Emmy’s elbows nearly gave out. “You don’t have to?—”
“Shut up. I just need to—can I please?—”
“Yes,” she breathed.
His grip tightened on her thighs, spreading her open, and her brain emptied because his mouth was on her inner thigh, his stubble scraping the soft skin, and then higher, and the first press of his tongue against her was so precise and devastating that her head dropped back against the granite and she stopped thinking entirely.
He was—God. The same unhurried thoroughness he’d brought to every single thing she’d ever watched him do. The same attention. Except now the thing he was paying attention to was her, and the focus was annihilating. He found a rhythm thatmade her hand slam flat against the counter. He found the spot that made her thighs clamp around his head and her back arch off the granite. He worked against her with his mouth, slow and relentless, and when she tried to squirm away from the intensity his arm locked across her hips and held her there—pinned, at his mercy, on her own kitchen island while the Christmas lights blinked overhead and the kettle sat cold on the stove and her curated, organized, pathologically controlled life dissolved under Grant Knight’s mouth.
“Don’t stop—” The words ripped out of her. “Grant, don’t—right there, please,please?—”
He didn’t stop. He gave her more. His fingers joined his mouth—one, then two, curling inside her while his tongue worked in slow devastating circles, and the combination shattered something fundamental in her understanding of what her body was capable of. The tension built low and tight, coiling, and his free hand pressed flat against her stomach holding her down, and the possessiveness of it—held open, held still, heldexactly where he wanted her?—
Emmy came with a sound she’d never made before. Loud, graceless, his name breaking apart on her tongue. Her whole body arched off the counter, her hand fisting in his hair, and he worked her through it, mouth softening but not stopping, his fingers still moving inside her, pulling aftershocks from her like he knew her body’s secrets better than she did and had no intention of letting her keep them.
When he finally pulled back, he pressed his mouth against her inner thigh. Rested his forehead there. She could feel his breath, ragged and hot against her skin, and the intimacy of it—his face pressed against her thigh, his hand still curved around her hip—was almost more devastating than the orgasm.
When he straightened up, Emmy’s thighs were still trembling. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Hishair was destroyed, his shirt half-untucked from where she’d been grabbing at him, and his eyes when they found hers were glazed and dark and completely undone—like a man who’d just had something confirmed that he’d been afraid to believe.
“Come here,” she said. Her voice was raw.
He leaned over her. Braced his hands on either side of her head. She could taste herself when she kissed him, and the groan he made into her mouth was raw and desperate and barely human. His hips pressed against hers and she could feel how hard he was, how close to the edge of his own control, and the knowledge that he’d done all of that—undone her completely—while ignoring what his own body was demanding made her want him with a ferocity that scared her.
“Bedroom,” she managed against his mouth. “Down the hall. Left.”
“Yeah.” His forehead dropped against hers. His arms were shaking. “Yeah.”
He pulled her upright, and her legs were useless, and he caught her—one arm around her waist, steadying her against him while the blood returned to her extremities and the room stopped tilting.
“My kitchen island,” she said faintly.
“What about it.”
“I’m never going to be able to make coffee at that counter again without?—”
“Good.” His mouth found her ear. His voice was a growl. “That’s the idea.”
He lifted her. Carried her down the hallway with effortless, maddening, physics-defying ease—and Emmy buried her face against his neck and breathed him in and felt, against her bare skin, the barely contained tremor running through his entire body.
He found the bedroom and set her down on the edge of the bed.
The room was dim—just the streetlight coming through the window, amber and cold. He stood over her, and the expression on his face wasn’t hunger. It was something older. Something that had been waiting.
“Em.” His voice was low. “We don’t have to do this now. We have time.”
The word cracked her open. Time. Like this wasn’t a single desperate night. Like he was planning on tomorrow, and the day after, and every day after that.
She reached for the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head.
Emmy’s breath caught.
She’d seen him in Under Armour. She’d seen the billboards. She’d once accidentally lingered on an ESPN body issue photo and closed the tab so fast she’d knocked her coffee over, which she’d never told anyone.
This was different. This was Grant above her in the half-dark, close enough to touch, and the reality of his body was absurd—shoulders that blocked the streetlight, the planes of his chest, the hard lines of his stomach tapering into his waistband. He was built like the thing he was, an instrument of controlled violence, and the contrast between that body and the way his thumb was tracing her jaw right now made her stomach clench.
She ran her hands up his chest. His eyes closed. His breath left him in a slow, shuddering exhale, and his head dropped, forehead resting against hers.
“You have no idea,” he said quietly, “how long I’ve?—”
