Fall From Grace (25 page)

“Do you have any idea what you do to me, Grace?” His voice was low and husky, and he gazed at me, ice blue eyes concentrating hard.  It took my breath away.  “Just one.  Grace...”

His slow deliberate hands moved over my skin, fingers trembling. It unleashed an inferno that coursed through my body. Every move he made was so freaking erotic.

“Just one,” I whispered.  Then his lips touched mine.  It was barely a kiss; his lips hovered over mine, taking the briefest of moments to savor the intensity.

I told myself, just one, a little one, then that would be it. I would stop myself from going too far.

“Grace,” he sighed and his lips devoured mine.  I fell completely apart in his arms, his touch unraveled me, and his kiss brought me back together; complete.  I wanted all of him; I wanted to taste every inch of his body.  I moaned desperately into his mouth and he pulled me closer.

He clasped my hands above me and yanked the tee shirt over my head.  He tilted his head back appraising me, and then let out a long faltering sigh.  He trailed kisses over my neck and shoulders, and across my torso, leaving a burning sensation in their wake. Gently, he grazed my skin with his teeth, biting me softly.  Every place he touched me echoed in my groin, making me breathless.

Yanking the cup of my bra down, he licked me in circular motions; my nipples hardened, I could feel the moist sensation all the way in my groin.  He touched me as if he couldn’t get enough, like I was the first woman he’d ever touched, I shuddered in response to his fingertips.

My fingers ran down the lean muscles of his chest and settled on the button of his jeans, undoing them with the snap of my fingers.  His hands slid over my legs up to the button of my jeans and I did the same. He leaned back and grinned wickedly, which made the deep parts of me ache with want even more.  Thick hot desire burned in my belly.

Watching me, he laid his hand flat against my belly, dipping his fingers slowly between the material of my panties and my skin.  My body hitched up towards him with longing.  His fingers kept traveling down, ever so slightly, and my body throbbed for them.  I quivered and his breath faltered again, as he watched my breathless reaction.  Our breathing amplified in the small confines of the Jeep.  He dug his teeth into my bottom lip and moaned; I rocked against him.

I slipped my hands past his waistband and tugged gently as my hands grasped his smooth hard skin.  He closed his eyes, his breathing caught.  When he opened his eyes again, his gaze was scorching, wanting, needing.  I felt his legs tense under me; he throbbed in my hands.

His lips touched mine again, breathing me in I like was his air, then he tore his mouth from mine; panting.  “Please, Grace, whatever it is you’re going after, please try to find it here in me. I will try my best to be the man that you need me to be.”  His words brought me back to earth, and sent me reeling, as I realized where our hands were.  I pushed against him and leaned back.

I cupped my hands over my swollen lips and tried desperately to get off him.  I was astounded by what I had almost let happen, what I still wanted to happen.  “Shane, I’m sorry.”  I felt my eyes go wide and filled themselves with tears.  I looked out the window, I looked up, down; I was frantic.  I started the engine and blasted the heat; ice-cold air filled the small space.  My body convulsed and raged against my decision to stop kissing him.  I squeezed my hands around the steering wheel just to keep them off him.

Shane lightly placed his hand on my chin and pulled my face towards his.  I flicked the heater even higher. The noise from the vents was a welcoming distraction from the hunger in Shane’s gaze.

“I lost myself in you that night, lost myself somewhere in that kiss,” Shane said.

“I told you I can’t do this.  I told you I was in love with someone else.”

“An ex-boyfriend, right?  Not Tucker or Ethan or Blake?”

I nodded my head and wiped the humiliating tears from my cheeks. I wasn’t crying about the kiss, because my God, that was freaking amazing. It was the fact that he could make me forget something that I’ve been after for thousands of years with just the tips of his fingers.  Oh my, what would the rest of his body do to me?  It’s killing me that I want to find out!

“Let me help you erase his memory,” he whispered.

I almost threw up on him. In fact, I know I definitely would have if there were any food in my stomach.  I literally dry-heaved.  Then I smacked him across the face.  I wanted to punch him.  I wanted to punch him with a fully closed fist.

He didn’t even flinch from the slap. He just arched his stupidly perfect eyebrow at me, as if I was a joke to him.

“You cold fucking bastard!  What will you erase it with, your dick?  You really think sleeping with you is that fucking awesome?  I love someone, Shane, with my whole heart.  Don’t you understand what that means?  Do you even have a heart inside that body of yours?”  I cried.  Hot tears poured down my face.  They came down to defend my angel, the one I could never seem to find.

He drew his hands back and leaned against the door, looking right into my teary eyes, expressionless.  “No, Grace.  I don’t have a heart.  I did once, but I gave it to a girl and I let her keep it when she died.  That’s why I am the way I am, why every girl is just another piece of ass to me. No one has ever come close to making me feel the way she did.  But shit, Grace, I would do anything to erase her, to not feel that fucking hole in my life.”

I couldn’t look at him any longer.  I would have bet my life on him lying to get me to have sex with him right there out of pity.  Like I would be the one that could tame him. I wondered how many poor girls got their heart crushed by those words.  I’d burn in hell before I became someone’s piece of ass!  “Let’s just keep trying our cells, so we can finally get out of this box, forget everything that’s happened, and move on with our lives.  You can go back to your adoring Pieces of Ass, and I can go back to being alone. Everyone gets to live happily ever after.”

“Holy shit, Grace!  Do you not listen to anything?  Grace, that’s not a kiss I’m ever going to forget.  Looking at the way I fucking make you cry, I wish like hell I could forget it, but I freaking can’t!  I want you!”  He grabbed my hands and pinned them together.

“Don’t do this, Shane.”

“Why?  Lie to me and tell me you don’t fucking feel that need between us,” he yelled.

“Really, Shane? You want to go there? What are you asking me for exactly?  You just want me to spread eagle for you right here, let you have your way with me, get me out of your system?  Then we get out of this and you get to treat me like nothing but a PIECE OF ASS?  You can have a great story to tell the guys-all about how you tapped that ass stuck in a snowstorm.”

He had nothing to say, because I was right.  “This is a nightmare, Shane, me and you.  I woke up crying the other night thinking how you kissed me!”

“Really, Grace?  Why don’t you go ahead and ask me what wakes me up sweaty and trembling every freaking night!  Go ahead, Grace, ask me!” he demanded.  He pulled me closer.

“Get away from me, Shane!” I moaned, moving away.  I clawed his hands off me and I yanked open the Jeep door.  It wouldn’t budge, so I shifted my body and kicked at it until it opened enough for my body to climb out.  All the while, Shane was screaming, cursing, and pleading for me to listen to him.  I pressed the mute button and yanked my shirt back over my head.  “I’m a fucking novelty to you, just because no other girl has ever had the self-esteem to say no to you!”

I pulled myself out of the car. The snowdrift we were parked in was so high that I was able to climb right onto the roof.  Underneath the hardtop, I could feel Shane kicking the passenger side door open to come after me.

The roof lurched beneath my feet and Shane grabbed my flailing arms, dragging me off the Jeep and into the snow.  “Get away, Shane!”

He lifted me up and tossed me over his shoulder, forcing all the air from my lungs.  Carrying me, he climbed the snowdrifts, as I pounded my fists against his back.  When he found an area sheltered by a tree, he eased me off his shoulder, sliding me down the front of his body.  Oh, holy horror was that freaking hot!

I tried to wrench free, but he held me tight against him with one hand on the small of my back and the other grasping my neck through a fistful of hair.

He gently tugged my hair back and pulled his head down to mine, kissing me once on the lips.  He brushed his lips along my cheeks to my ear and whispered with the heat of his breath, “Go ahead, Grace, ask me what dreams I wake from at night.”  He pulled his head back and his eyes assaulted me with his fierce intensity.  “I wake up with you as the last thought in my dreams.  I dream about your lips, the smell of your skin and hair, and the freaking fire that burns inside of me to be inside you.  I want to bury myself inside you and never climb out, my sweet death.  Grace, I’m fucking in love with you.”

I stopped struggling and let him hold me.  One, I was freezing because I had left my coat in the Jeep and two, well, for a minute; I so badly wanted this to be my real life.

I blinked back tears.  “In another life, Shane, if I was anybody but me, I would have loved to be loved by you.”

Shane stood there holding me, eyes pleading, when we heard the roar of the snowmobiles.  Finally, one of our messages got through!

Shane stepped away from me and raked his hands threw his snow covered hair.  Two snowmobiles appeared out of the blinding whiteness and skidded to a halt in front of us.

Tucker lifted his visor to exclaim that my Superman was finally here, giving me a wink.

Blake lifted his visor and rolled his eyes.  He jumped off and reached out his hand out to me.  I took it and he helped me straddle the snowmobile, then he got on behind me.

Rage shadowed Shane’s features and his hands balled into fists.

Tucker looked rejected.  I cared about neither at that moment. All I cared about was Blake.

With a disgusted sigh, Shane waded through the deep snow back to the Jeep and yanked the passenger side door open.  I watched him effortlessly pull our packs and jackets out and sling both our guitar cases over his shoulders then climb back over the snowdrifts to our waiting snowmobiles.

Glaring angrily into my eyes, he handed my jacket to me when he passed, “Here you go, wouldn’t want you to get any colder than you already are.”

The words stung, because I knew he wasn’t talking about the temperature. He was just stating how cold of a person I was.  He was right, but I had no other choice.

After I pulled on my coat and zipped it up against the wind, Blake wrapped one strong arm around my waist and the other on one end of the handlebars.  He took off without even waiting for Shane to jump on Tucker’s snowmobile.

Chapter 15

Blake skidded to a stop near an enormous wrap around porch where Lea, Conner, Ethan and Brayden sat together waiting.  When I climbed off Blake’s snowmobile, Lea flung herself into my arms, “Oh, thank God, you’re okay!”

I looked back toward Blake, “Thank you,” I said.

He grinned back at me. “Get inside and warm up, we’ll talk later.  Then we can think of a way you can properly thank me.”  What?

“Come on, let’s go inside.  We’ll get you warmed up and changed, and then we’re going to the bar at the resort. I need a drink,” Lea said, moving me away from Blake.

I was shuttled away from Blake as he drove away blasting snow out of his path.  Lea dragged me by the hand through the front entryway of an enormous log cabin style ranch.  When the warmth of the inside hit me, I realized how wet and cold I was.  My jacket was soaked through, and so was the shirt and jeans I wore beneath it.  It felt as though a layer of ice was forming on my skin.  I began shuddering uncontrollably.

Shane strode in after us and looked far worse than I did.  He dropped all of our belongings in front of him, closed his eyes, leaned back and rested his head against the wall.  “Lea, get her out of those wet clothes.”

“I’m fine,” I shuddered.  I was lying through my teeth. I could barely move and icy chills rocked my body.

His eyes snapped open and gave me a challenging glare.  “You’re impossible!”  He stomped towards me, picked me up with one hand, and flung me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, again.  “Bring the bags for me, will you?  My hands seem a bit full,” he said to Lea.

He marched with me through the house, down a long hallway and into a dark room.  Lea switched on the lights for him and he threw me down on a beautiful king-size four-poster bed.  “Get out of your clothes!”  He walked through another door and came back with an armful of soft white towels.  He lifted his eyebrow at me, “Do you know what hypothermia is?  Get out of your clothes!”

I gritted my chattering teeth and began taking off sneakers and socks.  My eyes never left his harsh stare, but I did notice when Lea quietly slipped out of the room.  Oh, was I going to kill her for that!

Shane tore off his shirt and pants and stood in his boxers, leaning over his bag, searching through it for dry clothes.

With my bag slung over my arm, I slowly walked through the door where he had gotten the towels.  I didn’t care if it was a closet or a bathroom, it was where I would be getting changed so I wouldn’t have to do it with Shane’s eyes on me.

When I changed into dry clothes and blew dried my hair, I walked out of the bathroom into an empty room.  My guitar was in its case, propped up against the bed, but all of Shane’s things were gone.  Throwing my bag on the bed, I walked out of the bedroom and into the rest of the house.