Chapter 8
chapter
eight
Griff
I’m not asleep. I want that on the record.
I’m resting my eyes. Stretched out on Hope Bailey’s too-short sofa with my head tipped back and that absurd duck robe doing its inadequate best, every muscle in my body unclenched for the first time in what feels like a decade.
The rain has slowed to a normal downpour. The county’s safe, everybody accounted for, and she did that with me — sat at the table and worked Burton’s list one stubborn old voice at a time while I ran things with my cell and her laptop. We did it together. As a team.
She slipped down the hall a while ago. Said something about getting comfortable. I’ve been lying here half-dreaming a whole life where I get to listen to her move around in the next room every single night.
Then my phone rings. I answer and a robotic voice alerts me to an elevated heart rate. The panic-threshold alert. The one that dropped my stomach through the floorboards of my truck the night the documentary got her.
Except tonight there’s no truck. Tonight I’m twenty feet away, and she’s got a murmur, and a heart-rate alarm is the one call that could be real. Eleven years of worst cases hit me all at once, and I’m off the sofa and down the hall with her name already in my mouth.
“Hope—”
I get the door open.
And every thought I’ve ever had leaves my head at once.
She’s on the bed, on top of the covers, completely bared except for a pair of light pink underwear. Underwear she currently has one hand down the front of. Her head is tipped back, lips parted, throat flushed… she looks fucking glorious.
Her watch makes a sound, then “warning: elevated heart rate.”
Her eyes fly open. She freezes. Her eyes meet mine and she gasps.
I should leave. Shut the door. Apologize through it like the gentleman my aunt raised.
I don’t move. I can’t. I wouldn’t walk away from her in this moment if my team called me. This is happening.
“Oh my God—” She snatches her hand back, going red to the roots of her hair. “The watch sent you an alert. This is so emba—”
“Don’t.” My voice sounds wrecked. “Don’t you apologize. And don’t you dare stop on my account.”
Her breath catches. The whole room goes still and hot.
“Griff.”
“Tell me to leave.” I mean it, every word, even as my hands curl to fists at my sides to keep from crossing that room. “Say it and I’m gone. I swear to God I’ll go. But if you don’t say it, sweetheart—”
“Don’t leave.” Barely a breath. Then her eyes lock on mine and hold, steadier, sure. “It’s been kind of a stressful day and I was just trying to relax.”
I nod.
She swallows. “And I was thinking about you.”
That’s the permission I need.
I cross the room and I go to my knees at the edge of her bed, because I feel like I’ve wanted her my entire life. And I’m done pretending I don’t. I don’t care how long it’s actually been.
“Look at you,” I say, low, hooking my fingers in those thin cotton shorts. “You were right here doing this all by yourself, weren’t you? Handling it. On your own.” I drag them down and off. “You’ve got to learn to ask for help, Hope.”
Her laugh breaks into a gasp when I get my hands on her thighs and spread her open and just—look. She’s already slick, already flushed and swollen and perfect, and I’ve thought about this so many nights I have to take a second so I don’t embarrass myself.
She sucks in a breath. “Griff—”
“I’ve got you. Let go of the sheets. And maybe take off the watch.” She does, tossing it off onto the floor. Then reaches for me, her fingers sliding into my hair, and I lower my mouth to her and finally, finally find out what she tastes like.
She’s better than the cookies. I’d tell her as much, but my mouth’s busy.
I take my time even though I’m dying, because I want her first climax to completely undo her. Then I’ll slowly put her back together one kiss at a time.
I learn her by the sounds she makes—the hitch when I circle her clit, the whimper when I slide two fingers into her and curl them just right.
The way her thighs start to shake around my ears.
I keep her right on the edge until she’s saying my name like a prayer and a curse tangled together.
Until her heart rate alarm would be going off all over again if the watch weren’t lying face down and forgotten.
“That’s it,” I tell her against her skin. “You’re so close I can feel it. Come on, sweetheart. Give it to me. Come all over my face.”
She shatters. Bows clean off the bed with my name torn out of her. I lick her through every pulse of it, and it is the single best thing I have ever done in my life. And I’m not even wearing my badge.
After, I gather her up against my chest and hold her while she comes back down, both of us tangled sideways across her bed, the duck robe still on, but now parted and not covering much.
She presses her hot face into my throat. “I cannot believe you caught me doing that. That’s so embarrassing. I might actually die. Death by mortification. Round two. It’s a theme with us. But this is undoubtedly worse than having blue paint on my face.”
“You want embarrassing?” I press my lips to the top of her head. “I had to take myself in hand in your shower. I was imagining all kinds of filthy things I wanted to do to you. I knew I had to do it just so I could sit next to you on that sofa without disgracing myself.”
“You did not.”
I nod. “Face against your tile. Your name in my teeth.” I feel her go still. “So we’re even. More than even. I’ve got you beat.”
She lifts her head and looks at me, wonder etched in her features.
“I did. And I’d do it again.” I brush her hair back off her face. “You’ve got no idea, do you. None.”
“No idea about what?”
Here’s the part I’ve been refusing to say out loud.
“That day. The first emergency alert. When I came out and found you on the ground.” My thumb traces her cheekbone.
“For the record, I was on the ground looking for an earring. I did not fall. Not that I have proof since my watch has sent you so many alerts and I probably am ridiculous most of the time.”
“Hope. I don’t think you’re silly or ridiculous or incompetent.
I think you’re the most capable, stubborn, self-sufficient woman I’ve ever met.
Rescuing you was never the point.” I make myself say the whole potentially embarrassing truth of it.
“The reason I came out every time—the reason I wouldn’t let Tate or any of the other deputies take a single call is that I can’t stop thinking about you.
That’s all it ever was. A grown man who can’t keep his head straight because some woman at the end of a county road got under his skin.
So deep under my skin I’m not sure anything will ever change that. ”
She’s staring at me now. “How many of those alerts were you already—”
“Close by?” I exhale. “Pretty much all but the first one. I told myself I was patrolling the east end. There’s nothing to patrol on the east end, Hope.
I was driving past your place to see your lights were on.
Never stopped. Never let you know. Just—needed to know you were all right, and then I’d go home and hate myself for it.
” I hold her gaze. “So no. I never thought you were helpless. I just couldn’t stop coming to you. ”
For a second she doesn’t say anything at all. Her eyes go bright and wet, and for once—for the first time since I’ve known her—Hope Bailey is speechless.
Then she climbs over on top of me and kisses me like she needs my kiss as much as she needs air.
I run my hands up her naked skin. She’s impossibly soft and I squeeze her plump ass.
“Tell me you’re sure,” I say against her mouth.
She’s already shoving the terry-cloth of the robe out of the way, baring me to her. I’m rock hard, have been since I put my mouth on her pussy.
“I need you to be completely sure, because once we do this, I know I’ll want to do it again and again.
She lowers her wet pussy and slides herself against my dick.
“Christ, Hope. You’re going to make me pop off before I’m even inside you.”
“I’m sure, Griff. I have never been this sure of anything.”
“I don’t have any condoms with me, but I’m clean.” I get the words out even though my whole body’s shaking with wanting her.
“I trust you, and I’m clean too.” She grinds down onto me. “Nothing between us. I want to feel you.”
So I give her that. I grip her hips and push up into her. She lowers herself at the same time, and then I’m inside her, all the way to the hilt.
I watch her face the whole way; watch her mouth fall open and her eyes go soft and dreamy. I pull her down to me and press my lips to hers. “You feel amazing already.”
She wiggles on me and I flip us so she’s under me and I’m on top.
That makes her laugh. “I love how you can manhandle me like I tiny little woman.”
I know what she’s saying. I know how the world has made women feel about their bodies. No matter what they look like, they’re taught to find all the flaws. It’s bullshit.
“You’re tiny compared to me. And I love your body. Your softness and curves. I think you’re perfect.”
Her legs come up and wrap around my hips and she gives me a sweet smile.
I have to drop my forehead to hers and just breathe, because I’ve spent a decade convincing myself that everyone was better off if I kept to myself, didn’t allow anyone to get close.
As it turns out, I was only ever waiting to find the one place I’d fit without having to hide anything about me.
“There you are,” she whispers, like she can feel it too. Like she knows.
Then I move, and there’s no more talking for a good long while—just the two of us and the last of the rain and her nails in my back and her voice breaking around my name. When she comes apart the second time I go right over the edge with her, buried deep.
After, we’re a wreck of tangled limbs and damp sheets and I’ve got her tucked into my side where I’m starting to think she’s always belonged.
I came back to Saddle Creek after being a big city detective because I wanted some peace and a slower life.
That’s what I told myself. But now I can’t help but think that maybe I came back so I could meet Hope.
I can’t stop touching her—her shoulder, her hip, the soft curve of her belly. It’s like my hands are trying to map her so they don’t forget any detail.
“Your heart’s going a mile a minute,” I murmur against her temple. “The watch was right about one thing.”
She huffs a laugh. “First accurate reading it’s ever taken. Figures it’d be about you.”
“I was engaged once. Her name was Tara,” I start, and feel her go quiet and attentive against me.
“It wasn’t that she was a bad person. It’s that I couldn’t bring all of myself to it.
I’d come home off the worst day you can imagine.
After seeing things nobody should have to and I’d need to vent about it.
Process the horrible things people do to each other.
But she couldn’t hear it. She’d change the subject, shut me down.
Wanted the man but not the badge, not what the badge saw.
So I split myself down the middle. Kept the cop in a box and gave her what was left, and after a few years there wasn’t enough left of me to be anything to anybody. ”
My arm tightens around her. “I told myself that was just the deal. That a woman like you, especially with all that sunshine, couldn’t possibly want the darkness that seems to cling to me like a heavy coat.”
Hope shifts, props herself up on my chest, and looks down at me with her pretty brown eyes.
“Griff Meadows.” She lays her hand flat over my heart.
“You listen to me, because I’m only going to be this serious once tonight and then I’m going back to being unbearable.
I can handle every part of you. The cop and the man and the badge and everything it’s ever seen.
Bring it all home. You can take that coat off or you can leave it on. It’s up to you.
“I’ve walked through my own fire—you know that now—and I promise you I will not flinch.
” Her voice softens. “And I only ask one thing back. That you can handle every part of me too. The stubbornness and the sunshine. The incessant baking and bad home-repair. There is never a need to split yourself down the middle for someone else. No offense to your ex, but she sounds incredibly selfish.”
I stare up at her and I feel the last wall I’ve got come down without a sound. Just crumbles into a pile of dust right at her feet.
“Every part,” I tell her. “I’ll take every part, sweetheart. Pretty sure you’re stuck with me now.”
“Good.” She settles back down against my chest, cheek over my heart, and I feel her smile against my skin. “Because the roads are washed out, so you’re literally trapped here till morning.”
“That the only reason I’m staying?”
“Nope.” She yawns, warm and boneless and mine. “But it’s a good head start.”