Chapter 9 #3
Izzy stopped dead.
The air left her lungs all at once.
He had clearly just finished his own bedtime routine. He’d brushed his teeth, his blonde hair was mussed from a towel, and he was wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung gray sweatpants. No shirt. No barriers.
Just a sprawling expanse of broad, sun-darkened shoulders, a chest built from actual, brutal labor, and a sharp V-line disappearing into the cotton of his pants.
Up close, the low hallway light traced the hard planes of his torso and the rugged, golden scratch of stubble framing his mouth.
He looked less like the steady rancher she’d been arguing with all week and more like a very bad decision standing barefoot in a doorway.
Izzy didn’t look away. In fact, she let her eyes do a slow, deliberate, unblinking drag down the length of his body, and back up—giving him the exact same thorough, appreciative assessment he’d inflicted on her the night before.
Grant caught her looking. A muscle in his jaw jumped beneath that five o’clock shadow as he braced one hand against the doorframe, effectively cutting the small hallway in half. His chest rose, the space suddenly feeling suffocatingly tight.
Izzy stood there in her tiny camisole and silk shorts, her pulse giving a loud, violent thud against her ribs.
“Oh,” she murmured, her voice dropping an octave. “Well. Good night.”
She made a move to step past him toward the bathroom, her shoulder nearly brushing his bare skin. As she reached his side, she paused, tilting her face up with a slow, dangerous little smile.
“Sweet dreams, cowboy.”
Grant didn’t move out of the way. He let out a low, gravelly rumble that vibrated right through the floorboards beneath her bare feet.
“Yeah,” he rasped, his eyes dropping to her mouth before locking back onto hers, stormy and dark. “Sweet dreams alright. Not with the way you look.”
Izzy stopped. She turned around to face him fully, her back pressing against the hallway wall.
She didn’t even have time to reply.
Grant closed the remaining inches between them, his hand coming up to cup the back of her neck, his fingers tangling into her dark hair as he leaned down and kissed her.
It was deep, heavy, and thick with the frustrated attraction they’d both been trying to outrun. Izzy let out a soft, defeated sound against his lips, her toiletry bag slipping from her fingers and hitting the floor forgotten as her hands flew to his bare chest.
The feel of him was overwhelming—the hunger radiating off his skin, the hard, unyielding muscle beneath her palms, the solid ridge of his ribs.
She gripped his shoulders, pulling herself up into him, her lips parting as he took more, his stubble burning a rough, intoxicating path against her skin.
His other hand flattened against her waist to anchor her tight against his hips.
He tasted like mint and the dark coffee from earlier, demanding and possessive in a way that left her completely unraveled. Every point of contact burned, her soft silk pajamas pressing against the rough, warm planes of his bare skin.
When he finally pulled back, it was agonizingly slow. His lips lingered for one last, bruising second before he rested his forehead against hers. Both of them were breathing hard, the narrow hallway filled with the frantic sound of it.
Grant’s eyes opened, the blue of them entirely stripped of his usual stoic calm. He looked at her like a man who had just crossed a line he had absolutely no intention of erasing.
Izzy swallowed, her lips tingling, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She tried to steady herself, to summon a bit of her practiced composure, trying to make a joke out of the way the air between them crackled.
“Wow,” a shaky smile touching her lips. “Well... that was unexpected.”
Grant didn’t blink. He kept his forehead resting against hers, his breath hot against her mouth. “Was it?”
The word was a low, knowing whisper that made her knees weak. She lingered there in his space a bit longer, the absolute reality of what they were doing crashing back into her mind.
“Burke would kill you,” she whispered.
A ghost of a rough laugh shook his chest. “And Caitlin would help.”
Izzy let out a soft, helpless laugh, slowly releasing his shoulders and stepping back an inch until the cool air of the hallway rushed between them. She looked down at her fallen toiletry bag, then back up at his dark, intense eyes.
“Okay,” she said, clearing her throat as she retrieved her things. “I’m going to go brush my teeth now.”
Grant watched her as he stepped back to give her room, forcing himself to steady. He looked at her one last time, his voice a rough, uneven scrape in the quiet house
“Goodnight, Izzy.”
He turned and stepped into his bedroom, closing the door quietly behind him.
Izzy stood against the wall for a long second, her hand trembling against her skincare bag. The clock downstairs kept ticking, steady and unbothered, but in the quiet mountain dark, everything had just changed.