“Thank you for sharing that with me,” Cole murmured into my hair, and I turned to look at him. A lot had happened in the last couple of months since we’d gotten together, stuff that could either make or break you, but I think it had made us stronger.
“I love you,” I whispered. I didn’t want to break the peace and quiet that had now settled over us, but I wanted to let him know.
“Ditto!”
I felt the back of the bed hit my knees as Cole kissed me and lost my balance. As I landed on the soft comforter, I looked up to see Cole pulling his shirt over his head and then throwing it over to the corner of the room. I joined in and started undressing too. Once every last bit of clothing was gone, he continued standing, and I took in the beauty of him.
Cole was tall and broad shouldered, but even though he didn’t officially work out, he had a perfect six pack and muscles. All of the Townsend boys had wanted an area to do workouts in when they felt like it, so one of the outhouses had been turned into a gym with weights, treadmills you name it. Cole went every now and then to work out, but it wasn’t part of his daily routine. Whatever was, it was working for him.
“I love the way you’re looking at me,” he rasped, looking over me in hopefully the same way that I was looking at him.
“I love every part of you.” It was getting easier to say my feelings out loud to him, and the beauty of it was that every time I did, I just knew that it meant something to him because of the expression that he’d get.
Crawling backward on the bed toward the pillows, I lay against them and waited for him to join me. He didn’t keep me waiting for long as he crawled up the bed toward me giving me sporadic pecks on whatever part of me he could. Once he reached my core, he stopped and pushed my legs further apart with his shoulders.
“You’re beautiful all over.” He put his hands under my ass and lifted me up towards him and then licked up my pussy and groaned. “Fuck, baby. Mine!” He leaned back down and licked again, this time, more firmly. I tried to move my hips to get more of him, but his hands tightened underneath me, and without him saying anything I knew I was to stay still. “Good girl.” He rewarded me leaning forward and licking again, but this time, he didn’t stop. He drove me crazy licking around me and inside me, but not once did he head towards the area that I needed him the most.
Just as I was about to try and smother him with my thighs, his control broke and the next thing he was sucking on my clit as he pushed two fingers into me. I screamed louder than I think I’d ever screamed in my life as I came hard.
He waited for me to come back down again before moving up my body and doing the sporadic kisses again whenever he felt like it. I’d expected him to lay down and take his time, but as soon as he was far enough up my body and the tip of his cock was where it needed to be, he adjusted his hips so that he was in the right position and started to push into me.
My head fell back onto the pillows, and I groaned as I felt him entering me. He’d only just gotten a couple of inches in me, when he pushed hard until he was all the way inside.
“Look at me.”
I lowered my head back down and opened my eyes to see him looking down at me with such love on his face that it took my breath away, even more than when he slammed into me when he got carried away.
“I’m never letting you go,” he growled as he started to thrust hard. It wasn’t enough for me, and I lifted my right leg higher until it was over his shoulder. Oh, fuck me, that was perfect.
“I don’t want you to.” And I didn’t.
Cole was on form, and I came another two times, and when he finally came, his groan was so loud that I felt the vibrations of it all over my body making me involuntarily tighten around him.
Lying on top of him afterward, I closed my eyes and listened to his heartbeat. I was going to speak to the Cardiologist at work and get myself tested for the arrhythmia problem that Lou had. Cole had flipped a switch inside me, and now I needed to make sure that I was okay.
Chapter Eighteen
?
I’d been calling the asshole in Piersville for two hours now, and he hadn’t answered me. Maybe I should send someone out there to give him a shake? He didn’t know that I knew about his little thing for the red-headed owner of the underwear shack in Shitsville, and what he got up to at night. Yes, I think I’ll arrange for a little surprise for him.
“Yeah,” the arrogant piece of shit answered.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” I was getting more fucking pissed than I’d already been. That ‘shake’ was going to be a life-altering wake up call now, and he only had himself to blame.
“I apologize,” he sounded like it caused him pain to say that and I couldn’t help the grin that knowing that gave me. “What can I do for you, Sir?”
“Update.”
“Still no change. The heads of security are still keeping it tight and with the involvement of that ex-SEAL, his friends, getting close to them is still an issue. Although, not impossible.”
He was speaking my language now. “How so?”
“One of the guys stationed on the ranch is a friend of a friend. With a bit of information, I’ve been able to persuade him to see things from our perspective.”
“You have dirt on him?” Dirt was good, it made people act obediently. Look at the dirt that I had on this piece of shit, he’d be heeling in no time once I used it.
“Yes. It appears that this guy had an affair with his wife’s sister. She has a baby now and the question over whether it’s his or the husband’s is there. The wife doesn’t know, though, and he doesn’t want her to because she’s sick or some shit and he apparently loves the bitch.” The snort he gave showed his weakness. Men in our positions and jobs didn’t give a fuck about feelings, well at least not any but our own, and there he was judging a man on his.
“How accommodating is he going to be, do you think?”
“Very.”
“This is good news,” at least for you. “The person seeking retribution on the Townsends has requested that we do something, so I think it’s time for a shake up. One that will rock the Montgomerys too.”
“What would you like me to do?” Ah, the obedient dog was back. Too bad he had his own surprise coming.
“I want you to focus on the heads of the family; Hurst, and Linda. Not fatal, that would make them tighten security even more and take away the fun. Make it look like an accident, but make it painful.” Pain, the word was so beautiful to me.
“An accident?”
“Can you do that or not?” I was wrong, the obedient dog wasn’t back. It would be soon, though.
“You know that I can.”
“So what are you waiting for?” I ended the call and threw the phone into my office drawer seeing the photograph that I kept in there staring up at me.
“Soon, mother, soon.”
Chapter Nineteen
Cole
I couldn’t believe that I was back in this fucking hospital. I know that Eb worked here, but we were here more often for accidents than I was to visit her.
Ren and I had been working on a truck when the call came through from Mom telling us that Gram had had an accident. She’d been taking a load of laundry down to the basement when the step had snapped, and she’d fallen. Pops had heard her scream and called an ambulance when he’d found her unconscious. Right now, we didn’t know anything about her condition, and I’d been pacing back and forth waiting for the doctor or Ebru to come out and update us. The only consolation we had was that Ebru was part of her medical team; we knew she’d get the best care regardless.
“She was just lying there,” Pops said for the billionth time. “She only has a small cut here,” he pointed to the side of his head. “Why would that make her go out cold?”
“Sometimes it happens, Dad,” Dad said to him. He sounded calm, but that was just for Pops’ sake. “She wasn’t unconscious for long, so that’s good news.”
> “Was it because I wanted her to wear one of those ass flossers?” Pops asked, and we all stopped what we were doing and looked at him in disgust.
“Look…I get that we’re an um…unique family,” Ren started, “but what y’all get up to behind the doors of your home…”
“What the shit are you on about son? Women wear those all the time.” Pops looked confused.
“You said ‘ass flosser’.” Maybe the old dolt was going senile? That might explain his recent ideas about going to a resort in the Caribbean and walk around naked as the day he was born.
“Yeah, those thong things,” he replied, and even though it was better than the awful thoughts that we’d apparently all had, it was still nauseating thinking of Gram having thongs.
We were saved from continuing the conversation from hell by the doctor and Ebru coming into the room. Apparently, she had a mild concussion, a couple of broken ribs and a broken arm and would be just fine. In fact, after the results of her CT scan, she was being released in a couple of hours. Breathing a sigh of relief, we all sat back and started arguing over who was going to nurse her. Not arguing for being the one to look after her, but arguing to not be the one to look after her. She was hell when she wasn’t well, and last time we’d had to get the doctor to sedate her when she’d sprained her ankle because she was determined to help repair fences on the far western side of the ranch. After five rounds of five rounds, and a couple of extra ones, of rock, paper, scissors we were still undecided who was going to do it. As her husband, though, it was decided by unanimous vote that Pops was going to do it, so the old guy was sulking in the corner of the waiting room glaring at all of us. Happy days!
“There he is,” Gram sang at me as I walked into her room to wheel her out to the car. Everyone had gone in front of us to either go to my grandparents' house, or to wherever they needed to be. I’d agreed to drive her with Ebru seeing as she’d finished her shift an hour ago.
“Hey, Gammy,” I gave her a kiss on the cheek. I loved this old biddy. “I’m gonna drive you home okay?”
“Ohhhhhhh,” she squealed, and I looked at Ebru who was looking in the bag holding the painkillers that she was to take for her injuries. “Are we going on the horsey?” She started making clip-clop noises and neighing.
“Yes, we’re going in the Mustang.” I’d had it cleaned professionally after Ebru and I had defiled it, although Gram didn’t know that. That was my baby. What it had seen that night…it deserved a deep clean.
“Lead the way, cowboy,” she sounded a bit like Liza Minelli with all of the cabaret style singing she was doing.
“What’s she on?”
“Morphine,” Ebru snorted as she told me. Shit, what if she reacted like I did to painkillers? If I saw her naked, there’d be no coming back from that!
Pushing her out of the room, she sang goodbye to the nurses, doctors, patients, porters, visitors, literally every person that we passed, before bursting out in ‘when you wish upon a horn’. Apparently, a lot of the staff remembered it because they all burst out laughing and pointed at me. Fuck my life.
“I can’t wait to go in the horsey,” she squealed as we rode down in the elevator to the car. “Is it still a unicorn? I loved that idea, that’s why I told them about it…”
I’d switched off to her rambling until she said this, but now she had my attention.
Clearing my throat, I asked, “That was your idea?”
“Of course it was! I had that tail in the basement for ages. Wasn’t it pretty?” she swung her head in Ebru’s direction. “Wasn’t it pretty Eeeeeee buh buh bruuuuu? I love that name. You’re pretty too! My precious unicorn munchkin would have made such a pretty girl don’t you think?”
Ebru was leaning against the wall of the elevator looking at Gram wide-eyed as all of this went on. It was like she’d developed ADD. The fact that she’d told them to unicorn my car, though, had my eye twitching.
As we reached the ground floor and the doors opened, Gram squealed again and started clapping her hands. “Ohhhhh goody, there’s a party!” I looked up and saw that they were raising money for a kids charity and the entire lobby was filled with…clowns. “Let’s go uneeeeeecorn!” There was no fucking way I was going in their direction, ever. Clowns gave me nightmares and my entire family knew it, evil fucking bastards! “You can do wishes with your magic horn. Honk honk!”
Looking in the opposite direction, I saw the fish tank that took up the entire wall and started pushing her in its direction.
“What are you doing, Cole?” Ebru asked, trying to keep up with me.
Stopping in front of it, I made sure that the chair was facing the tank, put ten bucks in her hand and then hit the brakes on the chair so she wouldn’t roll away. “You’re at Sea World Gram, enjoy!”
Grabbing Eb’s hand, I ran towards the back entrance of the hospital while pulling my cell out of my pocket. “Get your ass back here and take her. She’s by the tank,” I told Dad before going out the doors and heading in the direction of the car.
“Don’t you feel guilty just leaving her there?” Ebru didn’t sound like she genuinely meant that, more like it was just one of those things you asked for the sake of it.
“Not one fucking bit!”
“Oh good,” she sighed. “I was thinking of taking her to the soft play area for kids.”
As we drove out of the parking lot, I saw Dad’s truck driving in and gave him the bird. The smirk and the look in his eye gave me an inkling that he knew what had gone down. The evil smile that I gave him in return had the smirk dropping from his face. Good, I hope she made his life hell.
Coleman
I was fucking pissed over what I’d just found out and I was dreading going into Jack Townsend’s house to tell them all.
Pacing back and forth next to my vehicle, I thought of the only thing that I knew would calm me down right now - Amy. I know we were fighting it, at least I was. She seemed to have forgotten that I existed. When she’d been back for Crystal’s birth, I’d managed to get her alone, but…fuck no this was frustrating me even more. I needed to stop thinking and grow a set and go in,
“You okay, fella?” Baz had snuck up on me. No one ever got to sneak up on me; I’d been trained better than that so I needed to get a fucking grip.
Rubbing my hands down my face, I took a deep breath and then looked up at the guy I’d come to like working with. I tended not to trust anyone, but him I trusted completely. Then again, the news from today showed that I needed to remove my trust and feelings from the guys working for us and approach this in a cold and level-headed way.
“We have a rat.”
Baz’s head snapped to the side like I’d punched him. “What?”
“Fucking yeah. We need to go through our men and find out who.”
Looking at the entrance to Jack’s house where they were all waiting for me, Baz’s face took on a level of hardness that, if I’d been a standard Joe, would have scared me.
“Let’s go in.”
Opening the door, we walked into the living room and I saw the twins lying on the floor playing with some frame thing with hanging shit on it, and Ren holding his daughter who was out cold in his arms. Looking over at Linda, who was now back to walking around and trying to escape the confines of whatever house she was in to go out and do shit, I saw her sitting quite happily on the couch smiling at the twins on the floor. She wasn’t super old, but she wasn’t young and some fucker had played on that. Beside them were George and Christie, who were watching the twins with that special look of love that only a grandparent gives a baby.
Brett was standing next to Ren now and kept putting his hand up every time his brother tried to hand him the sleeping baby. Ren just turned around and put his daughter in his brother’s arms and walked away, leaving Brett holding her to his chest, looking terrified. This would happen to him soon enough, at least I hoped it would. The latest news made me worry that no matter what we did, the assholes
responsible would succeed in killing one or more of this amazing family. That thought brought out a level of pissed in me that I hadn’t felt since Afghanistan. I would fucking die before that happened.
“What have you got for us, Son?” I almost smiled at Hurst. No matter who or how old you were, he always called all of us son. I didn’t have a family of my own, but they’d all adopted me into this one no questions asked.
“I’ve just inspected the stair that split,” I began. No sense in beating around the bush on this. “It had been cut through.”
They all sat staring at me in shock. Yeah, no shit!
“How the fuck did they get into my house?” Hurst looked like he was ready to take on the world and I didn’t blame him one bit.
“This is what we’re looking into.”
“There’s an insider isn’t there?” I looked over at Cole’s girl Ebru, not at all shocked that she’d figured it out immediately and nodded grimly.
“Fuck me!” Hurst yelled, shocking the babies and making all three start crying. Brett looked like he was going to pass out as he told the crying baby girl in his arms that he’d buy her a pony if she stopped. I was closest to the twins at this point, so I crouched down and started jingling the hanging shit to try and get their attention back on it.
“So, what’s the plan?” Jack said over the furious chatter going on in the room now. He seemed to be too calm; I’d expected him to act like his father was.
“Jack, where’s my goddamn guns?” All of the talking stopped immediately as we all looked at Hurst. There was no way in hell he was getting a weapon. He’d almost taken out three of my guys in the last five months. One had to get twenty stitches in his left ass cheek when Hurst got distracted when he was shooting cans and accidentally clipped him.
Until Forever (Providence Series Book 3) Page 18
