Twenty
Colin
Candy stood at the edge of the parking lot, smoking, his head tilted back, broad shoulders slumped. Colin recognized that posture well; he’d seen it in his old man often. The stance of a man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. And for a man, the world consisted of his family: the people he loved and could care for with his own two hands.
Colin drew up beside him and shoved his hands in his pockets. “She’s scared,” he said without preamble.
Candy blew a stream of smoke up into the evening sky. “Of course she is. That motherfucker wants to kill her.”
“Yeah,” Colin agreed. “And I’d like to think you have a plan to keep that from happening that’s more effective than sitting on our asses, watching her work, and hoping nothing happens.”
Candy’s head tilted forward, and he gave Colin a sideways look. “Getting pushy, prospect.”
“Getting worried about my girlfriend.”
Candy took a long drag and exhaled through his nose. His gaze drew inward, eyes glazed against the last flare of sunlight along the horizon. “Riley put someone where she works. That changes things.”
Colin nodded.
“That means I need to reevaluate everyone in her life.”
Colin lifted his brows.
“Not you, idiot,” he said without feeling. Then his eyes widened. “But you ain’t the only newcomer we’ve got around here.”
“Aw damn…”
Candy grinned. “Your brother knows how to scare the piss outta people. Does that run in the family?”
~*~
Jenny
Reason seventy-two she needed her own place: privacy. She’d toed off her boots and taken down her hair when she heard the hard rap at her bedroom door. It was Candy, doubtless, coming to pick up where he’d left off being anxious.
“Coming,” she muttered, opening the door. “I’m…”
Colin stood in the hallway.
“You can’t be back here,” she blurted before she could catch herself.
“And yet I am.” He flattened one of his sizable hands on the door and pushed it the rest of the way open, forcing her to step back. “Let me in.”
She held up a flat hand of her own, an unmistakable stop sign. “No. Hold on. I mean, you can’t be back here. This is family or invite only in the sanctuary.”
He gave her an amused, patient smile, no sign of his temper from moments before. “Aren’t you family?”
She rolled her eyes.
“So can’t you invite me?”
“You really want Candy knowing we’re back here together?”
He laughed. “Ooh, does that mean you’ll let me do dirty stuff? I was just gonna talk.”
She threw up her hands, tired and exasperated. “Whatever.”
Colin stepped into her bedroom and shut the door behind him. The room shrank once he was fully inside it, by a considerable margin.
“Damn, you’re big,” she muttered, a little warm and flustered to see him dwarfing all her furniture.
He flashed her a smile that blazed a trail straight from her stomach to parts south of that. “All over.”
“Ugh. That’s not what I meant. You’re too big for regular human furniture.” She glanced around the room, realizing not only was the room cramped, but messier than she would have liked. Folded clothes stacked up on the dresser, boots poking out of the cracked closet door, her journal open on the bed.
Her journal!
She brushed past him, flipped the leather bound notebook shut and crammed it down between the bed and the wall. She was breathing hard when she turned around, and Colin was watching her with his head cocked, expression quizzical and dog-like.
“Secret diary?” he guessed.
Since that was exactly what it was – no sense explaining the therapeutic benefits of hashing out her nightmares and daily thought bubbles – she pressed her lips shut and sat down slowly on the bed, not answering.
“Mercy’s wife writes,” he said, quietly, contemplatively, and she wondered if he’d meant to reference his sister-in-law. “Books. I asked. She was sitting there in her socks, with her baby, looking like she was doing nothing special, and she was writing a book.” He sounded incredulous at the idea.
“Yeah.” Jenny felt some of her anxiety soften. “Ava’s always been a little bookworm. She and Mercy always had that in common.”
Colin snorted, but his gaze had gone faraway. “Felix was the biggest nerd.”
“There’s worse things to be.”
“Yeah.” His gaze refocused, lighting on her like hot brown coals. “A lot worse, yeah?”
She couldn’t take him looking at her like that. She melted inside and wanted to stop thinking, just push her hands through his thick hair and pull him down on top of her.
He took a step closer, towering over her. “What do you write?”
“Hmm? What?” What pretty lips he had. She wanted to feel them against her own again.
“What were you writing, in your secret diary?” He gave her a teasing smile, but it dropped away, the intensity overtaking him.
Jenny took a deep breath and felt the air tremble in her lungs. “My therapist thought it would be helpful to keep a journal.” She told him the total truth. “I was writing about what happened.”
“Do you write about everything that happens?”
“Most things.”
“Did you write about what happened last night?”
She felt heat steal into her cheeks and shook her head. “Some things it’s better to keep to yourself.”
The mattress dipped low when he sat beside her, the springs groaning a protest. “Does that mean I shouldn’t have told the guys about it?”
She elbowed him hard and he chuckled. “Liar. You don’t even like most of them.”
He didn’t deny it. Instead, he took her breath when he said, “I like you.”
She couldn’t handle this. Just couldn’t. “Colin, don’t…”
When she would have turned her head aside, he caught her shoulders and held her facing him. “Hey. Listen. It’s like I said last night–”
“I heard you last night. And even if you meant it, and even if you’re some kinda Cajun miracle walking into my life.” She gave him a brief grin before her face fell. “I can’t do this again.”
He frowned.
“I can’t be the girl who lets a man consume her. I did that before. I can’t do it again.” She had to have learned from her awful mistake, she thought. She had to have grown.
“Consume, really? Baby, if you want to talk about eating–”
“I’m serious.”
“ – then lie back and let it happen. I’m serious too,” he said, expression turning ferocious. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not anybody’s favorite guy. I don’t have a history of consuming anybody.”
“I…” She what? What did she say to that? He was fast becoming her favorite guy.
“It scared me today,” he admitted, voice low and rough. “When he got hold of you. I…” He shook his head. “I haven’t ever felt like that before.”
Oh God…
“And I dunno. Maybe you don’t feel any kind of way about me. Maybe you hate my guts. But…”
She laid her finger against his lips. “Stop talking.” Grabbed his biceps, leaned into him, and kissed him.
She knew it was all over, with that first touch of their lips. It had been building to this, and they’d finally reached the crossroads. If she chose to divert, to go her own way after this, it would be a decision of the mind, and not the heart. And it would rip her in two when it happened. Because this moment was the emotional, feminine core of her deciding on Colin O’Donnell.
He was her man, whether she’d wanted him to start with or not.
He let her play with his mouth a moment, her tongue flirting between his lips, his teeth, her fingers digging into his arms. And then he took over.
He pushed her back onto the pillows, climbed over her. Her legs opened automatically, making a cradle for his hips. She arched into the sheer size and weight of him, hands sliding into his hair.
He thumbed open the buttons of her work shirt with rough, hasty movements. She heard threads tear. He lifted his head, broke their kiss, and she went liquid between her thighs as she watched his eyes drink in her red lace bra.
“Jesus, baby, you are built,” he whispered, and hooked a thumb in each fragile cup, drawing them down so her breasts were bared and lifted.
Her pulse quickened as he shifted down in the bed. “Please,” she murmured, just before his breath fanned across her aching nipples.
He suckled her, one and then the other. She cradled his skull in her hands, arched into his mouth, shameless as she offered herself to him. The sensations were exquisite, each tug of his lips radiating beneath her skin, plucking at every nerve.
Then his lips cruised downward, skimmed across her belly. And his hands found the button of her jeans.
“God.”
She lifted her hips, helped to shed the second skin Levi’s. A hot flash of awareness moved through her, left her wondering, doubting. And then he pushed her knees up, wedged her thighs apart with his shoulders, and kissed her sex.
“Ooohhhh,” she whispered, fingertips digging into his scalp. Riley had never done this. Had never expressed interest in it. Had usually flipped her over and gone at her from behind. She was embarrassed…but more than that, she wanted it. She was thirty-nine, and this gorgeous hunk of man wanted to go down on her…and she was lifting into the steady strokes of his tongue.
It was incredible.
All self-consciousness burned away in a matter of moments, replaced with a desperate need. The hot, wet touch of his mouth against her was pure heaven. She closed her eyes, pressed her head back into the pillow, and gave herself over to it.
The orgasm was nerve-shattering.
She was still gasping, trying to catch her breath, when he reared up over her, huge and splendid as the sun in her eyes.
“You’re still dressed,” she managed, between panted breaths, hands running up his cotton-covered chest.
His grin was cocky, irritating, and hot as hell. “You want me naked?”
“Fucking yes.”
He laughed. Sat back on his heels and stripped his shirt off, giving her a show of flexing, caramel-colored muscles and the shadows they threw. Ditching his jeans and boots was more awkward, as he stayed kneeling on the bed. She helped. And then…
She made an incomprehensible sound when he entered her. She closed her thighs tight around his hips, dug her heels into his ass.
“God, Colin…”
He rode her hard, the mattress threatening to give out altogether.
Jenny wanted him closer, closer…She clutched his arms, his shoulders, his neck…
“Please,” she whispered. “I need…”
“I know, baby,” he said against her jaw. He kissed her cheek, her forehead. Flexed his hips until she whimpered from the force of his invasion. “I know.”
She shattered again.