by Serena Bell
At least that mess they could clean up. The mess that they were creating by prolonging Operation V-Card? Well, she wasn’t so sure about that one.
She was, however, sure of one thing: She wasn’t going to give up the way Griff could make her feel until she had to.
24
He was wrecked enough that his brain was wiped blank. It had been a long time since he’d come that hard with only a hand on him. He got up and went to the bathroom, mostly to clean up but also because it bought him a little time to think. He sorted himself out, zipped up, washed and dried his hands, then stood staring in the mirror. His pupils were still huge, his eyes glazed, his cheeks ruddy. And the thing was, he wanted to fuck her. He’d just come and he wanted to fuck her as soon as possible.
That wasn’t going to happen in Alia and Nate’s house, but it was pretty clear to him that it was going to happen. Again. And maybe again and again.
The jazzed-up feeling in his chest was split between Bring it and What the fuck am I doing?
He went back into the living room and sat in the armchair, just to give them enough distance to have an actual conversation.
She rubbed her fingertips over her cheekbones. “Maybe I’m out of line in saying this but it seems like we’re not actually done.”
She was glazed and pink, too, and it looked a hell of a lot better on her. Her mouth was tipped up at both corners, like she was trying really hard not to smile. And he wanted to lunge out of his chair and kiss that smile right off her face.
But she had a damn good point, and they needed to talk.
“You’re not out of line.”
She nodded, just one small, tight acknowledgment. “But it doesn’t have to be a big deal, either. I know you don’t do relationships, and that’s fine. I’m here for two weeks and then I’m going back to Seattle. So this is just temporary. Time-limited. Right?”
Two weeks. Time-limited. Perfect. Right?
Why was he having so much trouble answering a simple question? She’d obviously killed thousands of brain cells with that hand job. “Right.”
“What if we just say we’re going to—whatever this is, fool around, fuck—”
The sound of that word on her lips made his cock jump.
“—until I have to go back to Seattle, and then we’ll call it. And we can stick with the original rule that there is no Operation V-Card—I think the last thing either of us wants is for Nate or Alia to catch wind of this.”
That was true. So why did the secrecy thing suddenly feel a little uncomfortable?
Probably because if Alia knew what he and Becca had just done on the couch, she’d make him pay the upholstery cleaning bill.
He pointed a finger at her. “And it’s exclusive. For the next two weeks.”
Where the fuck had that come from? Maybe from the same primitive part of him that had wanted to kill CJ for making a pass at her.
She raised an eyebrow. “Okay. I think that rule mostly pertains to you. Hard to imagine, but there aren’t thousands of suitors currently beating down my door for a chance at me. Unless you count CJ.”
“You underestimate yourself,” he said irritably. “You can do way better than CJ. And on another topic, you could totally help Jed. Stop selling yourself short.”
Her mouth fell open.
He wanted to reel the words back in. They hadn’t come out at all the way he’d heard them in his head. “I’m sorry. That came out harsher than I meant it to.”
She closed her mouth and wrapped her arms around herself. For a moment, he thought he’d really made her mad. Then she said, “You’re not wrong. About the selling myself short thing. I told you I’m turning over a new leaf, right? I’m trying not to do that anymore, but old habits die hard.” She gave herself a hug. The smile was gone and the wrinkle between her brows had reappeared. “That said, I have to disagree with you on the Jed thing. I barely graduated high school. I don’t have any experience with kids aside from Robbie, and the damage I do to him is the usual aunt stuff like embarrassing him in front of future girlfriends.”
She got a faraway look on her face.
“Alia was an honors student. In, like, everything. I, on the other hand, had learning disabilities that took a long time for anyone to catch and diagnose. One teacher asked me straight out, in all seriousness, if Alia and I were actually related because—and I quote—‘your sister has such a brilliant mind.’”
Griff winced.
“Right? And I think that woman is still teaching at our old high school.” She frowned. “After the school figured out what was going on with me, they made accommodations, but I didn’t suddenly thrive. I stayed in the lowest track, with kids whose desire to learn had been shit-kicked out of them at some point. A few of them were working hard, like me, but most of them had just given up. Those classes—they were where learning went to die. And I just felt like, I was killing myself—going to tutors, trying my hardest—and I still couldn’t keep up with my peers. I still couldn’t get Bs, or even Cs most of the time. I figured I must be really—”
She didn’t say it, but she didn’t have to for him to hear the word in the room.
Stupid.
“You’re not stupid,” he said. “You’re smart, and funny—like how good you were at Taboo. That’s intuition, and being able to read and interact with people. The stuff that will actually help you in the world.”
She winced, which wasn’t the effect he’d been trying for, not at all.
“Honestly? I hate that, the ‘you’re not stupid’ thing. Alia always did that. She said I was street smart, and smart in all the ways that mattered—EQ, whatever—but you know, after a while, you don’t believe it any more. You think people are just trying to make you feel better.”
So basically, nothing he could say would make her change her mind about what she believed about herself.
This was why she was working a job that was “fine” instead of one she loved. Because deep down, in the snakiest part of her snake brain, she didn’t think she was smart enough for anything else. She thought she had to settle.
Well, that was bullshit, and he was going to do his best to make sure she saw it and believed it.
“All that, Becca, makes you the perfect person to get through to someone like Jed. You were getting through to him. He was listening to you, which he doesn’t do to any other adults as far as I can tell.”
“Even you?” she asked. He could hear the eager hope in her voice, even if she tried to sound nonchalant about it.
“Even me,” Griff said, completely truthfully.
He thought about Jake, trying to talk him into leading the support group. Maybe Jake felt the same way, trying to convince Griff that he had what it took, as Griff felt now, trying to convince Becca.
“Jake wants me to lead the peer support group sometimes.”
“Oh. Wow. You’d be great at that.”
“I don’t know. I’m the last person who should be giving anyone advice.”
“Why’s that?”
“You saw me the other night.”
“The flashback?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Yeah, but that’s the whole point, isn’t it? You’re supposed to be their peer and walk together through the darkness. They don’t expect you to be perfect.”
“I’m far from that,” he said with a snort. He gave into an impulse that had been building for the last couple of minutes and said, “Can I tell you something?”
“Yeah,” she said. She pushed her hair back, behind both ears.
Was he really going to do this? He literally hadn’t told anyone.
But it couldn’t have been easy for her to tell him she thought she was stupid. And she was waiting, hands folded, eyes as calm and unjudgmental and blue as the cloudless sky, and damn it, he wanted to tell her. So he opened his mouth and gave it a shot.
“I’ve tried to leave R&R a couple of times to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Just like you. I had a good job at one point
, but I lost it.”
“Because of the PTSD?”
She said it so neutrally. The same exact way she would have said “flu” or “diabetes,” which made it possible for him to nod.
“I froze up.”
“Just, out of the blue?”
His hands were fisted, he discovered, and he tried to unwind his fingers. “I was working at a hotel, doing odd jobs and landscaping. There was a metal door out back, and the pneumatic hinge was broken, so when people weren’t careful, it would slam.”
“Like a gunshot,” she said.
“Yeah.” It hadn’t sounded anything like any of the weapons he’d ever fired or heard fired, but that hadn’t mattered to the part of his brain responsible for fight-or-flight.
“Did you ask them if you could fix it?”
“Several times.”
“But—?”
“The part was expensive and that door was only for service people.”
Lines appeared in her forehead. “Then they’re just assholes.”
It would have been so much easier for him to believe that, but he knew it wasn’t true. He hadn’t given them a chance to do the right thing. “I didn’t tell them why it was a problem. They didn’t even know I’d served.”
She took that in quietly.
“I was going to fix it out of my own paycheck, when I had some spare time, but then one day the door slammed, and the next thing I knew I was standing in the middle of the lobby yelling something—I don’t even know what—and I’d scared the hotel guests half to death. And it wasn’t the first time something like that had happened, so they fired me.”
“I know you said Jake and Nate don’t know. Have you ever talked about it with anyone?”
He shook his head.
Her eyes moved over his face, assessing but not judging.
“What happens? When you have an episode?”
“I go back to—”
His throat was tight, and he wasn’t sure he could get the words out, but her expression was so—calm.
“This one night. There was a surprise attack.”
It was always that fucking night he went back to.
“Six guys died. I was the platoon sergeant, so the men were my responsibility.”
He didn’t—he couldn’t—say the rest. That he’d had a chance, maybe a slim chance, but a chance to change the outcome, and he hadn’t taken it.
She reached out her hand and he grabbed it, not caring that he was probably hurting her.
“We went to bed and everything was okay. And we woke up in the middle of a battle. That’s what happens in the flashback. I’m in one place and then I’m in the middle of a firefight.” He didn’t explain the other part. How the flashbacks, like dreams, sometimes incorporated people who hadn’t been there in real life. Marina, usually, but other people too, from time to time. Family, friends.
Becca squeezed his hand, which made him realize he’d been crushing her in his grip. He eased off.
“That sucks.” Her voice was steady, level. Kind, but not pitying.
“Yeah,” he said, smiling at the understatement.
“In the flashback—”
But whatever she’d been about to say, she shut her mouth abruptly, and when she opened it, she asked, “Do you think it would help to tell Jake?”
“Probably?”
She smiled at that.
On a whim, he pulled her hand to his mouth and kissed it. He barely touched her skin, but the now familiar spark leapt between them, setting his skin alight. He grunted, and her smile ticked up a couple of levels of intensity.
“So, um, thinking about the continued sexual education of Becca Drake,” she said, a tease in her eyes. “I’m still a beginner. If you’re really a full-service operation, I’d think you’d need to provide an overview of all the positions—”
Heat flushed him and swelled his cock as he did a quick mental review of what they’d left out. “Well, that’s true. We only covered missionary.”
“—and it’s not really a complete package without blow job training—”
“Jesus, Becca.”
“You don’t want to send me out in the world less than fully prepared to give really, really good head, do you?”
His cock surged against the zipper of his jeans. He dropped a hand to the denim-clad bulge and gave it a quick rub. Just to ease the throb brought on by the thought of being in her mouth.
It didn’t help.
Her eyes followed his hand, avid.
“I can help you out with that,” she said.
25
Talk about blowing. The look on Griff’s face was blowing her mind. He must have had a zillion other women go down on him, but as she climbed off the couch and settled herself on her knees between his, he was watching her with the ultimate What did I do to deserve this? expression. Gratitude was so fucking hot.
She was looking forward to this. She trusted him not to do anything freaky without warning her, like yank her hair or push hard into her throat. And she had a thing for his cock. She loved the feel of it, the satiny texture over the swollen head and velvet just below, and the whole thing so unbelievably rigid under all that soft texture. The thick veins and the way the skin shifted a little under her hand . . .
She was getting wet, thinking about it. Since when could she fantasize her way to ready?
Since Griff.
She unbuttoned his jeans and unzipped them, for the second time that night. He reached in and freed himself, and his cock jumped up at her like a jack-in-the-box. “Well, hello,” she said, and wrapped a hand around him. “You want to grab the arrow low on the shaft,” she said.
He bellowed a laugh. “I was wondering if you’d caught that.”
“You weren’t subtle.”
“I never realized how suggestive archery was until that lesson,” he said. “Or maybe it was just having the right student.”
She ducked her head and licked the smooth cap. There was a drop of pre-cum gathering at the slit, and she cleaned that up. Then she thoroughly licked him, all over the head, where the head dipped toward the shaft, down the length of his shaft. She made her tongue flat and strong and braced him with a hand behind so she could use a little more force without hurting him. He bucked his hips up from the couch appreciatively.
She wanted to see if she was doing okay, so she looked up at him, only to find him looking back down at her with so much heat and, yes, gratitude, that she felt a surge of her own wetness. “Griffin Ambrose, Ruiner of Panties,” she said.
He laughed, but it was kind of a dark half-laugh, half-groan. “Yeah? You’re wet because you’re going down on me?”
“Yeah.”
She was wet from before, anyway, but now she was considerably wetter, and yeah, she was surprised to discover it, but it was because of this. It was turning her on to turn him on, and the better she was getting to know his cock, the more she appreciated it. The way it pulsed under her tongue and against her lips. How hot it was. The softness of his sac when she cupped it—
That pulled another groan out of Griff, so she played a little, fingers and tongue, and then she went back to licking the head, and then, because she was tired of waiting and she wanted it, she sucked him into her mouth.
His hips bucked again, and his abs went rigid. She peeked, and his eyes were closed, his head thrown back. Okay, then. She knelt up and took him deeper. A breath hissed out of him. Deeper, then. And why not, deeper. She felt him against the back of her throat, and she swallowed, letting her muscles caress him.
“Holy shit, Becca,” he growled.
She did it again. She moved up and down on him, still gripping him tight at the base, spiraling her tongue around his shaft, and, when she rose up on him, giving him extra attention all over the head. At the end of every stroke, she opened her lips wide around him so they nearly met her hand and let him push against the back of her throat. Not only did she not hate it, the sound he made every time, like air was being forced out of him, was killing
her. The next few times, she heard her own whimper, chasing his grunt.
He touched her hair. Tentatively. He was asking for permission, and she knew—she knew—that he’d respect her wishes if she said no. Which made it so damn easy for her to say yes. She nodded, her mouth still full of him. He wrapped his fingers into the thickness of her hair, but he didn’t pull on her head. He just cupped his hand there and moved with her. His cock had grown even bigger in her mouth, which she wouldn’t have guessed was possible.
He was holding back, though. She could feel it, in the tension in his thighs and abs. What would it be like if he didn’t hold back? She slid a hand under his ass and tugged him up to her, and she got her answer, because he sort of lost it, then, in the best possible way. His hips jabbed toward her, his cock surging into her, and she discovered she could use her tongue and her throat muscles and her hands on his hips to control his speed and let him thrust into her mouth, and oh my God that was hot, her pussy was all liquid, her panties drenched, and she really needed another hand so she could rub down there and ease the clamor.
He knew, though. He reached down and cupped her through her jeans, and she rocked against his hand. Yes, that, and she squeezed, too, to try to get more friction and more pressure, and he made a broken noise. “Becca, I’m going to—”
He tried to draw back, but she held his hips and wouldn’t let him, and his cock jumped against her palate and he was coming, surges and spasms and the hot bitter taste of him in her throat. She was coming, too, whimpering against the fullness in her mouth, bearing down on his hand.
She let him slip from her mouth and rested her head on his thigh. His fingers moved gently through her hair.
She was still catching her breath when she heard the squeaky board at the bottom of the stairs creak.
“Did you hear that?” she whispered.
“What?”
She ran to the stairs and found Alia retreating up them, trying to be silent. Her sister’s pained expression told Becca everything she needed to know.
“I’m sorry,” Becca whispered.