Page 48 of The Holiday Clause

He snatched her arms, pinned them on the table above her head, locked tightly in his one-handed grip. “I mean it. No more poking. No more teasing. And no more coming over here all done up.”

She laughed. “All done up? Grey, this is what I put on in the morning. There’s nothing special about what I’m wearing.”

He growled. “You look... hotter.”

Something inside of her clenched. The furthest Grey had ever gone with his compliments was to tell her she looked nice. He thought she looked hot? No, not hot—hotter.

Something was definitely going on between them, and she didn’t think it had to do with wills or weddings.

“You make me feel hot.” The confession cast a moment of intense silence.

Everything stilled.

She swallowed, breathing in his familiar scent, a mixture of cedar, the outdoors, and pure masculinity. This close, she could see the tiny scars that nicked his skin from labor and woodworking over the years.

His hand tightened around her wrists. “Grey, if it’s just tonight, make it count.”

“What are you doing to me?” His fingers traced slowly down her throat, as if he were testing his limits and hers. She didn’t move her hands from where he’d pressed them into the table.

Lifting her chin, she gave him full access to anywhere on her body he wanted to touch. The drag of those slightly calloused, work-roughened hands sent a shiver through her as they grazed slowly beyond her collarbone to hold her breasts possessively.

Her gaze softened to a half-lidded stare as she let the sense of his touch wash over her.

Greyson never spoke unless he had something meaningful to say. But when he looked at her like he was looking at her now, a thousand unspoken words were exchanged between them.

Need. Want. Lust. Hunger. Obsession. Denial. Anguish.

Fantasies from the last fifteen years flooded her mind as she waited for him to lose control and finally take what he wanted.

His fingers, reverent and gentle, whispered desires over her skin as his eyes spoke of longing. The intensity of his stare set a claim, and the energy radiating from his body left no argument about what he considered his territory.

But when he spoke, he said the opposite. “This is wrong, Wren.”

“It’s not.”

“It is. We have too much history. I don’t see you…like this.”

He was a flesh-and-blood contradiction, but, in the end, actions always mattered more than words. When his warm palm, again, cupped her breast possessively, she arched into his touch, and his gaze filled with panic.

The moment held, like a silent negotiation that hit like a reprimand. “You can’t expect me not to respond when you touch me, Grey. It feels too good.”

His nostrils flared as the internal debate ticked across his stern face. His hand shifted, and she caught his wrist, stilling him before he could pull away.

“Please.”

He studied her through a veil of doubt and confusion. They’d never done anything like this before—not until recently in theshed—but she’d be lying to say she hadn’t imagined it a thousand times. However, nothing compared to the reality of his hands on her.

She pressed her body into his touch, so there was no misunderstanding. “Please, Greyson.”

His silence was torture.

Again, he captured her hand, returning it to the table, above her head, with an unmistakable press that warned her to keep it there. She feared he’d fix her shirt and end whatever this was.

Instead, he trailed his fingers down her front, between her breasts. She closed her eyes, lost in the teasing sensations, achingly turned on by every torturous caress. When his tongue traced the tip of her nipple, she gasped.

His grip closed around her hips, wedging her against him with a deliberate tug. Only, this time, it wasn’t his thigh he pressed against her.

The firm friction was so precisely placed. Heat rushed past every nerve ending along her spine, tickling the hairs at the nape of her neck. Pressure built at her core as dark wanting flooded her insides.