I squeeze my eyes shut and bury my face in his neck. “You,” I whisper.
With a groan, he slides his hand up my thigh, rucking his t-shirt up to my waist. I go to turn, to get on my knees and straddle him, but he tightens his grip, holding me in place with my side against his chest. “Don’t.”
“Let me touch you,” I beg.
“Shhh.” He rubs his thumb across the top of my thigh, making me moan despite myself. “This is just for you.”
He skims his hand under my shirt, over my belly, then back again. Lower this time, and firmer, right where my belly meets my mound—my on switch. I twist, pressing my face into his neck as I spread my legs for him.
Point, Cole.
First he circles my opening, a teasing rub that makes me squirm and murmur achingly for more. Then he strokes me more deliberately, gathering the wet evidence of how quickly he can turn me.
Spreading it up to my clit, he rolls his thumb over that spot as he twists his hand and thrusts into me.
Sweet one minute, hard the next. Why did I expect anything different?
Two fingers drag out of me, slow enough I can feel every single inch. I shudder as his knuckles slide out of my entrance and I rock my hips, inviting him back in.
“Fuck my fingers,” he growls, tugging on my hair, giving himself more access to the sensitive bits of skin he likes. My ears, my mouth, my neck. “Be greedy. Get yourself off on my thumb. Take it, beautiful.”
I roll my pelvis in a shameless echo of his words, sliding my pussy all over his hand. I like the heel of his palm best, and when I find it and start whimpering, he takes over again.
“Yeah? Do it,” he whispers, his tongue licking along the curve of my ear as he talks me straight into coming on his hand. “Grind on me. Look at you go. You’re so fucking gorgeous.”
I tug my shirt up, wanting his other hand on my skin there. My breasts hang heavy and my nipples ache for his touch.
Nipping at my ear, Cole spins me so I’m sitting on him, my back against his chest, my legs hooked on the outside of his thighs. I pull his hands to cup my breasts, and his hot, heavy breath in my ear is the best sound I’ve heard all day.
The press of his cock beneath my ass feels pretty good too.
“Sure I can’t tempt you…?”
He groans and bites my neck. “Believe me, I’m tempted.”
“But no?”
A rough laugh against my skin is answer enough. Tonight is for me. I don’t understand why, but he’s intent and I’m on fire, so I stop fighting, and close my eyes.
Feelings blur the specifics of what he’s doing. I don’t know where his hands are going, but I like what they do when they stop for a second, how they make me feel. Squeezing, stroking, slapping…with each sensation, I climb higher and feel more free, and then his touch is between my legs again, his arms wrapping around me.
Heat sizzles through my veins, radiating out from each erogenous zone Cole has just switched on, then bouncing back until every part of my body feels connected and on fire and ready to explode.
My swollen skin is so slippery now, his fingers glide over the nerve endings and as his teeth sink into my earlobe, he rocks the heel of his hand over my clit and I combust into a trembling, pulsing, all-thoughts-vanquished puddle of goo.
After the last aftershocks of my orgasm fade, and I’m slumped against him, boneless and once again, oh so tired, he slowly stands, dead-lifting me as he shoves off the couch, his thighs flexing and his arms straining. I wrap myself tighter around him and he carries me to the bed.
I hold on tighter than tight when he tries to pull away after tucking me in.
“I’m just getting my phone, I need to check in,” he says roughly, not looking at me.
I grab his hand, anxious as he moves out of touching range. “Cole?”
He snags his phone and rolls back against me. “Hmm?”
Swallowing hard, I spit out the worry that’s been at the back of my head for the last twenty-four hours. “Are we okay?”
I mean it in all the possible ways—emotionally, legally. Relationship-ally.
He grips the back of my neck, his gaze burning me. “Of course.”
But when I wake up in the middle of the night, he’s gone. We went to sleep together, but at some point, he quietly slipped out of the room.
I don’t call him. I’m scared he won’t answer, although he’s given me no reason to think that.
I don’t turn on the television, because I’m terrified of what I might see, although I want to think he’d choose differently now.
He came for me.
I choose to trust him, but it’s hard.
It takes me a long time to drift off again. I wonder where he is. What he thinks he had to do. I worry.
In the early morning, I wake up with his arm around my waist and his face buried in my neck, and I lay there for a long time, silent, relieved tears streaming down my face.
Of course I knew we’d have secrets. And for so long, I’d thought Cole was off-limits for my heart, because he wasn’t the guy for me. But then he pushed his way into my life, and I forgot about this side of him, because he was so sweet and we fit just right.
Now I’m remembering everything else. But instead of climbing out of bed and throwing his clothes at him, cursing him and shoving him out the door for only giving me a piece of him, I just lay there, desperately soaking up his warmth, because I love him.
—five—
Cole
For the second and final interview the next day, Hailey has a lawyer present the entire time.
It goes much smoother, and ends with us getting their blessing to return to Washington, but she’s still wrung out when I whisk her into the car, where our bags are already loaded, and we head straight for the airport.
Goodbye Florida. I’ll do my best to help you fry Gerome Lively. And if you fail, I’ll kill him myself.
— —
Three mornings later, I run from Hailey’s apartment to the office. Dawn is breaking, it’s cold as balls, and I’m pounding the pavement like it’s to blame for what happened to her.
Nope. That’s all me. I clench my jaw, owning my responsibility. Hard to pound myself into the ground, though I’m sure as shit going to try.
I own that I’m probably fucked up. Being abandoned at the age of two by addict parents will do that to a kid. The Parkers were good people—are good people, and that I just thought about them in the past tense proves that I’m not capable of the kind of emotional sensitivity Hailey deserves, and needs after what’s happened to her.
My adopted parents deserve better, too. I should know, they told me over and over again, until I ran away at sixteen and joined the Navy. Now we live on opposite sides of the continent and I haven’t spoken to them in three years. I get polite cards at Christmas and on my birthday, because they’re good people even if they don’t like me.
A pigeon lands briefly on the sidewalk in front of me, only to take off again in a huffy flutter of feathers when I don’t slow down. Fuck you, pigeon, I’m rarely likeable. It’s my nature, deal with it.
When we got back to Washington, I wanted Hailey to come stay at my place, but I knew she wouldn’t.
“Is my place safe?” she asked me as we drove away from a private gate at Dulles airport. I wanted to lie to her, to tell her she had to stay in my penthouse, but I had to confess to her that I had Wilson convince her downstairs neighbor to move—a fact that did not impress her. But now she has the most secure apartment outside of the White House in all of Washington, D.C., so I don’t care.
Much. I care a little that how I deal with problems isn’t how she’d want them dealt with. But when she curls into my side, closing her eyes to the outside world, I think maybe she doesn’t know how to deal with the horrors of my world. Maybe she just accepts that I do what needs to be done, even if I don’t like it.
I stayed home with her the first day. I took her to her office that morning and she made me wait in the reception area
while she had a conversation with her boss about taking a leave of absence from her internship.
So far, we’ve kept her name out of the media, and our Florida attorneys will keep on the courts to ensure she remains Jane Doe, but that might not last forever.
Yesterday was my first day back at work. When I returned to her place at the end of the day, she’d baked muffins, but as soon as I walked in the door, she crumbled. I held her as she cried, then I fed her and tucked her onto the couch with me. I rubbed her shoulders and smoothed her hair until she fell asleep.
I haven’t touched her again since that night in Miami. I want to. God, I want to so much. The urge to lose myself in her body is overwhelming, but each day she seems worse, not better. I can’t take advantage of her.
I want to tell her I’m working hard to make her world safe again, but that would be a lie. Because of me, her world is never going to be the same.
I stole that from her, and I don’t know how to make it better.
— —
Tag and Wilson step into my office shortly before lunch and close the door behind them.
I shove Lively’s file, which I’d been poring over for the hundredth time, looking for something new—anything—and cross my arms. “What?”
Tag’s face says it all, but he spells out the news anyway. “Lively’s been granted bail.”
“Fuck.” I punch my desk and stand, pacing to the window. “Restrictions?”
“Monitoring ankle bracelet. Passport surrendered.”
I glance at Wilson, whose jaw was clenched even harder than mine, and who’d been silent to this point. “And we are…”
“I’m tapped in to the security footage on his Miami home. There are some blind spots, but I can fly down there and try to get inside.” He hesitates, his eyes steely grey as he stares at me. “You want this problem to go away?”
Do I want Wilson to assassinate the man who’d had Hailey kidnapped? There has never been an easier answer. Yes, I want that. Fuck, I want to be the one to do it.
But it’s not that easy. We’re not invisible agents in this. We need to be smart.
I slowly shake my head. “Go. In and out like a ghost. Get us more information, but we don’t interfere.”
Tag lifts his eyebrows.
“Yet,” I clarify, scrubbing my hand up my face. “We don’t interfere yet. Let’s wait until the Feds fuck it up. Give them a chance to do the right thing.”
A single knock at the door reminds us we’ve left someone out of the conversation. On purpose? I look at Tag, who looks at Wilson, who opens the door.
Jason strolls in, his hands in his pockets. Casual as anything. This can’t be good. “You forgot to invite me to your tea party,” he says slowly, looking at our partners before pinning his gaze on me.
“Just talking.”
“We do that together. The four of us. When did we stop being a team?”
I shove to my feet. “When you warned me off of Hailey.”
“I wasn’t wrong.” He stares at me, daring me to claim otherwise.
I take a deep breath, then let it out. “Does PRISM have any thoughts on what’s happened?”
He shakes his head. “Not yet. I’m flying to Geneva tomorrow.”
“You were summoned?” It’s one thing for us to bristle at each other. It’s another for Jason to be in trouble—I’ll always have his back, like he had mine in the Bahamas, no questions asked.
“It’s fine.” He lifts one hand and points his palm at me. “Really, it’s fine. I need to renegotiate the terms of our service to them, anyway.”
“You shouldn’t go alone.”
“I’m not. I’m taking Mack with me.” Jason’s brother borders on paranoid. I can respect that. “He’ll bring his security team.”
I don’t want to ask if there’s anything he doesn’t want us to do while he’s gone, because I’m not sure I can stay within any parameter he sets.
Like he knows that, he just nods and glances as Wilson. “You’ve got news?”
“Lively’s on bail, at home. Ankle bracelet.”
“You’re going down there?”
“Like a shadow.”
Jason twists his head back toward me and ghosts me a smile. “Cole read my mind, clearly.”
I nod back at him. We may not be in sync any more, but we’re still cut from the same cloth. Always have been.
He holds out his fist. “Stay safe.”
One by one, we each return the bump.
—six—
Hailey
I can’t blame Cole for thinking I need to be treated with kid gloves. I have nightmares every night, and haven’t been able to go to work or leave the house by myself yet.
Every day I lose myself in Ravelry and a long bath and baking muffins.
By the time he comes back, with take out for dinner, I’m ready to crawl out of my skin.
Over and over again, for six days.
Now I need something else, something that will wipe away the humiliation and fear.
The sensible answer is counseling.
I stopped being sensible two months ago, when Cole Parker strong-armed me into his car and accidentally made out with me in my kitchen.
I want sex. It’s been over a week, and while what we did in Miami was what I needed at the time, it’s not the same thing. I want what happens when we’re together in every way possible, that crazy chemistry magic that makes me feel invincible.
My heart starts beating faster as his key turns in the lock.
“I got Vietnamese noodles,” he calls out, and I set the lube I’m holding on the bedside table.
“Sounds great,” I say with a smile as I join him in the kitchen.
He puts the food down and wraps me in a tight hug.
“What’s that for?”
He kisses my forehead. “Can’t a guy just hug his girl?”
“He can, and she’ll like it, but that was extra squeezy.” I slide my fingers under his shirt and stroke the bare, tight skin of his abdomen, tracing the ridges of his six pack as he flexes for me.
How am I this lucky? He literally saves my life and lets me grope him to my heart’s content. I’m done feeling sorry for myself.
“What are you doing?” The question comes out part groan as I go to work on his shirt buttons.
“Getting you out of your work clothes.”
Dark amber eyes glow down at me from a rugged face, five-o’clock shadow highlighting all the harsh lines that I’ve come to love. “If I’m going to be stripped down, I’m going to want some naked company.”
I grab his hands and slid them over my hips. “Make it so.”
We get each other naked in record time as Cole backs me into my bedroom, and by the time we hit my bed, I’m aching for him to just be inside me, even though I had other plans.
“It’s been too long,” he says as we fall together as one, his heavy thighs shoving my legs apart. I rock my hips up to meet his throbbing cock, wet and ready for the heavy thrust I know is coming.
I don’t know anything.
“Do you know how hard it is to not taste you?” he growls, nipping at my jaw. Desire ripples across my skin, ever-widening circles of awareness as he moves down my neck, rasping his wide tongue across my skin, stretched taut for him as I arch my back. “And now…all I want to do is fuck you so hard I go blind.”
“Yes,” I gasp. “I want that. Do that.”
“I can’t.” Another growl as he reaches my breasts, cupping my overflowing flesh together as he feasts on my nipples. “I need to worship you first.”
“A hard fuck is an acceptable form of worship in the Religion of Hailey.” I squirm as he pinches one nipple while tugging the other deep into his mouth. He knows what that does to me. “I’m so wet, Cole. You’d slide in so smooth.”
He swings his body up, effortlessly kneeling between my spread legs now, and he lazily strokes my swollen, exposed pussy. “You aren’t lying.”
“Never,” I whisper as he shoves firs
t one, then two, then three fingers into me, stretching me wide. His cock thumps hard and heavy against my thigh, and I reach for him, but he snags my wrists and tugs them over my head, looming over me once again.
“You know why I can’t fuck you yet?”
I shake my head, mouth wide, nipples straining for the rough rub of his chest against mine.
“Because I haven’t kissed you yet. And you deserve to be kissed from head to toe every single time we make love.”
I giggle, because that sounds dangerously close to saccharine, but he just glowers at me. “No laughing?”
“Feel free to laugh—if you can.”
He fists himself, coating himself in my wetness, then he rocks the wide head of his cock against my clit as he drops on top of me—our sexes aligned, but not for fucking.
Apparently, he was serious about that kissing thing.
And once he starts, I can’t object.
Hard and determined, his mouth covers mine, sucking and licking and teasing. At the same time, his hips press between my legs, moving just enough to keep my blood near the boiling point.
Not nearly enough to make me come, even as he devours me in a kiss that says so much—how hard it’s been to keep his hands off me, how much he needs me. I recognize that possession. It pulses through my veins, too.
But he’s not marking me. He’s giving it to me hard—the only way he really knows how—but he’s being careful. No whisker burn, no swollen lips. As he moves south, I’m sure he’ll avoid hickies and bite marks, too.
He’s just making me feel good. Taking care of me, again. Which is nice, but it’s not what I want.
“Cole!” I plead as he threads his fingers into my hair, tilting my head to the side. “You don’t need to be gentle with me.”
He grips me tight enough to show he thinks he isn’t, and he pulls my earlobe into his mouth. “You have a problem with how I’m making love to you?” he growls, jerking his hips against my sex.
Of course I don’t. But…
Hate F*@k: The Complete Story Page 20
