“I don’t… please. Just please…”
He didn’t ask questions; he didn’t do anything but yank at his shorts, and push, bare and beautiful, inside of me. In that moment, that push, I lost every hold I had on myself and became his. He shuddered out my name, pressed himself fully inside, and waited for one long breath.
“Are you okay?” His words were painful and tight, gritted out between his teeth, and I nodded, unable to form words, unable to do anything but worship at the altar of Cole Masten from that moment forth.
“Good,” he moaned. “Because I’m about to unleash hell.”
He was wrong. It wasn’t hell. It wasn’t anything close to hell. It was beautiful, fucking heaven, his hands tight on my ass, his pumps fast and quick and barely controlled, the perfect, rapid rhythm pushing me to a place I had never been from just sex, a completion that took me completely by surprise and caused my body to tighten, my breath to gasp out, my fingers to dig into the mattress, and my world broke, around his heaven and to my hell. I came, screamed his name as I did it, and his arms came around me, pulling me up against his chest, his final thrusts done with his mouth on my neck and his hands up my shirt and tight on my breasts.
He pulled out at the last moment, his hand fast, his body rolling, taking me onto my back against him, his orgasm hot and wet against my back, and he moaned my name as if he was breaking. I rolled over, for no sane reason, straddling his body, and pushed down, taking him in me, my mouth covering his as I filled myself with his cock and rode out the last tingles of my orgasm, his hands gripping me down, hugging me to his hard chest as he gasped against my mouth, his kiss desperate, hard and needy, his hands moving with manic need, squeezing, gripping, sliding over me as he feasted on my mouth.
He was hell. But his body, his cock, what he did to me? It was heaven. And I wasn’t sure, in the moment that I finally pulled away from his mouth and rolled off him, how I would handle that. I wrapped the sheet around me, stared at the ceiling, and felt the push of a thousand questions welling in my throat. Why was he there? Why had he touched me? Had it been anything other than a basic need fulfillment? What did he think of me now and how would this change our dynamic?
I was a Southern girl. We were all born to go to heaven. Even if it was the last place I belonged.
CHAPTER 56
Brad DeLuca would kill him. Of that, Cole was certain. He would fly up there, wrap those big hands around Cole’s over-privileged neck, and strangle him.
And Cole would die with a smile. A second fact he was certain of. Because what just happened made his prior obsession with Summer look like an adolescent crush. What just happened was a game changer and one that’d be worth going to the chopping block for. What just happened validated any curiosity he’d had about Summer and increased it tenfold. Being inside her had been completely different than Nadia… than anyone else. He looked up to the ceiling and tried to put his finger on what had made it so different. Tried to figure out how a woman so frustrating could have a body that felt so perfectly in tune with his.
She rolled off him and sat up on the bed, the worn, white undershirt riding up her back, and he reached over, pulling it down carefully, his fingers caressing the skin of her back, missing the touch when she pulled away and stood.
“That was a mistake.” She found her panties—those damn red panties—and bent over to pull them on, his eyes dropping to her skin, her ass, the arch of her back.
“You need fresh ones.” He reached down for his shorts, feeling suddenly naked on the bed. “Those are a little wet.” He smiled, and she seemed to miss the joke, standing up and turning to him, her arms crossing over her beautiful breasts. He suddenly realized the comment that he’d ignored. “It wasn’t a mistake.”
“It was. It was—” She threw up her hands. “Stupid.”
He followed her lead, getting off the bed and stepping toward her, her hands coming up as if to hold him off, and he stopped. “Is this something you do? Go psycho after you fuck someone?”
She flinched as if she’d been slapped, and he wished, in a heartbeat, he’d kept his mouth shut, his brain-to-mouth function around her permanently broken. Maybe he’d had others speaking for him for too long. Or maybe she was the type of woman who drove a man insane. “I don’t… fuck people,” she seethed, her face darkening, the strength he lov—respected coming through. “And I’m not psycho. Forgive me if I don’t want to cuddle with my costar afterward.”
“Costar?” He laughed away the jab he felt hit his gut. He couldn’t take rejection, not right now, not with Nadia so close, so recent. Maybe DeLuca was right. Maybe his rules of celibacy were about more than Cole’s reputation. Maybe Summer was right, and this was a mistake. “High on yourself, aren’t you?”
She stepped to a dresser, white and sagging, set against the wall. “Wow. You really are an asshole.” She pulled open a bottom drawer and bent over, pulling out a pair of shorts, and he didn’t know how this had turned so wrong. Maybe his after-sex social skills needed work. He hadn’t needed those skills during the last six years with Nadia. And the experiences since… those girls had been too interested in taking a selfie with him to have a conversation. Especially not a conversation like this.
“Summer…”
She yanked up her shorts, and her nipples were visible through the thin top. He stared, she caught him staring, and her cheeks flushed pink, her arms stiff as she jerked open another drawer and pulled out a T-shirt.
“Did I miss something?” he asked, trying to chase down the root of this problem. “Did I do something to piss you off?”
“You’re married.” She spat out the words and pulled the shirt over her head, his eyes getting one last feast of her torso before it was covered by a bright pink celebration of the Class of 2002.
“My wife was married when she fucked half of Hollywood.” The response came out hard and sour and she turned to him, her eyes blazing, and he knew, before her mouth opened, that she’d taken it the wrong way.
“Is that how your marriages are over there? She cheats so you cheat? Everyone goes home happy and even?”
She suddenly wasn’t the only angry one in the room and he stood up slowly, taking a deep breath, trying to control his anger. “I never, from the moment I met Nadia, kissed another woman, slept with another woman. Not until she served me divorce papers. That might have been how she operated, but not me.” He turned to face her, his voice level. “You’re concerned about me being married? I’m as ready to be out of that as anyone. And trust me, my activities are the last thing on my wife’s mind.”
“I’m sorry that you got hurt. And I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions. But you are still married. And it seems like you’re awfully quick to just jump in the sack to look for another.” She moved out of the bedroom, her bare feet quiet as she burned a path to the kitchen, her hands still angry despite her apology, her movements quick as she pulled the coffee maker out from the wall, ran water into a pitcher, and opened and slammed more cabinets than seemed necessary for a cup of coffee.
He followed her, his words trying to catch up with her thought process, and find the place where she got such a wrong impression of him. “Look for another wife? Babe, that’s not what this is—”
“I am not your babe.” She pulled a lime green mug out and slammed the cabinet door so hard it broke, falling crooked off one hinge, and she stared at it, blinking rapidly, her mouth pursed tight. “I don’t even like you.”