Page 8 of Claiming the Grump

She snatched the condom out of his hand, bit on the corner of its envelope and tore it open. That was another sight Keith committed to memory.

A quick shove made him fall onto the mattress, and Rachel reached for him, eliciting a sharp inhale. She rolled the condom on with confident strokes, but slowly. Too fucking slowly. She licked her lips and bent to kiss the base of his dick.

Too much. And yet not anywhere enough.

“Tempest. Rachel. Careful—I might come just like that.”

“Don’t you,” she bit the soft flesh of his inner thigh, “dare!”

And then she licked where she just had bitten. This woman was fire and ice and everything in between.

Keith grabbed her by the shoulders and flipped them around so that he was on top. The move was more aggressive than anything he’d ever done to a woman.

She beamed at him. “You need another invitation, Ginger?”

That cocky smile gave way to an expression of sheer pleasure when he plunged into her.

She moved with him like she’d decided how this was going to go and he was welcome to keep up. He did. The afternoon light came through the thin curtains in horizontal bars and caught in her hair, and he had the nonsensical thought that he was going to remember this light for a long time. Her eyes found his and stayed there. He kept them.

Her breath became ragged. Her fingers clamped on his back. He felt it before he heard it—she pressed closer and made a broken sound against his shoulder, almost a mewl. He stayed with her through all of it, and then followed.

He burrowed his face into the side of her neck until she tapped his shoulder. Reluctantly, he rolled off her.

She lay on her back looking at the ceiling with the particular expression of someone doing a quiet inventory of themselves and finding everything more or less accounted for.

He lay beside her and watched the ceiling too, her shoulder warm against his.

“This place,” she said eventually.

He turned his head. She was looking around now—the bare walls, the single lamp with no shade, the crates and boxes stacked against the far wall, the kitchen through the open door that had, he was almost certain, stood like this for at least two decades.

“Is bleary.” She scrunched her nose.

“I’ve got two knives in my kitchen and even three forks.”

She laughed—a real one, full, surprised out of her. He felt it in the center of his chest like a clean impact.

“This is transitory. I didn’t want to rent more permanently without knowing the town first.”

“Okay.” She considered that. “That is actually smart.”

Then her eyes landed on the crates with books, and her entire face changed. She sat up.

“You’re a reader.” She said it as an accusation, as if he’d been withholding evidence. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why should I have? It’s not like it was a great flirting quality.”

She was already swinging her legs over the side of the bed.

“You have got,” she informed him, walking stark naked across the apartment like she’d never once been insecure about a damn thing in her life, “absolutely no idea.”

She crouched at the nearest crate and excavated. He propped himself on one elbow and watched her pull out two books: the sci-fi novel that had been everywhere last spring, and the battered paperback collection of Thoreau’s essays.

She held them up. Looked from one to the other.

“A man of contradictions.” She tucked both under her arm and padded back across the room. “I like that.”

She got back into bed, arranged herself against the pillow and opened the Thoreau to somewhere in the middle. Not the beginning. She found what she was looking for—he could see it in the slight change in her posture—and started reading aloud.