He looked to Don, but the man was back at the dining room table, his cell against his ear. Cole grabbed his tennis shoes and worked the first one on. No point in taking the truck, not when they were so close. He yanked off his shirt. He’d run over there and knock on the door. Give her some grief about her phone, then bring her over to meet with Don. Assuming she didn’t have an afghan to crochet or a well to dig, what else could she have to do at nine-thirty in the morning?
Sleep. That was apparently what Summer Jenkins had to do at nine-thirty on Wednesday mornings. Cole stood, his hands on his hips, and stared down at her. Correction: Sleep hard.
He’d been almost panicked when he’d come in. Her truck was in the drive, unlocked, the keys in the ignition. He’d glanced at it, then climbed the front steps, knocked on the door and waited, leaning on one hand against the wall. There had been no answer, no doorbell to press, the curtains on the front closed tight. He’d knocked again, harder. Walked around the house and then returned to the front. After the third round of knocking, he’d tried the door. Unlocked. Like the truck. This was a town of people waiting to be killed.
He had cracked the door, calling out her name, the quiet house open before him, lights off, no response made. Then, with mounting unease, he stepped in. The first door he’d opened had been to her room. And there, stretched out on the bed, had been her.
Red underwear. Between that and her dress, she was on her way to ruining the color for him. She lay on her stomach, arms up by her head, one knee higher than the other, her beautiful ass on full, uninterrupted display before him. He could stare without being caught; his eyes could travel over the lines of her body without a glare; he could have one, continuous moment of Summer worship. And he did, right there in her bedroom, noticing everything he could and cementing it into his mind. The freckle on the back of her right arm. The tan on her legs that faded to white the higher it went on the back of her thighs. The dimples on her back, barely seen—a thin white tank top almost covering them up.
He wanted to wake her up.
He wanted to stand there and stare at her forever.
He wanted to turn around and leave because she was obviously safe and this was behavior that would put him in jail.
He never was good at making decisions.
CHAPTER 55
Our house was always hot in the morning. It was built in 1904, a sharecropper’s cabin to the Holdens’ plantation and was put on the dirt facing west, in order to capture the morning sun. That might have been great for cotton pickers who rose at five, but for Mama and me it was a pain in the ass. More for me than Mama. She was out of bed by seven, in her car by eight, and at work by eight-fifteen. Me, I liked my sleep. When our house phone jangled sometime around nine o’clock, I kicked off my hot sheet, rolled over on the bed, and shoved a hand in the general direction of my bedside table and the telephone. There was a crash, my wandering hand a little too energetic, and the phone stopped ringing. I went back to sleep.
A throat clearing awakened me. A man’s throat. I opened my eyes, my yellow sheets coming into focus, and slowly rolled over. Cole stood at the foot of my bed. Shirtless. In black running shorts. Staring at me. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what I had gone to bed wearing. I felt something hit my foot and reopened my eyes.
Cole was leaning forward, his hand on my foot. He straightened when our eyes met. “Summer,” he said quietly—a stupid thing to say as we were looking right at each other.
“Why are you in my bedroom?” I had to look down, just to see if… oh God. I was only wearing underwear and a wife beater. I looked back at Cole, and he was staring, his eyes following the path mine just took, his jaw tightening, one finger twitching against the top of his hip.
“You didn’t answer your door, your front door was unlocked, and your phone line is busy.” He clipped out the sentences without looking at my face, his eyes still on my body, and I shifted a little on the bed when I realized that the front of his loose shorts was tenting. Tenting. I hadn’t been touched, hadn’t been kissed—other than that kitchen disaster—in three years, and this man, this sex god who’d had Nadia Smith, was aroused by me. My inner mention of his wife shut down my sex drive, and I rolled over, trying to block out the image of the arousal on his face, the push against his pants, the roll over preventing my legs from opening up for him. And holy crap, I’d been about to do that. Invite Cole Masten, my costar, into my bed. I reached out for a sheet, something to cover me up because my butt was now right there in front of his eyes. My hands found nothing, and I stopped moving, stopped breathing because I could hear his breath, hard and loud in the room, and ohmyword it was sexy. The bed sank beside my right knee, then beside my left, and I felt the brush of soft fabric against the bottom of my feet—his shorts—and it was so erotic I almost moaned.
“What are you doing?” I gasped, a set of fingertips moving slowly, from my right knee up, along the side of my thigh and drifting gently over the curve of my butt.
“Shh…” he whispered. “For once, Summer. Just shut up.”
I didn’t respond because his hand fully settled on my skin, sliding under my cotton panties, and palming my bare skin, squeezing the flesh so hard that I gasped, my shoulders lifting, his other hand pushing, holding me back down.
“Don’t move. Don’t think. Please. I need this.”
“Nadia,” I gasped out her name, my only protest, and his hand instantly stilled on my ass.
“Summer.” He leaned forward, the change in position pushing his pelvis, his hard-on, against my feet, his hand harder on my butt, and his breath was suddenly hot on the nape of my neck as he softly spoke. “If I never hear that name again, I will die happy. There is nothing about her that needs to be in this moment.”
“But—” My protest died when his lips settled on the back of my neck, his teeth following up the kiss with a scrape against my skin.
“For the love of God, Summer. If you want me to stop you need to tell me right now.”
Tell him to stop? I couldn’t. He ground his hips and my feet lifted, apart from my brain, and brushed against one large, hard item. “Yes…” he hissed, sitting back, his mouth leaving my neck, his hand running slowly down my back. The other slid from my thigh up, underneath my panties, both of them palming my ass. The man appeared to have all of the time in the world, and I swallowed a moan as he squeezed, rolling his hands up and out, in small circles, the place between my legs affected by the movement, the cotton of my panties pulled tight by his big hands, the friction just one more piece in the unraveling of my sanity in this moment.
How would I ever recover from this? How would any man ever be able to compete?
He spoke, his words gruff and barely controlled, and I lost all reason with the next words out of his mouth.
“Summer, what will happen when my hands move lower? When I slide my fingers in between your legs?” I felt the pressure as one of his hands moved, teased me, fingers sliding over my ass and almost lower, almost there. I hoped his question wasn’t a literal one because I couldn’t form words, or thoughts, or anything right then. “I’m about to find out exactly how much you’ve been wanting my cock.” He growled the last word, and I almost bucked under his touch, my need burning, crying out, my legs scrabbling underneath him, crawling up the bed, a feral desire deep inside me wanting to be on all fours, my butt in the air, ready for him, frantic for him.
“No,” he said, holding me down, his knees tight against me as he held me in place, prevented my climb, one hard finger sliding back down the crack of my ass and further, in between my legs, and he swore in the silent room, my low groan joining his curse. “Do you get this wet for all of these country boys?” His fingers played with the soaked material between my legs, my thighs fighting to part, and he gave me a little room, my knees urgent in their spread, my feet clamping around his arousal, and he groaned, the sound deep and needy, pouring fuel on my need and pushing it further, more intense, my initial shock at how hard he was replaced with a
constant hammering in my brain to have it now, right now, because I swore I would die without it.
He didn’t push aside my panties; he didn’t rip them off; he just moved, with slow and patient strokes, from my ass to my taint, back and forth, and I pushed my hips higher in the air, my face buried against my fitted sheet, any composure lost as I begged him to go lower, begged him for more.
“Jesus, Summer, I want to taste you so badly,” he whispered, his head dropping, his teeth softly biting into my left butt cheek. “I want to flip you over and bury my face in between your legs and fuck you with my mouth. I want to make you scream my name and come underneath my mouth and taste the moment you fall apart for me.”
“Then do it,” I challenged. “Shut up and do it.” I may have told him to shut up, but I had coveted every word, every sentence—words uttered to me, about me, from him. I could hate this man, curse him to hell, but there had never been a question on this earth that the man was beautiful, that his body was sin, that his sexuality was addicting. And now he was here, in my bed, his hands on my skin. Skin that hadn’t been touched in so long. Skin that begged for more, raw need pulsing through me.
“I can’t.” His voice broke on the two words, his fingers frantic as they pulled at my hips, pulled them up, his fingers skimming my soaked panties down, and I was suddenly bare before him, bent over, the hum of the fan brushing air over my most sensitive place. “Where’s your condoms?” he rasped, and I tried to find reason and came up short. Condoms weren’t an item I had ever stocked, and I couldn’t think of anything right then but having him.
“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.”
“I—” Everything he said was coming out wrong, the emotion radiating from her body nerve-wracking, and he stepped back, putting his hands on his head. I don’t even like you. That didn’t hurt when it came from a stranger, from critics, from fans who didn’t get autographs signed. When it came from her, it was different; it stung. Stung so much that he stepped back, needing the distance.
“Please leave, Cole.” Her words were broken and took his heart along with them, a jumbled mess of regret rolling down a hill iced with dislike. That was the problem with what they had just done. Because no matter how great it had been, it hadn’t been done on a bedrock of friendship or compatibility or respect. It had happened between two people who didn’t even like each other.
He followed her wishes, for one of the first times in their clusterfuck since meeting, and turned away, walking through the small living room, out the front door, and off her porch.