| |
Grayson
So many moments. Moments where my body touched hers and our thighs squished together. So many moments where I easily could have wrapped my lips around hers and taken her right at that fucking table. We worked through the entire weekend plotting out our chart. Making sure we had the delivery down to a science. For days, I worked next to her, feeling her breath against my shoulder. For days, I worked alongside her, feeling her body heat reaching out for me. For days, my head spun. For days, my cock throbbed. The hold this woman had on me was too much, and there were times I made excuses just to get away from her.
Bathroom breaks.
Water breaks.
Walking outside to get fresh air.
I wasn’t sure how much longer I could take it. The tension between us was palpable. And it didn’t help that I knew what she tasted like. What she felt like against my hands. Ever since the little talk we’d had, I’d been kicking myself. Why the fuck had I told her that hooking up was a bad idea? We both wanted it. It was evident in the way she reacted to me. Sometimes she pressed into me and sometimes she held my gaze. And always, her eyes fell to my lips.
Always.
I couldn’t stop thinking about fucking her. Bending her over the couch and sliding our work off the table so I could drench it in her. Being so close to her and working with her was fucking me up. I could smell her hair. It would be nothing to reach out and tuck a strand of it behind her ear. If she turned to look at me, I felt her breath pulsing against my lips. If she moved to stand up, I felt her hip brush against my shoulder. Small touches that sent electric jolts of lightning down my spine.
Some of it even left me short of breath.
“What if we took this route?” Michelle asked.
She rose up from her chair and reached clear across the table as her shirt stretched up her back. The map easily covered the entire table, and she was trying to reach the fucking corner of the map. Her shorts crept up her thighs. Her arm stretched so far I could see the fabric of her shirt mold to her breast. I watched her raise her knee up and plant it onto the table, giving me the best shot of that rotund ass of hers.
I raked my hands through my hair and quickly stood.
“Why don’t we finish this tomorrow?” I asked.
She looked back at me with a shocked stare as her lips parted.
“We’re almost done. Are you sure?” Michelle asked.
Fuck me. That innocent stare. That truly confused look. She had no idea what she was doing. Sprawling herself out over that table and hiking her leg up. Wearing those clothes that molded to her curves and teasing me with the shadowed slope of her ass. It would’ve been nothing to rip my cock out and take her. To pull her shorts and panties down and slide into her warmth. Everything in me was heightened. Her scent enveloped me. That hot, salty scent of a woman that drove me absolutely wild.
“I’m sure,” I said, as I stepped back from the table. “I need a shower.”
“Oh. Okay. Then we’ll finish it up in the morning. Breakfast is on me this time,” she said.
She slid her body from the table as I bit down onto my lower lip. I didn’t bother arguing with her. I felt my cock soaking the boxers underneath my pants. I stalked down the hallway and slammed into my bathroom, literally pulling at locks of my hair.
I shut the door and stripped myself of my clothes as my aching cock hung thickly between my legs.
I turned on the shower as cold as I could stand it and got in. But it did nothing to calm my erection. The only thing it served to do was make me cold. Which only made me ache for release more. I reached down and turned on the hot water, ratcheting it up until it almost scalded my skin. I hissed as my hand wrapped around my thick dick as precum fell in thin streams to the floor of the shower.
“Michelle,” I said with a whisper. “Suck that cock.”
I closed my eyes and imagined those pouty lips around my shaft. Sucking it. Drinking me down. Hollowing those cheeks out for my viewing pleasure. I conjured the softness of her hair in the palm of my hand. How thick her hair had been twisted up in my fingers during that kiss. I stroked my cock faster as I imagined her head bobbing, my hand guiding her along my cock. Her tongue swirled. Raked along the throbbing vein underneath. I pressed my arm against the wall and leaned my forehead into my skin, feeling my toes already beginning to curl.
For days I’d put it off. For days I’d willed my cock to stay at bay.
But I couldn’t handle it any longer. My body physically hurt.
I saw her bent over the couch, her pussy swallowing my cock whole. Streaking it with her arousal as her juices coated me. I saw her pinned to the wall, helpless against my attack as I buried myself in her. Those moans when she ate. I heard the echo off the corners of my mind.
How sweet my name would sound falling off her lips.
I bucked into my hand. I felt my cock throbbing in my palm. I took her every which way in my mind. In my lap. On the balcony. In the back of that rental car. I saw her in the shower, dripping with hot water as her mahogany tendrils dropped down her back. I tasted her saltiness on my tongue as I devoured her pussy, watching her glorious curves jiggle for me. Oh, how those tits would bounce. I’d fuck her until she was nothing but a wave of desire crumbling against my arms.
“Michelle. Fuck. Yes. So tight for me. I’ve wanted that pussy. Give it to me. Squeeze me, Michelle. Holy—fucking—shit—”
My toes curled and my legs locked as my cock shot cum at blinding speeds. My body shook. My hand tightened around my girth. The shower spun and the room tilted as I stumbled. My shoulder caught the wall and my feet slid out from underneath me. I went tumbling to the floor as my cock continued to spew cum that had built up for days onto the shower floor. I crumbled to all fours, my head hanging as hot water sprayed over my body.
The sheer force of my orgasm hurt.
But the only face in my mind was hers.
That beautiful smile and those innocent eyes.
I slept soundly that night, but not for lack of dreaming about her. She ran rampant in my mind, but it wasn’t just sex. I saw us holding hands and walking around town. I saw us at my vineyard as I plucked a grape from the vine and fed it to her. I saw my arms wrapped around her as we stood on my private balcony, overlooking the decadent expanse of Napa Valley.
My eyes opened and I smelled waffles before the scent of coffee hit my nose.
“We’re going to have to pick up the pace today if we’re going to finish in time,” I said. “We need to start delivering today.”
“Which was why I wanted to finish last night. So I did.”
“What?” I asked.
“I stayed up and mapped out the best way for us to take these routes.”
She slid the map towards me and I looked at the final decision she’d made.
“You stayed up?” I asked.
“I did. Now eat, because we have to get on the road.”
“This is efficient,” I said.
“It’s not so much about delivering in a specific order as it is getting the flow of town. Stillsville is separated into four parts, if you look at it closely. Two outer rings and two inner rings. If we take each ring clockwise from the house, we’ll end up back where we need to be to load up without having to go out of our way in order to get back.”
My eyebrows shot up my forehead as I looked over at her. She leaned against the kitchen table with her coffee to her lips, but I knew the grin she was hiding.
I was impressed with her work.
“Then let’s finish breakfast and start loading up,” I said. “I’m paying you overtime for those hours, by the way.”
“What!? No you’re—”
“Sh!” I said.
Her eyes widened, but she didn’t fight me again. I picked up my waffle and ate it as I chugged some coffee down, then the two of us got to work. We loaded up my rental car with the possessions for the first round of deliveries, then we started out. And the pattern was the same. Michelle drove to each house and stopped at the curb, then I pulled out the possession for the person that lived there. I walked up to their door, knocked on it, and then delivered the speech I’d rehearsed in my mind.
“Anton Volk cared for you greatly. He cared for this town greatly. And as a last gift to you, he wanted you to have this.”
Their reactions were strange, but almost all of them were the same. Tears would fill their eyes and they’d bring me in for a hug, like I was the one to be thanked. Some of them were shocked to see me standing on their doorsteps and tried to strike up a conversation with me, but I kept everything short and sweet. We had a day full of deliveries and something told me more people would be hugging my neck before it was all said and done.
“Thank you so much, Grayson.”
“He would’ve been proud of the man you turned into.”
“Oh, I haven’t seen you since you were just a teenager.”
“What are you up to these days?”
“I’m so sorry for your loss. I know he meant a lot to you.”
So many sentiments that punched me in the chest. So many things I wanted to say to so many people. But it wasn’t about me. Not this trip. It was about Anton and how an entire community had been affected by his generosity. And the more doors I knocked on, the more I understood the love everyone had for him in this town. It was strange, listening to stories of him I didn’t even know. And it seemed everybody had a story. A small anecdote to share with me that brought a smile to their face and filled their hearts with grief.
“I’m going to miss that man.”
“He always had a sucker for Bobby.”
“Beautiful. That was how he made me feel.”
“Are you okay?” Michelle asked.
She pulled into the driveway as we prepared to load up the last of the items.
“I’m okay. It’s just—strange.”
“What is?” she asked.
“Knowing that all these people cared for Anton the way I did. I didn’t even know he knew them. They never came around when I was here.”
“Maybe they didn’t have to. Maybe he went to them,” she said.
“Maybe. They all have stories, you know? Stories that make him happy, just like he made me happy.”
“Are you worried that it somehow diminishes the relationship you had with him?”
I stopped inside the house as her question blanketed my mind. In an odd way, yes. I thought I’d been special to him. Taken in by a quiet man who didn’t have anyone. I had thought we were kindred spirits like that. He didn’t have anyone, I didn’t have anyone. So we didn’t have anyone together. But seeing how he impacted the community—how he impacted Michelle—almost made me wonder if I was ever special to him at all.
Or, if I was just another project.
“Look at me, Gray.”
My gaze fell to hers and I lost myself in her emerald eyes.
“Many people have memories of Anton. I have memories of him. And many people loved him. He was obviously a major cog within this community. But there was only one person he trusted to settle his estate. He only had one godson, Gray.”
Her words were comforting. Delightful, even.
I was beginning to see why Anton had taken her in.
The last route we drove, Michelle took a more active role. She got out with me at every stop and helped me through the last of the deliveries. She hugged people’s necks and brought smiles to their sad faces. She dried their tears with her fingers and kissed their foreheads, comforting them in their own time of grief. I saw a genuine outpouring of affection from her. An affection I’m sure she bestowed upon Anton many times.
Oh yes. I could definitely see why Anton was quick to let her in.
Michelle was beautiful and smart. Efficient in her work. She’d obviously been dealt a rough hand, otherwise Anton wouldn’t have let her stay with him on various occasions. And with every person we came into contact with, I watched her sympathize with their pain. I watched an empathy flow from her that not many people in this world had. But those people who did possess that trait all had one thing in common.
The hand they’d been dealt in life had been rough.
I wondered what her hand consisted of.
We drove back to the house in silence after the deliveries were complete. I took the wheel this time and Michelle sat there, staring out the window. All at once, the women I’d known in my life flooded my mind. The women who came onto me when I was playing in the NFL. How they tried to seduce me and hook me with the temptation of their bodies. I thought about how those women quickly disappeared after my injury, when I was fighting through my concussion. All of them said they cared, until I couldn’t whip out my wallet and pay for their dinners. Until I couldn’t fuck them stupid in their own beds. Until I couldn’t get up out of a bed to purchase them diamonds, rubies and golden rings.
I studied the lines of Michelle’s body. She was exactly the type of woman I’d pounce on. Thick. Curvy. A nice smile and plump lips. A thick head of hair to hang onto while I tore up her body, and curves that jiggled for my viewing pleasure.
Another wave of women came blasting to the forefront of my mind. The kind of women that flocked to me after my success at the vineyard.
They were of a higher caliber. Came from richer families. But they were still the same. Still gold-digging women. In their world, their merit was based on the physical pleasure they could bring a man, and my merit was based on the amount of money I could spend on any one given date with them. If I didn’t take them on my private jet to Italy for a special pasta dish for our first date, I wasn’t worth the time or the energy. I wasn’t worth the time they spent in the gym toning their bodies, and I wasn’t worth the hundreds of thousands spent on plastic surgery they pumped themselves with to look a certain way.
I pulled into the driveway and turned the car off, continuing to run my eyes along her form.
She didn’t have the fake nails or the layers of makeup. She didn’t have the dyed hair or the expensive jewelry. She didn’t give a shit about fashion and, based on our early interactions, she had no idea who I even was. It was rare for me to run into someone that didn’t know who I was. Mostly people recognized me from the NFL, but the more my vineyard took off and the more delicate my brand became, the more people recognized me from talk shows and interviews in Forbes and popular wine magazines.
Michelle didn’t seem like those women at all.
Just a small-town girl who was down on her luck and looking for someone to give her a break.
She wasn’t trying to siphon me for my money. If anything, she kept bucking against it. Something I wasn’t at all familiar with. She didn’t want it. At least, she made it seem that way. She didn’t strike me as the kind of girl that wanted a man to bankroll a life of luxurious laziness. She wasn’t part of the ‘Ladies Who Lunch’ crowd. In fact, she struck me as the type who mocked or scoffed at women like that.”
“Ready to go in?”
Her voice ripped through my mind as my hand opened the car door.
“Yep,” I said. “It’s been a long day. I’m ready for some food.”
“Sounds like a good idea. We didn’t stop to eat lunch.”
None of it mattered. As I unlocked Anton’s front door and let us both in, I realized none of it mattered. How different or mysterious she was. Or what we had in common and what we did not. I was scheduled for a flight out tomorrow night, which meant this town would be left behind. I would be using my morning to drive around the county to inform the tenants of his properties that their land was theirs, free of charge, then I’d head back to O’Hare and get the fuck out of Illinois.
But I wondered what Michelle would do once I was gone.
I wondered where she would go and what life had in store for her next.
