by Skye Warren
Colin’s eyes sharpened. “What’s wrong with him?”
I blinked away the answering thoughts. “Nothing. I mean, it’s not like he’s ready to be a father. He just wants to mess with me, but he…he had a rough childhood. I mean, really bad.”
“He ever hit you?” His voice was soft, but even if I couldn’t have sensed the banked fury within him, I knew from experience what he could do to a man who hurt me. Even if I could’ve gotten the words out, I couldn’t tell him, not without risking Colin going after Andrew, hurting them both.
I was grateful that the phrasing of the question allowed my “no” to be the truth. He hadn’t hit me, not exactly. But I knew I had to be more specific if I wanted Colin’s help. “He’s just not completely…stable. He drinks too much, and he uses. He picks up and leaves whenever he wants. And when he’s angry…well, I don’t want Bailey around him.”
“You need money,” he said.
“Sort of. I have money…” Not enough, probably, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted safety. And him. “I mean, I’m not sure how much it’ll be, but—”
“I’m not rich, but I have enough for this.” He looked like a man calculating the odds. Unnecessary, really, since I was woefully out of my league. This wasn’t a negotiation as much as total surrender. “I’ll help you.”
I gave Colin a look.
He raised his eyebrows, all innocence. “I meant the right way. I can find a decent lawyer. We’ll fight him, legally. In the meantime, move in with me.”
“What?” Hadn’t seen that one coming. “That’s…that’s insane.”
He actually rolled his eyes, making him look more like the twentysomething that he was. “People move in together all the time.”
“Not after dating for a week,” I said.
“I’m counting since the first time.”
“In case you forgot,” I said, “I have a baby. A kid.”
“I didn’t forget. There’s room for her. Besides, your apartment is a shithole.”
Harsh. Even worse, he was right. “You’re completely frustrating.”
He raised one eyebrow, which somehow proved my words irrelevant in one smooth swoop.
I set down my fork, taking his offer seriously. “We barely know each other.”
“We know each other enough,” he said. “From the first it was different.”
It was only the truth. Ever since my sordid proposition at the bar, there had been something between us. A spark, or maybe just recognition that he could handle my brand of crazy. I’d tried to ignore it and had even gone back to the bar to disprove it, but nothing had worked. What was this thing that felt like trust but looked like lust?
“But why?” I said, desperate to deny him or find some excuse to accept. “Just tell me why you’d even want that?”
“I have reasons.”
“But you aren’t going to tell them to me.”
“It’s okay, what happened before.” He pulled me close. “You’re with me now.”
The words were pitched perfectly, but they bounced off the wall of secrets I kept between us. I’d left out the most important part. What would he do if he found out?
I shivered, and he encircled me in his arms. Keeping me, for now.
“Can you spend the night?” he asked.
“Yes.” I had already put Bailey to sleep in Shelly’s bed. This was the third time in as many weeks, but Shelly graciously claimed not to mind about the loss of income.
“Good,” he murmured.
He took me to his bedroom upstairs. It was just as plain as all the other rooms, just as casual. Home, but I couldn’t think about that. Instead I tried to psych myself up. Please him, pay my dues, when all I really wanted to do was have sex with him. I wanted to rip off my clothes and his. In my wildest thoughts I wanted to push his face down between my legs and tell him to do that thing again.
Instead I just stood there in his bedroom like I’d never been inside a man’s bedroom before. Which was almost true, except for Andrew’s.
He turned down the sheets. When he glanced back, his eyes softened. “Come here.”
I averted my eyes while he tugged my dress over my head. He gestured to the bed, and I kicked off my shoes and climbed in, still in my underwear and bra. After stripping down to his boxers, he followed me in.
I wished I didn’t feel this strange nervousness. It felt almost like a wedding night. How awful.
Colin turned me away from him. I expected him to take off my bra or fuck me from behind, but he was working from a totally different playbook, because what he did was pull me in close to his body and cuddle. Christ, we were spooning. And not as a sexual position. Although there was a certain hardness pressing into my ass, it was doing absolutely no nudging, no rocking, and no thrusting. Whoever heard of a hard, docile cock?
Ah, hell. We’d skipped the wedding night and gone straight to married.
Well.
I pushed my ass back slightly, gratified by the catch in his breath. His arm tightened around my waist, but his hips remained still. Another nudge of my ass, this time triggering a twitch of that hardness.
Yes, that’s it. I rocked back into him. He had wanted me, the slut. And sluts were for sex. No more thinking, no more feeling. No more worry. At least for tonight, I got to play the slut and still be safe.
When I felt his hand drift around to my hips, my lips curved into a smile. Gotcha. Then his hands skimmed over my stomach and beneath my panties, and my smile slipped and my eyelids lowered.
Rough fingers prodded me open. One finger worked inside me, a little deeper each time my hips rocked into his hand. And thank God—finally!—his hips pushed against mine. At the knowledge that he was into this, a participant, my mind slipped a little closer into that blissful space of submission. But God, I wanted so much more. He was capable of more.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
“You want this, don’t you?” He repeated his words from earlier, still worrying over my consent. No, nothing like the others. Tears sprung into my eyes, and I was grateful he couldn’t see them.
“I want this. I want you.” I could only hope he took the thickness of my voice for arousal. “I want you to give it to me hard. Be rough, Colin. Do it.” Even before I’d finished speaking, his fingers inside me and his cock rubbing against my ass sped up, roughened.
His other arm slipped under me, holding me flush against him. As if I was going anywhere. But I was totally cocooned now, at his mercy. His fingers hit a certain spot inside me, and a soft cry escaped me. My hips jerked in a frantic rhythm, reaching for it, begging.
But it wasn’t his fingers rubbing me that took me over. It was the sharp pant of his breath on my neck. His excitement, mine. And as my climax took me, I shook in his arms, falling apart, held together.
As I collapsed into his hardness, my heart felt overfull. Desperate to turn this into something familiar, something sexual, I grabbed his wrist and sucked his wet fingers.
I swirled my tongue around his fingers like a cock, offering.
He shifted on the bed so that he lay flat, accepting.
I crawled—prowled, really—on my hands and knees between his legs. The tense arousal on his face made me feel sensual, powerful. There was a certain power to my role, that I could incite this man to lust. He pulled down his boxers, and, with his hands in my hair, slipped my mouth over his cock. That’d been the shortest power trip ever.
Down and up, he directed me. Steadily, inexorably forcing more of his smooth, hard skin into me. My focus narrowed to my senses, what I could see or taste or feel. Every time I lost my way, he brought me back with his fingers at my neck, a soft grunt or a tensing of his thighs beneath my hands.
It wasn’t about sucking cock. This was Colin guiding, and me yielding. Colin giving, and me receiving. Or was it the other way around? It didn’t matter, so long as it never ended. There was a certain urgency about him, more than a man wanting to come, and I answered it by taking him deeper.
> Even as my jaw tired and my eyes watered, I felt his pleasure like it was my own. His labored breathing, his fingers tightening in my hair, the small thrust of his hips—I wanted it all. My fingers fumbled, wrapping around him, stroking him below, fondling delicate skin.
Suddenly he surged up. Next thing I knew I was on my back, knees bent, and Colin deep inside me.
I gasped, belated.
“Fuck,” he said.
He wrenched back, then fished a condom out of the nightstand. A few seconds respite and then he thrust back inside me. He was too deep to move. Too deep to breathe.
“Colin.” Pleas had never worked, but he stilled.
With his nostrils flaring and a light sheen of sweat on his face, Colin looked savage. “Hurt you?”
“No, I…”
He rocked against me slightly, straining. “You what?”
I want you. Don’t leave me. “Fuck me.”
He did.
And then I feel asleep, enfolded in thick arms, feeling like Alice falling down the rabbit hole.
Chapter Twelve
Sunlight beamed directly into my closed eyes, but how? Cheap vinyl blinds provided little relief, but my window backed up directly to the next apartment building. Besides which, it was coated in decades of goop.
My nose tickled. I took a deep breath and smelled—a man. Shit.
I snapped my eyes open. Chest hair. A familiar face. Ah, Colin. Safe. I shut my eyes again, fully intending to employ a fake-it-till-you-make-it approach to sleep.
The brightness pricked behind my eyelids. I peeked one eye open and glared at the big bay window with no curtains. This house needed a woman’s touch.
The night rushed back to me like the pop of a balloon. Well, damn. Looked like that was my job now.
Speaking of which, a certain piece of hot, hard flesh pressed into my hip.
Last night was the first time I hadn’t showered shortly after sex. I always had done so immediately after my date nights, even with Colin. Despite the fact that he’d used a condom, I felt surprisingly sticky—everywhere. I supposed it should be hot, the remains of sex, the morning after, but it was…awkward.
Naked, I slipped from Colin’s unconscious grip.
The bathroom held only the basics: a bar of soap, a bottle of shampoo-conditioner, shaving supplies. The shiny surfaces shone, too clean for a bachelor’s place. Had he just moved in? That would explain the minimalist but catalog-perfect furniture and lack of decor. I made a mental note to ask him and decided he wouldn’t mind if I took a shower.
I stood under the spray and flipped the tap all the way to hot, relishing the biting cold that steeped into a blissful scald. As I lathered myself using the minty bar of soap, I heard a snick from the door and Colin’s voice. “Excuse me.” Excuse what? I peered around the shower curtain to see two pale, tight ass cheeks, then snatched the curtain back in place with a squeak.
Damn.
He was using the potty. No, the toilet. Fuck! I was an adult. It was called a toilet.
“You okay?” He sounded amused.
“I’m fine.” I clutched the soap, which slipped from my hands onto the tub with a thud.
“Sure?”
I picked up the soap. “Never better.”
“Can you move today?”
I dropped the soap again. “Fuck!”
“What?”
“Nothing. Ahhh, moving. Hmm…” To be honest I hadn’t been entirely sure we were doing that, or whether the whole thing had been some weird date dream. And I really hadn’t expected it so soon, but leave it to Colin to be expedient.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Can we talk about it later? I have to go in to work this afternoon.”
“About that,” he said.
I didn’t like his tone. I poked my head out of the shower. Colin leaned against the bathroom counter, somehow looking not at all silly while totally naked—and hard.
“I was thinking you could quit,” he said.
I gaped but managed to eke out a, “What?”
He shrugged in the face of my shock. “It sucks. The pay is shit, and so are the hours. You don’t even like it.”
He added that as an afterthought, but of course, I didn’t like it. Damn him for knowing that. “Wait a minute. How do you know how much I make?”
His eyes flickered. “You work shifts in a low-end bakery. How much can it pay? Besides, I’m in the industry.”
That made sense, I supposed. But still… “It would take time to find a better job. How would I pay my share?”
“I didn’t ask you to move in because I need a roommate, Allie.”
The effect of his sarcasm was offset by the teasing light in his eyes. I tightened my grip on the shower curtain to shield myself from the cold air and his hotness. “How will I pay you back for the lawyer?”
He snorted. “It wasn’t going to be a loan. Besides…there won’t really be a regular bill.”
That alarmed me.
“Relax,” he said. “He’s a real lawyer. He’s already on retainer, that’s all, with my brother.”
I wanted nothing to do with his brother, and Colin knew it. I especially didn’t like the idea of using his lawyer, someone who might have a different agenda. And worse, if the lawyer was paid by Colin’s brother, I’d owe him.
“No,” I said.
Colin didn’t look the least bit perturbed, as if he’d known I’d say that.
“It’s not about the money. He’s good at what he does.” Colin paused to give me a look, confirming that yes, the guy had gotten them out of illegal shit before. “I wouldn’t trust just any lawyer to help with this, seeing as, well…fathers have legal rights. Visitation, joint custody.” He shrugged away the awful words.
“I see,” I said through clenched teeth. “If you think he deserves visitation and…custody, why are you helping me?”
Colin looked me straight in the eyes. “I don’t think he deserves anything. I don’t give a fuck about him. I’m doing this because you want it, and I’m going to get it for you.” Then he turned and walked out of the bathroom.
My heart beat against my chest, hard and fierce.
It was a rather dark shade of gray, his declaration, but I didn’t think I’d ever heard anything more romantic than Colin telling me he’d spend his money, break laws, do anything he had to, to give me what I wanted. He was the man I’d been looking for without even trying. The man I hadn’t believed existed, one who’d fight for me. One who’d win.
Chapter Thirteen
My best friend in fifth grade was my neighbor two doors down, Leslie Pritchard. We didn’t like each other all that much, but absentee parenting made for strange bedfellows.
Leslie was lonely on nights her mom worked, and so she got a kitten. Leslie and I would sit around in the evenings playing with him, and as if the kitten were our campfire, he would jump in the air and flick his frizzy orange tail.
She’d toss a string, and he would leap with abandon only to come crashing down to the thin carpet in a tumble of tiny limbs. Bug—that was his name—didn’t know that cats should always land on their feet, and he remained staunchly flippant throughout his adolescent years up until he got run over by my dad’s truck. That day marked the end of my friendship with Leslie Pritchard.
The cats around my old apartment were nothing like Bug. They scattered as I climbed the steps, Bailey in one hand, a double-layer cake in the other. All I needed was a handless trombone and I could star in a Dr. Seuss book.
I slid Bailey down my leg so I could knock.
My gaze traced the lines of peeling paint on the door, maroon with white underneath and a trace of blue between them. Like the rings in a tree, marking the time. It had been two days since I’d fled Colin’s house, making empty promises about calling him and soon. I knew what I had to do, but it could be hard to leave home, even if home was a shitty apartment in the scary side of town.
Shelly opened the door.
“Hey, ladies.” Her voice was hoarse, an
d her smile didn’t quite reach her bloodshot eyes.
Shit, shit, shit. Maybe it was just the tiredness resulting from staying up late. But this was Tuesday, and she usually didn’t have a client on Monday. In fact, I left her alone most of the time on Mondays to let her sleep it off. Besides, lack of sleep wasn’t enough to affect her like this. Shelly was like a prey animal. Her problems never manifested in her appearance. If she looked like this, then things had truly gone to shit.
“Shelly?”
Her eyes slid away. She opened her mouth, to answer maybe, but then clapped a hand over it. Leaving the door open for us, she stumbled back through the hallway. The thud of the bathroom door punctuated her departure.
I found Shelly curled up on her bed on top of the covers. Bailey tried to go to her, but I distracted her with a chunk of cake that would be hell to clean up later.
I returned to the bedside. “Jesus, Shelly. Which one?”
“Things just got out of hand,” she mumbled, her eyes closed.
It had been a stupid question, because the answer didn’t matter. She could hardly go to the police. I’d been too afraid to ask the important question, but I asked it now. “How bad is it?”
“Not bad.”
I sighed. “Just tell me. I’m going to find out anyway.”
She looked so thin. When she swaggered around, dressed provocatively and with that half smile, she looked every inch the femme fatale. But lying there, she seemed almost childlike. I reached for her, my hand hovering in the air as if she might break if I touched her. Except she’d already been broken. I gingerly pulled up her shirt to reveal angry, red welts that streaked the length of her back and down under her jeans. I’d seen them before, back when Shelly had first started in the life, before she had regulars to keep her safe.
“He did this,” I said, my voice detached from my head as if I had a cold. I meant the one who liked to rough her up. I told her not to see him, and usually she didn’t take on clients like him, but there was something about him that kept her going back.
