A Game Of Brides (Montana Born Brides) (7 page)

But he only watched her, his brows slightly raised.

“Chemistry which is sputtering away by the second,” Emmy said, more pointedly. “I’m not opposed to exploring this thing, but I gave up being patronized by men who hardly know me about a decade ago. I have three weeks here in Montana and a dirty little fling sounds like an excellent way to avoid my responsibilities as Margery’s maid of honor. It would be kind of fun if it was you. But I’d be perfectly happy if it was someone else, too.”

And then, finally, with her head held high and a whole lot of nonchalance she didn
’t feel, Emmy slammed her way out of the truck and headed for the cabin she really didn’t want to share with him.

Griffin watched her go.

He didn’t believe her. But he also had no intention of letting her slip off to
someone else,
thank you, especially after she’d used the word
dirty.
And neither one of those things mattered anyway, because she was a grown woman and it wasn’t his goddamned business.

His grandmother had sat him down when he was fifteen
and full of himself and starry-eyed Emmy had been, in his estimation, no more than an annoying little kid.

You have a responsibility here, Griffin,
she’d told him, very solemnly.

It
’s not
my
fault, Gran,
he’d protested.
She’s, like,
twelve.

That had been an insult as he
’d been so worldly and adult, by his reckoning. Gran Martha hadn’t laughed the way Griffin thought he might have if some shithead fifteen-year-old said something like that to him now.

Three years seems like a long time now,
she’d said calmly, sitting at the long table in the breakfast room surrounded by glass and mountain views on all sides.
But there may come a time it won’t. And you’ll remember we talked, Griffin. Because you have a responsibility to that girl, and to yourself, not to go ahead and do something simply because you can.

Even in his own memory, he
’d been sulky.
I don’t know what that means.

You do.
Gran Martha had eyed him, her short hair still salt and pepper then instead of the snow it was these days, making her green eyes gleam.
You will. I expect that when the time comes, you’ll behave like the young man I admire.

And so, that night in the barn, he had.

Eventually.

But t
hat was then, he thought, watching Emmy Mathis’s perfectly adult body enter his cabin—once again, without looking back, which shouldn’t smart the way it did. And this was now.

The glorious now, where everybody was
all grown up and no one had responsibilities to anyone but his or her own damn self. Where those three years signified nothing, as Gran Martha had promised. Where there was absolutely no reason for him to think about
responsibilities
when he thought about Emmy.

Hallelujah.

That got him out of the truck and into the cabin, only a step or two behind her.

“
Have you finished making up my mind for me?” she asked over her shoulder, and he thought she was the sexiest creature he’d ever seen, with that hint of laughter in her voice and that line of her jaw and that way she moved her hips. “Because nothing’s hotter than that.”

He
wanted to pick her up, spin around, and slam them both back against the door he shut behind him. He wanted to be inside her before he took his next breath. That he didn’t succumb to that desire, that he took a deep breath and reminded himself he wasn’t an animal, made him feel like he deserved a freaking medal. Or five.

“
I apologize,” he said, and he meant it. “I’m not trying to be patronizing. I promise.”

Emmy turned to face him fully then, and she grinned.

“That’s a step in the right direction. Only nineteen more to go.”

“
Come here.”

He heard the way his voice scraped through the cabin.
He didn’t take his eyes off of her as he watched her pull in a breath, then another, like she was having trouble getting air. He wanted that mouth of hers on his again. He wanted her beneath him. He wanted to see exactly what he’d walked away from ten years ago. God, what he wanted.

And she
’d said she was looking for
dirty.
He could do that.

He couldn
’t wait to do that.

“
Why are you giving the orders?” she asked, but her voice was breathy and she was moving toward him anyway.

“
Catch-up time is over,” he said, but his attention was on that mouth of hers. “Unless you have any important confessions to make?”

“
No.” She stopped a scant inch in front of him and he could smell her. Apple shampoo. The peat and fire of whiskey. Emmy.
His.
“I’m all out of confessions.”

“
That’s a good thing, Bug,” he said, reaching over and tugging her closer with his hands sunk deep in her hair. “Because I’m no priest.”

And this time, when he kis
sed her, he took the brakes off like they’d never been there in the first place.

It was a high-octane, reckless descent into madness.

It was perfect.

She wrapped herself around him and everything imploded.
Just burned away like there was nothing but her. But this.

Through the
white-hot haze of desire, Griffin was aware that they fit together with a certain sleek
rightness
, the way he’d tried so hard to pretend he hadn’t noticed ten years ago. He kissed her again and again, and she met him each and every time. He felt her delicious breasts press against his chest. He bent her back over his arm and tasted his way along the line of her neck. She made greedy little noises of pure abandon that almost undid him, and he claimed her mouth again, not surprised when he found he’d managed to move them over toward the long kitchen island that separated the kitchen from the rest of the great room. He lifted her up and stepped between her legs, closer.
Closer.

But
when he slid his hands beneath the hem of her shirt, she stopped him.

“
Absolutely not,” she said, and when he pulled back to look at her and tried to rein himself back in, she was grinning, her brown eyes dancing. “If there’s going to be nudity tonight—”

“
There is.”

Her grin widened.
“Then you’re going first. I have a very serious personal policy of never stripping all by myself.” Her eyebrows arched up. “Childhood trauma.”

“
Your childhood trauma is one of my fondest memories,” he managed to tell her. “Though in my memories, I should be clear, you’re definitely not crying.”

She put a hand over her heart.
“That’s almost romantic.”

Griffin shrugged out of his hoodie and let it drop, never shifting his attention from Emmy.
He reached over and grabbed the back of his t-shirt, then pulled it over his head, and when he cleared the wall of fabric he saw her eyes had gone a little bright and were focused on his tattoos.

He waited.

Eventually, she looked up, and flushed. “You have more tattoos than you used to.”

“
I do.” He felt wicked and powerful at once, and he knew it had everything to do with that look in her eyes. “Want to see them all?”

That delicious heat.
It licked through him. It marked him. He thought that if she kept looking at him like that, he’d transform into pure energy right then and there. Like his skin couldn’t hold him in.

And then she reached over and
ran a finger over the griffin tattoo that covered his heart, and he became nothing at all but fire.

Griffin Hyatt was dangerous enough fully clothed.

Naked, he was heart
stopping. Mythical, like the bright creature he wore on his chest. Like his name. Emmy actually felt her heart stop inside her chest, then burst back to life like some kind of grenade.

“
You better stop looking at me like that,” he warned her as he kicked his boxer briefs aside and stood there with the supreme confidence of an athletic male, his green eyes glittering and hard.
All of him
was hard.

And his tattoos were glorious.

They swirled and danced across his skin, some of them clearly separate, some interconnected, all of them beautiful. He was a taut male canvas, beautiful in the way dark, forbidden things were beautiful. Seductive and masculine and almost too much to bear.

“
I don’t think I can stop,” she murmured.

“
Then this might be a short night.” He sounded so lazy, so amused, that Emmy found herself smiling. He still stood there, the bright kitchen lights shining down on him like a spotlight, and looked anything but uncomfortable with it. “And I can’t help but notice that you’re still wearing all your clothes.”

“
Imagine if I ran out that door, never to be seen again?” But there was no heat in it, no intent, and she shifted closer to him as she said it.

“
We’re not kids anymore, Bug,” he said in that low growl that moved in her and tied her into knots all up and down her spine and deep into her belly, like that once-hated nickname was an endearment. “I’d catch you before you went too far.”

“
Maybe that’s what I should have done ten years ago,” she murmured. She ran her hands over his chest again, then bent to press a kiss against that griffin that guarded his heart. His sigh was a heavy, lustful thing, and it made a molten sort of joy wash through her. “Chased you across the Grans’ land, totally naked, then down into Paradise Valley. Hell, all the way to Yellowstone. I wonder what would have happened then.”

“
Exactly what’s about to happen now,” he replied, and she could feel the rumble of his voice beneath her hands as she slid off the counter and explored him. The thick planes of his pectoral muscles. That hollow between them. The ridged wonder of his abdomen. “And then you would have left for college the same way I did, and it all would have been that much worse.”

She shook her head, and frowned up at him.
“You’re so conceited. What’s wrong with me that I think that’s hot?”

“
Not conceited. Just confident. With reason.” He grinned. “You’ll see.”

Emmy turned her attention back to the perfection of his body, because she was afraid he
’d see all that naked longing in her gaze. Maybe it would scare him away. She knew it was close to terrifying her. She leaned over and tasted him. Not the griffin this time, but lower. She set a random course across the shapes and swirls that marked his chest, tasting him wherever the urge took her. Salt. Man. The clean scent of his skin, warm to her touch.

And when she got to the proud thrust of the hardest part of him, she didn
’t think. She took him in her hand and when he blew out a breath, she sank down to her knees and thought she might die if she didn’t taste him there, too.