Chapter 10
Grant finally allowed himself to move, pulling out of Everly and then plunging in to the hilt, her answering moan setting the base of his spine tingling.
He wanted this to last, but damn if she wasn’t about to undo him here and now.
Her inner walls gloved him impossibly tight, and he forced himself to slow down, to draw it out.
To take a moment to appreciate the fantasy playing out in front of him.
Countless nights he’d imagined this, and yet nothing compared to the reality of Everly, naked, offering herself up to him.
“I can’t stop looking at you, you know that?
” he told her, sliding his hands down her legs to cup her ass.
Her skin was hot beneath his touch, the floral scent of her surrounding him like a cloud.
“Now who’s flattering who?” she smiled, her words a little breathless.
“You know what I said earlier, babe. I’m not a liar.” He pressed a kiss to the inside of her ankle and rocked deep. Everly arched her back and closed her eyes, her lower lip caught between her teeth and her dark hair fanned around her.
“Grant,” she hissed. He closed his eyes too, then, and threw his head back, momentarily lost to the sensation of her slick, hot walls sliding around him. “Grant,” she said again, urgently this time, and his eyes popped open.
“I want you on top of me. To hold me,” she panted, reaching for him. She lowered her legs, wrapping them around his waist, and he followed her across the bed without breaking their connection.
Something in his chest twisted as he settled between her legs and hovered above her beautiful face.
He’d meant to give her space, to not force too much closeness, but the truth was that lying here face-to-face, holding her in his arms as they made love, was exactly what he’d dreamed of.
“Much better,” he said, wrapping an arm around her and bracing the other one above her head.
Everly threaded her hands through his hair and pulled his mouth to hers.
“God, Ev,” he groaned as his thrusts grew harder, more urgent. The ancient wooden bedframe creaked as they moved together, their breath mingling. Sweat beaded on his brow as he strained to hold his body in check.
He reached between them, rolling one of her dusky pink nipples between his fingers. “I love these, by the way,” he gasped. “Such perfect breasts.”
“I love the way you touch me,” she whimpered, her breath coming faster. “It’s so good. Too good.”
“You deserve it, baby. You deserve to feel amazing.”
Everly moaned. “Keep touching me, Grant. Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”
“Never.” He worked her nipple with his fingers, then bent and sucked the other one into his mouth.
He was rewarded with a sharp cry, her muscles tightening around him and pulsing as her orgasm crashed through her.
She gripped his ass tight and then reached between them to stroke the sensitive patch of skin just behind his balls.
Grant saw stars. He finally let himself go, following Everly over the edge with a broken shout, his name on her lips.
He collapsed to the side of her, careful not to overwhelm her with his full weight, and waited for his heart to stop beating out of his chest. Soft hands cradled his face, and he leaned into her palm, then looked down into deep green eyes that held an emotion he couldn’t quite identify.
A lone tear trailed down her temple, and he kissed it away.
“What’s wrong, baby?” A small sliver of worry pierced his heart. “Did I hurt you?”
“God, no,” she laughed, the sound reverberating through his own chest. “I just—I didn’t know I could feel that way anymore. I thought something was wrong with me.”
“You’re perfect,” he told her, and meant it. No woman had ever gotten under his skin like Everly. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”
He took care of the condom quickly, then returned after a few minutes to find Everly sprawled in bed, facing away from him, the old quilt pooled around her hips.
Her bare back rose and fell in a slow, unguarded rhythm, her hair spilling across the pillow like a pool of ink in the dim light.
He leaned against the door frame, taking in the sight of her–a sight he wouldn’t have thought possible even a week ago.
Everly Holland, asleep in his bed, the air still thick with what they’d shared. And what they hadn’t yet.
She was shy. Like she didn’t know how beautiful she was, like someone had made her believe she needed to hide herself.
A muscle ticked in his jaw as Grant considered who exactly had put those ideas in her head.
He’d been afraid that doing this with her would feel like crossing a line, even after what she’d told him this morning.
But right now, all he felt was contentment.
Peace. The kind he hadn’t felt since his life had changed forever.
Life had a way of taking without warning–he’d learned that the hard way.
But for once, it had given him something he’d never dared to hope for.
And he wasn’t about to let it slip by unappreciated.
So Grant committed this moment to memory before climbing into bed, pulling Everly into his arms and tugging the quilt over them both.
She sighed, then snuggled into him like they’d done this a hundred times before.
He lay awake, her rhythmic breathing and the steady patter of rain filling his ears, and waited for regret that never came.
◆◆◆
“Where is that damn thing?” Grant rummaged around in the kitchen cabinets, searching for the old soup ladle that he knew had to be close.
He hadn’t eaten all day, and hunger had finally forced him to leave the bed—and Everly—and find something to eat.
Luckily, the soup she’d started earlier was simmering away in the crockpot.
The sun broke through the dissipating storm clouds, and the late afternoon light beamed through the windows, shining into the cabinet and reflecting off a round silver surface. Grant snatched up the soup ladle, his stomach rumbling, but something else glinted in the sun too. Jeremy’s ring.
He picked it up and held it between two fingers, thinking of the troubled marriage, the troubled man, it had represented.
Everly had said she never wanted to see it again, and he finally understood why.
He debated throwing it in the woods to be lost forever among the leaves and logs, but that wasn’t his decision to make.
Until Everly decided what she wanted to do with it, he’d store it in the fireproof safe in the spare bedroom.
He turned it over in his palm, and the sunlight caught something else. An inscription on the inside.
3N5T88DIJZZ1.
Grant’s blood chilled. He turned to the laptop that was now on the counter instead of the table, files still flashing across the screen as the encryption-busting program worked.
He glanced between the ring and the screen, trying to match up what he was seeing.
Twelve characters. A seemingly random jumble of numbers and letters.
It was a file.
Everly was still asleep, but he had to know if she’d seen this before. Had to ask her before he called Evan. He entered the bedroom and sank down beside her, the ring in his hand.
“Ev. I found something. Wake up, baby,” he said softly. She stretched and yawned, then rolled over and gave him a languorous smile that, any other time, would have had him stripping his clothes off then and there.
Her smile faded as she realized what he was holding.
“What are you doing with that?” she grimaced, sitting up in bed and throwing the blankets back, still completely naked.
Grant took a breath and summoned the razor-sharp focus he’d honed over the years in STAG.
He stopped her from leaving with a gentle hand on her thigh and tried not to think about how good it felt to be able to touch her like this. How right.
“Ev, I need you to look at something.” Grant tilted the ring so that she could see what was engraved on the inside. “Does this inscription mean anything to you?”
Everly squinted, then frowned. “No. I didn’t have his band engraved. What is this? Looks like a bunch of jumbled nonsense.”
Grant’s fist closed around the ring until the edges bit into his palm. “It might be the piece of information Evan’s been looking for.”
◆◆◆
Everly fed Posie and then fixed herself a bowl of soup, sitting at the kitchen table as Grant and Evan discussed the inner workings of her former husband’s laptop.
It was a video call this time, so Evan could see the ring, and she made sure to stay well out of the way.
She’d thrown a robe and panties on, but nothing else.
From the heated looks Grant kept throwing at her, she thought she might not be wearing them for long.
She’d had sex with Grant McDowell. Holy shit. And he’d worked her body so expertly, left her so satisfied, that she didn’t know if any other man would ever come close.
He would have done even more if you’d let him , she reminded herself. He’d been ready to taste her… there …before she’d stopped him. She felt herself growing wet again at the memory and shifted uncomfortably in her chair, the movement drawing Grant’s attention.
“Dude, what do you keep looking at?” Evan asked.
Grant shook his head. “Nothing. Any luck getting into that file?”
Evan’s keyboard clacked in the background as he worked. “Negative,” he told Grant. “Looks like this one is going to require a different program to unlock it. Should be able to get into it by tomorrow.”
The call ended, and Grant settled across from her with his own bowl. “Looks like this could definitely be what we need,” he told her between bites of soup. “Although what exactly Evan will find when he finally breaks in, I have no idea.”
She nodded. “Of course. And an even bigger mystery is why Jeremy would engrave an important file name onto his wedding ring. This whole thing makes no sense.”
“It’s weird, I agree. But we’ll get it figured out. Get these bastards out of the picture and you back to your life in Atlanta.” He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
The thought of going back to Atlanta, to her cold empty townhouse, sat in her gut like a bowling ball. She pushed her bowl away, her appetite suddenly gone.
“You okay?” Grant asked.
“Yeah. I just…can’t help but wish that this wasn’t temporary. That we didn’t have to go back to our respective lives.”
He went still. “What do you mean?”
She waved a hand between them. “You know. You in Savannah. Me…wherever.” Oh, God. Was she really trying to ask him for a committed relationship just a few hours after they’d had sex?
Grant sighed. “I get it. More than you know. But that’s the way it has to be, Ev.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m a soldier. And beyond that, I’m a soldier in STAG. You know what that means. Last-minute deployments. Weeks of no contact. Missions that are dangerous as hell.” He looked down at the table and shook his head. “I’m just like Jeremy. I could come home in a box. You don’t deserve that.”
Everly’s mouth fell open. “First of all, you don’t get to decide what I do and don’t deserve.
I’ll be the judge of that. Second of all, you are absolutely nothing like Jeremy.
You are kind and loving and good.” Her voice wavered, but she pressed on.
“Jeremy was a hateful little man who only cared about himself and got off on humiliating other people.”
“You want to talk about it?” Those blue eyes held hers, calm and reassuring, and Everly marveled at his ability to always cut straight to the heart of the matter.
She twisted her hands in the hem of her robe. Did they really need to have this conversation? Why was she trying to bring up this topic now, of all times?
Because you know you can tell him anything, her heart whispered. He’ll always listen.
“It’s…embarrassing,” she said, a flush spreading over her cheeks.
“I’ve heard some pretty embarrassing shit over the years,” he told her. “I bet it won’t shock me.”
Everly laughed in spite of her nerves. “I don’t even know why I got myself so worked up.” She cleared her throat. “Earlier, when we were together, and you wanted to, you know…”
“Eat you out?”
She felt her flush deepen and figured her face had probably gone crimson.
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “That’s not something I have a lot of experience with.
Or any experience, really,” she finished quietly.
“I asked Jeremy to do it once and he complained the entire time. Said it was gross, said his jaw hurt too much. Then he got a—a hair in his mouth, and he flipped out.”
The memory replayed in her mind like a movie, even though she’d tried to forget it.
“Are you trying to turn me off? Because it’s fucking working,” Jeremy snapped, sputtering and swiping at his tongue. “This is disgusting.”
Shame rooted Everly to the spot, and she clamped her legs closed as he scrambled out from between them and hurried to the bathroom to rinse out his mouth. “I’m sorry,” she told him, her throat tight with the effort of holding back her tears.
“Don’t ask me to do that again. You’re nowhere near clean enough,” he snarled, headed for the door. “I’m going out.”
Grant took her hand from across the table, his thumb drawing circles over her knuckles.
“I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.
Ever. If you don’t want to do something, I won’t be offended.
” He kissed the back of her hand. “But let me just say, for the record, that there is absolutely nothing gross about your body. At all. And also for the record,” he added, his voice dropping an octave, “I have a very strong jaw.”
Everly huffed a small laugh, withdrawing her hand from his grasp. “I’ll keep that in mind. But Grant…none of this changes the fact that if we keep going like this, parting ways is going to be that much more painful.”
He nodded, his jaw working. “I know.” His eyes met hers again. “Do you want to stop?”
Everly sighed. “I think we should resist temptation. Sleep separately. Make it easier on ourselves to say goodbye when the time comes.” It was a shoddy answer, but she couldn’t bring herself to say that she wanted to stop. Because she sure as hell didn’t.
“Goodbye is going to be hard, one way or another. But I don’t regret what we did,” he told her, his jaw flexing.
Neither did she, even if she couldn’t bring herself to say it.
Instead, she scraped her bowl into the trash and left it in the sink.
“I’m going to clean up,” she told Grant, a yawn cracking her jaw.
Her tone was casual, but Everly felt anything but relaxed.
She was wound tight, her body aching for Grant again, her heart telling her to protect herself.
She steeled her spine and headed for the bathroom without another word, his eyes burning into her back the entire way.