by Kat Ransom
“Em,” his deep voice fills the tiny space of our hallway.
“What are you doing here?” I crack the door and try to peek my head out, but he sticks his foot in the gap immediately and pushes it open.
His gaze runs up and down my hideous ensemble then returns to the abomination that is my bed head.
He looks like he just stepped out of a high-end fashion ad in his dark jeans and untucked white button-down rolled up to the elbows so the whole world can see those delicious forearms.
He has that appearance like he just rolled out of bed, too, but a smoldering, casual look that is entirely intentional. His hair is supposed to be a little disheveled. The more he runs his fingers through it, the better it looks.
Why does he always smell so good?
And I look like a runaway asylum inmate.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he whispers.
“Have you been drinking?”
From the way he’s inspecting me like he’s going to devour me, I know he has not. But he’s very much drunk on something else, lust.
“Pancakes,” he smirks, running his long fingers across the buttons of my pajama top and unbuttoning the top one.
I take his hand and lead him into my bedroom, shutting the door behind us. I’m not that awful of a roommate to subject Klara to the dirty things I know are going to come out of Cole’s mouth when he has that gleam in his eye.
Cole walks around my room slowly, running his hand along my dresser and knick-knacks, taking everything in. He grazes my jewelry box then sees the little metal stick-man. He picks it up, and it seems so small in his hands now.
“You kept this,” he glances at me and spins the steel figure in his palm.
I nod and take a seat on the corner of my bed.
Cole made the little figure out of scrap steel during our metalworking class. Its head is a big machine nut, and it’s attached to a large bolt, and it has spindly little legs. At the time, I teased him that it was an accurate depiction of him—how big his head and ego were.
I couldn’t bear to have photos of us out all these years while I was trying to forget him, but it felt wrong to have nothing, too.
Cole puts the figure back on my dresser. “What else did you keep?” He takes a few steps back to me and starts slowly unbuttoning my pajama top again.
“Nothing,” I lie.
I wonder if he has any mementos of me left in his fancy penthouse. Probably not. I’m sure his other girlfriends would have shut that down. I know I would have. Plus, he’s never been sentimental like I am.
“You left me hanging,” he bends and kisses my neck, pushing my top off my shoulder.
“I feel asleep,” a warm flush overtakes me as Cole pushes me back to the bed and slides his hand into my top to cup one of my breasts.
The texts we’d been sending earlier had gotten downright lewd. The last one I remember from him was a very graphic description of how hard and aching he was for me. There’s something intensely satisfying about having the power to do that to him. Knowing that he drove here in response.
Knowing that he’s been here before, outside, watching Klara and I walk to that club. Instead of feeling creeped out, I like it. I like that he was watching.
He kneels over me on the bed, and the heat of his breath covers me as he runs his tongue around my nipple ever so slowly.
“Turn the light off.” No one needs to see this, my pancake pajama nightmare.
“Fuck no.”
“I’m a mess, I look like an idiot,” I push his shoulders back.
He takes my chin between his thumb and fingers and makes me look at him. “You’re stunning. You’ve only gotten more beautiful over the years.”
I blush and swivel my eyes since he’s holding my face still. I’m suddenly self-conscious looking like this while he looks like, well… him.
“What?” He asks.
“You could have any woman you want,” I mumble, embarrassed to even say the words. I hate sounding like an insecure girl, but sometimes it’s hard not to be one. He hasn’t made that any easier over the years.
“Good. Because the one I want is you,” Cole pushes me back down onto the bed and scoots me up, so my head is on the pillows, and he’s hovering above me. His eyes are electric blue and won’t leave my face.
I force myself to look at him again. “We’re out of control, Cole. What are we doing?”
“You’re setting the pace, remember? You tell me,” he lowers his head and gently kisses my neck, grazes my collarbone, then starts kissing lower and lower down my chest.
His touches are feather light today, so different from how aggressive he usually is. I want to discuss what’s happening between us, but instead, I find my thoughts escaping me and my fingers in his hair.
He swirls his tongue around my belly button and kisses along the waistband of my pants, his fingers sliding them down one excruciating inch at a time and hips lips following.
“Fucking pancakes,” he says and then kisses my core through the flannel. “Sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I find that hard to believe,” I laugh.
And also mean it. I’ve seen the girls he’s dated, the six-foot leggy pro tennis player with fiery red hair, for one. I highly doubt she wears button-up flannel pajamas.
She probably has a collection of leather and kinky vinyl shit, thousands of dollars of lacy La Perla. I’m making good money now, maybe I need to up my game. Tomorrow Klara and I can go lingerie shopping. She got fired and has nothing else to do besides study, anyway.
“Where’d you go?”
Cole’s staring up at me, and I realize I’ve zoned out.
“Sorry, guess I’m still tired,” I lie again.
I don’t like that I keep lying to him about the fears in my head, but I’m afraid to bring them up. I’m so scared that it will be the end of this.
“Go back to sleep then, baby,” he inches up and kisses my stomach and starts to move off me, but I push him back down.
“After,” I smile. I don’t care how sleep deprived I am, or what random thoughts run through my mind, I’m never turning down Cole’s mouth between my thighs.
I may be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.
“You sure?”
“Uh-huh,” I raise my hips and playfully shove his head back down where it belongs. This man’s tongue is addictive.
More feeling, less thinking.
“Vixen,” he lowers back down and kisses along my pelvis, sliding my pants down further.
“Stay the night with me?” I want to sleep next to him, stay wrapped up in him. He’s always gone in the morning on race weekends, all of his obligations getting him up at the crack of dawn.
He doesn’t answer, but his mouth and tongue are doing all the talking, instead, as I arch into him. Everything is soft and slow tonight, sweet torture as he brings me to the edge then pauses, over and over.
Once his fingers join the assault, though, there’s no stopping it, and I remember coming at least twice while biting my pillow and trying not to be the roommate from hell.
I remember being held close in his arms, against his chest, breathing in his scent, being encased in his warmth.
Being so content and sated.
And then, when a beam of warm sunlight came through my blinds and woke me, I felt all around my cold bed, and I knew he was gone again.
Sixteen
Emily
Some things are not quite right with Cole and me, besides the obvious. Waking up alone this morning, Cole absconding into the night again, is not sitting well.
I’ve been focused on trying not to overthink things, not make them unnecessarily complicated, and to be cool and casual. It’s also not the easiest thing to talk about, and frankly, I thought I was being silly, imagining things.
But something is not adding up, and I’m afraid I might know what it is. If I’m right, I can’t continue sticking my head in the sand.
“This is really weird and too much
information, but I need your advice,” I tell Makenna as I pace my bedroom. It’s the middle of the night in Texas, and it was rude of me to call, but she’ll forgive me.
God knows I’ve done it for her.
“No such thing as TMI. Spit it out so I can go back to sleep,” she mumbles in her groggy voice.
“Well, for starters, he won’t fuck me,” I blurt out. There’s no other way to say it.
“What.”
“Just what I said.”
“But you said… you told me about all the times…”
“Yeah, he gets me off, like, over and over, but it never goes any further.” I try to clarify, running my hands over my face in embarrassment.
“Is he… hard?”
“Very, all the time. That’s definitely not the issue.” All equipment is functional, highly performing, top of the line, by all appearances.
“Well, he said you could go slow. Does he know you want it?”
I stop pacing and look up at the ceiling, “This is so embarrassing, but yes. I have specifically said, fuck me, I want you inside of me, so on and so forth.”
“Maybe this is too much information,” Makenna giggles.
“It’s not funny.”
“Okay, okay, so then what happens?”
“He keeps, you know, doing what he’s doing until I have enough orgasms to pass out. He orgasms me unconscious every night. Like, with his hands and mouth.”
“Umm, wow, okay. On the one hand, that’s kind of amazing, but yeah, on the other hand, weird. From what I know about Cole, he’s never been one to pass up sex.”
“Exactly, he’s insatiable. And then when I wake up in the morning, he’s gone. Every time. Last night I asked him to stay the night, he ignored me, and you know, did it again, and when I woke up, he was gone.”
Makenna lets out a groan, and at least I know I’m not the only one who finds this bizarre. I’m not imagining it.
“I hate to say it, but it kind of sounds like you’re the mistress,” she finally adds.
I slink back down to my bed, the weight of Makenna confirming my fears hitting me. “Oh god,” I murmur.
“I mean, I don’t know. But if Dr. Phil is to be believed, if he isn’t getting it from you, he’s getting it from someone else, right?”
“You know he’s not a real doctor, right?” I’m grasping at straws, I don’t want to have these thoughts. But I can’t ignore them anymore, or ignore the apparent lack of Cole’s interest in bringing his dick to the nightly orgasm parties.
Or that he leaves right after every time.
Or that I am a girl with plain brown hair and plain brown eyes who wears flannel pajamas.
Naive girl.
“I’m not going to be some skanky mistress, if that’s what this is,” my fists ball up as I clench the cell phone in my hand.
Hanging up with Makenna, my blood pressure continues to rise as I pace. All these years, all the women I’ve seen him in pictures with and on television come back to haunt me.
I let myself get sucked back into his undertow, and I’ve been avoiding the hard talks with him. I didn’t want to rock the boat. I was happy for the first time in years, and I thought that I could move past it, chalk it up to being young and foolish maybe, but not as his side piece.
Or worse, someone he feels guilty about hurting, so these are sympathy orgasms every night, and he returns home to the hot Russian tennis bitch afterward.
I throw on clothes and pull my hair into a high ponytail. I make myself a little presentable because if she’s going to be there when I show up, I’d prefer not to look like a total loser.
An idiot in pancake pajamas.
“Klara?” I call when she walks past the bathroom.
“Ja?”
“Random question. What’s it mean when a guy will fool around but won’t actually have sex with you?”
She squints her eyes at me in the bathroom mirror as I coat my lashes in mascara, “Like he’s just toying with you?”
I nod. Is that what Cole is doing?
“I guess he’s just not that into you?”
My gut sinks.
I couldn’t compete with his world six years ago, I guess that hasn’t changed. But I have, and I’m not putting up with it anymore.
The entire way to London, I am stewing and growing more irritated, angrier. I don’t know if he’s home or who might be there when I get there. I’ve never been to his condo, but I want answers today.
Right now.
My plans to storm to his door and beat on it are thwarted by a doorman who won’t let me into the elevator until he calls Cole. I feel slightly cheated out of the plan I had cooked up in my head on the drive here, but I’m quickly allowed to proceed up.
Of course, you have a doorman, this is your world now.
My heart is racing as the elevator moves to the top floor. If there’s another woman here, it’s going to be awful. I try to get ahold of myself.
The elevator dings and the doors open. I’m expecting to have to walk down a hallway, but the elevator doors open to a private lobby for Cole’s condo. I barely have time to notice the sleek wood floors and clean, modern design because Cole is standing there waiting for me.
He’s barefoot, shirtless, and in a pair of thin gray jogging pants with his hands stretched straight up onto the door molding above him. For a flash in time, I am stupefied from the sight before me. I will myself not to stare at the prominent V along his hips.
“Good morning, gorgeous girl,” he flexes before me, all stretched out and looking like a Greek statue with a sexy smirk on his face.
“Don’t you ‘gorgeous girl’ me,” I bite, step off the elevator, and move past him.
His smile fades, and he spins around behind me to close the door.
I stomp into the condo as he follows, asking me what’s wrong, what’s going on.
I don’t know what I expect to see or what I’m looking for, but the size and space of this condo are overwhelming. Spanning the entire floor, three walls are floor to ceiling glass, and the far wall, overlooking the river, is open and letting the breeze pass through. There’s a huge deck outside.
Highly polished wood floors gleam under soft white recessed lighting. Cream sofas and chairs are accented with pops of navy blue and gray accent pillows and dark rugs, giving a very masculine feel to the vast open-concept space.
Like everything else, it’s so much more tangible and impressive in real life versus what I saw online when Cole gave an interview at home years ago.
“What’s going on, are you okay?”
In the middle of his living room, seeing no one else lingering about—though I have not seen the bedrooms—I spin around and can feel how red my face is, how angry I am. Everything I have been trying to ignore bubbles to the surface.
“Why won’t you fuck me?” I yell and don’t even care how ridiculous I sound.
“What?” Cole’s head jerks back and his brows furrow.
“You heard me,” I cross my arms and stand my ground.
“What the hell is this about?” He takes a step toward me, but I hold my hand up, and he stops.
“You do everything else short of actually fucking me, then you leave. Every time, Cole. Am I just not what you want, or am I the other woman?” I force myself to spit out my hostile words even though I feel my eyes getting watery, and my voice falter.
He brings his hands to his head and runs his fingers through his hair. He looks confused and mad, which is just great because that’s exactly how I feel, and I’m sick of it.
“You think I don’t want you?” He says like he cannot believe the words coming out of my mouth. Like I’m a crazy person for suggesting such a thing.
“Is that why Cole? I’m not some model or athlete.”
I throw my arms out to my side. My voice carries throughout the cavernous, open space. Surely if there was anyone else here, they’d hear me yelling. The Tennis Bitch would probably have stomped out by now and beat me with her racket.
“Don’t you dare pull that shit,” he yells back and points at me.
His chest is heaving, and his muscles are tense, and I’m taken aback by his anger. I was the one who was going to be angry and yell today.
“What the hell is going on, Emily? Since when are you the insecure, jealous type?”
“Since you made me that way!” My anger flares up like gasoline on a fire. I'm fighting the tears hard, but they’re just a drop away from spilling over the dam, a flood is about to ensue.
He drops his hands to his hips, where his jogging pants are riding low. His shoulders sag under the realization that we’re talking about this now. Like he hears the hurt in my voice that he caused.
“You left me, Cole! And then you spent the next six years parading around with beautiful, exotic women…”
“I was single, Em,” he interrupts me. “You were with other people, too.”
I don’t know how he knows what I was doing, but he isn’t wrong. Our proclivity certainly wasn’t equal, if we’re talking semantics, though.
“Is that why you won’t have sex with me? Do you have a girlfriend?” I peer over his shoulder toward a hallway beyond the kitchen that must lead to bedrooms.
“Jesus,” he huffs and starts pacing. “You think I have a girlfriend, that there are other women—what—hiding in my bedroom right now?”
I shrug and twist up my face because it sounds ridiculous when he says it like that, and I know it.
But I also don’t trust that there isn’t another woman.
Or six.
“Go look then,” he waves his arms around. “Go on!”
“Fine,” I cock my head in defiance and start down the hallway. Several doors line each side of the hall, the first being a restroom and a spare bedroom.
“How about in there? Any chicks in there?” He asks for every room I stomp into.
There’s a gym. There’s a room with wall to wall helmets and trophies inside and a desk. The master bedroom is bigger than my whole apartment, twice over, in Cambridge. Its walls are all windows opening onto the deck area and dark gray curtains. Mostly I’m noticing the bed, though, and the obvious one side of it that has covers thrown back and pillows used, the other side still pristine and made up.