by Anthology
“Wait? You’ve been living in Denton all this time?”
Jade nodded with a look of confusion. “I thought you knew that.”
“How the fuck—” Unable to hold back his anger, Colton gnashed his teeth. “No, I didn’t know. How the hell was I supposed to? You vanished off the face of the Earth, Jade. I’ve been trying to find you for eight fucking years!”
Her body stiffened and her eyes grew wide. For the first time ever she was afraid of him, but Colton couldn’t find the strength to stop vomiting out his pain.
“I waited a week after your mom’s funeral and when I didn’t hear from you, I drove back down to Austin. But you were gone. Nobody…and I mean nobody knew where you were or how to reach you. What the fuck, Jade? I thought we were friends.” Colton’s sharp words were edged with accusation and anger.
A look of remorse lined her face and she tried to pull away from him.
Fuck! He hadn’t meant to rip into her like a rabid coyote. Wishing he could take back his caustic words, Colton did the only thing he could think of…he pushed her up against the brick wall of Marshall’s Dry Goods, and kissed her. Kissed her hard and senseless.
Within seconds she relaxed and kissed him back. Fireworks, rockets and cannons detonated inside him. Colton had spent fifteen grueling years yearning, wanting, and waiting to taste her sinful mouth. But nothing had prepared him for the savage electricity that flash-fried him from the inside out.
Ravenous for more, he swiped his tongue over the seam of her lips. Jade opened and welcomed him inside her mouth with a kitten-like whimper. Colton’s cock jerked and he issued a low groan. Sweeping over every sultry, slick crevice, his tongue collided with Jade’s. Wrapping together, sliding apart, they danced a decadent tango of lust…need…craving.
Drowning in the silky essence of his lifelong fantasy, Colton tossed caution to the wind, and turned up the heat. Passion, raw and untamed, consumed them. A tremor slid down his spine as the sizzling current that arced between them set fire to every nerve-ending in his body. Colton was going up in flames and he loved every fucking second of it.
Jade’s tiny squeak rippled over his tongue as she peeled her mouth from his. The pink stain of embarrassment caressed her cheeks. She darted a furtive glace to her left, then to her right.
Hoping to alleviate her obvious discomfort, Colton cupped her chin and forced her gaze to his. “You taste like peaches and cream. Do you have any idea how long I’ve waited to kiss you like that?”
Jade blinked. “All those years I thought you avoided me like the plague because I didn’t own a set of pom-poms.”
The taunting smirk that curled her lips sent a growl rolling from his chest. Sliding a fist into her hair, Colton yanked her head back and gazed into her eyes. “I wanted tons more than a set of fucking pom-poms with you, gorgeous.”
He slanted his lips over hers once more. Swallowing down Jade’s gasp, he plunged his tongue deep inside her sweet, slick mouth. And just as his body ignited in flames once again, Jade pulled back and wrinkled her brows.
“Colton…we’re sucking face on the damn sidewalk,” she chided.
His shoulders shook in silent laughter. “I don’t give a shit if we’re in the middle of fucking Time Square, Kitten.”
Jade jerked her head up. Her eyes narrowed and she shot him a humorless smile. The memories of the first time he’d called her that nickname rushed through his brain.
“Stop that. Why are you always calling me kitten?” she’d asked tersely.
Colton had leaned in close and whispered in her ear: “’Cause I bet you’ve got the prettiest little pussy in all of Texas.”
“So we’re reverting back to that, are we, Stick?” she taunted with a sardonic smirk.
“Am I still your Stick?” he asked in a low raspy growl.
“Oh yeah. Thankfully, some things never change,” she answered in a sultry bedroom voice. “You’ll always be Sin-On-A-Stick to me, Colton.”
The caveman inside him thumped his chest. He wanted to toss her over his shoulder and drag her to his cave…err, rather ranch, and reinvent fire.
You’re getting ahead of yourself here. There are a couple million questions you need her to answer. Like…is she married?
The thought made his blood run cold.
“Are you…” they both began, breaking off the question at the same time.
Jade issued a nervous chuckle. “Go ahead.”
“No. Ladies first,” he insisted.
“I was just curious…are you, um…married?” she asked timidly.
“No. You?”
She shook her head.
Colton’s cock reared up, giving a love-muscle-fist-pump. He and his painfully engorged dick were eager to explore a hell of a lot more than Jade’s soft mouth. Visions of her spread naked on his bed, writhing and wearing a just-fucked-glow flushing her pale skin, exploded in his brain.
Talk first. Fuck later. His sub-conscience demanded.
“Will you follow me back to my ranch?”
Jade nibbled on her bottom lip, then nodded. “Sure.”
Her ragged, breathless reply was Colton’s undoing.
“Fuck following me. Get in my car. We’ll pick your truck up later,” he blurted impatiently.
Gazing into her smoldering dark eyes, Colton threaded his fingers through hers, and started toward his car. It was then that he noticed nearly everyone on the street was grinning and gawking at them.
“Oh my god,” Jade whispered in a tone of complete mortification.
“Get some, Colton!” called Cletus, the town mechanic, as he flashed the thumbs up sign.
Shit! The last thing he wanted was for his well-meaning friends to embarrass the hell out of Jade. As Colton quickly led her past the diner, Toot, owner of Toot’s Café, pushed through the glass door and flashed him a mischievous grin.
“Who’s the pretty little girl you got there, Colton?” Before he could answer, Toot continued, “That smokin’ hot kiss you just shared has half my customers wanting some cream pie now.”
Toot and the others gathered nearby roared with laughter.
“Someone shoot me,” Jade muttered under her breath.
Colton laughed as he helped his blushing girl into the passenger seat. Closing the door, he turned and pinned Toot with a wide grin. Every customer inside the café had their faces all but pressed up against the plate glass window, watching him and grinning like loons.
Colton was fairly certain the kiss he and Jade had shared would be plastered all over the front page of The News Tribune in the morning. Colton didn’t give a damn. All he wanted to do was to get Jade home, interrogate the hell out of her, strip her bare, and spend the rest of eternity in bed with her.
“She’s my future wife,” Colton quipped with a grin. “Sorry, Toot, but the show’s over. You’d better get back inside and start serving up pie before you have a riot on your hands.”
* * *
Sitting in the car, still trembling after Colton’s heavenly toe-curling kiss, Jade felt her heart lurch to her throat. Had she heard him right…his future wife?
A burst of panic spiked. Jade’s knee-jerk reaction screamed; run. Instinctively she gripped the door handle in a white-knuckle hold before she sucked in a ragged breath. Since walking away from Colton, she’d conditioned herself to shoot down every marriage proposal since high school. Well, there’d only been two, but that was two too many as far as she was concerned. The only man she’d ever wanted was Colton.
It IS Colton this time, her conscience reminded.
That realization made her heart lurch even harder. Surely he’d simply been verbally sparring with the taunting woman from the café…hadn’t he?
Before Jade could analyze her emotions further, Colton climbed in behind the wheel. His scent wafted over her…a combination of masculine musk mixed with a hint of leather made her girl parts light up like the Fourth of July.
After starting the engine he took her hand. Pressing his firm, warm lips to
the back of her flesh, his blue eyes delved all the way to her soul. She stared back, studying the lines of his sculpted face. Time had matured his boyish features. The angle of his jaw seemed more defined, as did his chiseled cheekbones and the sensual bow of his lips. Impossibly, he’d grown even more spellbinding.
Her hormones sang in approval.
When he backed out of the parking space, the people of Haven clapped as they drove away. Jade wanted to crawl onto the floorboard and die.
“Sorry about that,” Colton stated sheepishly. “They mean well…but sometimes they can get a bit…”
Jade grinned as he felt his cheeks begin to burn.
“Why, Colton Maddox, I do believe you’re blushing,” she taunted.
“You wish,” he countered with a manufactured scowl.
Giggling, she leaned over and dragged the tip of her fingernail through the wheat-colored scruff adorning his jaw. “I think your blush is cute.”
Colton growled as he captured her hand and nipped the end of her fingertip between his teeth. Pulling her digit deep inside his mouth, he laved his slick, hot tongue over it. Jade’s pussy clenched and throbbed wildly.
The man possessed some mad skills with his wicked tongue. Jade ached for Colton to wreak havoc and destroy her with every mind-blowing one of them, too.
When he eased her finger from his mouth, he cupped her hand and placed it on his thigh. She felt his body tense.
“I need answers, Jade. Why the hell have you been hiding from me, and what the fuck have you been doing for the past eight years that’s kept you from picking up a goddamn phone, or coming to see me?”
An inky wave of guilt slid through her. She had nothing to offer him except piss-poor excuses. And when she hesitated to answer, Colton shot her a look of warning. She knew better than to make up some cock-and-bull story. They’d vowed to one another long ago to be honest, no matter what. She would still honor that promise, though it was going to hurt him.
Fidgeting with the edge of her T-shirt, Jade drew in a deep breath. “Two days after Momma’s funeral the bank foreclosed on the house. I’d lost everything, or at least that’s how it felt. I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted all the hurt to go away. So I crawled inside myself and shut the door behind me.”
“Why didn’t you call me? I could have helped…helped you…helped stop the bank from foreclosing.” Colton’s nostrils flared. His mouth thinned to a tight, angry line.
“I didn’t want to burden anyone with my problems.” When he opened his mouth to argue, Jade held up her hand. “I needed time to grieve, alone. As far as you helping with the bank, it was more than a few late payments, Colton. Momma had stopped paying the mortgage, and paid the doctors and hospitals instead. We were so far in arrears by the time she passed…it was pointless to try and salvage the house. Besides, it was better for me that the bank took it. I didn’t want to live there any more.”
“Too many memories,” he whispered as if reading her mind.
Jade had forgotten the way Colton had a sixth sense when it came to charting the web of her emotions. The man understood her better than she did herself most times.
“Yeah,” she murmured.
“Well, that explains why you left. Why I got that damn recording that your number was no longer in service when I tried to call. But you still haven’t explained why the fuck you never called me!”
His face was lined with anger and pain.
An avalanche of suffocating guilt slid over her as she watched him clench his jaw.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it,” he fumed bitterly. “When I got to Austin, I reached out to Trent, Daniel, and Chrissy, but none of them knew where you’d gone. I even tracked down Brea, who by the way is living in Denton with some dude named Weed, now.”
Colton rolled his eyes. His lips curled as if something sour lay on his tongue. Their girl, Brea, had a penchant for hooking up with men undeserving of her sweet and loving ways.
“She was beside herself with worry, too,” Colton scolded. “I need to know why, Jade. Why did you shut me out?”
She squeezed her eyes shut to hold back her tears. Swallowing down the lump of emotion lodged in her throat, she gripped Colton’s hand, and opened her eyes.
“I truly am sorry,” she whispered, as she turned to face him. “Yes, I should have reached out to you…to my friends, but especially you. I was lost and it took a long, long time…months in fact, for me to dig my way out of the darkness. By the time I could see light again, I just assumed everyone had moved on with their lives and found happiness.”
Colton didn’t take his eyes off the road. He simply tightened his hand in hers. “You didn’t have to hide from me, Jade. I would have led you from the darkness. You know I would have.”
Yes, she did. And it was that gaping wound of guilt that had haunted her all these years.
“I do,” she softly whispered. “And that’s why I couldn’t reach out to you, Colton.”
“What the fuck does that even mean?”
That dominant edge had returned to his voice once again, and damn if it didn’t turn her on. Shoving aside the tingling sensation enveloping her body, Jade focused on aligning her thoughts so she could answer him.
“I purposely steered clear of you, because you were the only person on the planet I wanted to save me. I was so desperate for the pain to go away, that I ran as far and fast as I could in the other direction. I didn’t want anyone, especially you to see me in such pain.”
“Oh, babe.” His words came out on a sympathetic groan.
“So I packed my truck and started driving. I went to search out a new life. And when I got to Denton, well…I stopped running.”
“But you said earlier you were looking for a new life…starting over.” Colton pinned her with a knowing stare. “What are you running from this time, Jade? Better yet, do you plan to ever quit running?”
Fuck!
With a heavy sigh, Jade started spilling her guts. She told Colton everything: her job, her failed attempts at romance. The poor man winced as she described walking in on Peter—her last romantic casualty—while he was face-timing and jacking off with the hideous skank he’d been screwing behind her back.
“So you’re trying to escape the pain of his betrayal?” Colton asked.
“Not at all. Peter’s roving peter has nothing to do with that. His actions didn’t even scratch the surface of my heart.”
“You mean you didn’t love him?”
Jade shook her head.
“Then why were you in a relationship with the man?” he asked, visibly confused.
“Because he was safe.”
“Christ, Jade. A pit bull will keep you safe. You can even fall in love with the mutt.” He shook his head. “I don’t understand. You’re a beautiful, loving soul. Why the hell weren’t you giving your all to Peter or some other man?”
Jade hung her head. Her skin crawled. She wished she’d never made that fucking vow of honesty to Colton.
Suddenly he stopped the car, shoved it into park, and cut the engine.
Jade turned and stared out the windshield and drank in the sight of a grand, two-story, plantation-style house. It was beautiful.
“Why, Jade? Tell me!” Colton thundered.
Snapping her head his direction, Jade’s eyes filled with tears. Her heart sliced in two as she pinned him with a painfully embarrassed gaze. “Because none of them were you!”
Dropping her head to hide the tears spilling down her cheeks, Jade bit back a pitiful sob.
Confessing that she’d carried a torch like the freakin’ Statue of Liberty all these years swamped her with the same pathetic feelings of inadequacy that had suffocated her back in high school. She was the polar opposite of everything Colton was attracted to. She wasn’t tall or thin. She didn’t have bleached blonde hair, or surgically enhanced jaw-dropping tits.
Her secret that she’d been in love with him forever was out, and it hung in the air like a n
oose. Colton probably perceived her as nothing but a hot, tragic mess.
“Jade,” he whispered softly.
She kept her head down. Couldn’t look at him. Didn’t want to see the pity and horror reflected in his gorgeous eyes.
“Jade!”
Colton spoke her name on a plea.
Angrily swiping at her tears, she lifted her head.
“I love you,” he whispered. Tears welled in his eyes as he choked out the words. “I’ve been in love with you since the first time I saw you.”
His words and the hungry gleam in his eyes sent Jade’s heart soaring, and shattered every unworthy emotion that had plagued her for over a decade. As Colton pulled her to him, tears of joy, safety, and love streamed down her face.
He cupped her cheeks and kissed her roughly, then bolted from the car. Racing around the vehicle, he yanked open her door and pulled her into his arms. He pressed his lips to hers with a deep and passionate kiss that made her feel drunk and dizzy.
“I need you… want you… all of you, Jade. Forever,” he murmured as he carried her up the steps, and onto the massive wraparound porch.
Forcing her eyes to focus, she blinked up at him. “Kiss me again, Stick.”
“Oh, I plan to do a whole lot more than kiss you, Kitten,” he promised in a sinful seductive tone.
Dipping his head once more, his warm breath fluttered over her lips. A shiver raced up Jade’s spine, enveloping her in a blast of heat. As Colton kissed her with heart-weeping tenderness, she whimpered and laced her fingers behind his neck to keep from floating away.
* * *
Lost in the sensual glide of Jade’s tongue, and drowning in the taste of her kiss, Colton carried her into the house, and up the stairs to his bedroom. Grudgingly pulling his mouth from hers, he gently placed his long-lost angel in the center of his bed, right where she’d always belonged.
Skimming a stare up and down her lush curves, Colton tempered the urge to tear away their clothes and drive deep inside her sinful little cunt. But he wanted their first time together to be more meaningful than simple gratification. Colton yearned to claim Jade…bind her to him, and meld their abandoned souls as one.
With his gaze locked on her beautiful face, he watched a mischievous smile tug the corners of her mouth.