Chapter 26 – Sidney
TWENTY-SIX
SIDNEY
“Pain in the ass,” I mutter as I spray the mud off the front of my Range Rover . . . again. The street is nothing but mud due to my neighbor’s landscape project. Broken sprinkler heads and truckloads of dirt don’t make for a pretty road to drive on.
“Hey.”
I yelp at the sound and whirl around to find Grayson standing there, sweaty, out of breath, and looking far more sexy than I want to admit.
“What are you doing here?”
“Running. I was out for a jog.”
“Great.” I try to sound unfazed. Like I haven’t rerun the other night in my head a million times to try to figure out if I read too much into what he said. To try to figure out if I overreacted to the situation on the street.
I don’t get like this about a guy, never have, said I never would, and so it’s driving me absolutely crazy. “Have a good rest of your jog.”
“Sid?” He sounds surprised when he shouldn’t be. “Is something wrong?”
“Nope. I’m fine. Just fine.” I turn my back to him and start spraying my tires again. It’s so much easier focusing on them than the incredibly sexy sight of him that I don’t want to acknowledge. The visual that immediately clouds the way I felt the other night.
“You’re fine? That’s universal woman code for I’m pissed at you.” His chuckle scrapes over my nerves as he reaches out to take the hose from me, and I yank it away.
“Don’t!” I spin around to face him and, of course, he’s way too close. The nozzle I aim at him is the only thing between us, and my car is at my back.
“You care to share what I did wrong?”
“No.”
“Okay.” He draws the word out. “I waited around for you at the festival the other night.”
The side that wants to believe the words he said in the office melts while the skeptical one who saw him with the strawberry-blonde snorts.
“What? You don’t believe me?”
Did I really just snort out loud?
“No, I don’t. I saw you.” I jab the hose nozzle in his direction, and a smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth, which only serves to infuriate me further. “I saw you and that woman—”
“What woman?” he laughs.
“The pretty one with the strawberry-blonde hair.” He snorts, and I jab the hose in his direction, suddenly on the defensive and more than aware that I think I’m going to look like an ass here. That all my overthinking was for nothing. “Don’t mock me.”
“I’m not mocking shit.” He puts his hands up, but his smile remains. “That was my sister-in-law, Grant’s wife. Her name is Emerson.”
Oh. Shit.
“I was playing the part you want me to play. Chatting up the ladies asking about the contest, urging them to go online.” Embarrassment flushes every ounce of my body. “I was whispering to Emerson how ridiculous it was, and she was there to laugh at it all with me.”
“Oh.” As in, Oh shit, I look like the craziest hormonal bitch ever.
All I want to do is crawl under this car and hide when his grin widens to epic proportions. “Am I forgiven?”
“No.”
His laughter rings out, and I hate that I love the sound of it. “Okay. What else do you need from me?”
His words throw me. Words no man has ever spoken to me during a fight. It’s usually, “Can we get this over with?” or “Are we done yet?” or “Can we have make-up sex?”
Make-up sex.
The idea sticks but only because he’s sweaty and sexy and so damn close that my every nerve is already attuned to him.
Like they needed any help.
“Sidney?” he prompts when I don’t respond. His gaze moves. A slow, languorous slide from my head to my toes that makes me feel as if he’s undressing each and every inch of me.
“Yeah?”
“You have some”—he reaches out and runs a hand over the curve of my chest just above my tank top—“dirt right there.”
I swear my breath hitches. I know my nipples harden. I react when I swore I wasn’t going to. Damn him. He showed up here with those eyes and those muscles, and hell, even I have to admit that I’m in trouble. I’m down the rabbit hole when it comes to him, when I don’t want to be.
And when he leans in and brushes his lips against mine, my mind fogs, and my body tenses and—
“Argh!” I accidentally spray him with the ice-cold water square in the chest, and he jumps back.
“Oh my God.” I can barely get the words out as I laugh hysterically. “I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry.” Tears pool at the corners of my eyes.
He shakes his arms so the water flies off them as his gaze lands on mine. “Turnabout’s fair game, Thorton.” His brows lift in a taunt. His fingers twitch as if he’s itching to touch.
He takes a step toward me.
“It was an accident. I swear.”
Another step.
“Uh-huh.”
Closer.
I can’t resist. The playful look on his face. The desire unrivaled between us. The relief that I acted like an irrational female and he took it with a complete grain of salt.
I tighten my finger on the trigger of the nozzle, sending a stream of water straight to his chest. He tries to jump out of the way, but he’s too close to avoid it.
“Oopsie.” I shrug and smile coyly.
“That wasn’t a very smart move.” There’s a roughness to his voice that electrifies the air as it telegraphs where his thoughts are. What it is he wants.
And I hope to God I’m right in thinking that it’s me.
“What are you going to do about it?” This time, I’m the one who taunts. I’m the one who teases. I’m the one who wants to finish what we’ve almost started a few times but had too much damn common sense to finish.
Another step.
I can smell the soap on his skin. I can see the beads of water on his neck and arms. I can hear the hitch of his breath. “There are a whole lot of things I could think to do about it, but I’m not sure which of them we’d regret the most once they were done.”
I squirt the hose again. This time, he flinches. This time, a laugh falls from his lips. This time, he lunges after me to grab the hose, and I dodge away from him, my fingers pulling the trigger so that I completely soak the front of his body.
The air fills with our shrieks and threats as I hit him and then run. As he dodges and then chases.
Around my car. Another stream of water. My sides hurt from laughing so hard, and I’m not paying attention as Grayson takes the hose lying on the ground and yanks on it, pulling the nozzle from my hands.
I turn to run but realize I’m out of real estate.
My back is against the fence, and Grayson is standing in front of me, nozzle pointed my way and a smirk playing at the corners of his lips.
“You wouldn’t dare,” I say, hoping for an ounce of mercy when I showed him none.
I yelp when the cold stream of water hits me in the stomach. “Oopsie,” he mimics me, and all I want to do is strangle him as the water slides down the denim of my shorts and over my thighs.
“Grayson.” It’s a plea. It’s a warning. It’s an oh my God does he look gorgeous with his hair plastered to his forehead, the lighthearted grin on his face, and his shirt clinging to every cut inch of him.
“You know what they say about paybacks, right?”
“Yes. That a gentleman like you would never retaliate on a poor, helpless female like me.” And then I shriek as another spurt of water hits me.
“Oopsie.” His laugh rings louder than mine. “Nice try, but you’ve made it clear you’re no damsel in distress, so that doesn’t fly with me, Princess.”
Crap.
And that’s the only thought I get to have before I’m hit full-on with a longer stream of water. “Stop. No. Grayson.”
I rush him. I try to yank the nozzle from his hands, and when I do, I throw it to the ground and run. Through the gate. Into the backyard. Around the flowerbeds.
I make the fatal error of thinking I can run past him on my way back to the front yard, and before I know it, Grayson hooks an arm around my waist, and we both fall laughing onto the grass.
The fall knocks the breath out of us, but within seconds, I’m wriggling to get away from him.
Then I’m not.
My body freezes, fully aware of every long, lean inch of his body flanking mine.
Of that instant burn in my belly and ache in my thighs when I stop moving only to find his face in front of mine.
His eyes on me. His lips inches away. His body wet and warm all at the same time.
His dick hard and pressed against my thigh, telling me his thoughts align with mine.
“Grayson . . .” This is a bad idea.
Kiss me.
This is such a bad idea.
Why isn’t he kissing me?
And then he does. A soft brush of his lips against mine. And then another. Sips and sighs of a kiss as we lie on the ground in my backyard with the birds overhead and a lawnmower sounding off elsewhere . . . but my entire world is focused on him.
On the rough brush of stubble against my chin. On the drops of water falling off his hair and onto mine. On the softness of his lips, the flex of his muscles, and the hints of restraint being tested.
There’s a tenderness in his touch, his kiss, but there’s the underlying edge laced with riotous desire that I can taste on his tongue and feel as he touches me.
Every part of me warms. Heats. Wants more when I fear it might only bring the agony of wanting more again.
His hand runs down my rib cage and slides under my shirt.
I gasp as his wet palm brings a chill to my skin while his lips bring warmth to every other part of me.
He finds my nipple over the wet lace of my bra and squeezes it ever so gently between his fingertips.
The sensation is like a mainline to the delta of my thighs.
Between his touch, the adeptness of his kiss, and the feel of him getting harder against my thigh, every part of me aches for more from him.
I lose myself in this world. The grass beneath us. The taste on his tongue. The groan of desire vibrating in the back of his throat.
The slowness begins to slip into want.
The tenderness builds into greed.
The desire morphs into need.
“Grayson.”
“Inside,” he murmurs against my lips between kisses.
“Yes.”
But neither of us moves. Neither of us wants to ruin the perfection of the moment. The calm before the storm.
“Inside,” he says again.
“Neighbors,” I murmur as the dog next door barks.