Eliza
The low octave of Grayson’s voice rumbles straight to my belly, curling down and hooking itself there. I’ve been viscerally aware of him from the moment I sat beside him, closer than was work appropriate. Close enough to make my skin tingle with awareness.
But not close enough to satisfy the desperate, aching pull toward him.
I know that pull.
I felt it stir when I saw him in the warehouse. When he trapped me against that desk. Attraction. Desire. Hormones that’ve had enough of staying away from this man, and are begging for me to jump his bones. Chemicals I was determined to ignore, because…
Because they’re unprofessional.
Because I had a bad morning, and I’m probably not emotionally responsible right now.
Because this is Grayson.
But Grayson just shifted that big, sturdy frame closer to me, leaning down on one arm. His gaze keeps traveling down to my lips, still salty from the oysters. And he just laid down a blatant dare, knowing full-well I never back down from them.
That’s just because you weren’t eating them with the right man.
“How can you be so sure?” I whisper, my chest frozen in anticipation.
“Do you really want me to answer that?” His body is as still as my lungs, eyes molten as he waits for my response.
I may not have had many partners, but I know.
What this is, what he’s asking. What my answer will lead to.
And whether it’s from being out here, so far removed from everything, or exhaustion from constantly needing to make the right, smart, success-driven decisions, I shut off my brain.
“Yes,” I answer.
His nostrils subtly flare.
That’s his only reaction before he smoothly shucks the oyster in his hand.
He leans in closer so our forearms brush.
“Have another one.” He lifts the shell toward my mouth, but I barely look at it, too fixated on his smooth lips and the neatly trimmed scruff around them.
Scruff I’d once found unkempt, too rugged, but now has me wondering what it’ll feel like on my skin. Between my thighs.
The cold edge of the shell meets my lips, and I open my mouth, allowing him to press it inside enough for me to suck the flesh away.
He applies pressure, dragging the bottom of the shell down my lip as he removes it. Then he dips in, catching that same lip between his own, giving it a gentle suck that shoots straight to the ache between my legs.
He pulls away, slowly licking his lips.
“You’re right.” His hot breath ghosts across my mouth. “‘Good’ isn’t a strong enough word.”
I gasp when the bumpy, rounded exterior of the shell lands on my chest, just below my collarbone. He presses, gently nudging me onto my back. His body follows, so he’s lying on his side next to me, eyes on that shell.
He moves it, dragging it across my upper chest, then down to trace the scooped neckline of my shirt, the shell’s cool, rough texture lighting a path of little fires. My nipples harden against my bra, waiting for the shell to pass over them. Craving it.
He stops just above my left breast. “So what do you think, Boston?” The words vibrate along my side as his body curls closer, half-covering me. His head dips, eliciting a full-body tremble as his lips brush the edge of my ear. “Those oysters working?” he whispers.
His face roves over to mine, so close our noses brush. That shell remains still on my skin, my chest heaving beneath it.
I didn’t expect this from him.
I expected what I’ve always gotten. Dispassionate patterns of movement, the same old routine that always ends in the guy’s release.
Not this torturous seduction and these rumbled words.
Not for every single nerve ending to throb in frenzied anticipation of this man’s next move.
And all he’s done is half-kiss me and caress me with a freaking seashell.
It isn’t nearly enough.
Not even close.
“You’re going to have to discover that for yourself, Grayson,” I say, hardly recognizing the throatiness of my voice. His jaw tenses, encouraging the next sentence to fall from my lips. “Though I’m not quite sure you know where to find it.”
His lips part in a cocky grin. The kind he wears so easily, that puts us back on familiar footing. “Someone’s impatient.”
“Not impatient. Just making sure you know your way around at age thirty.”
“I’ve never told you my age. You asking around about me?”
My eyes want to roll, but they refuse to leave his face. “I did my research before I took the position.”
For a moment, that grin flashes into a genuine smile. “‘Course you did.”
Then that smile disappears and the shell moves, crossing over my neckline and onto my shirt. He pauses there, flipping the shell, so that its blunt edge presses into my skin through the fabric.
Then he starts to drag it.
The gentle scrape is wicked, tracking down, down—ohmygod. The abrasive edge passes directly over my nipple, and my chest arches up before I can smother the instinct.
“You wonder if I know my way around,” he drawls, looping low across my belly with the shell, and starting a track up toward my other breast. “But the thing is—” he pauses as the edge passes over my nipple, and my chest jerks again— “I farm oysters for a living.”
That wicked scrape draws a track down the center of my chest, past my belly button, pausing just above the juncture of my thighs, where I’m already soaked. Helplessly dripping with need, and he hasn’t even touched me with his hands. “Which means I’m exceptionally good at finding pearls.”
The shell flips again, and he presses the rounded exterior to my throbbing core.
My entire body jolts, and yet a small laugh still manages to escape my throat. “No way you just used that line out loud.”
His fingers increase their pressure, and my breath catches. “Like you once said, I only know how to speak in shellfish.”
Another laugh bursts from my gasping lungs.
There’s some sort of witty remark waiting in my head, I’m sure, but I’ll never know, because the shell disappears, and the next sensation I feel is his rough fingers at the edge of my shorts. My laughter dies away.
The only thing that exists in my head—in the world—is his strong body engulfing me, the smell of his hot skin, and those fingertips playing at my thigh, inches from where I burn.
His eyes are molten gold when they meet mine, and he dips his head, speaking his next words against my lips. “Tell me, Eliza.”
Tell me.
Permission. He’s asking for permission. To touch me, to cross the line we’d etched in permanent marker when we first met.
I nod, incapable of coherent words.
Grayson doesn’t delay.
Like he needs it as much as me, his fingers slip under the fabric and bury themselves beneath my panties, slipping against me.
“Fuck, you’re soaked.” The curse is low and strained against my lips, his fingers stroking long and slow.
My hips tilt up, needing more—pressure, speed, words, for the life of me I don’t know—just whatever will get me that release that’s wrapping bands around me, threatening to explode. I’ve never been more turned on my life and I just, I need—
“There it is, that pretty little pearl,” he murmurs, grazing my clit with two fingers.
Ego be damned, I moan, eyes squeezing shut. Those fingers become knuckles, rubbing, again and again, eliciting more moans from my chest.
“And those are some pretty sounds,” he grits out. His knuckles trap my clit and squeeze. Lightning shoots up my spine.
Not skipping a beat, two fingers slip into me, stretching me, while his thumb continues circling.
“Should’ve expected it, with how fucking pretty everything else about you is.
” His voice is stiff, strained, the words like gasoline to waiting flames.
His hips meet my thigh, a long, rigid bulge pressing into me. His fingers rub, and stroke, and flick.
Within seconds, I’m gone.
A cry shoots straight from my throat as I come all over his fingers, harder than I think I’ve ever come before. His fingers stay there, caressing me, until the last trembles drain from my body and awareness begins to seep in.
I pant, feeling the sand beneath my head, the breeze washing over my cheeks, as his fingers slip from my shorts.
Maybe I should be embarrassed, self-conscious about how desperate I just was, but Grayson appears just as affected as me, his face pulled in tense lines, his erection grinding against my side.
He’s looking at me like I’m the only thing that exists in this salt pond, like I’m some kind of wonder, and for a heartbeat, neither of us moves, caught up in some kind of spell.
Then, in one smooth motion, he threads a hand into my hair and kisses me.
His lips are confident. Firm, but completely unrushed, laced with something so much sweeter than lust. Despite what his fingers just did, this somehow feels like more.
His scruff tickles my skin as his tongue sweeps in, dragging against mine with easy intent, and sensation explodes in my chest, a whimper flying loose.
He swallows it, fingers tightening in my hair as his cock twitches against my thigh.
I reach for his pants, hand pressing against the outline of his thick, hard length. Our lips move, becoming frenzied, as he leans back and I shift onto my side, my intent as clear as his want. My fingers fumble for his button when the smooth, velvety notes of a song wash over us.
It’s soft at first, enough to make me wonder if I’m so caught up in him, I’m hearing things. But then Grayson breaks away.
He catches my hand, the half-lidded desire in his eyes morphing into awareness as he sits up.
“Fuck.” This curse isn’t gritty with desire. It’s agitated.
When I follow his gaze, I understand why. A fishing kayak drifts toward our beach, an old man mouthing the words to—is that Frank Sinatra?—playing from his large speaker.
“Thought this was the Secret Spot,” I mutter through swollen lips, running my hand down my sand-coated hair.
He releases a drawn-out exhale, raking his hand across his jaw. “Like you said, it faces the open pond.”
I track his hand as he adjusts his bulge, which still hasn’t gotten the message of the moment. We sit there, breathing, as the man casts his line, drifting closer and closer, completely oblivious to what he’s interrupted.
And what, exactly, did he interrupt?
My mind is eager to overanalyze, to start drawing conclusions about what just happened, to find answers now. But it doesn’t get the chance, because Grayson faces me then, notices the sand in my hair, and begins dusting it off.
With a hitch to his cheek, he says, “Think we can safely conclude you were eating oysters in the wrong company, Boston.”
My shoulders relax. “I think you just have really potent oysters.”
He barks out a light laugh. “Tell yourself whatever you want.”
I glance pointedly at his hard-on. “And what's your excuse?” I ask. “You only had one.”
His hand pauses, resting on my head. His tongue drags across his lip. Slowly. Thoughtfully. And he gives me the last reply I expected. One that doesn’t deflect, or tease, or end with a challenge.
“I don’t need an aphrodisiac with you.”
Oh.
His words hang in the air between us, like an epic declaration, the summit of a peak appearing through clouds I assumed would never part. Maybe he didn’t mean them to be so…big, but that’s the impact they strike me with.
His ringtone cuts through the air.
For a few moments, he ignores it, his eyes steadfast on mine.
But the electronic notes keep going. I watch as he recedes from the moment in slow-motion, his lips pressing together. Then he breaks away completely, removing his hand, sitting up, and pulling his phone from his pocket.
“Sorry,” he says, brows drawn as he reads the caller ID. “I need to take this.”
“All good.”
He cleans up as he talks, and I help him, trying not to blush as I pick up the shell he’d touched me with. I hear Lala’s name mentioned, Grayson’s tone low and serious, and wordlessly file back into the skiff with him.
We’re almost at the docks when he finally hangs up. “Lala’s got a fever,” he informs me over the wind. “I’ve got to go take her to the doctor’s. My aunt’s watching her, but her husband has her car.”
I nod in understanding and say, “I hope she’s okay.”
He looks at me over his shoulder, then.
I don’t need an aphrodisiac with you.
His words themselves are a freaking aphrodisiac.
I wonder if he’s replaying them in his head, like me.
Though if he was, he probably wouldn’t have so much resignation in his eyes. Resignation that suggests he’s shoving what just happened between us far, far away. Redrawing the line we’d just temporarily erased in permanent marker.
When we arrive at the dock, there’s no opportunity to confirm that hunch, because Mark’s there, whisking Grayson into a conversation. And three minutes later, his truck bumbles out of the lot as he rushes to pick up his little sister.