Chapter Nineteen #2
“It’s a photo-op. You’re supposed to pretend you’re getting married because of the song.
You know, ‘Winter Wonderland’?” Grant started to hum the familiar melody, but he trailed off because Ivy was staring at him like he’d lost his damn mind.
Maybe he had. “It seemed really funny during the planning meeting.” Her words finally filtered from his ears to his brain.
“What do you mean, ‘You’re you and I’m me’? ”
She crossed her arms and stared at the snowman, who did look a bit ridiculous with his circular wire glasses, liturgical stole, and collar.
“I’m me. I’m shy and awkward and I’ve never had that many friends.
And you’re…you. Everyone likes you. Everyone’s always liked you.
You were prom king and student body vice president and you’re probably Coeur-de-Lac’s most eligible bachelor.
And you’re trying to tell me that you think you’ve been taking me on dates.
You don’t see how ridiculous that seems? ”
“No, I don’t.” Grant took a few steps toward her. “I think you’re wonderful. Why wouldn’t I want to take you on dates?”
“Then why didn’t you tell me they were dates?
Your brother is a fucking dumbass, but at least he’s clear about his intentions.
According to you, we’ve been on three dates, but you haven’t tried to make a single move on me.
Even Austin understood that you’re supposed to end a date with a goodnight kiss. ”
“Ivy, you make me irrational,” he said as emphatically as he could. “When I’m around you, I can’t think straight. I don’t know how to behave. You’ve got me so turned around and upside down that I feel like I’m living in zero gravity every time I look at you. And all I want to do is look at you.”
“Then why didn’t you kiss me last night?” she said, seeming to grow more indignant instead of softening in the face of his confession.
“I didn’t know if you wanted me to. Why didn’t you try to kiss me? I was open to it.”
“I tried. You made a big fuss about walking me to my front door, then nothing. I even mentioned the mistletoe! What am I supposed to think when you don’t kiss me when there’s mistletoe?” Ivy put her hands on her hips and glared at him.
It was a cliché as old as time that men found women beautiful when they were angry, and Grant was not ashamed to admit that he was a cliché. Ivy was gorgeous.
“Who needs mistletoe?”
It was a single step to close the distance between them and cradle her cold cheeks in his palms. Then he kissed her the way he’d been wanting to kiss her since he was nineteen years old.
He started gentle and slow, needing to savor the moment he’d waited a decade for.
Her lips were so soft and so perfect that he never wanted to stop kissing her just like that.
Then her hand was on his waist, gripping his jacket, and her other hand curled around the back of his neck to drag him closer, and all of his brain cells left the room when her tongue brushed against his bottom lip.
The most intense craving he’d known in his life was in charge now.
He cupped the back of her head and wrapped an arm around her middle, his fingers almost able to dip into her pocket.
He opened his mouth to her sweet invasion and moaned when her tongue brushed against his.
Her fingers tangled in his hair and grasped hard enough to hurt, but he didn’t care.
His hand was on her ass, her tongue was in his mouth, and his dick was throbbing.
“This is a family place!” Tony declared loudly.
Grant felt as dazed as Ivy looked as they slowly separated. Her pupils were so big that her green eyes were basically black, and her fantastic lips were slightly parted. He wanted to kiss her again.
He started to lean in, but Tony cleared his throat as obnoxiously as he could.
“As thrilled as I am that the two of you managed to figure out the obvious next step in your very strange mating ritual, sex in public is a crime in Wisconsin.”
Ivy stepped away from Grant and fixed her hat. “I thought you’d abandoned us.”
“We did,” Brad said, his arm casually around Tony’s waist, “but we made it to the end, sat on Santa’s lap, and decided to double back to see what was taking you so long.”
“I honestly expected you to be walking five feet apart with your hands behind your backs like you were in a Jane Austen novel,” Tony said.
“Since when do you know anything about Jane Austen?” Grant asked.
“I watch movies.” Tony leaned his head against Brad’s shoulder. “If you two can finish this walk without adult supervision, I think we’re going to head back to my place.”
“Grant, you don’t mind taking Ivy home, do you?” Brad asked.
“I think I can handle that,” Grant answered.
Grant and Ivy managed to keep their hands to themselves for the rest of the Christmas Walk, sticking to safe discussion topics like the weather and movies they’d both loved over the last ten years.
He did allow himself to rest his hand on her thigh for the short drive back to her parents’ house, because now that he’d kissed her, he wanted to touch her.
Everywhere. All the time. Ivy seemed receptive, since she put her hand on top of his.
He pulled up next to the curb and put the truck in park. Ivy looked out the window at her house.
“I’m kind of surprised you didn’t take me back to your place.”
It took three rapid beats of his heart for her words to register.
“Wait. That was an option?”
Ivy laughed, and he didn’t even care that it was at his expense because she was so damn pretty.
“I could still take you back to my place,” he offered, putting his hand on the gear shift.
“Oh, no. You made your bed; you lie in it,” she told him, moving his hand off the shifter.
“You could lie in my bed.” Grant intertwined their fingers and kissed her hand.
“Too bad for you I don’t put out on the third date.”
Grant groaned. He deserved that one. But even if she wasn’t coming back to his place and he couldn’t go to hers because he could see the blue light of the TV through the curtains, he wasn’t ready for the night to end.
“Do you have a curfew or did you want to make out more?” he asked.
She unbuckled her seat belt and his heart sank. She was really going to leave. Then Ivy unbuttoned her coat and wiggled out of it.
“My dad always told me boys only want one thing. Good thing he was right.”
Grant didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been her crawling over the center console or pressing her knee dangerously close to his balls as she awkwardly worked her limbs into place to straddle him.
Her ass would have honked the horn if he hadn’t slid his seat back as soon as she crossed the dividing line between his seat and hers.
“I didn’t want to be awkwardly leaning over the console,” she explained.
Grant traced the curve of her waist with his palms and then filled his hands with her ass. “I wasn’t complaining.”
She unzipped his coat and spread it open. Goose bumps followed the path of her hands from the center of his chest to his shoulders.
“This doesn’t feel real,” she said quietly, like if she spoke too loudly, he’d disappear.
“I know what you mean.” Grant stretched upward and kissed her neck. A shudder was his reward.
He did it again, but as she shifted, his teeth scraped against her skin. Ivy gasped, her body tensing.
“Sorry,” he murmured, and pressed a gentle kiss against the spot.
“Do it again.”
She arched her neck, offering it to him like he was a vampire and she was his willing meal. Grant nipped at the pale column of her throat, drinking in her needy whimpers like they’d sustain him forever.
“Fuck,” she moaned, her fingers threaded through his hair to keep him where she wanted him. “That feels good.”
Blood pounded in his veins in a stampede to his cock, which had rapidly become a hot, borderline painful rod strangled against his thigh by his jeans.
He lifted his hips, trying to get more comfortable, and Ivy rocked against him in response.
The pressure and friction sent an electric zing of pleasure through his body.
He bit her neck and she did it again, grinding herself against him roughly.
She used her hold on his hair to leverage his head so she could capture his mouth, kissing him with a desperate, fervent hunger that lit him on fire.
Her tongue stroked his, and every time she retreated, he’d catch her bottom lip between his teeth, demanding more.
They were breathless, trying to steal each other’s oxygen, while Ivy rode him frantically.
His hands were on her hips, not guiding her but learning her pace and rhythm, because when she did begin to falter, he could keep her on her path to sweet oblivion.
“Oh god,” she squeaked against his lips, and then fed him her cries as her body tensed.
Grant held her ass tightly, maintaining her blistering pace as his own pleasure threatened to spill over.
A bead of sweat slid from his forehead, down his face to his neck.
Ivy’s legs gripped him tighter and tighter until she suddenly popped up like she was spring-loaded, her cleavage nearly giving him a black eye.
“I can’t… Oh god…” She panted, then slowly relaxed until her head was on his shoulder and she was boneless in his arms. She licked the trail of sweat off his neck, and it was his turn to shudder as his balls clenched like fists. “Mmm…salty.”
All of his windows were fogged over and they were both covered in a thin sheen of sweat.
Bruce Springsteen crooned softly in the background.
It was almost like he’d gotten a do-over on that summer they worked together at the theater, because if he’d had half an ounce of sense and some guts, they’d have been making out and dry humping in his truck back then.
“Did you…” Ivy trailed off, but he knew what she meant.