Fall in Love Book Bundle: Small Town Romance Box Set

by Grover Swank, Denise

  He lifted his head to look into her eyes. She met his gaze directly.

  “You sure about this?”

  “What did I tell you about me being okay? I will let you know if my status changes.”

  “I just want you to know that with the taste I’ve already gotten, I’m about this close to already being addicted to you.”

  Heat flared in her eyes, even as a smile teased her lips. “Then let’s keep going. I’d really like to get you all the way to addicted.”

  Griffin felt the corner of his mouth twitch. He wanted her more than he’d wanted anyone he could remember in a very long time, but he also felt the constant urge to smile in the time he’d spent with her, and dammit, if he didn’t still have the urge to hug her.

  Just then, he felt a familiar, hard bump against his leg.

  He looked down. Sugar looked up at him and gave a short, loud bleat.

  She was feeling neglected.

  Dammit.

  “Go away,” he told the goat.

  She head-butted his leg again.

  He nudged her with his knee. “Go find Spice and Stan.” He glanced at Mike, the duck, who was never far from Sugar. “Do something.”

  Mike was very unhelpful most of the time. But he loved Sugar and followed her around like a puppy. While she followed Griffin around like a puppy. It was ridiculous. And annoying a lot of the time.

  “Hey, Sugar,” Charlotte said. “You can have him back in about an hour, okay?”

  Griffin looked at her. “An hour, huh?”

  “Approximately,” she told him with a sexy smile.

  He suddenly wanted a lot more than an hour.

  Dammit.

  “Hey!” Charlotte suddenly exclaimed, looking down.

  Sugar had now head-butted her. But harder than she did Griffin. With Griffin, it was for attention. It now seemed she was actually getting aggressive with Charlotte.

  The goat bleated at her and then grabbed a mouthful of Charlotte’s dress.

  “Hey!” Charlotte said again, grabbing the skirt of her dress and trying to tug it away.

  “Enough,” Griffin said. The dress was going to get torn, or Sugar was going to take another bite and get some skin this time.

  He leaned over and grabbed the goat. He turned and set her away from them and gave her a little push. “Get lost.”

  Then he turned back to Charlotte, took her by the waist, and picked her up as well, carrying her to the nearest empty stall. The floor was covered with hay, and there was less light in here, but there were no animals in it at the moment, and the door would shut, keeping any more curious—or jealous—creatures out.

  He set her down, pulled the door shut, and latched it.

  Sugar trotted over and stuck her head between the slats. She gave them a pissed-off, “Maaaaa!”

  “Ignore her. She’ll go away,” he told Charlotte, who was holding the top of her dress against her breasts to keep it from falling down.

  He really wanted it to fall down.

  “A lady should never tolerate being ignored,” Charlotte said. “She should dump you.”

  “I agree.”

  She nodded and glanced at the goat. “Also, she should not watch her crush get it on with someone else. Have some self-respect, Sugar.”

  Griffin felt himself snort softly. “Get it on?”

  “I didn’t know if I should use bad words in front of her. How old is she?”

  “Six.”

  “Yeah, I definitely shouldn’t say ‘fuck’ in front of her.”

  But she should absolutely say it in front of him. To him. As in begging him for it.

  He reached for the blanket that was draped over the short wall that separated the stall from the next one. He draped it over the door, letting it hang to the floor on the inside—where Sugar couldn’t grab it with her teeth and yank it down.

  With her view blocked, Sugar gave another long, pitiful “Maaaaa.”

  “Wow, she’s got it bad,” Charlotte said.

  “And you’re still here in spite of the smell, the hay, and the cock-blocking goat.”

  Which was damn amazing.

  He didn’t know another woman he’d want to kiss and “get it on” with who would tolerate any of that.

  “Technically, she’s not cock-blocking,” Charlotte said, reaching for him and pulling him close. “She’s trying. But it’s definitely not working.”

  “You know,” he said, running his hand up her arm again, “you’re pretty damn delightful after all.”

  She gave him a full smile at that. “Told you so.”

  “That makes you feel pretty cocky, huh?”

  “Oh, that doesn’t make me cocky. I’ve been cocky for a long time. But it does make me happy.”

  He knew he shouldn’t say it, even as the words occurred to him. This was exactly the kind of thing that he shouldn’t even be thinking, not to mention admitting out loud. Still, it was his voice that said the words, “I think making you happy could be a really fun hobby.”

  She nodded. “If that’s the case, you definitely need to put your mouth back where it was.”

  He lifted a brow, dropped his gaze to the top of her dress where it was now gaping away from her skin, and said, “I figured you’d like me being a little more talkative.”

  She lifted her hand to his head and pulled him forward, putting her lips against his before she said, “Hey, Griffin?”

  “Yes, Charlotte?”

  “This is me nudging you.”

  It took him just a second, but he remembered telling her earlier that sometimes to get the goats to do what he wanted, he had to nudge them. So Charlotte was going to nudge him here? That was absolutely unnecessary.

  He kissed her deeply then ran his mouth down her throat, loving her shiver as his scruffy chin lightly abraded her skin. He stopped at the top of the dress and licked along the edge of the fabric. Then he took the silky material between his teeth and pulled it down.

  Charlotte wasn’t wearing a bra with the strapless, summery dress.

  Absolutely fucking delightful.

  The woman really was perfection. And he knew looking at her tantalizing naked breasts with the hard, pink tips that his addiction was going to be complete and possibly devastating.

  Still, he gave a little growl and reached for her hands at the back of his head. With his fingers around her wrists, he pressed her hands against the wall of the barn on either side of her shoulders. The position caused her back to arch, lifting her breasts, and he bent to take a nipple in his mouth. He licked and sucked, drawing a gasp and a moan from her. Heat shot through him at the sound, making blood pound into his cock.

  To this point, he’d found her funny, not quite sweet, but certainly friendly. But she was also full of sass. She had been completely unintimidated by his attempts to avoid conversation and send her on her way. He definitely liked her, which was more than he could say for some of the other women whose breasts he’d been this close to, but he was under no illusion that he needed to treat her gently or be romantic with her. And he definitely liked that about her too.

  He wasn’t a guy to mince words, he wasn’t much of a poker player because his emotions always showed, and he’d gotten himself fired twice for speaking his mind. So he certainly wasn’t a guy to hold back on how he was feeling when he was with a beautiful woman who seemed to want him as much as he wanted her.

  “Don’t move your hands.” His command was short and gruff. He let go of one of her wrists so that he could cup the breast he was not currently worshiping with his mouth. Satisfaction coursed through him as Charlotte kept her hands pressed against the wall of the barn. He rewarded her by first rubbing a thumb over her nipple then rolling it between his thumb and forefinger before tugging on it gently. Her head fell back against the wall, and her eyes shut as she moaned his name. That got her more than a tug. He pinched her nipple and moved to take that one with a hard suck as well.

  “Tuck both your hands behind your back,” he ordered.
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  Charlotte did it without question. She didn’t even open her eyes. She slid both hands down the wall and then behind her lower back. The position was amazingly submissive and incredibly hot. Griffin tugged the front of her dress down further, bunching the expensive material at her waist and leaving her torso bare. There was also something incredibly hot about knowing the fabric that had cost her eight hundred dollars and was now going to be wrinkled and dirty from a barn wall because she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

  He ran his hands from her waist up to her sides, relishing the goosebumps that broke out over her skin. He kept both breasts in his big hands, thumbing the nipples, then tugging again as she whimpered. He alternated between pinching and sucking until she was writhing against the wall and begging breathlessly with hot little pleases and oh my Gods and Griffins.

  “I want more of you, Charlotte.”

  Her eyes flew open to meet his. Then she simply nodded.

  “I want all of you.”

  She nodded again.

  “Say it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Say yes, you can have all of me, Griffin.”

  Her blue eyes were nearly the color of the darkening night sky when they met his. She wet her lips. “Yes, you can have all of me, Griffin.”

  Heat and desire more intense than any he could remember gripped him. His cock ached for her, but he felt an even deeper need. It was more than just a physical completion that he was craving. He needed to know that she would think about this for a very long time to come.

  Considering that he often forgot a woman’s name within a week or so of spending the night with her, that was a particularly strange urge. He intentionally didn’t remember names. It was subconscious now. A habit. But at one point, it had been very purposeful.

  It was an asshole move to not know a woman’s name when you took her to bed, but if you had no intention of an ongoing relationship of any kind, there was no reason to remember her name in the long-term. He often remembered the names of people he disliked more easily than he did the ones he liked, and he was sure a psychologist could have a heyday with that, but the fact remained that he didn’t let people’s names, or any details about them, sink in too deep. It was easier to not feel attached to someone whose name he didn’t remember.

  But in this case, with this woman, he wanted to sink deep and not just in the as-deep-inside-her-as-he-could-get-for-as-long-as-he-could way.

  With his gaze locked on hers, Griffin reached behind her and grasped the tiny tab of her zipper. He pulled it the rest of the way down. She shifted away from the wall but kept her hands behind her back. A streak of satisfaction went through him. This woman was absolutely not the submissive type, but he loved that she was willing to let him call the shots here. Whether she just needed a chance to let loose and have someone else make some of the decisions, or whether she read in him the natural instinct to be in charge didn’t matter. He was going to make this very good for both of them.

  He tugged on the skirt of the dress, and it fell to a silky pink puddle around her heels. She wore a matching pink thong. And nothing else.

  “Wow, I guess I was wrong,” he said, his gaze raking over her.

  “About which thing exactly?”

  Her tone indicated that he’d been wrong about several things.

  “Turns out there’s actually nothing terrible underneath that eight-hundred-dollar dress.”

  Chapter 4

  Griffin gave her a smirk as he met her eyes again. “You are definitely overpaying for clothes, Charlotte. This body could make anything look good.”

  “Oh, don’t get all complimentary now,” she said. “I might start thinking that I’ve gotten past your grumpy façade.”

  The fact that the woman could stand with her hands behind her back, half-naked—hell, a lot more than half-naked—in a barn and still tease him and think she had the upper hand was admirable. Because frankly, she did have the upper hand. At that moment, Griffin realized that this woman could get him to do almost anything. It was really going to be in his best interest to keep that information from her.

  “Façade?” he asked, taking a step forward. He put his hands on her waist and lifted her up out of the pool of pink silk on the floor. He set her next to it and backed her against the wall again. “You think I’m faking it?”

  She tipped her head, studying him as if truly considering his question. “No, actually,” she said after a moment, “I think the grumpiness is real. But I gotta say, it just makes me want to dig in and find out what that’s about.”

  “Too bad you’re leaving soon,” he said, not at all sorry she would be leaving before she could poke around in his psyche. Because he had no doubt, she meant that. “And you are going to be very busy in the time we’re spending together until then.”

  She opened her mouth, clearly to reply, but Griffin ran his hand down her back to her ass and then slipped his middle finger under the strap of the thong where it crossed her hip. He ran the digit back and forth between her skin and the garment.

  Charlotte caught her breath. And stopped talking.

  With what he was sure was a smug grin, he leaned in and said against her ear, “Do you know what some people think is an appropriate synonym for grumpy?”

  She shook her head. Probably because Griffin’s finger had moved to the front of her thong and was now brushing over her mound.

  “Grumpy and bossy are often similar characteristics. And while you might spend more time with bubbly optimists than grumps, you don’t seem to mind being bossed a little.”

  He moved his finger lower, brushing over her clit.

  She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth but said nothing.

  “For instance, if I told you to spread your legs a little, you would.”

  She swallowed hard. And nodded.

  “I really like the way you just dropped your dress on this barn floor for me, Charlotte,” Griffin said roughly against her ear. “And I might be grumpy and bossy, but I’m happy to reward people who do things I like.”

  His finger brushed back and forth over her clit, and he could feel the wet heat that had already dampened her thong. He dragged his mouth up and down the side of her neck. Her head tilted away, giving him better access to the sweet skin, and, much to his pleasure, her hands stayed behind her back.

  “I think it would be hot as hell if this thong was down around your ankles while I made you come with my fingers right here in this dirty barn that you are way too good to even walk into.”

  She shivered, and suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to make this woman come hard, right here and now, without a thought to the animal sounds, smells, or even their presence. Not to mention the fact that she had family, and likely friends, in a building only about a block away. He loved the idea of making her mindless with pleasure. And he loved the realization that he’d gotten her even this far already.

  “Are you going to let me press your bare ass against this barn wall and make you come, Charlotte?”

  She took a shaky breath, then said, “If you don’t, I might have to cut off your balls and feed them to Hermione.”

  Griffin laughed, caught by surprise. He had no doubt that she was hot and wanted everything he was teasing her with, and yet she was still able to make quips and remind him that she was letting him boss her around because she enjoyed it rather than because she was mindless.

  She was very aware of their location and the proximity to the barnyard animals as well as the human beings nearby, and she was choosing to be here with him like this with her dress on the floor and her sweet body exposed to him.

  It was a good reminder. He did like to be dominant in the bedroom, but this was even better than being with a woman who was simply overcome by his prowess. Charlotte Last-Name-Unknown was here with him right now because she absolutely wanted to be.

  “So are you going to take my thong off, or do I need to?” she asked. “Because to do that, I’ll have to move my hands. And honestly, this positi
on with my hands behind my back is really hot.”

  In spite of her sassy words, her voice was breathless. Griffin definitely took note of that, and he, no doubt, let his smugness show on his face.

  “Oh, I can help you with that,” he said. “But now I’m going to need you to ask me nicely.”

  Charlotte’s eyebrows shot up. “I have to ask you to take my thong off?”

  He shrugged, then lifted a hand to one of her breasts, teasing the nipple. “Yes.”

  “Don’t you want to take my thong off?”

  “Oh, I definitely want to take your thong off. But I’d very much like to hear you ask me to.”

  He was, in fact, tight and hard from head to toe in anticipation of seeing this woman completely naked and feeling all the sweet, tight, wet heat between her thighs. But playing with her was so much fun. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed sex this much, and he needed to enjoy it as long as he could since he was going to lose her.

  Whoa. Griffin was immediately shocked by the thoughts of “losing” her. She wasn’t his to start with, and he certainly didn’t want to keep her.

  Not since he’d set a box of photos and letters on fire before leaving D.C. had he kept mementos of any kind. He didn’t have pets. He didn’t keep animals other than the ones he cared for as a veterinarian. He didn’t even keep takeout menus. He definitely didn’t keep people.

  There was nothing to be lost here. What his subconscious had surely meant was that he wasn’t going to have another chance to enjoy this body or this woman’s wit and sass. And yes, as surprising as it was, he was enjoying those things as much as he was the sight of her naked.

  “Well,” she said. “We could turn this into a game of chicken and see who gives in first on this whole thong-stripping thing.” She looked around. “A game of chicken would be appropriate for our current situation.”

  He leaned in, pinching her nipple and sliding his hand further into the thong he wanted to rip from her body. Right now. His middle finger teased her hot, slick opening, and she gasped.

  “Take your thong off for me, Charlotte.” He slipped his finger into the second knuckle and paused. “Now.”