Beep-beep beep beeeeep. Beep-beep beep beeeeeep.
“Goddammit, not again,” I muttered, and slapped the alarm off before whacking the pillow in frustration. When would my subconscious stop torturing me with visions of myself and Grant together again? When would I be able to get a good night’s sleep without torrid dreams which, to add insult to injury, got cut off right before the good stuff by the sound of my ancient alarm clock going off, leaving me with only the scent of Grant on the silk pillow—
Wait just a damn second.
My alarm made an entirely different sound than the one that had just gone off. I didn’t have any silk pillows, and they sure as hell didn’t smell like Grant.
Also, why could I still hear a waterfall?
Memories of last night came flooding back in HD and surround sound, and I sat upright in shock. I gazed around Grant’s bedroom. So…it hadn’t been a dream. There was the evidence right before me—the clothes on the floor, the rumpled sheets, the half-open door to the bathroom, steam drifting out of it from Grant’s morning shower…ah, so that was where my dreaming mind had gotten the sound of the waterfall.
I let my mind drift to last night, to the way Grant had consumed me with his mouth and his hands, to that tender look of passion in his eyes, to the—
I wanted to rest in the amazement and the afterglow, but unfortunately my common sense had woken up with the rest of my brain, and Grant wasn’t right there to send it back to sleep. Shit, what had I done? And what did it mean for him?
What did it mean for…us?
Was there an us?
The sound of the shower cut off abruptly, and I fidgeted with the blanket, suddenly shy.
Grant wandered back into the bedroom, naked except for the towel he was using to squeegee his hair.
Even as nervous as I was, I couldn’t help but take a moment to admire the long lean lines of his body, the way his muscles rippled as he walked. His cock jutted at half-mast from a triangle of golden-brown hair, and my fingers twitched on the blanket, wanting to trace a line down his chest until they rested just above him. I wanted to look up teasingly into his eyes as I very deliberately kept from touching where he wanted me to, and I wanted to say—
Grant’s head swung towards me and he started slightly as he saw that I was awake. “Ah. Good morning. Fancy running into you here.”
His eyes darted all over my body, as if checking that I was really there. A smile crept onto his face, and he couldn’t seem to decide to do with his hands, starting to lower the towel and then raising it again as drops of water began to drip onto his shoulders.
I couldn’t help but return the smile. God, but I loved him. I loved him when he was imperious and when he was nervous, when he was angry and when he was sweet. I loved each line of his face and every way they changed, in every mood and every situation. I could watch this beautiful man all day. “What a coincidence. Good morning to you, too.”
“I was thinking, ah, eggs?” he said. “Or fruit. Or pancakes. Toast? It occurs to me that I don’t know your favorite breakfast food yet.”
You, I thought but didn’t quite have the confidence to say. “All those sound good. Any of those. I mean, one. Or two. You don’t have to get all of them.”
“I, er.” He elected to lower the towel, finally, not quite covering himself but not keeping his arms awkwardly raised anymore. Now that was more like it. “I may have already ordered all of them.”
“Good,” I said. There was a dizzy, fizzy, soaring singing in my blood, as if I’d downed a glass of champagne just by looking at him. “That’s good.”
There was a silence, probably not as long as it seemed to be, where we were both frozen across the room from each other, me sitting and him standing, both of us naked and grinning our matching goofy nervous uncertain grins.
“Oh, come here!” I burst out finally, opening my arms, and he laughed—a real laugh, at ease and hardly nervous at all, and came into my embrace, pillowing his head against my breasts as I let myself fall back against the headboard, holding the man I loved.
“You don’t—I take it you don’t…regret it, then?” Grant said against my skin. He was curled up against me, seeming in that moment so vulnerable. So lost. “Staying over? Letting me…touch you?”
I stroked his hair gently, feeling yet more love bloom within my chest. How was it that each time I thought I couldn’t love this man more, I found there was yet room to grow? “Not one bit.” I hesitated, my hand stilling as my insecurities struck. “Do you?”
“Never,” he said, pressing a kiss against the swell of my breast as he found my hand and gripped it with reassuring warmth. “Never in a thousand years.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Good.”