18. Griffin
Chapter 18
Griffin
W hen I wake, my bedroom is mostly still dark as usual because of my curtains. What is unusual is the petite woman next to me. She’s nestled against my chest, her breath warm on my skin. My arm under her neck is half asleep, but I’m not going anywhere. I’d lose all feeling in my extremities before I moved.
Andi’s revelation last night about her parents plays on a loop in my mind. The thought of anyone hurting her, especially those who should have protected her, stirs a fierce protectiveness within me. I want to shield her from the world, from anything that might cause her pain, and I reflexively hold her tighter. After pressing a kiss to the top of her head, I stroke my fingertips over her temple, sliding a few loose pieces of hair behind her ear.
She rouses, first with a flutter of her lashes and then a slight tightening of her muscles before she stretches and yawns. She tilts her head back to look at me, eyes all soft and hazy and utterly fucking adorable.
“Morning,” she mumbles, and I trace her lips with my thumb.
“Morning.”
“What time is it?”
I briefly pull away from her to grab my watch from the nightstand and buckle it around my wrist. “Quarter to eight.”
“But since the kids aren’t here, we don’t have to get up, right?”
Her smile is hopeful, and while I’m not usually one to laze around in bed all day, I couldn’t be paid to get up right now. Instead, I roll to my side and curl my arms around her. She snuggles back against me, her ass against my thighs, and while my cock likes it, I don’t intend to make any moves for anything beyond this.
At some point late last night—after we talked more about Andi’s parents and her grandmother, her childhood in Texas, and she finally divulged how my devil children tried to torment her—she slipped one of my T-shirts over her head, and I put my underwear back on to go to sleep. She said she’s just not comfortable sleeping naked.
Which is perfectly acceptable.
Especially when what she does want is to be held like this. To have me roll locks of her hair between my fingers. To trace the contours of her body with my fingertips until she giggles. Her favorite thing, though, is a hand massage. I started doing it mindlessly, pressing my thumb and index finger into different spots on her hand while we talked, but as soon as I stopped, she simply held up her other hand and pouted.
I couldn’t say no.
Obviously.
My girl gets what she wants.
So, I massaged her other hand too, this time with more effort. And the moan she let out was what led to me putting on another condom and telling her to get on top. It took a while for her to let go and figure out what she liked, but she eventually got there, riding me like a fucking champ.
It was a long night. A long and perfect night. So, I shut out thoughts of what this all means for us and my kids. I don’t think about the future or how she may or may not feel about me. Instead, I dust kisses on her ear and neck and shoulder before laying my head on the pillow behind her, closing my eyes to sleep for a little while longer.
We get about twenty minutes before Cat leaps up onto the bed, meowing and stepping all over Andi. She laughs, nuzzling him. “Yeah, I know. I’m in the wrong bed. Were you looking for me?”
He paws at her, almost like he’s answering in the affirmative, and she strokes his back.
“Sorry, I’ll make you breakfast. No need to get sassy with me.”
“Let him starve,” I grumble as she rises, walking away from me. She shoots me a baleful look over her shoulder, but it quickly melts into a smile. One that’s solidly in my top five. The playful one that she always tries to stop from growing by biting into her lower lip. It never works.
Much to my satisfaction.
“Come on,” she says with a wave to me. “I’ll make you breakfast too.”
When I get up, I smack her ass. “No. I’ll make you breakfast.”
As Andi slips into the en suite, I head to the kitchen to give Cat his breakfast before jogging back upstairs. Leaning against the doorframe, I watch Andi rummage through my bathroom cabinet, helping herself to my toothpaste. She squeezes a dollop onto my toothbrush, tosses the tube back onto the shelf, and starts brushing her teeth as if she’s done it a thousand times before. Strangely, I’m not grossed out. In fact, I find it oddly endearing, the way she’s making herself at home in my space.
She catches my eye in the mirror, foam gathering at the corners of her mouth. “What?”
“Nothing.”
She rolls her eyes but loses the battle with her smile. After she finishes, she hands me the brush for my turn while she splashes water on her face, the little baby hair around her temples wet. Once we’re both finished, she tugs on my T-shirt that she wears, her legs bare. “Can I borrow another one of your sweatshirts?”
“You don’t have to ask.” I wave my hand toward my closet, and she helps herself, finding a hoodie to pull over her head. It hangs almost to her knees, and I reach out to tug on the strings. “My clothes look better on you anyway.”
She blushes a pretty pink, and I don’t hesitate to take hold of her face, my hands on either side of her cheeks, my tongue sweeping into her mouth. My new favorite way to wake up in the morning. Next to Andi, brushing our teeth together, kissing lazily. It’s only when I smooth my hand up her thigh to her bare ass that she backs away from me. “You said you’d make me breakfast.”
Her pussy is so much more appetizing, and I grunt unhappily. “I did, didn’t I?”
Almost as if she can hear my inner thoughts, she laughs. “You don’t have to make it.”
“No.” I cup the back of her head to kiss her once more. “You’re getting fancy French toast.”
“Ooh la la.”
“We’ll circle back to this later,” I say, letting my fingers caress the curve of her ass and down to where she’s bare beneath my T-shirt and sweatshirt.
In the kitchen, I plug in the portable griddle and add cinnamon to the egg and milk mixture as Andi watches from the seat I insisted she take.
“I’m not sure any man has ever cooked for me before,” she says quietly, like she didn’t mean to admit it out loud.
I glance over my shoulder. “Is it wrong to say that makes me glad?”
She crosses her legs and sets her chin in her hand. “No. But why do you feel glad?”
I shrug, turning back to the task at hand. “Just do.”
“That’s not an answer.”
As the French toast sizzles, I work on cutting up strawberries and a banana. “I hate that you’ve had the bad experiences you’ve had, but I’m not really sorry that means you sort of avoided men altogether. Because men are shit.”
Behind me, she giggles. I don’t think I’m particularly funny, but it makes me feel brand-new whenever I earn a smile or laugh. Although, I shouldn’t be so impressed with myself since she laughs easily. Smiles even more.
“I don’t need to go on dates or have sex to know that,” she says. “But if men are shit, does that include you?”
I don’t answer until after I’ve divided the fruit onto two plates and flipped the French toast. Then I face her, leaning against the counter. She’s staring up with wide eyes, and I’d sooner break my own heart than break hers. “I’ve done shit things in the past.”
“Like what?”
I fold my arms over my chest. “I don’t know. The usual bullshit things guys do. Not returned calls and texts.”
“You were a ghoster?”
I nod, not one ounce of guilt. “Got her name on a Saturday, never spoke it again after Sunday morning.”
“Savage, Captain.”
“I don’t trust people,” I say before I even really comprehend the words, and Andi tilts her head, studying me. She hums curiously.
I swing around to remove the French toast from the griddle and add them to our plates before retrieving the maple syrup and can of whipped cream from the fridge. I don’t usually have it, but the shopping lists have been subtly changing since Andi has moved in, and now I have things like Reddi-Wip, Nutella, and salt-and-vinegar chips in my kitchen.
I spray a dollop of whipped cream on my fruit and a whole heap on hers. When I finally bring our breakfast over to the table, she lights up. “Very fancy. Thank you, Griff.”
I like when she calls me that. That she feels comfortable enough with me to shorten my name.
We dig in, but she doesn’t let the conversation drop. “You trust me, though?”
My mouth is full, so I can’t talk, but even if I could, I don’t know if I would. Too honest already. That I do trust her. Implicitly with my kids, and nearly wholeheartedly with me. I don’t trust people not to leave or give up. But I do trust Andi not to, and it grows stronger with every passing day. Instead of saying all that, I merely nod, and she grins, spearing a piece of strawberry and French toast. “For the record, I think you’re the best man I’ve ever known.”
Before she can take her bite, I intercept her mouth, kissing my appreciation for her into it. I don’t stop until her fork clatters to her plate, spraying whipped cream on her so that she shrieks. I chuckle and lick a few drops off her neck. “Delicious.”
She swats at me, playfully ordering me to stay on the other side of the table until she’s done eating. After we both finish our breakfasts and clean up, I receive a text from Taryn informing me she’ll drop the kids off at noon, and I show the message to Andi.
She twirls her hair, a terrible actress, as she makes her twang thicker. “So many hours to kill. Whatever will we do to fill the time?”
I know she’s talking about sex, and, yes, but also… “Actually, I was hoping you could play something for me.”
She drops her hands to her sides. “Really?”
“Yeah. I want to hear one of your songs.”
“Okay,” she says with a big smile. “I’ll be right back.”
Five minutes later, we’re in the living room. Her on one end of the couch, guitar in hand, and me relaxed on the other end, facing her with one knee up on the cushions as she plucks a few chords.
She clears her throat. “I wrote this one a while back. It’s… Well, you’ll understand.”
When she starts to play, I watch her fingers dancing over the strings, her voice filling the room. She sings of heartache and leaving home, leaving a piece of herself on the floor of her bedroom and in the reflection of the mirror. It might be interpreted to be about a breakup, but I know it’s really about her parents. It’s melancholy yet catchy, and the way she closes her eyes, body swaying slightly, is spellbinding. The way her voice cracks and goes off on different notes makes me smile. She strums certain chords, and it sends chills down my spine.
The song is beautiful, and when she finishes, I have to clear my throat, chest tight with emotion. “That was incredible,” I say eventually. “You’re incredible.”
She stares down at her guitar, blushing as if she doesn’t know. “Thanks.”
“No, really. That was really good. I don’t understand why you’d leave LA. I mean, you’re obviously talented enough to make it big.”
She snorts a laugh as she sets the guitar down. “Not really.”
“What do you mean?” I lean forward. “You’re amazing.”
I’d heard the term fangirl before. Gracie says she’s a Swiftie and a fangirl. Well, that’s me. Fangirl. Whatever the Swiftie version for Andi is.
She redoes her hair, unraveling her messy bun only to redo it so it looks exactly the same, and I suspect it’s to waste time. So I sit and wait. With a huff, she gives in. “It’s all about who you know. Who you can get your foot in the door with. When I moved to LA, I didn’t know anybody or what to do. I was so green, I was literally still putting my songs on CDs and dropping them off with the people at the front desks of record labels.”
I frown. “What’s wrong with that?”
“They get thrown in the trash, and no one uses CDs anymore.”
I rub at my forehead, suddenly feeling one hundred years old. “It’s not like you were using cassette tapes.”
Andi’s brows pinch. “What?”
I drop my head. “Oh my fucking god. Remind me what year you were born?”
She bursts out with a laugh and slaps my leg. “I’m kidding! I know what cassette tapes are. I’m not that young.”
I sigh and meet her gaze. “Well, I feel that old.”
She crawls into my lap, scratching at my stubble. “You’re mature.”
She’s not making me feel particularly better, especially when she appears so young without makeup on. She’s got freckles. Fucking freckles . They’re dotted across her nose and cheekbones, faint but there, nonetheless. And those brown eyes of hers are so innocent. Makes me feel like a goddamn pervert when I focus on her lips and every thought I have is depraved.
“I’m a different generation,” I grate out, and she shrugs.
“So?”
She doesn’t understand. Wouldn’t get it. How it feels to inhabit the stereotype of a man going through a midlife crisis. To do the math—multiple times—about how the age gap between her and me is close to what it is between her and my kids. Not to mention how Logan and Grace might feel if they ever found out.
Blinking a few times to clear my head, I meet her gaze and refocus the conversation. “What happened in LA?”
She takes a deep breath and starts talking. She tells me about how she met Dahlia and they started writing music together. How they’d do gigs, Andi playing guitar and Dahlia singing. Then she explains how she eventually got a job with the Ryder guy, some big-time producer who needs to be knocked around for how much of an asshole he is. How he belittled her, made her feel small, and eventually fired her at a party in front of important people, agents and other producers.
Who wouldn’t be embarrassed by that? But I also hate the idea of Andi giving up on what she loves.
“You know, you’re doing a great job with Grace, teaching her how to play.”
Andi smiles proudly. “She’s doing really well with it.”
“What if you did that more? Teaching guitar to other people. You play the piano too, right?” When she nods, I keep going. I hadn’t thought of it before, but now that it’s out there, it makes sense. “There’re music schools around here. Or you could do private lessons or something. Even songwriting. Is that a thing? Teaching someone how to write songs? Probably like writing poetry. You can either do it or you can’t.”
She laughs at my bumbling. “Yeah. There are classes about songwriting.”
I raise my brows in a challenge. Right there is her answer. She can still make music. She can still make money from it. Might not be her original plan, but it’s not nothing.
She considers me for a minute. “Yeah, okay. I’ll look into it.”
I palm her thighs, pushing her to straddle my lap, as I kiss her. Looking into it is not a promise of forever, but it could be the start of something. The start of Andi staying here, living here…with me. With the kids.
It could be the start of an us .
I kiss her again, deeper this time, my hands roaming her body. She’s soft and warm, her skin smooth beneath my touch, and when I trail my mouth down her throat, I can feel her heart racing, matching the pounding in my own chest. I want to go slow, to savor every moment, but my body has other plans. I’m already hard, my cock straining under my shorts, eager to sink into its favorite place.
When I slide my hands up the T-shirt and sweatshirt of mine she’s wearing to cup her breasts, plucking at her nipples, she arches into me. I love her tits. They’re the perfect handful, and I push the cotton up so I can lavish them properly, licking, sucking, nipping until she’s writhing beneath me, her hips grinding against mine.
Since she’s not wearing underwear, I can feel her wet heat against my shorts, and since I spent so many hours learning what she likes last night, I have a hard time not skipping ahead. But even as she’s becoming more and more comfortable with sex, I need to remind myself to go slow.
With the window right behind the couch, morning light streams in, highlighting all the things I love best about Andi, her swollen lips, her glittering eyes, and peaked little nipples, and I don’t want anyone else seeing. I lift her up in my arms, snap the curtains shut, and carefully lay her down on the carpet.
“This is better,” I murmur against her lips.
“Rug burn,” she says with a smile in her voice as I kiss her throat.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle.” I’m completely serious even though she was joking.
“I know you will be.”
I settle on my elbow and lift her shirt up a few inches so I can trace my fingertips over her lower belly and down between her legs. She inhales audibly, bending her knees to give me more room when I sink my index finger inside her, soaking it before circling her clit. She moans and tangles her fingers in my hair, pulling me down to her for a kiss, taking what she wants.
“Let’s get you good and ready,” I rasp into her mouth, and she relaxes even more, so I push my finger back into her, crooking it to find the spot that makes her cry out. I add my middle finger, stretching her, preparing her for me, telling her how perfect she is, how pretty she looks, how I am so hard for her, I’m not sure I can wait much longer.
Of course I would, though. I will always give her whatever she needs.
Fortunately, I don’t have to be patient for long.
Her orgasm hits her hard, her body convulsing, her pussy clamping down on my fingers. I ride it out with her, my mouth never leaving hers, fingers stroking her through the tremors as she comes down.
Once she settles, I reach into the pocket of my shorts, happy I decided to toss a condom in there just in case and rip it open with my teeth.
Beneath me, Andi sucks air through her teeth. “I don’t know why I find that so hot.”
“Yeah?”
“Reminds me of a caveman or something, ripping apart meat with your teeth.”
I press my mouth into a flat line, concentrating on pushing my shorts down to roll the condom on, pointedly not laughing.
“You think you could kill a mammoth for me?” she asks, and I notch myself against her pussy, feeling the intense pressure to slide home in one thrust, but I hold off. Barely.
“I could definitely kill a mammoth for you.”
“With your bare hands?”
“Goddamn right.”
She bites into her bottom lip, feminine satisfaction crossing her features, and that’s it. That’s all I can take. I push inside slowly, giving her time to adjust to my size. She’s tight, her pussy gripping me like a vise, and I grit my teeth, fighting the constant urge to thrust, to claim, to take .
Once I’m finally fully seated inside her, I dip down to kiss her, my tongue mimicking the slow, steady pace I set as my cock slides in and out of her in long, languid strokes. She’s wet and warm, and I groan into the crook of her neck. “Sweetheart, you make me feel like I can do anything.”
“You can.” Her teeth scrape my ear as she wraps her legs around me, her heels digging into my ass, urging me on. I speed up, my thrusts becoming more urgent. Still, I’m careful she doesn’t get rug burn, which is hard when all I want to do is rut.
Be the caveman she wants me to be.
Fuck her hard and fast. One day, I will.
But today is not that day.
I sit back on my heels, staying inside her while I reach between us to strum her clit. I think the sudden loss of motion throws her for a loop, and she whines. “Griffin.”
“Yeah, baby?”
“I’m so close.”
“I know, so give it to me.” She pants as I circle and rub and push her right up to the edge. “Come on. Be my perfect good girl.”
That’s when she loses it, her eyes flutter closed, inner muscles clamping on me, and I level myself back over her, thrusting once again, drawing out her pleasure, both of us riding out our orgasms until we collapse completely on the floor, a tangle of limbs.
Once I catch my breath, I snatch a tissue from a box on the coffee table and take care of the condom before holding myself above her, tugging her shirt and sweatshirt back into place. A soft smile plays on her lips. “No rug burns.”
“Told you,” I say with a nip to her lower lip. I spend a few moments taking her in, the blush on her skin, the mess of her hair, and I wish I had more time to revel in her warm glow, but I don’t. “We should get dressed.” I press a kiss to her forehead. “The kids will be home soon.”
Andi groans, but she sits up, and I can’t resist one last kiss, a sweep of my tongue along hers, before standing. I adjust the elastic of my shorts as I pick up my cell phone, a notification on the screen for a new email. Unlike Andi, who lets her emails pile up so much that my eyes nearly bugged out of my head when I saw she had over 3,000 in her inbox, I categorize each message as it comes in.
This one is a reminder from the school about the safety drill they’re running tomorrow. I tense reflexively, a familiar anger bubbling up inside me. Andi apparently notices because she smooths her hand up and down my back. “What’s wrong?”
I sigh, running a hand through my hair. “There’s a safety drill at the school tomorrow. I just… I hate that they have to go through that.”
“Safety… Like a shooter drill?”
I nod, and she winces. “Yeah, those suck.”
“Gracie always gets so nervous, it takes a few days for her to calm down about it after, and you know Logan. He’s so sensitive. I hate…” I grit my teeth and growl out my frustration. “I just fucking hate it.”
I step away from her, my contempt for this particular blight on our society making me pace as I spit out my words. “I spent years— years —flushing out terrorists, making sure this country was safe. But then I had to come back to this country to find out it terrorizes our own kids because a few people like to wave the constitution around for gun rights and a well-regulated militia, pretending they’d have the balls to do what I did in the real militia.”
Andi’s eyes soften, and she steps closer, stopping me in my path. I draw up short, breathing through my nose to try to calm down as she molds her palms to my jaw. “You have every right to be mad about it.”
Her touch drains the fight from me. “Why did I do all that? Why did my brothers and I go through all that? Some of them never made it back, and for what? Freedom?” I lift my arm out at my side. “Freedom to sacrifice students? Force them to hide in closets, scared for their lives?”
She wraps her arms around me, her head resting on my chest until my heart rate is back to normal. After seeing and doing the things I did during my service, I find it difficult to send my children out into the wide world to begin with. Add this ridiculous and easily solvable problem to the mix, and I resent it. It’s not often I feel this way about my military career, but it’s impossible not to see how this very American problem is the most un-American thing about our country. Home of the free. Land of the brave.
I could personally attest to that not being true.
Andi tilts her head back, her chin against my chest. “You are a good man, Griffin. The best man. And I hope you know you can talk to me about your time in the service whenever you want.”
“I don’t talk about it much,” I say, soothing myself by dragging my hands up and down her back.
“I know, but if you ever want to. Talk to me.” She rubs her fingers over my collarbone. “You take care of everyone around you. I hope you allow me to take care of you every once in a while.”
Her words land like a punch in my solar plexus, and I nearly buckle under the force. My perfect, sweet girl. “You take care of me, sweetheart.” I sweep my fingertip over the slope of her nose and then across her lips and down to her pulse at the base of her throat. “More than you know.”
She smiles, and I capture her mouth in a soft, slow kiss, tender and full of promise. One that ends far too soon because we really do need to get dressed before the kids get home. “Better get moving.” She tosses me a saucy wink as she struts out of the living room. “Can’t get off schedule.”
And for once, I wish we could.