by Blair Grey
Besides, I was hiding things of my own. I hadn’t exactly told her what I did for a job. If she didn’t want to talk about the job search, that was her own business. I was probably reading too much into it anyway. It was probably more that I had spent the whole afternoon trying to show her how great Las Cruces was. Trying to get her to forget about her woes in moving here. She didn’t want to be reminded of them now.
I smiled at her. “So what do you do when you’re not running into me at the diner?” I asked her. “You already know my hobby is motorcycles. What do you like to do?”
Holly laughed, and we were back to that same easy conversation for the rest of our dinner. After we were done, we lingered over a bottle of wine, and I suddenly realized that I wanted to take her home with me. What’s more, I was pretty sure she would agree.
So it seemed like a sign when we walked outside, and it was raining.
“Uh-oh,” Holly said, grimacing at me. “What does that mean for getting home? Can you ride motorcycles in weather like this?”
“You probably could, but I wouldn’t feel safe doing it,” I told her. “Especially not with you on the back. There’s a hotel over there. Why don’t we get a room for the night? I’ll pay. I feel bad about stranding you out here.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Holly said, shaking her head. “It’s an adventure.” She grinned and leaned a little closer to me. “Besides, I wouldn’t mind spending a little more time with you. Pretty soon, I’m going to know all your secrets.”
I laughed. “I don’t have any secrets,” I lied. I put a hand at her lower back and steered her down the street to the hotel. The place was a little run-down, but it was cozy and dry inside. Unfortunately, they only had one room available.
“But the business suite only has one bed,” I said blankly, staring down at the pricing chart in front of me.
“Um, yes,” the nervous man at the check-in counter said, looking back and forth between Holly and me.
Holly put her hand on my arm, leaning in toward me. “That’s fine with me,” she said, her voice laden with lust.
I grinned down at her and shrugged at the other guy. “All right, we’ll take it,” I said.
I led Holly upstairs to our room and watched from the doorway as she went over to the bed and sat on the edge of it. She grinned at me and then, her eyes full of molten desire, stripped off her shirt, revealing a pretty red bra underneath. And more of that tanned, tanned skin of hers.
I groaned and joined her on the bed, pushing her back, running my hands over her body. It was like my mind couldn’t figure out which I wanted more: to strip myself down and give my throbbing erection a little more space, or to strip her down and kiss my way along her body.
Fortunately, her hands started stripping my clothes off me, meaning I could concentrate on her body.
I pressed my mouth against hers, heat sparking between us.
16
Holly
I didn’t know how things had progressed so dizzyingly fast, but I definitely wasn’t complaining as Grant kissed me, his mouth hot and needy against mine. His hands soothed away my worries and my guilt. I shouldn’t feel guilty; we were two consenting adults, and I knew exactly what was going to happen when the guy at the desk told us that the only room he had available was one that only had one bed in it.
The main thing was that Grant didn’t know who I really was or why I had purposefully run into him at the diner again that day. He thought I was just some girl from Montana who didn’t know the area.
And to be honest, I felt like I didn’t know the area. I had never been to either of the places that he had taken me today. It was all entirely new to me, and I appreciated that. He saw the world differently than I did. He sought out these beautiful places, and then he shared them with me. It was something I never would have expected from him, especially not given the information that Ryan had told me about him.
He just didn’t seem like a cold-blooded killer. I couldn’t make myself believe that he was.
My job was meant to seduce him and get him to spill all his secrets, but now I just wanted to seduce him. Although to be honest, I wasn’t sure exactly who was seducing whom at this point. As he laid me down on that hotel bed, I felt hot in a way that I had never experienced before. Like every touch of his fingers along my body sent jolts of electricity bursting through me. Like the fire in my belly might make me utterly combust.
I whimpered as he nipped at my lower lip, then I moaned as he thrust his fingers inside of me. And still I was begging for more. He finished stripping out of his clothes, and I ran my fingers along his tattooed skin, feeling the faint ridges that the ink had left there. Scars, but scars that he had chosen. Not scars from a rough life, not scars from a violent life. Just marks of who he was.
I wanted to know who he was.
I gasped as his mouth found its way down to my velvet folds, his tongue sliding along past my clit and into my slick hole. He laved at my entrance, making me writhe with desire as his fingers held me open for him. My hands twisted in the sheet, my hips shifting with aborted thrusts, my whole being crying out for more.
He pulled away with a grin on his face, just watching me for a moment.
“Please,” I begged, and I knew that he knew exactly what I was asking for. Somehow, even though we still barely knew each other, we were utterly in sync, our needs as one.
He covered my body with his, calloused hands stroking lines of fire along my tanned skin. I shivered, a line of goosebumps bursting into life behind each tender touch. My lips found his again, my mouth opening immediately, welcoming him in. There was no finesse by this point. We were sloppy, messy, needy. And I loved it.
I felt as though I was laying myself bare to him, giving him every part of my body. But I didn’t feel nervous or ashamed. I could tell that he would be gentle with me.
He edged inside of me, moving slowly, and I groaned, my head falling back. It was almost too much, the burn of the stretch. But I needed it. Oh, how I needed it.
Grant frowned down at me. “Jesus, you’re not a virgin, are you?” He panted, looking actually concerned.
I burst out laughing, startled. “What? Of course not!” I said, still snickering. “Why?”
“You’re just so fucking tight,” Grant said, shaking his head in amazement. “God.” He pressed his forehead into the crook of my neck, and I suddenly realized that he was close, too, and that this wasn’t going to last nearly as long as I would like it to.
But then again, we had the room for the whole night. We didn’t need to make it last.
I rolled my hips, using my heels to pull him closer. He slid all the way into my pussy, his tip hitting the very end, and I cried out, pleasure exploding behind my closed eyelids. My fingers scrabbled at his back, nails digging in, my body desperate for something to anchor itself on because I could barely comprehend the pleasure spilling through me. It was too much and somehow so perfectly right.
Grant began to move against me, thrusting his hips hard, and I forgot how to breathe.
“Oh God,” I groaned, pressing my hands to my face. The heat in my belly spiked to dizzying heights, and still he didn’t relent, thrusting into me again and again and again.
I screamed his name, heedless of the no-doubt thin walls of the hotel room. He continued to pound against that spot inside of me, and my whole body clenched tight for one moment, toes curling, and fingers tangled in the sheets. Until suddenly, I went lax, falling back against the bed, coming for what felt like forever.
Grant gave two final thrusts as I moaned, my head turned in to the pillow. I could feel him spilling inside of me, his dick twitching, and my walls gave one final clamp, my abs clenching hard and then relaxing. Grant collapsed toward me, his body practically scorching with heat. Or was that heat coming from me? I didn’t even know.
I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, my eyes slipping shut. Grant chuckled and rolled to the side, his fingers coming up to stroke my hair. “Good?” he aske
d.
“So good,” I groaned, rolling toward him and putting my head on his chest.
But my contentedness couldn’t last forever. It wasn’t long before thoughts started slipping back into my head. What the hell was I doing? I was supposed to seduce Grant, but I was sure, now, that I had gotten too close to him. I had a job to do. There were so many things that I was meant to ask him about. Information that I was supposed to be getting from him.
And instead, I had gone on a date with him and let him fuck me until I was barely conscious. Instead, the feeling of his fingers trailing up and down my spine were soothing me until I was absolutely limp in his arms.
Instead of doing my job, I was finding that I liked this guy. Ryan was going to kill me if he found out. Ryan couldn’t find out.
I swallowed hard, the last traces of my good humor disappearing. This was the kind of thing that could totally ruin my career. And I was so newly settling into my career that I wasn’t sure that I was ready for that. I didn’t want to screw things up. I didn’t want to get relegated to a desk job for the rest of my life, and I didn’t want to get kicked off the force.
Could I be kicked off the force for something like this? It was unprofessional. Granted, he wasn’t my coworker or anything. But he was a target, possibly a criminal.
Vera would have a fit if she found out too. Suddenly, I felt my blood run cold. Vera. She was going to wonder where I was if I didn’t come home. She would probably assume that I was out with a guy, but she’d want to know who I was out with. And I’d never been much good at lying to her. Maybe I could lead her to believe that this was just part of work, that it was all my plan to seduce him. But she was bound to see something in my face because I could tell I was starting to have feelings for Grant.
And she was bound to disapprove.
Grant shifted, and I looked up at him. “You okay?” he asked quietly. “Not too sore?”
“Not too sore,” I said, but my voice caught in saying it, and I could see the concern on his face. He didn’t ask what was wrong, though. Instead, his hands continued to stroke down my back, as though he thought that he could soothe away all the worry inside of me.
I wished he could. I wished I could go back to just enjoying this time with him. To basking in the afterglow of good sex.
I didn’t know what the hell I was thinking anymore. Risking my career, all because he was sweet to me? I couldn’t let myself be so close to him. And even if it was the only way to get information from him, I knew that I shouldn’t have sex with him again.
I just didn’t know if I could stop myself now. I was having a hard time thinking of Grant as a target. As a criminal. Even as a member of the most powerful biker club in New Mexico. I joined the force to do a job, and Grant was the job.
But I was having a hard time thinking of things that way. Grant just seemed like a good guy in a bad situation.
The problem was, I wasn’t sure there was any way to get out of this with both of our lives still intact. Either my job was in jeopardy, or he was getting wrongly arrested. I didn’t know what to do. And there was no one I could talk to about it.
I needed to keep seeing him if I wanted to keep my job. That much, I knew. I would just have to make sure to keep my feelings out of it as much as I could. If I ended up heartbroken over this, I would have no one to blame but myself.
The sex had taxed my body enough, thankfully, and it wasn’t long before I fell asleep. But I didn’t sleep well, and I woke up feeling restless and uncertain, plagued by unhappy thoughts.
17
Grant
On Thursday morning, I woke up with Holly in my arms, her head still pillowed on my chest. There was a feeling I couldn’t describe, deep down inside of my own chest. Like this was right. Like this was what I had always been waiting for. Like she was the person I had always been looking for.
Maybe it wasn’t just her. I didn’t know her well enough to really say for sure. Maybe it was more the situation. The fact that she didn’t know what I really did with my life. The fact that she didn’t judge me. I liked having someone to talk to outside the MC. Someone who wasn’t at all a part of that side of my life.
The thing was, I knew that made our whole relationship something of a lie. She didn’t know who I really was, underneath it all. And I couldn’t help feeling guilty about that. In the stark light of morning, I couldn’t help feeling like I had somehow deceived her.
But things couldn’t have turned out any differently the night before. She had wanted this just as much as I did, and anyway, there was no way I was taking her home with the rain like it had been.
I still felt like maybe I should have given her a heads-up first. Like it was selfish of me to want to be with her just because she didn’t judge me. But I didn’t know what else to do. And besides, it was clear that she had other things on her mind, things that she was keeping from me. I had never seen someone get so serious after sex. Like her mind had been a thousand miles away. I’d wanted to ask her about it, but I didn’t know how. She was already so down, so clearly upset, that I hadn’t wanted to upset her further.
Holly stirred against me, opening her sleepy eyes. There were bags under those eyes, like she had barely slept the previous night, and it made something twist inside of me. She was still nestled against me, so I had to believe that I wasn’t the cause of her unease and discomfort. But I wondered what the problem really was. I had been in too deep of a sleep to notice if she had been tossing and turning.
I thought about what she had said before, about how she and her sister had come here from Montana because they needed a change of scenery. She had laughed when I suggested that it might be because of a breakup, as though that was absurd. But now I wondered if maybe she’d been lying to me.
Because wouldn’t that explain all of it? It seemed like it had been a while since she’d had sex, and it also seemed like she had gotten a little morose right after the sex. Like no matter how good it had been, there had been something else that she was thinking about right afterward.
Maybe there was an ex-boyfriend, a guy that she still had feelings for. Wouldn’t that explain her behavior?
She smiled up at me, and even though I could tell that there was still a hint of unhappiness to the expression, I figured I’d take what I could get. “Good morning,” I said.
“Good morning,” Holly said. There was something guarded about her tone, but I still wasn’t about to ask. “What’s the plan for today?” she asked.
“Well, the rain finally stopped a little while ago, so I was thinking we could go get some breakfast and by the time we were done, it would probably be dry enough to drive home. Or we could skip breakfast and try to head home now; I just feel like it’s better to be safe. I don’t want anything to happen.”
“That’s fair,” Holly said. “Breakfast sounds like a good idea anyway. I’m pretty hungry.”
“Well, we did do a little bit of exercise last night,” I couldn’t resist saying, grinning down at her.
Holly laughed. “You were the one doing all the work,” she said, and she looked happier than she had before. That made me wonder if maybe the whole reason she’d been upset was that she thought this was just a one-night stand and that I was never going to contact her again. I hated that I might have made her feel that way. It probably had to do with the fact that I had walked out of there the other night when we were having drinks.
I still wasn’t sure that getting involved with her now, when I had so much other drama going on, was such a good idea. But on the other hand, it didn’t feel like drama with her. In fact, she felt like an escape from all the drama. I wasn’t sure if that was a healthy way to look at it, not in the long run, but at the same time, that was the way it seemed right now.
And if she had her own things that she was running away from, things that she was trying to forget about, things that were bringing her down, then really, where was the harm?
We slipped out of bed, and I rummaged around to find my clothes
from where they’d been haphazardly discarded the night before. Holly snickered quietly. “It’s like we’re teenagers or something,” she said, holding up her wrinkled, inside-out shirt. “Like we couldn’t take the time to do things properly.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “What did you think was going to happen? That we were going to stop and fold our clothes neatly and set them in a pile?” I was amused at the very thought of it.
Holly giggled. “No, of course not,” she said.
“If you don’t think I got you good enough, I’m more than happy to haul you back off to bed,” I said, smirking at her. I was pleased to see the way she flushed at that, to note the way she shivered a little at my words.
She didn’t regret what had happened the night before; that much was clear. She might have other things on her mind. There might be more to it than that, but she didn’t regret it. I had to be glad about that.
We went to breakfast at a diner down the street. It was nothing special, not like Monica’s place, but the fried eggs were good, and it was all filling. And the coffee was decent. Holly looked like she needed it. Again, I wanted to ask. I couldn’t help feeling concerned about her. But I wasn’t sure that it was my place to ask.
“Thanks for bringing me here,” Holly said shyly as we ate our food. “I mean, for bringing me out to the special overlook. And to Monica’s.”
I smiled over at her. “My pleasure,” I told her. “Hey, you haven’t seen Las Cruces until you’ve seen the places that make this city special.” I paused, debating not saying what I really wanted to say. But finally, I spit it out: “I have to admit, I don’t really want you to go back to Montana. And I figured that if I showed you the best places around here, maybe you’d stick around.”
Holly laughed. “I guess that’s a good plan,” she said. “But I’m not planning on going back to Montana.” There was something else that flickered through her gaze. Again, something seemed off. But she was smiling again.