How to End a Love Story(59)

“Hm,” he rumbles sleepily, and his hand drags down her stomach over his borrowed T-shirt, then slips below the fabric.

“I think I’ve had this dream before,” she murmurs, and feels his answering chuckle against her ear as his thumb brushes the few inches of skin above her belly button. “When we were at the cabin.”

“What happened in the dream?” His hand flexes, and it causes his thumb to scrape just below the swell of her breast. She exhales shakily; so does he.

“It was your comforter,” she says, pressing back into him, and hears a gratifying “hm.” “It smelled like you, and I think I was incepted somehow to crave this.”

He pushes up against her again, and the fabric of her boxer shorts shifts so she can feel the ridge of his erection against her bare ass cheek. His hand slides out from under her shirt and lands on the curve of her hip, his fingers seeking purchase.

“What else are you craving?”

She squeezes her thighs together for the friction, and he groans into her neck as he pulls her back by the hips. She rubs herself slowly up against him, and he exhales.

His hand slips over her hip and slides down to press against the damp, hot heat of her through his borrowed boxers.

“Fuck,” he says. “You’re wet.”

“Mm,” she answers, biting her lip and pushing up against him.

“Could you come like this, sweetheart?” He growls the question into her ear, as his hand presses insistently against her.

“I,” she gasps, as he pushes up against her clit through the fabric, then eases off.

“You,” he prompts, repeating the motion.

“I want your fingers,” she says.

“Thought you’d never ask,” he answers, and slips his middle finger between her slick folds.

“Oh,” she groans, as she adjusts to the feeling of him inside her.

“Fuck,” he says, and resumes the slow, upward pressing movement of his fingers.

“Grant,” she exhales, drawing herself against him in tight circles of pressure.

“You gonna ride my finger like a good girl?” He kisses her neck.

“Yes,” she gasps, as she squeezes him back with her inner muscles.

“How about a second?” he murmurs.

“Yes,” she says again, as if there are no other words. She lets out an involuntary moan when he pushes another finger into her.

“How did your dream end, Helen?”

“I wanted to come,” she whispers. “But I couldn’t, because you were downstairs.”

“That’s right, I was,” he rasps. “If I’d known this was waiting for me . . .”

Helen lets out a soft, keening “hmm,” and he crooks his fingers inside her, beckoning.

“Please, Grant,” she gasps.

“I like the way you say that,” he growls.

“Please, Grant,” she echoes needily, and he rewards it by repeating that quick, beckoning motion deep within the slick heat of her—again, again, again until she’s thrumming from want. “Can I come now?”

“You can come when I say so,” he says, his voice low. “In five . . .”

She exhales slowly.

“Four . . .”

He presses against her again.

“Three . . .”

His fingers press to the hilt.

“Two . . .”

The heel of his palm pushes against her, and she whimpers.

“One.”

He crooks his fingers and hits that spot and her world explodes behind her closed eyes, and she’s faintly aware that the desperate sobbing sound is her. Ah, ah, ah. She clutches at Grant’s wrist, pressing it against the front of her. Please, Grant. Behind her, she feels his breath coming out in short gasps into her hair and knows he’s climaxing with her.

Afterward, when they both come back to earth, she shuts her eyes tightly and pretends to snore. Grant laughs behind her, his breath still expelling as a shallow, labored pant.

She turns around, and he’s watching her closely.

“That’s one way to avoid morning breath,” she murmurs, and he pushes a hand into his eyes sleepily as he laughs.

“You’re funnier than I thought you’d be,” he says. “Before I knew you.”

Something twinges in Helen’s heart at before I knew you, and she wonders what he means by that. How far back does his memory go? Before their trip home for Christmas? Or earlier? Before she moved to LA? Before that one night that linked his name forever to her family history?

She wonders how often he thought of her back then, before he knew her—if he thought about her at all. She knows she had a reputation for being a humorless bore in high school, but it still hurts to think he probably thought so too.

The laughter fades from his eyes as he watches her.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I was an idiot for thinking that.”

She smiles faintly and shrugs. “I didn’t give you or anyone else any reason to think otherwise.”

He reaches out and brushes the hair from her face, and she thinks suddenly of how improbable it is that they’re both here, in his bed, after all this time. She thinks they must have both taken a few accidental wrong turns somewhere and feels a pressing, surprised kind of panic as she realizes how close they must have come to never having this happen at all. She feels like this bed and this morning and this something between them exist only in a precarious bubble, and it might burst into nothing as soon as she leaves.