The King Next Door

“Guess our night is over,” she said, reluctance obvious in her tone. “I’ve got to go.”

“Yeah, I know.” He lifted one hand and smoothed a wet lock of her hair back from her face, trailing his fingertips across her cheek as he did.

One touch.

He was on fire again with no hope of quenching it. One damn night. It might have been enough with anyone else, but with Nicole...

Connor’s voice reached for them from inside the house, reminding each of them that their night was over. That reality had come crashing down on them.

“You’d better go,” Griffin said quietly. He wanted to grab hold of her and keep her just where she was. But he couldn’t and he knew it. Didn’t make letting her go any easier, though.

She closed her eyes briefly. “Sorry this had to end so soon.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

“Is it...weird between us now?”

“Getting there,” he said softly. They were talking to each other like polite strangers when only minutes before he’d had his mouth on her breasts and her long, lovely legs wrapped around his waist. Yeah. It was weird.

Connor’s voice had shattered the moment between them and it was probably good that it had. Sex was simple. This situation with Nicole wasn’t. Best to remember that.

She nodded. “I thought it might be hard between us...after.”

Sure it would be, Griffin thought. Every time he looked at her now, he’d remember and want more. “Not gonna be the way it was, that’s for sure.”

“It was still worth it,” she told him.

“Oh, it really was.”

Smiling, she started to climb out of the tub, then stopped, sank lower into the water and looked at him. “This is going to sound ridiculous, but would you close your eyes?”

“Seriously?” He smiled in spite of the tension coiled in the pit of his stomach. “I’ve seen every inch of you.”

“Yeah, but that—” she waved one hand at the water, vaguely indicating what they’d just been doing “—was different.”

“You keep surprising me.”

“A good thing, right?”

“Yeah, I guess it is. You know,” he said, snaking out one hand to grab up her bikini, “you could just put these back on.”

“Takes too long to try to wiggle back into them in the water. Griffin, come on. Close your eyes for a second so I can go to Connor.”

Like nobody else, he told himself. Nicole was completely unique. How she could be shy or embarrassed after what they’d just shared was beyond him, but he was intrigued by her more and more. She was a complicated woman, he thought, smiling to himself. She didn’t react to anything the way he expected her to. She wasn’t easy to read and he found that exciting. Hell, Griffin had known how to deal with every woman he’d ever known, until Nicole. She kept him off balance, though—off his game—and, he thought, that might not be a plus in the long run.

“Fine,” he said finally and closed his eyes on that last, disturbing thought.

“Thanks.” He heard the water slosh and her feet as she stepped onto the top level of the stairs. “I’m going to grab your towel, too, since I forgot to bring one.”

“No problem.” His eyes were still closed, but his imagination worked just fine. In his mind, he saw her wrap the towel around her body. He saw rivulets of water running down her arms and legs and sliding down the curve of her throat and everything in him yearned to lick them all off.

“Okay,” she said, “I’m good.”

Griffin opened his eyes again and found reality even better than his imagination. She looked warm and wet and completely amazing draped only in a white towel. She watched him through blue eyes that still held a trace of passion, and damned if he didn’t want to grab her and pull her back down into the hot tub.

So much for worrying about being off-balance, he thought wryly. At the moment, he didn’t give a damn what she was doing to his equilibrium—he just wanted her.

But playtime was over and she was clearly moving into Mommy mode.

“So,” she said, inching closer to the back door, “this was great, and I’ll, uh, see you tomorrow, right?”