at the sensation.
He made a little growling sound in the back of his throat and ground his pelvis into me.
“Griffin!” I scolded. “Don’t. We’re in someone else’s house.”
He rolled over on top of me, trapping me under him. “Axel’s house. I think it’s perfect, actually.”
I touched his face. “You’re not jealous of Axel, are you?”
He kissed me, long and slow and sweet. “What I am, doll, is very happy that we’re both safe and free,” he whispered. He thrust his fingers under my shirt, finding my breasts and rubbing his palms over my nipples.
I groaned. It felt amazing. My whole body started to respond to him, warmth gathering between my legs, my pulse starting to thrum.
“And you’re very sexy when you wake up,” he continued, teasing the tips of my breasts.
I wrapped my legs around his hips, bucking against him. I could feel his arousal, hard and huge.
He pushed up my shirt. He closed his mouth over one of my nipples and sucked.
I shuddered, giving myself up to the pleasure of it.
“And okay, maybe I’m feeling a little territorial.” He gave me a wicked grin.
“Griffin, I’m you’re wife,” I said, arching an eyebrow. “You don’t have to… mark what belongs to you.”
“But you do belong to me, don’t you, doll?” He lowered his mouth to my other nipple.
I gasped. “Always.”
He reached down and eased my panties over my hips. “I want to be inside you, doll. I want you. I love you.”
And we were kissing, and I was kicking off my underwear and unzipping his pants, reaching inside to stroke his stiff length. And everything felt good. So good. I felt very turned on, and I wanted him too.
“Okay,” I managed. “Maybe it might be a little bit fun to be marked territory.”
He chuckled against my mouth.
I let my voice get throaty. “But only if you promise to mark me very, very deep.”
In response, he lifted my hips and thrust inside me with one long stroke.
My back arched and I grasped fistfuls of sheets. He felt wondrous, so familiar and so nice. My Griffin.
His mouth was on my nipple again, sucking into it into a tight peak as he began to move within me, stirring me, filling me, sinking into me.
I moaned, and it was loud, and I didn’t care.
He kissed his way up my chest, settling in the hollow just below my jaw. His voice was gravelly. “You are so sweet and tight and…” He grunted, punctuating his words by burying himself inside me. “You feel like heaven.”
I snatched his chin and forced him to kiss me.
Everything was building inside me, a taut, overpowering sense of euphoria, and I writhed in his arms, even as he pinned me down and rubbed against me in the most delicious of ways.
“Make me come, baby,” I gasped. “Please.”
His fingers went between us, finding my clitoris. He flicked it, and spasms went through me.
I cried out.
He was relentless, pushing deep in and out of me, his fingers working at my sensitive bundle of nerves, and I was caught up in it. I thrashed. I grasped onto his shirt—why was he still wearing that?—and I struggled to breathe, struggled to think, struggled to get myself right to the place where it would take over. I tensed. I moaned. I shut my eyes and grit my teeth and—
There.
It bowled through me, a bubble pushing its way to the surface to pop. I surrendered to it, letting it make my whole body twitch and ripple. It was ecstasy. It was exultation. It was elation. It was joy.
Griffin’s lips were on mine. His tongue was stroking mine.
Inside me, his thrusts grew more frenzied.
I grabbed his ass, pulling him even closer.
He threw his head back, pumping his own orgasm into me.
And then we both relaxed.
He lay on me, still inside me, panting and planting tiny kisses on my bare skin.
I rubbed his head. The stubble there was a little longer than it usually was, and I liked the softness of his shaggier hair.
And then… “Shit,” I muttered.
He lifted his head. I could tell he was about three seconds away from going to sleep. “What?” he mumbled.
“You came inside me.”
“Yeah? So?”
“So… I didn’t want you to do that.” I looked at the ceiling, trying to think. It probably didn’t matter. It was too late, because I was pretty sure that I’d ovulated while we’d been locked up, but there was always a chance my calculations were wrong.
“Why not?” He still sounded sleepy.
“You know why not.” I shoved him. I didn’t want his weight on top of me anymore. I was feeling panicked all of the sudden. I needed to get up and go into the bathroom and try to somehow wash of all of his… stuff out of me.
Griffin rolled over. He was still mostly clothed, except his pants were undone and his penis—soft now—was dangling out of them. “You can’t be serious.”
I started to get up.
He grabbed me. “Leigh.”
“Griffin, I need to get rid of—”
“You really don’t want to get pregnant, do you?” he said. “You’re so adamant about it that you’ll ruin our reunion over it. What is so disgusting about having a baby with me that—?”
“It’s not about you.” I shook him off.
He tucked himself inside and zipped up his pants. “Do whatever you want. I need to take a walk.”
“No,” I said. “You’re tired. You haven’t slept. Just lie down and—”
“I was tired,” he said. “I actually was floating somewhere in a kind of perfect universe of you and me and good feelings and… But I don’t feel like that anymore.” He sat up.
I was completely naked. I pulled the sheets up to cover me. “Griffin, I don’t want to fight about this.”
“I don’t either.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed. “There’s no way for it to work. You hold all the cards. If you don’t want to do it, then we can’t have a baby. I guess there’s not really anything to talk about.”
“Well.” I touched him. “It makes you sad.”
He wouldn’t look at me.
“What if…” I chewed on my lip. “What if we tried it a different way?”
“What are you talking about?”
I scooted closer to him. I rubbed his shoulder. “I don’t know if I can handle being pregnant. Maybe I’m being an idiot about it, but I swear to God, if you force me to do it—”
“I wouldn’t force you to do anything.” He looked at me, but there was anguish in his eyes.
“What if we adopted?”
His jaw worked.
“I know it’s not the same. It’s not our genes, and it’s not our—what about a surrogate?”
His eyes widened. “Are you serious? You’re too afraid to do it, but you’d pay another woman to do it instead?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I think that would be better. If some other person was willing to, then why couldn’t she?”
He got up, dragging his hands over his face. “I really need to take a walk, doll.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
I was outside on the small porch that connected to one of the apartments when Griffin came out. He looked haggard. There were dark circles around his eyes. He’d shaved since getting out of lockup, but he still looked like he needed to sleep for a week.
He saw me and started to back away. “Sorry, I didn’t know anyone was here.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“I didn’t mean to intrude.”
I shrugged. “Well, I was trying to get some space to think, but I don’t know if it’s helping.” I cocked my head. �
�You look awful.”
He let out a short laugh. “Gee, thanks.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Just… shouldn’t you be getting some rest?”
He rubbed the top of his head and sighed.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
He walked past me to clutch the railing on the porch. He hung his head. “You said you thought that Leigh was excited about getting pregnant.”
“Well…” I twisted my hands together. “The thing is, I guess I just assumed that. She was talking about it a lot. She would go on and on about how to figure if she was fertile and stuff. But after a while, I started changing the subject and tuning her out.” I sat down in one of the chairs on the porch. “I guess it just too painful for me. Here she was married and trying to have a baby, and I’d never really had a boyfriend. I was jealous.”
He eyed me. “I never knew you felt that way.”
“I don’t know if I knew,” I said. “I wouldn’t really admit it to myself.”
He peered down over the city. “So, what you’re saying is that she probably wasn’t ever really that excited about it.”
“I really don’t know.”
Griffin tucked his head against his chest.
And then I realized he was fighting tears, and I suddenly felt embarrassed and uncomfortable. I wasn’t really good with guys crying. Griffin and I were friends and all, but…
I got up and went to him. Awkwardly, I patted his back.
He sucked in breath. “Sorry,” he said, and his voice was thick.
“It’s okay,” I said.
He shook his head. “I just… I’m really tired. It’s making me…”
“You don’t have to explain.”
We were both quiet.
“So, you want babies a lot, huh?” I said.
He looked at me. “You know, I didn’t really used to. But after we lost… Leigh and I were pregnant twice. And they’re both gone. And… I don’t know, sometimes I think about it, and it just hurts. The fucked up thing is that I don’t even know if it hurts her.” He wiped at one of his eyes.
I patted his back again. I didn’t know what to say.
“I guess I keep thinking that it would hurt less if we had a baby that we didn’t… that lived.” He swallowed. “But that’s probably not even true. It would probably still hurt.”
I still didn’t know what to say. I had never thought far enough into the future to think about having children myself, and all I knew about the subject now was that I was incredibly not ready to think about it. I took a deep breath. “You know, you guys are still young.”
He let go of the railing and backed up. “Look, never mind. I shouldn’t even be—”
“I’m not saying that because I’m trying to downplay what you’re feeling,” I said. “It’s only that, maybe, because of the fact that you had those two experiences, you both started thinking about babies. And that’s sooner than you would have if it hadn’t ever happened.”
He rubbed the top of his head. “Maybe.” He swallowed. “Doesn’t matter, though. She doesn’t want to do it.”
“I don’t know if that’s true,” I said. “It’s not like she doesn’t like babies. I know that when I was paying attention to her, she really did seem excited about the idea of being a mom. But you guys are… what? She’s twenty-four, and you’re twenty-six? You have a lot of time. Even she isn’t ready right now—”
“It’s not about timing.” He drew in a shaky breath. “She’s afraid of it. She’s terrified of being pregnant. And if we wait, and she never gets over that, and I spend half my life waiting to see if she will, and she still says no…” He gripped the railing again, leaving the thought unfinished.
“Oh,” I said. “It’s that important to you.”
“Yeah.”
We were quiet again.
What did this mean? Were Griffin and Leigh going to get divorced or something now? Was this all it took to end a relationship? But the two of them were so in love. They were devoted to each other. They couldn’t let something like this end everything.
Now I felt really bad for going off on Leigh about how her marriage wasn’t perfect. If I’d known things were this bad, I never would have said those things.
Griffin straightened again. He gave me a tentative smile. “Sorry. I know there’s nothing you can say.”
“I wish there was.” I held out my arms. “How about a hug?”
His smile widened. He nodded.
I squeezed him as hard as I could. And then we released.
Griffin rubbed his eyes again. He turned away from me. He cleared his throat. “Enough about me. What are you doing out here? What did you need space for?”
I rubbed my elbows. “Oh, it’s nothing.” It certainly wasn’t as big of a deal as what he was going through.
“Come on.” He looked back, trying to smile again. “Distract me, here.”
“Uh…” I laughed a little. “It’s just Axel, I guess.”
“Oh, yeah, why was he even there?”
“He, um, he helped me get you guys out. I was alone and… Well, stuff happened with us.”
Griffin’s eyebrows shot up. “You have got to be kidding me. You and Axel? What the fuck?”
I sighed. “And that’s everyone’s reaction.”
“Well, because the guy’s a total douchebag.”
“He’s not,” I said. “I mean… okay, he has his faults, but he had a weird childhood, and he has a bad relationship with his father and—”
“Fuck that,” said Griffin. He pointed at himself. “My dad died when I was a kid. And then I was put in adult prison as a teenager and brutally gang-raped hundreds of times, and then I was forced to be an assassin against my will. I don’t think the argument of having a hard time in the past really holds water. I seemed to manage to get through all of that without being a huge dick.”
“Never mind,” I said. “I’ll just let you have some time, okay?” I started for the door.
Griffin stopped me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to chase you off.”
“It’s really okay.”
“No, you can talk to me. I shouldn’t have gone off like that.”
I hesitated. “It’s only that everyone hates him. Leigh. You. Silas. And he doesn’t have a good history in terms of being a nice guy. So, I know I shouldn’t be in love with him, but…” I shrugged helplessly.
“In love?” Griffin made a face.
“Right,” I said. “I get it. You think I should leave and forget all about him. But you and Leigh are all tied up with these baby issues. And Silas and Christa are in Texas. I’m all alone, Griffin. I’ve been alone for a while. When I’m with him, I don’t feel alone at all. And it matters to him that I’m around. It’s not like with the rest of you guys, where I’m always in the background, but I’m not important.”
“Sloane, of course you’re important,” said Griffin.
I sighed again.
“Look, I can’t tell you what to do with your life,” he said. “If you want to take a chance on somebody like Axel, I’m not going to stop you. But I think I’d be a bad friend if I didn’t tell you that I don’t like the guy, and I think you’d be making a big mistake.”
My eyes filled with tears. “Right. Of course.”
* * *
Back on the other side of the building, Silas had returned with lots of beer, and the others were all lounging around, drinking, and hanging out. I heard the sound of their laughter before I got there.
But when I entered the room, I realized it was just Axel and Christa who were laughing. Leigh was sitting by herself, picking at the label of one of the beer bottles, and Silas was glaring at Axel.
“Listen,” Axel was saying, “you can definitely wear black and brown together.”
Christa took a sip of her beer. “No, you can’t. What are you saying? Everyone knows you can’t do that.”
“It’s all about how you style it,” said Axel. “Really. If you put it together properly, it all looks fine.”<
br />
“You’re a crazy man, that’s what you are.”
“I am Axel Whitman,” he said. “Trust me, you should let me dress you sometime. I will find an ensemble for you with black and brown, and you will be astonished.”
Christa snorted. Then she saw me coming into the room and waved. “There you are, Sloane. Look, your boyfriend is like… I don’t know, gay or something?”
“You know it’s actually very offensive to homosexual men to assume that they’re all interested in fashion, because they’re not,” said Axel. “I know plenty of gay men who are just as dirty and unwashed and clueless about the way they look as any straight man. No, I am a person who appreciates the importance of a good impression, that’s all.” He grinned at me.
I was still reeling from the fact that Christa had said the b-word. “He’s not really my boyfriend,” I said.
Axel chuckled. “She’s a challenging one,” he told Sloane. “I’m crazy about her, and she keeps playing hard to get. It only makes me want her more.”
Christa giggled. “Oh, God, I was never good at playing hard to get.” She peered out at Silas. “Right, babe?”
Silas was still glaring at Axel.
She turned back to Axel. “So, I totally slept with Silas the first night that I met him. I was what you would call easy, I think.” She drank more beer, still grinning.
I sat down opposite the two of them, next to Silas.
Silas leaned close. “He’s flirting with her. Your… whatever-he-is is flirting with my girlfriend.”
Axel’s mouth curved into a smile. He winked at me. “What are you twins whispering about?”
I couldn’t help but smile back at him. Seeing him made something tighten in my chest. I felt drawn to him. I wondered if that feeling would ever go away. I turned to Silas. “He’s not flirting with her.”
Silas’ nostrils flared. “Trust me, I’ve been watching them for quite a while.”
“That’s not the way he flirts,” I said. “He’s just being friendly. He wants you guys to like him.”
“How does he flirt, then?”
I giggled, blushing.
“Really,” said Axel. “You two are being really rude. It must run in your family, Sloane.”
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