Page 63 of The Sugar Maple Inn

“Grace. God.” He couldn’t form full sentences. Could barely breathe.

She hummed around him—the vibration nearly ending him right there—and pulled back. Her tongue swirled over the head and his knees nearly buckled.

He sucked in air. “I’m close. Real close.”

She didn’t stop. Just looked up at him with those sharp blue eyes while she took him deeper, and the sight of Grace Sullivan on her knees, lips wrapped around him, undid something fundamental in his chest.

He spilled hot inside her, letting out a long groan.

Then he pulled her up against him until she was pressed to his chest and his hammering heart. They stayed like that for a moment, neither speaking. Just breathing.

Then Grace laughed. Soft and a little breathless. “This is insane.”

“Yeah.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “It is.”

“We’re competitors.” She tilted her head back to look at him. “We literally just made each other come, and tomorrow we’re supposed to be back to—what? Enemies?”

“We’re not enemies, Grace.”

“We so are. Otherwise I wouldn’t have used my Anne Boleyn method on you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“That’s what I mean by ‘do everything but.’ ” She said it matter-of-factly, like she was explaining a business strategy. “Hear me out. So Anne, she kept Henry VIII wanting, right? Never quite satisfied. He was so fixated on her, so distracted by wondering when he’d finally get to…well.” She waved a hand. “You know, shag her, as they say in England. He literally broke from the Catholic Church because of it.”

Reese stared at her. Then laughed. “Are you seriously saying the reason we haven’t shagged is because it’s a power move on your part, Tudor England style?”

She knelt up, a glint in her eye. “Think about it. You’ll now be so fixated on wondering when you get to have sex with me properly, you’ll be distracted.”

“I already am.” He reached out, tipped her chin up with one finger. “Have been since the first time I set my eyes on you. Like I said, Grace, we’re not enemies…and I’m definitely not going to have your pretty head chopped off.”

“You might change your mind tomorrow, when the sun’s up and the competition resumes.”

He saw the slight sadness in her eyes so he pulled her back against him, tucked her into him so her slim back was against his chest. “Let’s not think about tomorrow,” he murmured in her ear. “Let’s sleep, then we can work on your Anne Boleyn approach. And by that, I mean seeing what else is covered by your ‘everything but’ rule.”

She hesitated for just a moment, then curled into him, pulling his arm around her waist, her hands over his, like they’d done this a hundred times before.

Her breathing evened out and he felt the exact moment she fell asleep as her body went heavy against him. That was when he felt like he could breathe as he stared up into the darkness.

What the hell had he just done?

She was right. He’d slept with the competition. The woman trying to buy the same property he needed. The property that held his family’s history. Even with Grace Sullivan warm and soft in his arms, her hair tickling his chin, the taste of her still on his tongue—even with all that, he wanted to learn what lay under the foundations of this place. Needed it, because everything in his gut told him that if he understood what was buried there, he might understand his dad more…and why he took his life.

Whatever they’d just done…it wouldn’t change that.

Couldn’t change that.

He closed his eyes and tried not to think about what tomorrow would bring.

Twenty-Four

Grace

Grace woke up convinced someone had replaced her blood with antifreeze. Her breath was visible in the air and that borrowed nightgown had all the insulation properties of tissue paper.

Then she remembered.

Oh, how she remembered.