The Grand Duel (The Grand Men #4)

Chapter 40

FORTY

Lissie

P izza, wine, and boyfriend in bathtubs isn’t talked about enough. Because what do you mean this is a thing, and why didn’t anyone tell me?

I watch the man opposite me as I have for the past half hour, wondering how I got so lucky.

“I told you if you wanted me in this thing with you, you’d have to behave.”

My jaw drops, and I reach for my wine, forcing my eyes away from his beautiful, powerful body. “Am I not behaving?” I take a sip.

“Not when you’re looking at me like that, no.”

I pout and place my glass back down. “I don’t like being so far away from my boyfriend.”

His eyes narrow, but I see the way his lips curl slightly upwards. “Yeah, well, your boyfriend is hanging on by a thread.”

His eyes drop to my breasts, barely coated in the bubbles. I reach up and stretch my arms over the sides of the tub, knowing it will lift them out of the water. “This tub is perfect,” I tell him, my gaze falling to his strong chest, the dusting of hair coating it.

He shakes his head at me.

I come back to the now and try to tame my smile.

He looks away, and I chuckle, my heart rate picking up when he moves from his seated position opposite to lie over me, his hands smoothing up my body as he passes through the water.

His prowling doesn’t stop, not until his mouth is on mine, lips bruising. “Tease,” he mutters as he inches back, kissing my cheek and then neck.

I run my hands through his hair and down his back, revelling in how good he feels. How new and exciting this is. “Me? You’re the one making moves.”

He grumbles something as he dips lower, kissing the top of my breast before coming back up. His tired eyes blink once as they find focus on my own, guilt filling me in the next second despite the way they darken, and then he goes back in for another hungry kiss.

He can’t stop, and I won’t stop him, no matter how sore my lips get.

He feels too good.

We feel too good.

I feel his cock brush against my stomach and close my eyes. I wonder if…is he ready to sleep with me outside of the club?

Sex has always been personal between us—or at least for me it has. But sex outside of The Nightingale, that’s something he’s not done with anyone, not in over a decade.

I’m lost in my head, wondering what he might need, when he grasps my waist and lifts me, taking my place and sitting me on his lap.

I smile, laughing as I right myself, placing my hands on his shoulders, grateful for how big this tub actually is.

Charles, though…I’m not sure he’s thinking at all.

I feel a hardness jutting up out of the water—his cock—and I look down.

My insides coil tight.

“Ignore him.”

I meet his gaze as he palms it back under the bubbles.

With my lip pulled between my teeth, I stretch myself over him, letting my breasts flatten to his firm chest. “Ignore him? That would be rude, wouldn’t it?”

He shakes his head and takes my lips when I offer him a kiss. “No,” he says against my mouth, running his hands up my back. “I wanted to ask you about earlier. Make sure you’re okay, but we got sidetracked.”

I shiver at his touch, my nipples hardening. “Right now, I’m perfect.” I sit back, and his eyes drop straight to my breasts again. My lips twitch. “Ever touched a woman’s boobs in the bath, Charles?”

He flicks his hungry gaze up to my face and shakes his head.

Excitement soars inside of me at the idea of giving him something that no one else has. I lean back on his lap and take his hands from where they rest on my thighs, smoothing them up over my hips to my stomach.

My mouth parts, my core heating as his hands glide over my waist on their own accord. “This is new for me, too.”

“It is?”

I nod. “I’ve never bathed with a man before.”

His eyes spark, and my heart flips, my hands falling away as he runs his fingers up over my breasts, my nipples growing harder at his touch.

A desperate moan passes my lips, and I rock forward without thinking.

He shudders, shifting beneath me.

“Sorry,” I say, the words passing my lips hushed.

With his hands on my breasts, it’s hard to think about anything else, but I need to remember that this is new for him. For us. I need to make sure I can pull back if I need to.

I need to make sure this is okay for him.

Before I can inch back, he has my hair wrapped around his fist, my head pulled back with his lips dusting my chest. “Apologise one more time for making me feel something, and I’ll have you on your knees, pretty Lissie girl. I don’t know what I ever said that made you think I wouldn’t want this, but it’s bollocks. I’m yours. Whatever the fuck I was doing before you isn’t what I’m doing now. You want to touch me, touch me.” He squeezes my breast, letting his fingers roll over my nipples as his mouth follows. “You want to bring me to my knees.” He drags his lips over my breast and sucks the skin at the base of my throat. “You do it.”

“Please,” I beg.

He releases my hair and cups the back of my neck, easing me upright again.

The second our eyes lock, I dart forward to kiss him, my hands fisting in his hair, dragging down his back as his hands rove my body, as we lose ourselves to the kiss.

When I pull away, my chest is heaving, heavy, my lips aching.

My eyes pin him, a little unbelieving that this can feel the way it does. They drift closed at the soft touch of his fingers stroking through my pussy.

His thumb settles just shy of my clit, applying the slightest pressure, as if he knows it’ll make me ache with need.

At the sound of the jets rippling to life beneath the water, I open my eyes.

“I want to watch you,” he rasps, reaching up and squeezing my breast. “I need to look into those eyes and see what it does to you. See that it fucks you up as much as it does me. Nothing between us.”

The blindfold.

He’s never looked into my eyes and seen me come.

“Anything,” I whisper, lowering my head so that I’m looking into his eyes. “You can do anything to me, Charlie.”

He groans. “Baby.”

“Charles—”

My pleas are met, cut short, with the feel of his fingers filling me, deep down to his knuckles. My mouth drops open, and I fight to keep my eyes from closing.

“I’ve thought about doing this to you for weeks,” he tells me, his lips forming to mine then pulling back, a little shaky. “You’ve not left my mind. Not for a second. You’ll be with me in the car, and all I can think about is how you’d feel spread out across my lap, my cock deep inside of you. You’ll bring me files, and I’ll already be daydreaming of the taste of you. Of the way your pussy feels when it’s wrapped around me.” He pulls his fingers out and uses his thumb and forefinger to grasp my chin, lifting my dipped head. He kisses me. “Eyes on me, baby.” His tongue darts out as he pulls away, licking, then sucking across my jaw. “You taste fucking divine.”

My insides ripple at his words, at the way he licked my arousal from my skin.

His fingers curl inside of me, and I drop my head back, grinding my hips down onto his hand.

When his thumb lifts, dusting up my centre and circling over my clit, I let out a whimper.

“Turn around,” he demands, moving me through the water with his hips before I can do it myself.

His arm wraps around me, my body twisted and flush to his as he repositions us, my front to the side of the tub.

He pushes up against my back, putting me in front of one of the jets. He uses two fingers to spread my pussy and then grinds his hips forward to direct me to the flow.

When the pressure of the water hits my clit, my mouth drops open, my body coiling in on itself as he holds me firm.

“There.”

“Charles,” I beg, fighting against the need to pull away with how intense the feeling is. “It’s too much.”

“You want me to stop?” His nose is in my hair, his lips dragging from my ear to my cheek.

“No,” I plead. “No.” I try to bend forward, my hips jutting back, but he takes a hold of my throat with his free hand, his other still spreading my pussy in front of the jet.

His hips keep me in place, his hand just the right pressure at my neck as he angles my head back to lie flush with his shoulder.

“Do you remember what I felt like inside of you?” he asks, his face pressed against mine. “Can you imagine it like I can?”

I rock forward over and over, my lips parting as pleasure overcomes me.

“Does it torture you like it does me, baby?” he whispers.

I feel his cock hard against my ass, his hips creating a force his hand poised at the front of my body matches.

If I was certain it was what he wanted, I’d lean forward and let him sink inside of me.

“I…” The flow of the warm water makes my body cave, and I reach up, grasping his forearm at my chest. “Oh my god.”

“Don’t hide it. I want to see you. I want to hold you as it takes over.”

I let out a breathy moan, the feel of the jet too much to bear, the way he makes me so free to feel, too much.

“Let it go. Don’t be afraid to show me. I’ve got you.”

My orgasm pulses through me, and I instinctively try to pull away, to ease the intensity that creases up my face, but Charlie doesn’t let me, holding me tighter, his hands gripping me tighter.

I cry out his name as it grows, the feeling almost unbearable as my limbs shake, my vision going black.

I feel a rush of something stream out of me, my body trembling at the sensation and growing heavy in his arms as my thighs struggle to hold me up.

“Yes, baby.” He sighs. “That’s it.”

I twist my head, needing him, and he meets my lips with a fierce kiss, our mouths tangling.

His hands sweep tenderly over my torso as his tongue licks and toys with mine, each kiss slow and drawn out. It’s as if he doesn’t want to stop.

My body grows lax in his arms, the orgasm unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my life.

I smile, and he pulls back.

“What?”

I shake my head, my lips pursed as I try to tame them. “Nothing.”

I’m wrapped in a fluffy towel and carried into the main bedroom. “Charles,” I plead, laughing—although I don’t really want him to put me down at all.

He sets me down by my bag and then reaches for the blanket he brought with him from home. “It’s freezing, Lis,” he tells me, quickly wrapping me in it and putting on his boxers. “I’m hoping the central heating will be up and running soon.”

He pulls on his T-shirt and then slips a hoodie over my head.

I shake my head as he bends and holds out the underwear I packed so that I can step into them. He follows with my leggings. “It’s not even that cold.”

“Your hair is wet.” He points out, standing.

I smile up at him, forgetting for a moment that I can kiss this beautiful man if I want to.

My boyfriend.

Charles Aldridge.

My stomach balls itself up in knots at the thought, my smile untamed and giddy.

“What?” he asks.

I shake my head, not wanting to give all my cards away at once. “Will you show me the rest of the work you’ve had done before we go home?”

He narrows his eyes on me, as if wanting to know what I was thinking, but then he nods and takes my hand, leading me from the room and down the landing. “I’ve had the room that was here originally split in two and made into a home office and bedroom.”

My jaw drops as I walk into the room he said would be an office. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“We’ve managed to create three bedrooms on this level and one in the loft. The stairs will be delivered sometime over the weekend hopefully.”

“Four bedrooms,” I muse. “That wouldn’t happen to be because of two small children who have you wrapped around their little fingers now, would it?”

His lip curls, and he pulls me to him by my jumper. “Maybe,” he says, stealing a kiss.

“I knew it.”

“But I wanted to be prepared, too. Just in case down the line…”

My brow gathers, my smile faltering. “What do you mean?”

He shrugs, still playful, which only confuses me. “Who knows what I might need these rooms for in a couple of years’ time.”

My heart stalls. “Children?” I swallow. “You mean children. Of your own?”

He licks at his bottom lip and looks down at me, as if gauging my reaction. As if he knew this conversation was bigger than he was letting on. “Maybe. Can you see?—”

I shake my head, barely hearing him, let alone my messy thoughts. “But I…I didn’t think you wanted kids.”

He laughs, his smile nervous. “Lis, I didn’t want anything until I met you.”

No.

No, no, no, no.

My heart sinks, leaving an aching hole in its wake. “Charles, I…” I tilt my head to the side, realisation making the sad smile that grows on my face full of pain. “I’m not able to,” I whisper.

The burning in my chest intensifies, making me feel sick as it gathers in my throat.

“You’re not able to?” he repeats.

I wet my lips over and over as my body sets itself on fire. Because this is it. I can’t run and hide from it right now, not here in this moment with him.

“Children.” My voice wobbles, my emotions from earlier in the night resurfacing. “I’m not able to have children.” I pick at the skin around my nails, watching as his face is transformed with confusion. “If I knew you had changed your mind, I never would’ve said yes to being with you like this…” I point between us, my heart feeling like it’s splitting in two. My worst fear since I found out at age sixteen that I’d never carry a child has just unfolded in the most bittersweet way. Because I can’t give this man all that he wants, and I want that for him. To see him have it all. “I’m so sorry, Charlie, I had no idea.” I shake my head and step back, unable to meet his eyes.

I turn and rush from the room, quickly grabbing my things from the main bedroom and walking down the stairs.

“Lissie, wait a second.”

I bypass the dogs, needing to get outside in the fresh air.

“Lis.”

My eyes burn, and I can’t stop it—the emotions, the feeling of it all bubbling up inside of me.

“Hey.” He grabs my arm and turns me, eyes searching my face. “Baby, no.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, tears falling. “I’m sorry, Charlie.”

“What are you sorry for?” he asks, horrified.

“I’m so sorry,” I repeat, my breaths getting shorter and shorter. “I can’t.”

Everything comes back to me as if I’m in the moment for the first time all over again.

The fear.

The unknown.

Jovie’s terrified, sad face as I drifted in and out of consciousness.

The smell of the hospital.

He pulls me into his chest, wrapping me tight in his arms. “Lissie, you’re scaring me. Please.”

The smell of him cocoons me, his arms warming me, his heart pounding in a rhythm that matches my own.

And it’s in his arms that I finally break.