Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
GRIFFIN
After we get Ames to his apartment above Watchfire, the ride home is a blur of Holden’s country music and the heart-thrumming sensation of Beckett pressed against me in the back seat.
Since Holden’s driving his official sheriff’s vehicle, this means he’s separated from us by a cage-type thing, which adds to the illicit feeling that I’m doing something I shouldn’t.
Not that there’s any law against one legal adult hoping to get railed so hard by another legal adult that he can feel it for a week. Not in Vermont, anyway.
But Beckett confessing, “I don’t want to stop,” keeps sloshing around in my head, along with the five thousand shots of rye I took and the message I got yesterday from Conor offering me a job—well, the possibility of one—back in New York.
And all of it’s making me twitch with nervous energy.
Part of me knows I should, at this minute, be messaging Conor back to ask for a meet-up. Hell, I should have done it immediately yesterday. That I should be excited about the prospect that I might be employable again, in the city again, even if the job’s not exactly what I’d hoped for.
Instead, I continued to leave his message on read and went to the Brine and Dandy.
Foolish, foolish, foolish.
I’ve never been a risk taker. I’m whatever the opposite of Jim’s free spirit is. Beer pong with Aunt Jill aside, just knowing something could impede my climb up the corporate ladder was enough to get me to avoid it.
Beckett Axford is the first terrible idea I’ve been unable to resist. In fact, as Holden sings along to Kacey Musgraves about how love can make the ordinary shine, and Beckett grins at me sideways while his fingers toy with mine, I feel like I’m actively embracing it.
“Sure you can walk home from here, Griffin?” Holden asks with a knowing grin as he pulls a few feet into Beckett’s driveway and the two of us climb out. “Chilly out there tonight.”
I glance down the dark road, toward where my driveway should be on the opposite side. It looks very far away and very dark, but fortunately, I’m not actually planning on walking anywhere.
“Definitely.” I wave a hand. “I’m highly adaptable. I can practically see in the dark. It’s no problem.”
“I believe you.” Holden grins, and I decide he might be my second favorite Axford.
I don’t realize I’ve said this out loud until Holden laughs and demands to know which sibling’s beaten him out for the top slot. “It’s Ames,” he teases. “Isn’t it?”
Beckett glares dangerously. “Aren’t there some ducklings crossing the road somewhere who need your assistance, Sheriff?”
Holden’s grin widens. “Have fun, boys. Play nice.”
Beckett flips him off, which only makes Holden laugh again as he drives away and leaves Beckett and me in the cold, dark woods.
Once we’re alone, Beckett turns to me and brushes the hair off my forehead. If he were anyone else, I’d probably dodge away, but thanks to some strange magic—or possibly multiple previous orgasms—Beckett’s gotten beneath my personal space force field. It no longer recognizes him as other.
“Hi,” Beckett says.
I shiver slightly inside my fleece, and not from the chilly autumn bite in the air. “H-hi.”
He curls an arm around me and pulls me against his side. “I was hoping you’d come inside for a drink, but if you—”
“Yes!” I blurt. I feel myself go hot despite the cold, despite everything. The last thing I need is more to drink, but I’m hoping Beckett means drink in the sense of fuck.
Beckett wraps his arm around my shoulders as we walk up the rest of the long driveway, his steps sure and certain despite the alcohol and the near-total darkness.
“Quiet out here, huh?” I whisper, and for the first time, I mean it in a good way. I like that the only sounds I can hear are our mingled breaths, the sounds of our feet crunching the leaves in sync.
“Not so quiet,” Beckett disagrees. “But you have to be still to hear the sounds. When I was a kid, I’d drag a sleeping bag into this clearing in the woods. I’d try to stay perfectly silent so the animals would forget I was there just so I could feel like part of the forest.”
I laugh because I can picture it. “Meanwhile, I dragged a blanket out onto the fire escape so I could listen to the sirens and the people playing music down the block and feel like part of the city.”
Beckett leads me up the three porch steps to his cabin.
It’s a squat little house that’s almost exactly what I had in mind when I learned I’d inherited Jim’s property, and it’s every bit as homey, if not nearly as whimsical.
The living room is all warm wood and comfortable furniture—a worn leather sofa, a coffee table, plaid fleece blankets, and a crocheted afghan—arranged in front of a fireplace laid with actual logs.
On the wall over the couch hangs an acoustic guitar.
I grin. “You liar! You said you don’t play anymore.”
“I don’t,” Beckett insists, heading for the kitchen. “I like how it looks, but I haven’t played in decades.”
“Not since that boy sophomore year broke the music in you?” I lean against the kitchen door. “I think I saw a Disney Channel movie just like that. Or was it the photosynthesis song that made you give it all up?”
Beckett snorts, and the look he gives me is heated, but he asks, “You want water, whiskey, or both?”
“How about… neither.” I step across the small kitchen and slide both hands up his chest.
He immediately sucks in a breath. He’s so much bigger than me, but it turns out I really like that. I might have accused him of being bossy, but when he and I are together, there’s not a doubt in my mind he’d rather cut off those big hands than use them in any way I don’t want him to.
“I was hoping that the come in for a drink thing was code,” I say. “For come in and get naked.”
“It was…” he admits, wrapping those big hands around my waist. His hands push my sweater up just far enough that his calloused thumbs rub the skin of my ribs. It’s just a thing he does. A habit, and it’s kind of a mindfuck that I’ve been with Beckett enough that we have habits.
I’m so damn mushy.
“…and it wasn’t,” he finishes.
Already I’m struggling to hold on to the conversation.
Like every time Beckett touches me, I get this electric hum in my blood, this feeling that part of me wants to savor the anticipation of what’s about to happen and part of me wants him to hurry up, to tear my clothes off right now, to put those thick fingers around my cock or in my ass.
The other part of me, the Sensible Griffin who wants to remind me that being with Beckett is just a deflection from the myriad things I don’t want to think about, has had enough alcohol that he’s bound and gagged in the corner of my brain, which is convenient.
“It was and wasn’t? What’s that mean?” I demand, moving closer to feel the solid heat of him against me.
“It means I wanted to be with you. For sex, yeah, but also to talk about… shit, I don’t know.
Your pickle aversion, or the kind of music you like, or your weird aunts, or why you think Vermont’s trying to kill you but you’re apparently still determined to lure tourists to come visit, why you decided to come here in the first place?
” He shrugs. “Any of those things, really.”
My fingers slide up to clench in the hair that curls over his nape. “Okay. Well. That’s… You’re not what I expected,” I hear myself say, and I wish I could blame alcohol, but I can’t entirely. For saying it out loud, maybe, but not for feeling it.
“Same,” he admits. “It was easier when I thought you were an entitled city boy out to destroy my company. The guy standing between me and what I needed to keep my business afloat. But then you turned out to be funny. And smart. And you get along with my siblings better than I do. And…”
Beckett’s hands move up my sides—only an inch, but there’s possession in that inch. I want that. To be possessed by him. I have no fucking idea what’s happening to me right now.
I dart my tongue out to wet my lips. “And?”
“And you’re so goddamn hot.” His fingers clench into my skin, and my breath catches. “I can’t see you and not want to touch you. To have you look at me. To see you smile. I feel like…”
“Like I’m losing my mind,” I breathe.
“Yes,” he groans.
And then I’m kissing him, and he’s kissing me, and it tastes a little like maple rye and a whole lot like possibility.
This isn’t like last time or the times before. There’s heat—god, so much glorious heat—but no anger, no feeling that I’m using Beckett as a distraction. There is nowhere in the world I want to be except right here.
I sink into it, into the warmth and the wanting. I forget about land disputes and family fuckery, about all the reasons this isn’t just complicated but impossible.
His hands frame my face, thumbs stroking over my cheekbones as he kisses me, and I make a sound more soft and helpless than I thought I was capable of.
But there’s no room for self-consciousness when Beckett’s tongue is in my mouth, when his hands are clasping my back and reaching down to mold my ass, forcing me to stop thinking and just feel.
“Tell me what you want,” he demands breathlessly.
Oh fuck. So many things.
I want to forget about Derek Sullivan and the town council and the ticking clock on my time in Winsome.
I want to stop thinking about my uncertain future and complicated legacies and just…
just be. I want him to touch me everywhere, and for me to touch him back.
I want to hear the sounds he makes when he comes apart.
“You,” I say, since that encompasses all of it. “I want you to fuck me. Please, Beckett.”
Heat flares in his eyes, and then he’s kissing me again, deeper this time, his hands moving up my sides again to pull my sweater over my head.