Page 1 of Rough Return

Fiona Strong was a genius. A woman out to get her man. She snapped the bustier, took a drink from her pilfered flask of vodka, and pushed her boobs up. Cleavage never hurt anyone and this thing gave it to her en masse. The overhead fluorescent lighting wouldn’t do much for her pale skin tone - might even make her look a little pastier than a usual redhead even - but she’d chosen the outfit knowing the mall wasn’t much for mood lighting.

For seven years, she’d done every damned thing she could think of to get Grier’s attention, from makeovers to not-so-subtle hints to standing beside his bike while she sucked a lollipop. She’d seen that one on a movie and the hero had practically had to stop, drop, and roll before he carried the heroine to bed. But Grier had shooed Fiona away like she had some sort of communicable disease. And for seven years, not so much as a kiss had passed between them.

Well, not today, cowboy. Today, Grier would see Fiona— and a lot more of her than her shorts and tank tops allowed him. And with a little luck, he’d feel her, too. Otherwise, convincing Daddy to make him take his twenty-year-old daughter shopping for clothes that wouldn’t fit in her closet was all for nothing.

She popped open the dressing room door and stepped out. Grier sat on a bench, elbows on his knees, blond head down, eyes on his phone. If she focused on his pretty face, she would lose the benefit of her Grey Goose courage, so she watched his hands instead. Long, semi-calloused fingers. She stood for a second imagining the delicious friction they would cause against her skin. A man like Grier knew passion, knew exactly how to bring a woman to the brink and he would. Even if it was her first time. Then he would send her shooting over the edge to real womanhood.

Focus, Fi.

She lowered her voice and waited until he glanced up to swipe her tongue over her paradise-pink painted lower lip. “What do you think?” She turned to the side and leaned against the door frame, not as much for support as because she knew from hours spent alone with a mirror that her curves played better at an angle. Grier needed to see and appreciate the full effect.

He looked down at his phone. “No.”

What the hell did that mean? “No, what?”

“It means no. No, I’m not going to let Max kill me because I let you buy that.” He lifted his chin again then turned it back down. “Now go change.”

He might have thought she missed the color in his cheeks, the way his grassy green eyes went dark and dangerous, but she didn’t. She also didn’t miss his cocked eyebrow to her non-reaction. In a planned response to his planned command, she pushed her boobs higher, gave a shoulder shimmy that would have caused a wardrobe malfunction if she’d thought to get the bustier one size smaller, then turned to head back through the louvered door.

The bustier was the least revealing of all the garments— okay, lingerie— she’d chosen to try on. Of course, before she walked out in one of the teddies or sheer camis, she’d need a few more shots from her flask.

Let the games begin.

* * *

Down boy. Dear God. If Max knew half the shit going on in Grier’s head, he’d not just kill him. He’d kill him slowly, take a piece at a time to toss up and down the east coast. You touch her, I’ll kill you. Grier looked down at his dick. It twitched with need. “Stop it.”

Truth told, this whole thing—impure thoughts and half-hard cock—was all Max’s fault. If he hadn’t forced Grier into babysitting Fiona while she tried on every provocative garment housed in the Prudential Center Mall, he would’ve been out riding with Kye, protecting the club’s interests instead of imagining the old man’s daughter naked and writhing underneath him.

He closed his eyes and counted to ten, then shifted in his seat to relieve some of the below-the-belt pressure threatening to make him sterile before his time, but it didn’t work. His dick still throbbed against his zipper. And when Fiona opened the dressing room door again, any blood left in his brain shot straight south of his equator.

Holy shit. Sheer. Black. A satin robe. Miles of leg covered in fishnets and secured by a red and black garter. With bows. Fucking bows. And the cleavage. She turned a slow circle and the robe flared, also did nothing to cover the thin line of fabric between two luscious ass cheeks. She opened the robe in front, and his tongue rolled back in his head. Her nipples poked the fabric into points he wanted to put his mouth around. And by wanted, he meant… really wanted.

Sheer wasn’t the right word. Transparent. See-through. Fucking fabulous.

He coughed, choked, lost any breath he might have been able to draw, then stood and held his leather jacket in front of her. If anyone saw her dressed like this, Max would heat a steel pipe and poke his eyes out. Grier forced her back into the dressing room.

And it wasn’t until she shoved him onto a small chair inside and straddled his lap that he realized his mistake.

She ground her hips against his cock as she latched her lips onto his throat. He should have stood and pushed her away but each delicious swirl of her tongue and every pull of his skin as she sucked the vein just below his jaw went straight to his dick. Coherent thought took a minute to break through the haze of want and need and desire so thick he groaned.

“Stop, Fi…o…na.”

She guided his hand to her left breast. Her perfect left breast, which probably matched her perfect right breast. The thought didn’t play well with his good intentions, and he closed his eyes as she used her hand to swirl his over a pert and already pebbled nipple. He snapped his jaw shut to keep another moan tucked in his throat.

Too many more of those hip rotations and he’d lose his fucking mind. She dragged her mouth up his throat to his ear. Breath hot, she whispered, “Take me, Grier. I want you to be my first.”

His brain, rather the mush she’d left behind, finally joined the party. He stood, and she slid down his body, making the space that should have been between them irrelevant. The robe pooled at her feet and she slipped the straps of the nightie down her arm so that it fell to join the robe.

Oh, dear God. Max would kill him.

Rather than reach out and haul her against him the way he wanted to, he exhaled from deep in his gut and walked out.

The plane lurched, and Fiona’s fingers curled around the armrests, her white knuckles the only indication of her sheer terror. She breathed out slow and glared at the sleeping man in the seat next to hers. The traitor. The only reason she would die if the plane plummeted from the sky. Grier fucking Owen.

And wasn’t it just some bullshit karmic justice that island life agreed with him? Made him prettier than before. Yeah. She could admit it. To herself and no one else, but admit it, anyway. He’d always been gorgeous. Now, though, blonder. Tanner. More muscular. Probably even taller.

It didn’t matter. She owned him now. Or she would once Max - and boy, did he hate when she called him that instead of Daddy - finally quit hanging onto a life that didn’t want him anymore. The thought caused an ache in her chest.