Lock and Key (48 page)

“Is this your grandmother Kim?”

He nodded.

I grinned. “It’s stunning.”

“Stunning?”

He dropped his keys and the shopping bag on the granite countertop, peeled off his jacket carefully, and leaned his hip against the island. “Come on, Grace.”

“It is. It’s also fantastic and magical all in one. That’s what this is.” My eyes returned to the portrait of Kim. “Fantastical. And I liked mine, too.” I gestured towards the sketches of me.

“You did?” He smiled. “Get over here, baby.”

Thick bubbles popped inside my chest. I loved that rough tone in his voice; the one that held a secret just for me. I scooted over to him, threw my arms around his neck and gave him my mouth. He pulled me in tightly against his chest, lifted me up, and deposited me on the kitchen island.

“Good morning,” he murmured. His dark gaze lingered on my mouth.

I plucked the slouchy knit cap from his head and mussed his short hair with my fingers. “Make the coffee, baby.” I grinned up at him.

“Hmm… bossy.” He leaned down, and his tongue swiped over my lips.

I opened the shopping bag, pulled out the bag of gourmet ground coffee and smiled. Miller spent money on good, high-end coffee.

“Brazilian?”

“Always. You like it?”

“I do. It’s very smooth and rich.”

“Scissors are in the drawer, there.” He gestured with his chin.

I opened the drawer between my legs, found the scissors, cut the bag open, and held it out to him. “Here you go.”

Miller took it, spooned out the coffee into the filter of his very clean, equally high-end coffee maker, flipped the top, poured in the water and hit the buttons.

He sauntered back over to me and stretched out his arms on the counter at my sides and studied my face. My stomach dipped and that hum took over my body.

“We’ve got a few minutes before the coffee’s ready,” he said quietly.

“Hmm?”

“I’ve got an idea,” he whispered hoarsely.

He leaned in and kissed one corner of my mouth and then the other. My face heated, and I sighed. My thumb rubbed over his generous lower lip. Those sensuous lips of his were what a few of my fantasies were made of.

“I like you in my shirt and nothing else,” he murmured. His hands slid up my bare thighs. His nose rubbed against mine. “Come here,” he said. I nestled closer in his arms.

He swept me up, and I let out a squeal. He chuckled as I hooked my legs around his hips. He snatched the sketchbook and a pencil from the drawer and carried me to the living room to the oversized leather armchair. My body sank into its thick softness. There was room for two on this chair. I could imagine the two of us curled up in the comfy leather island under a blanket before the fire, TV on, necking, reading, eating popcorn, napping. Very domestic.

He pressed me against the back of the chair so I was slouched against the cushion. He pulled my legs apart and kneeled down on both knees before me.

“I want to see you, Grace. Haven’t really had a chance yet.” His eyes were somber, wide. My breathing accelerated.

“Take off the shirt.”

I wriggled out of his shirt, and he took it from my hands and let it drop to the floor. I licked my suddenly dry lips. His heavy gaze swept down my body. My nipples pebbled immediately. He groaned as he cupped my breasts and kneaded them together, and then he leaned closer and kissed each one gently.

I let out a cry, desperate to kiss him. My lips ached for his. The pads of his fingers glided over the curves of my waist, my hips. His touch was feather-light, full of reverence, yet there was possession in it. A tremor betrayed me.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

I shook my head. My fingernails dug into the soft leather.

Miller’s hands pushed apart my knees. Sparks flew threw me as he lazily stroked my inner thighs. His thumbs barely caressed over the center of my own cataclysmic tornado.

“Oh, Grace,” his husky voice pulled at my name. “So beautiful, baby.” My eyes fluttered closed. His lips nuzzled their way up my left thigh. He took my one leg and slung it over the wide arm of the chair, my other remained on the floor, and he draped my upper body at an angle against the other arm. He sat back on his haunches.

“Touch yourself, Grace.”

I blinked up at him. “Wh… what?”

Miller sat on his knees on the floor in front of me and picked up the pencil and sketchbook from the floor. His pencil began moving quickly over the paper. He was sketching. Sketching me.

“Touch yourself, baby,” he said. “But keep your other hand up over your head.”

Heat flared over my skin. I watched his eyes dart between me and the paper as his pencil outlined and filled. My fingers went in between my legs, and my other hand clutched the soft leather of the chair arm under my head.

“Take yourself there slowly, but don’t come. I’m going to make you come.”

My fingers moved. I leaned my head back, and my gaze was riveted on him studying me, drawing. My breathing grew choppy. My heel raised up off the floor. I surrendered to my own rhythm and to his focused gaze. Everything I was tightened.

He dropped the pad and pencil. His hand pushed my fingers away and his tongue snaked over my throbbing center. His eyes scored through mine.

“Oh God, yes!” His tongue pulsed over my clit. My hips jerked. Sharp shards of pleasure tore right through me.

He pulled back, his tongue swiped over his lower lip, and he went back to sketching.

“Miller—?”

His pencil dashed over the paper. “Don’t move, baby.”

“Oh God—”

“I just tasted everything we did last night,” he murmured. “Tasted real good.”

My head sank back into the leather. He sketched with quick and long drawn-out strokes. I could practically feel the pencil on my skin.

“You need to feed me,” I said. “Now.”

His eyes remained glued to the sketch pad. “What?”

“I want to have enough energy to keep up with you”

He flashed me a grin. A boyish abandon swept over his features, and I melted like butter all over again. He dropped the pad and pencil on the floor, grabbed the t-shirt. I sat up, and he smoothed it down over me. My fingers tugged at the hem over my legs.

“And after I feed you?” he asked. His dark eyes teased me. My thighs pressed together.

“And after you feed me… what?”

“My bed,” he said. “For the rest of the day.”

“Very good idea. Because you need to finish what you just started.”

“Screw the dishes, Grace,” Miller said. “We’ll deal with it later.”

I stared at the tumble of greasy frying pans, sticky dishes, mugs, glasses, and an empty orange juice container in the kitchen sink. Ordinarily my hair would have stood on end at such a sight, but I only giggled. We had devoured the bacon, egg, cheese, and English muffin extravaganza I concocted and now lazed on the stools at the kitchen island.

“Later today we’ll go get your stuff,” Miller said. He swept over the granite counter with a damp paper towel.

I slid the salt and pepper shakers to the end of the island. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you moving in here. Today.”

“What?”

He looked up at me and stopped wiping. “What do you mean—what?”

“Today?”

“Yeah.”

“Um, I can’t do that. I have work myself into Jake and Alex’s schedule. They’re in Rapid City, not Meager, so I need to find a place there. Then I need to find a job.” I swept my hair away from my face.

“Grace—”

“I need to go through Ruby’s stuff, and then I really, really, need to find a yoga class and some kind of cardio so I can stay sane and still consume all this hearty food I’m suddenly surrounded by. And—”

His lips smashed together. “You’re not making a lick of sense.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No.” He shook his head. “You’re kidding yourself.”

“I am not! I need… time.

“Time?”

“Yes,” I said. “I need time, to get into the flow of… this.”

“What flow, Grace? Flow of what?”

“You know…”

“No, I don’t know.” He crossed his arms.

“I need time to get organized, get focused. I can’t just…”

“Can’t just what? Get a life?”

“Miller!”

“Fifteen years worth of rolling and drifting, and you’ve got nothing and no one to call your own.” He planted his hands on the granite and leaned towards me. “What the hell is there to organize?”

My face heated. “Excuse me, I do have a quality vehicle and, I’ll have you know, plenty of money saved in the bank!”

His dark eyebrows snapped together. “Congratulations. And how’s that working for you?”

I flexed my feet against the footrest of the barstool. My shoulders stiffened. My eyes swept over the clean, shiny granite.

“And where do I fit in to this “flow” of yours, Grace?” He asked. “Do I even fit in? Or maybe you don’t know yet? You need time to see if I fit in to your flow?”

“That’s not what I meant.” I cleared my throat. “Miller, look. I have to settle down for the first time in a long time, and that’s going to be a huge change for me. I need to get used to that, get comfortable first. It’s freaking me out a little. Then I can think about…”

“About what? About me? Us?”

“Well…”

“Grace, I have money saved in the bank too, a job I like, and my brothers who always have my back,” he said. “I’ve got my own house that I’m fixing, and a slew of amazing bikes. The one thing I don’t have, the most important thing, is you. And I’m not waiting for you to get organized, get in a fucking flow or find a yoga class or whatever the hell you’re babbling on about to have a life with you.”

“I’m not babbling!”

“You’re panicking! We need to be together, Grace. Now. Yesterday.”

“Okay, but…”

“‘Okay’ doesn’t factor into this at all,” he said. “And neither does the word ‘but.’ Jesus, nothing about us is ‘okay.’ We are good, amazing, dream come true. What have we been talking about and fucking about for the past two days and nights? Us, together, that’s what. We need to start making our home, Grace. I want a place that’s ours, where we can rest together. Don’t you get that? I need that. I need it now, and so do you. I can’t wait. I won’t.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled.

His hand clutched mine. “Are you scared?” he asked in a throaty whisper.

My eyes fell to our hands on the counter.

“I’m not your dad, Grace, I won’t just pick up and leave you. And I’m not an alcoholic like my dad or your mom. We’re not them.”

“I know.”

We held each other’s gaze in thick silence.

His hand squeezed mine. “We’re human. They’re going to be mistakes made, right?”

I nodded.

“I’ve never done this before, well, not really. Can’t say I know how it works.

“That doesn’t matter,” I said.

“No?”

My eyes found his. “As long as we’re both in it, all the way.”

“I’m in it,” he said. “Way the fuck in.”

I smiled. “Fantastic, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Dream come true?

“Definitely.”

My blurry gaze drifted around the kitchen, the hall to the bathroom and bedroom, the huge front window where light poured through and illuminated the sectional sofa with our crumpled quilt, the massive leather easy chair where he had me pose for him, the crap shelf where years of his beautiful artwork was piled, his neatly organized stash of tools.

“No more ghosts, new dreams. Get on with joy,”
Ruby whispered in my heart.

“We’ll fix this house any way you want,” Miller said. “Do up the kitchen with whatever appliances you like. We’ll build an extension with a bedroom and bathroom for Jake.

My body stilled. “You’d do that for Jakey?”

“Of course.” Miller got up from his stool and circled the living room. “We can have an extra room for a play room or a project room for sewing…”

I laughed. “I don’t sew.”

“Whatever,” he said. His hand ruffled through his hair. “I’ll extend the garage for your quality vehicle.”

“I’ve got lots of books,” I said “And you have lots of sketch pads.”

“Adding built-in shelves to the list. Anything else?”

“A porch out front would be really nice.”

His lips curled up. “Good idea. Done.”

I got off the kitchen stool and ambled towards the hallway. My fingers traced the blank, freshly painted wall. “Miller?”

“Yeah?

I ripped off my shirt and dropped it to the floor. I glanced back at him over my bare shoulder.

His eyes widened. “Babe?” A slow smile formed on his lips.

“You haven’t shown me your bedroom yet, and I might want to make a few changes in there.” I continued walking down the hallway. “You coming?”

“Ah, sweet fuck.”