Emma

I come awake slowly, pushing closer to the solid heat pressed against my front with a groan and almost have a heart attack when I crack one swollen eye to see Colton beside me, his golden hair ruffled.

His eyes are open but sleepy and I croak when he shifts, pulling one of my legs over his hip to pull me closer. I want to pull away and demand to know how he got in here but the feel of his cock pressed against me, slowly moving while he watches me is so good all I manage is a gasp.

“Afternoon, sleepy head,” he murmurs, kissing me softly and palming my ass when reason arrives and demands I roll away. “Uhuh, stay right there, Em, you’re so warm.”

He croons the words while shifting to his back and bringing me over him, the new position putting my full weight over his straining shaft.

“Hhhhmm, that’s it, baby, work it, slide yourself all over me.”

He groans when I shift and press my clit closer, the sensation getting stronger when I feel him shudder beneath me.

“Colt, what are you doing here?” I ask, forcing my hips to stay still despite the ache building in my sex.

“Sleeping with you. Waking up with you humping my cock,” he says wickedly, biting his lip when I scowl.

Hell, how am I supposed to be mad when it feels so good?

“I mean how did you get in here and what are you still doing here?”

I need answers. I’m so confused it’s not easy to stop dry humping him while I stare down at him with a frown. It doesn’t once occur to me to stop staring at his lips or that it’s weird that he’s palming my ass and slipping his fingers beneath the leg of my shorts. All I know is that I almost come when his fingers go beneath my thong and meet the wet proof of my arousal.

He stops there, his fingers resting against my lips and looks up at me with heat and not so little amusement.

“You thought I left you, Em? Shame on you.”

Oh, oh right there. His fingers slip up before I can answer and I feel the tip of one glide through my folds to rest at the entrance of my sex. My instinct is to push down and envelop that finger but he stops me with a hand clamped to my hip, teasing me mercilessly.

“Emma.”

Shit. I don’t want to talk. Isn’t it enough that I feel like a complete fool already and that I want to die of embarrassment?

“I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t be sorry, Em. Whatever happened, we can work through it, together. Just tell me you’re not running away or pushing me away,” he says, his eyes going hard when I hesitate.

I haven’t forgotten where his fingers are, hell no, that would be like forgetting a nail shot through your foot, but the way he’s looking at me leaves no room for anything but an answer. One I don’t want to give.

“I don’t think this is a good idea, Colt. You’re…I don’t think I can be what you need. I can’t…I can’t go to parties with you and socialize. I just can’t, so I think it’s best that we stop whatever this is before it goes too far.”

“No,” he says simply.

My mouth drops open at the one word and I find myself staring straight into his eyes, searching for answers.

“What do you mean no? You can’t just say no.” I gasp, moaning when I try to get off and he clamps down harder to keep me still.

The movement has his finger dipping into me and I gasp and still, not knowing if I want to move away or get closer.

“I can and I am. No, you are not leaving me just because you freaked out in the car. I don’t know why that happened or if you’re ready to tell me, but I’ll wait if that’s what you want. As for the rest, we work through it,” he says simply, scrambling my brain when he starts rubbing me intimately.

“I can’t…concentrate when you do that.”

“Good. Just feel,” he murmurs, flipping me over.

I groan a protest when he removes his hand from my shorts but squeak when he pulls them off in a move so practiced I’d have rolled my eyes if I had time to think.

Before I can blink, he has my lower half naked and it’s then that I go tense with embarrassment, my shyness coming to the fore.

“Oh hell, shit, Emma, this weekend had better get done fast.” He growls, looking down at my sex with so much heat I shiver.

I go to cover myself but Colton grabs my wrists and pins them beside my hips, shaking his head forcefully.

“Let me pleasure. Just this. I won’t take you and I can’t let you touch me but I need to touch you.” He pleads.

I nod, swallowing roughly and force myself not to move when he lowers his head and kisses just beneath my navel. The touch sends tingles of warmth to my clit and I bite down on my lip when he licks his tongue out, tracing a path to the short patch of sparse hair I haven’t bothered to shave.

I always assumed hair puts men off, at least that’s what my mother told me and why I was forced to wax or go for laser treatments but Colton doesn’t seem to care as he swirls his lips over me before placing a closed mouthed kiss just above my clit.

Heat streaks though me and I moan, panting when he looks up at me and stills, waiting for my eyes to meet his.

“You’re so beautiful, Em. Can I lick you? Would you like my tongue on your clit, inside you?”

It’s not a question that last part because he doesn’t wait for an answer, just opens his mouth and flicks the tip of his tongue over me. I gasp, straining against his hold and almost black out when he buries his mouth against me and starts sucking. Hard.

I have never…

Oh God, yes. Right there. Harder. Faster.

He obeys as if I’ve spoken aloud and releases my hands to palm my hips, pulling my legs open. His mouth is soft and yet forceful and I hear him groan when he licks down to my entrance.

“So wet.”

Yeah, I’m wet, drenched actually, I think sliding my fingers into his hair when I need something to hold onto because it feels so good. His tongue dips in and I see stars, my sex clenching around the muscle before shuddering when he pulls out to move to my clit.

I can’t describe it all, it just feels so good I let go and enjoy it, forgetting my inhibitions altogether when he settles his mouth against me and sucks harder.

I come without warning, my body exploding with sensation while he continues to lick me softly, the gentle flicks bringing me down until I become too sensitive and push his mouth away.

When I come back to life it’s to see him leaning over me with a smile of pure satisfaction before he kisses me. This kiss isn’t about sex at all, even if it’s erotic as hell sharing the taste of what he just did to me.

It’s more comfort and I suck it in and kiss him back because there isn’t much else to do.

“Come home with me, Emma. We won’t have sex, I’ve promised myself the weekend to get to know you, but I want you to sleep with me and wake up tomorrow morning knowing we’re together,” he says solemnly.

I should not do this. Today proved one thing to me that I haven’t faced yet and that is that I am nowhere near over everything. I may be coming out of my shell and forcing myself to talk to people, even considering a sexual relationship, but I am not over the real trauma my parents inflicted on me and that isn’t fair. Not to me and especially not to Colton who has no idea what being with him would entail for me.

And yet I can’t say no and just walk away, I realize, closing my eyes as pain streaks through my gut. I can’t leave him because the truth is that I haven’t ever wanted anything this much.

I want Colton James, for as long as he’ll have me, and I will have him, no matter what I have to go through.

“I’m not ready to talk about it…and I don’t know if I ever will be. You should be with someone who isn’t messed up and weird,” I say, stroking a hand across his stubbled cheek.

He leans closer to my touch and looks into my eyes, refusing to let me look away.

“You’re what I want, Emma. What happened earlier is not something that is going to just go away, I get that, but I know that we can be good together if we try. Come home with me,” he says again, kissing the tip of my nose.

“Okay.”

He grins at my acquiescence and jumps up, grinning when I gasp and dive for my shorts. Now that I’m all pleasured out, it’s not exactly comfortable having him look at my naked parts, ya know.

Colton just grins and waits for me to dress before ordering me to pack a bag - less underwear, of course - and waiting while I write a note for Buck and stick it to the fridge with a magnet.

My stomach growls loudly when we slide into the car and I hear him laugh when I blush before telling the driver to take us to his place.

“You going to cook for me, Emma Harper?”

I feel better, maybe because he gave me an orgasm, maybe just because he’s not running or forcing me to talk. Whatever it is I find myself smiling and raising an eyebrow.

“You expect me to cook on our second date?” I tease.

He grins back and he looks so young and so much less formidable than usual that my breath catches and I promise to make him look this way more often, sort of like my own little gift to the world.

“Third date, Miss Harper. The second involved panties and a spectacular orgasm for you.”

Arrogant. The man is arrogant and completely within his rights, I think, sticking my tongue out.

“What would you like?” I ask instead.

“Spaghetti.”

Now how did I know he wouldn’t rest until he got me to give him exactly what I have cooked for Buck a hundred times already? The man is obviously competitive, I think, giggling when he blushes and smirks.

“I’m a little jealous.”

A little?

I smile when he kisses me because there’s nothing to say and I am still smiling a half hour later when he offers to set the table while I serve a quick fix spaghetti that I know will be good.

“You’re staying here forever,” he mumbles around a mouthful of food, his eyes glazing over when I add parmesan and a sprinkle of cayenne, making it perfect, in my opinion.

That only has him moaning more with every bite and I smile all through a meal that sees Colton going for seconds while I eat slowly and nurse a glass of red wine.

When we’re done, he’s so full he can hardly move so I follow him to the couch and eye him askance when he just sits there.

“No TV. We’re not watching TV till at least the twentieth date.”

“You want me to sit here and watch you fall into a food coma?” I ask, scowling when I go for the remote and he moves it.

“Nope. I want you to talk to me,” he says, pulling me flat and snuggling between my legs, his head resting over my sex and bottom stomach.

The position should be awkward and yet I find myself scratching at his head, just as I did with Buck this morning while clearing my mind of anything but this.

“Tell me about your childhood. No, don’t tense up Emma. I don’t want to dig but we’re here, together and I want to know you. Nothing will put me off you, no matter what you tell me. Please.”

Damn, I can’t resist good manners and neither can I ignore the pleading tone in his voice.

“I hate talking about them.”

“I know. But I’ll dish some dirt on my own assholes if you talk to me. Sharing, remember? Getting to know each other before I get my dick in you, baby.”

“God, that is sooo romantic,” I gush sarcastically, struggling with a giggle when he tickles my sides. “Okay, okay, sorry.”

“Talk.”

Darn it.

“My parents are assholes, Colton, straight up assholes. My dad comes from money and he married my mom when she was nineteen and fresh out of beauty school, no lies,” I say, snorting because it is so clichéd. “They had my brother Art two years later and then Conrad two years after that. I was a late arrival and quite the surprise since they already had an heir and the spare at hand but apparently, Mom was so happy I was a girl she went out the next day and had a designer start on a pink nursery.”

“Sounds sweet,” he murmurs, moaning when I give him a head massage, rubbing lightly.

“Not sweet. Since the day I was born it was all about the best. I had the best house, the best clothes, the best of anything you can think of. But I never had…affection. I suppose Mom would have liked me more if I was outgoing and easy to handle but I pimped her game before I was ten years old and it made me withdraw more. I wasn’t just shy, Colt, I was afraid, terrified that if I made one wrong move, Mom would have me all but engaged to whichever rich little snot looked my way.”

He looks up at me questioningly before I shrug and push him back down, the soothing stroke of my fingers through his silky hair helping to keep me calm and focused.

“That was my function. I was the princess who’d marry well and unite two dynasties or whatever. From the age of thirteen my mom trotted me out to any social event that sprang up. I was scrubbed, polished, made up to within an inch of my life, the perfect life-sized doll for people to oooh and aaah over,” I mutter, still shuddering at the way mom would pinch me when I refused to perform.

“That sounds awful.”

“No, awful is when I got my period and started gaining weight. Mom had me on diets until I thought I was going to die of starvation. I used to sneak food from the kitchen at night. Our cook Geneva would hide a plate in the laundry room and that’s how I got by. It drove Mom crazy until she realized that I stopped eating when we went out to dinners and parties. I got down to under a hundred pounds one time before I started putting cookies in my purse and eating them while I hid out in the kitchens of other people’s houses.”

“Is that why you hate parties?”

“No,” I say, sighing. “When mom realized that I wasn’t going to toe the line, she fired Geneva and had my food card limited a school. It was me and salad for the next few years unless I agreed to go to dinner with whoever asked me out. Then I could choose what I wanted. Needless to say, I was downsizing rapidly before Gam stepped in and went nuts. My father’s mom was a force of nature, no one messed with her and I have to admit that the year I turned seventeen was a good one. I was left alone.”

Colton squeezes me when I trail off, my sadness when Gam died still as fresh as the day Mom came into my room and told me, her smirk making me long to scratch her eyes out. The only reason I didn’t was because I knew she’d use any reason to get me in line now that Gam was gone.

“What happened?”

“Gam died. She was planting tulip bulbs in her greenhouse when her heart gave out. Right before senior year. The next year was awful. I went on a lot of dates. A lot. But…”

“You were shy,” he fills in.

I snort because that is an understatement. I was almost physically incapable of forming words on those occasions, which made people start whispering about my mental state.

“People thought I was crazy. It pissed my parents off a lot because they’d planned to introduce me to a guy I’d been avoiding. Duncan,” I say, swallowing bile. “I hated him. He was older, richer and he made fun of me a lot. He also didn’t like that I was the only girl who ignored him. I think my parents were set to sell me to the highest bidder when Buck appeared. He took one look at me getting beat up by the cheerleading squad, kicked their asses and told me we were leaving.”

I laugh at the memory. At the time, I couldn’t credit what he was saying and I really did think he was yanking my chain. The day of graduation I packed a bag still doubtful that we’d leave but true to his word Buck hopped a bus with me and off we went.

“So you left.”

“I ran. Fast. Hard. In fear. My parents told me the night before that they expected me to accept Duncan’s proposal or they’d have to have me evaluated.”

That has him rearing up and I almost laugh at the look of horror on his face.

“You’re fucking kidding me. They wanted to have you committed?” he roars, his teeth clenched.

I stroke his cheek, just as I did with Buck four years ago and shrug.

“I don’t think that’s what they wanted but if I wasn’t going to play ball, they weren’t going to accept a hippy daughter who liked to live simple and wanted to go to school. Harper women do not work,” I say sternly, rolling my eyes.

“Jesus.”

I shrug again and try to pull Colton back but he resists and hangs over me, staring at me with an expression akin to horror.

“I don’t think I like your parents, Emma.”

“No shit, join the club,” I mutter, stroking his stubble.

“No, I mean I really do not like them. You’re never going back there,” he says, pulling me closer as if he’s afraid they’ll storm in right now to take me.

“I won’t. I’d rather be dragged behind a truck,” I say ruefully, trying to lighten the situation.

Colton doesn’t oblige me, though, and I sort of regret telling him because the light mood we’d shared is now totally gone.