Page 16 of Brother in Law with Benefits

"Safe?" he asks.

"I know where it ends. That's all."

"Sophie." Low. "Look at me."

I am looking at him. At the silver threading through his dark hair. At the lines around his eyes. At the way he's looking at me right now.

"If we do this," he says, "I need you to know — it might not feel safe. It might feel like everything but safe."

"I don't want an out."

"You should."

"Stop telling me what I should want." I step closer, eliminating the last of the distance. "I want you. I've wanted you since that dance and I'm done pretending otherwise. Is that clear enough?"

His hand comes up to cup the back of my neck.

"Crystal clear," he says.

Then he kisses me.

Five years of wanting hits like that — the accumulated weight of every time I didn't let myself think about him, finally released all at once. He kisses like he's been holding his breath since the wedding and just now remembered how to exhale, and I feel that exhale everywhere, low in my belly, in the sudden weakness behind my knees.

I kiss him back, hands fisting in his shirt, pulling him closer. His other hand grips my hip and we're moving until my back finds the wall near the bookshelf, and the solid impact of it punches a sound out of me I don't recognize as mine.

His mouth moves to my neck. I tilt my head back and I understand in that instant that this is going to be nothing like anything I've had before, and that I am not remotely prepared for it.

He's better at this than I imagined.

He takes my hand and I lead him down the hall.

We don't make it to the bed immediately.

We're kissing in the doorway, his hands in my hair, and I'm thinking this is Grant Guilligan and I invited him here and apparently I've been making good decisions today and then his teeth graze my bottom lip and I stop thinking about anything at all.

His hands find the hem of my sweater. He breaks the kiss just long enough to pull it over my head and toss it, and then his mouth is on my neck, my collarbone, while his hands map down my back like he's memorizing the shape of me for later.

His hands. I was not prepared for his hands. There's a deliberateness to them. He knows exactly where he's going and he takes his time getting there, and I had some vague expectation of urgency, of someone who's been waiting as long as I have and would want to rush. He doesn't rush. He treats my body like he has all the time in the world, like the entire nightbelongs to this and nothing else, and every unhurried inch of it makes me shake harder than speed ever could.

That contrast — his patience against my readiness — does more than the kiss did.

He unclips my bra and it goes. His mouth finds my breast, tongue circling, and I arch into him with a gasp. His other hand palms the other side, thumb dragging slow over my nipple until it's almost too much, and I'm already trembling, fingers digging into his shoulders to keep myself upright.

"Grant—"

"I've been thinking about this for longer than I should admit," he says against my skin, and I feel the words as much as hear them, low and rough against my ribs.

"How long?"

"Years. Every single time I let myself think about you, which was more than I'll ever tell you." His mouth drags lower, tongue tracing the underside of my breast, and I lose whatever I was about to say.

"Okay," I manage, which is the most intelligent thing I've produced since the doorway. "Okay, but—" He does something with his thumb and I lose the rest of the sentence entirely.

He pulls at my jeans and they go, along with everything underneath them, and I'm bare against the cool air of the hallway while he's still half-dressed, which feels like a specific kind of unfair I don't have the words to protest. His own shirt comes off — I help, which feels like a contribution — and I get my first real look at him.

Broad chest, dark hair across it, softer belly than I expected and somehow more appealing for it. A scar along his ribs, another on his shoulder. Evidence of a life lived in places that left marks, and I want to trace every single one of them with my mouth, which is a thought I'm having with startling clarity for a woman who's currently naked in a hallway.

I run my hands over him and his muscles tense under my touch, a full-body response he doesn't bother to hide.