by Bella Andre
“And the truth is, I wouldn’t want him to be any other way. I wouldn’t ever want him to be something that he’s not or feel like he has to say or do the right thing to make me happy. He makes me happy just the way he is, just the way he’s always been.”
“I see why you fell for her.” Cynthia broke the spell his wife was wrapping around his heart. “But since my readers aren’t here with us to see the two of you together in person, I’d love it if you could tell me what drew you to Anna.”
He didn’t have to think about it, didn’t have to pretend. “I’ve never met anyone so sweet.
Or so beautiful that I can hardly believe my eyes every time I look at her.”
“Cole.”
Anna’s whispered exclamation came with a deep flush in her cheeks. Any other woman would have preened, but she was more embarrassed than anything.
“But what you can’t see is how brave she is. She has more courage in her pinkie than a tailback running into a team of three-hundred-pound defensive linemen.”
“Wow,” Cynthia said as she scribbled in her notebook. “People are going to go crazy for you two.”
But Cole didn’t care about the interview anymore. He couldn’t focus on anything but Anna.
“One more thing,” Cynthia said. “When did you realize Anna was special, Cole? When did you realize you were going to marry her? When did you know you loved her and only her?”
Cole didn’t look away from Anna, couldn’t have torn his gaze from hers as he said, “The first time I saw her I knew I couldn’t let her go. I asked her to marry me that night.”
“Was it love at first sight for you, too, Anna?”
“I’d never done anything that crazy before,” Anna said in a soft voice, “but being with Cole felt so right from the start.”
“So, you’re telling me that you asked her to marry you the night you met and you accepted right then and there?” She looked at Cole, then Anna, her eyebrows raised with surprise. “So then why wait months to finally do the deed? And why do it in secrecy?”
Anna response was quick, fluid, believable. “My sister was getting married. I didn’t want to overshadow her wedding. And then, when she was heading off on her honeymoon, Cole showed up out of the blue. We just couldn’t wait another second.”
Cole’s gut cramped at her easy lie. She could never have done that on Friday. He’d promised to teach her new things, but he’d never meant for one of those things to be twisting the truth.
How could he ever forgive himself for doing that to her?
Cynthia turned off her recorder. “Seriously, guys, my readers are going to love your story.
It’s so romantic. So perfect. Thanks so much for chatting with me. If I have follow-up questions, I’ll be in touch. Look for the story in the weekend edition.”
They said their goodbyes, walking the journalist out to a cab. They drove back to his house in silence. There were so many things he suddenly wanted to say to her. So many things he didn’t know how to say.
Nothing in his life had prepared him for Anna.
For the love that she gave him so freely, no strings, no demands.
Just love. Pure and sweet.
Yes, he’d given her pleasure, but along the way he’d forced her to take on skills she should never have needed to know.
Lying.
Evading.
They walked into his house and Anna reached for his hand. “Are you okay?”
He wanted so badly to pull her against him, but he couldn’t stand the thought of sullying her with his touch. “You don’t deserve this mess. Not any of it.”
Her hand slipped tighter through his, so warm, so soft. “You’re not forcing me to do anything, Cole. Marrying you, staying with you, doing this interview—they were all my decisions, right or wrong. If I wanted to stop, I’d stop.”
He didn’t have the strength to keep his gaze off her beauty, the innocence that still clung to her, despite his bad influence. And then he saw it, the question in her eyes.
“What you said to Cynthia...did you mean it?”
Since that first moment he’d seen her, he’d been getting lost in her eyes. Lost again even as guilt bore down on him, he said, “I meant everything I said tonight.”
She’d protected him from even one small lie, taking the weight of them all on her own shoulders. No one but his grandmother had ever protected him before. No one had ever cared enough to take a risk like that for him.
Her beautiful eyes swam with disbelief and confusion. “How could you possibly think I’m brave?”
It killed him that she didn’t see it, that she didn’t already know.
“Do you remember our first night together?”
She flushed, leaning her forehead into his chest. But he wouldn’t let her hide from him, couldn’t stand not to see the sweet heat in her eyes as she rewound back to their first time together.
“How could I ever forget?”
He grinned down at her. No one had ever made him feel this happy. This good. And not just in bed, where she kept blowing his mind. Just like this, talking, teasing.
“You could have told me to stop at any time.” He brushed a lock of hair away from her sweet lips. “You were so brave. Not just that night, but every time we’ve been together.”
She shook her head, protesting, “That was just sex.”
“I’ve had plenty of sex, sweet girl. Trust me, what we’ve got going isn’t even close to
‘just sex.’ But if that’s not enough for you, I saw you with your mom. In the kitchen at her house.”
Her eyes widened in alarm. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough to be proud of the way you stood up for yourself.”
And for him. She might not have been telling the complete truth about their relationship to everyone that night, but she’d told her mother a truth she’d held inside for far too long—about how lonely she’d felt in her own big family, surrounded by loving parents and siblings.
As lonely as he’d felt in his family of two.
“There hasn’t been a single situation where you haven’t held your own, no matter how strange it all is for you, like the VIP box or dealing with the paparazzi. By the way, Julie and Melissa already told me that if I ever screw up and you leave me, they’ve chosen you over me.”
He loved the small smile she gave him. “Hell, tonight during that interview, you were the calm one. The brave one protecting me.” He tipped her chin up with a finger. “Do you believe me now?”
“It’s just that no one has ever called me brave before.”
“Then they’re all wrong.” He hadn’t forgotten a word she’d said to him the previous night. And now, he was the one saying them all back to her. “They’re all stupid. And blind. Crazy blind.”
“Crazy,” she echoed, the one word breathless with the same need that was killing him as they stood in the middle of his kitchen.
He needed to be closer to her, needed to know that she was right where she belonged...in his arms.
“I know I promised you crazy, sweetheart. I know you told me last night that you like it raw. Rough. And so do I. But right now all I want is to make love to my wife.”
Her eyes widened at his choice of words. He’d never called it making love before, hadn’t dared let himself go there.
“You make me a better man,” he told her, his voice husky with need. And emotion.
“I love you, Cole.”
He scooped her up in his arms, kissing her even as he walked across the room to the stairs, his heart pounding harder with every step. Not just because of how much he wanted the beautiful woman in his arms.
But because for the very first time in his life, he was going to make love to a woman he actually cared about.
Chapter Eighteen
No one but Cole had ever looked at her with such powerful desire. But she’d seen that desire before.
This time it was the emotion in his dark eyes that captured what was left of her heart.
> He hadn’t said the three words she’d said, hadn’t gotten down on his knees to declare undying anything to her. But she didn’t need him to.
Because she could see it in his eyes, could feel it in the press of his lips in a kiss that had nothing to do with sex...and everything to do with love.
Love.
“Sweet Anna.” He laid her in the middle of his big bed, staring down at her with such heat. With such need.
With so much love.
Love.
“My sweet Anna.”
Aching to feel him take her over the edge, she said, “I need to love you, Cole.” She reached out for him, desperate for his touch. For his love. “Please let me love you.”
And then he was right there, his deliciously hard weight on top of her. She kissed him with ravenous desire, wound her limbs around his to pull him even closer, bucked her hips up into the hard press of his erection.
“Slowly, baby,” he said against her lips when he finally pulled free. His tongue slid teasingly along the seam of both lips and she had to lick against him. “That’s how we’re going to go this time. Nice and easy. So slow. So good.”
She didn’t know who he was trying to convince, her or himself. But she knew how close she was to losing it already, with nothing more than his kiss—and his soft, sweet words whispering straight into her heart.
“Tomorrow,” she said, begging, bargaining. “We’ll go slow tomorrow.” She reached for his shaft, pressed her hand hard over his erection, felt an answering twitch as he grew even harder, even thicker beneath her grasping fingers.
Pure lust filled his eyes, the lines of his face a picture of a man barely holding onto his control. “Tomorrow I’ll fuck you rough. Raw. Tomorrow I’ll take you so fast, be so deep inside you, make you come so many times that you won’t know where one orgasm ends and the next begins. But right now—” He pulled her hands away from his belt. “—I’m going to love you right.”
He nuzzled her neck, causing ripples of pleasure to move all across her sensitive skin.
“Promise you’ll help me love you right.”
“You’ve always loved me right,” she gasped as his mouth found the swell of her breasts over the neckline of her dress. But then, instead of moving lower, instead of lowering his sinful lips over her aching, swollen nipples, he shifted his weight off her.
“No,” she moaned, missing his heat, wanting him closer, not farther away.
“Shh, baby,” he crooned. “I’m right here. Loving you. No bondage. No toys. Just me.
And you. That’s all we need.”
Something inside her chest came undone at his soft words, a cold wall she’d built around her heart cracking in two. His fingers undid the top button on her dress. He stopped at the second.
“I can feel your heart beating, baby, so hard it’s almost lifting my hands off you.”
“I didn’t know,” she whispered, the adoration in his eyes making her braver than she’d ever thought she could be. “I didn’t know I could ever love anyone this mu—”
He kissed her before she could finish her sentence, stealing not just her words, not just her breath, but her very soul. Her dress was open to her waist when he finally lifted his head.
“Let me look at you, baby. So beautiful.” He reached out, his hand trembling as he brushed his knuckles over the swell of one breast and then the other. “So damn beautiful.”
“You make me feel beautiful.” No one ever had before, not until Cole.
“You make me lose my mind, my control.” He tried to undo the clasp at the front of her bra. “My hands are shaking.” He looked like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “I’ve been having sex since I was fourteen, but I’ve never been nervous before. Not until you.”
She covered his hands with hers, smiling as she helped him undo the clasp. But then her smile fell away as she arched her back to force her breasts closer to the heat of his mouth.
“I could just stop here,” he said, between decadent slurps against the swelling flesh, the hard tips growing even tighter beneath his sultry tongue, “could just spend the rest of the night doing nothing but licking and sucking your tits.”
Waves of pleasure shuddered through her pussy, her clit throbbing as if he was sucking there instead.
“I could just keep loving you like this until you come for me.”
His sensual threat—or was it a promise?—sent another rush of arousal through her. His mouth burned hot across her breasts, laving her with his tongue, making her cry out with pleasure as his teeth scraped across her swollen flesh.
“That’s it, sweet girl. That’s how I want you to feel when I touch you. Now. Always.”
His large hand flattened against her belly and she pressed her hips up into his fingers. He suckled her again, causing uncontrollable tremors to take over her muscles, her limbs. And then his hand was moving lower, beneath the lower part of her dress that was still covering her and she opened her thighs wide in a silent plea for him to touch her. Instead of sliding into her panties, he cupped her between her legs.
“I can feel how wet, how swollen you are for me even through the silk.”
She was only just managing to take in his low words as he spoke against the curve of her breasts, when he nipped at her breast. Maybe it was the sweet flash of pain that cut the final thread that was holding her to reality. Or maybe it was the way he licked over the tiny abrasion so gently, so lovingly that had her crying out his name as the lowest part of her belly tightened, threatening to shatter. Or maybe it was looking down and seeing his dark head bent over her chest, that sent her orgasm slamming through her, from the apex of her thighs all the way down to her toes and fingertips and everywhere in between.
“Anna. Sweet Anna. I love hearing you come. Watching you come. Feeling you come.”
Just the sound of his voice was enough to keep her orgasm spiraling on and on, until she was fighting for breath, praying for oxygen to fill her empty lungs.
“I thought you were joking,” she admitted when she was finally able to speak again. “I didn’t know I could come like that.”
“It will happen again. I can promise you that. Only next time we’ll get there with just these.” He pressed soft kisses to her breasts, first one and then the other, and her low moan sounded in the room. “Let’s get this all the way off you.”
His words were steady, his face focused, but his hands gave him away, the slight tremble that she’d never thought to see in the incredibly strong man she’d married.
It shouldn’t make sense that having him undress her was such a big deal. Not when he’d had her naked so many times before, not when he’d had her tied up, not when he’d played with sex toys with her, not when she’d taken him down her throat and swallowed his come. But he’d never looked at her like this. Even when lust was tearing them both apart, there’d always been a barrier. Not just his, she realized with surprise, but hers, too.
Because even as she’d been falling in love with him, she’d been scared. Holding back if not her heart, then the last piece of her soul.
Tonight, he was claiming every part of her, inside and out.
“All of me,” she whispered as he gazed down at her naked skin. “I want you to have all of me.”
A sound—half growl, half groan—rumbled out of his chest and over her, but before she could reach out for him and demand the kiss she was so desperate for, his face was between her legs, her thighs spread open over his shoulders.
“I haven’t spent enough time here, haven’t tasted your sweetness nearly enough,” he lamented as he gazed at her wet folds with something akin to rapt wonder. “My damn dick is just going to have to learn to share.”
She shouldn’t be able to feel such deep emotion, such powerful desire, and still laugh.
None of those things had ever gone together before. But Cole tapped into every part of her: The part that wanted to laugh. The part that wanted to love. The part that wanted to fuck like a wild woman.
&nbs
p; “You laughing at me, sweet girl?”
His tongue curled around the tight bud of her clit before pushing between her labia, and then his fingers joined his tongue, plying her open, sliding into her aching core.
She arched into his mouth, his fingers, opening wider, taking him deeper. And through it all, she was smiling, was so happy she thought she might burst.
“You make me smile.”
And then Cole was saying, “You’re right,” and he was up and over her so quick she barely had time to mourn the loss of his tongue against her clit. How could she miss that when he was pressing the thick head of his erection between her slick folds?
“Tomorrow.” Propping himself up on his elbows, he cupped her face in his hands. His mouth a breath from hers, he said, “I’ll love you slow and easy tomorrow.”
He thrust all the way into her at the exact same moment that their lips touched. It didn’t matter that she’d detonated just minutes ago, that she should have been sated. In fact, her previous orgasm only seemed to make her more sensitive, more responsive. And when his tongue found hers and he kissed her like he’d never get enough of her, she came undone. Again.
Only this time, it wasn’t just her pleasure that she was getting lost in. She was right there with Cole for every stroke, every thrust, every groan, feeling his climax as if it were her own.
Just as her love for him meant that she would willingly take on his pain, she now realized she would always share his pleasure, too.
Chapter Nineteen
Cole was a master at holding focus. Even as a little kid, he’d been able to forget everything but the game. Didn’t matter what else was going on in his life, as long as he was on the field, he was good.
He’d been off all goddamned day.
So far off that the guys were not just giving him confused looks, he could see a couple of the rookies, hungry for the chance to shine on the team, talking about him. Like hell if they were going to take his position anytime soon.
He ran faster. Tackled harder. Physical pain meant nothing as he worked to recapture the one thing that he’d always taken as a given.
