The Perfect Stroke (15 page)

“I can’t go home with you!” I finally tell him, finding my voice once we’re a couple miles down the road. “I have a job!”

“Jackson can do it while we’re gone. You owe me for the shit you put me through tonight and for probably costing me the Riverton contract,” he grumbles.

“Gray,” I start, already feeling guilty.

“Just save it until we get home. Once we get there, you can explain what you were doing letting another man paw you in front of everyone.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

He slams on his brakes, guiding the car to the side of the road. Thank God I’m wearing a seatbelt or else I’d be thrust through the windshield.

“I’m talking about the fact that you just sent me on my way and agreed with those assholes that I could leave you behind, and then I come back to find you hanging all over another man!”

“Oh good God! You cannot be serious! Jason is a
friend!
And I encouraged you to go talk business so we could get the damn party over and I could go home. I told you I didn’t want to go in the first place!”

“A pretty freaking chummy friend, if you ask me!”

“Did you seriously just say chummy?”

“Can it, Cooper. I’m not in the mood for your mouth unless it’s on my cock.”

“Well, if you quit being an ass, that could be arranged,” I huff out before I realize what I’m saying. His eyes narrow and he looks at me. Then, he reaches down and scoots his seat back all the way and reclines it until the head of the seat is practically laying on the back seat. “What are you doing?”

“Waiting for you to put your money where your mouth is,” he says, folding his arms.

“Gray… I…”

“Chickening out, Cooper? I expected more from you.”

“We’re on the side of a road!”

“It’s a back road, but if you’re too scared to live a little…”

“I didn’t say that,” I tell him, watching as he unzips his pants. This should be the last thing I do. We need to talk about Gray going out of town, about how he expects me to just pack up and go with him. But as I watch the way his large hand wraps around his even larger cock and stroke it slowly, I know that any discussion we might have has been tabled—at least until we apparently have sex on the side of the road, because if I’m going to give him his, you better believe I’m getting mine, too.

I may be unreasonable here, who the fuck knows. What I do know is that I do not like seeing CC with another man near her. The fact that the man had his hands on her and was getting ready to dance with her pisses me off even more. I have this need inside of me to make sure she knows who the fuck she is with. I also have a need to unload inside of her, which is completely stupid and not going to happen. I will not have a kid. I shove that thought away even as a vision of CC, her stomach round with my child, comes to mind.       

“I can’t believe you,” she huffs, but she’s not fooling me. I see the flare of excitement in her eyes. She wants this as much as I do. 

“Stop talking,” I tell her, stroking my cock. “There’s other things you can do with your mouth.”

“So romantic.”

“Keep talking and in a few minutes it won’t matter anymore.”

“Minute man?”

“I think I’ve proven how false that is, but for some strange fucking reason, I have the need to come all over that smart little mouth of yours and remind you who you belong to.”

“Belong to?” she echoes.

Shit. I know I’ve said too much, but it’s too late to take it back now.

“My mom always had a saying,” I tell her, watching as she undoes her seatbelt and moves closer to me.

“I can’t believe you’re insisting on talking about your mother while you’re giving yourself a hand job. You’re seriously twisted, Grayson Lucas.”

“She always said you never forget to ride home on the horse that brought you to the dance.”

She stops just as she’s leaning down to my dick. She sits straight up. All at once, a beautiful smile slides onto her face, one so deep that her eyes sparkle. If I was the kind of man who was easily affected by such things, I’d say she could take my breath away in this moment. Then she reaches under her dress, shifting and moving around. At first I’m not sure what she’s doing, but when she comes out with a pair of black silk panties in her hand, I understand. I snatch them and watch her as she maneuvers herself to straddle my lap.

“I’d say that’s a good saying. Especially since you’re acting like a horse’s ass,” she whispers, but I don’t give a fuck what she’s saying at this point. I’ve moved my hands to her hips as she wiggles and settles down on me. My cock slides in between the lips of her pussy. The tip pushes against her and slides up so that it rests pressed against me and her warm, wet, cunt.

“You’re wet,” I whisper, surprised and thankful as fuck. She rotates her hips, sliding those sweet pussy lips against my cock, then grinds against me. It’s all I can do to stop myself from grabbing her and holding her still so I can slam inside.

“I seem to stay that way when you’re around, Gray,” she whispers.

It’s a simple statement and it’s not meant to do anything more than just express the truth, but it grabs hold of me. It burrows deep inside of me and some of the jealousy from earlier disappears, but at the same time, it makes me want to mark her deeper. I want to reach so deep inside of her that no matter where she goes, or what she does, she feels me… she
needs
me. 

She lifts up at the same time her hand wraps around my cock, squeezing it. She positions me at her entrance and I know in a matter of seconds that I’m going to be deep inside of her. I look at her… really look at her. Her eyes drugged with need, her lips wet and glossy, her face flushed, I listen to her breaths as they come in small gasps.

“What are you doing, Cooper?” I ask, truthfully wondering how someone so beautiful could be here with me.

“Riding the horse that brought me to the dance,” she answers with a smile right before she slides down on my cock. I groan as my dick pushes into her, the walls of her pussy holding me tightly, branding my dick with the heat of her. It’s never been better. Never. Out of all of the women I‘ve been with, they pale in comparison to CC. She’s it.
Fuck!
She’s it
. “And I plan on riding him all the way home,” she exhales as she grinds down against me, using my cock to scrape against her and stretch her pussy to accommodate me.

It’s a hell of a place to realize it. But right here on the side of the road, with a car going by here and there, my emergency flashers on, and the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met in my life sliding up and down on my cock, I can’t deny it.

I am falling in love with Claudia Cooper.

“Are you ready?” Gray asks, coming through the front door and acting like he’s going to fight a fire, he’s in such a rush.

“Ready for what?”

“I told you I was leaving for mom’s today for a couple of weeks.”

“I know.”

“So are you ready to roll?”

“Umm… Gray, I told you. I’m not going.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t want to.”

“C…”

“I like you, Gray. I like you a lot. I’m even getting used to the fact that you whack innocent balls for a living.”

“I don’t think that’s the way to put it.”

I smile at him, knowing that would aggravate him. “The truth is, I have a job, a demanding job, and Jackson and I have three engine rebuilds to do this week. I just can’t leave right now. I have to work to keep my deadlines.”

“I want you with me,” he says.

He will never know how much I want to throw caution to the wind and agree. I can’t, though, and the fact that I’m using the garage as a reason feels wrong. The real reason is that I’m afraid. We haven’t really discussed how the dance went down two days ago. I feel like it was proof that I’m not in the same circles as Gray. It’s also proof that I’m not sure I ever want to be.

“Jackson can keep your deadlines. It’s just a couple weeks, C. We can make it one if that helps,” I’m willing to work with you.

“You see, this is just proof of how different we are. I don’t have a bank account, Gray. All I have is my business. I can’t ignore it for some man and go traipsing across the…”

“
Some man
?” he asks, and even I wince. I didn’t mean it like that at all. Or, hell, maybe I did. I need him to give up on me because I’m not sure I’m strong enough to give up on my own.

“You know what I mean,” I try to defend.

“No, Cooper. I don’t know what you
mean
. Why don’t you enlighten me?”

“I don’t want to do this,” I mutter, unable to look at him. I move to go around him and put my coffee mug in the sink. It’s early, but I’ll just head out and get to work.
And pretend my world doesn’t feel like it’s crashing around me.

“Do what, exactly? Fight? Meet my family?
Be with me?
”

“I think it’s pretty clear, Gray, that we just don’t mesh.”

“The fuck we don’t. I think if anything, we have proven over and over that we mesh fucking phenomenally.”

“Everything doesn’t boil down to sex!” I growl at him as I try to leave, but he grabs a hold of my arm and pulls me back around to him.

“What is this about? Is it about the dance? Because you never said anything and I thought we had a pretty good bout of make-up sex afterwards.”

“Make-up? That wasn’t make-up sex, you moron.”

“What the hell was it then?”

“Lust! That’s all we have. We scratch each other’s itches, but we’re toxic to each other.”

“Whoa! Hold the hell up here. I thought what we’ve been sharing has been pretty damn good. How in the hell did we go from having fun and enjoying each other to being toxic?”

“We run in different circles!”

“Whatever, Cooper. You’re going to have to come up with one better than that.”

“How about the fact that you keep dragging me around people who hate me? People I hate? People who did their best to destroy me years ago? I don’t want to be in that circle again for any reason, Gray!” I yell, close to breaking down and telling him exactly what he’s asking of me. “Not even for you.” I whisper that last part, the part that hurts the most. I’m weak and I know it, but I can’t handle being around the Rivertons or anyone in their circle. My sense of self-preservation tells me I can’t…
even
for Gray.

“I see.”

“I like you, Gray, I really do. But…”

“But?”

“We’re just too different.”

“I don’t think we are at all. I think if you took the time to go meet my family, you’d see that, CC. I think that if you cared even a little bit about me, you’d at least fucking try,” he growls, and this time it’s he who turns away. Funny how that seems to be the last thing I want after this conversation.

“I
do
care about you,” I argue and mean it. I think part of me is already in love with him. Or at least I think that’s what it is. I’ve never really seen or had that in my life enough to recognize it.

“Then prove it.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?” he challenges.

That’s when I see it: the hurt in his eyes, the hurt I put there. The weight of that crushes down on me and I almost feel like I’m suffocating.

“It’s the same thing!” I lash out in regret, needing to get away because suddenly I can’t breathe.

“
I never figured you for a woman without a backbone, Claudia Cooper. It’s good I found it out now, I guess. Maybe I’ll see you around,” Gray says, and those words combined with the tone of his voice make me jerk my head up to look at him.

“Gray, it doesn’t have to be this way. We can keep having fun. We can—”

“What? Keep fucking? Oddly enough, Cooper, I don’t want that from you. For the first time in my life, I can honestly say that’s not even close to what I want,” he says disgustedly.

He looks like a stranger.
He barely spares me a glance before he turns around and walks out the door. I’m left standing there wondering how we got here. In the last two days, he’s joked about me meeting his family, and yeah he told me that he had made all the reservations to leave today, but I never realized he was completely serious about taking me with him. Other than mentioning it to Cammie and her father, he’s never once asked me. And now… we’ve gone from laughing and playing, making love every night to… this.