22. Elise
22
ELISE
Elise
I ’d been in Grant’s home before. Dropping off things from the office. Picking up things to bring here. Helping him on documents that didn’t add up.
But never like this, consumed with desire and heady on the concept that he loved me.
Never with the intention of kissing him breathlessly and getting naked.
I hadn’t counted on having such an important talk in the car, but we had. Now that the hard part was over and I knew we were on the same page… Let the good times roll.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you when I left,” I explained as he tossed his keys to a side table. He didn’t take his eyes off me as I backpedaled into the living room.
“I understand.”
“You do.” I smiled. “You get me.”
He stepped closer, grabbing me in his thick arms to hoist me right up off the floor. “Oh, I’ve got you, all right.”
I giggled, excited to be in his embrace again. Being flush with him was where I belonged. Nowhere else. Lowering my head to his, I kissed him tenderly. “And I’ve got you.”
“You can’t get rid of me now,” he joked as he carried me clear into his bedroom. “I’ve only started with you. We’ve only started.”
I nodded. My heart swelled with love and joy at his honest words.
Letting me slide down against him, he brought me back to my feet. It was a slow, gradual drag of perfect friction, and it encouraged me to get out of my clothes faster.
This ruggedly handsome and successful man was all mine. He didn’t belong with Samantha—who I last saw making out with a groomsman in the hotel lobby before I left. He didn’t make sense with any other woman. Just me.
Between hot kisses and greedy hands, we tore our clothes off and tumbled onto his bed together. We had a lot of years to make up for, and I intended to savor every minute that we fought to have.
His hard body blanketed me as he rolled us until I lay on my back. Sandwiched between him and the soft mattress, I felt so secure and desired. When he gazed at me with that soulful, intense stare, I felt like I was looking right into his soul, the one that matched mine.
I stroked him, reveling in the smooth yet rigid surface of his cock. He didn’t hold back, matching me in foreplay with his fingers spreading my entrance apart. Sticky cream coated my skin, and he smeared it with more pressure, ensuring that he gave my achy clit attention too.
“I love you, Elise,” he repeated huskily.
Hearing him say it before we made love was sweeter than his blunt admission in the car. Witnessing the play of sincerity on his face made it all the more significant, too.
“And I love you,” I vowed before I craned my neck to kiss him harder than these tender, playful pecks we pressed to each other’s faces and necks, wherever we could reach. I wanted to lick, suck, and nip at all of him. His taut skin was a map of so many rises and dips, and I knew I’d take my sweet time exploring him and learning every inch of his muscled frame.
Kissing him became harder the longer we played with each other. I arched into his touch. He lowered his hips to thrust into my hand. Oral didn’t seem likely with how impatient we were to make love, and I was fine with that—this time.
“Let me get a condom,” he said after he reared back from a searing, deep kiss.
“Where are they?” I asked. “I want to put it on you.” I could hardly keep my hands off him, and I wanted the pleasure of rubbing that layer over him.
“Drawer.” He kissed me as I scooted out from under him. As I turned to crawl to the night stand he’d indicated, he caught me around my waist. His arm snaked over my stomach. Kneeling behind me, he tugged me back until I was flush against him.
“Unless…” he said into my ear before kissing along my neck.
“You want to?” I asked, excited to consider taking him bare.
“I’m clean,” he said in between wet kisses that drove me wild. Those soft presses charged my desire. He was a quick learner in all things, but also in finding my erogenous zones.
“Me too,” I replied as I leaned back to him. Spreading my knees apart, I arched my ass toward him. The first bump of his dick on my pussy thrilled me, and I swore I’d soak his sheets if he teased me any longer.
Getting on all fours seemed like I’d get the best, deepest angle, but he wasn’t having any of it. Hugging me flush to him, my back against his chest, he kept me close as he notched his cock into my slippery entrance. Testing my ability to stretch around him like this, he guided me to lift and sink down, taking his cock into my pussy with an agonizing slowness that drove me wild.
“Oh, God. Grant.” I moaned it as I closed my eyes. Without sight, I could focus on all my other senses. Like the smell of sex, so musky and potent in the air. The feel of his big girth stretching me as he drove up into me. And the taste of him as I turned my head to kiss him as he thrust into me.
He cupped my breasts, stopping them from jiggling and bouncing so fast. His fingers and thumbs worked magic on my nipples, and I gasped at how close I was to coming already.
It felt different, more carnal and real and raw. Without any layer between us, we were closer and more connected. My pill would prevent a baby, but I smiled with a secret glee that maybe he’d want me to come off it sooner rather than later.
Just before I could fall over the edge and be consumed with an intense orgasm, he rubbed his left hand from my breast to smooth it in a firm caress all the way up my arm. Lifting it, he guided me to hold on to his hair as we kissed and fucked.
“I love you,” he repeated in a breathy, throaty growl. He parted from our kiss long enough to utter that truth, and I showed him how I reciprocated the sentiment, coming hard and clenching around his dick.
“I love—ah! I love you too,” I cried out. Blinded by the bliss of this climax, I rode out the waves of pleasure until he followed me. He came, rocking back on his legs to push up into me that much more. Seated, fully inside me, he groaned his relief as his dick jerked and filled me with his hot cum.
Falling to our sides, we crashed to the bed and lay there entwined, catching our breath. He nearly put me to sleep, rubbing on my forearm, and I wondered if he was about to doze too with how deeply he breathed. We got up, though, to shower together, but my heart was completely and finally full when we got back into bed and slept like two halves united as one.
In the morning, I curled up against him, surprised.
“No run today?”
He stroked his hand over my thigh and ass. “No. You wore me out last night.”
I smiled. “And you wore me out this morning,” I said, thinking back to that two o’clock round of sex.
“I hope you don’t plan on going to the office today,” he murmured. “Because I sure as hell don’t.”
I laughed lightly, peeking up at him with my chin on his chest. “Well, you’re the boss, so what you say goes.”
“This won’t change anything there, will it?”
“Us dating?”
He nodded.
“I hope not.” I grinned. “I wouldn’t say no to office sex…”
“I have so many vivid fantasies set in your office.”
“Not as many as I do of us in yours.”
He groaned, mocking exasperation.
“In all seriousness, I like my job. I love working for you.”
“With me,” he clarified.
“Other employees date. Some are married.”
He nodded. “We have forward policies about all that.”
“So, yes. I intend to work as I always have. Like usual.”
“Except… maybe coming home with me here?”
I raised my brows.
“Too much, too soon?”
“No. I’m just happy you thought of it now rather than later. With Claudia and Derek buying a place soon, I feel like I’d rather avoid my apartment to give them their honeymoon time uninterrupted.”
He furrowed his brow. “I can’t believe they’re not taking a honeymoon.”
“Claudia insists on working.”
“Derek does too.” A slow smile spread over his lips. “That’s also why we’re not working today. We’re going to meet them for brunch.”
“It’ll be different seeing them together now,” I said.
“Not as much as it’ll be earth-shaking news for them that we’re together.”
A couple of hours later, we proved that point.
Derek and Claudia were already at a table, waiting for us. Grant took a seat, but before I could claim my own, he pulled me closer until I tumbled onto his lap.
Claudia narrowed her eyes, confused. Derek grinned like a lightbulb clicked over his head.
“I thought…” My cousin set her temporary cast on the table. “I thought you said you and Grant were pretending to be engaged.”
Yesterday, at the hospital, Derek explained the presence of the ring on my hand.
“I knew it!” Derek slapped his hand on his leg.
“You knew what?” Claudia asked.
“He loves her.”
Claudia’s mouth hung open. “You’re actually together.”
“I suspected—for years,” he told her.
“Me too!” She stared at me. “Or is this fake too?”
I smiled mischievously, turning to kiss Grant long and hard, so soundly that he dug his fingers into my shirt and whooshed out a deep breath when we parted.
“Not fake,” he said breathlessly.
“Aww…” Claudia smiled and clapped once before pressing her hands to her chin. “I think I always wondered too…”
“They way they bicker,” Derek said as he draped his arm around her shoulders, talking sagely. “And those looks, when they don’t think anyone is watching.”
She nodded. “And how he always seemed to be at a loss for words when she’d stretch her arms after she sat.”
Grant smiled, rubbing his hand up and down my thigh, like he couldn’t bear to stop touching me. “It seems like a lot can change in a weekend.”
I beamed down at him. “It sure can. It just took us six years to get there.”
And I, for one, couldn’t wait for all the years that would follow.