Chapter 23 #2
“I don’t know.” Alix’s lips were so delicate when they ghosted over Grace’s ravenous mouth.
“When did you take me to that Cuban food speakeasy?” She grinned, and Grace’s pulse responded with an enthusiastic flutter.
“Or there was that time you looked like magic when you were dancing.” She skimmed over Grace’s back, leaving rippling heat in her wake.
“Although panicking over a little accidental special brownie was pretty adorable.” She kissed her again, deep and full and devastating.
“God, and when you jumped in the pool in that fucking shirt… I thought I was going to faint just looking at you.”
Alix gripped Grace’s waist so hard, Grace was sure she was going to pick her up and throw her on top of the dresser. Desire roaring, Grace couldn’t stop wanting that. Wanting Alix.
Closing her eyes, Grace reimagined the moment in the pool. Imagined having given in to what she wanted. Having known the mesmerizing taste of Alix’s lips sooner.
A roar of sudden laughter made Grace jump. She was back in the present. In her body. In the realization that they were in Alix’s parents’ house and about to be sharing the guest bathroom with Susan and Steve.
“We should, um, get ready for bed,” Grace’s voice was low and husky and revealing that the last thing she wanted to do was let Alix go.
After another lingering kiss, like Alix didn’t remember how they functioned apart either, she stepped back with a pained sigh. “Okay,” Alix agreed, like she still wasn’t sold.
Grace changed in the bathroom, her nervous system still brighter than the Christmas tree on Main Street.
She laughed to herself while she brushed her teeth and wondered what other Hallmark hallucinations awaited on Christmas Day.
She pulled on her borrowed nightgown, which was warm if not extremely unflattering: high-necked and long-sleeved and flannel.
When she returned to the room, Alix was fiddling with the trundle she’d raised but sat two inches lower than the daybed. She looked up when Grace walked in and immediately started laughing.
“Oh, my God. What did my mom do to you?” Alix rushed toward her to get a better look, petting the shoulders of the flannel nightdress as if a calming touch might make it look better.
Biting back her own laughter, Grace looked down at the garment that had kept her pretty cozy. “Probably making sure I don’t inspire a single lustful thought in another human being.”
“It’s a crime to put you in this.” Alix rendered her verdict with sparkling joy. “Here, wear something of mine.” She produced a worn-looking Brynn Marshall tour T-shirt that would look significantly sexier on Grace than Prairie wife cosplay.
The sound of footsteps climbing up the stairs like a stampede made Grace decline the offer. A boner-killer was definitely the right choice in a crowded familial home.
Engaging her struggling willpower, Grace stayed in the chastity dress. While Alix washed up, she took over trying to figure out how to raise the trundle. By the time Alix was back, it was flush against the daybed and Grace had sat on it to test whether she’d locked it in place.
“Smart and handy?” Alix grinned, but all Grace could see was Alix’s legs in boxer shorts. Muscular from skateboarding every day, the lines that cut up Alix’s quads were so tempting to touch. The edges of tattoos she so desperately wanted to see.
“Now, where were we?” Alix turned the light off and crossed the room toward her.
The weight of Alix’s lips and the scent of her skin was a potent combination. Grace leaned back and pulled Alix on top of her. She managed a single hungry swipe of her tongue with Alix’s thigh pressing against her when their combined weight shifted.
With a loud, metallic crunch, the trundle dropped three inches. Fingers digging into Alix’s back, Grace buried her face in Alix’s neck to muffle her own laughter.
“Is every surface we kiss on going to be hazardous?” Alix joked, but Grace had felt her jump and knew that it had startled her too.
“Maybe your mom booby-trapped the room to make sure we don’t follow the Roberts path.”
Gracefully, Alix climbed off her and onto the daybed. “There’s room up here for two if we get close enough,” she said like she was offering the most reasonable bargain.
Temptation turned Grace’s nightgown into a sweltering prison. If she gave in just a little, there would be no stopping them from going too far.
“I promise to be a gentleman,” Alix said with a husky voice meant to make bad ideas sound good.
“Just for, like, a minute,” Grace said because no one could withstand this kind of test.
As soon as they were both on the small daybed, Grace knew it was a mistake. They were so close, and Alix felt so good.
“See?” Alix murmured against Grace’s ear.
“Plenty of room.” She draped her arm around Grace and pulled her in until they were flush against each other, and Grace forgot how to breathe.
How to do anything but wrestle with unstoppable desire.
“I still think you’d look better in my clothes,” she whispered before kissing a line down Grace’s sensitive neck.
Grace imagined how sexy Alix would look peeling off her shirt. Imagined the press of her bare skin against hers.
“I think the nightgown is for the best,” she whispered, hands in Alix’s hair.
“Why’s that?” Alix’s hand was electric where it followed the curve of Grace’s hip.
“Where do you think all of my underwear is?”
Alix’s hand stopped moving, but the stillness was even more intense than her touch. Alix let out a sound that was somewhere between a curse and a groan.
“Grace,” Alix breathed in a voice so pained, it rocked Grace’s body with another pang of desire. She shifted, rolling them so Grace was on her back and Alix was hovering over her, lips and body so tempting. “You cannot say things like that to me right now.”
Grace should have said good night and gotten into her own bed, but she parted her legs so Alix’s hips slipped between them instead, nightgown riding up her thighs.
Alix’s hips instinctively rocked forward, a slow, deliberate press against Grace that sent a bolt of molten heat straight through her.
Grace arched into it, a desperate, silent plea for more.
A voice boomed in their room like Susan was standing at the open door. “Steve, have you seen my melatonin? You know I won’t sleep without it! It’s bad enough that I…” Her voice trailed away.
They froze while the footsteps grew fainter and a door closed somewhere in the hallway. Alix was going to return to their kiss, but Grace put her hand on her cheek.
“If we can hear them—”
“Then they can hear us,” Alix agreed, finishing Grace’s thought with a resigned sigh. She collapsed onto Grace, burying her face in the crook of her neck with a groan of profound frustration. “Yeah…” she mumbled into Grace’s skin.
For a long moment, they just lay there, breathing each other in, the frantic energy slowly bleeding out into a painful ache. Alix pushed herself up onto her elbows, her eyes dark with regret.
“Okay,” she said, her voice raspy. “Okay. New plan.” Her gaze flickered down, then back up to Grace’s eyes. “My hands are quiet.”
The offer was raw, desperate, and so tempting that it made Grace’s stomach clench. A simple, physical release. It would be so easy. But it wasn’t what Grace wanted. Or rather not how she wanted it.
She reached up, thumb stroking Alix’s jaw when she cupped her face. She didn’t know how to say what she meant without sounding dramatic, but she didn’t want the first time she had Alix like this to be so quiet. To be in the dark. To be a secret in any way.
“I want this,” Grace confessed, hand skimming Alix’s throat and stopping at her chest where her heart beat wildly against Grace’s palm. Where it matched the same frantic rhythm of her pulse. “I want you in every way you want to give yourself to me, and I don’t want to be quiet about it.”
In the low light, Alix’s slow, beautiful smile was barely visible. But even if Grace couldn’t see it clearly, she felt it like the sun warming her skin.
“We’ll have time. I promise. We’ll make time.” Alix leaned in again, but when she kissed her this time, it was a deep, soul-shattering kiss that promised a thousand future moments without restraint. And then they lay there, tangled in each other, sharing the exquisite agony of unsated desire.
When Alix reached for her hand, intertwining their fingers, something other than lust roared to life.
The gentle touch had triggered every survival instinct, but for the first time in a long time, the desire to know what came next was infinitely stronger than the fear of getting hurt.
She squeezed Alix’s hands, and the disaster scenarios stopped their targeted assault.