Chapter 38
Ash
Gray is wrapped in my arms as we lay on the couch watching TV a couple days later. Well, she’s watching TV. I’m absently letting my fingers trail through her hair and wondering how long is a suitable amount of time to just ‘hang’ before I pull off her pants and eat her out.
She makes the most amazing noises when my head is between her legs, and it’s killing me not to take her into my bedroom, strap her to my bed, and bury my tongue in her sweet cunt.
My cock is painfully hard just thinking about it, but I don’t move.
I can’t seem to take that final step to bring her into my bedroom.
I feel like I have a good handle on what she will and won’t allow, but I’m still too nervous to put theory into practice.
If she ends up hating the experience, it will ruin what we have together, so we’ve had sex everywhere but the bedroom.
I remind myself she didn’t balk at the scene I instigated in her office, but that was still tame compared to what I want to do to her. Her easy acceptance of the belt around her neck that time gives me hope, though.
The show ends, and Gray shifts on top of me so we’re face to face. She’s cradled between my legs like a reverse missionary, and she puts a hand on my chest as she looks up at me.
“So are we just going to watch TV all night, or are you planning to fuck me at some point?” she asks.
Well, shit. If I knew she was waiting on me…
“You were immersed in the show,” I say. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“How was I supposed to concentrate on the show with your erection digging into my back?”
I laugh. “So we’ve both been lying here uncomfortably when we could have been having sex?”
She smiles. “Looks that way.”
I start to get up off the couch, and she leans back to let me. I get to my feet, but before she can follow, I lean down, pull her forward, and toss her over my shoulder. She shrieks as I stand up.
“Ash! What are you doing?” she yells.
“I’m taking a chance,” I say as I head toward the bedroom. It’s time to get over this mental block I have about letting Gray sub for me. She said she wants this. It’s time I let her prove it.
I just get to the hall when my phone pings, making the sound that says someone is at the door. A second later, my doorbell rings, and I stop dead.
“What the fuck?” I say as I head over to look at the door cam on my phone, Gray still slung over my shoulder. It’s not terribly late, only a little before eight, but I can’t imagine who could be here at this hour.
“Ash,” Gray says. “All the blood is rushing to my head.”
I ignore her, my hand clamped tight against the backs of her legs. I pull up the doorbell app to look at the live video and swear.
“Ash?”
I bend down and set Gray back on her feet, snaking an arm around her waist until she’s steady.
“What is it?” she asks.
I sigh heavily. “My parents and Petra are here.”
And I know exactly why.
“Your family? Did you know they were coming?” she asks.
I sigh again. “No, but I should have.”
I slip my hand in hers and pull her toward the front door. I doubt my parents will realize what they interrupted, but maybe Petra will get the hint. Not that it matters. They obviously just drove down seven hours from Canada. It looks like I’ll have house guests tonight.
I open the door, Gray at my side.
“Surprise!” my mom says when the door swings open, but the look on her face says she’s the one surprised when she catches sight of Gray.
“I told you that was her car in the driveway,” Petra says.
“Oh!” my mom says. “It didn’t occur to me you’d have company.”
Obviously not.
“No worries,” I say. “Gray and I were just watching TV.”
Petra thrusts the white bakery box in her hands at me, and I take it from her. I’m a hundred percent sure it contains a cake.
“TV. Right,” my sister says knowingly. “Looks like Inga owes me twenty dollars. She didn’t think you two were really together.”
My lips thin. Gray was right about Inga’s suspicion.
“Happy early birthday!” my mother says, breaking the tension before I can respond to Petra. “Inga couldn’t get away from work, but we wanted to come down to celebrate with you.”
“It’s your birthday?” Gray says. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s tomorrow,” I say, stepping aside to let her and my parents in. Luckily, the situation in my pants eased when I realized they were here.
I lead the way back into the kitchen and living room as everyone follows. I hadn’t bothered to turn off the TV when I scooped Gray off the couch, so it’s still on. Hopefully that will deflect suspicion about what me and Gray were really up to.
“Do you have candles?” my mother asks as she sets her purse and another bag on the counter. “It’s the one thing we forgot.”
She and Petra both start opening kitchen drawers while my father sits down at the kitchen table.
“I don’t need candles,” I say as I give in to the inevitable and take out dishes and forks.
“Of course you do,” my mother says as she opens the cabinet where I keep my canned goods.
“Found them!” Petra says as she pulls a small box from the back of the junk drawer. She shakes the box. “Well, I found one.”
She opens the box and dumps one lonely candle into her palm. I’m actually surprised I have that one. When I moved up here from Florida, I dumped everything from my junk drawer into a box. The candle must have been left over from the last time my parents came for my birthday.
Petra takes the cake out of the bakery box, sticks the candle in it, and lights the wick. They all sing happy birthday to me, and I quickly blow the candle out before they can perform an encore.
“How have you been, Gray?” Petra asks as she pulls a knife from my knife block and cuts the cake. “How’s my brother been treating you?”
Gray looks at me, and I feel like we’re both thinking about how I threw her over my shoulder a few minutes ago. Or perhaps we’re thinking about what I planned to do to her when I got her into the bedroom.
I raise a sly brow at her that seems to ask, ‘Well?’
She gives me back a ‘Don’t tempt me to tell them’ look.
“He’s great,” she says, smiling at Petra. “I’ve almost got him trained.”
I snort. She’ll pay for that remark when I get her strapped to my bed.
“Eat your cake,” Petra says to me. She pushes a plate of cake thick with buttercream frosting toward me. “The ladies are talking.”
I snort again but dive into the cake. That’s a comment I’d expect Inga to make. She’s starting to rub off on our little sister.
“Has Ash met your parents yet?” my mother asks Gray.
Gray seems to go a little pale at the question.
“I met her father,” I say before she can answer. “He came to vet me, as any good father would.” I add that last part for Gray’s benefit, to assure her I don’t blame her for her father coming to see me.
“And her mother?” my mom presses.
“We haven’t had a chance to get together yet, but I’m sure we will when Gray can arrange it. We’re both a little busy right now.”
Gray’s been dragging her feet about letting me meet her mother, but I won’t push her. I know it’s more about her relationship with her mother than anything having to do with me, so I can be patient.
I give Petra a look that begs her to change the subject, and she gives a quick nod. I’ve always been closer to Petra than Inga, and she’s good at reading my nonverbal cues. I learned that term from Gray.
“Are you teaching right now?” Petra asks Gray.
“Just one class,” Gray answers. “It’s an intensive session that meets every day. The trade-off was that they gave my large lecture intro course to someone else this coming semester, so I’ll have more time to work with Ash. I’m only teaching seminars, which will be really nice.”
“That’s great,” Petra says before diving into her cake.
My father is half finished with his piece and has yet to speak.
“You’re working on an MBA, right?” Gray asks my sister.
“Yes. In fact, I wanted to ask Ash a favor while I was here.”
I raise a brow at Petra. “Oh?”
“I need to find an internship for my program,” she says, “and since you work for one of the richest, most powerful men in the country, I thought you might be able to help your little sister out.”
My other brow jumps up, joining the first. “You want me to ask Mr. Kaladin about an internship for you?”
She nods. “Yes, thank you! I knew I could count on you.”
The thought of Petra working for Kaladin makes me uneasy for some reason, and I open my mouth to argue, but Petra only gives me a wink and turns back to Gray.
“He’s the best, isn’t he,” she says to Gray.
Gray gives me a commiserating look that says she knows I’ve just been roped into something I don’t want to do.
I sigh. “Right. I’ll see what I can do.”
It’s another five minutes and a second piece of cake later before my father finally speaks, and then it’s only to ask what I have for beer. After cake, he goes out to the car to bring in their overnight bags.
When he comes back in, Gray politely says her goodnights, even though Petra and my parents insist she should stay over.
I’ve stayed at Gray’s house a few times, but she’s never stayed here, mainly because we can’t go into the bedroom without me worrying I’ll turn into a sex-crazed monster and permanently tie her to my bed.
My family doesn’t know any of that, of course, so Gray heads home, leaving me with a case of blue balls that my hand will have to take care of later.
Mental note. Sex first, then TV next time.
Although in this case, it was probably better I hadn’t started anything with Gray yet. If I’d had her strapped down when my family arrived, I might’ve been tempted to send them to a hotel, birthday cake and all.
“Here,” my mother says, handing me a bag when Gray leaves. “I didn’t want to give it to you when she was here because I wasn’t sure if it was a surprise or not.”
I look in the bag and pull out a recipe card and a package that contains dried parsnip, carrots, leeks, and soup seasoning.
It’s part of what I need to make a traditional Icelandic soup called Kjotsúpa.
I don’t do much cooking myself, but Gray was curious about Icelandic culture, so I planned to make the soup for her at some point.
I asked my mother for the seasoning packet and recipe, and she said she’d give me both the next time she saw me.
I could’ve ordered the seasoning packet online myself, but my mother usually buys them by the dozen, and she insisted she had one she could spare, so I figured I’d wait.
“Remember,” my mother says, “oats, not rice.”
It’s a point of contention among some Icelanders about whether rice or oats should be used to thicken the soup, and it usually comes down to family tradition. According to my mother, we’re an oats family. My dad also has dibs on the bone marrow.
“Thanks,” I say, but I stop short of promising her I’ll use oats. Rice would be more familiar to Gray. I’m not sure how she’d handle oats in a soup, since that isn’t typical in the US.
“It must be serious if you’re making her Kjotsúpa,” my mother says.
“I just wanted to do something to thank her for working with me.”
It’s a lie, but I can’t get my mother’s hopes up until Gray and I get past our first session in my bedroom.
My mother shrugs. “If you say so. Just know that your father proposed to me after I made this for him the first time.”
I smile. “So I should expect Gray to propose to me?”
She winks and heads toward the spare bedroom.
My father comes up next to me on his way after her.
“For the record,” he says, “the soup is good, but I really decided to propose after the first time she-”
“Dad, I beg you not to finish that sentence,” I cut in.
He looks surprised for a second, then frowns. “What exactly did you think I was going to say?”
“I don’t know, but I’m just fine believing it’s the soup that sold you.”
He clucks his tongue and heads after my mother.
Petra takes his place at my side.
“So how serious is it between you and Gray?” she asks.
I side-eye her. “Serious enough that I’m pissed you didn’t give me a heads up you all were coming down. Fuck, Petra. Next time just shoot me a warning text when you’re an hour out.”
She chuckles. “So we did interrupt something. Should I start trying to get ideas from her about what she wants for a ring?”
I huff. “We’re not anywhere close to that yet.”
“Maybe you’re not,” she says. “But you should see the way she looks at you when you’re not aware.”
I can’t move or speak. Petra is the more intuitive of my sisters, but I can’t admit how much I want her observation to be true. I can read Gray’s body better than her face, and her body tells me unequivocally she wants me. But could she really want more from me than just sex?
For that matter, do I want more from her than that?
Again, the answer is unequivocal.
Yes, I want more from Gray than just her body. I want her mind and soul as well.