Chapter Eleven
Grant pulled up to an enormous gray and white shingled beach house shortly after sunset and awakened Liz, who’d been asleep for most the drive, proving that furniture shopping was utterly draining.
It was also utterly frustrating, including the part where he could very well have made love to her in the middle of the damn parking lot if Eric and a few of his employees hadn’t left the building for the night and found them making out against his car like a couple of teenagers.
After an hour in the car with her asleep the entire way, it was all he could think about. Making love to her. Ah, but if he were honest with himself, there was more. He wanted to whisk her away from that town and her work and her sadness, and prove to her she didn’t have to go this alone. Show her that there was more to life than the job she hid behind. Prove to her that she had someone to count on.
That’s called being in a relationship, a voice from within whispered.
For the first time in his life, she made him want to try. Not in the half-assed way he’d attempted in Africa, but really try.
For the first time, someone needed him. He wanted to be there for her. For as long as he could be.
In a way, it was a good thing she wasn’t pregnant. It had given them another chance together. There was no way he could ever imagine himself being a father, but perhaps he could try to be there for her as a boyfriend, even though he was well aware duty would soon come knocking at his door.
He watched her sleep and his heart swelled with a tenderness he’d never known. Or perhaps he had at one time, long ago with his parents. A feeling he hadn’t wanted to feel again, that he’d managed to push out of his life entirely until she’d walked into it and destroyed all his best plans. “We’re here,” he said softly, nudging her awake.
“Here” turned out to be a fabulous secluded waterfront property in the town of Duck on the Outer Banks that belonged to a friend of his. He walked her up a steep flight of stairs to the main level of the house, which was on the top floor, and took her directly out to the front deck overlooking the ocean.
“This view is breathtaking,” she said. The water stretched out before them, the last light of the sun fading to a pure, deep blue on the horizon.
“It certainly is,” he said. But he was looking at her. “And the beach is private.”
Below them, on the sand, a table was set with a white cloth and dishes covered with silver lids. Candles flickered in the semidarkness, and torches were lit around the table setting. “Our dinner awaits,” he said, sweeping his arm out before them.
“You did this…for me?” Liz asked.
He turned her to face him. Tucked a windblown strand of hair behind her ear, as the breeze from the ocean was steady here. “I wanted you to have a weekend where you truly got away from everything. Where you can relax.” He cleared his throat. “And be with me.”
He tossed her a tentative look. He wasn’t one to emote much, especially to women, who he made certain always knew exactly what the score was: sex and nothing else. But with her it was different. It had always been different.
Her eyes got a bit teary, but perhaps it was the wind. Then she hugged him. More like threw her whole body at him, wrapped herself around him and kissed him. “Oh, Grant.” Her eyes sparkled in the twilight, and she looked happy, which pleased him. He would never get tired of looking at her face, holding her like this in his arms, because he couldn’t seem to stop wanting her every waking moment.
She pulled back and looked over the patio railing. “Are we alone here?”
“For the rest of the weekend. The servers left us a magnificent menu of food for our stay, too. I think you’ll be pleased.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Servers?”
He shrugged. Perhaps he’d gone a bit over the top. “I didn’t want us to have to worry about anything.”
“Grant.” Her hand was soft on his arm, and it made him tug his gaze back to hers.
“Thank you for doing all this for me. It’s…wonderful. But there’s only one thing I want…and it’s not food.”
“Oh.” Relief coursed through him. Her words touched him deeply, not just her honest thanks, but the fact that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. On impulse, she grabbed hold of his belt loops and drew him closer. She unbuckled his belt and he helped her slide it off. Before he knew what she was doing, she’d tugged down his pants and knelt before him, slowly tracing the outline of his erection with her fingers.
“Darling,” he barely managed to say, placing his hands on her shoulders. “I’ve brought you here for your own pleasure. Not mine.”
“This is my pleasure.” She pulled down his boxers, too, so that he was standing there on the porch, the ocean breeze blowing on his bare ass.
“Perhaps we should go inside?”
“Says the man who was willing to do it in the mattress section of Furnitureland.”
He laughed, but that didn’t prevent him from getting his ass off the porch. He’d barely struggled the few steps inside when her mouth was on his cock, enveloping it, sucking on it, rubbing it. It felt so damn good he threw his head back and groaned out loud.
For once in his bloody life, someone was doing something for him. Not just for the sex, but out of…affection. Out of love.
He knew it for what it was.
Suddenly he wanted to give her more, needed to fill her and possess her and make her his. These feelings shocked the hell out of him at the same time he knew deep within himself that he’d never felt like this for any woman. “Liz,” he said, biting back another groan. “I don’t want to come this way. I want to be inside you.”
He pulled her up until she was standing, then scooped her up and carried her farther into the house. She was kissing him, running her hands over his chest, his nipples, his back, torturing him with her touch. He made it as far as the living room, setting her down on the plush carpet, where he helped unzip and slide down her dress.
She lay there on the rug, her dark hair surrounding her beautiful, flushed face, breathing a little heavily, just like he was. He ran his hands over her breasts, stroked her nipples until they grew hard, suckled them and kissed away her soft cries. Ran his hands along the smooth curve of her back, over her fine ass, reveling in her intoxicating softness. She tried to reach for him but he put her off, trailing his hands down her stomach and tracing the top line of her panties with his finger, teasing back and forth.
He leaned over and kissed her deeply, at the same time sliding his fingers under the tiny scrap of silk. Dipping his finger into her satiny wetness. Playing with her until her limbs tightened and she arched into him.
“Elizabeth.” Words failed him. Beautiful seemed utterly inadequate. He swooped off the panties and placed his mouth on her.
She bucked in surprise, but he steadied her with his hand, laving her intimate folds, sucking and teasing and tormenting until she writhed and whimpered under his touch. He slid a finger into her, then another, feeling her intimate muscles clench around him.
“I want you inside me,” she said, panting.
“After you come,” he said.
“No. Now.”
He twined his fingers around hers above her head, stretched out his body over hers, and drove into her in an act of pure possession. The honesty in her eyes shattered him. In that moment, Grant knew. He knew he had met his match, the one woman who could possess him entirely, who could send him careening out of control—even though he’d thought to possess her, be in control of her. To be in control of himself.
That was all a myth and it had all gone to hell in one brutal, crashing moment.
He held her, and stretched and filled her, and came apart with her, crashing hard and fast, until they both collapsed together in a tangle of limbs.
Afterward they lay there, listening to the lull of the tide as the waves crashed in and out, the ocean breeze stirring through the open doors. They watched as thousands of stars came out overhead.
He didn’t have the words to tell her what she meant to him. Something big had shifted, he knew, and he had no idea how to deal with what it was.
They didn’t move for a long time. At last, she kissed him on the forehead. “When you promise a fooling-around date, you mean it, don’t you?”
He looked up at her and smiled, then tucked her into his side, where she rested her head, splaying her fingers on his chest.
“I aim to please, Elizabeth,” he said, stroking her hair, kissing the top of her head. “And so you know, the fooling around part has only just begun.”
“Oh, that’s a relief, seeing as how I’m still so unsatisfied.”
He took that as a challenge.
And he never felt happier in his life.