Till Death

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  I wasn’t moving, even if a giraffe walked into my apartment and tap-danced. My gaze was glued to the firm globes of his ass as he retrieved a condom. He tossed the foil package on the bed. The room was heavy was tension.

  Then he was 100 percent focused on me. He took my hand as he kissed me, slowly turning me around and backing me up until I bumped into the bed. Gently he guided me down, folding his hands under my arms and lifting me up, depositing me in the center of the bed.

  “Waited years for this.” He lowered himself onto me, and the contact of his body over mine, with nothing between us, ignited a fire. “You know that though, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I whispered, touching his chest.

  Cole rose onto his knees and grabbed the condom, tore it open, and started to slide it on. His gaze rose to mine. “You sure you’re—”

  “I’m a hundred percent ready.” To prove it, I sat up and took over, loving his deep moan as I rolled the condom on.

  “Hell,” he groaned.

  Since I was there, I wanted to explore his golden skin. I went for his hips, tracing those marvelous bands of muscles. I was reaching lower when I suddenly found myself on my back, his lips trailing a blaze of hot, fiery kisses down my face and lower and lower, until his lips and mouth closed on the tips of my breasts.

  Crying out in pleasure, my fingers curled around the short strands of his hairs, holding him close as he sucked and licked. My hips moved restlessly against him, causing him to shudder as his erection nestled against where I wanted him. He shifted slightly and his hand was between my thighs, wringing another cry out of me as his fingers eased in.

  Everything moved fast at that point.

  My greedy hands were all over him. I was shuddering and shaking, and I almost came apart when I felt the first touch of him pushing in.

  “Hell, Sasha, you’re . . .” His voice choked off as I lifted my hips and he thrust in, seated fully. The pressure and fullness was unbelievable. “You’re fucking perfect.”

  This was what was perfect.

  I wrapped my legs around his waist, and the only sound in the room was our breaths and gasps, and the sound of our bodies moving against one another. His hips rolled and pumped, and I followed, quickly becoming desperate as a tight tension built inside me.

  Planting his elbow into the bed beside my head, he shoved his arm under my back and lifted me. Each stroke moved deeper, became more powerful. My body tensed around him and then a floodgate of pleasure built. We moved faster, our hips grinding together as our mouths clashed together. His tongue tangled with mine and then the tightly coiled knot of tension broke free. The orgasm was fierce, kicking my head back and lighting up every cell in my body.

  Cole came as the spasms racked my body. He shouted out my name as his hips jerked and lost all rhythm. My hands glided lazily up and down his sides as one last shudder hit him.

  Neither of us moved for a long time. Our hearts slowing down and our breaths becoming deeper, more even.

  “God,” he said, lifting his head. He kissed my swollen lips. “That was . . .”

  “Perfect. Marvelous,” I suggested. “Beautiful.”

  “Yeah.” He rested his forehead against mine. “All three of them sound about right.”

  I smiled, feeling like I had no muscles left in my body. “I could come up with a few more if you want?”

  He chuckled, lifting his hips and easing out of me. “I’m going to take care of this. Need anything?”

  Shaking my head, I bit down on my lip as he slid off the bed and walked toward the door. God, I could watch that man walk around naked all day.

  Even though there was a good chance I could fall asleep right there in the middle of the bed, I forced myself up and under the covers. I didn’t even bother grabbing the nightie. I drew the covers up to my chest.

  Cole returned, a look of approval etched into his striking face. “You sleep nude most of the time?”

  I shook my head. “Not normally but I’m . . . too lazy to grab my clothes and put them on. That doesn’t bother you?”

  “What the fuck would be wrong with me if there was a problem?” He pulled back the covers and climbed in, stopping long enough to turn off the light. The room was flooded with darkness with only the faint moonlight streaming in.

  Cole got an arm around me and drew me to his side. We were back to chest, his arm securely looped around my waist. There wasn’t an inch of space between us. My rear was cradled against his hips and the front of his thighs pressed against the back of mine. “Thank you.”

  My brows inched up my forehead. “For what?”

  “For . . . giving me you.”

  My heart swelled so quickly and fiercely I thought I’d cry. A moment passed and I felt his lips brush the back of my shoulder. I focused on taking several deep breaths, working the happy little messy knot out of my throat.

  As I lay there in his arms, my mind wandered over the evening, all the way back to when he was telling me about his ex-wife. He’d been about to tell me something, but we’d been interrupted. I twisted onto my back. His hand slid to my hip, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. Silvery moonlight caressed the bridge of his nose. His eyes were closed, expression relaxed. “You still awake?”

  “Uh-huh.” He tipped his head down and kissed my brow.

  I smiled as I closed my hand over his forearm. “You were telling me something about . . . about your marriage. You said it wasn’t the job that caused it to fall apart. You said it was . . . was me, but I don’t understand how.”

  He drew his hand away from my hip to the center of my belly. “You haven’t figured that out yet?”

  “Um, were there clues I missed somehow?”

  “Yeah.” He chuckled, sliding his hand up to rest between my breasts. “There’s been a lot of clues.”

  “Want to help me out then?”

  Cole’s lips coasted over the curve of my cheek. “For a while I thought you were the one who got away. That one day I would somehow piece it all back together, but I was wrong. You were the one.”

  I might’ve stopped breathing.

  He curled the tips of his fingers around my chin. “You are the one. Took me a long time to realize that. I kept telling myself that I was just focused on my job and that’s why I was never really there with Irene. Then I told myself that I hadn’t tried hard enough to make the marriage work, because it hadn’t been her. She’d done everything right. It had always been me. Me and you.”

  “Cole,” I whispered.

  His thumb swiped my lower lip. “When you left, you were still here. Like a damn ghost haunting my every step and thought. I never really moved on. Wasn’t going to. You had a piece of me.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I rolled onto my side and planted myself against him, burying my face in his neck.

  “Irene didn’t know about you and us. Never felt right telling her about you. That’s why she believed it was the job, but it wasn’t. Just was that a big piece of me was always with you.”

  “Oh God,” I murmured, clutching his shoulder with the hand that wasn’t wedged between us. Tears welled up in my eyes. “I . . . it was the same. It is the same for me.”

  Somehow he managed to circle both arms around me, and our legs tangled together. Cole held me tight, and as I lay there, sated and happy, something occurred to me that should’ve many years ago. With every man I’d been with since the Groom, I held them back, built up walls that no one had really tried to scale or to knock down. I’d always believed that I’d been open, but I knew I hadn’t. Not until now. But Cole had seen that wall and he knocked at it until a crack formed, and that fissure spread, bringing that wall down. It was more than just him though. It was also me. I let him in.

  I was ready.

  The riot of emotions I was feeling were good, and a small smiled tugged at the corners of my lips. I was finally ready.

  It wasn’t too much longer before I fell asleep and for the first time in a very long time, I slept without nightma
res.

  Chapter 21

  Sunday was a surprisingly normal day despite everything that had happened. Cole was up before me, and that meant he had coffee ready for when I stumbled out of the bedroom. For that alone, he was truly a keeper.

  He became even more of a keeper throughout the day. He helped out around the inn, taking care of small maintenance issues Mom hadn’t gotten around to hiring someone to fix.

  After lunch—lunch he’d run out and grabbed for us—I found him in the bathroom of one of the rooms, half his body under the sink. One booted foot rocking to some unheard rhythm. Metal clanged off metal.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, leaning against the frame of the door.

  “Fixing a pipe.” His foot stilled. “Your mom mentioned she hadn’t been putting guests in this room because the pipe leaks after the water is turned on.”

  I bit down on my lip but it didn’t stop my smile. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I don’t mind,” he replied. “Just a washer that needs to be replaced. Nothing major.”

  “That’s sweet of you to do,” I said, my gaze traveling over his long legs. He was wearing jeans that faded over his knees. “Thank you.”

  There was a pause. “Thank me later, babe.”

  I started to ask how and then I completely understood how he wanted me to thank him. My entire body flushed hot. Memories of last night flooded me. “I can . . . I can do that.”

  Cole chuckled from under the sink. “Oh yeah, baby, you can.”

  Needless to say I was distracted most of the day.

  Cole’s friend showed up in the later part of the afternoon, and he was there until the evening, wiring my apartment along with Mom’s. Both of us got a new key fob out of the deal.

  No press showed up, but every time I heard the door open, I waited for that shady journalist to pop back up or for Detective Conrad to come by. Tyron never showed to ask more questions. Later that night, I admitted to Cole that I’d expected the detective to be around, but Cole explained that was common. Tyron had asked all that he needed to at the time, and if he’d missed something, he’d be back.

  Cole knocked all thoughts of the detective out of my head when we were in bed. First it was with his hands, his mouth, and then every part of him. Then afterward, when we lay in each other’s arms, he did it again.

  “I want you to meet my parents,” he announced.

  I was running my fingers over his hand, tracing the line of the bones from knuckle to knuckle. My hand stilled. “Come again?”

  “You never got to meet them before,” he continued. “And I want you to meet them.”

  “I . . .” I trailed off, because I had no idea what I was about to say.

  He threw his long leg over mine. “You’re not planning to go anywhere soon, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Then I think it’s a great idea for you to meet my parents.”

  Mulling that over, I agreed after a few moments. No actual plans were made, and it still felt a little weird thinking and planning for the whole meet-the-parents deal when I was receiving severed fingers in the mail, but I knew it was important to continue living. Not just existing like I had been immediately after the Groom or, in reality, how I’d existed the last ten years. So it was okay to make plans and to live.

  Cole woke me up Monday morning, before the first light of dawn had begun to splash across the floors, with his hand between my thighs and his mouth on my breasts.

  So I wasn’t complaining.

  Not when he flipped me onto my belly and lifted me up onto my knees with an arm around my waist—there was nothing but an excited gasp parting my lips. And when he entered me from behind, complaining was the last thing on my mind.

  “Grab the headboard,” he ordered in a rough voice.

  Doing what I was told, I held on to the smooth wood. The fullness was insane. He started off with a languid pace, but then he gripped my waist. A moan slid out of me as he started moving fast and hard. My hips pushed back to meet his thrusts. He felt great. Amazing, actually. One hand reached around, swiping his thumb along the knot of nerves, and I came apart, the rippling sensations rolling over me. Grunting, he pumped his hips and then buried deep.

  Cole brought me down to the bed, his weight half on me, and I didn’t mind that at all as we both lay there, me on my belly, our bodies tangled together, being surrounded by his weight, his smell—everything. Completely sated, I was floating in that blissed-out half-awake state. His hand trailed down the center of my back and over my hip. “You okay?”

  “I’m dead. But I’m dead in a good way,” I mumbled.

  He chuckled. “I’m going to head out. Got to head to work. I’ll call you later, okay?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  His lips brushed my shoulder. “You need an alarm set or anything?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “You going to sleep a little more?”

  I gave my best impression of a nod.

  Laughing the sexy laugh again, he rose over me and kissed my cheek, pulled up the comforter, draping it over my back, and then he was gone. Feeling a way I hadn’t in a long time, I fell back to sleep just the way Cole left me, on my belly and with a smile on my face.

  My cellphone rang around ten o’clock Monday morning, while I was about two hours into bookkeeping. When I saw Miranda’s name appear on my screen, I more than welcomed the break.

  “What’s up?” I answered.

  “Oh my God, girl, why didn’t you tell me Detective Tyron is one fine-looking man?” she demanded.

  I blinked. “What? How did you see him?”

  “He was here, but I don’t have a lot of time. I’m in between class right now,” she continued. “But you’re not going to believe what is going on and it has to do with why I now know that Detective Conrad will be the father of my future babies.”

  Grinning, I rose from the table in the kitchen and stretched out my back. Maybe I had misread the whole Jason thing. “Did he come talk to you about what happened?”

  “No. He was here with another detective this morning. I just happened to be talking to Cindy—she’s one of the counselors here, and I saw him talking to Coach Currie. You remember him, right? The hot coach we drooled all over in school? I told you he still works here.”

  I walked over to the island. “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Well, I figured the rumors about him having possibly inappropriate relationships with some of the senior girls was finally panning out to be true.”

  “What?” My brows flew up.

  “But it wasn’t,” she continued like she hadn’t just suggested that the coach was breaking what I assumed was more than one law. “Tammy, who works the front desk and literally can hear a cricket sneeze two rooms over, says they were here questioning the coach about Angela.”

  My back stiffened. “What?”

  “I don’t know any more details,” she said. “But obviously Detective Hottie must suspect something.”

  “Yeah,” I murmured, turning toward the door leading to the back room.

  “I have to go, but I’ll call you later.”

  Hanging up, I placed my cell on the kitchen island. Tyron was questioning Coach Currie over Angela? That was . . . absolutely unexpected, but there was something about that piece of news that nagged at me.

  I walked around the kitchen island and slowly opened the door. Cold air swirled around my legs. What was the man who practically plowed me over wearing?

  Opening the door to the staff staircase, I peered inside the dimly lit landing. Wasn’t he wearing a baseball cap with some kind of emblem and a white shirt with the same kind of emblem? And I’d thought that emblem had been vaguely familiar.

  My pulse pounded as I stared down into the shadowy cellar door. It was locked, and Cole had put a deadbolt on it, something we probably should’ve done a long time ago.

  I shivered.