girl he’s a freaking GREYMARK he’s not taking you to a barn!!
that doesn’t tell me what to WEAR…
A dress. With your knee-high boots. Trust me.
I put on my green wrap dress, knee-high boots, and look in the mirror. I look… okay; I lookgood. Nothing like a woman who is unraveling over an alpha who left her a coffee and post-it note.
But, of course, I change my earrings twice, redo my lipstick. Then I sit on the edge of my bed at 6:52 with my hands pressed between my knees so I’ll stop fidgeting, telling myself to be cool, be normal, get a straight answer tonight, don’t let him kiss you stupid again before he gives you one… And then the doorbell rings.
Seven
Esme
I open the door and forget how to breathe. Sven is filling the whole damn frame… He’s always huge, but I’ve only ever seen him at work, in one of his flannels, in daylight. And now he’s at my doorstep, standing in the soft evening light, wearing a navy sweater that stretches over his amazing shoulders and dark jeans that hug his massive thighs. Lord have mercy… and he’s looking at me like I’m the only thing in the whole damn universe.
“Hi,” I manage after a long beat of us just staring at each other.
For a second he doesn’t say anything. His eyes just travel down my body, slow, taking in my dress and boots, then they climb back up to my face, his jaw working the whole time…
“You look…” He stops, then starts over, rougher, “You look beautiful.”
It comes out like he fuckinghadto say it. Like that’s the best he could do with using only his words, and I feel them land low in my belly.
“You said to dress warm.” I gesture at myself, at my long sleeve knit dress, like an idiot. “I went with warm.”
“Good.” His voice drops another octave. “It’ll be cold by the water.”
Then he holds out his hand, palm up. The enormous green hand he could pick me up with. I put mine in it and watch it disappears completely, swallowed. Sven’s fingers close around me carefully, like he’s afraid he might crush me. Then he walks me down to a truck that’s even bigger than him. He opens the door and lifts me. This male actually lifts me, with one hand on my waist, like I weigh freaking nothing, up into the passenger seat. And I freaking love that he can do that! I am in so much trouble…
He climbs in next to me, and the whole truck shrinks. I don’t know how something this big manages to feel small, but it does the second Sven folds himself behind the wheel. And it’s just me and him in the dark and the heat pouring off his body in the closed-up cab, so much of it, it’s like sitting next to an open oven, and his scent… God, his scent… Cedar, wood-smoke and that warm, dark thing under that I feel more than smell, that drops straight down the back of my throat and low in my belly.
I’m wet before we hit the end of my street.
Just from this. From sitting next to him. From the size of his thigh a few inches from mine, the muscles in it shifting under the denim when he works the pedals. From his huge hands on the wheel. His enormous green hands, the veins on the backs, the way the sizeable steering wheel looks like a toy in his grip. All I can think about is what they would feel like on me, how much of me one of them could cover, and I have to look out the window and breathe through my mouth. It doesn’t help. Breathing through my mouth just means I’m practically tasting him now. Fuck…
He drives with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on his thigh, and I keep sneaking at the hard line of his jaw in the dashboard light, at his beard. The way his sweater pulls across his chest every time he turns. The glint of his earring. He’s so tall his horns nearly graze the roof of the car, and all that alpha folded into a truck right next to me has me clenching around nothing.
Then his hand leaves his thigh and lands on mine…
It just settles there, heavy and hot, his palm covering my whole knee and half my thigh, and I stop breathing entirely. He doesn’t look my way. Doesn’t freaking say anything. Just keeps his eyes on the road and his hand on my leg like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like it fucking belongs there. Then his thumb starts moving… slow, lazy, back and forth… and I feel it every-fucking-where. A small sound almost escapes me. But I miraculously manage to catch it. Oh God…
I turn and see his nostrils flare. He knows. Of course he fucking knows… he can smell exactly what’s happening to me, what he’s doing to me just by fucking existing inches away, with his hand on my leg. Sven’s jaw goes tight, a low rumble starts up in his chest. It’s barely there, and I feel it more than I hear it. But his thumb keeps moving, and neither of us says a single word the rest of the way. I just press my thighs together around his hand and lose my whole mind. By the time he parks, I’m soaked and dizzy, and I’d climb into his lap right here if he so much as looked at me the wrong freaking way. Or the right one. Your pick!
* * *
Sven takes me to a place past the marina. It’s a low building, right on the water. There’s no sign I can see. Warm light spills out of the windows. And inside it’s all dark wood andcandlelight, with a fire going in a stone hearth that’s roughly the size of my apartment… This is the nicest restaurant I’ve ever set foot in, and it smells incredible!
A woman dressed in all black comes around the host stand, and her face changes the moment she sees Sven.
“Mr. Greymark, your table is ready.”
She walks us back to a booth by the fire that clearly is the best seat in the place, and people look up as we pass them. Not exactly staring, but the way a room notices when someone important walks in. A man at the bar nods at my dinner companion. Sven nods back and puts his hand on my back to steer me into the booth, then he slides in across from me.
There are no prices on the menu…
“Please get whatever you want,” he says with a small smile.
I shake my head, but I’m smiling too. “I always seem to get whatever I want when I’m with you.”
