Colton: An Army Wives Novel

by Audra Cole

  Colton’s hands left me all too soon. He moved north and palmed my breasts, fingering my hard nipples through my dress. “Let’s get this off. I want to see you, Karena.” I sat up and let him slip the dress off over my head. The bandeau top went next, leaving me in nothing but my heels. “Those can stay,” he said with a wicked grin at my shoes.

  “Turn around’s fair play,” I reminded him with a suggestive grin. “Although, you don’t have to keep your shoes. I’m really not into that.”

  He laughed when I threw a wink at him. He stood from the bed and stripped down for me in a tantalizing slow motion that left my entire body throbbing. Every inch of him was pure perfection. He was better than any movie star, model, or pop star. He was real, rugged, and in the flesh.

  He came back to the bed and my hands roved his body like they had indecisive minds of their own, unsure what to touch and tease first. He was rock hard and ready, but didn’t rush me. He watched me as I explored his body and memorized the feel of him under my fingertips. After a long while, he took my hands and kissed each fingertip slowly, his eyes locked on mine. “You’re so beautiful, Karena.”

  I ducked my chin, a hint of blush warmed my cheeks, as though I just realized we were sitting on his bed, completely naked, minutes away from making love to one another. There had been dozens of moments of realization in the course of our relationship, but there was a new weight to everything now that we were going to cross the last boundary we’d set between us.

  Colton leaned in and kissed me soft and slow, letting me know he felt it too. It was more than a night of passion and excitement. It was a promise, a hint of a future, the beginnings of something real.

  Fueled with a surge of unexpected emotions, I deepened the kiss, reaching around to the back of his neck. I wanted him as close to me as he could get. As his tongue found mine, his hands pushed me back down onto the bed and he braced himself on his elbows above me. He kissed down my neck until I was breathless and panting. When his lips and tongue melted over the hardened tip of my nipple, I squeezed my eyes shut, soaking in the sensations as they danced over my body.

  When he came back up my body, I opened my eyes and found him staring down at me. I hooked my leg around his hips, beckoning him forward. His lips met mine again as he entered me soft and slow at first. I gasped when he filled me, and rocked against him as I stretched and expanded around his girth. I smiled to myself as we paused together.

  He was a perfect fit.

  Colton rocked out and in, slowly at first, building pressure that threatened to consume both of us. Within seconds, I was clawing at his bare back, my hands running the length of his firm muscles, and over his molded ass cheeks, begging him for more.

  Which, he was all too happy to give to me.

  * * * *

  I was smiling before I even opened my eyes when I woke up on Monday morning. Colton’s bare torso came into focus as I fluttered awake and my smile deepened. He was still sleeping, his rock solid chest rising and falling in a gentle rhythm. I rolled to my side and propped my arm under my head, watching him sleep. It was unbelievable that only a week had passed. Being with him the night before, had been so natural that it was hard to remember what it was like with anyone else. Granted, it had been a very long time since my last relationship. But, I had a feeling that even if it had been more recent, I would have felt the same way. Colton eclipsed any relationship I’d ever had before. Hell, he overshadowed any other man I’d even known before. He was kind and considerate, but with a silent strength that made me feel safe and protected. I’d seen firsthand, with his buddies, his loyalty and knew that he was the type to love hard.

  My heart fluttered as I wondered what it would be like to be loved by Colton Hawkins.

  Love wasn’t what I’d been looking for when I answered his online ad. In fact, it was the opposite. I had been far more interested in the fact that he wasn’t looking for love.

  I rolled away, staring up at the eggshell ceiling and gathered my fleeting thoughts. I can’t be falling for him. That wasn’t what this was supposed to be about, I reminded myself. Colton was looking for a wife. He was willing to provide and protect, in exchange for someone to build a life with, someone who was willing to set aside love and fairytale bullshit. How had he put it? A contract.

  “Whatcha thinkin’ about over there, pretty girl?”

  I rocked my head against the pillow to look over at Colton, his sleepy drawl stirring up a fresh wave of desire. I rolled back to my side and smiled at him. “I was thinking about making you a big, yummy breakfast. You didn’t put cooking skills on your list of wifey requirements, but I figure it can’t hurt.”

  Colton laughed. “I won’t turn you down.” He traced a finger down my cheek and over my lips.

  I shivered at the sweet gesture, and the starry look in his eyes.

  “What if it’s terrible?” I asked, shaking off my thoughts of what lay beneath the covers. “Breakfast, I mean.”

  Colton laughed. “Then you’ll be immediately disqualified and put back on the first flight outta here.”

  “Very funny.”

  He smiled lazily at me. “Ask a silly question…”

  “Fair enough.” I sat up and scooted to the edge of the massive bed. “Maybe I’ll just pour you a bowl of cold cereal.”

  “Whatever you want, gorgeous.”

  I laughed and marched out of the room.

  Halfway through breakfast—which turned out to be cold cereal, after I burned the waffles, I’d originally set my heart on—Colton got a phone call. He’d frowned when he saw the number, and took it into the other room, holding up a finger to let me know he’d be back in a minute. I finished my cereal and went to work on cleaning the rather spectacular mess I’d made in the kitchen.

  Half an hour passed before I heard Colton’s footsteps on the floor and he rejoined me in the dining room. I smiled at him and was about to comment on the sad state of his cereal, but stopped mid-sentence at the look on his face.

  Something was wrong.

  “Karena, I hate to do this, but I have to go into work.”

  “Oh.” I licked my lips. “Um, all right. Is everything okay?”

  Colton nodded but his expression remained distracted and distant. “Yeah. I’ll, um, pick up something for lunch when I leave. I’ll call.”

  “Okay,” I replied, nodding.

  I couldn’t tell for sure, but as he raced out of the house, a pinching tightness in my chest told me he was lying.

  And that was the one thing I knew I couldn’t live with.

  Chapter Eighteen: Colton

  As I left Colonel Reeve’s office, there was only one thought left in my mind.

  How am I going to tell Karena about this?

  I walked without really seeing anything in front of me, only making it back to my truck on autopilot, I was behind the wheel and cruising back towards my house before I fully realized what I was doing. I pulled into the driveway and sat there for a long minute, staring out the windshield at the small, one car garage.

  Eventually, I found the resolve to get out of the truck and go inside. I’d been gone for a couple of hours and knew Karena was waiting for me to get back. When I twisted to shut the front door, Karena’s steps padded into the room, and I sucked in a deep breath before facing her.

  “Colton? What’s wrong?” Her expression was full of alarm and my stomach knotted one loop tighter, knowing that there was nothing I could do to relieve her worries.

  “Karena, there’s no easy way to say this, it’s the worst possible timing no matter how it comes out…” I paused to take another deep breath. “I just came from my CO’s office—”

  “CO?”

  “Commanding officer. Colonel Reeves. The reason he had me come in was to tell me, face to face, that I’m being sent out on a deployment to the Middle East.”

  Karena’s face registered the news in slow motion. Muscle by muscle. Her brow raised and then fell, her eyes narrowed but then widened, and her mouth droppe
d open. “I don’t, I mean, when? Why?”

  Before answering, I closed the gap between us, and opened my arms, ready to gather her to my chest. She backed up a step and put her hand up. “Colton?”

  “I leave in three weeks.”

  A hand flew to cover her mouth as she gasped.

  The sound of her shock hit me like a sucker punch to the gut and when a glossy sheen appeared in her eyes, I damn near lost control of myself. I knew there was no point in going crazy or getting upset. This was the life I signed up for. The deployment, although badly timed, wasn’t a foreign concept to me, and I knew I would handle it like all the others.

  But Karena…

  It wasn’t fair to her. This wasn’t the life she had signed up for and she didn’t know how to process it. How could she? She’d never had to before, and now it was in front of her, after flying in from left field.

  “Karena, I’m sorry,” I offered. It wasn’t much, but it was all I could think to say to her.

  “How long?” She dropped the hand from her face and clasped it with her other hand, working at her knuckles with her restless fingers. “How long will you be gone?”

  “Six months, but there’s a chance it could be longer. We’re providing backup support for the squadron on the ground. They’ve been taking some heat and need more men to hold the zone they’re occupying.”

  She nodded, but her eyes were vacant, as though she wasn’t quite grasping my words.

  “I know this is the shittiest timing and I understand if you want me to put you on a plane back to Seattle tomorrow, but…” her eyes bounced back to mine, “…I’m still here, and I’m still willing to see this through, even with this new information”

  Her eyes dropped back to her hands. Impatience bubbled up inside me, and I wanted to reach for her, to demand an answer, but I bottled it and waited. When she finally looked back at me, a small smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “I guess you’re gonna need a pen pal while you’re gone, might as well be me, right?”

  I reached for her and this time she let me hold her. “I’d like that,” I replied, before dropping my lips to the top of her head.

  As we clung to one another, I marveled at how unbelievable it was to think she’d only been in my life for a handful of weeks and already I was wondering how on earth I was going to say goodbye.

  * * * *

  “Your father got word that you’re being deployed, Colton, is that true?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried not to sigh into the microphone. “Yes, mother, I just found out this afternoon.”

  “Why didn’t you call?” Her voice raised an octave and I wondered if she even heard the part that I’d just found out myself. It really made very little difference. The fact that she’d had to hear it first from my father, instead of directly from me, was all she needed to know to hold onto hurt feelings and claim she was being left out.

  “I’ve been a little busy…” I replied, thinking of Karena, who was still in bed, wearing nothing but a satisfied smile. The news of the deployment had rocked us both, and when we ran out of things to say about it, we took it to the bedroom. We still hadn’t figured out what to do in light of the news, but we’d had a hell of a lot of fun.

  I’d been in the kitchen getting iced tea and some sustenance before we launched into round three, when I’d heard my phone ringing.

  My mistake had been answering it.

  “—to include your own family in these types of decisions!”

  I tuned back into my mother’s rant and pinched the bridge of my nose. There was only one way out of this. “I’m sorry, you’re right, I should have called.”

  My mother’s frosty tone melted, as she continued, “You can make it up to me by coming for a family dinner tomorrow night. I’ve already called to make sure Jeff and Lyle are free.”

  I stifled a sigh by gritting my teeth together. A family dinner was the last thing I wanted to do. Especially with Karena here for less than a week. Sunday afternoon, I’d be at the airport, dropping her off for her flight back to Seattle.

  Beyond that…I still didn’t know.

  “Seven o’clock,” my mother chimed in, interrupting my thoughts, and completely ignoring the fact that I hadn’t even agreed to go.

  I grit my teeth together, feeling my jaw flex tightly around each terse word, “Mother…I can’t. Maybe next week.”

  A cold silence stretched between us. I didn’t have to check the connection to know she was still there. This was one of her tactics. She was used to getting her way with my brothers and me, and she didn’t have any reservations about the means to force our hands.

  I sighed, this time letting my frustration vent loud enough that she could hear. “Mother, listen, I’ve been seeing someone. And I want to spend as much time with her as possible before I leave.”

  “Colton! Why didn’t you say something?” she squealed.

  Shit.

  I’d just thrown Karena into the shark tank.

  “Now you have to come! I need to meet this woman that’s captured your attention. Oh, Colton, I’m so happy!”

  Panic and irritation welled up inside me, but there was nothing I could do. At least, nothing I could do if I wanted to avoid a relentless guilt trip that would span the length of my deployment and beyond. What would Karena say about meeting my family? We’d only known each other a week, and while it was serious, and getting more so by the minute, meeting my family hadn’t been part of our arrangement. In fact, I’d been purposefully avoiding the topic with her.

  “Colton, seven o’clock, and if you’re going to bring that same wine you brought on your last visit, maybe try an older vintage,” my mother added.

  I stifled a growl. It was done. There was no going back now. I nodded for a moment, searching for something to say, besides the string of expletives that were exploding like fireworks in my head. “All right, mother, we’ll be there.”

  I clicked off the call, and silenced the phone before setting it back on the table.

  A pair of warm fingers traced down my bare back, interrupting my jumbled mess of thoughts about introducing Karena to my family.

  “I was starting to miss you,” Karena’s husky voice purred from behind me. I smiled when her fingers found the waist of the boxer briefs I’d pulled on before going out to the kitchen.

  I turned and pressed a quick kiss to her beautiful pout. “What would you say to meeting my family?”

  Her nose wrinkled. “Really?”

  I sighed and nodded. “My mother called just a minute ago. She heard about the deployment and wants to have a big family dinner to see me off.”

  “Oh,” Karena replied, her lips staying open as she turned the thought over. Her eyes drifted away from me and I wished I could tap into her mind and see what she was thinking. We’d gotten much closer in the past forty-eight hours, but there were still so many things to learn. We weren’t anywhere close to the type of bond where I’d be able to guess what she was thinking before she said it.

  “Talk to me, Karena, tell me what you’re thinking,” I prompted, setting a finger under her chin to bring her beautiful honey colored eyes back to mine.

  “What would we tell them? Your family doesn’t know about…this…” She shook her head, discarding whatever thought had followed her statement. “I don’t really know anything about them. What would they say?”

  I sighed. It was a great question. One that, unfortunately, I didn’t have an answer to.

  “I really don’t know,” I started, pausing to run a hand through my hair. “We could be honest, and tell them why we’re doing this, or we could leave all that out, and just tell them we’ve been dating for a few weeks and let that be the end of it.”

  I had oversimplified the reality to an extreme degree, and I knew it. But if I told her the truth, about my family and the complicated dynamic, I was pretty sure she’d go running for her life. Or, at the very least, fall ill with a mystery bug right before we were supposed to leave.

&nbs
p; She shrugged. “You’d know better, but from what I’ve seen, most people think we’re kinda nuts for doing this whole experiment.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t argue. Karena had confessed that her best friend, Becca, thought we were insane—well, mostly that she was insane—and my buddies weren’t too far behind in that line of thinking. Neither of them had gone so far as to tell me I’d lost my mind, but the sentiment was there, unspoken, anyways.

  “I think you’re right. We’ll keep that to ourselves for now.”

  Truthfully, there was a much larger issue floating in the back of my mind. One that I hadn’t wanted to bring up, but knew that it would need to be discussed soon. With the deployment on the horizon, the window of time for Karena and I to decide what to do, and act upon whatever decision we made, was rapidly shrinking. We still had a week left in our original plan but now, the added weight, made the already restricted timeline feel even more enclosing and small.

  I stared down at her as she was processing the new hurdle in our path. I traced the lines of her face and lips, and reached out to stroke away the wisps of her hair that had been ravaged by the afternoon spent together in bed. She turned at my soft touch and met my eyes with a soft smile. “It’ll all be okay,” I said, somehow aware of the question in her eyes. “I promise.”

  Chapter Nineteen: Karena

  The clock in Colton’s bedroom was on the fritz. The hands were moving entirely too fast. I confirmed it was, in fact, correct, with a quick glance at my cell phone and groaned, before popping back into the bathroom. My hair was still up in hot-rollers, and I hadn’t applied a swish of makeup yet. My mind was racing, on the verge of a breakdown over the thought that in less than an hour, I’d be walking into Colton’s parents’ house to meet his entire family.

  Since the plans had been made, Colton had patiently answered my questions, going into his dad’s military career, his brother’s family and his younger brother’s relationship. I was armed with the basics, but it didn’t take the edge off my nerves. In telling me about his family, Colton had spilled that I was the first woman he had ever taken home to meet them, and that even if we tried to downplay the seriousness of our relationship, his family would assume certain things and would treat me accordingly. Which, Colton had all but said, would include asking lots of questions.