Page 8 of Sweetheart and the Grouch
AINSLEY
There’s something strange about the quiet. When you’re around noise all the time, you crave quiet. But when you have it, it feels…disconcerting. Growing up in the city all my life, the level of endless nothing occasionally spliced with an animal’s call or the rustle of the trees, feels louder in the middle of the night than all those cars and sirens. I can’t sleep.
Sitting up in the bed I’m sharing with Elena, I smile at her sleeping form, glad that at least one of us is resting well. I place my hand on her blonde head and brush her hair away from her face, then I get up and head to the kitchen to warm up some milk. Maybe that’ll do the trick.
“Everything all right?” The deep voice speaking from behind me as I open the fridge almost causes me to drop milk everywhere.
“Oh shit. You startled me,” I say, hand to chest as I turn and place the jug on the counter.
“Apologies,” Ajax says with a sheepish grin. “I thought you saw me already.”
I look from him to the computer setup that’s providing the glow of light in the darkened room and shake my head. “You couldn’t sleep?”
“Haven’t tried yet to be honest.”
“Are you working?”
He glances back to the glowing monitors and scrapes a hand across the back of his neck. “Attempting to.”
“What are you, like a programmer or something?” I ask, noting all the random code and symbols all over the screen.
“Something like that. My job is to test security protocols and report any gaps that need fixing.”
My eyebrows lift. “You’re a hacker.”
He reaches back and shuts one of the monitors off, but the glow from the PC tower remains the same. “I’m a security analyst. This is all above board.”
“Sure thing,” I say with a grin. “That’s why you’re doing it in the middle of the night, hidden away in a cabin in the woods.”
“Well, that’s when most of these kinds of—” He stops talking and presses his lips together. “You know what? Let’s just leave it at that. Were you looking to heat that milk, or something?”
I look down at the jug in front of me. “Oh, yeah. I figured it might help me sleep.”
“I can probably do you one better than warm milk,” he says, moving his massive frame from the desk area to the kitchen. In the still of the night, it feels like he’s crowding me in. But I like it. I haven’t felt safe many times throughout my life, especially around men, but with Ajax, I feel just fine. In fact, when he reaches up and pulls a small box out of the cupboard, his shirt rides up and I get a peek of smooth abdomen, my fingertips tingle with the desire to reach out and touch him. Would he welcome that?
“Here,” he says, snapping me out of my lusty haze as he hands me the packet. “Chamomile. Calms your nerves and helps you sleep.”
“You think I’m nervous?” The words slip from my mouth in a whisper as I look up to meet his eyes. He’s standing so close.
“Would make sense. New town. Smoke-filled new home. Needing to spend the night at some strange man’s house.”
“I don’t think you’re strange. I think you’re safe.”
“You don’t know well enough to decide that.”
“I’m a good judge of character.”
“My character ain’t that good, sweetheart,” he says, his voice getting lower so he’s almost talking in a whisper like me. “My restraint isn’t that amazing either.”
My breath hitches as he reaches up a hand and ever so gently brushes my messy curls behind my ear, letting his fingertips touch my cheek in a way that makes me shudder. With his green eyes looking dark and concentrated, he moves his hand down toward my chin, his thumb swiping across my lips. I gasp and part them, and I don’t know why, but I sweep my tongue out, tasting a slight saltiness when I touch the pad of his thumb. He groans, and then before I know what’s happening, his mouth is on mine, and his hands are reaching down to cup my ass.
I open for him, letting his demanding tongue in with sweeping strokes as he lifts me onto the counter and spreads my legs either side of him. I’m caged by his arms, locked in with his body and his mouth, and there is honestly nowhere else I’d rather be in this moment.
He grinds against my core, guiding my head back to kiss me harder, deeper, that hard length of his pressing into me in the most sublime of ways. I whimper as the tension builds, my hands fisting against the front of his shirt as I try to pull him closer to me. But all this seems to have the opposite effect, because just as fast as all this started, it stops. And Ajax is pulling away from me, his hand going through his dark hair as he lets out a slow breath.
“I’m sorry. Fuck. That was wrong.”
“No. It—”
