“But since it is…” I look up at him, waiting on him to assure me he’ll stay.
He does. “I’m not going anywhere just yet.”
That brings a genuine smile to my lips. “Good.”
He smiles, another smile that feels so much lighter than is typical. I never thought of Griff as being guarded around me, but the unguarded tenderness he’s shown me in just the last few minutes is so much different than how he’s been with me in the years we’ve known one another. It’s too drastic a change to have occurred in a few minutes, so I have to believe he held all these feelings behind some kind of floodgate. It fortifies my belief that I’m what came between them, that I’m the reason he had to leave.
I just didn’t know.
I never knew.
I feel like it should be impossible for someone to have these feelings and manage to keep them all separate. This must have been so hard on Griff.
Overcome with tenderness, I reach up to run a hand along his scruffy jawline. I smile softly, then work my fingers through his hair, around the back of his head. I pull him down for a kiss. He hasn’t even kissed me yet—well, on the mouth, at least.
His lips brush mine softly, like he’s afraid to be too demanding. Like he, too, still feels I’m not his to kiss. I don’t think about that. I close my eyes and give him access when he deepens the kiss just a little. I still want him. Arousal pools between my legs, even though he satisfied me. I run a hand down his torso and unhook the button of his pants. Next, I unzip them and shove my hand down the front, rubbing his cock through the fabric. Boxer briefs? I go for the waistband to shove my hand inside those, too, but he catches my wrist and tugs it out of his pants.
I break away from his lips to shoot him a look of confusion. “That has to come out if you’re going to fuck me.”
Laughing lightly, he says, “It does? Well, I guess I’ve been doing sex wrong.”
I frown. Despite his lightness, he isn’t looking me in the eye.
“What’s wrong?” I ask him. “Don’t you want to…?”
Now his gaze jumps to mine, startled. “I do. Of course I do.”
“Then what’s the problem? Is it Sebastian? He told me to do this—he swears he’s fine with it.”
Griff shakes his head, but breaks my gaze again briefly. “No, it’s not that. There’s nothing wrong, I just…” He meets my gaze, a little more firmly. “I want to take you out first.”
I blink at him. “Take me out? Like, on a date?”
“Yeah. You’re not some hooker I hired for the night; you’re Moira. If we’re going to do this, we should do it right. Not because Seb told you to. We should go out just the two of us. I should take you on a proper date.”
I grin up at him. That’s such a Griff thing to insist on. He already has me naked in bed, he’s already given me an orgasm, but he doesn’t want to have sex with me until he feels he’s fulfilled his gentlemanly duty by taking me out first. “All right, if you say so.”
“I’d kinda like to stay a little longer, though,” he tells me. His gaze drops to my breasts, but unapologetically this time. “I’d like to spend a little more time looking at these, too.”
“Look your fill,” I tell him. “Look, touch, taste—I don’t have anything else to do right now.”
So he does. It’s unspeakably tender, lying here in bed with Griff. We talk a little more, kiss a lot more, and he touches me all over. It’s so much different from what I’m used to. Sebastian loves me intensely, of course, and he pleases me so much, but I feel more like an extension of Sebastian than Griff. Sebastian treats me like something that belongs to him—that’s a given. Griff treats my body like a coveted treasure that he can’t believe he’s allowed to have. He savors the feel of my skin, the brush of my lips. He kisses me slowly, like he’s memorizing the taste.
It’s lovely.
When the door opens, I’m snuggled up on Griff’s chest, my head resting on his bicep, our hands twined together between us. I immediately let go and sit up, fear traveling down my spine. I still feel like I’ve done something irrevocably wrong, and when I see Sebastian walk through the door, all the justifying and insistence that he said he was okay with it flies right out the window.
The sight of my husband shouldn’t hurt, but I feel guilt weighing down on every part of me, threatening to crush me. It replays the sounds I made just a little bit ago when Griff had his face buried between my legs, the tenderness I felt for him while we snuggled and talked. The guilt is so heavy I can’t breathe properly.
This man is the only one I’m supposed to be doing these things with.
Sebastian walks in, by all appearances relaxed. My husband is the most capable man I’ve ever met. It takes a lot to shake him. He’s at ease in any given situation—and if he’s not, you’ll never know.
Now he’s stripped off his suit jacket and left it behind somewhere, probably in the living room. He’s wearing his white dress shirt, unbuttoned at the top. The tie he wore to work is long gone, but he’s still neatly tucked into his black slacks. The sleeves of his shirt have been pushed up to his elbow and he’s holding a glass with a couple fingers of amber liquid in the bottom.
I don’t look at his face until he pauses at the foot of the bed and raises the glass to his lips. I can feel his eyes on me, so even though it makes me feel sick to my stomach, I meet his gaze.
I feel changed, and I wonder if he can see it. I wonder if it’s real, or if I’m just worried his vision of me will be forever tarnished by this.