by Pippa Grant
She thrusts her hands into my pants, grabs my cock, and strokes me as though we didn’t do this four times already since last night. “Fuck, Parker, that feels so good.”
She squeezes tighter and pumps. I grab her wrist. “Not so fast. You first.”
“Me—”
I dip my head and suck her nipple through her bra, she gives a muffled cry and rides my thigh harder. Her hands fist in my hair and hold my head to her breast. “More,” she gasps.
I pop the snap on her pants and slide a hand down from her belly, into her panties, and stroke that perfect pussy.
“More,” she pants.
I move to her other nipple, kneading the first between my finger and thumb. It’s so hard, so tight, and her pussy is so slick and ready in my hand. I brush her clit once, twice, and then slide three fingers up into her channel.
A low moan comes from her throat as her orgasm explodes around my fingers, and I almost come right there with her. I’m aching and hard and ready, and she’s squeezing and pumping and riding my hand and biting her lip. The light’s all shadows playing over the ecstasy on her face. It’s the hottest fucking thing I’ve seen all day.
“Ohmygod, I needed that,” she whisper-gasps.
Before I can think, she’s on her knees, whipping my aching cock out of my pants. She cups my balls, licks me from base to tip, and then takes me into her slick mouth. Her tongue twirls around my cock, she gives one hard suck, and—fuck, she’s not even taking me all the way, but she swirls her tongue again, sucks once more. I grip her hair, try to still her, because— “Parker, I’m going to—”
She sucks harder, and I come in her mouth. I come so hard I feel it in my fingernails. The explosion rips through my body, so powerful and overwhelming and all-consuming that glitter sparkles in my vision and my knees buckle.
Holy shit.
“Was that…okay?” she whispers.
I haul her to her feet and clutch her in my arms, half-leaning against the door for support. “Fucking amazing.”
Kids, marriage, my job, her workaholic tendencies—it all flies out the window.
I am not letting this woman go. Not anytime soon anyway.
28
Knox
After we put ourselves back together and slip out of the storage closet, we get separated in the crush of adults devouring Steph’s tacos. I finally find Parker after the piñata’s been murdered and the cake’s been cut, trapped in what looks to be a stilted conversation with my brother’s neighbor, who’s only invited because his kids are more normal than he is and my sister-in-law is something of a saint.
“I got these organic mushrooms I’m growing in my basement,” he’s saying to Parker’s breasts. “You want, you can come over to my place after the party and try some. Not far.”
“Hey, you.” I slip an arm around her waist and press a kiss to her cheek. Her jaw’s tight, and I wonder what I missed that could’ve been worse than organic basement mushrooms. “Sorry, Vinnie. She’s got plans.”
“My mushrooms only take a minute,” he says. “Gonna change your life though.”
“That’s what they all say,” Parker mutters.
I squeeze her hand and pull her closer to the door, adding a soft apology to her on Vinnie’s behalf. “His wife’s made a lot of progress with him, but even she can’t fix everything.”
“Is Abigail opening all of those presents?” she asks with a dubious eyeball aimed at the pile of gifts making the table in the corner groan.
“They only have this place for another fifteen minutes, so probably not. You have band practice tonight?”
“I was going to head into the office to get a jump start on Monday.”
“I could show you my jungle call impersonation instead. Back at your place.”
She laughs and leans into me. “I could be convinced.”
“Hey, are you the Crunchy chick?” A guy who might be one of the dads from Abigail’s preschool class stops next to us and angles a glance at Parker’s cleavage. I clear my throat and give him a death glare, which he doesn’t see because his eyes are trained at nipple level.
“Her boobs aren’t,” I say before she can answer for herself.
He starts and glances up at me.
I wrap both arms around her shoulders and rest my chin on her head, and that’s right, buddy. Now you know I’m glaring at you. Quit fucking disrespecting my fiancée. Asshole.
“If you’re going to make an orgasmic organic joke, I’ve heard them all, and they weren’t funny the first time,” Parker says with an impressive amount of venom leaking through her smile.
He opens his mouth, then ducks his head. “Coming, honey.”
His wife whips her head around from her spot beside twin girls at the cake table, eyes creasing in confusion while he heads in the opposite direction.
The jackass was totally going to make an orgasmic organic joke.
“I thought Troy had better friends,” I say.
“It’s not your brother. It’s me. Maybe it’s something I eat. Maybe my pores exude some kind of primal loser magnet.”
“I have a distinct memory of a storage closet that says you’re wrong.”
I get a real smile this time. “Do you?”
“I do. And I’m on rainbow overload.”
“So we shouldn’t take some of the streamers back to my place and see all the interesting things we can do with them?”
And that, folks, is how we go from rational and semi-relaxed to raging hard and desperate in an instant. “Yeah, we can grab some streamers.”
“And the unicorn blanket? Or is that too weird?”
“Troy.” I flex my fingers at my brother. “Toss that blanket here.”
He shrugs and tosses it over. I drape it over my head. “We’re taking off. Great party. Hug the birthday girl for us when she comes down off her sugar high.”
“You’re disgusting,” Troy says, but he’s grinning.
“Quit giving him ideas,” Steph tells me. “This baby factory is C-L-O-S-E-D.”
We head to the elevator. The doors close behind us, and when I turn to grab her by the waist and take advantage of elevator time, she just sighs. “How is it that you’re wearing a pink unicorn blanket, and I’m the one who feels like a dorky loser-magnet?”
“Parker Parker Elliott, you realize you were hit on by fourteen men this afternoon?”
“I was not.”
“At least ten.”
“There weren’t ten single men there. And the only reason they were all staring at my chest is because they’d forgotten what unmilked breasts look like. Or—oh, shit. Did I drop something on my shirt?” She tilts her head down to inspect her tank top.
I can’t answer.
Because I’m suddenly laughing so hard I can’t stay upright.
“What?”
“Unmilked breasts?”
She glares at me.
I open my mouth to defend myself, but I snort through my nose instead and hold up a finger.
“If I wanted this kind of treatment, I could’ve just gone next door with the mushroom man,” she grumbles.
My cheeks are aching like a son of a bitch, but fuck, she’s funny. “The visual on that—all those women munching on grass, hooked up to milking machines, passing around tacos and unicorn poop…” I can’t stop snickering. “Can you picture Nana in that lineup?”
Her lips wobble. “You are a terrible, evil, wrong man.”
“I am,” I agree. “I’m a bad, bad boy. I need my punishment now.”
Her eyes go wide, pupils dilate, and she gnaws on her lower lip as though she’s considering how to best punish me.
The elevator stops on the first floor. She shifts, and an adorable little fart noise escapes from somewhere behind her.
Her eyes are still wide, but that’s not lust in them now. “Can I confess something?” she whispers.
“Yep.”
“I might’ve had one too many tacos.”
I shouldn’t laugh.
But I can’t quite keep it in. Not after the unmilked breasts too.
“Shut up.” She points to the door, gesturing me to go first, and farts again. “Not. One. Word.”
I swear, I try really hard to not snicker. “Make you feel better if I ate too many tacos too?” I ask. “Because I could—”
“Do it and die.” She pushes me out of the elevator. “I’m going to the office. And when I’m done with my little taco problem, I’ll call you.”
“This doesn’t bother me,” I tell her, but I can see I’ve lost.
This round.
There’s always later tonight.
29
Parker
Since Sunday, I’ve been on a regular diet that includes Gas-X, tacos, and orgasms. I’ve had so much mind-blowing sex that I’m mildly surprised I still have brain cells left to do my job.
Knox’s romance and chocolate event and my reunion are in two days, and the weird truth is, after the whole farting incident, I’m actually feeling extremely confident that I’ll be able to handle my reunion just fine. Because if a guy as sexy, smart, and hot as Knox can handle me farting one day and still want to go down on me the next, then maybe I’m no longer the dweeb of Julian Oakland High.
My brothers got wind of our engagement, took Knox out for a round of drinks and interrogation after he left my apartment the other night—Brooks was in the city for a three-game home series and Rhett flew in just for dinner—and have quit dropping by unannounced.
I don’t know what he told them, but they’re satisfied.
Which is only terrifying because we’ll most likely be staging our breakup late next week, and now my brothers know where he lives.
My heart pangs again.
I like Knox. I don’t want to marry him, but I don’t want to break up with him either.
I even let him sleep over last night.
But I don’t know if I’ll ever want to give him children, or even if he’d want me to. I don’t doubt he wants children, mind you—I just doubt he wants them with me. Me and my horrible genes and rampant insecurity when it comes to personal issues.
This is a temporary thing. Mutually beneficial.
It’s just started feeling…real.
After giving Chase a quick update on a new marketing tactic I want to try for the holidays, I pack up my office and head downstairs earlier than usual. Knox is meeting me at my apartment in an hour, and I’ll barely have time to get home and pick up my laundry before he’s there. But when I push out onto the sidewalk in front of Crunchy, there’s a surprise waiting for me.
A surprise in the form of Lila Valentine. The perfect, perky, put-together Lila Valentine. My heart flips inside out and my inner bitch roars to life. He’s mine, you bachelor-stealer.
“Parker,” she says warmly. “Do you have a minute?”
I look at my wrist, where I’m clearly not wearing a watch. “Ah, actually, I need to—”
“My boss wants to open a small publishing house for romance novels,” she says. “We want Knox to consult on title selection, but he’s not answering my calls, and I don’t want to cause any issues for him at work by being one more woman asking for him. I understand that’s a little touchy at the moment.”
I twist my head to look at her closer.
She’s probably younger than me by a few years, meticulously put-together, gorgeous red hair shimmering in the light, and it would be so easy to hate her on principle alone, except there’s something…lonely about her.
“You wanted to take us to lunch to talk,” I say.
She nods. “And since I can’t set up lunch with him if he won’t take my calls, I thought you could talk to him for me.”
“You couldn’t leave a message?” I ask.
She pinches her lips together and gives me a look. Not a jealous-woman look. More like a you really don’t get it look. “I have. I suspect he’s deleting them without listening. Or he’s truly not interested, which seems unlikely given what we’re willing to pay him. My boss loves his Mr. Romance blog.”
“Your boss…?”
“Dalton Wellington.”
I know that name. He made a fortune in tech around the same time Chase was making his own fortune, though I don’t know anything else about him.
“I’m his executive assistant.” Lila slips me a card.
“That must keep you busy.”
Her nose flares as she laughs. “Oh, you have no idea.”
I shoot a glance up at the black-and-steel building I just exited. “I might.”
She looks too, then nods. “You know what? I think you really might.”
“Romance novels?” I tilt my head toward my subway stop, and she falls into step with me.
“Mr. Wellington has reached a point in his life where he has more money than he can ever spend. It’s not much of a risk to his way of life to amuse himself with launching a publishing house.”
“Probably shouldn’t put it that way when you talk to Knox.”
“Actually, the romance line is his concession to me.” Lila grins. “He’s writing science fiction mysteries himself. Inner geek and all that.”
“Ah, the truth comes out.”
“Please ask Knox to call me. If he’s interested, we’ll be happy to discuss a compensation package.”
“You could’ve asked him at your date.”
“I wasn’t convinced yet that he was the right person for the job.”
“And you are now?”
“You’ve seen his blog stats since the Times piece, haven’t you?”
Huh. She really doesn’t want him for herself. The idea is unfathomable. “Your bid. At the auction… That was crazy high.”
“What makes a better story: that I approached him at work, or that I paid a hundred grand at a bachelor auction for a studly romance expert?”
“You’re insane,” I say on a laugh.
She smiles back. “You work for a billionaire. You know how they can be.”
I think about Chase, and all the things he’s done for Sia, and honestly, all the things he’s done for me, and for Crunchy as a whole, and even for his mom and their hometown, and I shake my head on another laugh.
They’re a crazy, eccentric bunch. “That I do.”
30
Knox
There’s something different about Parker tonight.
Her smile’s bigger. Her stories are louder. She passed me Lila’s card without so much as a hint of self-consciousness or a whisper of jealousy before we dug into our nachos. When she dropped a chip down her blouse, she just fished it right out, then gave me a bigger view of her black lace bra, winked, and pulled her shirt back up.
A week ago, she would’ve been blushing and stammering, but tonight, she’s a bold, confident woman who’s been stroking my leg with her foot under her little kitchen table for the last thirty minutes, holding me captive with stories about high school and her family and the numerous times she was passed over for a promotion—and too shy and worried about losing her job to fight for herself—before Chase bought Crunchy and promoted her almost on the spot.
“Oh, and speaking of Chase,” she says suddenly, “this is for you.”
She pulls an envelope from her back pocket and hands it over. It’s thick, and she’s grinning even wider now. “Gavin looooved that book so much, he’s reading Her Rebel Heart now. And I got the audiobook to listen on my commute. We’re going to talk my other brothers into having a book club with us.”
A week ago, that would’ve prompted a sense of triumph.
Today, though, I care less about five more romance lovers in the world and more about snagging her wrist and leaning over the table to kiss her.
Because I can. And I need to. As often as possible, for as long as possible, because there is not now, nor will there ever be, another man who can appreciate Parker for t
he beautiful, half-mess, half-goddess, all-perfect woman that she is.
Fuck, I don’t know if I’m man enough for the job, but I know for damn certain there’s no one else out there who could ever come halfway close.
I’m getting my act together. I’m going to quit pushing Dorky’s buttons. I’ll let her do whatever the hell she wants with my blog. I’ll even call Lila back if that’s what she wants.
And maybe I can be the motivation she needs to quit working so damn many hours and live a little.
“Bedroom,” she gasps.
We don’t make it that far, and instead end up sprawled on her cheetah-print rug, Parker riding me like a jungle woman on a giraffe, wild and wanton and so fucking sexy I can barely last until her pussy clenches around me and she comes hard and desperate with a jungle mating call that echoes through my veins and drives me wild.
She’s mine.
She might not know it yet, but she’s mine.
31
Parker
Knox thinks he’s been playing it cool, but I know he’s amped up about his Romance and Chocolate program this afternoon. Which is actually something of a relief. I’ve started wondering if he actually wants to stay in the land of the gainfully employed. He’s still blowing off Lila, and I suspect he’s just humoring me with the improvements we’re making to his blog, because every time I mention it, he distracts me with sex.
Not that I’m complaining about good sex, mind you. It’s just that he needs a source of income. Because he needs to eat and pay rent and save some cash so he can actually retire someday. So he should be ramped up about the program today.
Especially since he’s still insisting that he’ll quit if he can’t change that reporter’s mind about romance novels. The library is getting double coverage from the Times. Both the reporter he called a dick and said reporter’s managing editor will be there.
There’s also a freelance reporter who works for Bustle, an NPR editorial director, the newscaster who emceed the bachelor auction, and someone from Library Journal coming.