by V. Theia
But Gray held me fast. He cupped my cheek and made me look at him.
There was no look of yes, it’s your fault, India, in his eyes. If anything, I saw understanding. And a shared empathy in the pits of steel looking unwavering back at me. “Don’t play the what if game, sweetheart. I’ve been there, and it doesn’t help. You were the best big sister, but your own grown up life was just beginning. I’m sure your parents blame themselves too, it’s human nature. It’s one of those terrible things that happen to good people.”
Oh, great, there went the water works again. I pressed my forehead to his shoulder and soaked his shirt. “I wish I was my old self again,” I confessed.
“You will one day. Your brain knows something bad has happened, baby. It’s putting all its energy into protecting you. When you’re ready you will get back every piece you’ve tucked away. But you know what, India? I think you’re pretty-fucking amazing as you are. Strong and resilient. Fun and beautiful. And you do all that while you hold up your mom and deal with what life throws at you with those demons on your back. Give yourself some credit, you are fucking amazing.”
Oh, wow.
I leaned our foreheads together. “Have I told you you’re fucking amazing, too? Thank you, Gray.”
We had us a real moment, truth and comfort and it didn’t suck.
“I don’t want you to see me like that.”
“Like what?”
“A victim. I know I’m a moody flight risk, but I don’t want to be that woman. Not to you.”
He kissed me. “You’re just India to me, you’ll always be my mean-girl.”
I sighed into a smile. “We’re probably giving the street something to talk about with me in your lap.”
“Fuck the neighbors.”
Chuckling I wiped my face for the third time. I bet I looked like an extra on The Walking Dead. My face swollen and blotchy. “They used to call me That Rivera Girl. I don’t think my reputation has changed much over the years. They saw me as the party girl, the drunk girl, the girl who was always with a different boy.”
“Like I said,” he growled. “Fuck the neighbors.”
Yeah, fuck them all. They never saw me holding down the forte. How I was the one bringing home money and keeping mom out of a psychiatric unit.
But the sting of their judgement still carried on my shoulders.
“You’re perfect, India. And it’s anyone’s loss if those assholes don’t see it.”
My heart fluttered. It was me this time who cupped his roughened cheeks as he smiled his perfect boy smile.
“Are you looking to get laid?”
“Yes, I’ve never wanted inside a woman more than I do right now,” he answered instantly and smirked before dropping a kiss to my nose then stood and placed me on my feet. “Let’s ask your mom what she fancies for dinner and I’ll go pick it up.”
“Gray. You don’t have to stay.”
“Shut up and go find us some menus.” And didn’t he just slap my bottom.
Yeah, he was getting laid tonight.
“You mentioned how you blamed yourself for something.” I asked on the drive home. Sleepy and full of kung pow chicken, it was nearing midnight when we left mom’s house and I was eager to get back to the apartment and crawl into his big bed … with the man in it.
“I did say that.” He replied, evasive.
I wasn’t put off. “Who was it?”
Gray dipped his dark head slightly in my direction and sent me a killer watt half smile hot enough to partially cook my liver before turning back to the road.
If not for my crampy belly I might have crawled into his lap and gave him a drive worthy of stories to his grandkids in years to come.
A punch of pain. Ow. Gray with kids. Gray with a wife.
Okay, that thought was getting shoved off into the deep, dark recess of things India didn’t think about.
For now, my sugar daddy was all mine. Some lucky bitch in the future would just have to wait her turn.
“Come on, you know all my crap, spill it, Ellison.” I poked his ribs and had the pleasure of seeing him ticklish.
“It was my ex. Dahlia.”
Dahlia. She sounded like a fucking precious flower.
“Don’t stop there, sugar D. We have fifteen minutes before we’re home.”
Another mega-watt smile, this time with his hand palmed around the top of my thigh. “I like you calling it home.”
I laced over his fingers. “Don’t distract me with your sex games.”
He flashed his naughty-boy grin. So damn sexy and he knew it. Wearing his specs pushed his sexiness over the top.
Gray was the best of all worlds. Hot and intelligent. Fuckable and sweet.
“We dated for eight month and it was assumed we were going to get married.”
Oh.
Maybe I didn’t want to hear this crap. Not with a slice of jealousy and possessiveness shooting through the middle of my belly. Pain came right on its heels. And it had nothing to do with the impending red sea doom every woman dealt with. I didn’t know why I’d never pictured Gray in a long-term serious relationship before. But he was long-term material. He was husband material and father material. And reliable, dependable material.
He was every good guy quality there was.
“You proposed?” Why did I feel sick?
Only now my curiosity was piqued to know more about Dahlia.
“Not quite. But she expected me to, even as she pushed for us to live together. She’d point out venues and rings often enough. Her family expected it. Our parents were decades long friends. It was nice for while it lasted but as that old cliché goes, it was good until it wasn’t. We argued, and she stormed out, she later confessed to cheating with her personal trainer because I didn’t propose at Christmas as she expected.”
“Wow.” I said. “What a spoiled bitch.”
I could have called her worse.
Gray chuffed a laugh. “Yeah, that was Dahlia. She wanted the best of the best and didn’t understand why I didn’t want to use my parent’s money instead of making my own.”
“This was before you turned into a shoe mogul?”
“Yeah, around nine years ago now I think about it. I’d experimented with my businesses up until then, but it was that point I was getting serious about importing. When we broke up I questioned a while afterward if I’d driven her to cheat. What could I have done differently.”
Crap. He sounded like he loved this precious princess.
My belly became all squirrely again. Gray pulled his lower lip into his teeth as he turned the car into the underground parking of his building.
We parked in relative silence climbing out. He rounded the car as he always did and tucked my hand in his. “You know you can’t blame yourself for her being a cheater, right? You didn’t make her climb into someone else’s pants, Gray.”
“She did me a favor. We wanted very different things in life. I wanted to work hard and become a success and she had socialite hostess in mind.”
Inside the steel coffin elevator, as always, my heart rate went up as the doors closed so I sneaked an inch closer to Gray and squeezed his fingers. “You wanted to make shoes and she wanted all the dicks?” I said tongue in cheek. Just a little bit bitchy. I wasn’t jealous…
Gray laughed, turning a raised brow at me. “There’s my lovely mean-girl.”
Yes, here I was. Not you, Dahlia.
I found myself asking. “Did you try to fix things with her?”
“No, once she told me what she’d done we were done.”
“Was it over for her?”
He rolled a shoulder leading us down to his apartment. “For me we were done.” And that said it all. Maybe there was a chick out there pining for Gray.
I couldn’t blame her. What kind of moron did you need to be to let him go?
“And you haven’t had anything long term since?”
His grin became wolfish gesturing me in first, his hand on my butt. “I’m trying
to, but she’s a headstrong, unique, incredible girl and I have to be sneaky about my tactics.”
Ohhh. Head rush. Pussy clench. Heart cinch.
As much as I denied it, Gray continued to rope me in one emotional tug at a time. Dahlia’s loss was my gain.
He pushed me up against a wall, bringing me out of my thoughts and as Gray’s head descended for what I knew would be an epic, wet kiss I moved out from under him. “Hold that thought, rock star. I need the bathroom.”
Like I suspected, there would be no sex tonight. Not with me wearing my granny panties under my pjs. When I told Gray sex was out he moaned and buried his head in the downy pillow before pulling me into his body, the look of carnal longing in the depths of his eyes practically scorched my skin off.
The big, hard frame of him locked around me until he had me comfortably placed with a hand resting to the top of my butt.
I’d discovered I really liked sleeping up close and personal with Gray.
I liked a lot of first things with Gray.
“Rock star?”
“Hmm?” He did that thing he did in bed where he stroked his fingers up down my back, until the hot spot at the base of my spine was on fire.
It usually led to sex. Who am I kidding. Sex sounded pedestrian. If we were near each other it usually led me to climbing all over him.
I did my own wandering and cupped the steel pipe digging into my belly.
“Ignore that,” he grumbled, faced pressed to the side of my throat. “He’s an animal and doesn’t know we can’t play in our favorite place.”
A giggle popped out of my lips. I stroked him again just to hear his grunt. “Just because I can’t have sex, doesn’t mean you can’t…”
His head rose off the pillow like lightening and I swear I could see his eyes glowing in the dark. Feral animal.
“Are we about to do butt stuff, baby-girl?”
Oh, god. This man. I laughed and used my free hand to yank a tuft of his hair while administrating a silky stroke to his cock with my other.
Already his tip was leaking with need and my belly flipped over to make him feel good.
I was so absorbed squeezing the thick width of Gray’s cock that I missed his sneaky hand trailing down my body until it was buried in my shorts, the heel of his palm sat directly over my period panties on top of my mound.
I flinched. Not from shock, but from the need pulsing through me.
Any woman would tell you their horniest times were when the river ran reddest.
“What are you up to, mister? You know I can’t do anything.”
Only half listening, because his palm pressed down directly on my clit and the sensation was eye-rolling good. So much so I bumped my hips up unbidden.
And then Gray dug in the heel of his palm, rotating over and over.
Around and around. Right. Over. My. Clit.
Oh, god. Oh, Jesus in heaven.
My whole top half of me filled with helium. My head fell forward on his shoulder, fingers still locked around his length.
“Gray-son…”
“Let me make you feel good this way. That’s it, dig your nails into my skin, let me know you like it when I wreck your hard, little clit. Do you have cramps?”
“Yes,” I hissed.
“I’ll shake your womb, baby. Make it better.”
Oh, god.
The fact that Gray got me off so easily using only a grinding motion of his hand was … amazing.
“God.” I puffed out. Much to his chuckled smug, delight as he kissed my damp forehead. “You’re a danger to me, Gray.”
“Good.” More smugness saturated his voice box.
I couldn’t have this.
Couldn’t have him gloating that he’d knocked me off kilter.
So, I squeezed his cock hard enough that his back left the mattress and when I laughed at his grunt I used that time to kick the sheet down to the other end of the bed.
“Your turn, rock star,” I told him, licking my lips, getting up on my knees.
“Jesus, India.”
His solid groan sounded pained. “What? I didn’t even put my mouth on you yet.” I laughed stroking a finger to the very tip where he was wide, pink and leaking. I knew a teased man when I saw one, so I popped that wet finger into my mouth and moaned licking his pre-come.
“Christ. Baby. Killing me. You’re looking at my dick like you’re about to eat your favorite meal.”
Another lip lick I looked up and smiled. “Maybe I am, who knows. What do you think, better than Fruity Pebbles?”
“God, fuck. Please let it be the truth. I’ll pay a million bucks.”
I laughed, rimming his length, my fingers unable to meet. Wow. Such a big boy was pretty Grayson. No wonder I had trouble walking the morning after a good fucking. And with a slow tug I let my fingers roll up the veins and ridges to hear his stuttered breath leave his lungs.
“That’s not enough.”
“Shoes. All the shoes you want, India, fuck. I need you to suck my dick right now.”
I laughed at his desperate croak as I nuzzled his groin.
A short lick to the tip. Another tug. He panted and groaned.
God, this felt good, having power over him. This confident man brought to a pile of pleading for me to suck on him.
Not to mention my own lust swirling through my lower belly.
All lust roads led to Gray.
“How many shoes?” A touch. A suck. A lick. I settled over his legs to torture him.
“Yes. Yes, fuck. All of them, please give me the suck, baby-girl.” He gave me reward when he blinded me in one of his smiles, and he touched his thumb to the corner of my lip. “Whatever you want. But now it’s time to put this sweet mouth on my dick and show me how fucking mean you can be.”
Dirty boy.
I was desperate to give him pleasure, to get him in my mouth and taste.
No one could ever say India Rivera didn’t excel at anything I put my mind to.
Seven minutes and Gray was toast.
I’d done that to him.
I’d eviscerated this man until he was nothing short of a swearing, pulsing man with his cock riding into my throat. He’d let me lead, even though I got the impression he wanted to fuck my face as hard as he could to chase his pleasure dragon.
He pulled me down over his chest, tangled fingers in my hair and breathed against my neck.
God, I loved this part of sex with him. The wreckage aftermath when we were both soft and recovering.
“You curse a lot when you get head.”
Unrepentant he flashed me one of his Gray smiles. He was touching emotional levels I didn’t know I had.
“It was all I had left, you sucked the words out of me.”
Watching him orgasm had me itchy. My own barely took the edge off and I bit down into my lower lip, trying to force my hormones to shut their howling for four more days.
Gray saw this and freed my lip with a roll of his thumb.
“I want to fuck you so badly,” I whined into his shoulder, undulating my crotch again his upper thigh.
It had to be because of Gray, I thought. No other guy would have me this way while my insides were having a war with itself by throwing axes at my uterus. I’ve never even liked being touched when I have my period. But here I was; hot, and steamy and climbing out of my skin.
Gray, took my face in his hand, kissed the tip of my nose, then another on my lips. “Do you trust me?”
“Yeah, why?”
He threw back the sheets, climbed out of bed and swept me into his arms before I could say a word.
In the bathroom he flipped on a light to a moody dim. Next, with me still in his arms, he strode across the tiled floor and hit a switch to power the rain showerhead. Steam filled the stall in seconds.
“What are we doing?” Amused, my arms latched around his neck.
“My girl wants to fuck me.”
Jesus god. Look, I might have had a second’s hesitation. But then my body too
k the wheel and began to hum as Gray dropped me to my feet and peeled me out of my shorts and vest top. “Nice underwear...”
“I knew you’d like my danger pants, you freak.” Watching as he tugged them down my legs I stepped out on auto pilot, my heart sped up when he guided me to the shower.
His eyes were dark, heavy and primal.
I was so achy all over for him that when he leaned down to kiss me I was ready to devour him with my tongue, lips and teeth. Moaning his name when he slanted his head for a deeper dive as water fell over us both. I was so into kissing Gray I didn’t feel his hand move between my legs or his fingers reach for the piece of string.
I wanted him badly and he gave me everything I needed.
It was some of the hottest shower sex I’d ever had. Gray took me to places I’d never been before. I felt like I needed to tweet or Facebook post all about it.
With Gray screwing me from behind, my hands locked on the wall and his hands gripping my hips, it was mind-blowing, and we’d had some pretty-amazing sex up to that point.
He shielded me from most of the water as it dropped down over his face giving me one hard shove. My panting as hot as the steamy mist gathering between us. A claiming thrust as his grunt of pleasure ricocheted low in my abdomen.
It might have been the best sex of my life.
Because for once I just let go.
I let Gray lead me where I needed to go.
He wasn’t disgusted in what my body was doing. He was as into me as I was with him. And when he came seconds after me, thrusting as hard as he could until I felt splintered apart by pleasure in my womb, his chest plastered wetly to my back, he kissed the underside of my ear and murmured my name in a tone I’d never heard from anyone before.
It was reverence and longing.
Lust coated, dark and carnal. I loved his eyes in their smoky state of slate, when he was preoccupied in drilling me to the tile. Even as I came down off my orgasm a new wave of want came over me.
I had butterflies in my belly and my heart was doing some weird as fuck thumping.
Three orgasms later and I’d won the war against both my hormones and my raging womb.
Flipping the lamp off at the side of the bed, he didn’t wait for me to curl back up with him, instead Gray pulled me across and got me half laid on his chest with my leg over his before he settled himself against the wall of pillows I’d added just this week as part of my Redecorate Ellison mission.