Take a Chance on Me

by Zoe York

  “When did you grow fangs?” He flipped them over and pressed her arms over her head. “I wanted to go slow. Wanted to do this differently this time.”

  “I didn’t wait a year for different,” she whispered, her eyes molten pools as she gazed up at him.

  “Has it been that long for you, beautiful?” Fuck, he hoped it had been, and he didn’t have any right to that.

  Her eyes flashed at him. She knew what he was thinking, and she wasn’t going to assuage that primal desire.

  She should be his, but she wasn’t, because he didn’t hold onto her.

  I couldn’t.

  He tightened his grip on her wrists and brought their mouths back together. Slower, more deliberately now. Showing her he still wanted her, had never stopped wanting her.

  It had been a year for him, too.

  A year of remembering. A year of fantasizing.

  He filled his hands with her curves. Her breasts, her hips, the swell of her bottom. She felt even sweeter than he remembered, and he sank deeper between her thighs, rocking his erection against her core.

  She said his name, over and over again, in between kisses. But she didn’t lift her hands, even after he let her go, and that rang an alarm bell deep in his brain.

  He lifted his head and looked down at her lust-dazed face. She gave him a tentative smile, her gaze drifting to his mouth, which was probably swollen and red. Slick with her kisses and aching for more.

  “Don’t stop,” she whispered.

  “Never,” he promised.

  But that was the wrong thing to say. He wasn’t in any position to be making promises, and she didn’t believe him anyway. Doubt flickered in her eyes and he ducked his head, kissing her again so he wouldn’t have to see that.

  Now her mouth tasted sharper, like a challenge come to life.

  “No pressure,” he added, and her mouth curved into a smile.

  “Shut up and kiss me.”

  He tugged her lower lip between his teeth, then smoothed over the sensitive tissue with his tongue. She stroked hers out, drawing him deeper, until their mouths were tangled together.

  A challenge, and a promise. He could take this as far as he wanted.

  Oh, he wanted to go all the way. But he needed more time than they had. It was only mid-day. Lunch first, fucking later. Maybe he’d make them both wait until tonight.

  For sex.

  She’d waited a year for this, after all.

  He’d give her a little something to tide her over. He wasn’t cruel.

  As she kissed him, her lips hungry and her tongue so clever it hurt, he unzipped her fly. He didn’t miss her shiver as he slipped his hand into her panties, finding her wet and swollen for him. She arched into his touch, her clit standing proud and ready for him. They both groaned as he rolled the pads of his fingers over it, and that let loose the most natural progression of stroking and touching. Lighter at first, then a harder grind. At the end, he held his fingers firm, and she found her own pleasure against his skin, with his mouth on her neck and his body pressed tight against hers.

  Third base on a skinny twin bed.

  Priya was all his camp fantasies come to life, and he’d only had to wait twenty years to find her.

  Chapter 7

  Before Priya could reciprocate, Grady disentangled himself from her limp, satisfied body and disappeared into the bathroom, whistling as he jogged out of sight.

  She listened to the shower turn on. Sure enough, it only took him a minute or two, and then he returned, a towel slung low on his tight, sculpted hips. With clothes on, Grady looked like a big guy. Burly, even, especially this year, having just come off a tour of duty.

  The scruffy almost-beard helped contribute to that impression.

  But naked—and oh God, this was her first time seeing him naked. And her brain was too scrambled to fully appreciate it.

  She shoved herself up and off the bed as he turned his back to her and dropped his towel.

  Oh, sweet heavens.

  Hello, butt. You’re perfect, she thought faintly. So perfect.

  But before she could launch herself at him and take a bite out of his magnificent ass, he tugged on a pair of boxer briefs.

  Well, that wasn’t a bad view either.

  He turned around and gave her a happy grin. She wasn’t sure why. He didn’t get to come. If she’d been left hanging, she’d be snappier than a hungry alligator right now. “Lunch?”

  She gaped at him.

  “Priya?”

  “Are you sure?”

  He laughed. “Yes. I want to feed you before you faint. Remember the goal for the week? Calm, cool, collected Priya? Unfazed by anything?”

  “I’m feeling pretty chill at the moment.” She glanced down at herself. Her shorts were still unzipped, her shirt was hiked up. She looked like a disheveled mess and she didn’t care at all. “Very chill. Totally unfazed. Come back to bed.”

  “I want more than a quickie before lunch, and you need food.”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  His grin slid toward feral. “Sustenance, beautiful. Fuel.”

  “I bet you have granola bars stashed away for just this reason.”

  That got her a bigger laugh, with his head thrown back. “Emergency sex food? Yeah, we can call it that. But those are like midnight rations, not main meals.” He grabbed a clean t-shirt, pulled it on, then closed the gap between them.

  He cupped her face, lightly brushing his lips against hers. “Thank you,” he murmured. “I always wanted to score with a hot girl in my cabin.”

  “Technically it’s my cabin, and you’re squatting.”

  “That was fantasy number two. Finding myself alone with the female counselor and having my way with her.” He rubbed his thumb against her cheek and gave her a soft, adoring look that stirred up all sorts of confusing feelings. “Never got past first base when I was a kid here. Probably for the best. I wouldn’t have known what to do if I’d gotten inside someone’s bra.”

  “Now you do.”

  “Damn straight I do. And I’m all yours.”

  For now. For this week, maybe. She could handle that.

  The mistake she’d made last year was letting herself dream of more. This time, they’d do this. Get sweaty, get their mutual attraction out of their systems, and then draw a very clear goodbye line in the sand.

  She dragged in a deep breath. “Lunch sounds good, actually.”

  “Yeah?” He searched her face before smiling again. “Good.”

  He dragged his hands down her body, straightening her shirt before carefully zipping up her shorts. That made her insides pull tight, hot and needy. She’d have to work harder at the unaffected thing.

  She was affected for miles right now.

  Lunch was more formal than breakfast had been, with a menu of options—and suggestions for Back to Nature afternoon activities running down the side.

  Did banging a Navy SEAL count? Priya picked that activity.

  She also picked a hearty chickpea salad with a cheese and pickle plate to start.

  “I’ll have the same,” Grady said as he handed his menu to the waiter. “And can we have the vegan brownies for dessert, but to go?”

  “What if I don’t like chocolate?” Priya asked, crossing her arms over her chest. As far as tests went, it wasn’t a very good one. She was already grinning.

  Grady rubbed the side of his cheek as his eyes darkened. “Nice try. But last year you had those brownies twice, and both times it went something like, ‘Oh. My. Gawd. This brownie is better than sex.’” He smirked, “That may have been when I decided to prove you wrong.”

  And he had, two nights later.

  She remembered both of those brownies. How had she missed him watching her? “Okay. The brownies are a good idea. But I already know that they’re not quite as good as your absolute best effort. Pretty close, though. Are you sure you want to risk another comparison so close together?”

  He just grinned.

  Eit
her he was willing to take that exact risk, or he had some crazy plan like they weren’t going to have sex right after lunch.

  Insanity.

  They talked about travel until their food arrived. Which airports they both liked—Frankfurt and Dubai—and hated—Heathrow and LAX. Grady gently poked at her recent trips, clearly trying to figure out what had ratcheted up her stress levels.

  Turning thirty and realizing you’re still hung up on a guy who ghosted you will do that. But that wasn’t fair. Sure, she’d been unimpressed with Grady’s disappearing act, but she’d known intellectually why he’d gone silent.

  She’d been embedded with soldiers and special forces. Knew the latter were even harder than the former, and the former were harder than she could’ve imagined.

  No. Grady had been an excuse she’d told herself to avoid looking at the hard realities of her workplace. “I like the travel,” she realized out loud. “More than being in New York. And I’ve been home more than away the last six months.”

  Grady’s eyebrows did a slow lift. “Yeah?”

  She pulled a face. “Huh.”

  “News to you?”

  “Yeah.” She took a slow sip of her water. “I asked for the local re-assignment. I’m doing more in-studio producing now, and I hate it. How about that. Fucking hell.” She laughed. “Well, that’s a good breakthrough to have, I suppose.”

  “Feel better?”

  She rolled her shoulders. “Not really.” Because it wasn’t just one thing. She’d bring that forward at her next performance review, or if an opportunity came up to step into her old role again. Would it be wrong to wish a baby on her replacement?

  No, a promotion or a jump to another station. Maybe Amanda would get some spiffy new gig with MSNBC.

  And none of that was where her head was supposed to be this week.

  “I should go to yoga later,” she mused. “Much later. The start of my afternoon is wide open.”

  Grady gave her a bland, not-picking-up-on-the-hint look. “Brownies and then yoga sounds like a great plan.”

  “Are you going to do yoga, too?” She narrowed her eyes in alarm.

  “Why? Do you not want me to?”

  She played with the condensation rolling down the outside of her glass. “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how seriously you take yoga.”

  “I’ve done it before. Once. On the deck of an aircraft carrier, in fact.”

  “You can’t make fun of it.”

  “I would never.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “Technically this is classified information, but the one time I did yoga was with the Indian Navy. We were on a joint training exercise in the Indian Ocean, and…when in Rome. I treated it with the utmost respect then, and I will today, too.”

  She groaned. “Damn it, that’s such a good human interest story, too. You’re a terrible tease.”

  He winked as their food arrived. “I am that.”

  “Tell me more about…whatever you can tell me. How often do you do joint training exercises with other countries?”

  “All the time. If there’s something planned, SOCOM tries to attach us if we’re in the area.” He dug into his bowl. “Are you asking as a journalist?”

  She shook her head. “I’d tell you if I were. I’m asking as…a friend.”

  The little waver before she said that grabbed his attention, and they looked at each other for a long beat. Their little table for two in the middle of a public dining room wasn’t the place for this conversation, though.

  But they weren’t friends. Not really. Last summer they’d antagonized each other for a week as Wyatt and Tegan danced around their growing attraction.

  Then they’d had crazy hot sex.

  Add in another phone call out of the blue—where Priya had to ask Grady where he’d gotten her number, too—and that brought them to this week.

  They had a connection. Friendship? That was more tenuous.

  Grady held out his hand and started ticking off experiences on his fingers. “We do Arctic training with both the Norwegians and the Canadians. They have more infrastructure and bases up there than we have access to. Then there’s a lot of Pacific Naval exercises. Don’t tell anyone, but the best perk of the job is going to Australia and Guam.”

  “I love Australia,” she murmured. “I haven’t been there in years, but I spent one very memorable weekend in Byron Bay with a group of surfers.”

  “If you like surfing, you need to come visit us in San Diego.”

  “Oh, I’m terrible. But I like wetsuits.” She winked at him. “Maybe I will come visit.”

  He reached across the table and rubbed her hand. “I hope you do. The invitation is wide open.”

  For now, maybe. She squeezed his fingers, then returned her attention to her lunch.

  But Grady wasn’t done with that conversation, and when they finished eating, and they had their brownies in a brown paper bag to go, he took her hand and led her down a path behind the main lodge she hadn’t explored before.

  “So we’re not going back to our cabin to continue what we started before lunch?”

  He shook his head. “Not right now. But if you’re good, I’m happy to repeat what we did before lunch in the great outdoors.”

  She blushed. “Ditto, of course.”

  His confident pace stuttered for a second. “Did you just offer me a hand job?”

  “Yes.”

  She got a quiet groan as a response, and that felt good. Grady didn’t need to be fully in charge of this crazy plan to turn her Back to Nature week upside down and inside out.

  Half a mile up the trail, Grady stopped. The main trail continued ahead, but he pointed to a smaller track, now grown over with grass and flowers and new sprouts of baby trees. “This way. Probably hasn’t been used in years.” He stopped and pulled her in for a quick kiss. “We’ll have all the privacy you could ever want up there.”

  Up where?

  She followed him along the mysterious, climbing single-file barely-there path as it took a steep shift up a rise. At the top there was an outcrop of rocks, but they were actually easier to climb than the path to get there. Cut almost like stairs, the hard gray boulders welcomed them to—

  The top of the world.

  They were up above trees here, and Lake Waawaatesi glittered below. “Wow,” she said, breathing hard. “I didn’t realize we’d climbed this much.”

  “It’s not actually that high,” Grady said, turning her around and pointing at the still significant rise of the mountain behind them. “But it feels like the top, doesn’t it? We used to come up here for overnight trips. I asked Michael if they’d reclaimed it, and he said they were focusing more on the north paths and the camping sites. So I figured we were good to have it all to ourselves. Come on.”

  Hand in hand, he showed her the meadow. Beyond the rock outcropping was a flat stretch of flowers and grass, and beyond that, the edge of the forest again as it followed the mountain’s rise.

  “There are probably dozens of these spots in various points off the hiking trails. But this one is my favorite because…” He jumped over a fallen tree and pointed ahead. “It has a camping platform someone built.”

  The wood was faded now, silver in the sunlight, but it was sturdy enough that when Grady stretched out his sweatshirt, Priya happily stretched out beside him. They lay on their sides, facing each other, using the sweatshirt to prop their elbows against.

  “Brownie?” he asked, opening the little bag.

  “Please.”

  He split the first one in half and gave her the bigger piece. She savored each bite, taking her time and not caring at all about the noises she made. Not better than sex with Grady, but close.

  Dark, rich chocolate and a sweet, dense texture that left only a few easily licked-up crumbs on her fingers.

  “So good,” she whispered as she nibbled the last morsel.

  Grady set the bag side. “And we’ve got another one for later.”
r />   Later? Right, she realized as he leaned in. Later.

  His kiss was soft this time, coaxing and erotic. “You taste extra good right now,” he said, licking at the corner of her mouth. “Those brownies are sinful after all. They make me want to cover you in chocolate. Lick it up slowly and carefully. All over…”

  “Everywhere?” Her breath hitched as he rolled her onto her back.

  “Every. Last. Inch.” He braced his arms on either side of her head and lowered his mouth again.

  Kissing Grady was like diving into a churning wave. A rush of disorienting sensation that sent her spinning, but when she came up for air, she was grinning like she’d conquered the world.

  And she just wanted to do it again.

  “You promise that nobody else is going to come up here?”

  He exhaled roughly. “That path hadn’t been used in years. I swear.”

  She wriggled out from beneath him and pushed him onto his back. “In that case…” She peeled off her shirt, loving the way he looked at her, how his eyes darkened and his mouth went slack.

  Time for her to be in charge. “I want to kiss you, too,” she murmured as she crawled over him. “Every. Last. Inch.”

  She started with his mouth, pressing her lips against his, then her tongue. She teased him as his hands roamed over her bare back and sides, as he played with the edges of her bra and worked the straps off her shoulders.

  She rose up on all fours as he unhooked the bra and bared her flesh, then leaned forward so her nipples just brushed against his face.

  His groan was unholy and perfect.

  He cupped her breasts in his big hands. Her thighs trembled as her body tightened and reacted to his touch—sweet and rough at the same time, and achingly familiar.

  “I’ve been thinking about your tits all week, Priya. Do your nipples always get this hard? I need a taste…”

  “Put your mouth on me,” she whispered now. He didn’t need to be told twice, latching onto one peak, then the other. His tongue pressed against her skin as he pulled her into his mouth. He’d bit her last year, and she’d liked it. “Harder.”

  He looked up at her, his eyes glittering, and bared his teeth as he tugged.