A mental image of Heather flashed in his mind and guilt suddenly flooded him.
Brenna wrapped her legs tight around his waist, squeezing with her knees. “This is the part where you’re supposed to move inside me, Grant.”
He leaned in and kissed her again, and she responded with a sexy, needy flick of her tongue. She arched her chest, letting her ni**les skim against his chest. Any thoughts of Heather vanished and he was lost in Brenna again. She was so abandoned. He’d never met anyone like her.
Grant thrust, hard. She gave a triumphant shriek in return and rocked her hips, egging him on. He thrust again, the motion hard and rough, their bodies sawing forward with the force of their movement. Her groan of response was thrilled, and he continued to thrust into her—not quick or steady, but hard and brutal and lacking rhythm. Primal. Wild.
Fierce.
“Oh God, yes,” she breathed in his ear, and he felt her pu**y clench around him, rippling around his cock. “Fuck me like that.”
A dirty talker? That was sexy as hell. He thrust even harder, not noticing when the pillows went flying to the side. Her pu**y clenched around him again, and she gave a little gasp, as if surprised. He pounded into her, his entire body shoving forward with the motion, and she clung to him desperately.
“Yes! Yes! Fuck me just like that. I’m so close.” Her voice broke in a tiny sob. “Keep . . . please . . . keep going.”
With a primal roar he didn’t know he had in him, he hammered into her, his thrusts suddenly as quick and frantic as they were wild. She screamed his name in his ear, and he felt her entire body clench, her pu**y tight around his c**k with the force of her orgasm. Grant roared his own release, coming so hard that he nearly saw stars, slamming his body into her own and feeling her shuddering underneath him. When he’d finished coming, he fell on top of her, panting and wet with sweat.
She gave a long, breathless sigh of sated pleasure, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Mercy,” she breathed. “You win the game.”
Through the haze of exhaustion, he chuckled. “Are you conceding defeat?”
“For now,” she said thoughtfully. “You may have won the battle, but you did not win the war, sir.”
And then she yawned.
He yawned, too, feeling tired for the first time in a long time. Probably all the sex that did that to him. He rolled off her and moved to the bathroom, taking a few minutes to dispose of the condom and then toweling himself off. He grabbed a fresh towel for her and moved back out to the bed. “Did you want—”
She was fast asleep, hugging his pillow, her purple bangs stuck to her forehead.
Sleep was probably a good idea, he thought, eyeing the way she was hogging his bed already. He leaned over the bed and carefully moved her sprawled limbs over a few feet, giving himself enough room on the bed, and then pulled the covers over the two of them.
He turned off the light and curled around her body, satisfied.
For the first time in five years, there was a woman in his bed. For the first time in five years, he’d made love to a woman until they were both sweaty, exhausted, and utterly sated. It felt right. No, better yet, it felt like coming home.
Who would have thought that Brenna, of all people, would be the one to wake him from his emotional coma?
Grant brushed a lock of hair off of her shoulder in an affectionate gesture and pressed a kiss to one of the bluebirds on her shoulders.
FOUR
When Grant awoke, sunlight was streaming through the window onto his face. He squinted at the light and shielded his eyes, then turned to his alarm clock. 7:17 AM. Damn. This was early for him. What had woken him up? Normally he had trouble sleeping and worked out until late, then fell into bed, only to wake up sometime around ten in the morning, groggy and exhausted.
Last night, though, he supposed he’d been distracted. Flashes of last night with Brenna made his morning wood a little harder and he rolled over, reaching for her.
The bed was empty.
Grant wiped the sleep from his eyes and sat up, surveying his room. The bedcovers hung off the side of the mattress, as if Brenna had crawled from bed and not bothered to fix them. Her pillow was on the floor, next to a scatter of buttons from his shirt. Clothing was strewn everywhere. His dresser drawer hung open, shirts spilling out onto the floor.
She was obviously awake. He wrapped the sheet around his nakedness and moved to the edge of the loft, standing near the ladder and peering down to the floor below. Brenna was seated on one of the barstools at his kitchen counter, dressed in one of his oversized T-shirts, her legs bare. She was flipping through a magazine and eating what looked like a piece of toast.
This was a picture he could wake up to for the rest of his life.
Grant grabbed his boxers from the floor and threw them on, then descended down the ladder and moved toward her. “Good morning.”
She glanced up and nodded. “Hey.”
He leaned in to kiss her cheek, arms going around her waist. Her hair was wet—she must have showered already.
Brenna stiffened in his arms. “What are you doing?”
He pulled away, surprised at her reaction. “I was just greeting you.”
She looked confused. “Yes, but why are you kissing me?” She took another bite of her toast and gave him a puzzled look, as if he’d just done something ridiculous. “You feeling okay?”
“I’m trying to kiss you because I want to kiss you.” He leaned in again, and when she took another bite of toast, her brow wrinkled in consternation, he sighed. “That’s what couples do, Brenna.”
She coughed, thumping her chest as if the food had gone down the wrong pipe. He waited for her to catch her breath and, after a moment, she choked out, “Couples?”
Now he was starting to get annoyed with her again. “Yes. You know. People who date and have sex together. People in a relationship.”
She put down her toast and slipped away on the other side of the stool, crossing the kitchen back to his refrigerator. “We’re not in a relationship, Grant. At least, not a real one. That stuff was for show, remember?” She opened the door and studied the contents of his fridge. “You have any orange juice?”
He moved to the fridge and shut the door. Could she not pay attention for five minutes? “You and I had sex last night. We slept together.”
“Yes, we did.” She looked unconcerned.
“So what was that, then?”
“Fun?”
“Fun? That’s all it was to you?” It was the first time he’d had sex with someone since Heather died. Not that there hadn’t been offers—he just hadn’t been interested. This was big for him. Momentous. A changing point in his life. And she thought it was just . . . fun?