Rochelle Alers - Forever an Eaton

“If you’re going to raise your voice, then I don’t want to be anywhere around,” she told Griffin.

“Dammit, Belinda, you act like I’m going to verbally abuse them. When it comes to discipline we are going to have to be on the same page, or else they’re going to play one off the other.”

“I know,” she whispered, burying her face between his neck and shoulder.

“What do you do when your students act out?”

“I put them out of my class, and then write them up.”

“Do you have problems with the boys?”

“What kind of problems?”

“Do they try and come on to you?”

“A few have tried, but when I give them a ‘screw face’ then they usually back off.”

“Show me a ‘screw face.’” Easing out of Griffin’s comforting embrace, Belinda sat up and glared at him. There was something in Belinda’s gaze that was frightening. “How do you do that?” he asked.

She smiled. “Practice, practice, practice. I have more problems with my female students than the males. Some of them outweigh me, so they believe they can take me out with very little effort. In not so many words, I tell them I can roll with the best of them.”

“You’re not talking about fighting a student?”

“Of course not. But what they don’t know is that I have a black belt in tae kwon do, with distinction in sparring and power breaking. Myles studied karate for years, earned his black belt, but didn’t like competing. I, on the other hand, loved competitions.”

“Do you still compete?”

“No. It’s been a long time since my last competition. A lot of teachers refuse to teach in rough neighborhoods, but the confidence I gained from a decade of martial arts training and the fact that these kids need dedicated teachers is why I stay.”

“So you can kick my butt.”

Belinda smiled. “With one arm tied behind my back,” she said, teasingly.

“Ouch!” he kidded, pressing her back to the mattress. “When I first met you I thought you were cute and I wanted to ask you out, but you were Miss Attitude personified.”

“I was nineteen and you had already graduated law school, so I thought you were too old for me.”

“I’m only five years older than you. I graduated high school at sixteen, college at twenty and law school at twenty-three. That made me an accelerated student, not an older man.”

“You seemed so much older then.”

“What about now?”

“When I saw you rolling around on the porch with Layla and Sabrina I had serious doubts as to your maturity.”

“They love it when I wrestle with them,” Griffin drawled. “Fast-forward thirteen years, and I’m going to ask you something I should’ve asked when you were nineteen. Belinda Eaton, will you go out with me?”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

“Why do you think I’m kidding?”

“Not only are we aunt, uncle and godparents but our nieces’ legal guardians. We sleep in each other’s homes, you have a key to mine and I to yours, but right now we’re in bed together. Dating would be ludicrous given our situation.”

“You’re right about us sharing a situation.”

“Is there something wrong with that, Griffin?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it, but I would prefer having a relationship with you aside from what we share with Sabrina and Layla. That way I could get to know you better.”

Belinda was strangely flattered by Griffin’s interest in her. She experienced a gamut of emotions that didn’t let her think clearly. Circumstances beyond their control had brought them together and the man whom she’d come to believe couldn’t be faithful to one woman wanted a relationship with her.

“I’ll have to think about it.”

His expressive eyebrows lifted. “What’s there to think about?”

Belinda gave him a long, penetrating stare. “I have to decide whether I’m willing to see you exclusively.”

“Does that mean you’ll give up Sunshine?”

“Who’s Sunshine?”

“Your pen-pal chump living off the taxpayers in a Sunshine State prison.”

“Raymond is not a chump,” she said in defense of the kindest man whom she had the pleasure of knowing.

“He’s in Florida and you’re in Pennsylvania, which means you live at least a thousand miles apart. How often do you see him, Belinda? Or better yet—how many times a year, if he’s not incarcerated, does he make love to you? How do you know if he’s being faithful to you?”

Her temper flared as she sat up. “How do I know you’ll be faithful to me?”

“You don’t. All you’ll have is my word.”

Belinda wanted to tell Griffin that she was beginning to like him, in fact, like him a little too much to be indifferent to his sexual magnetism. When he’d held her down on the porch she’d been on the verge of climaxing and that just looking at him made her body hot and throb with a need long denied. Griffin was right about Raymond. She didn’t know whether he was sleeping with another woman but that wasn’t her concern because he was her friend. She’d fallen in love only once in her life, and it ended with her moving off campus to come back home. It took years before she trusted a man enough to sleep with him.

“If I can’t have Sunshine, then it definitely has to be no skanks, ‘chicken heads’ or hoochies for you.”

Throwing back his head, Griffin laughed. “You drive a hard bargain, Lindy Eaton.”

“It has to be all or nothing.”

Griffin ran a forefinger down the length of her nose. “If you ever have to negotiate a deal always remember to give your competitor an out.”

“Is that how you see me, Griffin? Am I a competitor or an opponent?”

“Neither.”

“Then what am I?”

“I’m someone who’s concerned about you. You’d fallen asleep less than half an hour into the movie. I know you’re exhausted. You no longer cook, clean, wash and iron for one, but three. Layla told me you spent more than an hour folding laundry.”

A scowl settled into Belinda’s features. “You have the girls spying on me?”

“No, Belinda. I only asked them how their week went and both were only too willing to tell me. The reason I want to take you out is to give you a break. It can be one night a week. We can leave Layla and Sabrina at your parents’ or with my mother when she comes back. You can let me know in advance what you want to do or where you’d like to eat and I’ll make it happen.”

Belinda’s expression brightened. “If all you want to do is to take me out to dinner, then that means that I don’t have to give up Raymond.”

“It doesn’t matter because I get to see his woman a lot more than he does.”

The slow, sexy smile that never failed to make women sit up and take notice of Griffin Rice spread over his face as he moved over Belinda, supporting his weight on his elbows.

Belinda’s breasts felt heavy, her nipples swelling as she leaned into the solid wall of his chest. For years she’d watched Griffin with other women, wondering why, other than his gorgeous face, they chased him and now she knew. He was inherently masculine and sexy, and it didn’t matter that she was another in a long line of women who would get to sample what the celebrity lawyer was offering. She opened her mouth to his kiss, drowning in the sexual heat, succumbing to the sensual spell that made her feel as if she and the man holding her to his heart were the last two people on earth.

Griffin’s heart slammed against his ribs when he showered kisses around Belinda’s lips and along her jaw. Lowering his head, he fastened his mouth along the column of her velvety, scented neck, nipping, suckling, licking her as if she were a frothy confection.

“You taste and smell so good,” he mumbled over and over.