Page 7 of Claiming the Grump

She kissed like she did everything else: deliberate, a little audacious, not asking permission for anything.

“Wait.” She pulled back. Not far. Just enough to look at him. Her palms were flat on his chest, and she was watching his face with those warm brown eyes like she was reading a text in a foreign language and getting the gist of it . “I hate to have to ask, Ginger, but I have standards. Are you single?”

The question caught him off guard, and his shoulders came down an inch he hadn’t noticed they’d been holding. He found himself smiling before he answered. “This is just my second day in town, and I haven’t met anyone but you.” He reached up and tucked a curl behind her ear—couldn’t help it. “And I’ve left nobody behind, if that’s what you think.” He respected that she’d asked outright, that she wasn’t going to play the game without knowing the rules.

She began pushing the shirt off his shoulders, and he let her. “No trail of broken hearts in your wake?”

He snorted. “Not to my knowledge.”

She got the shirt the rest of the way off and dropped it somewhere behind him. Her eyes made a brief, frank assessment of what she’d uncovered.

“Hm.” She brushed her hand across his chest.

He watched her satisfaction at the result with more pleasure than he had any right to.

He discovered fairly quickly that she gave as much as she took, which he should have predicted—nothing about her had suggested otherwise. She pushed back when he nudged forward, she bit where he expected her to yield, and when he walked her back toward the bed, she rerouted them sideways, so she was the one deciding when they stopped. He would have smiled, except his mouth was occupied.

He’d always been thorough. It was one of his more reliable qualities. He catalogued what she responded to—a sharply drawn breath when he found a particular spot on her waist, the way her chin tilted up when he kissed her neck, the small, demanding sound she made that communicated more with complete clarity. He got the sound again by repeating the thing that caused it, just to confirm the data, and she made an impatient noise at him that clearly meant stop running experiments and do that again simultaneously.

He worked his way down the length of her spine, unhurried.

There had been a theory forming since the bar—a hypothesis about the woman who’d sent a stranger his own drink back as a joke and walked out with her hand briefly warm on his shoulder—and the evidence was accumulating. She was a spectacular hypothesis.

She was also watching him. He became aware of it when he got to the small of her back, the quality of her stillness shifting from pliant to attentive. He pressed a slow kiss to the base of her spine and felt her exhale.

He gave her butt cheek a little nibble and worked his way down her thigh.

“Legs?” She squirmed in protest. “We’re beyond legs now, Ginger.”

“Nuh-uh.” He hummed against the soft skin in the hollow of her knee. He liked the feel of the vibration.

“Ginger, I’m telling you…”

“Patience, Tempest. Patience.”

He took his time exploring her all the way down to her foot. And there he was rewarded: small, dark ink against the inside of her ankle. A frog, crouched and about to jump. He ran his thumb across it, tilting his head. “A frog?”

“Sometimes,” she said from somewhere above him, her voice a little unsteady, “you have to take a leap.”

He kissed the frog. Felt her breath go ragged. It was time to leap. He reached for the nightstand, and she made a sound of pure relief that he would be thinking about later—for a while, probably. He fumbled with the drawer. His hands, which performed precise functions in professionally stressful situations, were not at their steadiest.

He got the condom. Turned back to her.

She was already reaching for him.

“Tempest.” He’d never had sex with someone he didn’t know the name to. And he would not start today. He had his standards, too.

“Hm-mm?” She had her hands on his shoulders, her warmth close enough to almost short-circuit thought.

He held still, which took some effort. “What’s your name?”

That landed. He could see it—some part of her coming back to the room, the warm daze clearing just enough to register what he’d asked. She blinked.

“Rachel Grant.”

“Hello, Rachel Grant.” He shifted forward, just barely. “I’m Keith Larsson.”

“Keith Larsson.” She tipped her head back. “Stop talking.”