An Ounce of Hope (A Pound of Flesh #2)

by Sophie Jackson

  Yeah. That shit was right. She was fine. Too damned fine.

  He rubbed a hand down his face, noticing another brushstroke of blue paint on his palm. Yeah, he’d even started painting again in an effort to curb his salacious thoughts, to try to stave off the cravings he had for Grace, but it wasn’t working. His paintings were, as always, frantic and hurried in their creation, his frustration filling the canvases as quickly as he set them up.

  Maybe this was why addicts were told not to start any type of relationships when they were first recovering. It would certainly make sense. Max’s desire to lose himself in Grace’s body was as strong as his need for coke had been when he first entered rehab.

  “Shit.” He sat up, still holding the phone to his ear. “Look, man, I’m gonna go. I got some stuff to take care of.”

  Carter huffed. “Fine. You know where I am if you change your mind. You take care, you hear me?”

  Max smiled despite himself. “I will. Later, brother.”

  He ended the call and threw his cell next to the remote before he changed into a clean pair of shorts, grabbed his Vans, and yanked them onto his feet. He slipped his wallet into his pocket, collected his rental keys, and lifted the painting that had been propped up against his room wall for a number of weeks, hoping it was the icebreaker he and Grace needed.

  As she always did, Grace opened the door to her house with a beaming smile. The sound of Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” was playing in the background. How ironic.

  Max smiled back, fidgeting and unexpectedly nervous. “Hey.” His eyes traveled down her strapless blue sundress to her bare feet. He smirked at the blue polish on her toes.

  “Were we supposed to be meeting for a run today?” She frowned. “I thought you had to work with Vince.”

  “No. I mean, yeah, I did work,” Max replied, flustered. “We finished early so, I, um, I wanted to bring you this.” He held up the painting she’d commented on the day she’d brought pizza to his room; the day she’d let him see her naked chest, suck on her nipples, and—

  “Really?” she exclaimed, her eyes wide and excited. “I can have this?”

  Max shrugged, handing it to her. “Sure. I said so, didn’t I?”

  Grace grinned. “Thank you. It’s wonderful.” She spent a moment looking at the canvas of gold, browns, and caramels, and a soft look of something that made Max’s stomach clench flittered across her face. “I know exactly where it’ll look amazing.” She glanced up and tilted her head toward the interior of the house. “I have to be at the bar in a few hours, but you wanna come in? I’ve just made some lemonade.”

  Max took a deep breath and nodded. “Sounds good.”

  The house was truly fantastic now that Grace had all her furniture. Her photographer’s eye made sure that all the deco was tasteful and she’d utilized the space perfectly. Max took a moment to appreciate the soft colors of green and cream in which she’d painted the sitting room, and the deep brown leather sofa and light wood coffee table in the center of it. A green rug lay on the floor by a large bookcase of the same beech-wood tones while the walls were punctuated with sepia photographs that Max assumed Grace had taken, leading up the bare wood stairs to the upper level. The July sunshine filled the space through the French windows, which Grace had propped open, bringing the natural colors of the surrounding forest into her home.

  He noticed a canvas photograph of two kids on a beach, a boy and a girl—a teenage Grace—neither of them older than sixteen, arms around each other, the braces on the boy’s teeth clear to see, his legs, like his body, long and gangly.

  “My brother. He looks entirely different now. He took a long time to grow into himself.”

  “He’s younger than you?” Max asked.

  “Yeah, a year, but he’s the one who looks after me.” She looked over the other photographs in the room. “I need to get some recent photos of him, but he’s about as fond of having his picture taken as you are.”

  Max’s gaze moved to another photograph, this one in a wooden frame. It was black-and-white and appeared sun damaged, leaving the image faded in parts. A tall black man with an exceptionally cool Afro, dressed in tight-fitted shirt and jeans, stood with his arm around a striking dark-haired white woman whose smile was as big as the one Max saw on Grace’s face when she laughed.

  “Mom and Dad,” she said softly, looking fondly at the picture. “Mom was from Preston County. She met dad in DC. They were together for twenty years before he passed away. Mom managed ten years without him.” She glanced up at Max. “Heart disease.” She looked back at the picture. “Kai and I always believed she died of a broken heart.”

  “She’s beautiful,” Max murmured.

  “Yeah, she was.”

  Max followed Grace into the kitchen, where she handed him a cold glass of lemonade.

  “Mom’s recipe. Homemade,” she said with a wink.

  “I should hope so,” Max replied, taking a long sip. The silence stretched out between them, fizzing and sparking like it always did when they were alone. Max wondered fleetingly if that was why Grace had retreated from him. It was certainly an odd feeling. He leaned a hip against the kitchen counter, watching her as she pretended to wipe condensation off her glass. “So,” he began, placing his glass down. “I was thinking maybe we could talk.”

  Her eyes snapped to his, worry creasing their edges. “Talk?”

  Max swallowed and cleared his throat. “I wanted to make sure that everything was still okay. You know, with us.” He gestured with a finger between them.

  Grace blinked. “Us?”

  “Yeah.” He exhaled and dropped his shoulders. “I mean, you seem . . . different and— We’re good, right?”

  Grace shook her head gently from side to side. “Why on earth would you think we weren’t?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “You’ve been nothing but amazing, Max. You’ve been a good friend.” She licked her lips. “A great friend.”

  A smile tugged at the corners of Max’s mouth. Grace put her glass next to his and moved closer, her gaze on her fingers as they danced along the side of the counter. “I know I’ve been a little distant since the cabin. And I’m sorry. I was just so damned mortified by what happened the night we went out that I didn’t know whether you wanted anything more to happen or how to even broach the subject.”

  Max nudged her foot with his own. “Hey, I told you. You can talk to me about anything.” He watched her shoulders relax. “And, seriously, woman, I still want the ‘anything more’ to happen.”

  “Yeah?”

  Max rolled his eyes. “Pfft, shut up.”

  Grace’s heavy expression lifted. “Even though I vomited and made a spectacle of myself?”

  “Even then. And trust me, if you wear underwear like that every time you vomit, I’d absolutely be okay with that. Gives me something nice to look at while I’m holding your hair back, right?”

  They both laughed.

  “Okay,” Grace said on a long breath. She regarded him for a moment. “Okay.”

  Max felt the anxiety he’d been harboring about their conversation drift away on the breeze whispering through the house. “So the place looks awesome.” He pointed to a part of the kitchen wall that he’d rebuilt and plastered. “Especially that bit. That part’s my favorite.”

  Grace sipped her drink before almost choking on it in excitement. “Oh, hey! I need to show you something.” Putting her empty glass in the sink, she grabbed Max’s wrist and pulled him toward the stairs. “I forgot to tell you!”

  Max chuckled as he followed her up to the first level of the house. She released him and quickly closed a door that was slightly ajar, looking embarrassed. Max looked at her in question. “Dead bodies?”

  “Not quite. My darkroom. I’ve been working on the photographs for my show.”

  “Yeah?” Max asked excitedly. “The ones of me? Can I see?”

  Grace shook her head firmly. “Not yet. The collection’s not finished. I have something better to
show you.” She led him down the corridor to the room Max knew to be her bedroom.

  Better indeed.

  She pushed the door open, stepped into the room, and opened her arms wide. “Ta-da!”

  The last time Max had seen her bedroom, when he’d been hauling all the heavy-ass furniture around for her, Grace’s place of sleep had been a blowup mattress on the floor. Now in its place was a wrought-iron framed bed, decorated in a white comforter and stacks of pillows. The fucking thing was huge.

  “Wow,” he murmured, stepping closer.

  “Right? Isn’t it awesome?” Grace bounced around the bed to the other side and clambered onto it. She lay down and patted the space next to her. “Here. Try it.”

  Seeing her on her back all bare arms and legs was a real test of Max’s resolve. He cocked his head to the side and lifted a curious eyebrow.

  “Oh, stop,” she chastised with a smirk. “I just want you to feel it.”

  Max barked a laugh. “Shit, it’s been a long time since I’ve heard a woman say that to me.”

  He toed off his shoes and eyed her suspiciously. He pointed to the bed. “Seriously, though, are you propositioning me? Because, I’ll be honest, I’m totally fucking fine with that.”

  “Just shush and lie down.”

  Relaxing, Max sat down on the bed before swinging his legs onto it. He launched a couple of pillows down to the foot of it so they didn’t smother him to death and adjusted himself into a comfortable position: on his back, his hands laced on his stomach. “Damn,” he muttered, shuffling a little. “This shit is comfortable.”

  “I told you,” Grace replied, her words laced with smugness. Max turned his head to watch her. “I love it,” she added, closing her eyes. “I’ve never had a huge bed all to myself before.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I can starfish and no one can stop me.”

  She moved her arm outward, showing Max how she could starfish like it was her job. Sure enough, even with him next to her in the monster bed, she had room to spread out. Max copied her as she moved her arms and legs, as if they were making snow angels on the duvet, and her hand touched his. They both paused. Grace glanced over at him and gently rubbed Max’s pinkie with her own.

  The contact made the ball of desire in his belly twist and the muscle in his jaw tic as he clenched his teeth together. He exhaled heavily and shuffled some more into the ultracomfy bedding, trying to ignore the way the atmosphere around them changed, sharpened, and how it caused his pulse to thunder through his body.

  “So I have a question,” Grace whispered.

  “Shoot.”

  She moved closer, rolling slowly onto her side, her breath warm on his cheek. “What if I was?”

  His eyes slid over to hers, though her focus was on his chest. She watched, seemingly fascinated as it lifted and dropped with the heavy breaths he was taking. “What if you was what?”

  Their eyes met gradually and Max’s lungs squeezed. “What if I was . . .” She lifted a shoulder. “Propositioning you?”

  He stared at her for a beat, dragging air into lungs that were now apparently finding it really fucking hard to do their job. “You teasing me again?” The words sounded ever so slightly bitter off his tongue, which wasn’t Max’s intention, but, shit, he couldn’t cope with another game of look but don’t touch. He wanted to touch; he wanted to touch her everywhere.

  Grace lifted onto her forearm so that she was above him. “No,” she whispered with a gentle shake of her head. “I’m not teasing.”

  It was as though a vacuum pulled all the air from the room as she spoke. Wordless, Max pushed his head back into the pillows beneath it, making sure that he could see all of her face, trying to detect any hint of dishonesty. As was always the way with Grace, he found none. His gaze traveled over her, starting with her bright eyes, which were always truthful, to her mouth so plump and eager, down to her neck and her fucking awesome chest. “You sure?”

  “When you look at me like that?” she breathed. “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “How am I looking at you?”

  “Like you want me.”

  “I do.”

  She moved gradually, sitting up. “I know.” Max made to sit up with her, but her small hand on his chest pushed him back down. “Stay.”

  All Max could do was nod. He watched her hand move over his chest and down to his stomach, slow and careful until it reached the hem of his T-shirt. She pulled it up, exposing his skin, which she touched reverently. This was okay, Max thought, breathing deeply. He was prepared for this. She’d done this before.

  What she hadn’t done before, however, was place those fucking stupendous lips against his stomach and kiss him. Fuck, her mouth was so damned soft. He released a low grunt when she did it again and her mouth moved across his clenched muscles, around his belly button, and up toward his chest, pushing his T-shirt up the farther she went.

  Max lifted a little from the bed, pulling the damned thing over his head, and dropped it to the floor. Carefully, with his fingers, he pushed her hair back, not holding her—knowing her aversion to being restrained in any way—but keeping it back from her face. He wanted to see her, see her explore his body. He wanted to capture every single moment because, fuck, he’d never seen anything as erotic as Grace taking control. He fisted the bedsheets with his free hand, clenching and releasing, instead of succumbing to the overwhelming need he had to grab her, throw her down, and have his way with her.

  As if reading his mind, she hummed with a smile into his skin and Jesus fucking Christ when her tongue came out to taste his nipple, Max almost leaped from the bed.

  “You taste good,” she said into his chest, her fingers moving through the hair that speckled it. She sighed. “I want to taste you all over.”

  “Goddamn,” Max uttered, grimacing at his uncomfortable hard-on. His hips flexed with the need for any type of friction. “Do what you want,” he urged. “Please. Anything.”

  She glanced down at his predicament. “Can I . . . would it be okay if I undressed you?”

  Max scoffed and quickly pushed the button through the hole on his shorts, eager to get her started. “Grace. Don’t ask.” He opened his arms wide, offering himself to her white-hot stare. “Just touch.”

  She kneeled up and clasped the fly zipper, pulling it down too fucking slowly. Max lifted his hips and pushed his fingers into the waistband at his lower back, helping her pull the godforsaken things down his thighs. He kicked them off his feet, leaving him in nothing but his boxer briefs, tented with his want. Max bit his lip when her finger traced the outline of him through his underwear.

  “You’re so hard,” she murmured.

  “You have no fucking idea,” he replied, holding back an incredulous laugh. “Take them off me.”

  For a split second, Max saw her waver, he saw anxiety and doubt, and his stomach dropped. He opened his mouth to reassure her, to tell her that, despite him and his cock wanting nothing more than to have her bouncing all over it, it was okay, that they didn’t have to do anything, that they’d take it slow, but, God bless her, he didn’t get the chance.

  Without preamble, Grace pushed her small fingers into the elastic of his underwear and pulled. Max didn’t hesitate. He lifted up, allowing her to rid him of them, and kicked them off his feet to the end of the bed.

  Naked and hard as hell, Max lay back and allowed Grace to stare at him.

  Her green gaze wandered from the tip of his toes to the crown of his head and back again, roaming over his cock in such a way that Max was pretty certain he could have come from that particular look alone.

  “You’re . . . exquisite,” she whispered, reaching out a hand to caress his erection. He growled at the sensation of someone other than himself touching—it had been too fucking long—the gentle stroke, the throb that craved more, harder, firmer.

  He swallowed back a moan when she gripped him and slid her hand up and down, cautious yet determined. “What the hell’s wrong with this picture?�
��

  With her eyes still on his dick in her hand she replied, “Absolutely nothing.”

  He laughed gently, bringing her eyes back to his. “Grace.” He lifted a hand and stroked her thigh. “I’m naked and you’re not.” She glanced down at herself as though surprised by the fact. “Let me see you,” he urged. “You’re in control here, Grace. I’ll do whatever you want, but I want to see you.” He squeezed her leg. Still on her knees, she released him, appearing to consider him carefully. “I’ve got you,” he murmured. “Trust me.”

  She took a deep breath and lifted her dress up and over her head, leaving her in a pair of black panties and nothing else. Her hair fell down her shoulders and back and her dark skin was so fucking beautiful in the soft light that filtered through the white lace, which hung at her bedroom window. Her scars—her tiger stripes, as Max had come to call them—moved like ripples on a pond as she discarded her dress to the floor.

  “Perfect,” he said softly when he saw her fidget under his appreciative stare. Max couldn’t help but touch. He reached out and cupped her tits, loving their weight in his hands and the pebbling of her nipples against his palms. “Fuck, yeah.”

  “What do you want?” Grace gasped, arching her back and pushing more of herself into his grasp.

  “Whatever you fucking want,” he replied before licking her stomach.

  “Max, tell me.” The slight pleading in her voice brought Max’s head up. “I want to know. Please?”

  Max moved back, resting his weight on his elbow. He rubbed a hand through his hair as a barrage of filthy, hot, and sweaty images assaulted his mind. He chuckled nervously. “Grace, this is all on you. I don’t think—”

  “Max,” she interrupted, placing her hand back on his cock.

  He swallowed and closed his eyes as he spoke. “I want you to ride my face. I want you to come all over my mouth because I’m desperate to taste you. Then I want you to do the same to my cock, because I don’t think I can wait another second not being inside of you.”