Lori wanted so badly to heal Grayson. He obviously blamed himself for what had happened with his wife. And she hated that he did. She wanted to clear away his pain and fill up the empty spaces with love.
But life, she knew, wasn’t always that easy. And sometimes having some fun despite the pain was all you could do.
She looked down at the picnic he’d packed, and teased, “Well, if you’ve got lunch, then I suppose you could have me as an appetizer first.”
The next thing she knew, he was throwing her up over his shoulder, pulling a thick blanket out of the other saddlebag, and carrying her down to the beach. She could easily have gotten back down on her feet, but what was the point of pretending she didn’t love this?
Just as she was going to let herself pretend, at least for the next few days, that this was a life she could stay and live forever.
They’d barely spread the blanket out on the sand before they were both reaching for each other.
“I don’t know how you do it,” he murmured as they stripped off each other’s clothes and he sat on the blanket and pulled her over him. “All I know is that I can’t stop wanting you.”
“I’ll show you how,” she said as she wrapped her arms around his neck and straddled his naked body. She loved the feel of the hard and fast beat of his heart against her own bare chest, proof that she affected him as much as he affected her.
She found his mouth with hers and kissed him softly, the salt spray from the ocean already on his lips. She knew she’d never forget this—making love to Grayson on his beach, his arms tight and warm around her. She could feel how much he wanted her, but he didn’t rush her, didn’t roll them over on the blanket and thrust into her, even though both of them would surely enjoy that, too.
He’d given her so much pleasure while also giving her back her confidence in herself as a beautiful, desirable woman—and now she wanted to give him back just as much. Lori knew she couldn’t fully heal Grayson, that she couldn’t change his past. But she could give him a few moments of sweet perfection in her arms.
Moments just like this.
She licked out against his tongue and he groaned his pleasure into her mouth as his tongue licked back. He made her smile, her rough and gruff farmer, even as she rocked her pelvis into his, his erection thick and throbbing against her slick skin.
But there was so much more of him she wanted to taste, to run her tongue, her lips, over. She rained kisses across his jaw, his five o’clock shadow scratching her lips in the most delicious way, then down beneath his jaw into the hollow of his neck where she had licked the rain from his skin just a week before.
The storm hadn’t only been brewing outside, it had hit both of them just as hard, just as suddenly. He said she made him forget, but he made her forget, too. Because one kiss, one caress at a time, Grayson had taken the place of every other man she’d ever been with—all of them nothing more than a prelude to the real thing.
To love.
She’d planned to run her hands over his broad shoulders, to kiss every inch of him, but the intensity of their passion for each other ran too deep for her to do anything but grab the condom he’d dropped onto the blanket, tear it open, and lift her hips up so that she could slide it onto his absolutely gorgeous erection.
Grayson’s entire body stiffened while her fingertips grazed his hard flesh, and she understood how hard he was working to keep himself in control for another few seconds—because she was doing the same thing herself.
“You’d better go faster than that,” he growled.
Lori was both grinning and panting as she decided to mess with him just the teeniest bit. “I’m going as fast as I can,” she said, even as she let her hands linger across him, her hips bump just a little against his, the tips of her br**sts slide over his rock-hard pecs as she fiddled with the condom.
“Like hell you are,” he said, and then he was taking the job away from her, his hands moving to her hips a moment later to hold her tightly as she finally took him inside, sliding down over his thick length one perfect inch at a time.
Her eyes fluttered closed, her breath rushing from her body as pleasure overtook her. When she finally figured out how to breathe again and opened her eyes, she found Grayson staring at her with such desire—and such wonder—that her chest clenched so tight that she could actually feel her love for him throbbing between them.
The only way she could keep from saying the words aloud to him was to cover his mouth with hers and focus every last cell, every last muscle in her body, on pleasure, on filling herself with his hard heat again and again and feeling him grow even bigger, even harder inside of her with every stroke.
“Grayson...” She couldn’t see anything but him, couldn’t think anything but his name, couldn’t feel anything other than the deepest pleasure she’d ever known in her life. And as the ocean waves crashed behind them into the jagged rocks along the coast, Grayson was her anchor as he held her so tightly on his lap that she could no longer move. She could only hold on as he thrust up into her again and again until she was crashing hard into a climax so beautiful she was nearly sobbing at the pleasure he gave her.
And as he called out her name, then exploded inside of her as she held him just as tightly as he’d been holding her, she didn’t have to wonder if her body had just told him of the love she hadn’t let herself speak aloud.
All that was left to wonder was whether he’d heard it, too.
* * *
The next afternoon, the sun was already starting to set by the time Grayson found her in the pigpen. “You’re just getting their stalls mucked out now?”
Lori remained amazed both by the way he managed to infuse each word with so much irritation, and by how cute she found it. Not rushing as she finished the final stall, she carefully washed off her rake and hung it up before saying, “I would have finished earlier, but someone made me late for work this morning by not letting me get out of bed.”
As she walked over to him at the gate, he made a face. “You really need a shower.”
“Well, you really are cranky,” she retorted even though she completely agreed with him about how nice a shower would be right about now. “Think a shower can wash that away, too?”
“You think this is cranky?” he growled as he took hold of her and dragged her around the side of the barn. “I’ll show you cranky.”