Chapter 30
Grayson
I wait until I’m absolutely, positively sure that Pen isn’t faking sleep anymore to inch off her bed and creep to the door.
Her chest rises and falls in even little breaths, Daddy Bear tucked against her side, her face turned away from me, and I close the door so quietly that I can barely hear it myself.
The second I step away from it, every hastily built defensive wall in me comes crumbling to the ground.
I move down the stairs quickly, each step sure, beelining for the living room. When I swing the corner, Carly’s sitting there on the couch in her shorts and my Broncos hoodie, her knees pulled up, scrolling on her phone like she doesn’t have something better to do.
Her gaze flicks up to me as I cross the line again.
My hand closes around her phone, setting it on the coffee table, while my other slides over her cheek, cupping her jaw, one knee pressing down into the sofa beside her.
I don’t say anything. Don’t know what to say. But I want her, want her properly, want her more than I have any other time before — and maybe that’s because there are fewer guard rails now, maybe it’s because I admitted it to myself, maybe it’s because I admitted it to her.
As far as everyone is concerned.
Her mouth parts like she wants to speak, and I don’t let her. I kiss her, mirroring my hold on her cheek with my other hand, keeping her there before either of us says something stupid. The smallest little noise comes from her throat, and my god, I want to bottle that sound and keep it forever.
My hands slip into her hair as I deepen the kiss, pushing past her lips, exploring her mouth, tasting the glass of wine she’d had after dinner.
Mine, my brain screams.
Mine, I answer back.
My hand moves of its own volition down her neck, her front, over the bunched fabric of the hoodie to her waist, and I pull her up a bit, needing the closeness — but it’s not enough. Christ, why isn’t it enough?
“Want you,” I mutter, trailing my mouth from her lips to her jaw, then down as her head tips back, along the column of her throat. My fingers press in a little harder. “Come upstairs with me.”
Her breath stutters as she exhales. “Okay.”
* * *
There are no words for this. Or maybe there are, but I’m far too weak to say them.
We barely speak. What little sounds are made are ones of praise and whimpered, hushed moans, Carly’s mouth either buried against my skin or covered by her hand, quiet without being asked, which on its own makes my chest ache.
I know how loud she can be when she wants to be.
And I know she’s not because of my daughter.
I cannot get enough of her.
I’ve lost track of how long I’ve been touching her, how many times she’s come, how many times I’ve murmured good girl or one more for me. It’s never just one more.
She tastes like God himself sent her just to tempt and torment me.
Her arousal coats my lips and chin and tongue, my fingers curled inside of her, and her weak little whines into the pillow she’s turned her head in to only fuel my need to drag more of them out of her.
Every flick of my tongue makes her thighs twitch around my head, every gentle graze of my teeth makes her fingers twist harder in my hair, and I just want to keep her right here under me for as long as I physically can.
Her walls tighten around my fingers, spasming, her thighs gripping me harder, deafening the world around me.
She’s close again. I know her too well now, know every sign in her body, know the way she starts to hold her breath and the way her abdomen tenses and the broken little gasp that sounds the same every single time. I’m memorizing it.
Memorizing her.
“Come for me, sweetheart,” I rasp against her.
And she does. Again.
Her body breaks, her breath returning, her grip loosening, a wild but muffled whine drowning in the cushion of my pillow. I keep going until her grip turns desperate, until she’s pulling me up by my hair, my body crawling over hers like it’s second nature.
She knows the dance now. Her legs wrap around my waist, her mouth meets mine, and I sink myself in her so deep that my brain stops working. I’m barely ready to go again, hard but god knows it’ll be a herculean effort to actually get a release, and I don’t care — it’s not about me.
It’s about her. Everything is about her.
“So good for me,” I rasp against her lips, each little movement of my hips making her nails dig harder and harder into my back and shoulder.
I lift my head just enough to look down at her, and god, she looks perfect — brunette hair fanned around her head, brown eyes half-lidded and almost drunk-looking, staring up at me like she couldn’t ever imagine looking at anything else. “God, look at you.”
“Gray,” she breathes, her lips staying parted as I adjust my movement, my pelvis shifting against that swollen, overworked bundle of nerves.
She pulls at my skin like she wants me close enough to crawl under it, and I fold right back into her, burying my head in her neck, wrapping my arm around her waist.
“Mine,” I whisper. “Mine.”
I mean it. I can’t not mean it anymore. I let myself believe it for one night back at Wade’s resort, but it wasn’t enough. It will never be enough.
And that, on its own, should scare me — especially after Halsey.
Especially when it was never like this with her, and I had a goddamn child with her, married her.
But it doesn’t scare me, at least not right now, not when we fit like two puzzle pieces, not when she calls me Gray like it’s hers to say, not when the things I’ve wanted stumbled drunkenly into my life and offered themselves up on a silver platter.
My free hand finds hers at my shoulder, my fingers threading through hers, and I press our joined hands into the mattress beside her head.
“Never—god, never had this before.” The words slip out unguarded, unchecked, and I’m too far gone with her to even consider walking them back. “Never felt like this. Not to this… degree.”
A little whimper escapes her, and I’m not sure if it’s because of what my mouth or my hips are doing. But her other hand glides up from my back, knotting in my hair, keeping me held to her like she doesn’t want me to slip away.
“What are you doing to me?” I croak. “Why is this so different?”
“I-I don’t know,” she murmurs, her nails scraping lightly over my scalp. “But I feel the same.”
The words land somewhere low in my chest, and I groan a little too loudly, squeezing her hand, the relief of that single sentence making my head spin. She feels the same.
She feels the same.
“You’re ruining me,” I huff, a breathy chuckle bleeding into my words, my hips moving just a little faster. “Absolutely ruining me, Carly.”
“Good,” she says, and the grin I can hear in her voice undoes me in ways I don’t know if I’d ever admit to. “Because you’re ruining me, too.”