Cuffed

by K. Bromberg

  She shrugs. “Something like that. What about you? Why was your day so bad?”

  “I had a donut delivery even though I hate donuts. My cruiser still smells like them.”

  There’s her smile. “Must have been donut torture.”

  “Yep. It was. Waterboarding and the smell of donuts are right up there together.” I lean back in the booth and take a long sip of my drink before pushing the bowl of pretzels and nuts across the table toward her. “A call we had today got to me.”

  “Want to share?”

  “Can’t . . . I just can’t,” I explain, when what I need is to talk about it. But not now. Not with her while I keep seeing her face in Keely’s. Not until I can separate the facts from the past. “What about you?”

  “You know what, let’s not and say we did.” She laughs and takes a sip, averting her eyes from mine. It’s a gesture that only serves to remind me of Keely again.

  “Nah. I’m not biting. What’s going on, Em?”

  She sighs and concentrates on picking through the bowl to steal all the cashews from it. I give her the time and smile at the prick who’s glaring at me from across the way because she’s talking to me and not him.

  Maybe I’m taunting him because I’m in the mood for a fight. Maybe I’m just being an asshole. Then again, maybe I just want to kiss Emerson and know this is bad timing to be thinking about it.

  “I told you I’m trying to buy Blue Skies, right?” I nod. “Well, trying is the operative word. In fact, my loan officer is a total prick.”

  “Is he not responding?”

  Her laugh has my back up instantly. “He’s responding, all right. I think the only reason he’s responding and considering me for the loan is because he thinks he can get in my pants.”

  I don’t like the fucker already. “Who is it?” I demand.

  She eyes me and twists her lips. “He’s a loan officer.” She deadpans. “I can handle it myself.”

  Bullshit.

  “Then go to a different bank.” Simple.

  “I wish,” she says in a way that makes me want to move to her side of the booth and slide an arm around her. I’m not quite sure we’re at that stage yet. “But they were the only bank even willing to consider my application. When my mom got sick, money was tight, so we used her credit, my credit, anything we could to pay for treatments. I’ve worked my ass off to pay it all back, took odd jobs everywhere I traveled to, and have sold off everything I own to do so.”

  “So, you have no collateral.”

  “Nope.” She sighs, and I hate seeing the sadness in her eyes. “It’s all paid off, but that doesn’t mean my credit score has recovered. I just need a fresh start, and Blue Skies is my chance.”

  “Everyone needs a fresh start now and again. Besides, I find what you did—paying off the debt instead of declaring bankruptcy—very admirable.”

  “It is what it is.” She rolls her neck.

  “So, who’s the prick?”

  “I told you, none of your business. I’ve dealt with a lot worse than a handsy loan officer, Malone.”

  “Handsy?”

  “Chill out. I’m a big girl.”

  “Chill out. I’m a big girl.”

  A look comes over Grant’s face that makes every part of me come alive. It was an innocent comment on my part, and yet, the look in his eyes is suggestive as hell and perfectly fitting for this darkened, back corner of the bar.

  “I’m well aware that you’re a big girl, Emerson. You’ve gone out of your way to make me acknowledge it.”

  I’m not sure if it’s a dig, but it’s true, so I don’t take it as anything other than that.

  “I heard you dropped the donuts by the homeless shelter.” His eyes flash up, and I’m immediately reminded of how I felt when I found out through the grapevine about what he did. “I have my own stalking capabilities.”

  “So I see.”

  “I think it was a super cool thing for you to do.”

  “Besides meeting you here, it was the easiest decision of my day.”

  I can see sadness in his eyes as he goes away from me momentarily. Back to his call? Back to the reason he is here, drinking in a bar by himself, perhaps?

  “Tell me about your call,” I prompt and reach out and put my hand on his. “I’d like to know about it.”

  His hand stiffens momentarily, and I know he’s battling with whether he should talk or not—a blue blood through and through. He picks up his drink with his free hand, takes a sip before setting it down, and then laces his fingers with mine. But he still doesn’t look at me.

  And as the silent seconds tick by, my mind begins to wander. To how we just officially held hands and I’m not freaking out over it. To how it feels natural and pretty damn good. I think I’m more freaked out over that than the notion that we are sitting in a bar and looking like a couple.

  “I used our rock thing today,” he finally says as he meets my eyes, but I’m completely clueless as to what he’s referring to.

  “Our rock thing?” I ask, head angled as if it would help me understand.

  “Yeah. It came to me today when I was on my call. I thought it might be a way to connect to a little girl, and I told her about it.”

  I’m so lost. Rock thing? What am I missing here?

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Yeah. Our rock thing. You know what, fuck it. Forget I said anything.”

  “No. Please. I want to know.”

  “My call today. It was a 10-16 . . . sorry, a domestic disturbance, and it wasn’t the first time we’d been called out there. I think the dad is abusing the mom, but the mom is making excuses to protect him. It’s a classic case of him beating her down enough, grooming her, so that she thinks he can’t live without her and vice versa. I don’t know. I don’t get it, but I know it’s real because I’ve seen it more times than I care to count.”

  “I’m sorry.” It’s all I say, but I squeeze his hand to lend him silent support as he thinks about something I can’t even fathom.

  “So am I.” He sighs, the sag of his shoulders a visible manifestation of the toll the call has taken on him. “I want to help the mom, but I can’t help her until she wants it, and I hope that it isn’t too late. But what’s even worse is that they have a daughter. She’s five, and the sweetest little girl who is caught in the middle of a shit sandwich. She’s defending a dad, who isn’t nice, and loving a mom, who doesn’t defend her. All this little girl wants is just to be a kid.”

  “That’s rough. I don’t know what to say other than I’m sorry. I can’t imagine the things you see every day. The things you deal with,” I say, really wanting to go back and find out what he meant about the rocks. Something is niggling at the back of my mind. I’m not sure what it is, but I’m too scared to ask.

  “You know what? I think we should stop talking about our shitty days and go get ice cream.”

  “Ice cream?” I laugh. “We’ve gone from drinking away our sorrows to ice cream?”

  “Yep. Do you have something against ice cream?”

  “Umm . . . no. Who could hate ice cream?” My stomach growls at the thought of food, reminding me just how long it’s been since I’ve eaten. “But then again, after my crappy day, this alcohol isn’t so bad, either.”

  “There’s my Emmy.” He flashes me an irresistible grin that freezes when we both realize what he said.

  I’m not going to lie and say those words don’t make me want to give in on this silly game we’ve been playing—control be damned—and kiss him. Right here. Right now.

  Our eyes hold and try to read what the other is saying. It’s then that I feel his hand tighten around mine and realize our fingers are still interlocked.

  “I know a way we can mix both ice cream and alcohol,” he says, eyes never leaving mine.

  “How?”

  “Mudslides. They have them here.” My stomach rumbles. “You want one?”

  “Like you have to ask.” I laugh when he raises his finger to the bar
tender before I even finish the sentence.

  “I’m a big girl, Grant. I don’t need you walking me home,” I say and then giggle when I realize that I’m nowhere near the airstrip. But still. Saying it is like meaning it, right?

  He swings our joined hands as he walks beside me. “I’m not walking you home. I’m walking you to my home since we aren’t sober enough to drive.” He veers off the sidewalk and up a short little path.

  “Grant?” I ask as I take in the wood porch of the house in front of us.

  “I know you’re a big girl, Em. I’m well aware of it.”

  His words hang in the air, hitting my slightly fuzzy mind as I follow him up the steps to stand under the porch light. “Is that flirting, Malone? Are you flirting with me?”

  He yanks on my hand, and I land solidly against him. It takes a minute for our minds to register what’s going on—that our bodies are pressed together—because we’re too busy making sure our wobbly feet don’t give out.

  But when we’re steady, everything registers for me. The heat of his body against mine. The hardness of it, too. The hitch of his breath, answering the gasp of mine. The darkening of his eyes. The tensing of his hand on mine. The flick of his tongue across his bottom lip.

  And, oh, how I want him to be flirting with me.

  Better yet, I want him to be kissing me. All of me.

  The thought makes me giggle as we continue to stand body to body, a lot a bit tipsy, beneath a dim porch light on an empty and darkened street.

  “We shouldn’t do this,” he murmurs more to himself than to me. It cues the panic inside me, screaming that this insane display of foreplay between us needs to have the match lit before I combust from sexual frustration.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re Emmy.” He brings his free hand up and runs a finger down the side of my cheek.

  That touch, skin to skin, is like a mainline of electric current to charge that slow, sweet ache burning inside me. It only serves to make me want more.

  “And you’re Phony Maloney.”

  “Exactly.”

  He steps back, and I tighten my hold on his hand and step forward with him. “Are you telling me there is nothing here? No lust? No attraction? No anything?”

  He gives me that sly smile of his again, the one that lights up his eyes and does funny things to my insides. “I never said that.”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying . . . Christ, Em, I don’t know what I’m saying.” He runs a hand absently up and down the plane of my back.

  “Maybe you’re saying we need to get each other out of our systems.” I utter the words before I think them and then feel ridiculous.

  “What?” He laughs. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  His body is against mine. His cologne is in my nose. His laugh is in my ears. He’s everywhere all the time.

  Too much talk right now. Too much saying. Not enough action.

  “Yes.”

  A few seconds pass as he gauges whether I’m serious, and I wonder if he’s going to take the bait. “And then what?” He angles his head to the side, silently asking a million questions my body wants to ignore.

  “And then curiosity will be satisfied, and we’ll be out of each other’s systems.”

  “You think that’s going to work? You think we’ve just met again after twenty years and it’ll be that easy?”

  He has a point, and I don’t want to think about that or semantics or reality. I want to think about him. And me. And his mouth. And his hands.

  So, I lean forward on my tiptoes and press my lips to his. “Enough talking, Malone.”

  He laughs, his lips vibrating against mine, but I don’t relent. I want him. I want this. I know we’re both buzzed, but maybe that’s the best way for this to happen so I’m not nervous and overthinking and neither is he.

  For a minute, I think he’s going to reject me. It’s in the way he stills for a brief moment, the way his lashes lower for just a second too long. Then he frames my face and leans back to look at me. Our breaths feather over each other’s lips as an unspoken conversation passes between us. I can’t put words to it, but somehow understand each and every syllable of it.

  And then his mouth is on mine in a savage greeting of lips and tongues and hands on skin and history reconnected.

  “Grant.”

  “Shh.”

  “Wait. I have rules.”

  He laughs with exasperation, a man being denied what’s sitting at his fingertips. “Of course you do.”

  “No sleeping over. I don’t do the sleeping together thing.”

  “No one said anything about sleeping, Em.”

  His smile sidelines me. The kiss he leans forward and brushes ever so tenderly against my lips makes me want to sag into him, even more so.

  “No promises.”

  “I thought this was a one-night thing, right?”

  “Yes, but no promises.”

  “I’m going to make you come. Can I promise you that?”

  Another kiss. This time I take the lead and lick my tongue against his until I pull back and nip his lip. “I’ll accept that promise.”

  “Good. Can we stop talking now because there are much more important things I want to be doing with my mouth, and every single one of them involves you and no words.”

  My teeth sink into my lower lip as our eyes meet. The door unlocks behind us. Our feet move in reflex. Our fingers link together.

  Once over the threshold, we kiss again—his lips beginning their masterful assault of everything that is good and sexy and arousing and needed.

  “God, yes.”

  His lips find my neck as my hand finds the door to push it shut behind me. As soon as the lever clicks, Grant has me up against it with one hand on my breast and his tongue licking its way up the line of my neck.

  He laughs as he stumbles. I giggle as I grip his shoulders to steady us. But even when I do, the earth is still tilting beneath my feet from his desirous assault. Every sensation is welcome and wanted. Each touch of his another reason to temporarily ignore my history.

  But he doesn’t.

  For some reason, the minute the thought crosses my mind, I can feel the sudden hesitancy in Grant’s otherwise all-consuming and libidinous demeanor and know we are on the same page.

  He is remembering.

  He is wondering.

  He is worrying.

  “No,” I gasp out in a desperate plea for him not to go there.

  “Em.” Regret. Fear. Uncertainty. All three meld and mesh in that one syllable of my name.

  My hands are on his jaw, forcing his face up so that he has to meet my eyes through the dimly lit entry to his house. “No,” I repeat. “I am not her anymore. She is not me. Don’t do this, Grant.”

  With that simple statement . . . that simple devastating statement, I press my lips to his. I need him to see that I’m not a victim and that I refuse to be treated like one. I need him to know that he has no clue what I do or don’t need, and therefore, I am going to show him.

  As if he knows this is what I need, he allows me to take the reins. The man hell-bent on proving to me that he’s in control, lets me take the lead in this dance that is uniquely ours.

  “Show me,” he murmurs, those two words as seductive as his touch.

  And so, I show him.

  With my hands and my tongue and my words and my touch.

  This time, we start slowly. I tease and taunt him with the gentlest of caresses while my hands find the hem of his shirt and pull it from his pants. With the slightest of breaks of our lips, the fabric passes over his face and falls to the floor. I do the honors for myself next as we move slowly backward in that awkward dance of kiss, touch, retreat, repeat, until the backs of his legs hit the couch

  “What do you need from me?” he whispers against my lips, unknowingly giving me the question I need and the willingness to take it.

  I’ve never been shy about taking
what I wanted from a guy before. I’ve never worried about what they thought because, in the end, we were both there for the same thing—pleasure. With Grant? I care. His ability to give me the things I need without even questioning is unnerving and comforting and makes me want this all the more.

  “You. I just want you,” I say as he hisses a breath when my hand slides inside the waistband of his jeans to find him hard and stiff and ready for me.

  “Take me, Em.”

  And then our mouths crash together again in a torrent of desire that warns of its irreversible damage to my body and my heart. I push it away, focusing on his hands undoing my bra. The pads of his thumbs brushing ever so softly over the tips of my nipples. His fingers tugging at my zipper. The palms of his hands as they run down my sides and push my pants down over my hips.

  My body reacts in every imaginable way to him. It wants and needs and begs and pleads. He pulls me against him so we’re body to body. Skin to skin. Mouth to mouth.

  “Christ, I want you,” he says as he shoves his pants off and steps out of them.

  “Then take me.” I give his words back to him because control has given way to need, and hell if every part of me isn’t ready and willing.

  My hands are around his shaft, stroking him gently. I cry out as his fingers part me and find me wet, muscles vibrating, nerves stimulated and waiting to respond to his onslaught of touch.

  He falls backward onto his couch—our laughs filling the room before they morph into drawn-out groans. There’s the telltale rip of foil and then I straddle his lap. Our mouths meld again as I grind atop of him so that my arousal coats his cock, and the feel of him steals my breath.

  Urgency becomes the name of the game.

  I lift my hips so his hand can find its way between us, and his fingers press into me. I moan. My nails dig into his shoulders and score his skin. He doesn’t seem to notice or even care as his fingers keep their even tempo.

  “Grant. God. Yes. Please. I need. Oh.”

  His chuckle is a murmur amidst the sounds I make, and at some point, I begin to beg. At least I think I do. Or maybe he does. I’m so caught up in the machinations of his fingers and the crest he’s slowly building within me that I’ve lost all semblance of time and place. As long as he doesn’t stop, I don’t care where I am.