by Holley Trent
“Not a big deal. If such a small thing can make someone feel better, I’m happy to do it. When I went through therapy after Daddy died, one of the things I learned about myself was if I was really feeling down, I could make myself a little more cheerful if I tried to cheer someone else up.”
“You know, that’s what we were arguing about before you made your call.”
She raised a brow. “The drawing? You didn’t want him to ask me to draw your mom?”
“No. I think that was actually good for him. What I’m more annoyed at is he’s not doing anything to pick up the pieces. You did therapy so you found some coping mechanisms. With Dad, it’s been nearly fifteen years since my mom died and he’s still carrying on as if she’s going to come back any day now and need her stuff. Her dresses are still hanging in the closet just the way she left him. Her hairbrush is exactly how she left it on the dresser. I doubt he’ll ever get married again.”
She turned in her seat to face him. “Does that bother you? I think my mother is posturing to remarry any day now and I hate the idea. I know it’s not fair of me to wish loneliness on her, but I can’t help the way I feel.”
He turned his head slightly to catch sight of her in his periphery. From what he could tell, she believed people only got one good chance at love. He happened to agree.
“No, I’m not bothered by his choice. I’m actually thrilled he loved my mom so much he can’t get over her. They were in love from the time they were children, so I’m not surprised he doesn’t know what to do with himself. I just think he needs to find a healthier outlet for his obsession. He’ll be much happier in a clean house with my mom’s things folded up neatly into chests and stored in the attic. He’s just making himself miserable, as if he’s punishing himself for not being the one to die first.”
She nodded and looked out her window at the passing scenery.
“So, we’ll head up to Cavan and spend the night there, yeah? There’s a church I’ve arranged for us to visit in the morning that has some records we can pore over.”
“Fine.”
She fell asleep in the car before he could even find a parking space at the restaurant he’d had in mind. The travel exhaustion had finally caught up to her. He smiled and shook his head at the sight of the sleeping beauty and just backed out and headed down the road to the inn he’d reserved rooms at. He hated to wake her, but when she didn’t respond to the sound of his car door slamming or of her own being opened, he reached across her and unbuckled her seatbelt. He stared at her for a moment as he thought and stroked her cheek with his thumb. Her eyelids fluttered open and she bolted upright as if she’d forgotten where she was.
“Dinner?” she asked, patting around with her hands, likely in search of her purse.
“No.” He held out his arm and let her use it for balance as she exited the vehicle. “I went ahead brought you to the inn so you can get some sleep. After that heavy lunch and tea, you’ll probably be okay until morning.”
She rubbed her eyes and rolled her head around on her neck with a sigh. “I’m genetically encoded to argue with you, but too tired to fight over food right now. I like the idea of a big breakfast.” She accepted the arm he offered and climbed out. “You must be pretty tired yourself, working on three hours of sleep.”
“Yes, well, I’ve built up quite a sleep deficit the past week, actually.” He lifted the trunk lid and pulled out their smaller bags. “I’ll catch up sooner or later.” Later, he thought. He wanted to spend every minute he could with her so that even if she left, she’d want to return for good. She needed to see he was good for her, and that he had a plan for their happiness, but he needed time to prove it.
He carried her bag to her room, where she sat on the edge of her bed and watched in silence as he checked the quality of the locks on her door and windows.
“Do you need anything?” he asked while she heeled off her flats.
She pulled her legs up beneath her and crossed her arms over her chest. “Grant?”
“Hmm?”
“You said you’re not especially conservative.”
He blew out a breath and hoped they weren’t creeping into a conversation about politics. She didn’t really want to go there. He leaned against the wall between the bedside and bathroom. “I’m not, on most things.” He forced a smile. What was she getting at?
She leaned back, propped up by her arms, and cocked her head to the side. Her hair had come loose sometime since arriving in the room and it fell over the shoulders of his jacket onto the quilt top like some ochre waterfall. He liked her in his clothes, though he’d liked her even more in none at all.
“Why do you keep booking us into separate rooms? Was that your plan for the entire trip?”
His mouth fell open, but he quickly sprang it back closed before.
“Is it that you’re religious?” she prodded. “You’re Catholic, right?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does ‘not exactly’ mean?”
He pulled his bottom lip between his teeth while he thought. “I suppose my general framework–how I treat others and my belief in a greater power–is derived from Catholicism. However, the Catholic church doesn’t seem to evolve quite as fast as its adherents, so many of my views don’t jive with the Good Book.”
“Your religion sounds a lot like mine,” she said still looking at him with that same accusatory expression. She sat upright to unbutton the jacket and shrug out of it. If she felt anything like him, she had to be burning up.
“Maybe…” He allowed his voice to trail off, as the sight of her fingers flitting at her throat to loosen the top buttons of her blouse were quite a distraction. “We can sit down sometime and pick it all apart and see where exactly we meet up.”
“I suppose that’s important if we’re really going to have a go at this,” she said, tossing his own words back at him. “Don’t want any surprises, right?”
He narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean ‘really going to’? We are, aren’t we?”
She allowed her blouse to fall down her arms and pushed it off the bed onto the floor. Up top, all that remained was the inadequate camisole he’d been cursing all day, and hair frothing around her heart-shaped face. “You’re not going to soil my virtue any more than it already has been if you share my bed.”
He just stared at her and those brazen nipples, unsure of what to do.
“Did you change your mind about wanting to make love to me?”
“No, of course not.”
“Okay, because I worried your Catholic guilt had kicked in. See, guilt is the part of Catholicism I don’t subscribe to.” She pulled her camisole up from the hem and over her head.
He fell to his knees there at the bedside. “Fuck, Carla, don’t do this to me.”
She stood and unfastened the button of her linen shorts. “Do what? Want to be touched?” She unzipped them and let the shorts fall to the floor as she made her way around to the bedside in only her underwear. Instinctively, he wrapped his arms around her thighs and pulled her closer.
“I’ll worship every inch of you,” he said, pressing his lips against her panties where her thighs joined and taking in her spicy scent. His arousal was immediate. “Jesus.”
“So, do it. Please.”
“Carla, I…”
“Please.” The urgency in her voice was so thick, the longing on her face so urgent. He couldn’t deny her. Not completely, anyway. He looped his thumbs through the sides of her panties and pulled them down without once breaking her gaze.
* * * *
Carla was overwhelmed by sensation, paralyzed by emotion. Here was a man–very near a stranger–who knew just when to tease, just where to touch. She felt like some simple creature with an instruction manual printed on her skin, for the way he meticulously worked her over.
Grant wasn’t the kind of man who dove in and did his perfunctory licks and crawled on top of her ready to seal the deal. He seemed to be making a study of her body, dancing the pa
ds of his fingers so lightly up her thighs that she shuddered and tried to close her legs in some sort of backward reflex.
He hooked an arm around the backs of her knees and dragged her bottom down to the edge of the bed where he knelt and parted her thighs yet again.
When his touches stopped, she gazed down her torso to find him staring at her face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, pushing up to her elbows.
He nudged her back down. “Waiting on someone to knock on the door and interrupt.”
They listened to the silence. Every single one of her muscles seemed to coil in anticipation as he paused with his hands on his knees. He seemed perfectly calm. Too calm. Too comfortable in his own naked skin.
She nudged his ribs with her heel. “You’re killing me.”
He made no verbal response and merely complied when she laced her fingers through the back of his hair and drew his face so close, he had no choice but to lick or get out of the way. He licked, and it was divine, but…
“Grant, I’m not made of glass.”
He growled and lifted her legs over his shoulders, wrapping his arms around her thighs. “You’re going to feel like it in a minute.”
Right.
She put her head back and closed her eyes as his tongue zigzagged down her slit and lapped around her entrance. He stretched her swollen nub away from her body between his teeth. The gentle abrading made her clamp his face between her thighs. Undeterred, he put his lips where his teeth had been and worked one arm free of her legs’ vice hold. A single digit probed her, followed by a second trying her out for size.
When he scissored his fingers inside her and increased his suction on her clitoris, she gasped and loosened her thighs as she tried reaching down and pulling him up to her. He didn’t budge. He gave her hands a kind shooing and pushed her by the belly so her back was against the bed once more.
He brought her near the brink repeatedly, sucking, flicking, nipping and generally giving her toes reason to cramp from curling.
She dug her nails into what she could reach of his biceps. “Grant…please!”
He pulled back an inch and blew a tickling breath on her drenching sex.
She dug deeper. “Damn it!”
He chuckled and unhanded her legs to slowly stand. “What were you saying about glass, love?”
“You’re an awful person,” she said, even as she scooted back, hooked her feet around his waist, and urged him down onto her body.
He climbed onto the bed between her parted legs and held himself up on his arms over her, staring down with that damned smirk. “Am I really awful?”
She gave him a forceful, ineffectual pull downward, but he relented anyway and lowered himself. His lips touched first, then she felt the weighty hardness of his shaft teasing at her entrance. She tasted herself on his lips and tongue and her arousal reaccelerated. That’s what she wanted: him inside of her. She wanted to be brought, finally, with her legs wrapped around his back.
His thrusts weren’t forthcoming. She pulled her mouth free of his and begged, “Please?”
“Are you taking anything?” he whispered before kissing down her neck toward the breasts he hadn’t paid nearly enough attention to. The scruff of his two-day beard gave her sensitive skin an erotic sort of tickle. She wanted even more sensation.
“No. Please.” Clamping his torso between her thighs, she angled him back up so his face was over hers, his tip at her opening once more. He didn’t move again until she opened her eyes to see the conflicted look on his face.
What’s he thinking?
She didn’t have time to ponder it further because he drove himself into her all at once. The intrusion made her gasp as she’d underestimated how his girth would feel inside her, touching everything at once.
He just lay there on top of her for a moment. The end of him pressed against her cervix with the tip of his thumb mashing against her clitoris. “Fuck, I’m not going to last,” he said. The ends of his curls tickled the side of her face.
When she could find her voice, she whispered, “So don’t last.” She laid light kisses down his jaw. “Just bring me.”
He slid out and forced his way back in with a bit more ease with a grunt.
She moaned. “More of that.”
He flattened himself against her for one more scorching kiss before saying against her lips, “Ride me. It’ll be a bit more gentle for you.”
“I don’t want gentle,” she said even as he unstraddled her.
“Yes, you do, because if it’s not gentle now, it’ll be the last time for a long while.” He rolled onto his back and eased her down onto him.
She closed her eyes and smiled with contentment as he kneaded her nipples between his fingers.
“You do realize I’m not wearing anything, love?”
“Mm hmm. It’s okay. You’re the only one.” She leaned over and sucked his plump bottom lip between her teeth as he took it in stride and worked his hips up and down. “Just throw me off when you’re ready. I trust you to pull out.”
* * * *
Carla thought if she died then and there she wouldn’t care. She had no desire to extricate herself from their spooning position, even to clean up the wet stickiness he had deposited at the apex of her thighs. What they were doing was risky, but she didn’t really care. He had awakened her by twining his legs with hers and taking her from behind on their sides. She didn’t care if she was a mess. She was so blissed-out, it was like she’d taken some sort of drug she didn’t want to come down from. Grant’s dick obviously administered a sedative.
“I could get used to that,” she said.
He repositioned behind her.
She rolled onto her back to see him sitting up and stretching his arms over his head. The muscles in his abs pulled and drew attention to the diagonals pointing down to what hid beneath the sheets. Her libido sparked once more, and she averted her eyes from his body. She had appointments to keep, and as lovely as getting trapped beneath his body sounded, she’d come to Ireland for a reason.
“Well, I hope so. I want lots of kids, so that sort of necessitates a lot of shagging, huh?” He gave her a knavish wink and leaned back against the headboard with a smile.
She propped herself up onto her elbow. Surely this man–this scholar–wasn’t a breeder who wanted a bunch of kids back to back. The idea sent a chill of panic through her, though she couldn’t fathom why. Perhaps because she’d never considered that a possibility for her own life? “How many is ‘lots’?”
He shrugged and reached over to the nightstand to pick up his phone. He scrolled through his missed calls. “At least three. Maybe four.”
“Four.”
“Tentative. If one and two are little hellions, I reserve the right to change my mind, but I like the idea of them having a bunch of siblings. Childhood was lonely for me.”
“And when do you see yourself starting this brood?”
He chuckled and put his phone down. “I’m not doing it by myself, love. Nature doesn’t work that way.” He pushed her hair back from her face and tucked it behind her ears. “Why the face?”
“Having a bunch of kids sort of gets in the way of having a career. Especially that many.”
“Well, it makes sense for one parent to be at home, love.”
She pulled her face back from his fingers grazing her cheek. “I assume since you’re tenure-tracked you mean me being the one at home.”
He seemed far too calm.
She sat up, yanked the sheets up over her chest–although that cat had already been let out of the bag–and gave him a nasty glare.
“Yes. That’s my plan, if you’ll have me. Get you here so we can get married and settle in.”
“And have a kid immediately?” The marriage part didn’t bother her so much. Hell, with what they’d spent the night doing, she’d probably already shot herself in the foot.
He shrugged. “Whenever it happens, love. I’m not going to get much more stable than I am now.”<
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“And what about me? What about my career?”
He turned off the side of the bed and strode nude toward his duffel bag. She tried not to get distracted by his muscular rear. It took a lot of willpower.
“You’d put it on hold until the kids are all in school.” He sounded so casual about it–as if that was the way it would be, no questions asked. After fishing around in his carry-on bag, he found a toiletry case and headed toward the bathroom with it. “I’m going to shower and shave. You want to join me?”
“No, actually, I don’t.” She wrapped the sheet around her body and stomped over to her pile of clothes. “I’ll shower in your room.”
“Did I offend you somehow?” He leaned against the doorframe with a blasé expression on his face.
She wanted to slap him. He didn’t even care that she was frantic. Maybe his crazy was leeching out again.
“I didn’t peg you as a chauvinist. You’re as bad as my brothers!”
He shrugged. “I’m sorry. I love you, I really do, and I respect that you don’t agree with my family-planning goals, but I beg that you meet me on this one. It’s important to me.”
Her face flushed, but for once it wasn’t from embarrassment. The Bruce Banner was coming out. “And you won’t compromise? It’s big-ass family or nothing?”
He stepped into the bathroom and ran some water in the sink. “How would that compromise go, love?” he asked around his toothbrush. “You keep pushing it off another year and another and what? I don’t want to be old with regrets. I don’t want to be like my parents and have a twelve-year-old and think maybe we should try for one more, but then it doesn’t work out. You can’t go back and have the kids later. You can always go back to work.”
“You’re absolutely right, Grant. I can go back to work. I’m going back on Monday. In America.”
He spit and shut off the water. “For fuck’s sake, Carla. You’re making this more difficult than it has to be.” He stood in the door and gave her a dark look.
“So, I should just concede and obey?”