Page 54 of Grant’s Heat

“Feel good, baby? Your gorgeous cunt is so tight. I feel you squeezing me like you’re going to come.” He leaned closer and started saying filthy things in my ear between biting and licking the skin nearby. Grant whispered dirty words about licking my come from my pussy after I orgasmed, fucking my ass, my mouth, owning every inch of me…

Until, just moments later, I exploded. I moaned and cried behind that damn blue tape, sucking air through my nose in deep, gasping pants until I felt actual tears running down my cheeks. Grant stood back a bit and watched me with fascination, as though he’d never seen a woman climax before.

He took me in from head to toe, seeming to catalog every nuance of the experience, and whispered, “My God, you are a revelation. Thank you for that, Blaze. Such a firestorm inside this little body.” He stroked my short hair behind my ear with one hand and held me steady with the other arm wrapped around my waist, while I concentrated on just staying upright.

Finally, I let my arms slide down the wood panel that led inside, and that movement seemed to shake him from his trance.

“Here we go, baby.” He picked at the corner of the blue tape and ripped it off in one quick jerk, freeing up my esthetician’s three p.m. slot next Tuesday.

“Fuck!” I shouted, touching my upper lip gingerly. If he hadn’t just sent me to the moon in coital bliss, I would have given him a smack.

“Hey, I passed on the duct tape. You should be thanking me,” he teased. “Get your ass inside. I don’t think I’m done with you yet.”

I finished closing my jeans and whipped my hands to my hips. “You’re awfully bossy today. What’s gotten into you? And…are you forgetting this is my house? And that maybe I should be the one giving the orders?”

“Hell no. I don’t roll that way. Ever. And I’m not bossy today; I’m bossy every day.”

“You weren’t like this the last time.” I checked over my shoulder as I walked inside to ensure he followed.

“I wanted to be careful with you the first time.” He paused for a second, his jaw ticking as he seemed to weigh his words carefully. “I wasn’t sure where your head was at.”

“I see. And today? My head is…where?” I finally asked, leaning against the kitchen counter.

Grant made direct eye contact again. Holy shit, he was alluring when he was so sure of what he was saying. “Needing a firmer hand,” he asserted. “You still do. You always do. That’s what makes all of this so—”

But then he stopped midsentence. And I knew why. He wasn’t faltering because he couldn’t find the right words. He’d hesitated because what he was about to say was wrong. Wholly, utterly wrong. No matter how right everything had felt the other night, or even how right they still felt, we were on the brink of crossing a really rickety bridge. A point of no return. A mistake we wouldn’t be able to fix.

And we both knew it.

“Grant.” I heaved out a lungful of air, all the weight of my shitty argument with Abbigail coming back to rest on my chest and the aching heart inside it. “What are we doing here?”

Better yet, what the hell was I doing here?

I had no business fooling around with another man so soon after losing my husband. Maybe my sister-in-law was right. Maybe I was an awful person. An awful wife. An awful human, all around.

“I…I really think you should go. We can’t keep doing this, Grant. We—we just can’t.”

“Hey, hey. What’s going on? Talk to me.” His voice shifted from the dominant sexy man to the cautious caretaker.

I, on the other hand, grew more resolute with every passing second. “No, Grant, I’m serious. I want you to leave. Abbi’s right. I’m bad at all of this.” I waved my hand around the kitchen randomly while Grant continued to stare. He had no idea what was going on in my confused mind. Again. It was so often the case these days. So he gave me a few feet of space and let me riot with my thoughts.

Finally, he tried to calmly reach me again. “Babe,” he started, but I quickly shut him down.

“No!” I shook my head violently from side to side, figuring if I did it aggressively enough, the sound wouldn’t be able to penetrate my ears. “No. No ‘babe.’ No ‘baby.’ Maybe we shouldn’t even be friends anymore, you know? It’s just going to keep leading to this. Or that!” I pointed frantically back toward the garage. “Don’t you get it?” I yelled hysterically.

“No, actually, I don’t. What we’re doing doesn’t make us bad people, Rio.”

“It does! How don’t you see that? People are already talking about me! That I’m a bad wife. My husband’s body isn’t even cold in the ground yet, and I already have another man in my bed. What do you think that makes me, Grant?”

“It makes you human, Rio. It makes you want to be alive. It means you are healing and trying to be healthy.”

“No.” I stabbed my finger toward him. “That’s where you’re wrong. It makes me a whore.” I sighed as hot tears burned in angry streaks down my cheeks. “It makes me a heartless whore, Grant.”

He shook his head and took a few tentative steps toward me. “You’re wrong. So wrong. And whoever put that bullshit in your head…” He held his arms out to embrace me, and I wanted it so badly. I wanted to bury myself in his chest and inhale that smell that had come to mean comfort. Breathe in the citrus and cedar and lose myself in the peace I could only find within him these days.

But then, with impeccable timing, Grant’s cell phone rang. The ringtone sliced through the moment like a dirty, rusty blade, eviscerating the ties that bound us to one another. Because I already recognized that ringtone after spending so much time with this man.

It belonged to Sebastian Shark. And the call would be a four-alarm, Shark-style emergency.