I kiss Grant back with a need more desperate than I’ve ever felt before. Right here in the drop zone, I deepen the kiss with my hands gripping the lapel of his flight suit and take every damn thing I need from him.
Leo chuckles somewhere near as he gathers his own chute, but I don’t care. He gets it. He gets this. Post-jump sex is indescribable. Using the high of the adrenaline coupled with the bliss of an orgasm is a major inside joke amongst jumpers.
And more than anything, right now, I need Grant.
He showed up today seeing a broken woman ready to give it all up. Then with his simple request, he started putting my bricks and mortar back into place to prove that I am as strong as I thought I was. Sure there is doubt, and there always will be. But he knew that was what I needed—to be pushed back into my comfort zone so I’d find my confidence again. So, I’d wipe out my skepticism.
Grant leans back, the gold in his eyes dancing with excitement and lust, and I know he feels the same way I do. We shared something up there. I’ve jumped hundreds of times and have had the trust of the people I jumped with, but this was different. We both took what the other offered and used it to conquer something we feared.
I shove the rig off my back, leaving the parachute billowing in the breeze to pick up later, and without care of who else might be looking, I jump into Grant’s arms and wrap my legs around his waist.
Between spurts of laughter, our lips find each other’s, and God, how good it feels to laugh with him and kiss him. How good it feels to know my mom is looking down on me, approving of my taking a chance. How funny it seems that I want him to save me after all.
“I need you,” I murmur against his lips as my hands thread in his hair and the heat of the sun does nothing to rival the fire in my body already burning bright.
“My dick’s already five steps ahead of you.” He chuckles as he begins to walk across the field with me wrapped around him like a monkey.
I wave over Grant’s shoulder to Leo, who just shakes his head at us and rolls his eyes. I think he says something sarcastic like, “Sure, I’ll take care of your parachute while you fuck,” but I don’t care, and I don’t have any shame because it isn’t like he’s never experienced this feeling before.
“Hurry,” I murmur as I nip the tip of his earlobe.
“Where? Keys?” His cock presses against me with each step he takes and makes the walk across the strip tortuous.
“Shit. My keys are in the office.” I laugh as my mind scrambles. “Go to the left. Red hangar. Far side.”
“Christ,” he mutters, but only because with each rub over his dick he lets out a little groan. “Here?”
“Mm-hmm. The door slides,” I say even though he’s already pulling open the large barn-type door. Then we’re into the shadows of the red hangar and he’s shoving the door shut and slamming me back against it. His lips are on mine in a savage union of lust and greed and want and need and every one of the seven sins mixed in there.
There is no finesse. There are no niceties. We are all about how fast we can unharness ourselves from our rigs and step out of them so we can feel and enjoy each other’s skin.
“Christ, Em.”
“I know. Hurry.” A laugh falls from my lips. “Post-jump sex is the best kind of sex there is.”
“Oh really?” he says, leaning back to meet my eyes. His have darkened with lust and suggestion.
“Mm-hmm.”
“You were holding out on me.” A brush of his lips against mine. A cup of his hand against my ass pulling me against his hardened dick.
“Can’t hold out on someone when they are the one refusing you.” I quirk my lips, but then they fall lax as he tugs down the zipper of my suit and yanks down my tank so he can suck then graze his teeth over my nipple.
“I’m not refusing you now, am I?”
“I wouldn’t let you,” I challenge.
There is a quiet moment where our eyes lock and our bodies vibrate from our connection – mental, physical, emotional—and then within a beat, we are back into frenzy mode. Zippers on flight suits sound off. The shimmy of clothes being pushed down. The squeak of shoes on concrete. The begged pleas to hurry. Quicker. I’m desperate.
And then, as we stand in this massive hangar buck naked, his body a mouth-watering sight only serving to encourage my urgency for him, I realize there isn’t really anywhere to have sex in here except for the concrete floor. The walls are lined with industrial shelving units. The tables are covered with plane parts.
“Where are we going to . . . crap.”
He takes in the sparse space save for the Cessna in one corner and a Piper in another before turning back to look at me with a gleam in his eye.
“What?” I ask.
“Guess there’s no time like the present to join the mile-high club, huh?”
Before I can process what he means, he lets out a whoop, swoops down, wraps his arms around my thighs and hoists me buck ass naked over his shoulder.
“Red or blue?” he asks, and I can only guess he’s making me choose a plane. I don’t have the heart to ask how he plans on joining any kind of club when there is definitely no room in either of them to have sex. “Decide.”
“Blue,” I say, and then cry out in shock when his hand smacks my ass as he makes his way over to the Piper. “Grant. What are—”
“Shush.” He slowly lets me down so that I slide down the length of his body. The friction of my slow descent makes my nipples bud so hard they hurt, but it has nothing on the ache banging hard between my thighs. “We’re chasing the moment,” he says, flashing a smile before his lips are on mine again.
The trailing edge of the wing is at my back and he pushes my ass against it while we speak with tongues and moans instead of coherent words.
The adrenaline is a high, but so is the taste of Grant Malone. And, Christ, how I want more of him.
Our hands are everywhere and not enough places on each other. His fingers find their way between my thighs, and the groan he emits when they find me wet, willing, and wanting for him is enough to make me come on the spot.
But that’s cheating.
If he wants to make me come, he’d better work harder than that to earn it.
“Turn around,” he demands.
“Should I assume the position?” My eyes flash up to meet his, my bottom lip between my teeth as I make a deliberate show of turning around. I lay my torso and breasts against the wing and wiggle my ass in a tease as I hiss at the cool metal beneath my bare flesh.
“Christ, Em.”
“Are you gonna frisk me, Officer Malone?” I say in my huskiest of voices.
His chuckle rumbles through the space as I wait for him. The sound of his hand working over his own cock is chased by his groan of appreciation, and just knowing he’s doing that because he likes what he sees is fire to my blood.
“Frisking someone has never been so tempting.” His foot knocks my feet farther apart before he leans forward. “Spread ‘em,” he says in my ear, the scrape of his chin against my shoulder as he retreats again causing chills to race over my skin.
Then there is an anticipatory silence as he stands behind me and I wait. Adrenaline begs me to rush this, my need paramount, but there’s something about how sexy this is that has me biting my lip as I stand there, bare to him, aching for him to satisfy me.
I startle when his hands hit both sides of my right ankle before slowly sliding their way up my leg. When they hit the apex of my thighs, he rubs his thumb back and forth along my slit before pressing into me. The only sounds in the hangar belong to my hitched breath, his labored groan, and his thumb working me at a leisurely pace. And once he has me wanting enough that I’m pushing back against his touch, he stops, repositions his hands, and then starts his ascent up the other leg. But this time when he reaches the top, I groan when he removes his thumb without stroking me.
Then gasp when his tongue does it for him.
His tongue is hot and I’m wet and . . . holy hell. My eyes flutter closed at the feel of him. The tease of what’s to come. The desperation for all of him.
I wriggle under his manipulation and plead when he stops. He takes one long, last lick with a libidinous groan before stepping back so that our only connection is where his hand runs back and forth over the curve of my ass.
Every part of me wants him.
“Is there a problem, Officer,” I ask coyly, so very aware that he’s allowing me to continue this charade of control he’s afforded me for the past few hours.
I don’t think he realizes that he could ask me for anything right now, and I’d give it to him.
Something changed between us today. Shifted. The fear I had over him, about him, is gone. I just need to accept it. Everything in me is whispering that a jumping-high orgasm slamming through my system to remind me how incredible his cock is will help do the trick.
“It seems I have forgotten my handcuffs.” He chuckles and lands a smart slap on my ass.
“Oh, am I under arrest?”
“Definitely.”
The palm of his hand slides down the line of my spine.
“What’s the charge?”
“Making me want you. Every minute of every goddamn day.”
His hands spreading me apart and then his mouth blowing ever so softly over me.
“What’s the punishment?” I’m breathless, spent before we even start.
“I’m going to fuck you. Thoroughly. Properly. And hopefully slowly . . .” His words seduce me, but it’s his dick slowly slipping into me that consumes me. It’s the feel of his thumbs caressing over my ass before one of them presses unexpectedly against the tight rim of muscles above it that excites me. I part moan, part wriggle back against his fingers to let him know I want him. “But the way you feel right now, I can’t promise the slowly part.”
I purposely tighten my muscles around his cock and moan at how full he makes me feel. “No woman complains about thoroughly and properly,” I murmur, the cool of the wing beneath me and the heat of what his dick is doing within me driving me to distraction.
“Good,” he says as one hand twists around the length of my ponytail and tugs my hair back some to hold me in place as he drives into me harder this time.
“Yes.” The word is a drawn-out sigh and each thrust brings a new round of pleasure, a new way to sustain the adrenaline of the jump.
“You like that?” He grunts as his thumb rubs circles to stimulate the nerves in my ass while the head of his dick expertly manipulates and taunts and teases the ones within me. With each touch, each graze, he pushes me up that welcome precipice between pleasure and pain.
“Please,” I beg, and it’s the last thing I have to say because he’s as primed and desperate as I am and ready to take the fall.
Again.
“We are lucky everyone was gone so we didn’t have to take the walk of shame back here,” he murmurs against the crown of my head.
He is leaning against the headboard of my bed, and I’m resting my head on his chest. I’m comfortable and more peaceful than I have been in days . . . and I know it’s because of him.
“Do you always take your suspects back to their place after you frisk them?” I murmur.
“No, but it sounds like you skydivers do after a jump.” He chuckles, its vibration rumbling against my chest.
“Adrenaline has a way of doing that to you—making you need that extra release.”
“Is this an occupational hazard I should be worried about?”
“No. God no.” I pause and then add, “But I won’t deny that all of my staff have had their fun at one time or another.”
“And that’s why Leo was laughing.”
“Ha. At least we left plain sight,” I say with a laugh as I think about Leo and that hot little number he all but mounted against the side of the Blue Skies shed after a particularly thrilling jump.
“I don’t think I want to know.”
“No, you don’t.” I can still hear the rest of the jumpers hooting and hollering for him to get a room, but the sweet, little thing he was with was so excited to have a catch like Leo, she had no shame.
We sit in silence for a bit, his fingers trailing up and down the line of my spine, moving the towel, which is still damp from our shower, down a bit more with each subsequent trace of his finger. I think of the day. Of how I came back determined to pick up and “go gypsy” to escape the feelings and the memories I can’t seem to stop. Oh how quickly that changed when he put his trust in me. He gave me his biggest fear and didn’t walk away like I wanted to do to him.
Shouldn’t I be able to face my biggest fear then, too?
“Thank you for getting me down safely,” he murmurs as if he’s reading my thoughts.
“Thank you for trusting me to do so.”
“You needed a leap of faith, Em. You needed someone to prove to you that they trust you, so in turn, you should trust yourself.”
“There are so many things you don’t understand . . . things I wish I could . . .” My fingers draw absently on his chest over his heart.
“No. It’s okay I don’t need to know.”
“I’m just not ready to explain—”
“You don’t need to. I’ve done enough damage. I pushed you when I didn’t realize I was. I guess I just want you to understand that I’m here for you. That I care about you. That whatever it is you need from me, I’ll try to give you, so long as you tell me. I can’t read your mind.”
I draw in a long, deep breath as if I’m trying to digest and believe what he is saying to me. As if I’m willing myself to whole-heartedly trust him.
“Trust is hard for me,” I whisper, feeling as if I just peeled back my soul and opened it to him. In reality, my revelation is nothing new but it’s still huge for me to admit.
“Understandably.”
Another deep breath. Another confession that needs to be expressed but that is totally unfounded. “I blamed you for the longest time you know.”
“Blamed me for what?” he asks, trying to pinpoint what of the many things I could pin on him.
“My lack of trust.” His fingers still for just a beat before they move to my chin and tilt my face so I’m forced to look at him. His eyes question me, but his lips refrain from verbalizing. “It was so much easier to blame you for everything than to blame the man who was supposed to love me.”
He nods ever so slightly; the compassion in his eyes is truly overwhelming. “I can’t tell you I understand, Em, because I haven’t walked a day in your shoes, but I can tell you that I respect what you are saying. That I hear you. That I’ll prove to you that you can trust me.”
I feel so stupid, needing to hear him say those words, but now that he has, I feel as if a weight has been lifted off my chest. “Where do we go from here?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean . . .” I pause and try to figure out how to put what I want to say into words. “Never mind.”
He pulls me in tighter against his chest. “Where do we go, Emerson? First of all, you’re not going anywhere. I love that you’re a gypsy and free spirited—I wouldn’t change that for the world. I’d never take that away from you. Though, I’d appreciate it if you keep the taking off without telling anyone where you are to a minimum. It makes the cop in me want to track you down to make sure you’re okay.”
“You wouldn’t . . .”
“Don’t tempt me,” he teases but with a hint of an edge that tells me he’d do just that if need be.
“I won’t. Remember, we’re working on trust here,” I say dryly.
“I’m aware.” He plants a noisy kiss on my forehead. “Since you’re staying put, then we keep doing what we’re doing. You get your loan despite how much I’d like to punch that slimy fucker you’re getting it through. I get my promotion despite the asshole trying to take it from me . . . and we . . . move forward. Together.”
“This is all a huge change for me.” I try to wrap my head around how two months ago, I was thinking about the next flavor of the month, and now, I’m sitting here discussing tomorrows with Grant.
“What is? The having someone care about you part or the feeling settled in one place?”
“Both. None. All of it.” I laugh as I hook my leg over his. I meet his eyes and find myself admitting things to him I haven’t yet digested myself. “I’ve survived this far by closing myself off and not allowing myself to feel . . . and then you enter my life with your lights and sirens blazing, and it’s as if you’ve handcuffed me so that I can’t escape from you. So that I’m forced to feel. So that I think in wants and needs. So that I wonder how I ever lived without it. I love it. I hate it. It’s overwhelming, and it’s just . . .”
“Well, get used to it because I’m not going anywhere and neither are you, even if I have to handcuff you and your gypsy ways.” There’s humor in his voice, but there is also an earnestness that tugs on my heart. It makes me just that much more thankful that he showed up today.
“Better make sure you bring them next time,” I tease as my body reacts to the memory of earlier in the hangar.
“I’ll make sure to put my extra set in the nightstand.”
“Promise?”
He leans forward and presses the most tender of kisses against my lips. “Promise.”
Our eyes hold for a moment. “You’ve pretty much obliterated my rules, you know that, right?”
He makes a non-committal sound. “I was wondering how long it was going to take for you to realize that.”
I shrug. “I have a selective memory.”
“Is that what it’s called these days?” The way he says it makes my body become all too aware of how thin the towels wrapped around us are and how easily we might be able to slip out of them. He kisses me again as my fingers reach for the towel at his waist. “There is one thing I forgot to do earlier—you know, proper police protocol.”
“Falling down on the job again?”
He chuckles against my lips. “Only if I’m falling on top of you.”
“Cute,” I say and then sigh as his fingers find their way between my thighs. “We were talking about following proper police protocol.” It’s hard to get the words out.
“Then I guess it’s time to get this strip search under way,” he says before his lips meet mine.
And just like that, we slip into something beyond my rules.
It should terrify me after the past week I’ve had, which was filled with doubts and questions, but there’s something so comforting about the moment.
About being with someone who sees my scars and still thinks I’m beautiful.