Chapter 6

Grant

I couldn’t let her leave. I don’t know what had come over me, I don’t know what I was thinking, but one thing was certain, I had to keep her up there with me. If I let her slip through my fingers now, I’d never have another chance like it.

I’d forgotten about the photos, but now that she’d found them, I figured it must have been fate. God wanted her to find those pictures. That’s what I told myself.

I looked at her. She was stunning. My cock throbbed with desire. I wanted to rip her dress off and slam her down against the hay. I wanted to make her beg me for mercy. Fuck. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be secretly in love with a girl for pretty much your entire life, and all the while, you’re certain you’ll never be able to be with her?

It’s torture.

I wanted to touch her. I wanted to caress her hair. I wanted to taste her sweet, honey lips. Just once.

I knew it was wrong. I knew it was a betrayal of the trust her father had placed in me, but I didn’t care. At that moment, I lost all control of my thoughts. I wanted her like a starving wolf wants a lamb. No amount of reasoning could turn me away from what I wanted.

“There’s a clasp at your neck,” I said.

She looked at me, startled. Her hand went to the back of her neck, where a mother-of-pearl clasp held the straps of her dress secure.

“Yes, there is,” she said, nervously.

“Open it,” I said.

Her eyes widened. She was shocked. But I couldn’t help it. The heart wants what the heart wants. People often suppose men are simple creatures with simple appetites, and on the surface that’s true, but I’m here to tell you that when you get down a little deeper, nothing is further from the truth. In some ways we’re simple, sure, but our hearts are every bit as complicated as women’s. Our emotions are every bit as deep.

I’d lusted for Lacey for years, I’d crushed on her intensely for vast swathes of my life. But this was more than lust. This was beyond mere desire. This was a yearning in my soul that I couldn’t control. My voice was speaking not just for the present, but for all the countless nights in the past I’d spent craving the warmth of her body.

I’d spent my life waiting for her. No relationship I’d ever been in lasted more than a couple of weeks. I was Lacey’s, heart and soul, and something inside me wanted to make her mine.

“Grant.” Her mouth formed the word but her voice made no sound.

It was our only chance. Never again would I have her in a situation like this. The music wafted in from the warm night. The flame from the lamp made the shadows look as if they were dancing. Faith and Jackson’s wedding had created a romantic magic that filled the night air completely.

“Just this once,” I whispered.

“What?”

“I’ve known you seventeen years, Lacey. Seventeen years I’ve stopped myself from making a move. Seventeen years I’ve treated you like family.”

“I know,” she said, her voice trembling.

“So don’t you think I’ve earned one night?”

“What are you talking about?”

“One night of pleasure, Lacey. One night of passionate love. Tomorrow, we’ll pretend it never happened.”

“We won’t be able to pretend,” she said.

“We will,” I said, desperate to persuade her. I wasn’t sure if I was right, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to get the taste of her lips out of my mind once I kissed them, but at that moment I’d have promised her anything. “I swear to you, nothing will change, Lacey. We’ll go on as before. And this one night of lust will be our little secret.”

“I don’t think I can,” she whispered, her eyes filled with tears.

I didn’t know if she meant she couldn’t make love to me, or she wouldn’t be able to forget we’d done it, but my cock was pulsing with desire. I could smell her perfume and the shampoo in her hair. I could see the glistening light on the wetness of her lip. There was no way I could resist. I had to have her.

“Give me one night, Lacey, and I swear I’ll never ask you for another thing in the world.”

Her head was shaking, she wanted to say no, but she was hesitating. She was on the cusp.

“I don’t know, Grant. You and the brothers and Faith are the only family I have.”

“One night, Lacey, and afterwards, I’ll never mention it again. I promise you.”

A single tear fell from her eye, flowed over her cheek, and landed on her lap. It made a mark on the blue silk of her dress.

“I don’t think so, Grant.”

I put my finger over her lips. “Shh. Don’t say anything. If you climb down the ladder, I won’t stop you, and I won’t ever mention this again.”

She shut her eyes. She made to get up but then stopped. She stayed put.

I’d meant it. If she got up to leave, I’d have let her go. I wouldn’t say a word. But she stayed. She stayed, her eyes closed, her face so beautiful I thought I’d died and woken in heaven with an angel.

She was mine. After so many years of lusting for her, she was finally mine. I felt like a predator that had finally trapped its prey.

I put my lips to her ear. “You’re still here,” I whispered.

She was trembling. I had the impression she was terrified of what was about to happen. I didn’t blame her. It was surreal, after years of thinking it was impossible, to finally give in to our desire.

She stayed absolutely still, her eyes shut.

“I’m going to fuck you so hard you’ll beg me for mercy,” I whispered.

She gasped, her breath caught in her throat, but she remained absolutely motionless. She was like a drug. She was intoxicating. After learning to treat each other one way, after being utterly polite and familiar, there was something mind-blowingly erotic about talking dirty to her.

I put my hand to her cheek and brushed it gently. I wanted to shock her. I wanted to terrify her. I wanted to excite her so intensely with my words that she’d almost be orgasming before I even laid a finger on her.

“I’m going to slide my thick, massive cock into your sweet, soft pussy, Lacey.”

She gasped again, as if she was holding in tears. My cock throbbed, so aroused that I was afraid I might come before I got it inside her.

“I’m going to fill you with so much come it will be dripping out of you for a week,” I said.

This time, she voiced a whimper.

It was all a game, but it was more of a thrill than anything I’d ever imagined. I could have stayed there all night with her, just whispering those sweet obscenities. Whispering those things to her was a magical, sexual release. They were the things I’d wanted to say to her since the day I’d set eyes on her, when she was seventeen and still in high school, and I was twenty-one and barely a man.

“Have you imagined my cock, Lacey?” I whispered. “Have you thought about what it looks like? What it feels like? You must have.”

She was so still, the air was so still, it was as if a ghost had entered the barn. She shivered from the sudden chill that seemed to have descended on us. It was weird. It was a warm night, but in the blue light of the moon through the window, whispering those forbidden secrets I’d bottled up half my life, it felt cold.

I looked at her skin. It was so soft, so white, that I thought I could see her blood flowing beneath it. I saw the tiny, rhythmical tremor of her heartbeat in her neck. I moved my face to her skin, the coarseness of my stubble brushing softly against her cheek, and I inhaled deeply.

Her sweet scent flooded my nostrils. It was almost enough to make me cry.

I touched her, my rough hands looking rougher against the perfection of her skin. From her cheek, my finger slid down her neck until it reached the top of her dress. I could see the gentle slopes of her breasts and allowed my finger to trail through the valley of her cleavage and up the other side.

Lacey shuddered.

“I’ve wanted to see these breasts for seventeen years,” I whispered. “I’ve wanted to devour them the way a wolf devours its prey. I’ve wanted the delicious cherries of your nipples to ripen under my wet tongue.”

She whimpered again as I reached around her neck and opened the clasp, allowing the dress to fall and reveal her naked breasts to my eyes.

It was my turn to gasp. They were more delicious, more succulent and seductive than I’d even dared imagine.

“Oh my God, Lacey,” I sighed, before falling forward and taking a nipple into my hungry mouth. I sucked on the tender bud gently at first, but then increasingly ravenously. I was so hungry for her it must have frightened her. She let out another quiet whimper.

I allowed my tongue to run over every inch of her breasts. I pulled her dress down to give me access to the entirety of her chest. I leaned her back on the hay and climbed over her.

“Lacey, you’re more beautiful than I imagined,” I said, looking down at her sweet face.

She opened her eyes. Two sapphires looked up at me, sparkling in the pale light. I was sure she was going to object, tell me to stop, that it was a mistake.

But when she spoke, she said, “When are you going to kiss me?”

I smiled. “That’s my girl,” I said.

I descended, our lips meeting in a crescendo of passion, our tongues forcing their way into each other’s mouths like they were searching desperately for something. We kissed intensely. We kissed ravenously. We kissed in the way only two people who have thought about it for years can kiss. We were making up for all the lost time. Her mouth was a well, and I dove into it again and again for the life-giving nectar it contained. We were both panting for air by the time we finished.

“Can you believe we’re doing this?” she said. “It’s like a dream.”

“I knew it. I knew you wanted it too,” I gasped between kisses.

“Wanted it? Grant, if only you knew.”

I reached under her dress, my hands sliding over her thighs like an invading army. They didn’t stop until they reached the lace of her panties. She rose, and I pulled them over her knees in a single motion.

“You’re eager,” she said, shyness in her voice.

I began opening my belt. “Lacey, when this cock slides into you, it’s going to explode.”

She looked up at me defiantly. “Then do it.”

She made to take off her dress but I stopped her.

“No,” I said. “Keep it on. If there’s one thing more arousing than fucking you, Lacey, it’s fucking you in a wedding dress.”

She was about to say something but stopped herself. I’d never know what it was she was about to say, because by then my body had taken over. I opened my belt and pants and pulled out the full length and girth of my manhood.

She gasped when she saw it.

“I know,” I said.

“Grant, you’re massive.”

I winked. “I know, Lacey,” I said again. “I’m a motherfucking monster.”