by Lexy Timms
“That doesn’t excuse my actions. Trust me, I’d blame the drink for what I told you, but the truth is, I do find you very attractive.”
Her fork hit her plate and her eyes whipped up to mine.
“What?” she asked breathlessly.
“You seem shocked. Do you not remember the kiss?”
“Of course I remember it,” she said.
“Does a man kiss a woman like that if he’s not attracted to her?”
“Well, no. I guess.”
“Approaching you the way I did last night was wrong. Tugging you into my lap and treating you like some sort of toy was wrong. But nothing I said was a lie.”
Her cheeks blushed furiously as she managed to pick her fork back up.
“The kiss was intense,” she said.
“Very. But that doesn’t change our predicament. I’m leaving soon. In a few days, actually. I have things to get back to, and the last thing either of us needs is to delve into something that we know is sure to end.”
Hurt crawled across her features and punched me squarely in the gut. But almost immediately, her face blanked. Her features fell. Her eyes became caged, like she was shutting me out. And it sucked. It really did. Because I’d come to enjoy the vibrancy of her big green eyes. But I also knew I was right. I had five days, maybe, left in this place. Then I was gone. Back to Napa Valley to secure the deal of a lifetime and elevate myself to a status most men would never achieve. And she would be here, searching for whatever life it was she was looking for.
“I get it,” she said, as she nodded. “And anyway, we are both grieving. That, in and of itself, makes people react in strange ways. Maybe all we were doing was looking for a certain type of closeness in the absence of our good friend.”
“Sounds about right,” I said.
Though I knew it was a lie. There was something more between us. Something unexpected and passionate. The heat that passed between us whenever we were close. The looks she gave me when she thought I wasn’t looking. My inability to keep my thoughts—or my cock—at bay around her. No matter the circumstance, I would’ve been attracted to Michelle. That dark mahogany hair falling around those bright emerald eyes. I would’ve lusted after her no matter what. With the smile of a blossoming young girl and the curves of a woman, I wouldn’t have resisted sweeping her off her feet, taking her back to my sprawling estate, and fucking her along every surface for the entire weekend.
Hell, the entire week.
But that didn’t change anything. It didn’t change the fact that her life was here and mine wasn’t. It didn’t change the fact that I had a deadline before getting out of this shithole and she apparently wanted to stay. And there was a part of me that was disgusted with that. How could I be attracted to anyone who wanted to stay in this place? And yet, I was. I was pulled towards this woman and curious about her. I knew there was more to her story. She had too much fight, too much fire, and too much hope in her voice to settle for a deserted, disastrous town like Stillsville.
I knew better than to get physically involved with her.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t try to figure her out while I was there. After all, Anton had seen something in her. Something that needed his care. She and I had that in common. We were both taken in by a wonderful, caring man. Which meant there was something going on with her that she wasn’t telling. Wasn’t divulging. Wasn’t explaining. Maybe she had it locked away like I did. Maybe she didn’t talk to strangers like I did. But that wouldn’t stop me from prodding, from asking.
Even though my time in Stillsville was stunted, it wouldn’t stop me from getting to know this bountiful beauty before me.
Chapter 14
Michelle
I took my time finishing breakfast, painfully aware of the way Gray looked at me. He kept his eyes trained on me for long moments at a time, though his gaze looked far off. Distant. Like he was seeing me, but not taking me in. I wanted to know what he was thinking. What he was feeling. But then again, I didn’t. His brunch meal was fabulous. It took all I had not to moan and praise him over it. Last night still stuck out in my mind, but his admission slapped me across the face.
He was attracted to me?
He wanted me?
I understood his reasoning. His want to keep his distance. And it seemed as if we’d reached some sort of agreement to not give into our attraction. But I didn’t like that. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to have to restrain myself with him. That kiss freed something within my gut. Shot electricity through my veins that I wanted to feel again. But I knew all too quickly how a lust could become an unhealthy attachment, and Gray did have a point there.
He’d be leaving in a few days and I would still be here.
And honestly? I would be leaving, too. If I couldn’t find a job—and it looked more and more like I wouldn’t—then I’d be leaving as well. Headed back to North Dakota. Back to an oil town where my mother would get to say things like ‘I told you so’ and ‘guess you’re really not better than the rest of us.’ Back to a life I hated, but a job I could resume. At least, I thought I’d be able to. I didn’t know anymore. I wasn’t that sure of anything. Pretty much everything was on wobbling stilts, and the foundation I thought I’d planted had been swallowed up by the gaping hole I was being dangled over.
The least I could do was accept the inevitable and start planning my future.
A shitty as my prospects were, I did have the option of going back to school. I’d only gotten my degree two years ago, so the credits were still transferable. I could go to college and get a four-year degree. I’d always wanted to teach. To educate. I could enroll in a teaching program at one of the local colleges. I’d have to take out loans, but I could probably find some financial need based scholarships, too. I graduated with a 3.2 GPA, which should be decent enough to find me something.
That was a plan.
Another option was trying to get some of my old jobs back. I could take the money I had in my duffel bag and use it to buy a used laptop to get back to medical transcription. I hated that damn job, but it had covered my bills nicely. And if I could hook myself up with one of the hospitals in the area, instead of spending my time in seedy bars fucking dead-end guitar players, I could really bloom that into something.
That was another option.
“Are you busy for the next couple of days?”
Gray’s voice ripped me from my trance as I chewed up the last of my crepe.
So good.
“I’m going to be on the road distributing Anton’s possessions, and it’s a huge job. I’ll need someone to help me go through everything and to keep it straight as I get it handed off.”
“I told you I would help,” I said.
“Well, I’d like to pay you for your time.”
I rose my eyes to meet his as he stood at the sink washing off his plate.
“You cooked, I clean. Remember?” I asked.
He grinned and my heart slammed against my chest.
Why did he have to go?
“How does one hundred dollars an hour sound?”
My fork fell to my plate for the second time as my jaw unhinged. And I didn’t even try to conceal my shock. He wanted to pay me what? He had that kind of money!?
“That’s way too much,” I said. “Anton didn’t pay me nearly that much.”
“Well, I’m not Anton,” he said.
“No. You’re not paying me for doing this. I offered to help. Anton was my friend. A good friend. An impactful friend. You’re not paying me to help you distribute things according to his will.”
“Well, you’ll never become a billionaire if you keep giving your time away for free,” he said with a chuckle.
“Well, I’m not at risk to become a billionaire anyway, so I don’t have to worry about it,” I said, giggling.
“One hundred dollars an hour is my final offer. If you don’t take it, you don’t get to help.”
“That’s not fair. What do you have against me helping you?”
&n
bsp; “Nothing. But I am going to pay you for your time. Anton was your friend, yes, but he didn’t appoint you in his will to help with all this. I’m enlisting your help because I’ll need it, and I don’t enlist help without paying for it.”
I furrowed my brow at his statement. Was he a business owner or something?
“Okay, fine,” I said. “I’ll take the job.”
“Good. Where do we start?” he asked.
“I need a list of the possessions Anton’s giving away. We have to organize it according to people in the community. If we just go driving around, it’ll take us a lot more time. We need to match names and locations to things, and we’ll need a road map to follow.”
“I’ve got that list somewhere. Let me go get it,” he said.
I took my plate over to the sink and cleaned it off while he went to search. Finally, I felt like I had a purpose again. It was a purpose that would soon dissipate over the coming days, but at least I had something to fill my time with. I washed my hands and wiped my mouth off one last time, then sat down at the table just as Gray walked back in.
“Here is it,” he said.
He slapped a stack of papers in front of me before he eased himself into his chair.
“I don’t need the will. Just the list,” I said.
“That is the list.”
“What?”
He chuckled as he leaned forward onto his forearms.
“Anton has a lot of stuff. Almost everyone in this town is getting something from him. Like I said, it’s a hefty job.”
“You’re telling me,” I said breathlessly. “Okay. So, we need to get started then.”
“You’re in charge.”
“What? Me?”
“Yep. You have a plan in place, so tell me what you need done.”
“You hired me, remember?”
“And as a manager, you delegate.”
“A manager,” I said.
“Yep. And if you play your cards right, I’ll can write you a recommendation letter so you can find a job once I leave.”
I narrowed my eyes at him as he sat back in his chair. What good would a recommendation from some guy I worked with for a few days do? But, it was better than nothing. And it was obvious the resume I had now wasn’t working. So I’d take whatever I could get.
“Deal,” I said. “First, we need a map of the town so we can write names down on it. I know where some people live, and something tells me you know the rest.”
“Unfortunately. Let me go rummage around. I think Anton’s got a few maps of the area around here.”
“And while you’re gone, I’m going to take this list and highlight names so they’re easier to pick out.”
“Sounds good. Be right back.”
We worked side-by-side the rest of the day, plotting out where people lived and what would be delivered to them. And the entire time, my thigh rested solidly against his. There were moments when he leaned over to point something out to me and I felt his breath on my neck. Moments when our eyes connected and the words we spoke fell into a void.
I couldn’t stop focusing on his lips.
It was hard to concentrate. Hard to keep focus. More than once, I found myself distracted by the heat of his leg rather than the words coming from his mouth. It took us hours to plot a trail on the map Gray had finally found. Hours to write in the margins what everyone would receive. We’d have to make at least four trips just to deliver things around the city, because Gray’s car wasn’t nearly big enough to haul all of it at once.
I suggested renting a truck or a U-Haul from somewhere, until I found out that we’d have to travel an hour just to pick it up in the first place.
There was one moment, however, that stuck out in my mind more than the rest. A moment when Gray reached across me to get the highlighter. His bare arm grazed the front of my tits just barely, and I sucked in a sharp breath of air. Gray turned his head and looked into my eyes, studying me as he grabbed the highlighter. He moved his arm over my head as my eyes fell back to the map, but then his hand came up and rested against the chair at my back.
And he scooted his chair closer to mine.
“So do you want to start planning our routes?” he asked.
My eyes fluttered up to his as the sun finally sank below the horizon, coating the house in darkness.
“I um—”
My gaze fell to his lips before I closed my eyes.
“I think we should turn on a light,” I said, breathlessly.
Chapter 15
Grayson
So many moments. Moments where my body touched hers and our thighs squished together. So many moments where I easily could have wrapped my lips around hers and taken her right at that fucking table. We worked through the entire weekend plotting out our chart. Making sure we had the delivery down to a science. For days, I worked next to her, feeling her breath against my shoulder. For days, I worked alongside her, feeling her body heat reaching out for me. For days, my head spun. For days, my cock throbbed. The hold this woman had on me was too much, and there were times I made excuses just to get away from her.
Bathroom breaks.
Water breaks.
Walking outside to get fresh air.
I wasn’t sure how much longer I could take it. The tension between us was palpable. And it didn’t help that I knew what she tasted like. What she felt like against my hands. Ever since the little talk we’d had, I’d been kicking myself. Why the fuck had I told her that hooking up was a bad idea? We both wanted it. It was evident in the way she reacted to me. Sometimes she pressed into me and sometimes she held my gaze. And always, her eyes fell to my lips.
Always.
I couldn’t stop thinking about fucking her. Bending her over the couch and sliding our work off the table so I could drench it in her. Being so close to her and working with her was fucking me up. I could smell her hair. It would be nothing to reach out and tuck a strand of it behind her ear. If she turned to look at me, I felt her breath pulsing against my lips. If she moved to stand up, I felt her hip brush against my shoulder. Small touches that sent electric jolts of lightning down my spine.
Some of it even left me short of breath.
“What if we took this route?” Michelle asked.
She rose up from her chair and reached clear across the table as her shirt stretched up her back. The map easily covered the entire table, and she was trying to reach the fucking corner of the map. Her shorts crept up her thighs. Her arm stretched so far I could see the fabric of her shirt mold to her breast. I watched her raise her knee up and plant it onto the table, giving me the best shot of that rotund ass of hers.
I raked my hands through my hair and quickly stood.
“Why don’t we finish this tomorrow?” I asked.
She looked back at me with a shocked stare as her lips parted.
“We’re almost done. Are you sure?” Michelle asked.
Fuck me. That innocent stare. That truly confused look. She had no idea what she was doing. Sprawling herself out over that table and hiking her leg up. Wearing those clothes that molded to her curves and teasing me with the shadowed slope of her ass. It would’ve been nothing to rip my cock out and take her. To pull her shorts and panties down and slide into her warmth. Everything in me was heightened. Her scent enveloped me. That hot, salty scent of a woman that drove me absolutely wild.
“I’m sure,” I said, as I stepped back from the table. “I need a shower.”
“Oh. Okay. Then we’ll finish it up in the morning. Breakfast is on me this time,” she said.
She slid her body from the table as I bit down onto my lower lip. I didn’t bother arguing with her. I felt my cock soaking the boxers underneath my pants. I stalked down the hallway and slammed into my bathroom, literally pulling at locks of my hair.
I shut the door and stripped myself of my clothes as my aching cock hung thickly between my legs.
I turned on the shower as cold as I could stand it and got in. But it did nothing to ca
lm my erection. The only thing it served to do was make me cold. Which only made me ache for release more. I reached down and turned on the hot water, ratcheting it up until it almost scalded my skin. I hissed as my hand wrapped around my thick dick as precum fell in thin streams to the floor of the shower.
“Michelle,” I said with a whisper. “Suck that cock.”
I closed my eyes and imagined those pouty lips around my shaft. Sucking it. Drinking me down. Hollowing those cheeks out for my viewing pleasure. I conjured the softness of her hair in the palm of my hand. How thick her hair had been twisted up in my fingers during that kiss. I stroked my cock faster as I imagined her head bobbing, my hand guiding her along my cock. Her tongue swirled. Raked along the throbbing vein underneath. I pressed my arm against the wall and leaned my forehead into my skin, feeling my toes already beginning to curl.
For days I’d put it off. For days I’d willed my cock to stay at bay.
But I couldn’t handle it any longer. My body physically hurt.
I saw her bent over the couch, her pussy swallowing my cock whole. Streaking it with her arousal as her juices coated me. I saw her pinned to the wall, helpless against my attack as I buried myself in her. Those moans when she ate. I heard the echo off the corners of my mind.
How sweet my name would sound falling off her lips.
I bucked into my hand. I felt my cock throbbing in my palm. I took her every which way in my mind. In my lap. On the balcony. In the back of that rental car. I saw her in the shower, dripping with hot water as her mahogany tendrils dropped down her back. I tasted her saltiness on my tongue as I devoured her pussy, watching her glorious curves jiggle for me. Oh, how those tits would bounce. I’d fuck her until she was nothing but a wave of desire crumbling against my arms.
“Michelle. Fuck. Yes. So tight for me. I’ve wanted that pussy. Give it to me. Squeeze me, Michelle. Holy—fucking—shit—”
My toes curled and my legs locked as my cock shot cum at blinding speeds. My body shook. My hand tightened around my girth. The shower spun and the room tilted as I stumbled. My shoulder caught the wall and my feet slid out from underneath me. I went tumbling to the floor as my cock continued to spew cum that had built up for days onto the shower floor. I crumbled to all fours, my head hanging as hot water sprayed over my body.
