“Oh my God,” I whispered into Gage’s shoulder.
“No bombs to make tonight, I’m sorry to say,” Gage replied, not missing a beat. “But I’ll be sure to let you know if something comes up while you’re in town, Anna.”
Grandma nodded. “You be sure to do that, though I’m thinking it’s going to be a flying visit so I don’t cramp your style. Plus, I’ve got a meeting with a Calvin Klein model,” she replied. “You’ll be free for dinner, then?”
I was about to open my mouth and say that men like Gage, who radiated danger, who lived life hard and chaotic, were not about to go to dinner on a Saturday night with an eighty-year-old and the boring woman he’d slept with the night before.
Gage’s arms flexed around me, and he spoke before I could. “Yeah, I’m not likely to want to be anywhere else.”
I let out a strangled breath. “This is too much to take in the morning,” I murmured to no one but myself.
Gage’s hand went to my chin, making my eyes meet his. “You can take it, Will,” he said, voice lower than a whisper.
The sex barely concealed beneath the words sucked away the oxygen from my lungs.
“Breathe, Lauren.”
I gulped in air on his command. Air saturated with him. With the sheer unbelievably of the moment.
My eyes stayed captured in his stare for a beat longer before he stepped back. I sagged slightly with the loss of him, and his hand steadied my hip for a moment before he let me go.
“I got shit to do, anyway,” he said, voice louder now. “But I’ll be back, tonight.” The words were a promise for a lot more than just dinner.
The tenderness between my legs pulsated with the craving for more.
With my freaking grandmother right between us.
“Oh don’t worry, I’m not staying here,” Grandma said. “I don’t like the rules.”
I turned to face her fully to give her a warning look.
I now had my back to Gage, so he couldn’t see this look, nor understand the warning it conveyed.
“Rules?” he repeated, voice low and raspy and slightly amused.
Grandma nodded. “Oh yes, and curfews.”
“Curfews?” His eyes darted to me before he yanked me back into his arms as if he couldn’t be without my touch. There was definite amusement in his voice now.
“There are no curfews,” I hissed, still fighting to get out of Gage’s embrace. It was distracting. “Just exit and entry preferences.”
Gage’s body vibrated with a chuckle. “Babe. ‘Exit and entry preferences?’”
“What are you today, a parrot?” I hissed, my face flushing. I glared at Grandma. “You need entry preferences since, on more than one occasion, you’ve lumbered in at 4:00 a.m.”
“Lumbered?” she said, hand to her chest. “I do not lumber. Imagine a thing to say to a grandmother. If we’re talking about lumbering, what is it you do during uncivilized hours on a Sunday?”
“I go to yoga,” I snapped. “And eight in the morning is hardly uncivilized.”
“In my world it is. Especially when you’ve just gotten home at four.” She glanced to Gage. “She’s a tyrant.”
I let out a sound of exasperation. “It’s my house!”
Grandma narrowed her eyes. “You know what my house is? My vagina. And your father came out of it. And his sperm went into your mother’s. So I’m responsible for giving you life. How about a bit more respect?”
My head found my hands. “Oh my gosh, my grandmother is talking about her vagina at nine in the morning when my man is right beside me,” I muttered, mortified.
The air had been light, pleasant, easy, and I’d sunk into it without hesitation. That was my mistake. Because my words tore through that energy with a serrated knife, Gage’s body stiffening behind me.
And then I wasn’t tucked into his embrace any longer, because he was dragging me across the room.
Yes, dragging me across the living room, without a word to my grandmother, who didn’t seem concerned at all, if her faint giggle was anything to go by.
I didn’t really have it in me to struggle. There was never a time I had struggled against Gage. Never a time I wanted to struggle.
The door to my bedroom slammed behind us. The scent of our coupling—of pure fucking—permeated the air, the rumpled and blood-smeared sheets assaulting me with beautifully brutal memories for the second I looked at it before I was slammed against the closed door.
Yes, slammed. My body protested at the impact, as the tenderness of my muscles cried out from the brutal handling. Gage didn’t seem to notice, since both of his hands circled my neck in a grip that so wasn’t gentle as his entire body pressed against mine, plastering me to him.
“Gage, what are you—”
“Shut the fuck up,” he ordered.
And then I did shut up, because his mouth was on mine. His kiss wasn’t tender. It couldn’t be. Not with the wildness in his eyes, the violence in his body. The kiss was as painful as everything else.