Abbi Glines - Take a Chance

This time when he grabbed my hips he sank inside me and bit down on my shoulder with a loud groan. That was exciting. Really exciting. He licked where he had bitten me then looked into my eyes. “I don’t have to pretend. I’m right where I want to be,” he said and slid his hands up my sides and covered my breasts. “Damn, these are nice.”

I leaned back on my hands and lifted my knees up his sides. “Don’t be gentle with me. You want to fulfill a fantasy, then use me to do it,” I told him. I didn’t want him using someone else to take my place. I was burning that out of his mind right now.

Grant swore and his hands clamped onto my hips and he began slamming into me over and over, his eyes never leaving mine. I slid a leg up and draped it over his shoulder.

“Holy fuck!” he yelled and grabbed my leg. He was losing his control, and the wild look in his eyes made me want to push him further.

I lay back until I was lying on the countertop and put my other leg over his shoulders. He turned his face and bit my leg while holding my gaze. I cried out. This was better than I imagined. Having sex in the kitchen was a major turn-on.

“Come here,” Grant ordered, pulling my hips up so close that my legs were draped over his back completely now. “You drive me fucking insane. Your plump little lips and big, round nipples, and these long-as-hell legs. All I want to do is stay buried inside you. You got me, Harlow. You fucking got me, baby. I . . .” he paused and groaned as the tremors of my approaching orgasm squeezed him. “I can’t fight this. I don’t fucking want to,” he finished, then both his hands landed on each side of my head. “Come with me,” he whispered, and I broke apart into a million pieces. I screamed his name and bucked underneath him while he chanted things about how tight I was and how good I felt. Every word out of his mouth sent me crying out in pleasure again. He had magic words. That was the only way to explain it.

I watched as Harlow stood outside on my balcony in nothing but one of my T-shirts. Her back was to me and the wind was making her hair dance around her shoulders. I had held her before I’d gone to clean up after our counter sex. Then I had to catch my breath.

I’d almost told her . . . I had almost fucking told her I loved her. Never. Had I ever. Almost. Told a girl. I loved her. Not even if the sex was hot. It had never even come to my mind, much less my mouth.

So now I had to figure something out.

Did I?

Was I in love with her?

She wrapped her arms around her front and leaned over to look down, causing the T-shirt to ride up and give me a glimpse of her ass. I was in love with that ass. I was in love with those legs of hers, too. But was I in love with her?

I watched her silently and felt the protective streak in me roar to life when I thought of someone looking up and seeing her in my T-shirt, looking like a sex goddess. I didn’t want anyone looking at her. She was mine.

She was mine.

Holy fuck.

She was mine.

I wasn’t ever letting her go, and I sure as hell didn’t want anyone else touching her. I wanted to hold her and keep her safely with me. It was irrational. It was . . . it was . . . I was in love with her.

I took a deep breath, preparing for the moment of panic to come along with this realization. But it didn’t come. I felt complete. The heavy weight I thought would come with this feeling wasn’t there. Instead, I could breathe deeper.

I moved from around the counter and went straight for the door. When I opened it, Harlow turned to smile at me. It was that perfect smile that could fix the world’s problems. I picked her up and carried her over to the lounger and sat down, cuddling her against my chest. I was feeling a little like a caveman at the moment, and I just hoped I didn’t beat my damn chest.

Harlow didn’t ask questions; she just tucked herself under my chin and wrapped her arms around me. Mine. All mine.

I was just going to have to convince her of this first, because although I had this figured out, I knew she didn’t. She didn’t trust me. Not with her heart. Even if she owned mine.

“Thank you,” I said into her hair.

“For what? Hot counter sex?” she asked with a smile in her voice.

“For you,” I replied.

She didn’t say anything else. That was Harlow. She didn’t ask a lot of questions. She didn’t want to always talk about things. She just took it in and accepted it. I just hoped she accepted that she was mine. Or more accurately, I was hers.

We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting there, talking. She told me about her grandmama. There was no wonder she was special. She’d been raised very differently from the other females in my life. She also did an adorable impersonation of her grandmother.

I told her about my dad and what it was I did exactly. Back when Dad married Georgianna, he had worked in construction. Now he owned his own construction company. His company was all over the Southeast. I helped him handle the Florida Panhandle. I managed things and checked on things when he needed me. I also dealt with phone calls he didn’t have time for.

I left out the fact I had ignored two of my father’s phone calls today. I wasn’t in the mind-set to talk business, especially when I’d just figured out I was in love. I needed to adjust to that first.

“I’m hungry,” Harlow said as she sat with her legs in my lap on the sofa.

I knew I didn’t have anything here to feed her. “Me, too. Want to get some Chinese?” I asked while playing with her little silver toe ring.

“Can we get takeout?” she asked.

I was all about keeping her to myself. “Sure. I can call and order it and they’ll deliver.”

She didn’t respond right away. She fiddled with her fingernails as if they had her answers. “Are you going to take me home tonight?” she asked, then glanced up at me.

“I was waiting until I fed you and buttered you up with a fortune cookie before I brought this up, but I want you to stay here tonight. I don’t want to take you back to Nan’s.”

She let out a breath and smiled. “Good. I don’t think I’m ready to walk back into that just yet. I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

I took her ankle and pulled her closer to me, making her squeal in surprise. “I’m all about keeping you here all the time. But tomorrow morning I have to do some work before I get fired. You don’t have to leave. You can stay right here. I just need to catch up on some things. Then I have a board meeting at the club at four.”

She scrunched her nose. “I didn’t think about how I was keeping you from work. I’ll leave in the morning. I have tennis anyway.”

Tennis.

I hated fucking tennis.

“I can be more fun than tennis,” I told her, crawling on top of her.

“Is this about Adam?” she asked, grinning up at me.

“Hell yeah, it is.”

Harlow laughed and shoved at my chest. “I don’t want Adam. I think I made that clear today. And yesterday, a few times.”

She had a point. But I wanted Adam to know it. “Okay, fine. Go to tennis, but if I come to watch while I work, don’t get pissed.”

Her eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t do that.”

I bent down to kiss the corner of her mouth. “Yes, sweet girl, I would.”

It was three days later before I went back to Nan’s. Grant convinced me to come back to his place every evening. When he wasn’t working, he was with me, and sometimes when he was working he was with me. Like during tennis every day. Grant sat on the porch that wrapped around the main clubhouse. He drank coffee and worked on his laptop.

Adam got the hint. He would’ve been an idiot not to. Grant made it very clear, going so far as walking me to the gate and kissing me until I lost my breath before sending me to each session.

Today, however, I had to go back to Nan’s. I couldn’t move in with Grant. We had to get over this hurdle with Nan. This was my house, too. I also wanted to talk to Mase without Grant around so I had privacy if Mase wanted to ask me about Grant.

When Grant got a call to drive two hours south to check out a site for his dad, he wanted me to go with him. But I needed some space to think. I felt like we’d gone from taking things fast to super overdrive. My heart was having a hard time keeping up.

I knew the moment I’d given myself to Grant that I had deep feelings for him. Then he’d destroyed them. I had thought it would take a long time for those feelings to come back, or even resurface. But I was finding out how wrong I was. They were coming back hard.

While watching Grant brush his teeth this morning as I shaved my legs, I realized that this felt right. It was easy. And it scared me. He was making me picture a future for us. But what kind of future could I give him? Not the one I’m sure he always wanted. He wasn’t in love with me. Falling into the daily everyday details of life with him was dangerous. Before, I was worried about getting hurt. Now, I knew I was going to get hurt. It had gone too far.

And I didn’t know what to do about it.

I was hoping Mase had some wisdom to share.

Nan’s car was gone when I pulled up to the house, and I breathed a sigh of relief. This was good. Maybe she was gone on one of her trips. I headed inside and stopped by the kitchen to get myself a bottle of water before going up to my room.

My room was just like I left it. Nan must have told the house cleaner not to go into my room. Not that I cared. I didn’t have a messy room, just an unmade bed. I set my water down on the table and sat down.