by Callie Rose
When I couldn’t take the silence anymore, I forced words past dry lips.
“Are… are you okay?”
He didn’t speak, but I could practically feel the answer vibrating from him.
No. Of course not.
Then, without warning, he slammed on the brakes.
The sudden change of speed made panic flare in my chest, and my hands shot out in front of me—but this wasn’t like my crash. The car didn’t roll, it just lurched to a stop as he pulled over on the shoulder of the road.
I was still trying to get my breath back when Cole exploded.
“God. Fucking. Dammit!”
He pounded his fist against the steering wheel so hard I was afraid he’d break it, his face contorting with rage. Then he slumped forward, pressing his forehead against the top of the wheel as he sucked in ragged breaths. His eyes closed, and his hands bunched into fists again, coming to rest beside his head.
“Goddammit,” he muttered again.
My entire body ached for the boy before me, as if the pain was too big and too deep to be contained by just my heart. I felt it everywhere, and it made me want to throw up.
“I’m sorry, Cole. I shouldn’t have come—”
“It’s not your fault.” His voice was rough but full of conviction. “Don’t put this on yourself, Legs.”
“Did he hit you?”
Without lifting his head, he nodded. For the first time since I’d met him, Cole’s body seemed to get smaller. I’d seen him puff up with rage so many times, but I’d never seen the opposite happen. Like the pressure of the world was literally compacting him, making him deflate under its weight.
“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered bitterly. He lifted his head off the wheel and stared ahead, unseeing. “I was expecting it. At least now I’m not fucking waiting anymore.” His gaze cut to me, pain and something like a challenge blazing in his eyes, as if he was daring me to call him a pussy or something for letting his dad beat him. As if I ever would. “And I’d rather it be me. As long as it’s me, it’s not Penny, and it’s not Mom.”
“It shouldn’t be any of you,” I whispered.
He chuckled dully. “Yeah, well. Shouldn’t doesn’t usually mean shit. You know that.”
I nodded. He was right; I did know. I’d learned that truth so well it was practically branded into my skin by now.
“Penny’s lucky she has you.”
He shook his head before I even finished speaking, anger flashing in his bright blue irises again.
“No, she’s not. I can’t do shit for her. What the fuck can I do? Take a few punches from my dad? Fuck that. She needs help, real help.” His lips pressed together, and I could feel his anger spiking like a blast of heat. “He won’t let her have it though. Calls her fucking disabled, like she’s less than a whole person. It’s like he’s mad at her for being born the way she was, and he’s trying to fucking punish her for it.”
The horrible feeling of helplessness kept churning in my gut, and I realized it was just a fraction of what Cole felt toward Penny. I wanted to help him, he wanted to help her, and we both had to watch someone we cared about suffer while we sat by with what felt like ropes tied around our wrists.
My hands shook as I unbuckled my seat belt, and I shifted awkwardly in the seat so I could face the boy next to me fully. “I’m sorry, Cole. I’m so sorry.”
He turned to face me, blinking several times as if he’d just realized I was still in the car with him. I took advantage of the movement and reached up to cup his face in my hands, trying to keep him with me, to keep him from sinking down into that awful place of guilt and anger and despair.
I had been there. I had lived there for too many years, and I knew how hard it was to work your way back to the light.
“Penny is lucky, Cole. So much of her life is unfair, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s lucky she has you. She needs you. To counterbalance all the shit. To love her. To protect her the best way you can.”
Cole tugged against my hold like he wanted to shake his head and turn away from me at the same time, but I tightened my grip, kneeling on the seat to give myself more leverage. Then I did the only thing I could think of to do.
I kissed him.
I kissed him the way he’d kissed me after I had told him the truth about my father, about how I’d been hurt too.
I kissed him to make him believe me, to pour my feelings directly into his soul.
I kissed him as if that could heal him—and even though I knew it couldn’t, I had to fucking try.
His body went stiff for a second, and I could feel him struggling not to give in, not to let anything good penetrate the blackness wrapped around him. Not to accept the light I was offering.
Then his lips pressed hard against mine, and before I knew what was happening, he was scooting his seat back as far as it would go and hauling me across the console into his lap. My knees ended up on either side of his hips, digging into the seam of the seat as I wedged into the small space between him and the steering wheel.
It wasn’t exactly comfortable, but comfort was the furthest thing from my mind as Cole deepened our kiss, crushing my body against his with his massive arms.
My hands ran through his hair, which had grown back to its usual cut of short on the sides and long on top, mussing up the blue-black strands. As our lips moved together in a consuming, deep, endless kiss, I ran my fingers over his shoulders, down his chest, and along his sides. He winced slightly as I moved over the ribs on the left side, and I jerked back, breaking the kiss.
There was barely room for me to lean away from him, but I pulled back far enough to slip my fingers under the hem of his dark t-shirt, sliding it up past the cut lines of his abs to reveal the dark red bruise blooming through the tattoos on his side.
I was a connoisseur of bruises by now, and judging from the color of the mark, I was pretty sure his dad had hit him more than once, going for the same spot over and over. I moved to touch it lightly, but Cole caught my wrist in a tight grip, keeping me from brushing my fingers over the mark. The expression on his face was almost ashamed, as if he’d rather cut out that part of his skin than let me see the damage he carried.
Tugging my hand free of his hold, I met his gaze evenly and reached for the bunched up hem of his t-shirt instead. He let me pull it over his head, our movements awkward in the confined space of the car.
I didn’t see any other bruises, so I ran my hands over all the places he wasn’t hurt, and as I touched him, I watched Cole’s eyelids droop like he was drugged.
We were pressed so tightly together that I could feel every bit of his body’s reaction to me, feel him getting hard between my legs. A thrill of desire and fear ran through me as I claimed his mouth again and moved against that hardness, unable to stop myself.
This wasn’t the first time I had kissed Cole, but it was the first time I felt totally in control of it. There was an intensity to the attraction that bubbled between us that made every kiss feel a little like standing outside in the middle of a hurricane, daring nature to sweep me up and carry me away.
That same consuming, overwhelming need still infused the connection between our lips, but now it felt like I was riding the storm instead of being buffeted by it.
Like I was the storm.
Cole grunted, bucking his hips up against mine, and I dragged my lips away from his long enough to mutter, “Back seat.”
He nodded, helping me crawl off his body and between the seats to the back. Seeming to realize there was no fucking way he’d fit if he took the same route, Cole shoved open the driver’s side door and wrenched the back door open, ducking his head to peer down at me sprawled across the leather seat. Then he slid inside, slamming the door behind him. I blinked at him, taking in the thick, tattooed muscles of his chest and shoulders, watching them bunch and contract as he crawled up to hover his body over mine.
He was staring back at me just as intently, as if he was trying to read something in my fac
e, to find an answer to a question he hadn’t asked out loud.
His gaze stayed on me as he slipped a hand between us, sliding it down my pants and finding my clit immediately, rubbing his fingertips in fast circles. His touch was demanding, laced with the harshness that infused so much of what Cole did, and my body responded as if he’d given it a single command.
Come.
I did. So fast and so intensely that it stole my breath, made my muscles lock up, and drew a loud, plaintive cry from my lips. I grabbed onto his forearm with both hands, trying to stop the delicious, painful pleasure, trying to survive it, but his fingers kept circling, the message clear in his touch and his face.
Come again.
Like a puppet, I did. Sensation ripped through my body again, and I turned my head, biting down on the wrist of the arm that braced him above me. He let out a hiss and then a low grunt, but when my body finally stopped shaking and I turned to look up at him, I didn’t see pain on his face. Just dark satisfaction. The fingers that had been working my clit moved down to slip inside me, and when he felt how wet I was, his blue eyes glinted.
My heart was still hammering hard in my chest, and I felt flushed everywhere.
But this couldn’t be all. I needed more.
Had cars passed by us on the road since we’d stopped? If they did, would they have any idea what we were doing in here?
This felt reckless and dangerous, but there was something thrilling about it too. Like the two of us could say “fuck you” to the world and something much sweeter to each other at the same time.
When Cole slid his hand out of my pants, I scooted backward a little on the seat, reaching for my button and zipper and then working my jeans down over my hips. His ice-blue gaze tracked my movements, and I saw him glance outside, probably wondering the same thing I was.
But I didn’t want him thinking about that.
Just about me.
Only me.
I tugged my shoes off before kicking off my pants, and then I knelt on the seat, tugging on his shoulders to make him sit. He moved willingly at my urging, and I crawled back onto his lap, reaching between us to run my palm over the line of his cock through the fabric of his jeans.
He shuddered, his arms banding around me again like he couldn’t help himself.
It looked like he was struggling to keep his eyes open, like he was still high, drunk on me—and I was addicted to seeing him like this.
My fingers fumbled with his fly, and when I’d worked it down, Cole helped me push his pants down his hips, letting his dick spring free.
The only thing that separated us now was the thin fabric of my panties, but I rubbed against him anyway, rolling my hips as I felt the hardness press against my still sensitized clit.
He groaned, his fingers digging hard into the flesh of my hips as his gaze fell to the place where we were pressed together. His cock was sandwiched between us, resting against his low belly as I moved against it.
I leaned back briefly, reaching onto the front seat for the small purse I’d carried. After what had happened between me and Mason, I’d thrown a condom into the side pocket of my bag, not really sure why I was doing it, but I was grateful as hell for it now.
Cole used the opportunity to run his hands up the sides of my waist, lifting the hem of my shirt but not taking it off. When I leaned forward again with the condom in my hand, he surprised me by catching my wrist again, stopping me from moving.
I pushed against his hold, but his arm had seemingly turned to steel, and it didn’t budge. My gaze caught his, and when it did, his grip tightened slightly.
“I was wrong,” he muttered, his voice raspy. “That day, in the locker room. I was wrong about you.”
My heart gave a little stutter in my chest, and I leaned back, blinking at him.
I knew exactly what he was talking about. During my first semester, Cole had cornered me in the girls’ locker room and accused me of trying to seduce his friends, told me I was a slut who would take whatever scraps she could get from any of them without caring who it came from.
And then he had kissed me.
I remembered it with painful clarity, because out of all the Princes’ cruelty during those months, that had been the thing that’d come the closest to breaking me.
My throat worked as I swallowed, and Cole finally released his hold on my wrist to draw his knuckles down the side of my face. His touch was gentle, but his expression was tortured.
“I wanted you. I didn’t know what to do about it, so I decided to hate you instead.” He shook his head. “And I was jealous as fuck that you had something with Finn.”
“Are you jealous now?”
His features twisted. “No. I just hate myself for what I said to you.”
I didn’t respond to that with words. What he’d done was awful and unfair, and no matter what the reason for it, there was no justification that would excuse it. Besides, even if I could’ve told him I forgave him for it, that wouldn’t have soothed over the pain he felt now.
Some hurts always stay with us as reminders to do better.
So I didn’t give him empty words of absolution. I just dipped my head and kissed him again. Our lips stayed joined as I felt him take the condom from me, and I scooted back on his lap to give him room to roll it on.
Fire burned low in my belly as he helped me rise up on my knees until I was hovering over him. I could feel him at my entrance, and my inner muscles clenched involuntarily, already craving the feeling of having him inside me, of being full of him. He was breathing in deep drags, his chest rising and falling under my palm as I braced myself above him, pulling my panties out of the way with my free hand.
This would change everything.
I knew it, on a level that went beyond logic or reason.
The four Princes and I had been to hell and back, and our time in the deep trenches of human awfulness had forged bonds between us that still barely made sense.
As I sank down onto Cole, as I took him into my body and watched him—felt him—shudder beneath me, something clicked into place, like a promise being sealed.
All four of them.
They were mine.
And no matter what Finn said, I was theirs.
Leah had joked about it in the car that day, that the Princes were a package deal. That if I was going to date one, I might as well date them all. She’d been kidding, but this was far beyond a joke or a dare by now.
It was monumental.
Life changing.
“Fuck,” Cole grunted, his hips jerking under mine. He trapped my hands on his chest with his own and scooted forward on the seat a little, giving me room to move against him.
He matched my rhythm as we began to rock our hips, and we didn’t kiss again, just stared at each other as our bodies fell into sync, chasing the pleasure that sparked between us.
By the time a car did drive by several minutes later, my head was tipped back, my bottom lip caught between my teeth, and what the driver saw or didn’t see was the last fucking thought on my mind. The muffled grunts and soft curses that spilled from Cole’s lips filled the small car, and when he grabbed my hips in a firm grip, I let him guide my movements until he came hard inside me.
My body was still wrung out from the two almost bruising orgasms I’d had earlier, but when I felt him swell and pulse inside me, my inner walls fluttered around him, something soft and sweet flowing through me like a balm.
I wrapped my arms around him, pressing our bodies flush together as I rested my cheek against his, feeling his warm breath on my ear.
He was still buried inside me, and although maybe I should’ve felt scared that I’d just crossed this line with the last of the Princes, I didn’t.
I felt happy.
Powerful.
Whole.
Chapter 19
We lingered in the car by the side of the road a little longer, but as the high began to fade, I could feel the outside world pressing like a thousand tons of seawater against
the little bubble of peace and happiness we’d created.
I knew Cole would probably catch hell from his dad when he got back home for being away so long, and every minute that we lingered, although precious and sweet, would be paid for in pain later.
And I couldn’t stand the thought of that.
The dark-haired boy refused to rush home though, carefully helping me get dressed before seeming to forget what he was doing and shoving his hand back down my pants, drawing another toe-curling orgasm out of me. Once we were finally put back together, he held my hand as we slipped out of the back seat and took our spots up front again.
A strange combination of euphoria and worry filled my chest as we drove the rest of the way back to Oak Park. When we pulled up into the student lot, Finn was already waiting for us. Cole got out to open my door, and when he pulled me from the car, I craned my neck, going up on the tiptoes of my good leg to press a kiss to his lips. He seemed startled that I’d done it in front of Finn, but his reaction to my kisses seemed to be automatic—his arms wrapped around me as he kissed me back.
It wasn’t long or deep, but it was enough to communicate what it needed to, and when our lips broke apart, his blue eyes were as bright as stars.
“See you Monday,” he said gruffly.
I nodded. “Be safe. Text me so I know.”
He squeezed me once more and then released me. Finn stepped up to my side as we watched Cole drive away, and I felt his large hand slide into mine, lacing our fingers together.
“He okay? He texted me but didn’t say much other than to meet you guys here.”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. It was late afternoon now, but it felt like days had passed since I’d left campus with Cole and Penny. Everything that’d happened in the interim was beginning to catch up to me, and I felt exhausted.
Finn blew out a breath, puffing out his cheeks. “Motherfucker. The sooner we all graduate and get the fuck out of here, the better.”
I braced myself for the twinge of panic that always seemed to come when I thought about graduation, about the five of us scattering to the wind—but it didn’t come. Maybe it was all in my head, or maybe it was the way he gripped my hand as he spoke, but when Finn said “we”, I felt certain that word included me.