She, in turn, returned the favor, pausing to flick one of his small brown nipples with her tongue.
Dry enough, Grant swung her up into his arms and carried her into the bedroom. He lay her on the bed and eased down beside her, trailing a finger from her cheek, down the long, slender line of her neck to the swell of her breast.
She turned to face him, fingers resting lightly against his chest. “I missed you,” she whispered. “I missed touching you. Knowing you were in the bed beside me.” Her hand moved lower, splaying across his torso, inching ever closer to his cock.
He let her talk, his breath hitching as she wrapped her fingers around his shaft and slid down his length.
Her fingers tightened their hold, tugging him gently toward her. “I missed having you inside me. Filling the empty space. Completing me.”
Grant captured her cheek in his hand and kissed her softly. “You filled my dreams. Every night and my thoughts during the day.” He kissed her again, sliding along the seam of her lips until she opened to him and met him in a tangling of tongues. A sensuous, warm, wet caress that brought them closer until their bodies melted together.
His hardness pressed against the softness of her belly, shooting heat through his blood, igniting a flame that had never burned completely out.
She was real. Not a dream.
After she’d left, he’d spent months going through every alternate scenario he could imagine that would have kept her by his side, and coming to one conclusion. He couldn’t hold her back. She had to do what she had to do. Driven by her loss, he'd had to let her go.
Now that she was there, in his arms, he wasn’t sure he had the strength to let her go again.
One thing was certain. He’d show her how much he cherished her. How much he wanted to make her happy. If she left him tomorrow, he’d find a way to pick up the pieces of his heart and move on.
His lips left hers and moved lower. He’d leave her with a lasting memory. A tribute to how perfectly they fit together.
* * *
Grant trailed kisses across Avery’s skin, blazing a path down her neck to where her pulse hammered at the base, pumping molten liquid through her veins, warming every part of her body.
Her core ached with her need for him. It had never been just an emotional connection with Grant. It had been a deep longing. An ache that could never be satisfied with a day, a week or a year in his arms. The two years apart had been a physical pain—a heavy weight on her chest, threatening to crush her.
The successful end of the operation should have left her drained and numb. The unrelenting drive to save innocents from the kind of fate her mother had suffered had been absorbed in the numbness. She’d gone on to her new assignment far from Florida. Far from the life she’d shared with Grant in Virginia, with the idea of starting over.
Too often, she’d thought of calling Grant and telling him she’d made a mistake and would give anything for him to forgive her and take her back. Every time she’d lifted the phone, she hadn’t been able to make the call. She’d burned that bridge, choosing her career over him.
Waking from the coma, before she’d remembered what she’d done, her first thought had been of him.
Now that she was in his arms, she realized how hard it would be to let him walk away when this case was over. If the hitman was truly the killer, the case would close. Grant would go home to Montana. Avery would return to San Antonio and move on to her next assignment with the bureau.
She reached for his shoulders as he moved lower, her fingers digging in, desperate to keep him close.
His mouth found her breast and sucked it in, setting off a burst of sensations, like electrical impulses pulsing through her body.
When he took the other breast in his mouth, her back arched off the bed, urging him to take more. Take all of her. Because she was his and always would be.
Grant moved lower, flicking his tongue across her ribs, nipping her skin and edging relentlessly closer to the juncture of her thighs.
He settled between her legs, parted her folds and touched his tongue to her clit.
Avery arched off the mattress, her breath catching and holding in her throat.
He touched her there again, flicking ever so lightly, but effectively, sending her nerves into an ever-increasing cacophony of sensations. The more he flicked and teased, the closer she moved to the edge until, like a box of fireworks going off at once, fire, light and color exploded in every direction, rocking her to the core.
Her hips rocked, pulsing her release as she rode wave after wave of her orgasm to the very end, collapsing against the mattress, spent yet wanting more.
Her hands tangled in his hair, tugging gently.
Grant responded, climbing up her body, dropping kisses along the way until his lips connected with hers.
He kissed her long and hard, tasting of her. Of what he’d done to make her lose herself.
