by Elley Arden
Grey took another bite of the apple, savoring the crisp, bitter taste. Long after he swallowed, a sweetness remained on his tongue. He decided it was satisfaction.
Everything was falling into place. Including Nel.
He smiled and tossed the apple core into a contractor bag hanging from the knob on the basement door. He still wasn’t happy about Paul tagging along to guard his little sister, but there were ways around that.
Slipping his phone from the pocket of his best blue jeans, Grey called up Nel’s contact information. He’d texted with her a few times before about supplies and work times, but he’d never given her a ring. Until now.
He tapped send and put the phone to his ear, his blood buzzing with anticipation.
“Hello?” She sounded far away and hesitant.
“I want to see you.” He cut straight to the chase.
“Hold on a minute, please.” Noises muffled on Nel’s end, and then she whispered, “You’ll see me tonight.”
“With your bodyguard,” he complained, but the smile on his face kept his voice even.
“Try four.”
Four bodyguards? Grey’s smile flipped upside down.
“My brothers,” she continued. “Paul thinks I need the help.”
“You mean the protection.”
“Yeah. They mean well.”
Oddly enough, Grey knew they did. And once again he was filled with the same confusing mix of entertainment and satisfaction at her brothers’ care of her. No, he wasn’t pleased three more strangers would be lurking around his house, but right now he had a different focus.
“Meet me for lunch,” he said.
“I don’t usually take a lunch.”
“Take one today.”
“Why?” He heard a smile in her voice.
“You don’t want me to answer that.”
“I don’t?”
“Nope, because if I do, you’ll be so turned on you won’t be able to work.” He chuckled. “On second thought, maybe I will answer that, and you can cut out early.”
“I’ll see you at noon.” Her breathy voice wasn’t helping to quell his anticipation.
“I’ll be waiting.”
It was the longest two hours of Grey’s life. He played with the dogs, straightened the guestroom he’d been calling his own, and then paced the floors for a good half hour, looking out the window in five-minute intervals. When he saw her car in the driveway, his stomach ended up in his throat.
He was always a ball of nerves before a big game.
She stepped out of her car, and he was pushed back in time to the day they met, when she was wearing a suit and an all-business expression. He hadn’t seen her in anything but sweatshirt and jeans since.
His brain registered a knee-length skirt, showing off shapely legs and bad-girl shiny black heels. Lust dislodged the ball of nerves in his throat, and he groaned. He wasn’t sure he was man enough to handle her, but he was damn sure going to find out.
Again he waited, but this time was even more painful, because he could watch while he waited, watch her hips swing as she walked, watch her loose curls swirl in the breeze. Every muscle in his body hardened, preparing for action.
Before she even reached the front stoop, he was sweating. Not giving her the chance to knock, he opened the front door and with an arm to her waist, dragged her inside.
“Hey,” she sort of squealed, slamming against his chest, sending a puff of soft perfume in his direction. “Down, boy.”
“Not a chance,” he growled against her lips.
He heard the thud of her purse hitting the floor, and felt her arms wrap round his neck, and then her mouth opened over his and their tongues entwined, satisfying the ache that had been growing inside of him since last night had been cut short.
There’d be no interruptions now.
The next thing Grey knew they were standing in the middle of the guest room, sucking the air out of each other, his hands shoved inside her suit coat, her hands under his T-shirt, clawing at his back. He didn’t like the rampant pace. So much of his life seemed beyond his control and worthy of forgetting, but not this.
He loosened his grip around her waist, dragged his mouth from hers and breathed. “Are you in a hurry?” he asked, moving on to nibble her ear.
“Are you?”
“I don’t want to be.” He looked at her then, her mouth swollen and irritated from the friction of his face, and for the first time since the season ended, he wished he didn’t have the beard. He smoothed the splotches with gentle swipes of his thumbs. “Unless you have an incredibly short lunch hour and an obligation on the other end.”
“I told Rena I had to meet a guy about a color copier and I didn’t know how long I’d be.” Her tongue darted out to taste his thumb when he brushed across her bottom lip. “I have time.”
“Then let’s slow this thing down,” he said, smiling, taking her by the hand and leading her to the bed.
Grey sat on the edge of the mattress and pulled Nel to him until she was lodged between his open thighs; her standing, him sitting. Eye to eye.
It took a couple breaths before Grey moved again, unbuttoning the two silver tabs holding her suit coat together. Everything about him was slow and precise, everything except his thrashing heart. With a flick of his fingers, the suit coat slipped from her arms.
Grey palmed her belly and breasts covered by a crisp white blouse, and the reverence of the motion took his desire from fierce to irrational. He touched her everywhere, over the top of her clothes, smoothing hands down her arms and along the bumps of her back, riding the curves of her ass draped in wool, slipping lower until he reached the bare skin behind her knees, her calves.
With his face pressed against her belly, his every breath was her; a soft sunny scent like a Gulf Coast afternoon. Damn if it didn’t make him hungry for more of her.
He licked at the fabric of her shirt, sucking her belly gently while his palms and fingers memorized every slope of her calves. Lower and lower until he slid massive hands around her ankles, swallowing the small bones whole.
The pressure inside of him built, and he questioned the wisdom of moving this slow. That was when he realized her fingers tightened in his hair, and her rapid breathing filled the room. What the hell was happening here?
He straightened, feeling drugged, and he didn’t have time to process anything more than Nel’s kiss. She gripped the back of his head, forcing their mouths together in the hardest, hottest kiss he’d ever been part of.
And then she cut it off, sliding her hands to his cheeks, holding him still. “Let’s speed it up a bit, shall we?” She added a grin as she darted her hands down his back, yanking his T-shirt over his head. Her gaze rolled downward, and her eyebrows arched. “Mmm, mmm, mmm. You sure don’t disappoint a girl.”
She reached out, tracing a finger along the center line of his chest, and his skin burned.
“I thought we were speeding things up?”
She laughed, slipped hands behind her, and the skirt fell to the floor. “Like that?”
“Like that.”
Then she set fingers to the pearl buttons on her blouse.
Grey was mesmerized by the motion, the sureness in her steps as she walked out of her skirt and opened her blouse. With sunlight streaming in from an uncovered window and a devilish grin on her gorgeous face, she tugged on her collar, and then rolled back her shoulders, letting the blouse slide down her arms, but catching it with her hands. He stared at a simple, unadorned bra and panties a shade darker than the cream of her skin, and it became the sexiest lingerie he’d ever seen. Probably because she stood before him in nothing but that lingerie and heels.
The pressure peaked, making his skin itch and his eyes burn. He was seconds away from reaching out and pulling her in, but she
caught him off-guard with palms to his chest and a shove that sent him falling to the mattress.
He thanked his lucky stars when she crawled over him. Because, hell yeah, he had a thing for pushy women. He just didn’t know it until he met Nel.
• • •
Nel planted her lips to Grey’s lips and sprawled over him, picking up where they’d left off last night on the great room floor. She liked this position, liked the way he groped her butt while his body heated her from beneath.
Of course, today was a little different from last night. There was less clothing. She ran her hands across his hard, wide shoulders and rode the curves of his muscular upper arms, all the while kissing him slowly, swallowing his every breath.
She still couldn’t believe she was doing this, but it was too late to argue.
Warm hands slid beneath her underwear, holding her tighter against his solid body. She dropped her lips to his chin and his throat, as he slid his hands over her back, leaving tingles in his wake, tingles that melted inhibition and hesitation into wicked desire, pooling it at her core.
This needed to go somewhere — fast. Pushing palms to the mattress, she lifted so she could kiss her way down his chest.
He unhooked her bra, the wisp of fabric slipping down her arms, landing on his stomach. She maneuvered out of it, tossing it aside while he took her breasts in his hands and thumbed her already hardened nipples. She bit her lip and groaned.
Even with the push to speed things up, it was painstakingly slow. All of it. And something about the speed smacked of an emotional stickiness that was confusing as hell. But now was not the time to wonder about it. Her brain cells weren’t exactly operating at full capacity. So she stopped thinking, sitting to straddle his thighs, feeling the burn in her groin from his body’s width. But the burn was overshadowed by the slivers of pleasure he coaxed from her breasts.
She reached for the button on his jeans, and then his zipper. “We should have done this while you were standing up,” she said with a shaky, gratified sigh.
A second later she was breathless and on her back, with Grey on all fours above her. He devoured her with kisses, while their hands battled each other to free him from his pants. And then he was naked, with her hands on his hard, bare hips, and he was tugging at her underwear, lifting her with his strength.
The panties made it as far as her knees before she wiggled out from under him and kicked them aside, all while somehow maintaining lip contact.
“I want top,” she said in between kisses.
“I won’t argue.” And he was on his back again, pulling her over him.
In all her years, she’d never … Her over-stimulated brain didn’t try to complete the thought.
Reaching between them, Nel took him in her hand, milking him slowly, listening to his breathing hitch. She let the lustful control whip her insides into a desirous frenzy, and when he slipped a finger between her folds and stroked her, too, she nearly broke. Gasping for air, rocking her hips, every inch of her burned with outrageous need.
“Condom,” she rasped.
He dropped a hand from her hip and slid it beneath a pillow, retrieving a blue packet that he brought straight to his teeth.
Pure animal. The thought brought her to the edge, and she gasped again, grabbed the packet from his lips and took charge. She rolled the condom into place, while ogling the magnificent man who was at her mercy. Did he know she was at his, too?
She opened her mouth and drew a breath as he gripped her hips and slid inside of her.
Heaven.
Perfection.
Meant to be.
The list involuntarily lengthened as she moved above him, his fingers strumming the same slow, steady pulse on the hot, wet flesh between her overstretched legs. It didn’t seem fair, that a man who made her feel like this would be here and gone, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could — or should — do about it.
“You better plan to take a lunch break for as long as I’m here,” he said, his voice rumbling.
She would’ve laughed if she wasn’t already moaning in anticipation of the perfect orgasm.
He slid a palm along her side to her breast. One hand up, one hand down. Three more breaths, and the combination of sensations dumped her over the edge, filling her with wave after wave of euphoria.
When he tumbled, too, pulling her closer, burying his face in the crook of her neck, she didn’t know what hit her.
But she knew one thing … she’d never look at her lunch hour as a waste of sixty minutes again.
• • •
Six hours later, Nel tried to hide her smile from Paul as they pulled into Grey’s driveway. She didn’t want her brothers to know she’d been here already today. What she did on her lunch break was none of their business anyway.
Joe’s mini-van pulled alongside Paul’s work van, and the rest of her brothers piled out.
Grey had no idea what he was in for. Thankfully, he was too sated to argue when she’d brought it up while they were still in bed. They really did need the extra help.
Paul pushed out of the van, meeting Rick and Greg in between the vehicles. Nel stared, shaking her head at the motley group. Now that she had the intimate logistics all straightened out with Grey, she wanted to be happy her brothers were here. This was the crew of workers she tried to suggest in the first place. Between the four of them, they’d rehabbed a dozen houses since Nel opened her agency. And the beauty about it was they accepted payment in beer.
Of course, she didn’t get to tell Grey any of that before he shut her down, proclaiming no crew. Funny how things changed — even when you didn’t want them to.
Joe motioned for her to get out of the van, so she did, bringing along with her an excitement to see Grey again, enthusiasm for the work they were about to do, and a touch of anxiousness over everyone getting along.
She was about to read them the riot act when she rounded the front of the van and came face-to-face with Rick and a case of beer. “What’s that for?” Suspicion scrunched her face.
He looked at the rest of the Parker men, exchanging conspiratorial glances before he looked back at her and smiled. “You know we always share a few brewskies after work.”
The others nodded and laughed.
She’d known them all her life, and she knew when they were up to no good. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but you guys better behave tonight. You’re only here because I want you to be here. We’ve got work to do.”
“Oh, we’ll behave,” Paul said with a slap to Joe’s back. “We’re just going to make sure he behaves, too.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Five guys in this room and there’s not one stud?”
Grey stood back and watched four sets of eyes narrow on Nel.
“In the wall. For the cabinet,” she stammered, and then slapped Rick’s upper arm. “Touchy, touchy.”
She was smiling, which was good and bad. Good because she must not be thinking things were going poorly. Bad because when that smile lit up her face all Grey could think about was getting her naked.
“Romeo, eyes over here,” Greg said, looking at Grey from overtop a mahogany cabinet. “You’ve got a few inches on Paul. You wanna hoist?”
Romeo. Cute. Grey chuckled.
It took less than an hour working side-by-side for Grey to decide he liked these guys. He liked the way they didn’t pull punches and badgered the hell out of one another — and him, too. It made him feel like part of something again.
“Sure,” Grey said, switching positions with Paul, who seemed none-too-pleased to be replaced.
“Don’t pout, princess,” Greg teased. “You just forgot to wear your shoe lifts is all. Next time.” He grunted and counted to three.
Grey tamped down a laugh with exertion. So far today he’d had sex, laughe
d, and got one hell of an aerobic workout in. It’d been a damn perfect day. Now, if he could just figure out a way to get Nel to spend the night.
Three hours later, the kitchen had come together, but Grey’s plans for the evening fell apart.
“He’ll take another. Give him another.” Joe sipped his own beer while Rick passed a full bottle to Grey.
Grey didn’t want it. Just like he didn’t want the first two, but he didn’t know how to say no, considering the work these guys did and the reason he wanted them gone. He could hardly say, “Leave, so I can have sex with your sister.”
He took a hearty swing to wash down the tawdry thought. They were getting along, especially while basking in the satisfaction of a job well done and drowning in the warm flow of beer. But he knew it would change if he made an overly aggressive move toward Nel. So he let her come and go from the room, despite his desire to hunt her down and corner her and …
Grey wiped sweat off his brow with the back of his hand and took another drink. For a guy who didn’t want any beer, it was sure going down easy.
“You think maybe you guys will agree to terms with Manion?”
It was the first time any of them had broached the baseball topic since Paul railed him in the garage about the time Grey face-planted the outfield wall against Pittsburgh last season. Paul waltzing up and breaking the ice like that was classic, and Grey appreciated the laugh. But right now, two-and-a-half beers in, he didn’t want to be gossiping about his teammates.
He shrugged. “That’s a question for Casey, not me.”
There was relative silence from the men scattered around his kitchen, leaning on freshly mounted cabinets. A few smacks of lips around bottles, but nothing else until Nel waltzed into the room with a shredded towel in one hand.