“Just now?” she asked incredulously. Her lips hovered mere inches from his temptingly.
“Convince me,” he commanded.
She brushed her lips against his, featherlight, always just out of his reach. “And here I thought you were the one who wanted complete control.”
“I’m learning something about equality, baby,” he growled before lifting her with his hands around her ass and throwing her back into the couch.
Their lips melded together with heat and intensity that could rarely be contained. Her fingers worked at the buttons on his shirt while he did all he could to work on the skinny jeans hugging her legs. Brady shrugged out of his shirt once she finished. He trailed kisses down her front and then tugged her jeans off of her body. Liz squirmed under him as he spent an interminable amount of time slipping each button of her shirt through its hole.
“Baby,” he murmured against her bare skin. His fingers ran along the outline of her bra. He slipped under the material, causing her whole body to arch off of the couch in response. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
She sighed and a smile touched her lips.
“I’ll never know how I spent so long without you,” Liz said.
He unhooked her bra and pulled her nipple into his mouth. She groaned at the feel of him sucking and gently biting it until it was erect.
“I want to be able to get my hands on this beautiful body whenever I can.”
After spending equal attention on the other nipple, he dragged her underwear to the floor and placed a kiss on the sensitive skin.
“I want to be able to listen to your beautiful voice and have you tell me all of your genius thoughts.” He kissed her once more. “I want you. Just you. All of you.”
“Brady,” she murmured. “Come here.”
So he obeyed. His pants dropped to the floor and in an instant his body was covering hers. He pushed her legs open to accommodate him. Then he was inside of her and they were one.
All coherent thought left her mind. She was just with Brady and nothing else mattered. This was the way it was supposed to be. They were working through their problems, working for what they wanted, proving that they could be together despite all the obstacles in their path. The sex was amazing, incredible, unbelievable, but it wasn’t all that encompassed their relationship. It had brought them together, but it wasn’t what was going to keep them that way.
What held them together was the love they both felt to their very core, the knowledge that being apart had been soul crushing, and the willingness to push for what they wanted. And Liz had never wanted anything quite as she wanted Brady Maxwell.
Chapter 6
THE NEXT LEVEL
Let me take you to dinner,” Brady said a few hours later.
Liz and Brady had been tangled up in his sheets all afternoon. While the thought of going out to dinner with him in public sounded wonderful, since their relationship had always been hidden, she didn’t exactly want to give up their alone time either.
“Right now?” she murmured, trailing her fingers down his bare chest.
He seized her hand in his and drew her closer to him. “Yes. I’d like to take you somewhere where everyone can see how lucky I am.”
Liz flushed at his comment. “I believe you’re the catch. Aren’t you North Carolina’s most eligible bachelor?”
“Not anymore.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it softly.
And really, how could she deny him anything after that?
She changed back into the skinny jeans and button-down that she’d had on earlier. There wasn’t a ton that she could do for her hair at this point. She finger-combed the knots out of the back and spritzed some water through it to help the natural wave. After sliding into her heels, she found Brady waiting in the foyer.
“Oh, casual Tuesday,” Liz said with a giggle. “How did I get a sport coat out of this deal?”
“Must be your lucky day.”
Liz wasn’t so sure about that, but Brady looked damn good: khaki pants, a light blue shirt with a navy blue-and-white diagonal-striped tie, under a dark blue blazer. She didn’t think she would ever get over how attractive he was, in and out of a suit. He took her breath away literally and figuratively.
Brady just shook his head at her stare and urged her into his Lexus. Almost as soon as they were out of the driveway she was fidgeting. He didn’t say anything about it until they were almost into the city.
“All right, what are you nervous about?”
“How are you not?” she asked, looking out the window and avoiding his gaze.
“You do not need to be nervous to be seen with me.” He reached for her hand and laced their fingers together.
“I know!” She bit down on her lip and tried to grope for what she really meant. “I’m not nervous about being seen with you. It’s just new for me. I feel like there’s an etiquette or protocol that I don’t know.”
Brady laughed lightly. “It shouldn’t be any different with me than it was dating . . . anyone else.”
The way he hesitated over that made Liz wince. She knew he was talking about Hayden, but that was the last person she wanted to think about right now. That relationship had gone up in a cloud of smoke because of what had happened with her and Brady. It wasn’t exactly guilt that slammed into her, because she was still furious that Hayden had outed their relationship to the press. It just felt like a weight . . . a sadness that things had ended the way they had. She swallowed back the memories and returned to the matter at hand.
“And . . . it is kind of our first date,” she said, peeking up at him.
“I believe I took you out for breakfast once and to a number of galas.”
Liz rolled her eyes. “That breakfast was just us planning out our affair. We talked terms. You could hardly call it a date. And you didn’t take me to either of the galas I attended. The first was for work.”
“You did a lot of work,” he said with a smirk. Both of them were clearly remembering the first time they’d had sex after the Jefferson-Jackson gala in Charlotte.
“The second gala, you took someone else.”
“But I was with you,” he reminded her. “And I flew you out to Hilton Head.”
“Are you really going to bring up Hilton Head? Where you left me alone in a suite nearly the entire weekend?” she asked.
“Fine. This is our first date?” he asked cheerily.
“Yes.”
The smile that crossed his face made her suspicious. He pulled out his phone a second later and jotted out a quick message before replacing it into his pocket.