Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 91497 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91497 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
I don’t know if I breathe as I take her in, all that bare skin, tan and pink, pert and quivering. I watch her stomach squeeze tight with nerves. I know I have to act, but I could stand here and stare forever like she’s my last sunrise, my life’s work.
“Grant?” she asks, her voice shaky.
My throat is tight. I can’t speak.
I push off the counter and walk toward her. Without a moment’s hesitation, I sweep my hands up to cup her face and I kiss her. Not hard, not demanding—tender and coaxing and loving. Loving. The word sideswipes me. I pull her to me and part her lips. Our tongues touch and we’re backing up against the wall. I have her pinned there as our kiss deepens.
Her hands were down, forgotten at her sides, but now they’re on my hips, creeping under my sports coat and shirt to get to my bare skin. She shivers and then I lift her, forcing her legs around my hips, keeping her in place against the wall. I hold her there securely. She’s kissing me with enough abandon to let me know she’s not scared of falling.
“Touch me,” she begs, and I release her face, pulling back to look at her.
Red lips. So red I take them again in an instant, biting down on her bottom lip and tugging until she whimpers. Then my mouth descends on her neck, the top of her shoulder, her naked breast. I take the tip into my mouth and I adore her, taste her, suck until she’s rolling her hips against me and digging her fingers into my coat. She rubs herself on me in a hot steady rhythm, trying to ease her suffering.
I’m entirely too dressed for what we’re doing, but the idea of stopping to sling off my coat and shirt and jeans pisses me off. The moment feels too precarious, too tender to let it slip away, so I stay put, recapture her mouth, steal her good sense.
Stay here, stay here, I plead as our tongues roll together. Let me have this.
Quickly, before she even realizes what’s happened, I set her down and drop to my knees. Not slowly, in a rush, I tug her panties down her thighs until she’s completely naked above me. Another shiver. A cascade of goose bumps over all that wonderfully bare skin. I grip the back of her thighs then let my head drop to her navel, breathing her in. Her hand caresses my hair. There’s a sweetness to it that almost doesn’t belong here. I close my eyes and try to get a grip on my own desire, but it’s useless. We’re on the cliff of insanity. The only thing left is to leap.
I’ve never thought of love as crazy before, but then, maybe everything before this was a poor substitute for the real thing. What’s sane about kneeling in a restaurant bathroom, staring up at Tate with her blown-out pupils and trembling bottom lip? What’s normal about feeling like I would do whatever she asked of me in this moment—slay, conquer, fight, love, plead. It feels like a thousand lifetimes have brought me to this moment on the floor, on my knees before a woman I love.
I understand then the feeling my dad must have had when he walked away from his entire family—life as he knew it in Mexico—to pursue a future with my mom.
“Do you regret it?” I asked him once, when I was young and couldn’t wrap my head around his decision.
He caught me by the chin and looked me square in the eyes as he replied sternly, “Not for a single second. I loved your mom with everything I had.”
It looks like Tate can barely breathe, but then neither can I.
I use my grip on her thighs to peel her further apart, opening her up for me. She looks down at me with flushed cheeks as I kiss my way between her legs, coaxing her sweetness out of her as I drag my tongue over her center, right in that perfect spot. A groan tears through her like it’s painful to have me here, in possession of this intimate part of her. I’m so gentle at first, but then I can tell she needs more. My tongue swirls around and around, and then I back away. She whimpers and presses her hips closer to my face. I smile, which she hates. I feel it in the way her fist tightens in my hair. I bite her inner thigh, and she growls.
“Grant,” she says, her voice thick with desire. “Please.”
I’m teasing her and I should feel bad, but no. We’ve both been left wanting these last few weeks. There’s a certain kind of torture in drawing out the inevitable. I press my forearm against her stomach, pushing her flat against the wall again as I lift her leg over my shoulder. Then I drag my thumb through her wetness, and as she quivers, I bury my face between her legs again. This time, I’m relentless with my tongue as I slide two fingers inside her. She thrusts her hips, rubbing herself back and forth over my mouth as much as my arm over her stomach will allow. She’s taking from me the same way I’m taking from her. I love how desperate she is, not shy in the least, not now.