He's So Fine (12 page)

“Then you’ll have to be quiet.” He accompanied this with another devastating stroke of his fingers.

And another.

More whimpers escaped her, unintelligible.

“Shh,” he murmured. “Not a sound or we’ll have to stop.”

“If you stop,” she gritted out, “I’ll kill you.”

With a badass smile, he brought her hand up to cover her own mouth, squeezing gently, silently telling her to keep a lid on it.

She tried, she really did, but she moaned when he slid back down her body. She lifted her hand enough to whisper, “Maybe we should just get to the main event.”

“No.”

No?
“I’ve got a condom in my bathroom,” she whispered, “but I’m on the pill and haven’t done this in a long time, either, so it’s probably okay—”

His mouth closed over her and she whimpered again, tightening her hand over her lips as his talented fingers joined the fray and…drove her right over the edge. Her hips bucked and she shuddered wildly as she came.

In less than five minutes.

In another time and place, say when her head was actually sitting on her shoulders, she’d have to think about how he’d managed to do what even she couldn’t do for herself. Oh, she could give herself an orgasm, and so could a guy. It just usually took a lot of effort and some general fantasizing about Channing Tatum.

This time it took nothing but Cole.

By the time she came back to herself, he was pulling a condom from one of the myriad pockets of his cargoes. “Someday you’re going to show me what else you keep in your pants,” she said.

With a snort, he brought her hand to his impressive erection.

“This,” he said. “This is the most important item—” The laughter seemed to back up in his throat with a sharp inhale when she stroked him slow and long.

“Jesus, Olivia,” he groaned.

“Shh,” she said, mocking him. “Not a sound or we’ll have to stop.” And then she guided him home.

He pushed inside her, a delicious, warm, wet slide, and she had one last thought before a tidal wave of sensuality took her away.

She needed to enjoy the hell out of every single second of this, because just as surely as the sun would rise tomorrow and then set tomorrow night, Cole
would
eventually walk away.

H
oly mother of God.
That was Cole’s only rational thought. He was balls deep inside Olivia’s tight body and reeling from sensory overload. It took everything he had to bite back the groan that wanted to escape.

She was having trouble keeping quiet, too. Her hand was still over her mouth, fingers white from pressing so hard. Leaning over her, he kissed those fingers as he pulled out of her and…pushed back in.

She caught his hips, wrapping her legs around him, digging her nails into his ass as he began to move, keeping him close and deep.

Right where he wanted to be. He couldn’t get enough of her. He loved her body, loved being all over it, and especially loved the reactions he got from it. But then she rocked up into him, tightening her long legs around him, and his entire world narrowed to senses, to how wet she was, to the way she clutched at him, the sound of her panting, the heat of her skin.

Planting an elbow near her head, he lowered himself enough to kiss her fingers, nudging them away from her lips so he could cover her mouth with his.

Beneath him, she shook as she came again, and watching her took him right along with her.

It might have been five minutes, an hour, or a lifetime later when he opened his eyes. He was warm. Actually he was toasty as hell, thanks to the woman curled into his side.

She was all over him. She had a leg thrown over his, an arm across his chest, her face pressed into his throat.

Either she was in a sexual coma or he’d killed her. “Olivia.”

She mumbled something and cuddled closer, rubbing the cold tip of her nose against his throat. Nope, not dead. “Supergirl.”

She tightened her leg and arm on him and then shifted her hips closer.

Yeah. He was on board with that and considered round two. The thought was tempting, so fucking tempting. How long had it been since he’d lost himself in a woman?

Since Susan.

Two years…

He hadn’t missed having someone in his life. He’d been busy holding on to his hurt, his fury. Holding on to it, nursing it, enjoying it even. But now, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember why.

Moving on was a much better strategy, and he was mad at himself for not thinking of it sooner. Brushing the hair from Olivia’s face, he watched as her dark eyes opened.

“Hi,” she said softly.

“Hi.”

“I was sleeping a little bit.”

“And drooling,” he said.

“I was not!” But she wiped her mouth and then narrowed her eyes when he laughed. “I don’t drool.”

“Okay, maybe you were just snoring,” he said.

She blinked. “I snore?”

“Loud enough to rattle the windows.”

She started to slip out from beneath him, but laughing, he tightened his grip and held her still. “My mistake, it was just the thunder.”

She fell to her back, and he leaned over her and kissed her, a long, lazy, hey-how-ya-doin’ sort of kiss that was perfect for stormy nights with no electricity and nowhere else to be in any hurry.

“What?” she asked, pulling back. “You’re smiling at me.”

“You’re purring,” he said, and laughed when her dark eyes narrowed to slits. “You are. It’s cute.”

“Well, you’re smug as hell. And it’s
not
cute.”

“Liar.”

Once again she started to escape, but another burst of lightning lit the place, and she went still.

Flat on his back, he reached over and ran a hand up the back of her thigh to cup her ass. “Where you going?”

A shockingly close roar of thunder sounded, rattling the windows, the ceiling, hell, even the floors, and Olivia turned and leapt on top of him. “Nowhere.”

Laughing softly, he tugged her into him, made a Herculean effort to get them both on the bed, and pulled the covers over them until they were cocooned. “Nowhere sounds good to me.”

Olivia snuggled into Cole’s body. Snuggled. She was still trembling and feeling a little bit like she’d revealed her tender underbelly. She felt…exposed and vulnerable, and as a rule, she didn’t do either very well.

And neither did Cole, she was guessing, given how he’d shut down after what had happened with the match. She’d managed to distract him from that, but he’d distracted her right back.

Still, she hadn’t forgotten that look of utter hollowness and despair. “Does it have to do with the rig explosion?” she asked quietly.

He’d been stroking a hand up and down her back, and his hand froze low on her spine.

“A little bit,” she guessed.

“The anniversary of Gil’s death is this week.” He said this into her hair, voice low, so low as to be almost inaudible, but she felt the vibration of the words rumble through his chest into hers as the words sank in.

She had one hand on his biceps, the other on his jaw. She stroked down his arm, around to his back, where beneath smooth, heated skin and muscle, she could feel the coiled tension in him. “You miss him.”

He let out a low breath and brushed his jaw to hers, saying nothing.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

“It’s not just the loss,” he said. “It’s that I thought…” He shook his head. “It’s turning out that maybe he wasn’t exactly the guy I thought.”

Her fingers trailed up and down his spine, the way he’d done to her only a little while before, and she realized his grief was mixed with something more. Anger.

She was definitely missing a piece of this puzzle. “What do you mean?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“It’s okay,” she murmured, “if you still don’t want to talk about it.” After all, she had plenty of her own secrets to protect.

“Something came out after,” he said. “After Gil died. And it changed…things. For me.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Oh, boy. Okay, so they were going to go there. And she couldn’t be surprised. He was not a man to hold back for long, if at all. “And whatever it is,” she said softly, “it affected your feelings for him?”

“Yeah. Though I’m trying to get past it.” He slid out of her arms and rose from the bed. “I’m getting water. Need anything?”

A moment to herself to regroup would be nice, to back away from the emotions that were entirely too close to the surface when it came to him. “No, thanks.”

Cole turned toward the kitchen and promptly tripped over the old trunk at the foot of her bed.When he righted it, the lid popped open. Inside were the costumes of her own personal collection, the ones she shared at Drama Days but couldn’t bear to part with. On top was the Cinderella costume, which he reached for.

The trunk lid slammed closed, just missing Cole’s fingers. He glanced at Olivia.

“Sorry,” she said, kneeling at the foot of the bed, holding the trunk closed while all gloriously rumpled. And gloriously nude. “You okay?”

“Private collection?” he asked.

She wrapped herself in the sheet they’d kicked to the foot of the bed. “Maybe I’ll take a glass of water after all,” she said.

In other words,
Yes, asshole, private collection
. Message received. Cole crossed the open space and hit the kitchen, filling up a glass of water, downing it in a few gulps before filling it again and bringing it to Olivia.

While she drank, he slid back into the bed with her. “Not exactly an open book,” he said.

She didn’t pretend to not know what he was talking about. She simply shrugged. “Old habits.”

He studied her face by the ambient candlelight flickering around the room. “You can tell me anything. You know that, right?”

“Nothing much to tell.”

Right.

One of their phones was going off; he could hear it vibrating across her nightstand. He lifted his head and found it was hers.

It said:
DICKWAD CALLING—DON’T ANSWER!

He glanced at Olivia. She did not meet his gaze. “Ignore it,” she said.

A minute later, another call came in. This time the screen read:
EVIL QUEEN CALLING—DON’T ANSWER
!

He was starting to see a pattern.

Olivia’s hand came into view, and she scooped the phone from under his nose and brought it to her nose. “Damn,” she said.

And then she tossed the phone across the room, where it landed in her laundry basket.

“Nice shot,” he said.

“Yeah, I make that shot a lot. The trick is remembering to rescue the phone before I do laundry.”

“Expensive mistake,” he noted.

“Tell me about it. I’m on phone number three this year already.” She rolled away from him and started to climb out of the bed. “Listen, I need to get up early, so you should probably go.”

He pinned her on her belly, letting the erotic feel of her beneath him take over from everything else.

She blew hair from her face, craned her neck, and narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s with the caveman hold? I think we’ve both had our jollies here tonight, so we can consider ourselves over the whole ‘I’m yours’ thing, right?”

“Wrong.” He rocked his hips against her sweet ass.

A soft moan escaped her, and her eyes softened momentarily, until her phone began vibrating again.

“How much you want to bet it’s another ‘Don’t Answer’?” he asked.

She turned her head so he couldn’t see her expression.

Ah. The brick wall. He was getting good at bashing his head up against it. “So who’s Dickwad?” Lowering his head, he brushed his scruffy jaw against the nape of her neck.

She shivered. She liked. So he did it again. “Olivia?”

“No one important.”

Uh-huh. Whoever he was, he was important enough to label. “And the Evil Queen?”

“Wrong number.”

He laughed softly. “Such a beautiful liar.” Scooping her hair aside, he pressed his lips to the spot. “I bet I could get you to tell me all your secrets, Supergirl.”

“They’re not very interesting,” she said, and then hissed in a breath when he nibbled his way down her spine, the sound muffled against the pillow, like she was pressing her face hard into it so he couldn’t hear her.

But he
wanted
to hear her. “I think everything about you is interesting,” he said, and when she growled at his hold, he merely spread her legs with one of his thighs. And then made room for the other.

“I said I have to go to sleep,” she muttered, but she pushed her ass into his crotch.

And then it was his turn to groan.

One hand braced at her shoulder, holding the bulk of his weight off her, he slid his other beneath her and cupped a soft, warm breast.

Her nipple immediately tightened and pressed into his palm.

“Okay,” she said panting. “Fine. You’ve got ten minutes.”

“I can do a lot with ten minutes,” he said. And then he proved it.

I
t was a sneaky, cowardly thing to do, but Olivia got up before dawn and…left.

Yeah. She left her own place, with Cole in her bed and her phone still in her laundry basket.

She stopped at the Eat Me diner for coffee, hit up the bakery for a croissant, and then wasted more time by walking the pier, telling herself she needed the exercise.

She didn’t. She’d burned a bazillion calories riding Cole like a bronco all night…Just remembering burned a bunch more.

The sun came up behind the mountains, highlighting the choppy water. She watched awhile longer while finishing her coffee and croissant and then went back home.

Cole was gone.

She’d thought she’d be relieved, but she was something else entirely.

Disappointed. In herself, not him. She’d long ago decided that as Olivia she was going to be a better version of herself, and she had been.

Until this morning.

By the time she showered, dressed, grabbed her phone, and got out the door—for the second time—she was having a hard time maintaining her distance about the night she’d just had.

What had Cole thought when he’d woken alone? And why did she care? He wanted to know more about her, and she got that. She wanted to know about him, too. But she didn’t want to share her past with him, not now.

Not ever, if she could help it.

Not because she didn’t trust him. As ridiculous as it sounded, she already trusted him. There was just something about him that instilled a boatload of trust.

But with that came a healthy dose of reality. She’d learned the hard way not to give too much of herself. Nothing good came from it. She needed to remember that.

Just a little bit longer with him
, the devil on her left shoulder begged.
Oh, please
.

You shouldn’t
, the angel on her right shoulder said, clearly worried.
Guard your past, walk away
.

Olivia’s heart clutched. She knew she couldn’t keep her distance, couldn’t resist him.

But tick-tock, the clock was counting down. She knew it. Behind that easygoing, laid-back nature of Cole’s, he was sharp as a fox. And intense. He had questions, and he wanted answers.

He was going to complicate the world she’d built for herself. He was going to huff and puff, and if she wasn’t careful, he was going to blow her carefully constructed house down.

Right around her ears.

Even as she thought it, her evil,
evil
phone buzzed in her pocket, and she took a look. Not a
DON’T ANSWER
this time, but Becca. “Hey,” Olivia said, cradling the phone in the crook of her neck as she unlocked the door to her shop.

“You missed mine and Callie’s impromptu breakfast. Did you get my text?”

“I did,” Olivia said, walking inside, flipping on lights and the heater. “Sorry. I was…busy.”

“Doing?”

“Uh…” Shit. She kept forgetting that friends, the real ones, liked the details. “Going through stock, getting the shop ready for Halloween, stuff like that.”

“Oh,” Becca said. “Because Callie and I thought maybe you were busy doing something else.” She paused meaningfully. “Like, say…someone else.”

Olivia went still. “Um.” Her brain started racing. “Why would you think such a thing?”

“Because we both saw Cole leave your place earlier. He was whistling, by the way.”

“He was fixing my…” What? “Stuff,” she said, then grimaced. Lame.

“Yeah?” Becca asked, sounding amused. “Is that what put that smile on his face? Fixing your stuff?”

Olivia closed her eyes and thunked her head to the front countertop. It did not knock any sense into her.

“Because in my humble opinion,” Becca went on, not sounding all that humble actually, “a smile like the one Cole was wearing screams ‘just got lucky.’”

In Olivia’s ear came the welcome beep telling her she had another call. “I gotta go.”

“I bet.”

“No, really. I’ve got another call.”

“Uh-huh,” Becca said drily. “Later.”

Olivia disconnected and eyed the screen to see who was calling her.

She stared at it for a moment and then burst out laughing. She had no idea when Cole had managed to get ahold of her phone and program himself in, but she had to give him creativity points. She connected. “Someone a little full of themselves this morning?”

“And yet you don’t deny the Best Lover Ever claim,” he noted, voice low and playful.

Damn, she was cheesing from ear to ear. She tried to curtail the stupid grin but couldn’t. “Why are you calling?” she asked, walking around and adjusting some of the Halloween decorations that she’d put up earlier in the week. She was thinking she could use some more. One could never have enough Halloween decorations. “Didn’t I just see you?”

“Ouch. And yes. I need a favor. I’ve got this thing I’ve got to attend Friday night. Was hoping you’d come with.”

Friday was three nights away, and Halloween. “Define thing,” she said warily. A date? Yes, they’d slept together, but that hadn’t exactly been a planned thing. A date would take them to yet another level, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for that.

“Suspicious much?” he asked, sounding amused. “I can see the wheels turning from here. Just say yes, Olivia.”

“I don’t think—”

“It’s a Halloween gig. Costume required.”

Excitement trumped reluctance. She loved to wear costumes. Loved. And he knew it. She eyed the rack of costumes she had displayed, already imagining at least three she wanted for herself. “You know,” she said casually, “that whole bossy thing you’ve got going was fun in bed, but it’s not as much fun in real life.”

“Okay,” he said. “Say yes,
please
.”

She let out a short laugh. He was a quick learner.

“I promise you a good time,” he said in that low, sexy voice, the one that had coaxed her right out of her shell last night and had her doing whatever he’d wanted.

And loving it.

Shaking her head, she walked through the shop to her office and flipped on a few more lights. The one over her desk actually went on and stayed on as it had all week now and she had to smile. “Fine,” she said. “Yes.”

“Was it me, or the fact that you get to wear a costume?”

“Do you really want to know?”

He laughed softly, so damn sure of himself. “I know it was me.”

She told herself she didn’t have time for this, or him. Her voice mail was filled with calls from the TV Land producer, her mom, her sister…All wanting their piece of her. A little bit of her after-sex glow eroded. She needed to stand firm. Because if she didn’t, if she caved and did this for them, they’d take what they needed and they’d leave her.

Again.

Which, actually, was a good reminder. This happiness in Lucky Harbor was tenuous, and it all depended on the facade that she’d built remaining in place.

Here she wasn’t the child star.

She was just herself. A sole proprietor. A simple woman with simple needs.

The minute she became Sharlyn again, everything would change. This happy life would vanish. Everything good would go away. Her friends. Maybe her business. Cole.

And if that wasn’t a sobering thought, there was the realization that this too, this life she’d made for herself in Lucky Harbor, was temporary.

God. God, she hated that. But the truth was, this life was nothing more than another show, another illusion.

Or delusion, as it were…

“Olivia? You still with me?” Cole asked.

Yeah. She was. The question was, how long would he be with her? “Yes.”

He paused, and this time the good humor was gone from his voice when he spoke. “Gotta say, it was unexpected waking up alone.”

She cleared her throat. “The whole night was unexpected. I didn’t plan on sleeping with you, Cole.”

“And I didn’t plan on you being gone in the morning.”

So honest. So up front. Again, no games, no hidden agendas, just…Cole.

She had no idea what to do with that. Or him, for that matter. She’d never met anyone like him. He’d probably never hidden from the truth about anything, and she knew damn well he expected the same from those he cared about. And that openness of his, not to mention those unspoken expectations, were a mystery to her.

“Women who are brave and pull perfect strangers out of the ocean shouldn’t make a run for the door,” he said.

She wasn’t sure what to say, but she did get a warm glow from him calling her brave.

“We need a do-over, Olivia.”

Her body quivered at the thought of a do-over and what it might entail. After last night, she no longer had to wonder how he’d be in bed. She could close her eyes and feel him moving over her, hear the rough timbre of his voice in her ear. He’d been…amazing. Intuitive, giving…deliciously commanding.

Which, of course, meant one thing. They couldn’t do this again. Because the closer they became, the more intimate things got between them, the sooner the end would come. “I’ve got to go,” she said.

“Me too. I’m late for a swim with Tanner.”

She pictured that for a moment, two of the hottest guys she’d ever known powering through the water. “That sounds…” Hot. “Crazy. It’s freezing.”

“We have special wetsuits.”

“Still crazy.”

“Nah,” he said. “It’s fun. We have extra gear, if you wanna join. Except no trying to save me. Copping a feel? Hell, yeah, go for it all you want. But no rescuing.”

She smiled and realized she felt…light as a feather.

Happy.

Terrified. “Can I ask you something?” she asked quietly.

“Anything.”

And wasn’t that just the thing. He was an open book.

And she…she didn’t even have a book.

“When you walk away, just do it, okay?” she asked. “Don’t try to sugarcoat it or drag it out. Just walk.”

There was a beat of silence. “Just walk,” he repeated, an odd note in his voice.

“Yeah,” she said. “And I’ll do the same. No hard feelings, I promise.”

Another beat of silence. “Is that how things are done in Kentucky, Olivia?” he asked softly.

Oh, God, that voice, that low, gentle but slightly pissed-off voice. She flinched at what he believed to be her past, the reminder harsh and unwelcome. Panic licked at her.

Trapped by her own lies.

“It’s how things are done in my world,” she said.

In her
real
world.

“Well, not in mine,” he said. “I don’t just walk away.”