by Gina Kincade
“They’re lovely, thank you,” she said, taking the roses and inhaling the sweet scent. “Come. I’ll put these in some water. You’re welcome to stay for dinner. It’s not much. Just pasta and salad.”
The weight of his gaze boring into her back as she filled the vase set her nerves on edge. Oh God, he was going to say no, she knew it. Disappointment lodged in her gut as she arranged the roses in a decorative lavender crystal vase she’d picked up at a swap meet last summer. Gathering the courage to glance his direction, she lifted her eyes.
“I need to tell you something and when I’m done, then you can decide whether or not you still want me to stay. Deal?” he said, his expression troubled.
Kate nodded slowly. “Okay,” she agreed and wondered if she’d been wrong to allow him to monopolize her thoughts when she knew absolutely nothing about him.
He began to pace in the small expanse of her kitchen, removing his necktie in the process and unbuttoning the top few buttons of his dress shirt. A few muffled curses escaped him and to say his nerves were strung tighter than a bow was the understatement of the century. Kate closed the distance and rested and a hand on his arm, halting him.
“Hey,” she said in a calm soothing voice. “I don’t know you at all, Grant. And maybe I shouldn’t let strange men into my apartment who could be serial killers, but you know what? I don’t know about you, but I could definitely use a nice evening in with my new neighbor. Somehow I get the feeling that it’s me that’s making you uncomfortable.
“Damn, but you’re intuitive,” he said. He exhaled a long breath. “And you definitely talk too much.” His lips tilted up at the corners.
“Would it be better if you had a glass of wine?” Kate asked. “Everything goes better with wine, including listening to my incessant chatter.”
He gave a brief nod, the tension leaving his body a bit. “I’m just going to be upfront about this Kate, and if you want me to leave after I tell you what I have to say, I’ll understand.”
Ahnfeldt bottle already in hand, she waved him to the living room sofa. “Have a seat, Grant and I’ll poor you a little bit of liquid courage. Not as good as Harry’s Liquid Luck, but I’m sure it will get you through our conversation.”
At his puzzled expression she explained. “Felix Felicis?” Grant continued to stare blankly at her. “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince?” She sighed heavily. “Not much of a movie goer, are you?” At his brisk shake of his head, she continued. “If we are going to be hanging out, you’re definitely going to need a moviecation.”
“A what?” he asked.
“A moviecation,” she said with a casual shrug. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen Pitch Perfect? You definitely need an education in movies. Specifically movies I enjoy, so don’t think you can try and usurp my iTunes playlist.”
Chapter Seven
This was a mistake, being alone with her in her apartment, the voice taunted. Grant stared at Kate, struggling with his own haunted thoughts. Today had been a good day. It had been the reason why he’d finally gathered up the courage to approach her.
It is a good day. Please, he begged the voice. Let me enjoy her company without complications. One evening, that’s all I ask. One normal evening with my new neighbor. Please. Please. Please.
He sat there stiffly on the overstuffed couch. Tension filled his shoulders, his arms, and his jaw. When she came over and sat beside him offering him the glass of wine, he gripped the goblet tightly between the palms of both hands. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!
“Hey,” Kate said gently, placing her hand on his arm.
Immobilized, Grant sat there, unable to look her direction.
“Hey,” she repeated. “Look at me.”
Reluctantly, he met her eyes. The color appeared even darker in the early evening light that lingered through the large bay window that nearly took up an entire wall. He flexed his fingers around the glass in his hands. His composure was slipping and he was sure Kate knew it.
Get a hold of yourself before you fucking scare her.
But how could he explain his erratic behavior to her without scaring her? Before he could get a handle on what to say, she broke the awkward silence between them.
“Grant,” she said softly. “We don’t have to do movie night. We don’t have to do anything that’s going to make you uncomfortable. In fact, I can make you a plate to take back to your place if you prefer.” She removed her hand from his arm.
“No!” he said, too quickly a just a touch too loudly. He winced. Grant inhaled deeply and turned on the couch to face her, setting his wine glass on the coffee table beside them.
Better to tell her on a good day. The words will be much clearer.
“Please don’t kick me out, Kate.” His hands balled into fists on his lap, but he forced himself to continue. “There’s no place I’d rather be right now.”
“Okay,” she said, dark brown eyes curious.
“When I was six my parents and I were on a vacation near the Grand Canyon. It was monsoon season and the sky just opened out of nowhere. The roads flooded quickly and my dad lost control of the car. We ended up in the bottom of a ravine. My father died on impact.”
“Oh my God. That’s horrible. I’m so sorry, Grant.” Kate took his hand and laced her fingers with his like she had a couple of weeks ago in the emergency room.
“We were trapped, my mother and I, by a large boulder crushing our side of the vehicle. She was bleeding through a wound in her abdomen, speared by a tree branch. I couldn’t get to her because my leg was wedged between the seats. My six-year-old self had no concept of time, but it felt like hours. Before the paramedics arrived, she had died.”
Grant heard Kate’s sharp intake of breath and plowed on before she could speak, not chancing a glance in her direction for fear he’d lose his nerve. “Being back in the emergency room the other day brought all those awful memories to the forefront. I’d suffered a broken leg, fractured elbow and a collapsed lung and was hospitalized for weeks. If it hadn’t been for my Gramms…” He shook his head. “I took it out on you and for that, I’m sorry.”
“Oh my God,” she repeated. “No one should have to suffer the loss of their parents, let alone be witness to their deaths. And at such a young age.” With her free hand she placed her palm on Grant’s cheek and turned him to face her. “I’m so sorry. So very sorry that you had to suffer like that. Physical and mental losses. I’m glad you had someone there to watch over you.”
Kate placed soft kisses to his brow, his cheeks, the tip of his nose, his chin all the while murmuring soothing words of comfort. When her lips touched his, the dam of need that had built over the last several weeks broke. He needed her. And God help him, he was going to take what she offered and consequences be damned.
“Wait,” he rasped wanting to kick himself in the ass for stopping when all he wanted to do was claim her mouth, her body, her very soul. “There’s more.” She had to know all of it.
“More?” she asked, soft brown eyes wide.
“Since the accident, I…umm, that is to say,” he fumbled.
“It’s okay. I understand,” she said. “You broke more than your leg and elbow that day. If you’re disfigured, or impotent—”
Grant’s head snapped to attention. “What? No!” His face filled with heat, horrified at the idea that she thought him incapable of pleasing her. “All my body parts are in working order, thank you very much,” he said removing his hands from her soft curves and putting a little distance between them. “It’s my mind that’s damaged,” he stated flatly.
“Damaged how exactly?” she asked, slowly inching away from him. “Are we back to the serial killer thing?”
He expelled a harsh breath. Here goes nothing. “I suffer from agoraphobia. A fear of leaving home lodges in the middle of my brain and I get trapped inside my own house.”
Kate visibly relaxed. “Ohhhh,” she said. Obvious relief smoothed out her tense features. “But,” she began, brow furrowing. “You l
ive here now. How did you manage that one? Weren’t you stuck somewhere else? Does this mean you’re cured?”
“Good questions,” Grant said. “I’ve been treating myself for the last year and—”
Kate’s stomach grumbled and she gave him a sheepish smile. “Guess I’m hungry after all.” She rose to her feet, tugging him along with her. “You finish talking while I scoop us a couple of plates of spaghetti.”
Grant watched her closely as she moved around her roomy kitchen gathering everything they needed for dinner. While she worked, he explained that he was a psychiatrist and that he worked closely with patients with specific neuroses and the progress they’d been making. He sat across from her at the small round glass table in the breakfast nook and handed her the glass of wine he’d spotted on the coffee table next to his.
“So you just decided to use the same therapy on yourself? And How did you go to college? Wasn’t it hard for you to leave your house?” she asked, taking the goblet from him and taking a sip.
Their fingers touched and heat flared low in his gut reminding his cock how much he wanted her and his hard-on flared to life. He shifted in his seat attempting and failing miserably at easing his erection.
“Ah, umm, yes,” Grant said. Ignoring his stiff cock through dinner had been an unsuccessful challenge as he told her all about how he’d started leaving the Litchefield House he’d grown up in with his Grandmother, how he’d mastered most of his OCD tendencies and fears while she’d been alive. “Gramms had been my biggest champion,” he continued. “If it hadn’t been for her, I’d probably been some homeless bum on the street.” He half joked. “After her death, the grief consumed me and I’d regressed. My most stable clients stayed with me, the ones who’d suffered as bad as I needed to be referred to colleagues who could do home visits.”
He took a long sip of his wine. “, The decision to buy and move into the condo was his way of ensuring that he would continue to get better and not backslide into old habits.
“I admire you,” she said softly. “You’ve made amazing progress and helping others with your same condition.” She shook her head, eyes shining.
Grant said nothing, only shrugged, uncomfortable with her praise. There wasn’t anything about him to admire. When she rose and picked up the plates to clear the dishes, he halted her. “Let me get the dishes,” he said. He took the dirty plates from her hands and placed them back on the kitchen table. “It’s the least I can do for you feeding me. But before I do, there’s one more thing to apologize for. You may want to kick me out, yet.”
She lifted a brow, but said nothing.
“When I found you in my condo the other day…” He swiped a hand through his hair and resisted the urge to pace. “I wasn’t mad at you, I was angry at myself. Since leaving the ER the other night you had been on my mind a lot. Too much, actually, invading my dreams, my client sessions, and I was pissed that I was becoming obsessed with a woman I’d barely met.”
“You’ve been on my mind, too,” she admitted softly. “But why would that make you angry?”
“Because, Kate, fixations are dangerous for a guy like me with my OCD tendencies…” his voice trailed off. He exhaled a ragged breath. “Anyway, I want to apologize for being rude and overly harsh, but when I saw you in my condo dancing the tango looking all gorgeous, sexy, and carefree. I guess I was a more than a bit envious of that.” As well as horny, but Grant thought it best to leave his cock out of the conversation.
She searched his face. “You don’t trust yourself, do you?”
“No,” he said flatly. “Not when I want something so much it hurts.”
Kate’s eyes darkened and she chewed her bottom lip, seeming to ponder what he’d said. Without saying a word, she picked up the abandoned dinner plates and took them over to the kitchen sink. The silence stretched between them, giving new meaning to that old saying on pins and needles. He needed to know what she was thinking.
Grant came up behind her so close that he could smell the exotic berry fragrance of her shampoo but he refrained from touching her. His gut clenched. “Kate?”
She turned and gazed up at him, trust burning in those amazing brown eyes of hers. “I think you sell yourself too short, Grant,” she said. “I trust you. Maybe enough for both of us.”
“You shouldn’t,” he said a bit too harshly.
He groaned, conflict and lust warring within him. Lust won out and their mouths came together, hot, hungry and impatient, their tongues meeting in a melding of lips. Kate’s arms encircled his neck as she met him stroke for stroke while Grant’s hands palmed her firm ass, hiking her upwards so she had no choice but to wrap her legs around his hips. He rubbed her core against his stiff cock, marveling at the rush of sensations rushing through his body.
Lifting his head he asked, “Where?” He growled.
“This way,” she said. “Floor plans are identical. I—”
Grant swallowed her words with another hungry kiss and carried her down the hall to her bedroom without breaking it. The flavor of wine and spicy tomato sauce lingered on her tongue and it was the most erotic thing he’d ever tasted. Inside her room the shades were pulled and the soft glow of the bedside lamp lit the room. He tortured himself with the feel of her body as he eased her off him, gently placing her feet on the floor.
He shed his suit jacket and shoes in record time while she kicked off her sweatpants. Impatient to see all of her, he pulled the old baseball T-shirt over her head and swore while drinking in the silky black lace demi bra and matching thong with tiny red lipstick imprints in the fabric greedily. “Jesus Christ, Kate, you had that on all this time under those old sweats? You’re going to fucking kill me.”
Her lips curved and there was a definite satisfied gleam in her heated gaze. “Yes, but I kept my clothes on all through dinner,” she said cheekily.
Running his hands down the sides of her arms, her bodied shivered. “Cold?” he asked.
“No, just a bit nervous.” She slid her hands down the front of his dress shirt and started on the buttons.
“Kate, wait,” Grant said, grasping her hands pinning them to his chest. “I want this so badly, but I don’t want to—” Uncertainty gripped him. “I told myself I wasn’t going to rush you. I was just going to come over here, apologize, take you out for dinner in a restaurant which terrified the hell out of me by the way, and be civilized. And here I am in your bedroom—”
“Shhh,” Kate said, silencing him with a finger to his lips. “You’re not rushing me.” Rising up on her toes, she kissed him softly. “I want this just as badly as you do, Grant. Maybe more. And I can’t believe I’m going to be the one to say this, but shut up already and fuck me. I need you inside me like yesterday.”
Grant laughed, the sound shocking him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually laughed. “You’re adorably impossible,” he said, sliding one bra strap off her bare shoulder and running his other hand down her side.
Her skin was so fucking soft. He let his palm roam lower passed her hip to her inner thigh. He slid his fingers under the laced edge of her panties and felt how wet she was. Grant groaned. She was so fucking sexy. “I love these,” he said, trailing moist kisses along the shell of her ear. “But they’re going to have to go,” he rasped, ripping them off in one fluid stroke.
“Grant!” Kate half-heartedly complained and giggled. “Those were new.”
“I’ll buy you more,” he said. He reached behind her and unclasped her bra and she let the tiny bit of lace fall to the carpet.
His hands slid between her legs again, finding her clit and stroking slow firm circles, his mouth slanted over hers, demanding she give in to him. He penetrated her slick heat with one fingertip and her hips bucked toward his hand seeking more, but he held back.
“Not yet, love,” he murmured, gliding the silky wetness over her tight bud. He was dying to taste her honey but willed himself to have patience. As it was, he doubted he would last very long once he was buried deep i
nside her.
Grant almost laughed out loud. What a joke. When it came to this woman, patience was a four-letter word. He backed her up toward the bed. Her legs hit the mattress and he eased her on top of it, spreading her legs wide and kneeling before her. Fuck patience. He slid two fingers all the way inside her easily.
“There are so many wicked things I want to do to you,” he said, voice gruff and thick with need. Shit, he was practically salivating.
“Yes,” Kate said on a moan, hips bucking against his hand. “Do all of them,” she demanded. “Every single one.”
Grant nipped her inner thigh, kissing his way toward her center, mouth watering. He couldn’t remember when he’d wanted anyone as much as he wanted Kate Sumner. His tongue swept up her center and satisfaction filled him as he got his first taste of her and growled. She tasted so damn exotic, he craved more. Like a starved man, he licked, sucked, and teased her pussy until Kate writhed and bucked under his ministrations. When he sucked her clit hard into his mouth she lifted her hips up off the bed.
“Oh God, Grant. Keep doing that, and I’m going to come,” she said.
He pumped his fingers deep inside her in rhythm to his tongue, loving the little sounds she made as the tension drew her body taught.
“Grant!” she screamed, grasping his head and holding him in place as her body shuddered and writhed beneath his mouth.
Greedy, he lapped up her juices, relishing the little aftershocks rippling through her.
Kate shoved at his head. “Mercy,” she cried. “For the love of all the saints and angels above, mercy.”
Chapter Eight
Kate lifted her head with an effort and glanced at Grant. His tongue licked his lips as he stared at her bare mound. Slowly, provocatively, he licked his lips, as if he wanted nothing more than to indulge in his favorite treat. Her toes curled.
“That was amazing,” she said, voice husky. “But I’m a glutton, and I need more.”
