Chapter 22
A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
—Charles Dickens
He was crazy about her, and then she said that and took him right over the edge into utter insanity. He’d never felt this way about any woman ever. He’d never wanted to spend every waking second with anyone before her, and he was counting the minutes until he could be alone with her.
They ate Italian from their favorite local restaurant and watched Frozen, listening to Simone sing every word of every song at the top of her lungs.
While Emma tucked Simone in after the movie, Grayson found himself humming “Let It Go” while he washed the popcorn bowl and tidied up the living room.
As Emma walked back into the room, the buzzer to the door sounded. “Wonder who that is at this hour.” She went to the intercom.
“Hey, it’s me,” a male voice said. “I saw your lights on.”
“Come on up.” She buzzed him in. “My friend Troy,” she said for Grayson’s benefit. She opened the door and welcomed her handsome visitor with a big hug.
He returned her hug, lifting her right off her feet. “So glad you’re back! It’s been so boring around here this week.”
Grayson watched the scene unfold with an uneasy feeling unfurling inside him. Who was this guy who was so familiar with her?
Troy put her down and came to a halt when he saw Grayson sitting on one of the barstools at the counter that divided her kitchen and living room. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you had company.”
“Come meet Grayson,” Emma said. “Grayson Coleman, this is Troy Kennedy.”
Grayson shook Troy’s hand. “Nice to meet you.” He took in the other man’s dark hair and intense brown eyes, which quickly moved from him to Emma.
“You, too.”
“Gray is Colton’s cousin,” Emma added, her cheeks flushing with color.
Troy looked at her and then at him before returning his incredulous gaze to her. “Not you, too! Emma! Are you serious?”
His heated words had Grayson standing to put a possessive arm around her.
“I can’t even believe this,” Troy said, hands in his hair as he spun around to head for the door.
“Troy! Wait. Let me explain!”
“What’s there to explain? First Cameron, then Lucy and now you. I wish I knew what the hell was so special about these guys in Vermont.” He pulled open the door.
Emma went after him, grabbing his arm. “Don’t leave. Let’s talk about it.”
“What’s there to talk about, Emma? Are you going to assure me that you’re not going to move away, too?
Remember how Lucy was going to ‘divide her time’ between here and Vermont?
We both know how that’s worked out.” He pulled his arm free of her grasp.
“I gotta go before I say something that can’t be unsaid—or unheard. ”
“Will you call me tomorrow?”
“Yeah, whatever.” He went through the door and bounded down the stairs.
She closed the door, turned the locks and leaned her forehead against it. “Sorry about that.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“I feel like I need to explain his reaction.”
“Only if you want to.”
“The four of us were like a little family, always together, until Cam left and then Lucy. He’s afraid I’m going to go, too, and he’ll be alone here.”
“Did you… Were you guys ever…”
“No, we didn’t date. Not really. We were each other’s plus one a few times at weddings and other events, but there was never anything between us besides close friendship.”
“He’s a good-looking guy.”
“Is he? I haven’t noticed.”
“Sure you haven’t,” he said with a chuckle.
“You don’t have any need to be jealous of him or any other guy.”
“That’s good to know.” He slid his arms around her waist and drew her in tight against him, hoping she could feel what her nearness did to him. “Is it bedtime yet?”
“We need to give her another half hour or so to make sure she’s asleep.”
Grayson walked backward to the sofa, bringing her with him.
Emma surprised him when she snuggled into his lap.
He wrapped his arms around her, content to hold her close—for now, anyway. “This was fun tonight.”
“This is my life.”
“It’s a nice life.”
“I like it, but it’s better with you here.”
Her words touched him deeply. “I don’t know if I can stand to wait another half hour to touch you the way I’ve been dying to all day.” Because he was holding her so close, he felt the tremble that traveled through her.
“You can do it.”
“I feel like I’m having the best dream of my entire life since I met you.”
“I’m having the same dream,” she said softly.
Grayson ran his fingers through her hair. “Are you upset about what Troy said?”
“Sort of. He’s a very good friend, and he’s had a hard time with everyone falling in love with guys in Vermont and leaving the city. I’ve felt the same way since Cam and Lucy left. It’s been a huge adjustment.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve made trouble for you with your friend.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Are you sure he’s not interested in you as more than a friend?”
“Very sure. Cam and Lucy tried for years to make us into a couple, but I never thought of him that way. There’s no spark between us. We’re just friends.”
“That spark makes all the difference, doesn’t it?”
She smiled at him. “It certainly does.”
“Has it been half an hour yet?”
“More like ten minutes.”
“No way. That was totally thirty minutes.”
“How about I check to see if Sleeping Beauty is actually asleep yet?”
“That’s the best idea you’ve had all day.”
She leaned in to kiss him, lingering long enough to get his hopes—among other things—up. “Hold that thought.”
“Been holding that thought since you left my bed early this morning.”
Grayson watched her walk away, noticing the way her jeans hugged her sweet ass and how her blonde hair reached her mid-back.
He loved looking at her, watching her move and the loving but firm way she mothered her daughter.
He loved talking to her, laughing with her, kissing her and making love with her. He loved everything about her.
“Holy shit,” he whispered to himself as the earth-shattering realization registered all of a sudden.
His grandfather was right. He was in love with her—completely and totally and absolutely in love.
He wanted a million more days with her and Simone just like today, here or in Vermont, or in both places if that was what they wanted.
His mind raced with scenarios and possibilities and plans, even as he told himself it was far too soon for any of these thoughts.
The last thing he wanted to do when things were going so well was to freak her out by asking for too much too soon. Patience was the word of the day.
Emma returned to the living room a few minutes later. “Sleeping Beauty is out like a light. She’s even snoring a little.”
Grayson launched off the sofa and had her in his arms two seconds later, lifting her right off the floor to carry her toward the apartment’s other bedroom.
“Tell me how you really feel,” she said with a teasing grin.
“You’re not ready to hear that.”
“Says who?”
“Me.” He put her down next to the bed and went to shut and lock the door. “What if she wakes up?”
“I’ll hear her. My ears are calibrated to her, even through a closed door.”
Grayson whipped the sweater up and over his head, tossing it aside on his way back to her. He put his hands on her hips and took a long, greedy look at her gorgeous face.
“What do you think I’m not ready to hear?” she asked.
“My true feelings about you—and Simone.”
“I want to know.”
He shook his head. “It’s too soon.”
“Grayson…”
Bending his head, he placed a series of kisses on her neck that had her leaning into him. He loved when she did that.
“Please tell me.”
“You already know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do, and if I say the words, it’ll change things. It’ll put pressure on you that you don’t need right now, and I don’t want to do that to you.”
“You really feel that way about me? And Simone?”
“I really do.”
Sighing, she closed her eyes and tightened her hold on him. “I do, too, and I keep asking myself how that’s even possible.”
“It happened that first night for me, when I talked to you about things I never talk to anyone about.”
“That’s when it happened for me, too.” She pulled back to look up at him. “Are you happy about it?”
“So happy. What about you?”
“Very happy. I’d given up on anything like this ever happening to me.”
He rested his forehead on hers, caught up in an emotional firestorm the likes of which he’d never experienced before. And then he kissed her with all the love he felt for her, even if he hadn’t said the words. He wanted her to know how he felt.
They undressed each other slowly, reverently, both seeming to understand that the stakes had been raised in the last few minutes.
Everything was suddenly more important, more fraught, more intense.
Grayson pulled back the floral comforter for her and then followed her into bed, immediately reaching for her.
Being in her arms felt like coming home, and he needed her the way he’d never allowed himself to need anyone.
He’d intended to go slow, to give her sweetness and tenderness, but the desire that had been on slow burn all day flared to life when she slid her leg between his and put her arms around him.
Their lips came together in a burst of passion that had him clinging to her as he kissed her and cupped her breast.
She arched into him, letting him know she wanted the same thing he did—right now.
Grayson couldn’t wait. He needed to be inside her immediately. “Emma,” he said as he broke the kiss. “I want you so badly.”
“I want you, too. Hurry.”
Her urgent tone made him crazier for her than he already was. He took himself in hand and slid into her, gasping at the incredible feel of her tight, wet heat surrounding him. “God, that feels so good. You feel so good.”
“Don’t go slow, Grayson. Please don’t go slow.”
Her words were like gas on a simmering fire, igniting the kind of passion he wouldn’t have thought himself capable of before her, before this.
Never had he felt so transported during sex.
But this wasn’t just sex. It was far more than that, and having her soft body wrapped around his was becoming as necessary to him as oxygen.
This was the kind of thing that came along once in a lifetime.
This was the kind of thing people changed their lives to accommodate.
“Emma,” he whispered, her name like an oath on his lips.
She clung to him, her fingers digging into the muscles on his back, her legs wrapped around his hips and her breasts pressed tight against his chest.
As he drove into her, surrounded by her, engrossed in her, it still wasn’t enough.
He wanted everything she had to give. He wanted to give her everything he had and then some.
He wanted to hold her and kiss her and protect her and provide for her and Simone and maybe even have children of his own with her. And he’d known her a week.
“Talk to me, sweetheart,” he whispered, his lips hovering just above hers. “Tell me how it feels.”
“Amazing. Like nothing I’ve ever felt before.”
“Same here.” He withdrew from her, making her whimper from the sudden change of plan, and took her nipple into his mouth, sucking and teasing until it stood up tight and firm. Then he did the same to the other one before moving down to kiss her quivering belly.
“Gray…”
“Hmm?”
“What’re you… Oh… Oh God…”
He slid his fingers into her and caressed her clit with his tongue.
She squirmed under him, trying to get closer and to move things along. “I… I can’t…”
The nearly frantic tone of her voice spurred him on. He sucked her clit into his mouth and ran his tongue back and forth until he felt her inner muscles clamp down on his fingers.
All the air seemed to leave her body in one big exhale as she came, silently but forcefully.
Grayson moved quickly to trade his fingers for his cock and drove into her, triggering a second wave that was stronger than the first and took him with her in an explosive release that made him see stars and left him gasping for air in the aftermath. Christ have mercy.
He collapsed on top of her, and she welcomed him with her arms and legs wrapped tight around him, as if she couldn’t bear to let him go, which was totally fine with him.
“Wow,” she whispered after a long period of silence. Her heart beat so hard, he could feel it against his chest and against his lips, which covered the pulse point in her neck.
“Wow isn’t a big enough word for that.”
“I never knew it could be this way. It’s like it gets better every time.”
“It does get better every time.”
“Don’t let me forget to set my alarm. I can’t believe I have to work tomorrow. The party is over.”
“No, baby,” he said, kissing her. “The party is just getting started.”