by Kat Ransom
“Better look in the closet, I may be hiding them in there,” he snarks.
“Don’t you gaslight me!” I spin and yell back at him.
“I am not fucking gaslighting you.”
“No, you aren’t fucking me at all, are you?” This has devolved into a spiteful yelling match, but it’s overdue, and we’re going to do it.
“You want to know why?”
“Yes,” I state authoritatively and cross my hands over my chest again, waiting for his answer.
“Well, let’s see, the first time in the motorhome, after my crash,” he starts listing, “I was so full of adrenaline I was afraid I was going to hurt you. And I wasn’t going to fuck you for the first time in six years in the goddamn motorhome.”
His voice is getting more irritated as he continues his list, “Then in your hotel room you literally fell asleep on top of me. Then what? Oh, the car. Yeah, asshole that I am didn’t think that was the appropriate time, either. And then the jet on the way home with Liam and a dozen other people on the plane. The airplane bathroom didn’t seem like the most romantic of choices. But fuck me, right, what a prick I am?”
“What about last night?” I ask quietly, staring at the floor. I’m starting to feel like a giant asshole, now, when he puts it like this.
I didn’t use to be like this.
He sighs and paces across the plush, cream carpet in his bedroom before turning back toward me. “It’s been six years, Em. Do you know how many times I pictured it in my head? Us getting back together? I just wanted…”
“What?” I whisper.
His eyes watch me, the blue reflecting the sun’s rays coming in through the glass as the sun moves high into the sky. “I just wanted it to be perfect,” he shrugs.
Both of us stand there silently for several beats as the first wave of brutal honestly hits us.
“There are no other women now?” I ask sheepishly. I need to know for sure. I want to hear the words.
He steps toward me and takes my face in his hands, forcing me to look at him, “No. There’s only you. It kills me that you think I’m like that, that I would cheat on you.”
The waterworks have slowed, but the well isn’t dry, and I feel moisture seep from my eyes again. “You have to understand, Cole. You left me, you hurt me.”
He nods and hangs his head. His shoulders are slumped, and I know he’s ashamed. “This is just about other women?” He asks quietly, staring at the ground.
I don’t like his use of the word ‘just,’ like it’s a minor detail.
“I’ve had to see you with all these other girls, all these years. I don’t want to be insecure or jealous, but… it’s hard. I’m not like them.”
Both of his warm palms cover my cheeks, and he looks me in the eye with a lingering intensity, “You listen to me, and you listen good. I have been with a lot of women, Emily. A lot.”
I force my eyes away, I don’t want to hear this.
He brings my face back to his, “You are the only one I want. The only one I have ever felt this way about. You’re not like them. None of them meant anything. You mean everything. Okay?”
He’s waiting for me to answer, but tears are streaming down my face. I need to blow my nose, and this has not gone how I was expecting it to. I came here to yell and catch him cheating, and now I’m a blubbering mess.
There’s just so many years of emotions battling inside of me.
“You’re the most beautiful woman in the world, Em. You’re my gorgeous girl. Okay?”
I nod and wipe my face in my sleeve, “In pancake pajamas,” I mumble.
He smiles and drags me into his chest, kisses my head. “I love your pajamas, and they were the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
I wrap my arms around his narrow waist and feel his warm skin against my face. I should probably apologize for being so obnoxious and searching his home like a psycho.
“I know I did this. I’ll do a better job of making you feel secure, okay?”
“You don’t have to do that,” I speak into his chest.
“I want to.”
“Why do you leave every night?” I ask while my face is still buried, and he can’t see it. Part of me wants to quit while I’m ahead, but the other part wants to conquer the mountain and send the insecure, sniveling, whining girl inside to her grave.
He takes a deep breath, then sits on the edge of the bed and pulls me onto his lap. I swallow hard, sniffle, and Cole helps to wipe away my tears while I will myself to pull up my big girl panties.
“I’ve never spent the night with anyone else. It was always just sex. I don’t know where we are, Em, and…” He pauses and thinks a second, “I’m fucking terrified.”
“Of me?” I can’t help but let out a laugh.
“Yes, of you,” he wipes another tear away and pushes a strand of hair that’s stuck to my face away, “you scare the shit out of me.”
All these years, I felt like he had all the power. He was the one who left, and I was the one rejected. To hear Cole say these words now, it feels like we are on the same page again, being honest and raw with one another again.
“I’m scared, too,” I admit to him. “I don’t know what’s going to happen or if this will work. What if I’m always afraid you’re going to leave again?”
I can’t go through that again.
“I won’t. I know I left, and I take all the responsibility for it. I was young and stupid, but that doesn’t make it okay. But, I was always with you, Em. I never changed my phone number so you could always call if you needed me. My email is the same. I tried so hard to let you know I was always here. I was wrong to leave, but it was always you.”
He kisses me sweetly, then stands and takes my hand. “I want to show you something.”
Cole leads us out of his bedroom, across the hall, to the room with his trophies and helmets. Sleek glass custom cabinets hold what appears to be a hundred or so helmets, dozens of trophies from around the world, and empty bottles of champagne from podium ceremonies.
He pulls the first one off the top cabinet on the left and hands it to me. “My first F3 race, Donington Park. I was just a teenager.”
I move it around in my hands, inspecting the Union Jack design. I can see why it’s special to him, but I don’t get his point. “I don’t understand.”
He rotates the helmet and taps where his name is emblazoned along the middle. I study it closer. Where his finger is, I see EW in chrome, blended into the design. You’d never see it if you weren’t looking.
“My initials?” I glance up at Cole.
He puts the helmet back, moves a few paces down the cabinet case, and pulls another helmet off. “My first F1 race, Melbourne. I was twenty-one then.”
I take it from him and look all over. Finally, I see it, EW, in a slightly darker blue than the other colors.
“Barcelona, I was twenty-four,” he hands me the next one, and I find the same. Four or five more helmets, he shows me my initials on every single one, over all these years, across all these continents.
Here I thought he wasn’t as sentimental as I am.
“Cole,” I whisper, another godforsaken tear running down my cheek and making my eyes sting. This is not the same variety of tears, though.
“It was always you, baby. Always.”
Wrapping my arms around his broad shoulders, I press my lips to his and feel his strong arms pull me in. We’re clinging to one another, pulling and gripping, like our lives depend on it. There’s a hint of morning coffee on his tongue as it parts my mouth, and I open to let him explore.
When his face drops to the curve of my neck, licking and sucking, my tears are replaced with an overwhelming need to be closer and closer to him. Lifting one leg up, he slides a hand down and hoists me around his waist. My legs instinctively wrap around him.
He pushes me up against the door, our kisses so desperate we bang into a display case on the way. The way he’s kissing me, possessing me, I know he feels it. I know he’s rig
ht here with me.
I know I never stopped loving him.
“Bed, Cole,” I moan around his mouth, and I feel his lips turn upward. “No more perfect. Now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he walks me across the hall back into the master bedroom and sets me to my feet next to the bed.
I kick off my shoes while he pulls my shirt over my head. My hands run over his smooth pecs, and I can feel his heart hammering, his chest heaving with breath as he unbuttons my jeans and shoves them down. Unsnapping my bra behind me, he catches the straps and yanks it off my arms until I’m nearly bare before him.
“Take off those panties and show me how wet I make you.”
I hold his stare and slide them slowly down my legs, then hand them to him. He smirks, inspects them, then drops them onto a dresser behind him.
Cole has always been in charge in the bedroom, since our very first time, and the way he’s breathing now, the way his eyes command mine, I know I’m in his control.
Completely exposed, he holds my chin with one hand, his gaze scanning me from my toes, up my legs and torso, over my breasts, and then he makes a full circle around me, soaking my body in. “So perfect,” he whispers into my lips when he’s made a full rotation.
Shoving his sweatpants down, I kiss his chest, and my hands graze his hard ass before tracing around to the front of his hips. I let my fingers slide down his hard shaft before I grip the base with my hand, and Cole lets out a hiss into my neck and drags his teeth across my skin.
A bead of precum forms on the tip, and I use my thumb to spread it across the broad purple head then stroke him, squeezing him as hard as I remember how he likes to be touched. He bends to kiss each of my nipples then pulls away. He walks to the nightstand beside the bed and pulls out a condom.
“Put it on me,” he hands me the packet, and I go to work, remembering this intimate part of our past.
He could tell me to do cartwheels right now, and I wouldn’t question it.
I slide the latex over his heavy dick, feeling the heat and the velvet skin as my hands glide over him. His fingers dip inside my pussy, and he whispers filthy comments in my ear about how drenched I am for him before he pushes me back onto the bed, and his body chases mine.
Supporting himself on his elbows, he attacks my mouth, and the head of his cock rubs up and down my clit, sliding effortlessly back and forth through my slick folds. I need him inside of me so badly I can barely breathe, my fingers gripping and clawing his back, desperate to feel him.
Cole’s left-hand grips my ponytail, and he jerks my head back before grinding down on me hard, his control slipping and his breathing picking up.
“You feel that, baby?”
“Yes,” I whimper in response.
“That’s how much I want you.”
The fingers of his right hand dig into my ass, and he pulls me into him harder. He pumps over me a few times, our motions growing more frantic.
“So long I’ve waited to bury myself inside this sweet pussy.” His hand slips between my legs, and his fingers start working me, his teeth marking my neck and breasts as we writhe against each other.
I can feel his need growing by the second, his body tensing, every muscle in his toned and cut body flexing.
“Cole, goddamn it,” I take his wrist in my hand, “I need you. Now.” I feel like I will implode without feeling all of him inside me.
In a swift movement with his hands on my hips, he rolls over onto his back and places me on top to straddle him. Holding the base of his cock up for me, he folds his other arm behind his head, and those blue eyes shimmer at me. He smiles, knowing exactly how desperate I am for him. “Take what you need, baby.”
With Cole guiding the tip, I slowly ease myself down onto him. An inch at a time, I have to start and stop, rock side to side, before I can finally sink all the way down.
We both groan, and the sweet burn of Cole filling me comes back for the first time in years. It’s so much better than I remember as I start moving up and down on him.
Somehow he’s even bigger and fits me even better. Fills up all the space inside of me like we were custom made for each other.
His fingers press into my hips, and I watch his face, his mouth open and head pushed back into the pillow. I can see his jaw tense, and his teeth clench, and I know he’s fighting the urge to throw me to my back and fuck me as hard as he wants to.
I love doing this to him, making him struggle against his control.
He rocks his hips up and thrusts into me every time I press down. “Fuck, that’s it, gorgeous girl, ride my cock.”
I build a rhythm, holding myself up with my hands on his chest, then lean back, arch my spine, and support myself against his thighs. I moan and breathe his name.
He sits up and takes a nipple in his mouth, pulling it in with his lips then dragging his teeth along the peak.
“You need to come for me, baby, I can’t hold…” he takes my ass and pulls me onto him harder and harder.
Biting my bottom lip and relishing feeling so powerful, I run a finger over my clit then bring it to his lips. He sucks in my finger, the fire in his eyes as he watches me burning intense. He’s close to losing it.
And I need him to.
I lean down over him and drag my tongue from the hollow of his throat up his neck and hover just above his lips, “Did you miss fucking me?”
His only answer comes in the form of a growl and hands tightening even more around my hips.
“Show me,” I bite his lip.
Before the words have left my lips, I’m on my back. Cole slams into me and knocks the air out of my lungs. My fingernails dig into his shoulder, and I gasp.
I feel the head of his cock drag against my walls as he slowly pulls out then thrusts back into me so hard the bed rocks. When I open my eyes, he’s watching me, storm clouds brewing in those blue skies, threatening to unleash a storm.
“Did you miss this big dick filling you up?”
“Oh god, yes,” I moan as he continues to drive into me then languidly pull out, over and over again.
Nothing, no one, has ever felt as good. Nothing has ever been anything but a pale imitation of the chemistry we have.
“More, Cole,” I beg.
He bites my earlobe and whispers, as if he doesn’t want to break the spell, the fantasy, “It’s been six years, Em, I don’t want to hurt you.”
Cole was always aggressive in bed, and I wonder how much more so he could be now. He’s mentioned this twice, but I know he’d never hurt me.
Not physically.
Even more, I want everything from him. I want one hundred percent of Cole, nothing less than his body, heart, and soul.
I am not eighteen anymore, I am not a good girl, and I want it all from him.
I run my fingers through his hair, scrape my nails down his scalp, along his neck, and across his toned back.
“I’m yours, Cole. Give me everything you have. I’ve waited forever for it.”
His eyes flicker, and a low primitive rumble comes from his chest, and then I am hit with the force of a tidal wave slamming into me. Throwing my hands up, I brace myself from being pounded into the headboard when he lifts my legs over his shoulders.
“Fuck, Em, fuck,” he pants.
He’s so deep inside of me, hitting places inside of my I was unaware even existed. I clutch for oxygen in between thrusts and crying out his name, a hellfire burning inside of me.
“Don’t stop,” I plead when I feel the crescendo creeping higher and higher.
I feel myself grow wetter, my walls clenching around Cole’s heat inside of me. My nails dig into his flesh, and I bite his shoulder, crying out as the salty taste of his skin stings my tongue.
Cole lets my legs drop to his hips, and I wrap and lock them around his waist. His hands fist my hair, and he sucks the skin of my breast hard enough to leave a mark.
He drops a hand between us, and his thumb starts to circle my clit with expert precision.
“Oh god,” I cry. I am so close to exploding, the pressure inside me well beyond boiling point and ready to shatter into a thousand pieces.
“That’s it, baby,” he growls in my ear. “Give me that cream, come all over my cock.”
“Cole,” I scream and arch my back off the bed, my head thrashing from side to side as his gravelly voice in my ear sends me over the edge.
His pace picks up, his hips firing into mine. The sounds of our skin slapping together join with Cole’s grunts. “Keep coming, baby, give me more.”
“Oh Jesus,” I clench down and dig into his shoulder with one hand, the headboard with the other.
My legs writhe, my body filled with spasms and aftershocks and unending ecstasy. An unintelligible cry escapes my throat as I stretch my neck and my hips twist and thrash underneath him.
“Give me more, baby, a little more.”
My throat goes dry and cracks from the intensity of my cries. Beneath my legs, I can feel Cole’s thighs thrusting, his calves and feet digging into the bed for purchase as the bed rocks and shakes like we’re going to crash through the glass wall and drown in the river below.
It would be a good death.
I don’t know if I am going to be split in two or come again, but my body jerks forward, and it hits me again, a wave of pleasure all at once rising from somewhere deep within that only Cole knows how to unlock. I loop my limbs around his slick body and scream, holding on for dear life, my whole body shaking.
“Fuck Em, I’m…” Cole’s mouth hangs open, and his face twists up into a beautiful, exquisite work of art.
“Give it to me,” I grip his ass and pull him hard, thrusting my hips upward to meet his.
He lets out a deep roar, thrusting as he explodes, and I feel his warmth fill the condom as my hands run down his back, slick with sweat.
He kisses me deeply as he slowly pulls out and I suck in a breath at the sting of being so stretched, a dull burn filling the void.
He pushes himself down and drops his head between my thighs, and his hot tongue covers my entrance, his heat and moisture soothing the delicious ache.