Page 30 of Always Been His

“Grayson. You and I…” she starts, her chin lifting, her voice pitching down into the tone she uses when she has decided to fight. “We’ve been doing this for two years. You cannot just stand here in front of half the town and act like you don’t know me. I haven’t done anything to you. I haven’t been a problem. I haven’t asked you for anything. So, whatever you’ve got going on this week, you do not get to take it out on me at Dom’s birthday⁠—”

“I never led you to believe there was …”

I stop mid-sentence, because a hand slithers across my chest.

“There better not be.” Sienna’s honey voice floats up between Annie and me, low and amused, razor under the sweetness. “I have a really big jealousy streak. You don’t want to see it. It’s the only ugly thing about me.”

The smell of her hits first. Coconut oil and the vanilla extract Iris bakes with. Then the heat of her lands along the whole back of me. She steps up behind me and presses in close, her chest flush against my shoulder blades through the lace of whatever she is wearing, her breasts soft against my back, and she hooks her chin over my other shoulder the way she has been hooking her chin over my shoulder since we were teenagers. Her hand splays flat over the front of my chest, palm hot through my shirt.

It’s been years since Sienna Rhodes has touched me on purpose, and my body responds before my brain catches up. The blood drops low and fast. The muscle in my jaw locks. My hand at my side curls into a fist and uncurls and curls again because if I don’t give it something to do, I’m going to do something with it I cannot do in front of a party full of people.

“Hi,” Sienna says, leaning around the side of my throat to flash a smile at Annie. “Thank you for keeping my boy warm for me, sweetheart. It has been hell getting out of the house tonight.” Her breath is hot against the shell of my ear when she turns her mouth to it. “I am so sorry for running late, baby,” she whispers, loud enough for Annie to hear. Her lips brush the curve of my ear. “Forgive me?”

I tilt my head a half inch toward her.

“Songbird,” I murmur, low enough that only she catches it, “you’ve done far naughtier things to deserve punishment, don’t you think?”

“Hmmm, no.” Her thumb sweeps another lazy circle below my collarbone. My stomach drops and my cock twitches in anticipation, and I have to physically lock my knee to keep from shifting toward her.

“Liar,” I growl, turning to look at her.

She flutters her lashes, the hazel of her eyes flashing gold with every blink, and without thinking about anything but how breathtaking she is, about how this is my one chance to pretend that everything went the way it was supposed to two years ago, I close the inch between us.

Her lips part underneath mine on a soft little breath that punches into the middle of my chest, and I bring one hand up to cup her jaw. I taste her sticky pink gloss and the rum on her breath and the vanilla extract clinging to the side of her neck, and I don’t give a single fuck which of the forty people behind me are watching.

She makes a small sound into my mouth.

I pull back half an inch. She doesn’t open her eyes.

“Hold on. Oh my god.” Annie’s voice drops, her eyes flickering from Sienna’s mouth at my ear, to the freckles across the bridge of her nose, to the royal blue of her hair, and the woman who has been fucking me for the past two years goes pale in under three seconds.

“You’re—”

“Sienna.” Sienna unhooks her chin from my shoulder long enough to flash Annie a slow, dazzling smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Just Sienna tonight, babe. Iris’s friend in town for a visit. I would love it if it stayed that way for everybody not currently standing in this circle.”

“Sienna.” Annie repeats it like a word in a foreign language. Her eyes drag back to Sienna’s hand on my chest. Her mouth flattens. “Right. Gray?”

I look up at her as Sienna’s fingertips run along the nape of my neck. “Yeah.”

“Call me back when the popstar leaves.” She picks up her purse from the bar and switches her hips into the crowd.

Sienna watches her go, but I keep my eyes on her. The warm lights from the bar make her skin shine like freshly polished copper. The highlights on her face make her sparkle like an angel.

“That was rude,” she murmurs at my ear, her chin sliding back onto my shoulder. “She really doesn’t understand no or taken.”

“Birdie,” I sigh, my hand mindlessly rubbing her wrist and she gasps.

I take her wrist tighter and pull her around so she’s in front of me, her ass skimming my thigh on the way, until she is standing in the V between my knees with her back to the bar. I hook one finger into the thin line of her thong showing at her hip and tug her the final inch closer. Her thighs slot against the inside of mine. Her skirt rides up half an inch against my jeans, her free hand catches the open collar of my shirt to keep her balance, and the entire front of her is one accidental shift from finding out exactly what she is doing to me down there.

She is wearing a black pleated leather mini skirt that hits her mid-thigh, a cropped, oversized black t-shirt that falls off one shoulder, and lace-up open-toe boots that go halfway up her calf in a way that should be illegal in the state of Maine. Her hair is out. She’s wearing a silver hoop in her nose I haven’t seen on her since she was nineteen. Two rings on her right hand. A hint of pink gloss at the corner of her mouth that I smeared there.

She is dressed like a rock star.

“I thought I told you,” I murmur, low, my fingers playing with the thong, “to stay out of my way.”

“Mm-hm.” Her free hand finds the front of my shirt. “But did you mean it?”

“Songbird.”