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I sink back onto the cushion, and pull my legs to my side, wondering if I dare ask what I want to ask. He leans into the cushion as well. “What do you want to know?” he asks.
I decide to dare. “Did you love her?”
“No,” he says easily. “I knew that even then, and so did she, but fucking around with my best friend—that was the wrong way to handle it.” He studies me a moment. “Your turn. Who burned you?”
“In the romance department? Me. For being stupid and probably young and infatuated.”
“An older man?”
“Yes,” I say. “And semi-famous, arrogant, and generally wrong for me, but I’m not heartbroken. I wasn’t in love either.” The muffled sound of my cell phone pings a text message. “My phone,” I say straightening. “I need my phone.” I jolt to my feet and round the coffee table to grab my bag, only to run smack into Cole, who’s apparently attempting to retrieve it for me. He catches my arms and gives me a mischievous look. “Always running into me.”
Heat radiates up and down my arms where he holds me, the awareness between us electric, the heat too fierce to have recently been sated. “I am, aren’t I?”
“Yes, sweetheart,” he says, his voice packing a low, rough quality, “you are, but I’m not complaining. I like it.”
He reaches down and scoops up my bag and sets it on the coffee table. “Thank you,” I say, and quickly dig my cell from my bag. I tab to the message and read the text from my mother: I have a surprise for your birthday! On shift, and I won’t tell anyway. Love you!
My birthday, which is only a week away and should have been celebrated with a law degree in my pocket and on my wall. “Something wrong?” Cole asks.
I glance up at him. “No,” I say, stuffing my phone in the pocket of the robe. “Nothing is wrong.”
He studies me, his eyes darkening, and suddenly, chilly. “You sure about that?”
He’s upset. He might even be angry. “What just happened?” I ask.
He doesn’t play those games he favors now. He’s direct. “That message,” he says. “Your urgency to check your phone. Are you married, Lori?”
I blanch, shocked, but quickly recover and his concern is not without merit. “No,” I breathe out. “No. God, no.” My hands find the hard wall of his chest. “I’m not that kind of person, Cole. I’m not a cheater.”
He doesn’t reach for me. He doesn’t touch me. “And yet you won’t tell me anything about yourself.” It’s a statement, not a question.
I yank my hand back. “It was my mother, who I worry about constantly since my father died, texting me about making me a cake, which is a big deal for reasons I won’t try to explain. I don’t even know why I told you that.” I suddenly feel trapped, and I didn’t even feel trapped when I was laying across his lap. “I should leave. Yes. I’ll leave.” I grab my bag, about to step away from him and he takes it from me, sets it on the table, and pulls me to him.
“Don’t go.”
“You just accused me—”
“I asked. You answered. I know lies when they’re spoken. I believe you. That I do just makes me want to fuck you all over again.”
“Cole—”
His fingers slide into my hair, his mouth slanting over mine, his tongue pressing past my lips. I tell myself not to respond. I tell myself this is the end of the road for this night, but he kisses me with passion, with possessive, hungry passion and he is big and wonderful, and he doesn’t taste of anger or accusation. He tastes of wine, pleasure, and everything right about this night.
“Do I taste like I want you to leave?” he asks again.
“You still taste like trouble, which is why if I had any sense, I would have left before now.”
“But you didn’t. You haven’t, and you shouldn’t.”
He doesn’t give me time to reply. He scoops me up and carries me toward the bedroom, and in a few moments, I’m on the mattress with his big body over me, the heavy weight of him pressing against me.
“We don’t have another condom.”
“I told you,” he says. “I’m resourceful.” He kisses me again and with one delicious lick of his tongue, I moan and forget my objections, and soon without regret. Because it’s not long before my robe is open and his mouth is on my nipple, and then my belly and lower. And lower, until his shoulders are parting my legs, and his warm breath trickles over my sex.
“Cole,” I whisper desperately when that touch of his mouth is just out of reach.
He answers with a lick of my clit, that sends sensations spiraling through me. I arch my hips, and he teases me, his hands at my sides, his mouth pressing to my belly. “Cole,” I plead again.
