She reached down to guide him inside her while he made a fist of the pillow to keep control of himself. And when he was inside her, it was even more of a strain to hold himself back. Because she was as tight and hot as he remembered. A perfect fit, with velvety walls that squeezed him with liquid heat.
He positioned himself over her, pulling her thighs up over his hips, unexpectedly delighted by the way she rubbed the soles of her delicate little feet on the backs of his thighs as if to draw him deeper inside her.
He began moving over her, nearly mesmerized by the sight of her pale creamy breasts, which swayed with each stroke and made his mouth water to suck them into his mouth. He bent his head to do just that, just as she was lifting her chin to kiss him.
They crashed, laughing a bit as they did so. They laughed. During sex. He wasn’t sure that’d ever happened before in his life, and it filled him with a feeling that was so unfamiliar he wasn’t sure what to make of it. Was it joy?
Unfortunately, any such philosophical questions were swiftly erased from his mind by the blinding pleasure of burying himself in Shelby’s oh-so-fuckable-body. He’d wanted to make love to her. And he was. But God help him, it wasn’t allll sunshine and laughter.
It was also scorching hot sex that had him shaking over her.
“Don’t hold back,” she whispered, as if she knew.
“Shelby, if I don’t hold back, I’m gonna bang you into next Wednesday. That’s how hard I want to take you.”
“Do it,” she encouraged, digging her nails into his shoulder blades in a way that was decidedly not angelic. Which broke his determination to do this nice and gentle. Broke it right in half.
Next thing he knew, he was ramming her hard, crying out with her when she turned red and reached her second climax. It was the sight of her, mouth open, head thrown back, arching like a cat in heat that unleashed the spasms in his own body.
He was coming inside her. Coming so hard that he saw bursts of color behind his closed eyes. Until he was kissing her, and kissing her, forgetting anything else in the whole world existed but this woman.
Chapter Six
SHELBY
I was happy in a way I didn’t know it was possible to be happy. Kissing him. Laughing with him. Crying out under him as he effortlessly brought me to climax. Well, maybe it wasn’t exactly effortless. He needed a big drink of water after we were done, then slipped back under the sheets with me to do it all over again, until I was sore and sated and nearly silly with it.
But he still hadn’t had enough, using his hands to coax me on top of him.
“You tryin’ to make up for all six years of being apart all in one go?” I asked, kissing his chin.
“You complaining?” Colt asked, with that cocky grin, swirling his fingertip over my already hardening nipple.
“You wouldn’t hear me complain about having sex with you even if you rendered me unconscious.”
Colt grinned wider. “Sounds like you’re setting me a challenge…”
“You look happy,” I said, softly, filled to the brim with love for him. “You have no idea how that makes me feel to think I might have something to do with making you happy.”
He kissed me, full and soft and emotional. “You got everything to do with it. Now that I’ve got you in my arms, I don’t want to let you go.”
“Afraid you’ve got to.” I sighed, staring at the window where the sun was starting to go low. “If I’m gone too late, my father’s gonna come looking for me.”
The mention of my father was all it took to shatter Colt’s smile. I was sorry to do it, for so many reasons, but mostly because it made him roll onto his back, and crash his head back onto the feather pillow. He worked his jaw, but stayed silent.
“Just say it,” I told him.
“Nope.”
“If you don’t think I can see it on your face—”
“This can’t be about him,” Colt snapped. “This thing with us. It’s just you and me, Shelby. If I start thinking about your father, if either of us starts to bring him into it, we’re in trouble.”
Well, there was no arguing that. I’d made him promise never to use me against my father, and he’d promised he wouldn’t. But he hadn’t promised to like my father any better. I was just going to have to let that dog alone. “Well, if we don’t want a confrontation, I’d better get home.”
Colt frowned. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a curfew. You’re a grown woman.”
“Glad you figured that out,” I grinned, squirming against him in a way that made him go a bit slack-jawed with desire all over again. “And no, I don’t have a curfew, but given what happened in the bar, my father’s been worried about me. He’s likely to think something happened if I don’t get back.”
“So call him and tell him…” Colt trailed off. “Well, I was going to suggest that you call him and tell him you were staying with me tonight, because I’d love to hear him lose his shit. But I suppose that’s not what you want or need.”
“No,” I whispered, tracing his lips with my thumb. So grateful that he was trying. He was trying to do right by me. Trying to put what I wanted and needed ahead of his resentment for my father. “There’s always tomorrow, right? This isn’t a one night thing.”
“I can’t let this be a one night thing,” Colt agreed, kissing the tip of my thumb. Then he heaved a sigh and rolled up to sit at the edge of the bed. “So let me drive you home.”
“I can walk.”
“Oh, I’m pretty sure that after what I’ve done to you, you can’t hardly walk at all.”
I smacked him playfully, but couldn’t stop laughing because it really was true. Good god, but this man could give a girl a working over. My arms were shaky just trying to button my shirt. “Colt, you know he’s not going to take kindly to you driving up to his bar.”
“You’ll distract him and I’ll make a clean getaway.”
I couldn’t help but smiling at the way he made it sound like a criminal enterprise that we were conspiring in together. The lawman and the gangster’s daughter…
“Alright then, I’ll distract him.”
“You’re good at distracting people,” Colt said, admiringly, and once he got dressed, I took each step down the staircase gingerly, holding Colt’s hand, swinging it between us.
We were a thing. We were in love. It was all I ever wanted, and I was so giddy I could’ve floated back home. But I let Colt hold the door for me, then climbed into his service vehicle.
We bickered over the radio all the way down the road because Colt never liked to listen to anything that wasn’t from another decade altogether. And we were still laughing when we pulled up in front of the bar, where I could see my father’s car.
Which made me sigh. I’d been hoping he wouldn’t be back already. “Well, I was going to invite you in for a nightcap…”
“Probably not a good idea,” Colt admitted. “Sure I can’t convince you to just come back with me and spend the night?”
“Tempting…” That was an understatement. Everything inside me wanted to stay with him. To stay with him forever. But I was trying to make smart choices. I wouldn’t know any of this was real unless I knew that he still loved me even when I wasn’t in his bed. “I’ll call you tomorrow?”
“You call me any time,” Colt said. “Even if it’s ten minutes from now, just because you’ve changed your mind…I’ll turn right around and get you.”
Chapter Seven
COLTON
Colt kissed her hard, with intimate promise, before finally letting her go. Then he sat behind the wheel of his car, watching her disappear inside the bar, reconsidering the wisdom of letting her anywhere near her father.
Because until the crime lord to whom those explosives belonged had his cargo back, Shelby was in danger. It was as simple as that. One gunman had already used her as a hostage. It didn’t take a genius to know that they’d send another.
Colt rubbed at his face, trying to think things through rationally, but he caught
the scent of her on his hands and it nearly made him come undone all over again. Goddamn, he loved this woman. What’s worse, he’d admitted it. Out loud. To himself and to her. Now there was no denying it.
He loved her and he needed to keep her safe, but until they cleared him of the shooting, he didn’t even have his gun to do it. Fortunately, he did have his brain and while it clearly wasn’t working at full capacity, he could bring it to bear. If he wanted to keep Shelby safe, then he needed to find those explosives. Find them, seize them, and make it clear there was nothing to gain from terrorizing Shelby.
So he supposed he could spend the rest of his administrative leave fixing porch railings or mending fences. Or he could spend them tromping around in these hills until he figured out where Buford stashed the stolen explosives. Or…
Colt slipped from the driver’s seat, popped the trunk, and opened the bag of equipment he had in the back. He had a tracking device with double-stick tape. It’d cost him a hundred bucks at some shop in Madison. Without a warrant, any evidence he got from it would be fruit of the poisonous tree. He wouldn’t be able to use it against Buford in a court of law, but it’d still lead him to the explosives which could be seized.
And though it pained him to the center of his being to think of Buford Baker getting away with his crimes yet again, it didn’t pain him nearly as much as the thought of losing Shelby to some dead-eyed gangster.
Colt grabbed the device and knew he’d have to work quick, moving swiftly to the back of Buford’s car, stooping down to attach it. If Buford caught him, well, they might come to blows, and he couldn’t help but welcome it. He was ready for it. He’d been ready for it most of his life.
What he wasn’t ready for was the door of the bar swinging open and Shelby standing there. “Colt?”
Given that he was down on one knee next to her father’s car, he knew she had him dead to rights. Which meant that the only defense he had was a good offense. “What are you doing back out here, Shelby?”
Even under the sallow light of the bar, he still thought he saw her complexion go to ash. “I changed my mind. I couldn’t stand to be apart from you tonight. I was going to call you to come back and get me…”
He loved hearing that. It was the best thing he’d heard in a long while. And he stood up, took two steps towards her, holding out his hand. “Well, then c’mon girl.”
But Shelby’s eyes were trained on the device in his hand. “Not until you tell me what you’re holding.”
Colt thought about lying to her, but that thought passed as swiftly as it came upon him. “It’s a tracking device.”
She exhaled, and the look on her face—the way it turned from bewilderment to slow burning contempt—was a stab in the gut. “You were gonna put that on my father’s car?”
Colt’s spine stiffened. “Yes.”
Then his spine nearly went to jelly as tears filled her eyes. “After everything we said to each other this afternoon. After everything we did with each other!”
As her anger echoed in the night, he whispered, “Keep your voice down. Let’s talk about this in the car.”
She slapped his hand away. “You promised, Colt. You promised that you wouldn’t use me to get at my father!”
Chapter Eight
SHELBY
I’d asked myself how many times was I going to let Colton Marbray make a fool out of me. Well, the answer appeared to be at least one more time. And this time, it wasn’t just breaking my heart.
It was going to crush me completely.
Feeling like my heart was tearing itself in two, all I could murmur was, “You promised not to use me, Colt. And I believed you…”
Colt’s expression went hard. “I didn’t use you. That’s not what this is.”
I wanted to believe him. Truly I did. But the night’s events took a painfully sharp turn in my mind. “I told you I could walk back on my own. I told you my father would be watching for you if you drove up. But you insisted in coming here. You told me to distract him. Now I know why!”
Colt ran a hand through his hair. “Jesus H. Christ, Shelby. That’s not what I was thinking about at the time. It just came to me.”
“It just came to you?” I asked, thinking about all the times my father had warned me about Colton. About all the ways in which my stepbrother had played with my heart before.
This time was the cruelest of all.
“You just happened to have a tracking device in the back of your car.”
The fact that I doubted him seemed to piss him off because he didn’t answer me. Instead, his eyes blazed, defiantly. “I promised you I wouldn’t use you, but I never promised I wouldn’t try to put your lowlife of a father in jail. Or that I’d stop trying to protect your life. Because that’s what I do, Shelby. That’s what I am. I’m never gonna stop doing my job. Not even for you.”
That’s how he justified it. That’s how he’d always justify everything. And maybe he wouldn’t mean to use me against my father, but he would have to use me. He would. Because I’d been my father’s accountant for six years. There wasn’t any scenario I could think of where I wouldn’t be called to testify. And I didn’t think Colt cared one bit.
For a few short hours, I’d felt like we were truly in love. Like we could be happy. Like we could find a way out of this maze of forbidden passion into being together. But that dream like every other one I’d ever had was nothing more than the dust under my feet.
Colt might not believe that he’d broken faith with me, but he had. His sweat and scent was still on my body and yet he hadn’t been true. Which meant there was no way forward for us. Not now. Not ever.
So when he tried to take my hands, I slapped them away again. “You finally did it, Colt. You broke me. You really did. And now we’re over before we began.”
“You don’t mean that Shelby. You’re just pissed—”
“You’re right I am. I’m pissed and I’m hurt. I’m hurt so bad I didn’t know I could hurt this bad and still be standing upright. But I do mean it. I was a stupid girl who fell in love with her stepbrother. I was a stupid girl who kept on loving him long after he left her behind. And I was a stupid woman who gave her virginity to him in the hopes that he might love her back just a fraction as much. But I ain’t stupid anymore, Colt. And I hope this really is a temporary assignment you’ve got here in West Virginia, because I don’t ever want to see you again.”
Part Three
Chapter One
COLTON
Special Agent Colton Marbray pulled into his long country driveway feeling as dazed as if he’d taken a hammer to the head. What in the hell had just happened? One moment, he’d been making love to Shelby Baker, the girl of his dreams. The next moment, she was telling him she never wanted to see him again.
Shelby didn’t mean it. Couldn’t mean it. Not after Colt had finally put his feelings out there…told her the truth about how he loved her. About how he’d always loved her even when they were teenagers, living together in this house. Both of ‘em trying to avoid her criminal father’s mercurial temper.
Sure, Shelby been pissed to find out that he was still trying to put her Daddy in jail. But Colt had never lied to her about that. He was a lawman. That was his job. Hell, it’s who he was. For generations back, Marbrays got some obsession into their blood and went after it like Captain Ahab went after his white whale. And Shelby’s father was—in the words of his wise neighbor Miss Annabelle Tidwell—Colt’s white whale.
Colton had been wanting to put Buford Baker away ever since the first time the bastard hit his Momma all those years ago, back when Colt was too young to do anything about it. But Buford Baker wasn’t just an abusive bastard. He was also about as close a thing to a kingpin as existed in Boone County. He was up this neck in organized crime. Someone had to put him away. And it had to be Colt.
Even if it meant losing the girl he loved.
Shit. Colt’s head was in such a bad place, he scarcely remembered turning on the light, unlocking the
door and letting himself into the old farmhouse his mother had left him. All he wanted was to escape into a black sleep in the hopes that it’d all come clear for him in the morning and he’d figure out a way to make Shelby understand.
But when he heard a creak on the stairs just as he was kicking his boots off to get into bed, everything came back to him in slow motion.
The fact that the door wasn’t locked.
The fact that he hadn’t turned on the light.
The fact that he knew every creaky floorboard in this house.
By instinct Colt reached for the sidearm that should’ve been on his hip—but wasn’t. So instead, Colt grabbed for shotgun in his closet. Then he racked it, ejecting a perfectly good shell just for the satisfying shlick-klick sound that would make any sane person stop in their tracks.
“So, before you take another step,” Colton called out to the intruder, forcing his voice to a deadly calm as he turned to peer at the partially opened bedroom door. “Let’s think this through.”
Fuck. He couldn’t see shit through that partially opened bedroom door. Whoever was in his house was too far in the shadows. So Colt kept talking. “My guess is that if you were laying in wait to kill me, you’d have shot me when I stepped on the front porch. Skulking about my house…now that speaks to some other nefarious purpose. Likely not one worth dying over. So I just want you to know that if you come any closer, they’ll be scraping pieces of you off my stairwell by morning. ”
Colt didn’t hear another footstep but he was sure he heard a shuddering breath some ways down. Good. It spoke to hesitation or recalculation, so Colt aimed at his door. And blew a hole through it.
BAM!
Stepbrother Breaks Bad: The Complete Series Page 8