Fine.
There was a lot about Griff that had her catching her breath—the way his biceps curled, the rare sighting of a half smile, how the man filled out a pair of jeans—but it was the way he made a place for everything and everyone that really got her.
Letting her plan for Operation Get Naked percolate, she hooked her feet around the legs of her barstool and took another look at what they would be painting.
She leaned in close to Griff, resting her hand on his thick thigh—for balance of course— and asked, “Were you expecting a lake scene with pine trees and a few happy little birds?”
“My money was on a sunset,” he said as he covered her hand with his much larger one.
Kinsey’s heart missed a beat or three before restarting with a vengeance. The air crackled around them, and his gaze dipped to her mouth. She didn’t mean to bite down on her lower lip, but it just sort of happened, kind of like how she’d squeezed her legs together before she gave in to the urge to slide her palm higher as she kissed him for real.
Plan? What plan? She was just winging it at this point and couldn’t stop.
A pinched-faced older woman cleared her throat and then gave a meaningful glance at the girl beside her, who had to be her maybe nine-year-old granddaughter. The girl watched them with rapt attention.
Okay, Kinsey Dalton. Time to dial it back, girl. You are in public.
She slid her hand free and turned to look at the sample of tonight’s painting project that was sitting on an easel at the front of the room. Larry, the man who owned Paint and Sip and led all the art classes, had told them he’d named it Unpack Your Feelings and said it was about the emotional addiction of online shopping and the negative impact it had on the environment. The painting showed a person buried under a huge pile of cardboard shipping boxes, one hand sticking out zombie-at-the-end-of-a-horror-movie-style against a backdrop of at least twenty delivery vans blowing diesel smoke into the sky.
A chorus of raucous giggles erupted from a group of four women who were obviously regulars.
“Sorry, Larry,” said a lady with glasses wearing a Get Nerdy With It T-shirt. “We’ll be good.”
Larry pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and smiled indulgently. “First time for everything.”
The women looked at one another and all did a sort of fair-enough shoulder shrug, then started giggling again.
“Okay, we’re gonna start off with a line of dismal gray across the middle of your canvas like so.”
An hour and a glass of wine later, Kinsey stood up and took a step back to look at her painting. No one was ever going to mistake her for an artist anytime soon, but it wasn’t half bad.
“We’re not going to hang these up, are we?” Griff asked, coming to stand next to her.
“God no,” she said with a chuckle. “I say we present them—framed—to Nash and Dixon, since they thought this date up.”
He grinned down at her. “I like that plan.”
Then he dipped his thumb in water and used it to wipe away a fleck of paint that had ended up on her cheek. His touch was gentle but firm, sending little shock waves through her that went straight to her clit. A quiet gasp escaped before she could stop it, and Griff’s lips curved in a sexy smirk that said he knew exactly what he was doing.
That wasn’t fair. So she grabbed his hand and turned his palm, placing a soft kiss right in the middle.
Then she gave him a wink and walked out the door with her ugly-ass painting and her very-good plan to have her wicked way with him later that night firmly in mind.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kinsey
The air in the car as they went over the Harbor Bridge was thick with tension. Kinsey hadn’t said anything after leaving Griff to follow her at Paint and Sip. She’d waited by the car, scrolling through social media, while he strode across the parking lot, his jaw set in a hard line and his body rigid.
Someone who didn’t know better might think he was pissed. She, however, did know better. She’d unwound the Griff Beckett knot, and the truth of it was the man who seemed not to have a single solitary emotion had so many of them that he had them on lockdown, unable to escape and mess with his orderly life.
All that effort expended on control had her itching to peel back the layers and see what was underneath. All that natural curiosity of hers was bound to get her into trouble one of these days, and if she had anything to say about it—and she did—then it would be today.
On the drive home from Waterbury, she sat there, quiet, and watched him. The sinewy muscles in his forearms as he wrapped his long fingers around the steering wheel at ten and two. The tension in his jaw when he cut a glance over and accidentally on purpose caught her toying with the necklace that slipped down between her breasts. The low grumble he made, which she didn’t quite catch the words of, but she understood all the same and it had her wet enough that she was a little worried about her panties.
They made it back to the city in half the time it had taken them to get to Paint and Sip. Sure, maybe the traffic gods had smiled down on them or maybe, probably, definitely it was the way he swerved around slower-moving vehicles, took several cut-through shortcuts, and treated the speed limit like a just-in-case-you-want-to suggestion. By the time they pulled into the building’s parking garage, she was practically electric with want. Every nerve ending was primed, pumped, and ready for action.
She’d barely stepped out of the car before Griff was on her side, a wall of lust, determination, and promise. He glowered down at her, and her breath caught. The scientific literature had documented spontaneous orgasms in women for decades, and a Rutgers University brain scan study found that the pleasure centers of participants’ brains lit up in ways indistinguishable from normal orgasm when they were enjoying the erotic fantasy of their choice. Still, Kinsey had never experienced that pulsating ache right on the edge of coming without even being touched…until now.
Griff didn’t say anything. He just cupped her ass and lifted her up as his mouth came crashing down on hers.
Fuck me. Literally.
She wanted to scream the words as she wrapped her legs around his hips and ground against him, but to do so would have meant cutting off this kiss, and it was more likely she’d put six sugar packets in her grits than do that.
This was like being in the front car of a roller coaster climbing that first big peak. It was all excitement and adrenaline and scream-worthy anticipation and the knowledge that whatever was gonna happen next, it was gonna blow her hair back.
He squeezed her ass cheeks, using those big hands of his to hold her against him. The length of his cock fitting against her core was enough to make her doubt her plan. Fucking Griff out of her system so that they could go back to achieving their respective and nonconnected goals seemed like a great idea at Paint and Sip. Now, when she could feel just how hard he was, the possibility that once wouldn’t be enough loomed larger—but not enough to make her change her mind.