Chapter Twenty-Three Reese
Twenty-Three
Reese
Grace’s hands slid down Reese’s chest to the waistband of his boxer briefs, and every muscle in his body went tight. He took a moment to watch her, really take her in.
She looked wrecked.
Hair tangled from where he’d fisted it. Lips swollen from his mouth. Skin flushed pink—same color as the tips of her hair—down her neck, across her chest. And those blue eyes, usually so sharp, so full of fight, were glazed now.
He’d done that.
The taste of her was on his tongue. He could still feel the tremor in her thighs when she’d come.
The way her hands had scrambled for purchase in his hair.
The broken sound of his name when she’d tipped over the edge.
Reese had been with beautiful women. Plenty of them.
But watching Grace Sullivan’s sharp edges blur into pure want… that hit different.
That hit everywhere.
His cock was painfully hard. Had been since he’d first put his mouth on her. Since he’d felt her arch and break and come on his tongue. He wanted more. Wanted to watch her fall apart again. Wanted to be inside her when she did.
Her fingers hooked into his waistband. Pulled his boxer shorts down. Freed him.
The relief was immediate. His cock jutted between them, hard and aching, and when Grace’s hand wrapped around him he had to lock his jaw to keep from groaning.
Her hand moved: slow, deliberate strokes that made his hips jerk involuntarily. Her thumb swept over the head, spreading the wetness there, and Reese’s vision blurred.
“Damn,” he managed.
He was going to lose it. Right here. Like a teenager getting his first hand job.
Reese caught her wrist, stilling her movement. “Grace.”
“What?” She looked up at him, lips curved in a smile that was pure trouble.
“Keep doing that and this is over before it starts. When I come,” he said, voice rough, “it’s going to be inside you, right there,” he said, fingers finding her folds. “Not before.”
She shook her head. “Nope. Too soon.”
“What?”
“I don’t have sex on a first date. Or, in this case, a first night trapped in a tower with a Canadian hottie.”
He felt heat crawl up his neck. “Ah hell. Sorry, Grace. I got ahead of myself. Shouldn’t have—”
“Chill.” She cut him off, that sassy edge back in her voice. “It doesn’t mean we can’t do everything but.”
“Everything but?”
She sank down onto her knees, peering up at him under her lashes as she took hold of his hardness again.
“Grace—” His brain short-circuited. “You don’t have to—”
“I know. But I want to.”
Her mouth closed around him and every coherent thought he’d ever had evaporated. She took him deep, worked him with her mouth, her hand, finding a rhythm that had him fighting not to thrust.
“Grace. God.” He couldn’t form full sentences. Could barely breathe.
She hummed around him—the vibration nearly ending him right there—and pulled back. Her tongue swirled over the head and his knees nearly buckled.
He sucked in air. “I’m close. Real close.”
She didn’t stop. Just looked up at him with those sharp blue eyes while she took him deeper, and the sight of Grace Sullivan on her knees, lips wrapped around him, undid something fundamental in his chest.
He spilled hot inside her, letting out a long groan.
Then he pulled her up against him until she was pressed to his chest and his hammering heart. They stayed like that for a moment, neither speaking. Just breathing.
Then Grace laughed. Soft and a little breathless. “This is insane.”
“Yeah.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “It is.”
“We’re competitors.” She tilted her head back to look at him. “We literally just made each other come, and tomorrow we’re supposed to be back to—what? Enemies?”
“We’re not enemies, Grace.”
“We so are. Otherwise I wouldn’t have used my Anne Boleyn method on you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“That’s what I mean by ‘do everything but.’ ” She said it matter-of-factly, like she was explaining a business strategy.
“Hear me out. So Anne, she kept Henry VIII wanting, right? Never quite satisfied. He was so fixated on her, so distracted by wondering when he’d finally get to…
well.” She waved a hand. “You know, shag her, as they say in England. He literally broke from the Catholic Church because of it.”
Reese stared at her. Then laughed. “Are you seriously saying the reason we haven’t shagged is because it’s a power move on your part, Tudor England style?”
She knelt up, a glint in her eye. “Think about it. You’ll now be so fixated on wondering when you get to have sex with me properly, you’ll be distracted.”
“I already am.” He reached out, tipped her chin up with one finger. “Have been since the first time I set my eyes on you. Like I said, Grace, we’re not enemies…and I’m definitely not going to have your pretty head chopped off.”
“You might change your mind tomorrow, when the sun’s up and the competition resumes.”
He saw the slight sadness in her eyes so he pulled her back against him, tucked her into him so her slim back was against his chest. “Let’s not think about tomorrow,” he murmured in her ear.
“Let’s sleep, then we can work on your Anne Boleyn approach.
And by that, I mean seeing what else is covered by your ‘everything but’ rule. ”
She hesitated for just a moment, then curled into him, pulling his arm around her waist, her hands over his, like they’d done this a hundred times before.
Her breathing evened out and he felt the exact moment she fell asleep as her body went heavy against him. That was when he felt like he could breathe as he stared up into the darkness.
What the hell had he just done?
She was right. He’d slept with the competition.
The woman trying to buy the same property he needed.
The property that held his family’s history.
Even with Grace Sullivan warm and soft in his arms, her hair tickling his chin, the taste of her still on his tongue—even with all that, he wanted to learn what lay under the foundations of this place.
Needed it, because everything in his gut told him that if he understood what was buried there, he might understand his dad more… and why he took his life.
Whatever they’d just done…it wouldn’t change that.
Couldn’t change that.
He closed his eyes and tried not to think about what tomorrow would bring.