Chapter 21
LEXI
With her eyes closed, Lexi slowly started taking stock.
The couch underneath her was soft, though she didn’t remember having a pillow under her head.
The blue knit blanket that was normally draped over the back of the couch was spread over her, chafing a bit where it weighed on her nipples.
They felt so sensitive. She fell asleep?
She sat up fast, and her sternum ran into a wall. Or rather, Grayson’s outstretched hand. When she would have sprung off the couch, he stopped her easily with his hand on her shoulder. He sat at the end of the couch, with her feet in his lap and his laptop off to the side.
“Easy,” he said, and she blinked at him. “There’s nothing wrong, there’s nothing to do. You’re going to stay right there and relax.”
“I f-” her throat seized for a moment, and she hacked. He handed her a bottle of water and waited while she downed it, openly staring at her neck and breasts where the blanket had fallen. She gathered the blanket up and tried again.
“I fell asleep?” She heard the astonishment in her own voice, and Grayson smiled.
“It’s more like you passed out, and then stayed asleep.”
The intense green gaze was back, and she stared back, speechless.
“Have you ever gotten off like that, love?”
Lexi was shaking her head before she even thought it through. She wasn’t certain whether he meant the choking, or without even having sex, or getting off hard enough she’d passed out. But it was a hard no to all three.
She looked around the room, wondering where her shirt was, when his fingers landed with unerring aim on her nipple, pulling through the blanket. A helpless whimper fell from her mouth as her eyes shot back to him.
“Answer me, Miss,” he said, pulling the sensitive tip farther and farther out.
“No,” she groaned.
Grayson stopped pulling but stayed where he was, rolling the tip with his thumb. God it hurt so good.
“No what?”
“No, I’ve never cum that hard,” she said.
Grayson nodded, and instead of releasing her breast he leaned forward, massaging some of the pain away. Of course that created a different kind of sensitivity, and she clenched her thighs together in response to the tightening of her core. He smiled and gestured a ‘come here’ with his other hand.
Lexi was more than happy to drop the blanket and flip onto her knees towards him. The kiss was tender and long, and he tasted of coffee. She wondered how she’d been out long enough for him to have made and drank coffee, and didn’t care.
His left arm went around her back, pulling her up against him, and his right hand was going through her hair.
He gentled the kiss more and more until she felt drugged all over again, and he pressed the top of her head down so her head was resting on his chest. Lexi wasn’t sure how she could feel so turned on and so relaxed all at the same time.
Being with Grayson was confusing her, on so many levels. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“Stay,” he said, and stood up. Cold air replaced where he’d been, and she gathered the blanket around her again.
A small pile of grey peeked out from underneath the armchair across from her, and she considered his back as he moved around the kitchen.
As long as she was in the same place when he came back, wasn’t that essentially staying?
She stood up quickly and padded the few feet away to snag her shirt.
Whipping it over her head, she made her way to the exact spot she’d been when he called from the kitchen.
“I saw that.”
Lexi huffed and plopped back onto the couch.
“Well, I thought about it. According to theories in quantum physics, I stayed.”
Grayson turned around. Incredulous eyes stared at her from the kitchen. Lexi shrugged.
“It’s like Schroedinger’s cat. As long as I’m in the same place that you left me when you come back, then from your perspective, I might not have moved at all, right? So it’s the same thing as staying still.”
As the microwave hummed behind him, he stared at her across the room. Silence reigned until she became aware of her own heartbeat. Did she confuse him? She hoped not. He wasn’t actually about to be mad, was he?
“It’s not at all the same thing,” Grayson said slowly, “although I can’t figure out how right now.” He snapped his fingers. “You have a shirt. If you hadn’t moved, nothing would have changed, right? So the very fact that something is different is evidence that you didn’t stay.”
Lexi smiled, thrilled he was going along with her analogy - and with a sound point. She shrugged.
“Yea, well, I’m not a cat. I need a shirt.”
He was grinning when he brought two plates out to the couch, and handed her one.
“Maybe I liked you without a shirt,” he said.
He dropped another kiss on top of her head before sitting next to her.
He inched the coffee table towards them, and she realized that he must have rearranged the furniture some while she was out cold.
Her attention was divided between the incredible aromas in front of her, and the astonishing fact that she’d gotten off so hard she passed out - apparently for quite a while.
She dug into the salad on her plate and appreciated that he’d gone with an Italian dressing.
For several minutes the only sounds were the clinks of forks against plates.
Each time she snuck a look at Grayson he was watching her.
The blush that came made no sense; this man had made her get off so hard she’d seen stars and literally passed out.
“How long was I out?” she asked, only after finishing the salad and moving on to… whatever smelled delicious on her plate. Ground meat, bread and cheese was piled in chunks across half of her plate. The first bite was delicious, and gooey on her tongue. Her eyes closed in bliss.
“About forty, forty-five minutes,” he said, in between bites of his own dish.
“What the hell is this? It’s like a cheesesteak, but not. And is that normal?”
“This place makes a deconstructed cheesesteak. I think it’s easier to eat. And is what normal?”
“For you to make a sub pass out from getting off like that?”
She asked the question around another big bite, and grabbed her water from earlier to wash it down. Then she noticed the silence.
She froze with her fork halfway up to her lips and looked at Grayson. He’d stopped eating to stare at her. Tight eyes stared at her and his straining jaw gave it away; he was angry at something. Her breathing slowed and she felt the frizzle of adrenaline shimmy across her scalp.
“No,” he said, and gripped her by the back of the neck, squeezing and releasing.
It turned her adrenaline into a chill she wasn’t sure what to do with.
“You do not tense against me Alessandra. I don’t care if I’m intense, or angry, or throwing furniture across the room.
” He drew her backward until she was reclining against the back of the couch, and leaned over her.
“I. Will not. Hurt you.” He punctuated each sentence with small kisses - at her temple, her jaw, and placed the last one on her lips.
Lexi kissed him back, and drew a deep breath again. Her shoulders relaxed. When he pulled back, she blinked up at him.
“Why did you get mad?”
He sighed a little and picked her plate up to hand it to her.
“Eat.”
She frowned at the plate. She was getting full, and he didn’t answer her question.
“Eat, Miss Alessandra, and I’ll answer you.”