Grant
There was no calming the hot rush of anticipation that she wasn’t leaving. That I had
more time. I slid the hotel key from my pocket and allowed her to precede me into the
room, trying to ignore that frantic thump, thump, thump of my heart.
Her eyes took in everything quickly, from the navy walls and perfectly made bed to the
stacks of my folded clothes on the bureau, the half-eaten room service tray still sitting next
to the armchair, only stopping when she landed on the framed photo on the nightstand.
Mercy perched on the side of my bed and picked up the frame.
She’d unburdened a great weight already, but she was still here for a reason, and I
would not be the one to rush her out the door. I’d let her stay forever.
“What do we fight about?” she asked quietly, gaze still locked on the photo.
I tilted my head to the side. “Sorry?”
Mercy looked up. The tears were gone from her eyes, only the redness surrounding
them leaving any hint of the heaviness in the hallway.
“What do we argue about? What do I do that drives you crazy?” When my mouth
quirked, she held up a hand. “Not I want to have sex with you crazy, but I’m going to go
scream into my pillow if you do that again crazy.”
“You want me to . . . complain about you,” I said slowly.
“Yes.”
My eyebrows shot up. “All right. Um . . . you always leave one bite of food on your
plate, even if you love the thing you’re eating.”
“I do no—”
“Yes,” I interrupted. “You do. Trust me, I’ve paid attention.” I set my hands on my hips
and stared into her face. “You hate using captions when we watch a show or a movie. We
argue about it every bloody time.”
“Because captions are annoying. I get distracted.”
“Yes, well, I’m older than you, and old people like having captions on. It makes it easier
to watch.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re thirty-five. You’re not old.”
“And your hair.” My gaze tracked over the messy knot at the top of her head. “Let’s
talk about your hair.”
Mercy shifted uncomfortably on the bed. “What about it?”
“If I find one more wadded-up nest of hair stuck to the shower tiles, I’m liable to go
mental.”
She was off the bed, eyes flashing as she poked her finger in my chest. “You have no
idea what it’s like to have thick hair, and it’s perfectly normal to shed up to a hundred
strands a day.”
“I could make an entire bedding set from what you leave in the shower during a week’s
time.”
Her mouth fell open. “Would you rather have it go down the drain? It’ll get clogged,
and I can’t imagine you’ll be happy then either.”
I leaned in and dropped my voice. “Then throw it away when you leave the shower, it’s
not that bloody hard.” I groaned. “And don’t even get me started on the way you hog the
covers. I used to wake up every fucking morning, dreaming of a day when my wife would
deign to share the blankets with me. It’s a miracle I haven’t come down with
hypothermia.”
Her jaw was set at a stubborn tilt. “Okay, you came up with that list really easily.”
I held her gaze. “Do you want more?”
“No,” she answered mulishly.
“Did it help?”
God, she better say yes. I felt the slightest crackle of electricity coursing under my
skin, sending my pulse sky-high.
Mercy’s eyes didn’t drop. “No.”
“Excellent. How about a list of what bothers you about me?”
She blinked. Blinked again. “You know that off the top of your head?”
“You hate that I make the bed immediately after waking. Sometimes I start tidying the
blankets when you’re in it, which is no small feat, since they’re wrapped around you like a
bloody burrito.” I licked my bottom lip. “You’ve threatened my life more than once for
that.”
Mercy pushed her tongue into the side of her cheek. “Yes, this helps. Ke ep going.”
“That I put my laundry away as soon as I’ve pulled it from the dryer.”
“You do not.”
I held my arms out. “Why would I wait? What’s the point?”
“Because everyone lets their clean clothes have a settling day,” she said, expression
incredulous. “It has to sit in the basket for at least twentyfour hours before I’m mentally
pr epared to fold it.”
“Trust me, I’m aware, because I trip over that basket every fucking week.” I touched
the end of her nose and she smacked my hand away. “Add that to my list as well.”
Mercy crossed her arms, color high in her cheeks. “What else?”
“You want more?”
“As much as you’ve got, Hastings.”
I grinned, smug and just on the edge of feral, and her eyes snagged on my lips and
froze as her throat worked in a swallow. “You hate that I always drive the speed limit.”
Her mouth fell open, eyes snapping back up to mine, wide with horror. “You do what?
That’s a suggestion.”
“It’s the law, Kincaid. Which you know, because you’ve talked your way out of twelve
speeding tickets since you turned eighteen.” I adopted an innocent expression. “Do you
know who’s never had to do that? Me.”
“I haven’t talked myself out of anything—I just happened to get really nice cops every
time.”
“Of course.” The sarcasm, thick and heavy in the way I dragged out the second word,
made her eyes narrow, her fingers curled up into a fist at her side. “Thinking about hitting
me, darling?”
“You have no idea.”
I dipped my chin. “Try it. The last time we said something similar— during an
argument much like this one—I had you flat on your back before you could blink.
Everything happened rather quickly after that, but I promise you weren’t angry for much
longer. Not with my mouth between your legs.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, dropping her gaze from my eyes to my mouth, then back
again. “I didn’t come here to have sex with you.”
“I know.” I canted my head, watching as she rolled her lips in and took a st ep back. The
distance allowed me to clear my thoughts. I couldn’t find it in me to be ashamed by how
quickly we’d turned this conversation on its head, because that was us. Had always been
us. We teetered on a constantly fraying tightrope where my composure was tested beyond
belief. She almost always snapped first, and that was the fun of it. When I knew she was
trying to drag me into the heat with her while it licked at her skin. “We quarrel over utter
nonsense on a regular basis. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Maybe.”
I sighed, allowing my expression to show her just how thoroughly I adored her. I didn’t
want to hide that any longer. It was too much work. I wanted her to see just how
completely I was hers.
“We don’t have a perfect relationship, Mercy. We never have. And I’m not trying to
capture exactly what we were before.” I spread my arms out and let them fall by my sides.
“The flowers and the phone calls and this stupid hotel room, it’s my incredibly imperfect
way of trying to show you how much I love you. You, Mercy. You. In every universe. In
every lifetime.”
She inhaled shakily, her eyes glimmering again as she searched my face. “Before, who
said ‘I love you’ first?”
Hope struck me like a lightning bolt, dead center and spreading out to my fingertips.
“You did.” I exhaled a laugh. “You were quite annoyed by it, actually. Yelled it. Like I’d
done something wrong.”
A tear slipped down her cheek. “I guess it’s fair, then, that you said it first this time.”
“I suppose.”
She took a st ep closer, and I held my body perfectly still while she reached up to touch
my face. Her fingertips were soft and cool as she traced the line of my jaw. My entire body
shook from the effort it took not to crush her against my chest and take her mouth in a
ferocious kiss.
“Damn you, Grant Hastings,” she whispered. “You have made it impossible not to fall in
love with you again. And if you ever think about leaving me before we’re old and wrinkled,
I will never forgive—”
I kissed her before she said another word.
I kissed her before she could take it back.
I kissed her as tears, hers and mine, mingled between our lips.
I kissed her.
And my wife kissed me right back.
Mercy flung her arms around my shoulders and sighed. I could hardly hear it over the
thunderous beat of my heart roaring in my ears. The hair on my arms lifted in goose
bumps when her cool, soft tongue sw ept against mine.
I wasn’t dreaming. I was awake and it was real and she was mine and I had her in my
arms. I’d never let her go.
I love you.
You came back.
You came back.
Don’t ever leave me.
I pulled back, hardly able to see her through the tears in my eyes. “Are you sure?”
It was her turn to brush the tears off my cheeks. She smiled, and my entire bloody soul
shook, like a key turned in the lock, and I could breathe again.
“I want you to come home,” she said, leaning up onto the balls of her feet to give me
another lingering kiss. “I don’t want to spend another night without you next to me.”
I kissed the tip of her nose first. Her cheeks and the arch of her brow and the bridge of
her nose. Her lips. Her perfect, lush lips. She opened her mouth, and I sw ept in my
tongue, groaning at the taste of her. I gripped her close, our bodies tightly pressed as we
stumbled toward the general direction of the bed.
Mercy slid her fingers underneath my T-shirt and sighed as she splayed them wide over
my stomach. I kissed down the line of her jaw and sucked on the skin of her neck, fingers
digging into the curve of her hips.
“Wait,” she said in a halting voice, though her fingers didn’t stop moving, tickling along
the line of hair that disappeared into the waistband of my trousers. “You said you’d be
good. I don’t want to make you . . . make you . . .”
“Make me what?” I sucked her earlobe between my lips and tugged with the edge of
my teeth.
She moaned, and that sound, bloody hell, that sound was like tipping a can of gasoline
over an open fire. There was nothing but heat. Flames. I’d let the world burn to ash before
I stopped what was happening here.
“I know what I want to make you do,” I murmured against her skin. “I want to make
you shake, my love. I want to make you squeeze so tight around me that I can’t fucking
breathe.” I gripped her face in my hands, gratified by the hazy look in her eyes. “I want to
make love to my wife.” I kissed her, achingly soft, speaking against her lips because I
couldn’t bear to pull away. “I can be so good and still do all that. Will you let me show
you?”
Her answer was an enthusiastic kiss while her fingers dug into my hair. Mercy broke
away from the kiss and started tugging at my clothes. I fisted the shirt behind my head
and tore it off. Her mouth fell open when she caught sight of my upper body, her dilated
gaze tracking down my stomach and to my rather obscene hard-on as it pressed against
the cotton of my track pants.
“I was just trying to be noble, but honestly, fuck it, that sounds like a much better
plan.”
I grinned into our next kiss, gripping her ass and hoisting her up into my arms as I
strode the last few st eps to the bed. With Mercy in the middle of the mattress, I
straightened, holding her heated gaze as I curled my fingers into the waistband of her
cotton shorts and the silk underwear beneath and tugged them off her legs. I licked my
bottom lip, nudging her cropped T-shirt above the bottom curve of her uncovered breasts.
I clucked my tongue in a disapproving sound. “Nothing underneath. Look at you.”
She arched her back at the slow drag of my fingertip around the hardened edge of her
nipple, that sweet pink color making my mouth water. I braced my hands on the bed on
either side of her hips and ghosted a kiss over the tip of one, then the other. Dragged my
lips down the line of her sternum and dipped my tongue into her belly button. Her stomach
trembled. Her thighs did too.
I sucked one breast into my mouth, eyes locked on hers as my teeth lightly grazed her
nipple.
She slapped a hand over her mouth to hide a loud moan, and I ripped it away.
“Let me hear,” I rasped. “I want every single sound.”
I kissed along her ribs, her hips, the ticklish soft skin on her lower belly, dragging my
fingers along the goose bumps on her soft skin. Mercy dug her fingers into my hair, a tight
grip that made me hiss through clenched teeth. I wedged my shoulders between her
thighs, pressing my hips against the mattress when she draped a leg over my back and
made a restless rocking motion.
Instead of lowering my head between her legs, I lifted my chin. “Eyes on me, darling.”
A shiver racked her frame, but my good girl, she did as I asked.
I licked. Long, slow, firm. Just the way she liked. Her stomach quivered, but her gaze, it
never left mine. I wrapped a hand around her thigh to hold her in place as I kissed
between her legs, de ep and tongue-heavy, a groan rattling from my chest when she
palmed her own breasts and watched me feast.
I’d make this so good for her.
It wasn’t our first time—not for her, definitely not for me. But this was the first time
that counted. When she could look at me with eyes wide open and know that my worship
of her came from a place of utter veneration, of the truest kind of love.
After a few moments, I pulled back, wiping my mouth and chin along the inside of her
leg. She bit down on her bottom lip, eyes flaring hot when I sucked on the skin of her inner
thigh. She liked when I left marks there.
“As much as I love feeling you beneath my tongue,” I said, prowling over her body until
my lips brushed hers, “I want to be inside you for the first one.”
I licked into her mouth on a chest-rattling groan. She cradled my jaw, sighing into the
luxurious, filthy kiss that tasted like her.
I stood, smiling faintly when she followed me with her mouth, a slight wrinkle of
disappointment in her brow. “Patience,” I instructed. “Hands above your head, now, love.”
Mercy’s lips quirked to the side, a mischievous glint in her eye as she arched her back
and did as I asked, her wrists crisscrossed above her head. She looked thoroughly
debauched, lips plump, shirt rucked up above her mouthwatering breasts, pink from the
sucking kisses and the stubble on my jaw.
Her eyes traced over my chest, shoulders, and arms as I untied the drawstring on my
sweats, lingering on the flex of my stomach. “Like what you see?” I asked.
“D epends on what you can do with it, Hastings.”
I growled under my breath, and her smile widened as my movements became jerky and
unfocused, shoving the sweats down over my hips and thighs until I could kick them off.
She clucked her tongue. “Nothing underneath. Look at you.”
I took myself in hand, moving my wrist up and down once. Twice. It was so fucking
gratifying, the way her breath hitched.
I prowled over her, gripping her wrists in one hand and taking her mouth in a
dangerous, de ep kiss. There was no stopping the painful, drumming urge to take her fast,
fuck her hard. Slow and sweet wasn’t for us. It never had been.
This was the way we made love. The way we’d always been.
Like the world outside us could collapse and we’d never know.
Mercy hitched her hips along my sides, whimpering into my mouth when I rolled my
hard-on against her center. When I teased her mindless. When I brought myself to a
shivering line where I imagined coming right there, right like that. We’d done that before.
We’d done so many things.
But this wasn’t the time to play.
She tugged at my grip, and I nipped at her bottom lip, a gentle rebuke that made her
buck underneath me.
“Let me touch you,” she begged. The hard tips of her breasts brushed against my
chest, her stomach pressed to mine as she arched her back. But I was too heavy, too
strong. The desire to fight me, even in this, was de eply ingrained in Mercy, and that was
what made it so good.
“Not yet.”
She moaned, chasing another kiss, which I gave her gladly. But I still didn’t release her
hands. “Fuck you, Hastings.”
I pressed her knee against my chest with my other hand and teased her opening with
short, shallow thrusts. “I’m trying to, darling.”
We kissed de eply, winding tongues and panting breaths, rolling hips and warm,
fragrant skin. We were nothing but sensation, and finally, I let go of her hands so I could
dig my fingers into her hair and tug her head back.
She clutched at my back, my ass, begging me silently to come inside her.
Mercy shook underneath me, and my entire world narrowed to a sharp point. To her.
Nothing but her.
With my mouth on hers and our eyes open, locked on each other, I adjusted my hips
and pushed forward, a long, slow slide, until I was buried to the hilt. Her eyes fluttered
shut, and I dropped my forehead against hers as I struggled to catch my breath.
“Perfect,” I whispered against her temple. “You’re so perfect.”
“Grant. Please.”
She asked so sweetly, took me so well, and there was no benefit to not giving her what
she wanted. What I wanted too.
So I did, in long, languid strokes, gritting my teeth at the wash of sensation as it
climbed up my spine, wrapped tight around my hips. As the room filled with the slap of my
body against hers, her sweet moaning sounds and the way she chanted, yes, yes, yes, and
right there, and oh God, Grant.
I wanted it to last forever. Wanted to exist in this space for the rest of my life, but only
with her. Only ever with her.
I’d sl ept with this woman hundreds of times. Countless moments of pleasure that
defied logic, because it always seemed to get better and better.
And this . . . this was somehow the best of them all.
The speed of my hips increased. Mercy’s breasts bounced with every thrust. Her thighs
started to shake. I slid my hand between us, pressing down with my thumb in tight, flat
circles that she liked.
“I love you,” I told her, holding her gaze as I did. “I love you.”
Another punishing thrust, and Mercy’s orgasm struck, her back bowing, her mouth
open on a silent scream, and the brutal tightening around me, the utter ease with which
she dismantled my composure, was like a splitting underneath my skin. I came a heartbeat
after her. I tucked my face into the curve of her neck and let it pour through my veins, hot
and thick and so fucking good that my head spun. I slowed my movements, turning my
head to kiss her again. Our kisses were soft and slow, and she was smiling.
She didn’t run.
She was here.
She came back to me.
I rolled us onto our sides, curling my arms around her back and waist, letting our legs
intertwine while we caught our breath.
Mercy hummed, dragging her fingers along the length of my sweatslicked spine. “We
don’t have to leave this bed today, do we?”
I smiled. “No. We don’t have to go anywhere.”
She opened her eyes. “Good. I have all sorts of things I want to try with you.”
“Is that so?”
“Do you think someone’s gonna make a noise complaint?”
“Oh,” I drawled, “I can guarantee it. You’re quite loud, you know.”
“You love it.” She snuggled into my chest, pressing a sweet kiss to the space above my
heart. It was hers, and now she knew it.
I set my chin on her head and sighed. “Yes. I rather do.”