Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
T his is probably a really dumb idea , Anna thought as she dropped onto the sofa beside Grant. The pain in her butt was totally gone, replaced by something warm and tingly that probably had nothing to do with the drugs they’d offered at the hospital.
Grant was looking at her like he suspected her pain meds were making her loopy, which was possible. But it was also possible she just wanted to have a little fun with this guy while she could. Breaking through his Boy Scout facade to reveal his inner sex beast earlier had been hot as hell. She kinda wanted to see it again if she could.
Besides, she had a hunch there was more to Grant Patton than he let anyone else see. Something behind his careful veil of perfection. Maybe this was a way to peek behind it.
“Okay, we’re going to do a homemade lie detector test,” she said, tucking her bare feet beneath his thigh again and pressing her knees together so she didn’t give him an inadvertent peep show. “One that involves some mild electrocution.”
Grant raised an eyebrow and stared at the battery in her hand. “I’ve used polygraphs before in counterintelligence work. I don’t recall anything about electrocution.” He frowned. “Or tongues. Why did you say you needed mine?”
“Patience, Boy Scout. We’ll get to that. First, tell me some of the physical signs that someone’s lying or talking about something that makes him uncomfortable.”
“Increased heart rate,” Grant said automatically. “Fidgeting. Failure to make eye contact. Dilated pupils, rapid breathing, sweating.”
“Okay, good. I’m going to ask you some questions. If I see you hesitate or I think you’re not being totally honest about your answer, you have to lick the battery.”
“Lick the battery?”
“Didn’t you do this as a kid?” She turned the battery over in her hand, tapping the end with the tip of her finger. “You touch your tongue to the two contact points on a nine-volt battery and it gives you a mild shock. Not enough to kill you, or even hurt that badly. It’s just a jolt. I’m not totally sure how it works, but it seems like a good deterrent against fibbing and half-truths, don’t you think?”
He was staring at her with an incredulous expression, but there was amusement in his eyes. “Did the doctor say anything about centipede venom getting into your brain?”
“Come on, Grant. It’ll be fun.”
“Electrocution usually is. You’re aware that since I’m trained in recognizing the signs of lying, I’m also trained at disguising them in myself.”
“Sure, but why would you? The point is that we’re training you to speak your mind. To be blunt, which is something you want to work on. What’s the point in faking it?”
He seemed to consider that a moment, then nodded. “Fair enough. So how about positive reinforcement?”
She wiggled her toes beneath his thigh. “What did you have in mind?”
“Some sort of reward system. For when I reply with the requisite amount of bluntness, of course.”
“That sounds fair. What do you want?”
“It’ll depend on the question, I suppose.”
The predatory gleam in his eye was enough to leave her squirming in her seat, but she nodded. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Okay, first question.” She thought about it a moment, trying to come up with something simple but not too simple. “What’s the last dirty thought you had?”
He hesitated a moment. His hands were clasped in his lap like he was working hard to keep them to himself. At last he nodded toward the front of her dress. “I thought about licking that little hollow spot between your breasts.”
A shudder of pleasure arced through her, but Anna forced herself to nod impassively. “You hesitated a little on that one, but I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt since your answer was good. No punishment necessary.” She clenched the battery in her fist and wriggled her toes under his thigh again, loving the solidness and warmth of his body touching hers.
“And my reward?”
“What would you like?”
“A kiss.”
She raised an eyebrow at him, which seemed a more suitable response than climbing into his lap. “I thought we decided to keep things professional between us since we’re working together and all.”
“That pretty much went out the window the second you got on your knees and ordered me to talk dirty. Kiss me, Anna.”
He didn’t wait for her to come to him. He unclasped his hands and slid one around the back of her head, pulling her close. His lips touched hers, and Anna held her breath, waiting to see if this would be an innocent peck or something more.
There was nothing innocent about it. The kiss was long and slow and deep, and by the time it ended, Anna was seeing pinpricks of light in her peripheral vision.
“Okay,” she said, a little breathless as she scooted back on the sofa. Lord, the man could kiss. Anna swallowed. “Next question. Does my sister have better boobs than I do?”
“No.”
His response was so forceful and automatic that Anna sat back a little. He was either completely sincere, or smart enough to know better than to answer honestly.
“She’s got a full cup size on me,” Anna pointed out.
“Size isn’t everything. Yours are perkier and have a nicer shape. They’ve got more dimension around the sides, more fullness through here. Plus they look spectacular when you ditch the bra, which is something bustier women seldom do.”
Anna blinked, taken aback. “You’ve spent a lot of time studying breasts.”
“What man hasn’t?”
“Studying my breasts.”
“What man wouldn’t?” He reached for her again. “I’ll take another kiss now.”
His lips found hers before she could protest—not that she planned to. His mouth was warm and soft and so goddamn good at what it was doing. His palm slid up her back this time, then veered to the side to graze the edge of her breast. Anna shuddered under his touch, urging him to keep sliding, to cup her breast in his palm.
When he released her this time, every inch of Anna’s body was tingling. Grant held her gaze, looking deliciously smug.
Anna licked her lips. “Let’s try a tougher one now. Give me one piece of constructive criticism on my fellatio technique.”
Grant snorted. “No.”
“Afraid I can’t take it? Come on, surely there’s room for improvement somewhere. Maybe a little more suction or some hand work or?—”
“No,” he repeated, more forceful this time. “There’s not a damn thing I’d change about the way you—” He cut off there, and she watched his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed, fishing for the right word. “Performed,” he added at last.
“Lick the battery,” she said, holding it out to him.
“What the hell for? I didn’t lie.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But you did hesitate to say the word blowjob, so that violates the rules of bluntness training.”
Grant rolled his eyes. “Do I get to see this rule book at some point?”
“Lick it,” she said, thrusting the battery at him again.
He started to argue, then shrugged. “I make it a policy never to say no to a woman who issues an order like that.”
He leaned forward, not hesitating even a little the way she and Janelle used to as little kids daring each other, “Do it!” then “No, you do it.” He wrapped his hand around hers, holding it steady as he stuck out his tongue and touched it to the contact points on the battery.
Grant didn’t flinch.
He drew back and nodded at her. “There you go.”
She frowned down at the battery. “Is this thing dead?”
“No.”
“Did you get a jolt?”
“Go on. You try it.”
She lowered her tongue to the metallic prongs. A metallic zap coursed through her mouth, and she jerked her head back. “Yeowch!”
He grinned. “Guess I don’t need to replace the battery in my smoke detector. You’ll have to come over every few months and check it with your tongue. I’ll take my reward now.”
“Your reward?”
“This,” he said, capturing the hand that wasn’t holding the battery. Before she knew what was happening, he’d drawn her hand to his mouth. His breath was warm on her palm as he uncurled her fingers and slipped his tongue into the junction between her index and middle finger. He stroked the webbing between the digits with such aching softness, Anna moaned aloud. He continued to lick her there, teasing the delicate skin with a few more strokes as he gripped her wrist with one hand. At last, he released her.
Anna sat back, pulse pounding in her ears, nerves screaming between her legs. Grant held her eyes, unblinking.
“You’re not the only one who can do oral innuendo,” he said.
“No kidding,” she murmured, staring at his mouth. She wanted it everywhere. Well, a few places in particular.
Instead, she cleared her throat. “Okay, next question. Ever cheated on a girlfriend?”
Something dark flashed in his eyes. It was gone in an instant, and she might have imagined it entirely.
But something told her she hadn’t.
“No,” Grant said, his voice firm.
She reached for his wrist and pressed two fingers against his pulse. Steady, not too quick, though what the hell did she know about his normal heart rate? She touched a hand to his face, trying to ascertain whether he was warm or sweaty, but hell, it was a warm day in Hawaii. Who wasn’t sweaty?
“Dilated pupils are also a sign of arousal,” he said, causing her to drop her hand from his face. “In case you planned to ding me for that.”
“Next question,” she said, pretty sure there was something more there, but not wanting to dwell on it or bother with the punishment or reward. Part of her wanted to ask about the brother in the photos. About why she’d never heard more about him, and why Grant had such a haunted-looking photograph of the man.
But something stopped her. Something made her bite her lip, then opt for a softball.
“Name something your mother cooks for family dinners that you pretend to like because you want to be polite but secretly you can’t stand it.”
“Brussel sprouts,” he said. “And lima beans. And shit-on-a-shingle.”
“Your mother serves you something called shit-on-a-shingle?”
“My mother flies fighter jets and knows how to operate a grenade launcher,” Grant replied, his voice tinged with pride. “She didn’t spend my childhood making cutesy-sounding recipes from Better Homes and Gardens .”
Anna grinned. “Your mom is awesome. She wore a shoulder holster to my first wedding planning meeting with your sister and Sam. You get a pass on that one.” She flipped the battery over in her fingers, trying to think of something she knew might make him uncomfortable. A subject that had made him uncomfortable before.
She stopped fiddling with the battery and looked at him. “Why don’t you want to be the best man in your sister’s wedding?”
“I don’t like standing up in front of crowds.”
There was no hesitation in his answer, no physical signs of discomfort. Still, she knew he was lying. She could sense it.
What else was he hiding?
“When you’re doing your spy-catcher work, do you sometimes know someone’s lying even though you can’t prove it?”
“All the time.”
She nodded. “You either need to lick the battery on the best man question, or tell me the real reason.”
He stared at the battery in her hand a moment, then met her eyes. “I’d like to lick it.”
His voice was so molten, so suggestive, she almost forgot she needed to press harder to get the answer. To dig a little deeper. There was something there, she knew it, but the tip of his tongue grazing the top of the battery was enough to send her thoughts skewing in a different direction. They could come back to that later.
Grant sat back and stared at her. His pupils were inky and his expression was so predatory she shivered. “Any more questions?”
Anna licked her lips. “Just one.”
“What’s that?”
She swallowed, taking a moment to consider her words. They’d agreed to keep things professional, but weren’t they well beyond that now? How much did it really matter, anyway?
Anna took a steadying breath. “Do you want to fuck me?”
“No.”
“No?” A wave of disappointment sloshed in her belly, but she tried not to let it show on her face.
Grant slid his hand over her knee, claiming it, as his gaze held hers. “Right now, I don’t want to fuck you. What I want to do is make love to you so fiercely you forget your own name.”
Anna dropped the battery. She felt it thunk against her anklebone, and it probably hurt, but she didn’t feel a damn thing. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t blink. All she could do was stare into those gray eyes and nod.
“Okay.”
Her acquiescence was probably irrelevant at this point. Not that Grant was the sort of guy to take her without consent, but with every nerve in her body screaming consent in a shrieking harmony of hormones, it was pretty damn obvious she wanted him.
He stood up and moved his hands under her. Before she could ask what he was doing, he’d scooped her into his arms and was carrying her down the hallway toward his bedroom.
“Grant, I can walk.”
“Of course you can. I’d just prefer to carry you at this moment.”
His chest was huge and muscular, and his arms were flexed with the effort of holding her. She knew this sort of caveman behavior shouldn’t turn her on, but she was so wet from wanting him that her thighs felt glued together.
He turned the corner and took four steps to the bed. He tossed her backward, and she flailed for a moment, struggling for a graceful landing. Grant was on her in an instant, his eyes locked with hers as he grabbed the hem of her dress and tugged it upward. She raised her arms like an obedient girl, breathless with heat and the sheer power of him. He flung her dress aside and claimed her mouth, kissing her with a ferocity that left her moaning against his lips.
When he drew back, his eyes were molten. “I want to make you come until you can’t stand.”
She could only nod as he reached for the waistband of her panties. She wasn’t wearing a bra—thank God for that—and he stripped the lacy thong from her and grabbed her legs. Shoving her thighs apart, he sank to his knees beside the bed. He caught her by the hips and pulled her roughly to the edge of the mattress.
For an instant, she felt exposed. Vulnerable. Naked. Then his mouth was on her and she forgot all that, forgot her insecurities and her self-consciousness and probably her social security number as his tongue plunged into her.
“Oh, God!” she cried out, clenching her fingers in his hair as she arched her hips up.
He responded by pushing her thighs open wider, his mouth everywhere at once as he licked and stroked and devoured her. He slid one finger into her, then two, and holy mother of hell what was that spot he grazed with his fingertip? It felt so goddamn good in places she never knew she had and if he didn’t stop stroking like that, she was seriously going to?—
“I’m going to come.”
“Mmm,” he murmured against her, and the vibration was enough to send her skyrocketing to oblivion. She shrieked as the first wave of orgasm hit her, then another, and too many more to count. He rode it with her, probing, stroking, licking, making her mindless until she was panting and breathless on the damp duvet.
When she opened her eyes, he was hovering over her. His gaze locked with hers, hot and gray and molten. “You are delicious.”
“You are—” She tried to recall if she needed an adjective or a noun or a verb, but couldn’t remember what any of those things were anyway, so it didn’t matter. “Holy fuck.”
He grinned and reached behind him to the nightstand. She heard the crinkle of cellophane and knew he was rolling on a condom. Somehow he managed to do it without breaking eye contact, without taking his hand off her hip. He moved over her, strong, forceful, intense.
She felt his knee between hers, pushing her legs apart. The weight of him on top of her was exquisite, the points of his hip bones hard against her softness. She opened her legs wider and pressed the heels of her hands against his ass. His eyes were still locked on hers, and though he hadn’t said a word, she nodded.
“Yes.”
Grant slid into her and Anna gasped, shocked at how deeply he filled her. His forehead hovered inches from hers, those gray eyes drilling into her as he drew back and plunged into her again. She closed her eyes and cried out, stunned by the magnitude of the sensation. Even with her eyes shut tight, she could feel his gaze on hers.
“Anna,” he murmured and drove into her again.
His rhythm was achingly slow, and Anna arched up to meet his thrust. She opened her eyes again and lost herself in the gray depths of his. She could see every fleck of silver, every warm hint of taupe, a kaleidoscope of ash and earth and sky and cloud in that intense gaze.
She was breathing fast now, and realized he was matching her breath for breath, thrust for thrust. He drove into her again, and Anna lifted her hips to feel him deeper.
He angled up on his forearms, rising above her as he thrust into her at an angle that made her cry out again. She could see every ripple of muscle in his chest, the hugeness of his biceps, the span of his shoulders, and still, those eyes, those eyes ?—
“My God,” she whimpered, fingers clenching so hard in the sheets she felt her fingernail split. There was something about the eye contact that amplified every thrust, every breath, every pulse, every point where their skin touched.
Something was buzzing in the back of her brain, faint at first, then louder until her ears roared with sound and sensation. She could feel herself hurtling toward the edge, and she raised her hips to meet it.
“Grant,” she gasped.
A knowing look flashed in his eyes as he drove into her harder, his forehead nearly touching hers, their gazes locked as tightly as their bodies as Anna cried out and clenched her thighs around him.
“That’s it,” he whispered, thrusting deep as something inside her exploded. “Let go.”
She did, giving in to an eruption of pleasure that pulsed through her whole body.
Grant was two beats behind. “Oh, God.”
She saw it in his eyes the instant he toppled into the chasm with her. A momentary flash of surprise, then pleasure so intense his eyes went dark with it. Anna screamed and clawed his back, but Grant didn’t flinch. He drove into her again as Anna arched and bucked and cried out, his eyes never leaving hers.
At last, she felt him go still. Anna was the first to blink.
“What the hell was that?”
Grant laughed and rolled to the side, pulling her with him. “I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment or a sign of medical distress.”
His hand slid over her waist, and Anna let him pull her up so they lay face-to-face, nose to nose, chest to chest. She breathed him in, still too shell-shocked to do anything but stare at him.
“That thing you did with the intense eye contact and the breathing and your hips and—” She stopped, not sure she was making any sense or that he was even aware of any of the things he’d done to blow her mind. She swallowed and reached a hand up to stroke the side of his face. “That was amazing.”
He grinned. “It was. Thank you.”
She opened her mouth to say more, then shut it. She honestly wasn’t sure what words might come tumbling out, and some things were better left unsaid.
Instead, she settled for snuggling closer to his chest and closing her eyes. “You feel good.”
He planted a kiss at the edge of her hairline, and she felt him draw a breath as he did it. “Are you tired? I know some of those meds can make you drowsy.”
“I’m fine,” she murmured, though her limbs were already feeling heavy with fatigue.
“Does the bite hurt?”
“Not at all. Sex is the world’s best painkiller.”
“You can stay here tonight if you want. I’ll call Janelle to let her know.”
“Mmmm,” Anna replied, not sure how she’d gotten so tired all of a sudden but knowing it was useless to fight. She could trust Grant to take care of things. Hell, she could trust him to repave her driveway if she needed it. He was the kind of man a woman could count on as a friend, a lover, a husband?—
She stopped, wide awake now. Husband?
She swallowed hard, curling her body against his. “Grant?”
“Mmmhm?”
“There’s something I feel like I should tell you.”
“Should I get the battery?”
She laughed, but it came out sounding stilted and nervous. “I don’t need the battery, but I do need to swear you to secrecy.”
His palm curled around her hip, and he drew her closer. “What is it?”
She sighed and reached down to grip his hand. “It’s something I’ve never told anyone else before,” she said, her voice soft and shaky. “Something I want to tell you .”