Colt stilled behind her. “Damn,” he mumbled before slowly sliding his hand to palm her stomach. “Do you have any fuckin’ idea what you’re doing to me?” The rough gravel of his voice reverberated throughout her entire body, making the need in her lower region pulse to the point of pain.
With his forehead on her hair, he followed the provocative roll of her hips with rolls of his hips in lockstep with hers. “Tell me to stop,” he murmured close to her ear.
She couldn’t speak if her life depended on it. She was only capable of feeling him and the music. His masculinity and the subtle scent of his cologne overwhelmed her senses. Her senses were so attuned to his that every move, dip, or roll was aligned with his. His hard shaft pulsed and lengthened against the swell of her ass. Her knees were no longer steady, and if it weren’t for his firm hold on her, she would’ve crumpled weakly to the floor. She whimpered with need.
Despite the room full of people and the crowded dance floor, it was as if they were the only two people in the room.
Imani closed her eyes, further shutting out any intrusion into their private sensual world. From the damp mess between her thighs, she knew there was no going back for her. Colt was the only man that had ever reduced her to a quivering mass of nerves. There seemed to be a drumbeat in the pit of her stomach, in the blood flow of her veins, and in every thump of her heart, which were testaments of her desire for him.
The song was raunchy and explicit, making her tremble against him. She moaned as the desire for him took all coherent thought from her mind.
He pressed his lips closer to her ear. “This can’t happen. You know that, right?” His voice was hard with emotion. “I don’t want to hurt you.” He was hard and hot at her back. “But, God, do I want you.”
“Colt?” Breathless with desire, she found her legs buckling under her.
“Do you have any idea how much I want us to happen? I would love you nice and slow, hard and fast, and then start again. I’d keep you in my bed for weeks,” he promised her darkly and ground his hips harder against her. “I’d want your scent all over my shit and me all over you, everywhere for everyone to know that you were mine.”
“Colt,” she whimpered.
“Yes, I’d be so deep in you, baby, you’d scream my name.” He tightened his arm around her. “But we can’t. Do you understand?”
“Am I to die a virgin, then?”
“What?”
“Don’t you think I should have a say in this? Suppose I don’t want anyone else?”
He chuckled darkly. “You’re trying to kill me, right?
“I’m going to be patient, Colt. Are you going to make me wait long?”
Before he could answer, the tempo of the music changed again, and this time, the crowd went wild. The lights were brighter again, and the crowd was stomping the floor and screaming out the lyrics of Cardi B’s “I Like It.” The intoxicated and uninhabited partygoers were having a blast and were determined that everyone in the apartment complex knew it.
Imani hated that they intruded on her and Colt’s private world. Since everyone was wearing masks, herself included, Colt’s bare face instantly drew attention once the lights came back on.
“Colt!” Sarah smiled nervously as she approached them in the alcove.
Colt dropped his arm from around her and moved to greet Sarah.
Imani felt bereft without his heat surrounding her. She knew that the thought of her and Colt as an item had never entered Sarah’s head. It was as though the concept of her guardian with a woman of color was not a possibility. At that moment, Sarah would have been more concerned about how pissed off Colt would be about his ward’s behavior than the fact that Imani had been grinding her ass on his cock for the past five minutes. Sarah’s innocent act was completely busted. However, it didn’t stop her from trying to redeem herself.
Imani had to admire her friend’s ingenuity. She had the room cleared of the partygoers in less than ten minutes. Imani wondered if Colt believed Sarah’s story about being coerced into this party. Colt didn’t comment, which Sarah took as a win.
Everything had changed that night. Their flirting game was no longer enough for Imani. She was gratified that Colt no longer hesitated in touching her either, but he made sure she understood that he was struggling with crossing an invisible line he’d set for them.
He kept coming back to the comment about her virginity though. She told him that if he wasn’t going to personally find the truth of that statement, then there was no reason for him to be asking. He didn’t stop asking, using every private opportunity to ask.
“Yes, I’m a virgin. Happy? Now leave me alone,” she muttered when he was being particularly annoying.
“Just remember to keep it that way,” was his unapologetic reply.
She gritted her teeth and ignored him.
Things got further complicated when she and Sarah had flown to Austin for a ball the Ragnarson family had historically funded. The day before the ball, Sarah had wanted to surprise Colt at his office and take him to lunch. Imani tagged along with her. Although the need to be around Colt was becoming embarrassing, and she was finding it harder to hide her feelings for him, that still didn’t dampen her enthusiasm in trying to seek him out.
When Colt saw them, he’d hugged both of them and grinned broadly, more than pleased by their visit. He’d had no idea that they had come to town because Imani had insisted on staying at a hotel and not at Colt’s ranch. On hearing where they were staying, Colt gave her a long considering stare but didn’t comment.
“Let me introduce you to my staff,” he’d insisted.
“Colt,” Sarah groaned in protest.
Only after they’d visited the third floor of employees and over one hundred employees did Imani understand Sarah’s protest. The law firm had a staff of over four hundred, and Colt seemed intent on introducing her to every one of them. She realized that the employees already knew Sarah, so Colt was doing this because of her.
While he went to great pains to introduce her and Sarah as his girls, trying to convey a fatherly figure, it was clear to her that had he had zero paternal feelings toward her. Every time he introduced her, he placed a palm at her lower waist and caressed her gently there.
Whenever any of his young associates showed her obvious male interest, Colt’s demeanor toward her would change. He would subtly shift the position of his body to be closer to her, his palm at her waist would tighten, and he would have an even harsher scowl on his face. At first, Imani had tried to convince herself that it wasn’t happening, but when he didn’t have the same reaction to their interest in Sarah, she couldn’t deny what was happening. He was almost growling if the men even smiled at her.
Between his soft touches, his obvious possessiveness toward her, and being near him for almost two hours while he introduced them to everyone, she was a shivering mess of desire by the end of it. If his unholy smirk was anything to go by, he seemed to be aware of her dilemma.
Imani barely made it through the lunch they had later. He kept finding excuses to touch her and kept her so primed she was almost ready to hump on his leg. The smolder in his jeweled gaze told her that he was almost ready to let her.
Wanting to wow him with her gown for the ball, Imani selected a deep red lace halter dress that displayed the flawless naked skin at her back with the waist of the dress sitting just above the swell of her ass. The dress had a long slit up to her mid-thigh while the skirt draped elegantly to the floor. To better display the incredibly provocative cut of the dress, she wore her hair in sexy bun with a few of her curls escaping to hang loose about her face.
She got more that she bargained for in his response and the response of most of the males in the room.
When he’d first greeted her and Sarah, he was standing next to his brothers with a glass of some amber liquid in his hand. From the onset, despite the molten heat of his gaze when he looked at her, it was clear he wasn’t happy.
Sarah was extremely popular and had drawn a crowd of young people around them. There was no way for Colt to be near them without appearing as though he was being an overbearing parent. His normal stern expression sported a deep scowl that had him brooding on the sidelines and keeping her in his sights for most of the night. He wasn’t trying to hide his displeasure. Too bad everyone thought he was being an overprotective guardian.
At least the family—his parents, his brothers and their wives, and she and Sarah—shared a table for dinner. As before, when they all ate at the restaurant for the graduation, he kept her next to him. Imani really had to wonder about his family’s lack of observation over his behavior. They were too quick in accepting that he was treating her like a daughter, when his hand on her bare thigh under the table was anything but fatherly. His grip was firm, but he did nothing else. Touching her and having her close seemed to calm him, smooth the frown from his face and the hard glare from his eyes.
She’d given up trying to control her reaction to him. The light buzz of awareness she’d felt all evening as he’d watched her from across the room had now ballooned into full-fledged lust. She crossed her arms over her beaded nipples and clutched her thighs tight to stem the frantic pulsing of her clit. She was a complete mess and was grateful to get away from him when the dancing started. Since she couldn’t show how she felt about him, she poured it into her dance. The poor guy who she knew only as one of Sarah’s friends had barely been dancing with her for a minute of the waltz before Colt cut in. His scowl had the other man immediately dropping his hands from her and leaving the dance floor.
“You like pissing me off?” He’d pulled her in close and growled his question into her ear.
“You seemed to get irritated with everything I do,” she deliberately dismissed, but she melted against him. They were so close they were barely moving, definitely not waltzing like the other dancers on the floor.
Colt didn’t seem to care if they were causing a scene. “First you come in here with this damn poor excuse of a dress…” he sputtered as if searching for the right words. “Where is the rest of the damn material?”
“Are you crazy? You do realize that you have no right to approve or criticize what I wear, right?”
“And then you smile at these damn little boys, encouraging them to look at…” Again, he grew speechless with ill-concealed anger.
“You don’t like me talking to other men?”
He glared down at her as though she were asking a stupid question.
Imani felt his palm possessively gripping her at the swell of her ass. She shook her head at the sad state of impasse they were in. “If you don’t like me talking to, dancing with, or having fun with other men, then do something about it.”
It was then that she turned her head to gauge what Sarah and his family thought of what was happening between her and Colt and was surprised that no one was gaping at them or even paying them any attention. Given the volatile emotions between them, she’d thought that it was like a neon sign around them, and she was shocked that people really only saw what they wanted to see.
She also watched Sarah dancing serenely, unlike any other time she’d ever seen her dance, with a man who seemed to be Colt’s age. He was a strikingly handsome man, not like Colt, of course, but he was good looking. Imani realized that she didn’t think any man measured up to Colt, and she accepted that she probably would always think so. Imani continued watching the other couple, but Colt’s next words forced her to forget everyone else around them again.
“You seem to think I have a choice in this. I have no control, no discipline around you. That’s unacceptable.” He sounded grim about his observation and was clearly not happy about it.
His hard length buried against her flat stomach told her all she needed to know about his control. He shivered against her, and she couldn’t help shuddering in reaction to his blatant arousal.
“I’m trying like hell, Imani, to let you grow up some more and decide if I’m really what you want, but this will be fuckin’ impossible if you push me.” His gravelly voice, husky in her ear, made her legs feel like over-cooked noodles.
Her breathing fractured.
He placed a finger under her chin and made her meet his gaze. “I need you to be sure about this.”
“I’m more than sure about what I feel,” she said with aching softness.
He sighed and pulled her hard against him. “God help us.”
Imani smiled at his tortured voice. “While I’m staying away from other men, are you staying away from other women?”
“I’m never like this with any other woman,” he gritted out against her ear. “I’m like a horny-ass teenager around you. You think if another woman could satisfy this, I’d be this way? I’m too old for this shit,” he muttered.
Imani knew she was grinning like an idiot, but she couldn’t help her reaction to his confession. Because he was being so surly, she was happy to make a confession of her own. “To be honest, Colonel, I’m not much better.”
He hissed and dropped his head to the warm cavity of her neck. He inhaled her scent as though storing it away for future reference, and then he straightened after some long minutes and put her away from him. He escorted her off the floor as though they hadn’t just had such an intimate encounter.
“Just so you know,” she whispered for his ears only as they joined his family on the sidelines, “I’m not going to wait around forever for you to make up your mind about us.”
His only response was a grunt to acknowledge he’d heard her.
Chapter Four
Colt got in the habit of coming over every Friday night after that. Sarah was convinced that it was to monitor who she was dating and stop any more parties at their apartment. Imani wasn’t so sure of that because Sarah just started going out on Thursdays and Sundays instead. Colt usually brought his briefcase with work and then used Imani’s home office as though it was his own. Although he didn’t sleep over at the apartment, instead renting a suite at an upscale hotel, he spent most of his time with them and only slept at the hotel.
Whenever he was in the apartment, her awareness of him was almost at a fever pitch. And it didn’t help that she could tell that she had the same impact on him.
Now with him holding her again, she stood motionless in his arms, not daring to be so bold now that they were in the apartment alone, trying not to spook him into letting her go. Maybe if she didn’t acknowledge it, he’d hold her longer.
“I know where Sarah is,” Colt told her softly.
“I don’t understand.” Imani was confused by this new change in his behavior. While they’d been flirting for the past six months on his visits to see Sarah, Imani never joined them on their outings. Although they always invited her along, she hadn’t wanted to impose or wanted to chance Sarah finding out how she felt about her guardian. It seemed that Colt had felt the same as well. She knew that he had a major hang-up about their twenty-year age difference and the fact that she was Sarah’s best friend. It was clear that he was happy to leave it at flirting and nothing else. He hadn’t done anything that indicated he’d ever do anything about their attraction even after the provocative dances they shared.
She had no reservation about any relationship between them. She wanted him. There was no doubt that she stood to lose her friendship with Sarah over this. At this point, she couldn’t make herself care about that. Her feelings for him had gone too far, seeped too deep for her to pull back now, or even give a shit what anyone thought.
“You’re going to have to come out to dinner with me to make up for her absence.” His expression remained unreadable, and Imani was lost as to what was happening or what he was thinking. He held her gaze, and Imani could have sworn that he could see directly into her soul. Did he know how badly she wanted to be with him?
Her breath hitched in her chest. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was hoarse, and she swallowed nervously. She was afraid to look down at her che
st, there was no way he won’t notice her beaded nipples through the white spandex. She pretended a lightheartedness she was far from feeling. “I have a date.” She didn’t know what made her say that but hoped like hell he couldn’t tell she was trying to distract him from her body’s reaction to him.
His gaze chilled, and his face seemed even more frozen than usual. “Cancel it,” he muttered.
Oh yeah, he was on the hook now. She almost grinned her triumph. “What?” She even managed a frown of confusion. “No, I can’t.”
He growled.
Damn. She couldn’t help licking her lips then and almost gave away her plot. “I’m already late for my run.” She bit her lip to stop from laughing at his confused expression.
“Are you going on a date or going for a run?”
Imani giggled.
He looked at her sternly, making her stop and bite her lip again.
“Colonel, my date is with that treadmill on the second floor,” she admitted with amusement.
“I’m being shot down for a machine?” Colt asked deadpan.
“Yup.” Imani giggled again, happy that he was responding to her teasing by playing along.
“Damn.” His lips softened in an almost-smile, but he didn’t quite get there. “At least it’s not a battery-operated model.”
She gave a short bark of laughter. She was really shocked now. That was a full-blown sexually explicit flirt, and she loved it. “You’re so wrong for that.” She grinned. She dissolved into another round of giggles, as he seemed to be fighting to remain stern.
He waited until she sobered to hold her gaze and asked softly, “Have dinner with me?”
“You’ve forgotten your objection to this?” Imani didn’t have to explain what this was; the knowledge was there in his eyes for her to see. He was still fighting what was between them.
She was now terrified that she wouldn’t be able to control her feelings for him. Just knowing that they were alone made her skin tingle all over, and her breath became trapped in her throat as though she were drowning. She stepped out of his embrace, turned, and escaped to the kitchen in a pretense of getting some Gatorade from the fridge.
Secret Obsession Page 5