Chapter Ninety

Safiya

G rayson was not on the beach.

I had heard some construction to the north when I came out, so I had turned south and walked for a ways, but I did not see anyone on the beach or in the water. Which was not unusual. The house sat on a large property, and until this morning, the parcels on either side of it had remained untouched and wild with tall seagrass and swaying palms.

Occasionally, I had encountered a couple or a lone individual who had ventured from the cove to the south or the point to the north, but it was rare.

My thoughts on Grayson, my smile long since faded, I walked and looked at the shells, but none compared to the one in my hand.

After another fifteen minutes, I turned back north.

By the time I was approaching the house, the hammering sound I had heard when I had come out to the beach had grown into a medley of beeping trucks and power tools, and I had grown curious.

I was also disappointed.

I had become accustomed to, and spoiled by, the solitude of what I could not help but think of as my beach.

With those thoughts swirling, with Grayson not standing on the lanai as I walked past the house, I came up on the property with the growing construction sounds and looked up toward the disturbance.

As if overnight, the entire framing for a new house had been erected.

Comprised of concrete blocks and steel bars and towering trusses, two stories of invasion stared back at me as two men stood at the edge of the property closest to the ocean as they faced the construction mayhem.

Caught in my discontent and grievance, I barely had time to notice the taller man dressed in a business shirt and pants when the other man, shirtless, muscular, and wearing a toolbelt, turned.

Grayson's dark blond hair rustled in the breeze as his gaze met mine.

He tipped his chin, and my heart absolutely stopped before it leapt back to life and pounded against my ribs.

I did not even notice the impossibly large man next to him turn to follow his gaze.

I was moving toward Grayson and him toward me when I remembered what I was wearing, and I stopped halfway up the sandy beach.

A few yards away, both Grayson and the man with him stood at the edge of the newly cleared land.

Before I could speak, the man next to Grayson said something in another language. His voice as deep as he was tall and muscularly built, he reminded me of the Vikings I had read about in my studies.

Without missing a beat, the moment the man stopped talking, Grayson answered him in the same language. Matching the other man's lower register, lack of pitch variation, and the almost unmelodic manner of his speech, I did not know what language it was.

Grayson switched to English. "How did you sleep?"

More than at my lack of clothes, heat flamed my cheeks when I noticed what was still over Grayson's heart. More faint, but no less present and visible, was the cross of my virginity.

Stunned speechless, I stared.

The other man said something that sounded clipped and chastising.

With his gaze still locked on mine and a sheen of sweat covering his well-defined arms and shoulders, Grayson barely tipped his chin at the man as he addressed me. "Safiya, Neil Christensen. Neil, Safiya."

Mr. Christensen switched to slightly accented English. "A fool is like all other men as long as he remains silent."

Thankful for my sunglasses, never having heard anyone insult Grayson, I looked between them.

"Danish proverb," Grayson explained casually. "Christensen is suggesting I'm a fool for asking you a personal question in front of him."

"I do not make suggestions. I state facts," the other man contended. "The project is on schedule. Stop arriving before the crew. Let them do their job, and do not antagonize the female."

Before I could register the shock of someone arguing with Grayson, he was replying with the same level of familiarity and casualness as before. "You know she's not any female. She's my wife, and if anyone antagonizes women, it's you. The project should be ahead of schedule. The crew needs to get here earlier, and I'll continue to work on the house because you know damn well that if I don't tell Raine I built it, she won't move in."

He was actually building a house for his mother? This man knew Raine?

"You are not building it," Mr. Christensen argued. "I am."

"Who do you think framed out the kitchen before your crew bothered to show up this morning?" Grayson challenged.

"My crews start work at times appropriate for noise ordinances. If I tell your mother I built the property, she will move in."

Grayson crossed his arms. "You think so."

It was not a question.

Mr. Christensen answered it anyway. "I do not think. I know."

The two men had a stare off.

Mr. Christensen broke first. Except it was not in defeat.

He began stating what sounded to me like a wish list that Raine herself would have come up with. "Energy efficient, solar panels, well-water irrigation, sustainable materials, water conservation, green certifications, and smart technology. She will move in." Mr. Christensen barely spared me a glance. "Miss Savas." Then he was walking away.

That man knew my real last name? "You are building your mother this house?" Next door? It was huge.

"Yes." Grayson stepped up to me and tucked my hair behind one ear. "How did you sleep?"

His scent overwhelmed me with desperate want. "Does Raine know this is happening?" Is this what he had wanted Feralyn to speak to his mother about? "How much land do you own?" How many people had seen him shirtless?

"Not yet, you need to be more geographically specific, and you didn't answer my question."

He owned land in other places? I glanced at his chest. "I-I slept well."

Immediately noticing my glance, he did not let it go. "Problem?"

I barely shook my head.

"Good." His gaze dropped to my throat, lingered, then he met my eyes again, and his voice became unfathomably, dominantly quiet. "Thank you for putting the necklace back on. You don't need to take it off again."

Suddenly my breath was gone, the noise of the construction disappeared, and my world became exactly as large as the man in front of me.

"Grayson." Breathy, needy, I did not recognize my own voice as the ocean breeze picked up and blew my hair in my face.

With practiced and efficient moves, he pulled an elastic off his wrist, quickly swept my hair back, and twisted it into a bun before securing it. "You may keep your hair up while you walk home." He pressed his lips to my forehead, and the scent of his warm skin and natural musk made need course through my veins. "I'm taking you to lunch. Be ready in twenty minutes. Wear the coral sundress, no underwear, no makeup. You may choose your own sandals."

The need turned to pulsing, unadulterated lust, and my mouth watered for a taste of his skin as my nipples pebbled into tight points of pain.

I did not know if I should press my thighs together or reach for him.

Desperate for both, but unsure after what he had said last night, after all the commands in the ocean yesterday, and because he had once said not to touch him without permission, I asked. "May I please touch you?"

"Where?"

My mind scrambled, but then I truly understood what he had meant.

You're going to have to get used to me.

It was not only one act he had been speaking about, and he had been right. This was our dynamic.

He was control. I was surrender.

It was not a choice.

It was need. It was want. It was life. It was him.

It was all him.

He was all I wanted. What I had always wanted since the very first moment his blue-gray gaze had landed on mine. But back then, I had not understood true desire or what this man could do to me, to my body. Back then, I would have been terrified of this aching that was so profound, it had twisted around my soul and fused me to him more deeply than any words.

Back then, I would not have understood that this was my intimacy.

I wanted this man to own me.

I wanted to surrender to him.

I wanted his full lips that were Iblis incarnate to touch mine.

So I asked. "Your mouth."

"No."

My want stronger than my ignominy, I tried again. "Your shoulder."

"With?"

Every one of my fingers. "My cheek."

He immediately understood. "Are you asking for comfort or affection, Safiya?"

My core constricted on emptiness, and my body was not my own. I was not prepared for this man. "Both."

"You can wait nineteen minutes."

Nineteen minutes.

Nineteen minutes .

It was an eternity with the heat licking at the juncture of my thighs. And the closeness of him, the sight of his chest, the unapologetically primal way he wore my virginity, he was surrounding my every breath and thought.

His voice dropped to a dark command. "Walk home, Safiya."

I suddenly remembered what he had done mere seconds ago, what he had taken off his wrist. "You took all my hair ties."

"I did."

"Why?" No underwear, no makeup.

"You don't need them unless you're with me. Eighteen minutes."

I did not walk.

I turned and fled to the house.