The Bucket List (8 page)

“Momma, I love you, and I am about to go and start enjoying life right now.” She started to move in the direction of the bathroom when her mother’s next words brought her up short.

“Okay, okay, but don’t go too crazy. You still have to live with the consequences of your actions. I know you like Brett but make sure you are doing this for the right reasons, not as a knee-jerk reaction to your father nearly dying. That’s all I’m going to say…well, almost all.” She laughed again.

“I love you, honey, and I think Brett’s good for you. Not to mention, it would be nice to have some grandchildren around.”

Grace again pulled the phone from her ear to look at it. She wasn’t really sure what to say to that comment so she erred on the side of getting off the phone before things really got out of hand.

“Um, Momma, I’m going to hang up now.”

“Okay, baby. Enjoy your trip and bring Brett by for Sunday dinner next weekend. Your dad wants to start bonding more with him.”

“Okay, Momma.” Grace pressed the end call button and flopped back on the bed almost in shock. Brett and her dad…bond? It was almost comical. 

“I was trying to tell you that she knew.”

Brett moved from the door of the bathroom toward her like a big, slab of walking sexiness. Grace rose up on her elbows watching him.  Lord, this man had a lazy swagger that was positively hypnotic. His deep voice brought her back out of her trance.

“She stopped by the shop a few days ago for an oil change and I thought she knew about the change in plans.” He bent down over her and slowly moved up her body, caging her in before kissing her slowly, then he moved back and to the side, taking some of his weight off of her while warming her entire left side. 

She nearly lost her train of thought…again. How did he keep doing that? She was normally able to keep a lid on the desire she had for him but once her needy body had gotten a sample of the pleasure he could bring, it was as if it craved him. No,
she
craved him now.

“No, I didn’t tell her about you going in Tia’s place. I thought it would be best to omit that part. Kind of like the adage ‘it’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission’.”

They both laughed and she stared at his handsome face. Her stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten yet. It was nearly evening and the noise outside had gotten way more festive. They could hear the jovial, upbeat blast of a brass band competing with the raucous voices of the revelers talking loudly, laughing, singing.

“Let’s go get some grub, then we can come back here and pick up where we left off on the list.”

“Okay, but first I need to get cleaned up.” He kissed her quickly and stood up, holding his hand out to help her up. She accepted and was pulled into his arms. He kissed her again; the slide of his lips on hers was like butter as they caressed not only her plump bottom lip, but the sides of her mouth as well.  Her hands went down to his crotch as she felt his cock stirring. 

“Down, girl!” he joked as he brought her hand up for a kiss.

“I think I’ve created a monster.”

“You have no idea,” she said under her breath as she was spun around and propelled towards the bathroom door.

Chapter Six

Brett found them a place to eat, but had he known Grace would put him through hell, he would have ordered in. All he could think about was getting her back to the room so he could strip her bare and love her until she begged him to stop.

He thought he was doing a noble thing by delaying their joining earlier. He wanted her to understand that what they had was not just sexual. He wanted to be with her. He thought dinner and lots of talking would take place and she would know he was serious.

Instead, the tables had been turned on him.

She sat across from him sucking on the tail of a Cajun boiled crawfish. With every drag of her lips, his cock jumped in response. Yes, he was in hell and she was his ice water. He reached over with a napkin and wiped some juice off her chin. She already had one Hurricane drink in a long bong-like plastic container and that was all he would allow.  There was no way in hell he was letting her get drunk tonight.  He wanted her relaxed, but sober and coherent for the loving he planned to put on her.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she warned between sucks.

“Then stop sucking like that.”

“What? You mean like this?” She picked up a big, juicy crawfish, separated the torso from the tail and played with the steaming meat with her tongue before sucking it long and deep. The meat came out with a pop and she slowly chewed the succulent, spicy, crimson flesh. She licked her fingers one by one. He couldn’t take it. He’d already started sweating and his cock was about to explode. She put her right index finger between her sexy lips and started licking the juice from it.

“Brett, look.”

She slowly moved to the next one but this time she did a trick the waitress showed her. She took the body of the crawfish, pulled the head, squeezed its sides and took a long lusty drag ending in a wicked, fleshy-sounding pop. They called it “sucking the head” and the dirty analogy was not wasted on him.

“Don’t I suck good head?” She grinned at the raunchiness of her own remark.

He could only stare at her and wonder what the hell had they put in that drink.

Grace reached for another crawfish from the tiny mountain before her. She cracked it open in sexy abandon, ready to suck the head again, raising one eyebrow in challenge as if to say, ‘what are you going to do about it’. 

He knew damn well what he was going to do about it. He was going to take her back to the hotel and fuck every single one of her dirty, overactive brain cells out. Before she could bring the briny treat to her mouth, he growled. Her big brown eyes widened in surprise.

“Grace, if you don’t want to get fucked in this restaurant I suggest you get up now.”  He was on his feet, not caring if the entire restaurant saw the bulge in his pants.  The waitress was by his side immediately.

“Don’t tell me you guys are ready to go that fast. You just sat down.”

Brett took out his wallet and pushed a large bill into her hand, not saying anything. Grace looked from him to the waitress with apparent sympathy as she wiped her hands, grabbed her purse and shuffled out of the booth.

Smiling halfheartedly, she chimed in, “The crawfish was terrific, but we are, um, late for something. Thanks for the great service.”  Brett pulled on her hand, put her in front of him and moved them swiftly towards the entrance, leaving the stunned waitress behind. Yes, he was coming off as an asshole and he was sure Grace would lay into him later but the hard-on he was sporting was cutting off the blood to his brain, making conversation difficult.  They were near the door when a woman who appeared to be in her late sixties with white hair pulled on his arm.

“Sir, I don’t mean to bother you but, are you Brett “The Wolf” McAllister?” 

Fuck, this was no time for fans. He had been out of the business for nearly three years now.  He honestly didn’t know what to say. His dick was throbbing and all he could think of were the four letter words he was going to have Grace shouting when they got back to the room. As if she could read his thoughts. Grace again spoke up.

“Yes, ma’am, he’s ‘The Wolf.’”

The woman’s eyes swung from him to Grace. As if seeing an ally in Grace, she directed her next question to her.

“Can you take a picture of us together? My grandson was a big fan of ‘The Wolf.’ He was heartbroken when he retired.”

Grace looked to him briefly as if to say
snap out of it and say something to this lady
. Seeing he was unwilling or incapable of cooperating, she said, “I would love to take a picture of you two. Where is your camera?”

“It’s in my purse; give me just a moment.”

She took a few steps to a nearby table where the rest of her dinner party smiled and waved at him. He nodded his head to them. Grace smiled and turned towards him talking to him through her teeth.

“Brett, baby, take off your jacket and drape it over your arm in front of you. That way you won’t scare the hell out of this woman with that hard-on you’re sporting and so you won’t scare her poor grandson when he get this picture. She already thinks you are crazy.” 

Grace was a flurry around him fixing his collar and dusting her hands down his chest. Her hands felt incredible through his cornflower blue button-down shirt, removing his jacket and putting it in his hands.

“One photo, Grace, then we leave,” he growled. He hated he could not pull out of caveman-mode, but shit, it was what it was at this point.

She shook her head in understanding, never breaking eye contact with him. He saw the shallowness of her breathing as her beautiful breasts moved up and down and the way the vein pulsed at the side of her neck. She shivered under his sexual gaze.  She felt it too.
Good girl.

The woman came back to them, handing the camera to Grace. She fidgeted with it, trying to show Grace how it worked. They finally got it together and the woman came to stand next to him, holding on to his arm. She had a remarkably strong grip for someone who looked so frail.

“Say cheese.” Grace’s sing-song voice floated to them.

 He was able to manage a half smile. He was sure he looked crazy but who the fuck cared. He had been waiting nearly three years for Grace to let him into her bed.  Granted, he had dated during that time, but none of them held a candle to her and it had been nearly a year since his last sexual encounter.

When Grace’s dad took ill, he’d left all other women alone and focused solely on comforting her and being available to her. There had been several close calls between them but things never got too far along. What they did on the balcony earlier had only whetted his starved appetite. He wanted his woman, and he wanted her now.  The woman must have said something funny because Grace smiled and laughed. The woman hugged her, gave him a sympathetic look, then waved goodbye to him.

He again nodded his head. He wasn’t even sure of how it happened, one moment they were in the restaurant and the next moment, he had her firmly stashed behind him as he navigated the busy streets of the French Quarter.  It was as if the revelers could sense he was in no mood for nonsense and scrambled to get out of his way.  His cock throbbed with every step.

He hadn’t looked at Grace once, but he knew she was with him. He could feel the nails of her supple fingers digging for purchase in his lower back as she grasped his shirt; trying to keep up with him. If he looked at her, he was liable to pull her into an alley and fuck her against the wall.  Her nails were already doing a number on him.

She was going to get fucked so well tonight all thoughts of a bucket list would be erased from her mind.

They finally reached the hotel. Two of the three elevators dinged, he maneuvered around the three people waiting and pulled her towards the first one. As they stepped into the elevator, Brett quickly pressed the button to close the door and told the other people waiting to catch the next one. Yes, he was being a prick but he didn’t give a shit. He was not going to wait another damn second to be with Grace and unless they wanted a show, it was best if they caught the next elevator.

“Brett! That was a rude thing to do,” Grace began.

Brett slightly unleashed his passion so she could see he was not dealing with a full deck. He pulled her to him and ravished her eager mouth…and she responded to his roughness by yielding to him one moment, then taking the lead the next. It was sexy as hell. She met him move for move, like a game of oral chess. 

Moans, groans and growls filled the elevator. Brett didn’t know if they came from Grace or him. After several floors, the elevator stopped and he went to exit, but Grace didn’t move. She was trembling, despite a firm hold of the railing along the wall. He went to her, picked her up, carried her to their door and then inside.

Chapter Seven

Frantic…desperate…crazed…that was how she felt. Brett McAllister made her feel that way.
Lord, this man knew how to touch a woman.
She’d felt the tension in him at the restaurant and tried to harness it to turn him on, but she quickly realized there was no harnessing Brett’s raw sexual power.

She’d had a devil of a time explaining his behavior to Maggie, the little old lady at the restaurant who’d wanted to take a picture with Brett. She finally settled on telling her they were just getting into town and although Brett was very tired, she’d brow-beat him into taking her out. The lady had laughed and said she understood. Her own husband could get surly when she dragged him all over the place like that. She was very sweet.

Now here she was, being thoroughly ravished and loving every bit of it. Her skin felt like it was on fire again just like earlier, it was not a fluke that Brett could literally bring the heat. Were all his sexual encounters like this? No wonder the groupies used to duke it out over him.

Somehow, though, she knew that this kind of effect, this kind of raw, heartfelt connection, was not business as usual; it came from a much deeper place. A place she didn’t want to name for fear she would wake up and realized she had been dreaming.

Their clothes had been shed at the door. Each of them was so frantic to be skin-to-skin they’d taken off their own clothes. Then they collided; warm hard skin to tender soft skin. Their eyes searching flesh, trying to take mental snap shots to develop later when things cooled down. Would they cool down? She hoped the hell not. His mouth was on hers, spicy and just a little salty from the crawfish. His big, strong hands stroked her back and down to her butt where he squeezed and kneaded each cocoa mound in his hands.

Thank the Lord for her ass. She always wanted it to be bigger, less…flat, but when he smacked it and immediately felt the stinging connect directly to her core, she realized size didn’t matter; a smack was a smack. It felt damn good. She never knew it could be like this, so elemental. He made her that way.