He pulls down my pants, and all too quickly my sneakers and everything else are gone. I’m naked and not just my body. I am so very naked with this man and always have been. But as for my body, I’m not alone for long. He strips away his clothes, and I lift to my elbows to admire all that sinewy, perfect muscle before he reaches down, grabs my legs and pulls me to him. The minute my backside is on the edge of the bed, he goes down on a knee. I sit up and cup his face. “Not now. Now I need—I need—”
He cups my head and pulls my mouth to his, kissing me with a long stroke of his tongue before he says, “And I need to taste you.”
“Not now. I’m not leaving. We have time. I need—you. Here with me.”
His eyes soften but he still leans in and licks my clit, and then suckles. I’m all but undone by the sensation because one thing I know and know well is how good this man is with his tongue. But he doesn’t ignore my request. He pushes off the floor, and in a heartbeat, he’s kissing me and I don’t even know how we end up in the center of the bed, our naked bodies entwined. We just are and it’s wonderful and right in ways nothing has been in so very long.
He lifts my leg to his thigh and presses his thick erection inside me, filling me in ways that go beyond our bodies; driving deep, his hand on my backside, pulling me into him, pushing into me, but then we don’t move. Then we just lay there, intimately connected, lost in the moment and each other. “Is this what you wanted?”
“Yes,” I say. “This is what I wanted.”
“I didn’t think I’d ever have you here, like this, with me again.”
“Me either,” I whisper, my fingers curling on his jaw. “Grayson,” I say for no reason other than I need his name on my lips. I need everything with this man.
He kisses me, a fast, deep, passionate kiss. “I missed the hell out of you, Mia. So fucking much. I don’t think you really understand how much.”
This moment, right here, right now, is one of our raw, honest, perfect moments that has always made his betrayal hard to accept. I need that honesty in my life and with him and I don’t even think about denying him my truth. “I missed you, too. More than you know, Grayson.”
He squeezes my backside and drives into me again. I pant with the sensations that rip through my body, my hand going to his shoulder. “Nothing was right without you,” he says. “Nothing, Mia.” He kisses me, and I sink into the connection, pressing into him, into his thrust, into the hard warmth of his entire body. Needing to be close. Needing the things that separated us not to exist.
Our lips part and his mouth is on my breast, lips suckling my nipple, my sex clenching around his shaft with the sensation, a soft whimper escaping my lips. And then he’s kissing my neck and whispering in my ear, “I love you, Mia.”
And I say it. I have to say it. “I love you, too.”
He pulls back to look at me. “Say it again.”
“I love you.”
He cups my face and forces my gaze to his. “Don’t forget that. I’m not going to this time.” He doesn’t give me time to respond. His mouth crashes down on mine and in a fury of heat, we snap and tumble into that wild, animalistic place that allows nothing but give and take. We’re all over each other. We’re saying, grinding, pumping, touching, kissing. I don’t want it to end and yet I need that next place we’re trying to find, I need all that I can take and give with this man, and there is no holding back. I am there, on the edge, and tumbling right over, far too quickly. I stiffen and then my body quakes, arching into Grayson’s, my fingers digging into his back. A low guttural sound escapes his lips as he buries his face in my neck and shudders into release right along with me. Because that’s just one of the things about us I remember. We’re really good at doing things together.
We collapse into the mattress, into each other and for a long time we just hold each other. I’m not sure how long we stay like this. I just know that it can’t be long enough. Finally, though, Grayson rolls me to my back and grabs tissues that he offers me, but when he pulls out, he doesn’t move. He stays right there with me, his elbows planted on either side of me.
“We need to have a serious conversation, Mia,” he says softly.
“I know. I know we do.”
“Good. So which will it be? Pizza or Chinese?”
Tension uncoils in my belly and becomes laughter. “Pizza. I haven’t had this pizza in—”
“Too long,” he says softly, brushing his thumb down my cheek. “Too long, Mia.” He kisses me. “I’ll order.” He lifts away from me and I am instantly cold where I was hot moments before. He sits down beside me and grabs his phone from the nightstand.
I listen as he orders our usual, remembering my preferences like I’d never left him. When he’s done, he sits his phone on the nightstand and leans over me. “I’ll be right back.” He kisses me and then in all his beautiful nakedness, he stands up and walks to the bathroom.
I sit up and take in the room that I haven’t really looked at in years, finding it as remarkable and unchanged as the chemistry between me and Grayson. It’s a traditional room, the bed an oversized king in black, with thick posts on each corner, and furnishings to match. A sitting room to the left with black leather furnishings and—
Grayson’s phone buzzes with a text and my stomach clenches. I throw away the blanket and sit up, staring at it on the nightstand. This is where it ended last time. In this bed, in this room, with a text message I’d accidentally read, but I don’t want it to end again, not this time.
I don’t want it to end.
I don’t want to say goodbye to Grayson.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mia
The past, six months ago…
Grayson and I don’t speak on the drive from the cemetery to the Long Island mansion that is our destination. When we arrive, he doesn’t reach for the panel to key in the code. His hands grip the steering wheel, and I know why. While his father was rarely here in the Hamptons, this was his house. Now it’s Grayson’s, and I feel the punch in my heart with this knowledge.
“Fuck,” he whispers, and when I reach for him, he pulls me to him and kisses me, like I’m breathing life into him, like I’m why he can move forward.
He releases me and rolls down the window, keying in the code. The gate opens and he maneuvers us past it and down the half-moon-shaped drive. We park in the garage, and when he kills the engine, we just sit there in the tiny space, neither of us wanting to move. “He was never here and yet somehow walking into this house, without him being here, makes this all so damn real.”
“Because it’s a piece of him. It’s a part of your life you shared with him. What are you doing about his apartment in the city?”
“I made arrangements. I have a service packing up everything and putting it in storage. I can’t go through it now. I need time and I need to sell the place.” He laughs bitterly. “He’d be furious if I left it sitting there, creating a useless tax bill.”
“He really would,” I say, giving him a sad smile. “I can help you go through everything.”
He looks over at me. “I need you to help me, Mia.”
“Then I will.”
He lowers his chin to his chest and draws a deep breath before he opens the door and gets out. By the time I’m out of the car, his fingers are tunneling into my hair and he’s pulling me against him. Somehow the door gets shut and I’m against it. And right there, in the garage, next to his father’s Mercedes, we’re all over each other. It’s like an explosion of everything all at once; anger, passion, love, pain, heartache of so many varieties.
My skirt is at my waist, his hand on my bare backside, fingers under the strip of satin running down the center. My hands are under his jacket, at his waistband. He shrugs out of the confines of his jacket and then it happens. We fuck. His pants are shoved down and my panties never come off, but they too, are just shoved away. My leg is at his hip and he presses inside me and I gasp, even as he shackles my backside and lifts m
e off the ground. My back is against the Porsche, and in a crazy, frenzied rush we pump, grind, and just plain fuck. Only fucking isn’t even the right word. We need. We take. He needs more than I do and I just need to help him sate the pain.
When it’s over, he all but collapses on top of me, but still, he’s so damn strong that he holds me up. He carries me just like that, into the house, and to a small bathroom off the garage entrance, and once I’m on the sink and we’re put back together, he cups my face. “Let’s go to the lighthouse,” he whispers.
I look down at my high heels. “I need to get rid of these.”
“Your things are still in the closet.”
My lashes lower, a punch of emotion in my chest. My things. He kept my things. He strokes my cheek. “Where they belong, Mia.” He doesn’t give me time to argue, taking my hand and guiding me through the house, but I wouldn’t argue anyway. With this man is where I’ve belonged since the moment I met him. Every moment apart has felt wrong, and I refused to let myself think about why I left. I won’t. Not now. I wish never.
We enter his bedroom, our bedroom until I left because we were here every weekend, and he doesn’t stop until we’re standing in an enormous, fancy, dressing room closet. He stands me in front of my row of clothes, him at my back, his hands on my shoulders. I stare at my things, at the way they hang next to his, and emotions assail me.
Grayson releases me and we dress, our eyes holding almost the entire time, neither of us looking at our naked bodies. Once we’re both in sweats and sneakers, as well as hoodies, we head to the beach. Hand and hand, we walk to the lighthouse and side by side, in a lounge chair we share, we watch the sun set over the ocean. When finally we speak, it’s of his father. We talk about him, just him.
***
Grayson and I spend two days holed up in the mansion. We don’t leave. We don’t talk about us. Not the broken part of us. We do a lot of remembering the good parts of us. We make love. God, how we make love. We speak in those unspoken ways and I don’t ever want to leave him again. But Saturday night arrives, and with it, the reality of a return to the city and my job with Ri’s company with it. Grayson and I are in the bed, both in sweats and tees, and I’m lying on his chest while we watch Tombstone, one of his dad’s favorite movies, when he suddenly hits mute and rolls us to lay face to face.
“We’re out of time. I don’t want this hanging over us tomorrow. I have to go back to the city tomorrow night.”
“Me, too.”
“We go back together.”
“Yes,” I say. I don’t even hesitate. “Together.” He strokes hair from my face and I can sense he needs to say more, but I suspect he just doesn’t have that in him right now. “Are you hungry?”
“Yes. You?”
“Yes. Pizza or Chinese?”
“Pizza. You know I love the pizza we get here.”
“Yes, Mia. I do know you love it.”
He says it like it’s so much more than pizza. And it is. The way he knows me is everything. He reaches across from me and grabs his phone. He orders the pizza, drops the phone on the bed, and then stands up and heads to the bathroom. His phone buzzes with one of the million text messages he’s gotten this weekend and I look down, and I don’t mean to, but I read the message.
I pant out a breath and sit up, holding my stomach, tears welling in my eyes. My God. I’m such a fool. I have to leave. I scoot off the bed and Grayson’s phone starts ringing. I grab my sneakers off the floor and call out, “Your cell is ringing,” before I disappear into the hallway. I collapse against the wall and swipe at my tears. I hate him. I love him so damn much. I have to get out of here. I dart for the living room, grab my purse and exit beachside, where I start running what will be miles of beach to reach a spot where I can catch an Uber. It’s time to leave Grayson and our lighthouse behind.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mia
The present…
“Hey, baby, did my phone buzz?”
I glance up to find Grayson standing in the bathroom doorway, now wearing sweats, his perfect chest naked, and shaving cream all over his face. “Yes,” I say. “It vibrated on the nightstand. Why are you shaving?”
“Your face is all red.”
I reach up and touch my cheek where the sting of his whiskers remains for the first time in far too long while he rakes his gaze over my naked body. “And if you don’t get dressed, you’re about to have shaving cream all over you.” He winks. “Check the message for me, will you?” He disappears into the bathroom. “Read it out to me!” he calls out.
I inhale and let my breath out, ticking through all the reasons why I am not going to leave.
He left his phone behind last time and now. He didn’t feel like he had anything to hide then or now. He’s shaving for me. He was always thinking of me. When I went to him at the funeral, we felt real and honest, like we do now. When I’m with him, despite every piece of evidence that says he’s guilty, my heart says that he’s innocent. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t be here now trying to protect him; trying to protect someone who I know to be a good, fair, honest person.
I grab his phone and I don’t look for anything to cover up with, because naked says I’m willing to be vulnerable with him again. And I have to be if I’m going to stay here, and I am. Everything inside me says that I belong here. I walk into the bathroom and slide between him and the counter.
“I told you to get dressed,” he reminds me. “You never did follow orders well.”
“That hasn’t changed and it won’t.” I lift his phone and read the message. “It’s from Eric.” I say, glancing at Grayson and then back to the screen, to add, “he says: We aren’t going to get anyone closer than Mia is to Ri to take him down. You need to be reasonable on this. We’ll protect her. You have my word.” I look up at him. “He’s right. I came here to protect you. Let me protect you.”
He studies me for two hard seconds and then he grabs a towel, wipes his yet to be shaved face, and tosses it. “No. Not just no. Hell no, Mia. I am not making you a target.” He walks to the door, grabs my pink silk robe I left here a year ago and pulls it around me.
“No,” he says, tying the belt for me. “This isn’t a discussion.”
“I was always a target, Grayson,” I say, sliding my arms into the robe. “Always. He wanted to hurt you. He used me and I let him. I hate that I let him. I don’t know how to undo that but to go after him for you.”
“You’re not going to go after anyone. That’s what I do. Not you, Mia. Not you.”
I reject that idea immediately. “You don’t go after people. That’s one of the things that makes you you and not him. That’s one of the reasons why I love you.”
“And yet you’ve spent the last year with him.”
“Working at his company, not with him. I didn’t lie. I haven’t been with anyone, I haven’t been with him.”
He grabs his phone and exits the bathroom. I feel the blow of his words and it hits me then that if I’m wrong, if he didn’t do what he appeared guilty of doing, I’m the bitch. I’m the one that doesn’t deserve him. I owe him in so many ways and I decide right then that I love him enough to accept the guilt, because he doesn’t feel guilty to me.
I race after him and I exit the bedroom, a gust of wind blasting through the now open patio door. I exit into a chilly breeze to find Grayson standing at the railing facing the ocean, his upper body naked, the muscles in his back and shoulders bunched. I don’t even hesitate. I go to him and the minute I’m by his side, he pulls me between him and the railing but he doesn’t speak. He just looks at me.
I reach up and brush my hand over his unshaven face, the rasp of whiskers on his jawline, then along the thicker edge of his goatee. “I like having your whisker marks on my face and everywhere else. I miss seeing those marks on my body.”
He pulls away the silk tie at my waist, parting my robe and then molding my naked body to his body. “I stood out here wondering if you’d
just leave again, Mia. I didn’t know for sure that you’d follow me out here. I can’t walk out of a room and have you disappear again. If that’s where this is headed, then we need to ignore the pizza, fuck again right now, and make it a final goodbye.”
“Can we fuck again right here and now before the pizza gets here, and just not say goodbye?”
The buzzer that signals a front gate visitor goes off and Grayson ignores it. “I don’t want the fucking pizza. I want us to make a decision about us, but we have a pizza at the damn gate.” He releases me, grabs his phone and hits a button that opens the gate on his security system app.
I yank my robe shut and his eyes meet mine, heat and anger in the depth of his stare. And then he just turns and leaves the room. It’s then that I feel as if I’ve been punched. It’s then that I realize that in the midst of finding each other again, we’re closer now to losing each other for good than ever before.
I enter the bedroom and stare at the massive space, and the bed where I have slept so many times with this man wrapped around me. I miss sleeping like that, with him. I don’t know how long I stand there imagining those moments with him holding me, but he doesn’t come back. Time ticks by and Grayson still doesn’t come back to the bedroom.
It’s been too long and I hurry down the hallway and start hunting for him. I enter the living room and find the pizza box on the island in the kitchen, but he isn’t there. My gaze lifts to the patio, and I know then that he’s back outside, but he’s chosen to exit through a location that divides us this time. I don’t let that dissuade me. I cross the room and exit to find him, just as he was on the other patio, his back to me, leaning on the railing.
“I don’t want this to be goodbye, Grayson. I don’t know how to make sure it’s not goodbye. There’s so much bad now. I’m afraid there’s too much bad. Are we just here to find that out?”
Dirty Rich Betrayal Page 6
