Page 62 of The Seascape Between Us

I released him immediately and leaned back, but in the dark, I couldn’t see his expression. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is good,reallygood. I just want you up here.”

He shifted me, positioning me over him so my face hovered over his cock, the tip of mine brushing his mouth. I went back to work on him, sucking him between my lips. His mouth parted, and he swallowed me down, his throat wrapping around me. I froze, tensing before I embarrassed myself and ended all of this too quickly.

My focus went to Daniel’s dick while fucking lightly into his mouth until his hands reached up and gripped my ass, his finger digging into my cheeks, and I was lost. I swallowed Daniel as deeply as I could, still fucking his mouth.

He groaned again, his body tensing under me just before the first splash of his cum filled my mouth, and I followed immediately, emptying myself down his throat.

Still shivering with aftershocks, I collapsed on my side next to him while I caught my breath.

“Holy shit,” he whispered. “It’salwaysso damn good.”

I smiled and righted myself, so we were face-to-face, then kissed him, putting everything I felt for him into it, and he responded, deepening the kiss, letting his tongue sweep into my mouth. When I pulled back, I cupped the side of his face and leaned my forehead against his.

After a few moments, I felt the tension leave his frame and his breathing turn soft and even. He’d drifted off, and no wonder. After today, he was probably exhausted. I pulled the covers up over us and closed my eyes, letting his soft breathing lull me to sleep.

I loved him. There was no other word for it, and I didn’t care if I ever left The Square if it meant I spent the rest of my days sleeping next to the man beside me.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Daniel

Iwoke to the lilting chirp of birds, muffled through the window, and a vague sense of unease. For a moment, I lay stretched out on my back, blinking the sleep grit from my eyes and frowning in the sun-filled bedroom, until memory caught up with me. The storm. The hotel. Grey.

I rolled onto my side, but he wasn’t there. Facing Grey’s side of the bed, I could see out the window. We’d forgotten to close the drapes before going to sleep. Outside, fluffy white clouds edged with gray streaked over a deep blue sky. Between the birds and the clear sky, I could almost convince myself that last night’s storm hadn’t really happened, that all of it had just been some kind of anxiety-induced dream stemming from nerves about the grand re-opening. I’d get out of bed, and yesterday would start all over—minus the catastrophic storm that had the potential to destroy everything we’d built over the past few months.

Of course, I knew that wasn’t the case. But the storm had passed and the birds were out. Maybe it hadn’t been as bad as the weather forecasters had predicted.

Sliding out of bed, I pulled on jeans and a t-shirt before shuffling out to the living room. Grey sat on the sofa, laptop balanced on his lap.

“Is the power back?” I asked. Maybe the damage from the storm hadn’t been as bad as we feared.

Grey shook his head. “I’m working offline for as long as my battery will last, which will be about another twenty minutes.”

“How bad is it?”

Grey’s expression turned uncharacteristically serious. “Not great.”

I wove around the furniture to the window to see for myself. Outside, despite the deceptively bright mid-morning sun and deep blue sky, the street looked like a war zone. Broken branches, leaves stripped from the trees, and debris were scattered over the street and across lawns. Someone’s garden gnome was face down in a puddle in the middle of our lawn. Across the road, the huge maple tree in front of one of the summer rental houses had split in half, exposing the pale, inner wood like an open wound, the heavy trunk and leaf-covered branches stretched across the driveway. Fortunately, there’d been no one staying there, so there were no cars in the driveway, but it was a hell of a mess.

If it was this bad up here, how bad had The Square’s main strip been hit? The hotel? Dread knotted my insides. As I turned away from the glass, I noticed Brody’s truck wasn’t in the driveway anymore.

“Did Brody leave?” I asked, turning back to Grey.

He nodded. “They went to check how the bar held up through the storm. If they couldn’t get down to the bottom of The Square,they were going to come back. That was close to an hour ago, so they must have made it back.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost ten-thirty.”

“Shit, why didn’t you wake me sooner?”

Grey’s gaze narrowed, his mouth pressing into a tight line. “Because you were exhausted after working yourself half to death yesterday; you needed the rest.”

I ducked my head and frowned. The way Grey looked out for me both warmed and annoyed me at the same time. It had been years since anyone worried about whether I worked too hard, ate properly, or got enough sleep, and having someone care was a novelty. But I’d looked after myself all these years, and I would again once Grey left.

I started to tell him he should have woken me sooner, but he held up his hand, cutting me off. “Whether we checked out the hotel first thing this morning or we go in a few hours, it’s not going to change anything. Get a coffee and something to eat, then we’ll head down.”

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