Grace

Once we returned to my place, I invited Davis in for a nightcap.

He followed me to the refrigerator, pulled my hand off the handle, and prodded me upstairs by poking me between the ribs as I giggled uncontrollably. I’m ticklish and made the mistake of admitting it a few days ago.

He won’t let me live it down.

He removes my dress, taking his time kissing my neck as I cup his manhood and massage his swelling erection through his suit pants. He rakes his teeth over my collarbone as he slides his hands around my ass. Then I’m in the air, being lifted and placed over his lap.

We half fall onto the bed before he sits up again and arranges my knees on either side of his thighs.

“I want you on top,” he rasps. I look down at him, admiring his painfully handsome face, clean-shaven jaw, and eyes the color of cloudy skies in the winter. Except there’s nothing cold hovering in Davis’s eyes. Especially now.

He unhooks my bra—black to match my dress and heels, both long gone. He pulls the straps down my arms and his eyes darken hungrily when my breasts are bared.

He ducks his head and takes a nipple on his tongue, and I rake my hands into his thick hair. Pleasure shoots like lightning from my breasts to between my legs. His attention goes there next, and he watches me openly while slipping his fingers past the barrier of a scant pair of silken panties.

My breaths are truncated, shortened by lust and an emotion far more dangerous than lust. In the desire-soaked air between us, Davis seems to share that thought. It’s scary and titillating and distracting and exciting. It’s the Ferris wheel all over again—the instability of the carriage, the intoxication of being up so high…

With one role reversal.

At the top of that Ferris wheel it was Davis holding tight, nervous about being so high. I was the one who embraced it. I was the one empowered by it.

Love, for us, elicits the opposite response.

My contemplation evaporates with the next sweep of his fingers against my center. Heat builds as he suckles my breasts—first one, then the other.

“Condom,” he says as the air chills my damp nipples.

“Nightstand.”

“Get it.”

“Yes, sir.” Fire consumes me when I crawl from his lap and earn a smack on the ass. I dig the condom out of the drawer—buried beneath a brush, nail file, lotion, and several other random single-woman paraphernalia.

Back on the bed, I tear the packet open as Davis kicks off his boxer briefs. Even though I’ve seen it repeatedly, the sight of his cock renders me speechless.

Jutting out from between his legs, it promises pleasure. Davis fills me like no one else. He wraps his fist around his thick shaft and gives one tug—then another. Between my legs, another surge of pressure pulses.

“You make me so fucking hot, Gracie.”

I roll the condom on him, taking my time at the ridge along the head before easing it over his length. Davis watches. I lift my eyes to his when I’m done, then move to straddle him. He surprises me by rolling on top and pressing my back into the bed.

“I thought you wanted me on top,” I breathe.

“Changed my mind.” He pins me with his weight, hooking one of my legs over his hip and tilting his pelvis forward in one firm thrust. I gasp.

I’m his.

He rocks into me again, one long, hard thrust. Over and over until the air swells with sounds of pleasure—mine and his.

His guttural growls mingle with my breathy moans. Soon we’re working up a sweat, pillows tumbling to the ground as our flesh slaps. I shove against his chest to push him over, to take over, but he doesn’t allow it. Trapping my hands over my head, he gives me a cocky smile and purposely slows his movements.

A sluggish reverse out…then a quick plunge in.

“Ohh.”

He extracts the sound from me without trying, and then does it again.

“Come for me, Gracie.” He glides back, then forward, this time adding a trick we’ve tried once before. “I’m going to count down from three, and you’re going to come so hard, you’ll beg me to stop.”

I think back to the hottest phone sex I’ve ever had—okay the only phone sex I’ve ever had—and a ripple of pleasure blasts through me at the idea of coming so hard I’ll be begging him to stop.

Worth a try.

“Three,” he commands. “You’re so fucking gorgeous.”

“Two.” He releases my wrist and teases my breast. “Feel it building?” He’s as breathless as I am.

I manage a weak nod.

“Gracie.” He rewards me with another thrust, and another. “Give it to me.”

That’s all it takes.

I coil, clinging to his back as wave after wave of my orgasm washes over me. And when he continues working toward his own release, I coil tighter still, my spent muscles spasming within until I’m sure I can’t take it anymore.

I come again, begging him to finish because I can’t take another second of pleasure. Finally he gives in.

Even during Davis’s orgasm, my body greedily takes another. Sweat coats my hairline, my breasts, my stomach. A ragged breath wrings itself from my lungs. My arms and legs go limp from exhaustion.

Davis gives me his weight, lying against me, embedded deep. His lips find my neck, his warm breath tickling my skin.

“Fuck, we’re good at that,” he says.

“Yeah, we are.”

He pushes to his elbows and studies me for a long moment. I can see what he’s not saying as plain as day. My heart kicks my ribs in terrified anticipation, but instead of saying the three words that could send me into a panic attack, Davis says three very different ones.

“Zombies and beer?”

It’s a cowardly move on my part, but I take the reprieve. “Zombies and beer.”

I have Monday off, which is a dream, considering McGreevy’s will be slow and I wouldn’t make much money anyway.

I’m at Davis’s house. He sits on the floor between my legs, his eyes on the screen as another hapless zombie meets a swift and merciless end. I’m massaging a particularly troublesome spot on Davis’s right shoulder, which must be tender given the way he grunts.

I lean to whisper into his ear, lightening my touch, “Office work is killing you.”

“I don’t work that hard.”

He does so. I harrumph.

“Eight to five at a desk isn’t exactly coal mining.”

“No, but moving that mouse all day and not moving your hot body isn’t doing you any favors.”

“I work out.” He digs a handful of potato chips out of the bag and munches.

“I’m jealous of your metabolism,” I grumble. “I too would like to sit on the floor and eat an entire bag of calories.”

He drops the bag to the coffee table and turns, wrapping his arms around my waist and looking up at me.

“Then do it,” he says.

I snort. “In case you haven’t noticed, my hips aren’t as narrow as yours.”

He grabs a handful of my ass-slash-thigh and squeezes. “And thank God for that. Your body is my dream. Or do you need me to prove it to you?”

I brought takeout from McGreevy’s for our dinner. We ate sandwiches, then collapsed on the couch. We haven’t taken our clothes off yet, which is a record for us.

“Why the smile, Gracie Lou?”

At a loss for a clever response, I decide to be frank. “Just…you.”

His eyes grow warm, long lashes dipping low as his mouth spreads into a slow smile. “Are you staying?”

“Why?” My eyes go to the screen. “Going to have nightmares if I don’t?”

“Possibly. I have a nightlight, though, so don’t feel pressured to stay if you can’t manage.”

I run my fingers through his respectably messy hair, thinking of reasons to go home. I come up blank.

“I brought a change of clothes.”

“Good.” He joins me on the couch and drops the chip bag onto my lap. “Eat all the chips you want.”

I lean against him and pluck a few crisp, round chips from the bag. His heart thuds against my back. On TV a katana blade slices the air and blood spurts from one of the zombies.

My shoulders shake with laughter.

“Like that?” Davis asks.

“I don’t know about us, Price.” I snuggle deeper against him. His arms lock around my stomach and I pull out another potato chip, reach over my head, and feed it to him. He crunches it happily.

“I do, Gracie,” he finally says.

Happy, eating potato chips, and resting on Davis’s solid form, I decide that his knowing might be enough for both of us.

Davis

I’m finishing my espresso two minutes before work when Grace comes downstairs wearing my T-shirt and her own floral pajama bottoms. I freeze at the bottom of the stairs, smiling at her messy hair as much as the cute, sleepy expression on her face.

“I won’t disturb you,” she says as she steps into the kitchen. “I know you have to work, like, now. You should have woken me up and told me to leave.”

God. She’s my favorite habit.

I kiss her forehead and cuddle her warm, cotton-clad body closer. “You don’t have to leave, Gracie. You won’t bother me.”

“How do you know? I can be obnoxious.” Her hands find my suit jacket sleeves, and the contrast between me dressed to the hilt and her barely dressed is nothing short of charming.

“I like you obnoxious.” I deliver another kiss, this one to her mouth, and walk to my office. “It’s your best quality.” At the doorway I turn. “I’ll break for lunch. If you leave before then, don’t you dare do it without saying goodbye.”

“Okay.”

I nod and duck into my office, log on, and crack my knuckles. It’s go time.

By lunchtime I’m ready to call it a day, which…never happens. I’m aware of Grace in my house. She’s quiet, but every time I hear the ripple of the newspaper or the clink of a spoon on the edge of a coffee mug, I want to go to her.

I send a quick email and give myself permission to stop for thirty minutes.

Grace is in the living room, spraying a plant with a mister. She’s standing on her toes to reach it, which has the added effect of raising her red long-sleeved shirt a few inches and showing off her lower back. The jeans cup her round bottom and her hair is down, her waves chaotic.

“I go away for a few hours and come back to you more beautiful. What gives?”

Her smile bursts onto her face, the sun streaming through the window catching the diamond stud in her nose.

“I was going to leave, but I didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye, and I didn’t want to interrupt you. Plus, I make amazing grilled cheese sandwiches. Want one?” She relinquishes my mister to the plant stand and walks by me en route to the kitchen.

“I can’t turn down grilled cheese.”

She chatters about various cheese types and mayo, then tomato and pickles and the preference of one over the other. Each has its merits, we decide.

While she talks, I remember the Grilled Cheese of Doom on the anniversary of my equally doomed wedding day. I can’t call up the loneliness, though. Especially with Grace here. It’s great to have her here.

Here, in my bed, in my kitchen—in my life, is…Well. She makes everything full instead of empty.

I could get used to it.

I think I’m already used to it.

When Hanna left me at the altar, Grandma Rose was the first person I saw when I flew home. I had to sober up for a few days first before breaking the news to her. She took the news well. With a head shake and a cluck of the tongue. Then she gave me a piece of advice I didn’t believe at the time.

There’ll be a woman, Davis, who will come along and make you rethink love and marriage.

At the time, I swore I’d never succumb to either of those plagues again.

Now, watching Grace carefully cut my sandwich into triangles, I know I was remiss to disregard the advice of the wisest senior citizen I know.

“Voilà,” Grace announces with flair. She slices her own sandwich before settling at the kitchen table, her plate next to mine. Our two sandwiches, plates, and glasses of water, side by side.

I take my seat. I take a bite. I reward her with an ecstasy-infused moan and exaggerated eye roll. “Best sandwich of my life.”

She playfully shoves my shoulder.

I polish off the first half and wipe my buttery fingers on a paper napkin. “You’re welcome to leave a few things here, you know.”

Grace, sandwich in hand, blinks at me.

“You wouldn’t have to pack a bag every time you wanted to stay if you kept a change of clothes and a toothbrush here.”

“You have to work.” She puts her sandwich down and brushes her fingers together.

“So do you. But in between you’re welcome here. Hell, I come to your work all the time and hang around.”

This earns me a brittle smile.

“What would that look like?” she asks. “Would I call first? Swing by unannounced? Are you going to give me a key?”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but…“Sure. You can have a key.”

“Davis.” Her tone is exasperated. She bites the corner of her lip like she’s deciding whether or not she should say what’s on her mind. Then she does. “Are you saying you want me to move in?”

“Gracie, no. I’m trying to be pragmatic.” Moving in is an extreme step, even for me. But just as I’m about to tell her I’m not remotely interested in her living here, I realize I kind of am. I sure as hell can’t tell her that. “All I know is that I want more.”

An expression akin to panic contorts her features.

“Whatever that looks like to you,” I clarify.

She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t look at me.

“Think about it,” I say easily. I hope I’m broadcasting calm I don’t feel. “Thanks for the sammie.”

She’s still not looking at me.

“Gracie?”

“I’ll think about it,” she promises.

My desk phone purrs one ring, then two. I leave her at my kitchen table and jog to my office to answer. Fifteen minutes later, call complete, I stick my head out of the door to find Grace, but she’s gone.