Crave

Dirty. Lecherous. Bastard.

It felt so good, though, that grip that he imagined was hers, the hold, that slide, that twist at the tip.

Besides, what were his options? Try to ignore it? Yeah, right. He threw on those pajama bottoms, he was going to be Barnum & Bailey obscene—a tent and then some. And he had to go see her downstairs before he crashed.

He had a warning to give his lovely attorney.

The last of his internal arguments hung around for . . . oh, maybe two strokes and then he got on the ride. Facing the showerhead, he planted one hand on the marble wall and leaned into his shoulder. His cock was heavy and stiff as his frickin’ forearm as he started to work it properly, his hand moving up and down. And the blast of fire that flashed up his spine made him drop his head and open his mouth to breathe.

In the gathering maelstrom, he refused to think of Grier. She might have been the cause of the arousal, but he was not going to fantasize about her while he jacked off in her shower. Just not going to happen. It was too skeevy and disrespectful—she deserved so much more even if she never found out what he’d done.

That was the last conscious thought he had before he was all about the orgasm: The head of his sex was so sensitive each swipe over the thing was a sweet sting that shot through his erection and dove into his balls. Spreading his legs farther apart, he got good and braced as he found his rhythm, the hot spray hitting his hair and running down his face as he began to pant—

From out of nowhere, and against management’s memo to the contrary, the memory of having Grier up close and personal grabbed hold of his brain and went bulldog. No matter how much he tried to forget or focus on something else, there was no detaching what it felt like to have been that near to her.

God, her lips had been an inch from his own. All it would have taken was an incline of the head and he would have kissed—

The release came on fast and powerful, ramming into him so hard, he had to turn into his biceps and bite down to keep from barking her name out loud.

And damn him to hell, he rode it to the last jerking spasm, milking himself until his knees went loose and he tasted blood from the biting.

In the aftermath, he sagged and felt like a wasteland on the inside, as if coming had drained him of not just the sexual impulse, but everything else.

He was so tired.

So very, very tired.

With a curse, he reached out the hand that had done the work and made sure there were no traces of anything on the marble or the glass. Then he rinsed off one last time, cut the water, and stepped from the misty confines that had gotten him into trouble.

He was still hard. In spite of the exhaustion. And the exercise.

Clearly, his cock hadn’t bought the bribe.

And yup, he was right: Flannel did absolutely nothing to conceal the hey-could-we-do-some-more-of-that. If anything, that pole thing made him look twice the size he was—which, considering he was hung to begin with, was not the direction he wanted to go in.

Folding up his erection and nailing it flat against his belly with the waistband of the pj’s, he reached for the fleece and prayed it came down on him far enough to hide that flushed head of his.

Which was still just full of bright ideas—

Okay, total no-go on the conceal. The pullover might have been long enough if his chest hadn’t been so big. As it stood? He was more naked than naked as he flashed his goods.

Isaac ditched the fleece and threw on his sweatshirt; the muscle shirt was just too nasty after the fight. Damn thing should be burned, not cleaned.

And before he made the return trip downstairs, he hit the first-aid supplies, although not because he cared: Sure as shit, if he didn’t use them, she was going to insist on coming up here and playing Florence Nightingale.

So not a good plan, considering what he’d just done.

The butterfly bandage he’d gotten from the med-tech guys in jail hadn’t stood a chance in the ring and God only knew where it had ended up. Whatever, though, the cut was nothing special, just a split in the skin that was deep enough to give a blood show, but nothing to get hysterical about. He was going to have a scar—like that mattered?

He slapped a Band-Aid on the thing, and didn’t bother with the antibiotic stuff. He was far more likely to die from Smith & Wesson-related lead poisoning than any skin infection.

Out of the guest room. Down the stairs. By the time he got to the front hall, things had begun to ease off slightly at the hip level.

Until he came around the corner of the kitchen and saw Grier.

Oh, man.

If she was gorgeous in a little black dress, she was totally beddable in what was evidently her version of pajamas: men’s flannel boxers and an old green sweatshirt that read, CAMP DARTMOUTH. With white socks and a pair of schleppy slippers on her feet, she looked closer to college age than any kind of thirty . . . and the absence of makeup and fancy hair was actually a plus. Her skin was satin smooth and her pale eyes popped rather than got lost behind her horn-rimmed glasses.

Guess she wore contacts.

And her hair . . . it was so long, much longer than he’d thought, and vaguely wavy. He bet it smelled good and felt even better. . . .

She glanced over from the red bowl she was drying at the sink. “Find what you need upstairs?”

Not. Even. Close.

For good measure, he yanked at the bottom of the sweatshirt to make sure Mr. Happy was covered. And then he just watched her. Like he was some kind of idiot.

“Isaac?”

“Have you ever been married,” he asked quietly.

As her eyes flipped up to his, he knew how she felt: He couldn’t believe he’d thrown that out there, either.

Before he could backpedal, she pushed her glasses up higher on her nose, and said, “Ah, no. No, I haven’t. You?”

He shook his head and left it at that, because God knew he shouldn’t have opened the door in the first place.

“A girlfriend?” she asked, picking up the pan to dry it off.

“Never had one.” As her eyes shot back to his, he shrugged. “Not saying I haven’t had . . . er, been with . . .”

Holy. Hell. Was he blushing?

Okay, he so had to get away from her and out of town—and not just because Matthias was after his ass. This woman was turning him into someone he didn’t know.

“You just haven’t met the right person, I guess?” She bent down and put the bowl away, then came over with the pan to tuck it into the cabinets under the island. “That’s always the thing, isn’t it.”

“Among others.”

“I just keep thinking it’ll happen for me,” she murmured. “But it hasn’t. Although I do like my life.”

“No boyfriend?” he heard himself say.

“No.” She shrugged. “And I’m not a one-night-stand kind of girl.”

That didn’t surprise him. She was much too classy.

As a curiously gentle silence bloomed between them, he didn’t have a clue how long he stood there, staring across the island at her.

“Thank you,” he said eventually.

“For what? I haven’t really helped you.”

The hell she hadn’t. She’d given him something warm to think about when he was alone in the cold night: He was going to remember this moment with her now for the rest of his days.

However few of those he might have left.