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“He doesn’t know what he’s missing out on. Besides, I don’t have time for a man who doesn’t appreciate this kind of awesomeness.” Twirling around, Jade puts herself on display and I see Ian checking her out.

Jade hands me the other beer, whispering, “He’s single, right?”

“Yeah, but–”

“No buts needed. Just wondering,” she dismisses whatever warning I was about to give her. “Oh, Ian,” she beckons. “Would you mind helping me in here with something?” Crooking her finger, she calls him down the hall where the bedrooms are. Needless to say, Ian follows behind her like a dog with a bone. Chugging down my beer, I try not to think about the two of them. It’s too hot and I’m too thirsty to keep my mind on anything but finishing the beer.

“What are they up to?” Grace asks, walking into the living room. Wearing those bright yellow cleaning gloves and a pair of cut-off shorts and a tank top, she still looks damn hot. With her hair piled high on top of her head, all I can think about it letting it loose and tangling my hands in it.

“Who the hell knows? But with the two of them, I’m sure once they figure it out the whole world will know about it.”

“So what do you think?” she asks, walking me into the kitchen. Spanning her arms to the side, she stands in front of me. “Squeaky clean, huh?” Dropping my empty beer into the trash, I let out a whistle.

Wrapping my arms around her from behind, I nuzzle into her neck. “I think it looks clean enough for all the takeout in the world.”

She elbows me in the side before spinning in my arms. “Shut up!” she defends. “I can cook my ass off.”

Digging my fingers into said ass, I stare down into her sparkling blue eyes. “This ass?” I question on a squeeze. She nods, swallowing hard. “I like this ass,” I whisper into her ear, loving the fact that she pushes into my groin. “But I’m not buying the whole cooking thing. You’ll need to prove that to me, Miss McCann,” I joke, dancing kisses along her jaw.

“Fine,” she sighs, stretching her neck to the side, letting my lips move wherever they please. “I’ll prove it to you, but . . .” Her words die out as my teeth sink into her earlobe. Licking over the bite, she groans and her body melts against mine.

“But what?” I kiss behind her ear. Pulling away from her, she moans.

“What?” A dazed and heated look falls on her face.

“You said you’d prove it to me, and then you said but, and then you just stopped talking.” Arching a brow, I can’t wait to see what she comes up with.

“Oh, um. Yeah, your tongue made me forget,” she admits, a touch of pink coloring her cheeks.

“Oh, sweetheart,” I pull her tighter in my arms, letting my lips move against her ear. “I haven’t even had a chance to prove to you all my tongue is capable of.”

“Ahem,” Ian calls out from the opening separating the kitchen from the living room. “Are we interrupting?”

“Yes,” I lament, shooting him an annoyed look.

Walking into the kitchen, he goes to the fridge and pulls out two more beers. “Oh, good.” He laughs, twisting the top off one and handing it to me. He opens the other and takes a long pull on it.

Totally ignoring the fact he’s being a jerk, Grace hands him a stack of takeout menus. “Whatever you want,” she offers. Ian’s face lights up, a sexual innuendo on the horizon. “From these.” Shaking the papers, she brings his attention to them. “For dinner. As a thank you for helping.” Looping one arm around Ian’s waist and the other around mine, she adds, “Seriously, thank you both so much for everything. My parents were busy with work this week and if it weren’t for you two, I would have had to do it all myself.”

“Hey,” Jade calls out, offended. “I would have helped.”

Grace laughs. “You carried the box of pillows.” She calls Jade out on her lack of effort in the actual moving.

“I would have called a moving company. You know where a bunch of hot men come in a haul everything for you, but”—she tips her chin at me and Ian—“since you already found some muscle, I didn’t have to do anything. You did my job for me.” Her simple yet ridiculous explanation is met with loud laughter from Grace.

After a few more minutes of laying into Jade for her
help,
we all decide on pizza for dinner. Even though they have delivery, I offer to pick it up, Ian joining me for the ride.

“I was wrong,” he admits quite bluntly as soon as I’m buckled in.

“What?” I turn in my seat, not entirely sure I understand what he’s getting at.

“The other day. I laid into you about being so serious with Grace. I was wrong.” His honesty and realness catches me off guard. “Guess it hit a little too close to home for me.”

“Okay,” I answer, still a touch skeptical.

“And I guess I’m just trying to apologize for being a shit lately. The crude comments, the sarcastic digs. It’s me being in a shitty place.”

“Yeah, but without the comments and digs, no one would know it’s you.”

“This is true.” He scratches his chin, considering my remark. “Yeah, you’re right,” he jokes, proud of himself.

“Asshole.” Starting the car, I laugh at him because despite being an asshole, and making a handful of comments about me and Grace being too serious too quickly, he is my best friend.

“This is also true.” With smugness on his face, he looks out the window laughing.

“So are we good on the girly feelings and shit?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the road.

He nods, silently answering me as he turns up the radio.

And with that, all is well.

“Good pizza. Great friends. A new apartment,” Grace announces, crumpling up the last of the garbage from dinner. “What more could a girl ask for?”

“Don’t forget the champagne,” Jade adds with a touch of a slur in her voice, raising her glass.

“Yes, and the champagne. Courtesy of my ever-thoughtful boyfriend” Grace says, slurring a bit herself before yawning. “Man, am I exhausted.”

“Me, too.” Jade stands, stretching theatrically. “And I’d stay and help you unpack. Really I would. But I have work in the morning. And there’s a train in like twenty minutes so I should get going.”

“I’ll drive you back,” Ian chimes in, nearly jumping from his seat on the couch.

Jade agrees all too easily and again Grace and I are left standing there dumbfounded about our two friends.

Standing by the door, I watch Ian close Jade’s door behind her. His face is lit up like a kid on Christmas, but he simply shrugs at me, before sliding into the driver’s seat.

When I close the door, and turn back into the living room, Grace’s eyes are hooded. She’s looking me up and down as she struts over to me. “You mentioned something before about this magic tongue of yours.” Her words, seductive as all hell, send a rippling force of need over my exhausted body. She pushes me up against the door, trapping me between it and her soft, lush body. “But we both know I’ve already experienced your tongue more than a few times. I think it’s time I show you what my tongue,” stretching up, she licks a hot path along my neck, “and lips,” she kisses along my jaw, “and hands,” reaching down, she palms my dick through my shorts, eliciting a low groan, “can do when they all work together.”

“Grace,” I protest. “You don’t–”

“What?” She pulls away, insulted. “You don’t want me to?”

“No that’s not what I meant, at all. It’s just what happ–”

Cutting me off, she attacks my mouth with hers, stopping the rest of my words before they can even fall from my mouth. “What happened with that asshole is not what’s happening with us.” Her voice, so strong and assertive, lets me know not to fight this.

Shaking my head, I realize I may be the only man in the history of men to ever say, “You don’t have to,” to an offer on a blow job.

Her fingers work at the button and fly of my shorts as her lips work against my neck. Growing impossibly hard, my body aches for her touch, but she doesn’t give it to me. “Gracie,” I beg as her tongue traces heated lines up and down my neck.

“What?” she teases, running her hands under my shirt. Lifting it up over my head, she tosses it to the floor.

Grinding my dick into her hip, I pull her body hard against mine. “You know damn well what,” I mutter into her ear.

“Oh, so then you’ve changed your mind.” Arching a brow, she looks up at me, mischief dancing in her eyes.

Holding her face in my hands, I stroke my thumbs over her jaw. “I never didn’t want it. I only wanted to make sure you were ready.” Our mouths come together in a soft, passionate kiss before I add, “And I’m also an ass.”

She laughs, slapping a hand to my bare chest. “Yes, you are. But you’re my ass.”

“Oh, I like the sound of that.”

“What? Being called an ass?” she jokes.

“No.” I kiss her once more. “Being called yours.”

Her lips pull up at the corners and I’m gifted with a warm, beautiful smile. Lacing her fingers with mine, she pulls us away from the door, down the hall, and into her bedroom. It’s a mess, boxes tossed all over the place and clothes sitting in piles on every surface imaginable. Her mattress is sitting on the frame, a sheet loosely draped over it.

Even if there’s a need for them, there’s no room for any words. The only thing there’s space for is the heated need brewing between us. With our eyes locked together in a force that would rival the gravity of a star, we stumble toward the bed. Wrapped in each other’s arms, we fall to the bed. She rolls us so that she’s straddling my hips.

So slowly that it’s bordering on torturous, she glides the tank top over her head, letting it drift to the floor. As if drawn to her body by some kind of magnetic force, my hands move to her breasts. “No hands. No touching,” she demands, reaching behind her to unhook her bra. For the briefest of seconds, I question if she’s had too much champagne, but the brightness in her eyes tells me this is all her.

It’s all Grace.

Leaning her body down onto mine, her soft skin brushes against mine. Pressing her lips to my ear, she whispers, “I want to take care of you, like you’ve taken care of me.”

Moving to kiss her, I’m more than frustrated when she pulls back. Laughing softly at me, she says, “I told you.
I’m
taking care of
you.
” To prove her point, and test my control, she licks the seam of my lips, forcing them to part. Her tongue dives into my mouth, demanding kisses in return. Fisting the sheet at my sides, I exercise as much restraint as possible in not touching her.

But the lush curves of her creamy, soft skin are taunting me, teasing me. With every move, her skin sets mine on fire. Trailing kisses down my neck and chest, she licks a path down the center of my stomach, smiling up at me when my muscles twitch. Lifting my hips as she tugs on the waistband of my shorts, I give her the help she needs to rid me of the rest of my clothes.

“Your body.” Her inhale is ragged as she searches for more words. “It’s beautiful,” she says, moving her lips once again across my stomach.

As she moves further down my body, she wiggles out of her shorts, adding them to the pile with mine. Clothed, she’s the ideal image of beauty, but naked, and poised between my legs, looking at me with passionate hunger in her eyes, it’s like being sent an angel directly from Heaven.

A flash of uncertainty mars her serene face. Throwing away her
no touching
rule, I pull her up into my arms, letting her head rest on my chest. “Shh,” I whisper, kissing against her temple.

“I just want to make you happy,” she admits. “And I started to get worried it would suck.”

“Aww, sweetheart,” I laugh. “It’s supposed to suck.”

She looks up at me, confused. Then she gets it.

Yes, I totally just made a ‘suck’ joke regarding a blow job.

Slapping a hand to my chest, she laughs.

As our laughter subsides, sparks of electricity race over my skin where her hand is. Covering it with my own adds to the feeling. Angling her head, she looks up at me, innocence and eagerness mixing in the ocean blue depths. With one last kiss to her forehead, I guide her hand down my body.

When her long fingers under my own wrap around my dick, my body trembles. Pushing up into our grip, I have to bite my lip to keep from coming in her hand. “Like this?” she asks, knowing full well that everything about the way she’s touching me is fucking perfect. All she gets is a low growl of approval.

Within a few strokes, we catch a rhythm and I remove my hand, letting her find her own pace. Watching her look down at my cock disappearing under her hands, I see the fire and passion in her eyes. Her tongue licks at her lips, hunger pulsating from her body. The whole thing is too much for me to take. Moisture trickles over her fingers, trailing down to the base of my cock.

Staying on my side, she slides down my body, kissing along my ribs as she moves. Hooking her leg over mine, I feel her wet heat on my leg, making me harder than I’ve ever been in my life. With her hand wrapped around my dick, she inches closer with her face.

A flick of the tongue is all it takes to make me writhe next to her. “Did that hurt?” she asks, worry pulling her brows together.

“Seriously?” Combing my fingers through her hair, I kiss her head. “The only thing that hurts right now is that you stopped.”