“I was right there.” She waved a bandaged hand towards the sofa. “I wasn’t expecting your toaster to burst into flames.”
Cole was no longer listening. His attention had been caught by her hands.
In two quick strides, he was around the counter and right in front of her. He took her hands gently by the wrists and turned them over. The bandages had been frayed, blackened and singed around the edges as though she’d burned her hands all over again.
“Jesus Christ, woman!” he swore loudly.
Without waiting for her to comment, he scooped her into his arms and marched with her to the sofa.
“I can walk!” she muttered at him grudgingly.
“You can’t be trusted to do anything!” he retorted sharply as he set her down on the cushion and knelt at her feet. “Look at what you did to your hands.”
“The toaster was on fire,” she said. “Your apartment would have—”
“I don’t give a shit about the apartment!” he shot back, hurriedly unwinding the ruined gauze while still being careful not to hurt her. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head. “I think the wraps got the worst of it.”
“Yeah? You think so?” He shot her a venomous glower. “And what if the fucking things had caught fire, huh? Then what?”
Her lips pinched together, not in anger, but in realization. Something akin to fear shimmered in her eyes and Cole mentally kicked himself.
He softened his tone. “Just … be careful, okay?”
She gave a barely perceptible nod.
With a sigh, he bent his head and examined her palms. The skin was still red, still slightly swollen and blistered, but they were wounds from before. They weren’t new.
“I think you’re okay,” he murmured, resisting the urge to run a finger over the heel and down the center; the injuries still looked so angry. “We should clean and rewrap them though before they’re infected.”
He raised his head and found himself caught in the shiny surface of her gaze. He only then noticed she was still in her sleep shorts and a light pink camisole. Her feet were bare, the nails a powder blue. Her knees were inches from the bare expensive of his abdomen. In the chaos of the morning, he hadn’t even realized he was clad only in his boxers and socks. Their near undress sent a crackle of fire coursing through him. It made him think of sliding his hands under her knees and parting them to accommodate his hips. He’d spread her open wide, push away her shorts, her panties and…
“Cole.”
Jerking back from the daydream, Cole blinked. He shook his head to clear it of the insanity and focus on the woman watching him with the same hungry eyes. The pink flush in her cheeks and the innocent part of her lips stirred the beast inside him to a new level of frenzy. Her skin was warm where he still cradled her hands in his palms. The material of his boxers stretched to accommodate the painful growth of his erection and he wondered if she could see it. She certainly couldn’t miss it.
“I’ll get the bandages,” he blurted before he could do something he’d regret later.
Her throat muscles bobbed. “I … I left them in the washroom.”
With a nod that he understood, Cole shot to his feet and stalked in the direction of the bathroom. He paused once to scoop up his pants from the office floor and yank them on before making his way to the last room.
The second he was inside, the need was impossible to ignore. His hand was slamming the door shut and locking it before he could give himself time to think. The denim was soft from too many years of wear and slipped comfortably around his knees. His feet parted on either side of the toilet, one hand braced against the wall behind it while the other moved to ease the four years of frustration throbbing like an open wound between his legs. Cole liked to think he was a patient, attentive lover who always put his partner first, but with the exception of his first time with Lily, Beth was the only woman he’d ever been with. Even after four years, hopes of her return followed by avoidance of women kept him from finding another.
He came quickly and without a single shred of satisfaction. Hot come sprayed the inside of the bowl in ropes and floated through the water before he smacked down the handle and flushed it all away. He watched the water drain and rise with a deep sense of disgust.
Was that what his life had been resorted to? A hasty jerk off in the bathroom while the object of his lust sat waiting on his couch? He needed a damn woman. He needed a hot, yielding body bowing beneath him as he drove into it again and again relentlessly. Four years was a long time not to fuck someone, especially when he and Beth could have given Sloan and Lily a run for their money.
Their hunger had been insatiable, wild and dangerous. It had been carnal. Maybe that was why he never bothered to find someone else, because he knew another woman would be like his feeble attempts at masturbation, unsatisfying.
No. The woman he wanted to lay open wide and pound into mercilessly was in the next room and self-preservation refused to allow him the risk.
Chapter Six ~ Beth
What are you doing here, Beth? The little voice was relentless in its question, screaming it over and over again inside her head until she wanted to jam a spike into her ear to make it stop. But it was right. What the hell was she doing? Surviving starvation and dying in her apartment smelling of BO seemed like such a small price to pay compared to the mental anguish of being with a man who made her insides liquefy. Maybe she was a closet masochist. Somehow the more painful the punishment, the more she craved it.
Cole returned with the plastic box filled with her ointment and wraps. Beth straightened as he slid around the sofa to perch on the corner of the coffee table directly in front of her. His knees were drawn far apart to cradle hers between them. He’d pulled on jeans, but remained topless and she couldn’t help wondering if that was deliberate. If so, it was just mean. How was she supposed to focus when all she could see was the hard grooves and valleys of his torso, the way the gray autumn light filtered through the windows and spilled like liquid silver over the wide berth of his shoulders? He still wasn’t as big or broad as Sloan, but his chest was firm, the muscles taut and perfectly indented in all the important places, like the square cuts of his breasts and the deep depressions of his abdomen. For a lawyer, he hadn’t lost his athletic physique, which raised the question: did he work out?
“Beth?”
Blinking rapidly like an owl awakening for a night of hunting, Beth stiffened. She fixed her gaze on his face and found him already watching her, waiting.
“Sorry?”
“I asked if you were sure you don’t want a bath first before I put the new bandages on.”
She was dying for a bath. Bathing was her biggest weakness. She couldn’t go without having at least one in the morning and one before bed. But then that would mean having him assist her and she couldn’t trust herself naked with him. Not that she thought he would take advantage of her, but more because she would want him to. Having him touching her hands and arms was bad enough.
“I’m okay,” she lied.
His lashes lowered, concealing whatever he was thinking while he concentrated on digging out the cream.
Beth watched his hands, watched the veins move and ripple beneath the pale skin. The knuckles were sharp edges capping long, agile fingers. They were powerful and strong, not slender pianist hands, but the hands of a man who knew how to use them, and use them well. The nails were clipped and slightly uneven, but that only added to the appeal. There was always something about his hands that made her stomach flutter and her skin prickle with heat. Maybe it was because they could be so gentle when he touched Calla, but possessive and controlling when he would flip Beth onto her stomach, pin her wrists to the mattress and drive into her, taunting her to take it. Those memories were the ones that kept her up at night, wet and desperate.
Yes. She definitely loved his hands. Her strange fascination with them bordered on obsessive, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t like she would ever tell him.
&
nbsp; “Are you hungry?”
For you? God yes!
“I’m okay,” she mumbled instead.
In the process of taking her right hand, Cole glanced up. His blue eyes met hers, deep and searching.
“How about coffee?”
Despite the tremors in the pit of her stomach, Beth felt her mouth pull apart, bowing into a wide smile that drew a laugh from her. Something flickered in his gaze, but it was quick and disappeared a second later.
“I did notice you didn’t have any here,” she said.
He lowered his head once more and concentrated on lathering her palm and the back of her hand and each finger with cream. “I usually grab a cup on my way to the office.” He worked his way up her wrist, dabbing and gingerly rubbing each blemish along the way. “I’m not here much.”
Carefully, he set aside the cream and reached for the gauze. His fingers deftly twisted the wrap into place from shoulder to fingertips around her arm. Then he started on the next arm.
“I was thinking about heading over to Lily’s place today,” she said, needing to break the silence drowning them. “Since I’m here and all. Calla’s probably at school, but it’ll be nice to see Willa … and Lily.”
He nodded slowly. “I can drop you off on my way to work.”
“Oh you don’t have to do that,” she said hurriedly. “It’s not a far walk and it’s completely out of your way.”
He never looked at her, not even when he spoke. “Yeah, wouldn’t want the lineup of people waiting to get in to have to wait.”
Something in his tone gave her pause. Maybe it was because they’d been together since they were nineteen, but she could always sense when something was wrong.
“Is something wrong at work?” she asked tentatively.
“It’s fine,” he mumbled. “I just always thought that when I became a lawyer, I would be able to do some good in the world. Help people. Instead, I’m a glorified secretary who sits in an empty law office all day twiddling his thumbs. I’ve had two cases this entire year and both were just ridiculous. I guess I just … I don’t know. I can’t leave Willow Creek, not when Calla’s here, but I can’t make a damn thing of myself here either.”
Beth thought about this a moment while he spread Polysporin across the arch of her thumb. Anger and frustration tensed his shoulders and cut through each of his words like they were poison. It hurt her to see him like that.
“Have you considered doing something else?” she asked.
“Like what?” He turned her hand over lightly to get her knuckles. “You know this town, it has one streetlamp and it’s been broke since before I was born. Everything around here is either family owned, or made for teenagers looking to score a quick buck.”
“Well, Sloan did it,” she pointed out. “He opened his own moving company. Maybe you just need to see what the town really needs and go from there.”
He didn’t respond. She didn’t expect him to.
When he was finished, he returned the leftover items back into the box and rose to his feet. His gaze went to the clock in the kitchen.
“I have to shower and get ready for work.” He lowered his head and met her eyes. “But I’ll help you get dressed when I get out and take you to Lily’s.”
She started to tell him it was fine, she didn’t need help, but she did. Dressing had become the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. It had never dawned on her just how much a person used their hands until they couldn’t. The sweats and sweater she’d worn the day before had taken her nearly an hour to pull on and that was with her constantly stopping to moan and whimper as her skin burned all over again beneath the bandages. It was a pain she refused to deal with again if she could avoid it.
“Okay?”
Realizing he’d been waiting for a response, Beth nodded. “Okay.”
He left her fretting on the sofa and disappeared into the bathroom. Beth rose the moment the door shut and hurried into the bedroom. She pulled out random articles of clothing from inside the suitcase with hooked fingers and tossed them onto the bed. When she got to the undergarments, she faltered. Her stomach flopped over. She willed herself to simply get it over with and waited anxiously for Cole to finish in the bathroom.
He was clad in only a towel when he stepped into Beth’s room. Light from the window caught the droplets of water clinging to him and glistened. His hair shone and the two day old growth on his face had been cleanly shaven off, leaving his face smooth and smelling of shaving cream and spicy aftershave. Beth had an inexplicable need to drag him over to the bed and lick the droplets off his skin while liberating him of the towel and sinking him deep inside her.
“I’ll move my things into the office,” he told her, possibly mistaking her stunned silence as outrage over walking into the room she was using.
She shook her head. “I don’t mind.”
He drew out clothes from the dresser and left with them held against his chest. The bathroom door closed a second later.
Beth exhaled. She closed her eyes and willed her body to calm the fuck down. It wasn’t like it was sex deprived. She may not have had another man since Cole, but she had done her best to taper the fire thoughts of him always invoked. She had even bought a toy or two to make the whole experience more pleasurable, but found them impersonal and distracting. No amount of rubber and batteries made up for the actual weight, smell, and power of a man driving her into the mattress.
She was still sitting on the bed waiting for him when he returned, dressed in black slacks and a crisp dress shirt. He was swinging a black blazer on when he stepped into the room.
The sight of him in a suit made every naughty part of her whimper. It was clearly one designed specifically for him, for his frame. The lines were clean cut, the material perfectly fitted. It hugged the width of his chest and curved with the narrow taper of his waist. The pants were formed to the lean lengths of his legs. He was hot. Delicious. Every woman’s fantasies brought to life. Shit she wanted him.
Busy tugging the lapel on his blazer down and shrugging the material into place around his shoulders, Cole missed the hungry clamp she had around her bottom lip until his head came up and his gaze locked with hers.
The hands she loved so much froze on the button of his jacket. Something fierce and wild leapt across the surface of his eyes and burned clean through her. Against the fabric of her camisole, her nipples tightened, becoming tight points aching for him to sooth with his mouth. The thin strip of material between her legs rubbed wet and sticky against her swollen mound. She was so ready, she could almost feel him stretching her around his hard girth.
“Beth.” There was warning in the tone, in his eyes, in the way his nostrils flared. But there was something else as well … a challenge.
Shit.
Say something! The voice in her head hissed. But there were only two words cutting into the tip of her tongue and neither was going to make the throbbing stop.
Fuck me!
She wondered if he could see it in her eyes. If he could sense it in the air. He had always been so aware of her arousal, always knowing even before she did, like their desires were somehow linked.
He had to know.
Pivoting on the balls of his feet, he turned his body in her direction the way a wolf moved at the sight of its prey. His movement was graceful and agile when he claimed the first step. Then the next. Beth nearly gasped in wonder and horror when her body gave the first tremor of an orgasm, and he hadn’t even done anything.
Frantic and mortified, she struggled to push off the bed, away from anything that could brush against her seizing clit before she really embarrassed herself. But he was there. His hips were thrusting apart her knees, filling her thighs. Then his hands were on her waist. And she came with a low whimper. Her cries were muffled by the front of his shirt. His arms gripped her to him as her body convulsed completely on its own.
“I didn’t even touch you.” His words were a hoarse murmur in her ear when she could think enough again to
hear.
“Oh God!” she gasped, wishing she would just die already.
He ignored her moan. “How long has it been?”
Certain she’d heard wrong, she dared a peek up at him. “What?”
His eyes were twin pits of hell, hot and ravenous. “When did you last have a cock inside you?”
Fuck, she loved when he talked like that. Yet at the same time, the question filled her face with liquid heat.
“Four years,” she whispered into the third button of his dress shirt.
The arms around her tightened, nearly cutting off her oxygen. One hand fisted into her hair. His breath rushed against her temple.
“Why?”
His lips grazed the side of her face, traveled the length of her jaw to nuzzle the curve of her neck. Beth shivered involuntarily. Her stomach muscles jittered with a delicious sort of longing she hadn’t felt in a hell of a long time. A moan hitched in her throat.
“Why?” she parroted breathlessly.
The hand in her hair tugged. Her face was thrust back, her jugular exposed to the assault of his teeth.
“Why has there been no one else?” he questioned.
His breath was so hot. It burned the places it brushed. Beth numbly wondered if she would have any skin left, or if it would all be melted away.
“I … I don’t know,” she admitted honestly.
He pulled back. The damp curve of his bottom lip rested ever so lightly over hers so their every breath tangled together. His smelled of peppermint toothpaste.
“I know why I waited,” he whispered.
Her idiot heart flipped in her chest, an excited little twist that made her feel momentarily lightheaded before the full weight of his words crushed it to powder.
She jolted back with such speeds that his grip in her hair tugged strands out by the roots. Cole blinked in surprise, quickly relinquishing his hold on her.
“Beth?”
“No!” His mouth dropped in surprise, his eyes widened in stunned shock when she planted her forearm into his chest and shoved him back. “No, you’re lying!”
Bye-Bye Baby Page 8
