Only for You

by Marquita Valentine

  With someone else.

  *** *** ***

  Cole

  We’re at the hotel she’s staying in, and I’m on the right floor. “Number?”

  “Seven One Five.”

  I raise a brow. “No penthouse?”

  She rolls her eyes at me. “Everett never let us stay in the penthouse. He always reserved it for himself.”

  Grabbing her hand, we race to her room. She gets the door open in no time at all, but it seems to take a million years. As soon as the door shuts, we’re ripping at each other’s clothes and kissing each other like crazy.

  “Where is the nose ring?”

  “Took it out.”

  I kiss her pink nipples and then suck a tight bud in my mouth. “Put it back in, for me?”

  “What about the hair?”

  She arches her back and I have to hold her arms at her sides to keep her from moving. I scratch my arm on her diamond ring, but the pain’s worth it. The pain means she’s mine.

  “It’s hot like this.” I grab a handful and lick her neck. “Gives me something else to hold on to when I’m smacking your sexy ass.”

  “You’re so dirty.”

  “And you love it,” I say with a smirk.

  “I love you.” She jumps on me and I catch her, spinning around to brace her against the wall. I slip my fingers between us. She’s wet, slick, and hot.

  “Ready for me?”

  “Now, now, now,” she chants.

  I slam into her, not taking a breath, not giving her time to recover. All I can think and breathe and see is Rae. How she feels around all of me. How she’s gripping me, how her nails are scoring my back.

  Not even a minute later, she’s screaming my name and I’m pouring into her, holding myself still while she milks my cock.

  Mine,” I growl. “Mine.”

  Somehow I managed to make it to the bed, with my dick still inside of her, and collapse on it. I pull her on top of me, and after our hearts calm, I begin making lazy circles on her back. “I love you, Rae.”

  “And I love you.”

  “No more secrets and no more lies.”

  She looks up at me. “And no more pushing me away.”

  “Never.” I lace my hand with hers. “This time, we’re lasting forever. You can spend all the money you want on me.”

  “Let’s pay for college first, for both of us.”

  “Sounds like a plan. I’ve always wanted to date a college girl.”

  She snorts, unladylike, but cute as hell. “But if you ever leave again, I’ll hunt you down and tie you to the bed.”

  “That might be worth it.” I pretend to consider her threat. “Would you use leather strips or handcuffs?”

  She punches me in the shoulder. “Cole!”

  Gazing into her blue eyes, I smile. “I’m not going anywhere. You’ve got me for life.”

  Then she kisses me.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Jaxon

  My head’s pounding like hell when I open my eyes. I have to blink a couple of times before my vision properly focuses.

  I recognize the room, pale blue walls, lots of window (all of which are wide open and letting in an ocean breeze) with a club chair near the set of French doors that lead out onto a private balcony, complete with its own pool.

  At least I know we made it to Charleston, South Carolina. At least we’re in my beach house.

  A small sound catches my attention, mostly because it’s magnified times three in my hungover state.

  Slowly turning my head, I’m not exactly stunned to find Bliss lying in my bed.

  Her back is to me, the sheet coming only to her waist. All those curves, right there for the taking. Or I had already partaken.

  Either way, I can’t remember exactly what happened last night.

  Bliss turns over, on her stomach, exposing more creamy skin and curves I want to touch and lick.

  I grimace. Of course my damn dick thinks now is the perfect time to turn my morning-wood semi into a full-blown hard on.

  Groaning, I try to rewind the night’s events, but all I can see in my blurry mind’s eye is a man talking to Bliss and me. We’re standing at a… I actually close my eyes tight and try harder to make out the sign.

  Twenty-Four Hour Bait and Tackle Shop.

  Some good time I had shown Bliss.

  I flop down on the pillow—a mistake of epic proportions. I scrub my face with my hand.

  Damn it. I screwed Bliss last night, but not before taking her fishing, and don’t remember shit about it.

  Maybe she will when she wakes up.

  Automatically my hand goes to the chain at my neck. Maybe I had sense enough to—

  My eyes pop open. “Where the hell is my ring?”

  A small hand touches my shoulder, the unmistakable feel of metal hitting my skin. I look down.

  My ring is on Bliss’ finger, on her left hand.

  “Oh shit,” I mutter.

  “Good morning to you, too.”

  My gaze flies to Bliss. She’s all pink cheeked and cream-colored skin, the sheet covering her body as she sits up. Unfortunately.

  But I’m not going to let that, let her, distract me. “Why are you wearing that ring?” That’s my ring. That was supposed to be Violet’s ring. Only our plans were interrupted. Our future had been interrupted.

  She frowns. “Because you gave it to me during the ceremony. You’re wearing one too.”

  I check my left hand. Sure enough, there’s a ring. “What ceremony?”

  She leans over me, dark curls brushing my face as does the rest of her body. Too bad the sheet’s between us.

  “Here.” She hands me a piece of paper and my cell phone.

  I glance up at the paper, read it, and nearly lose it. “Fuck me.” Then I look at the picture on the phone.

  It’s a damn good thing I’m lying down.

  The man I had remembered from last night? He’s holding a Just Married sign made out of fishing lures and wood.

  “Oh shit.” This time I gulp the word.

  Bliss’ pretty green eyes search my face, her cheeks heating. “We haven’t consummated it, yet. So technically, we could get it annulled.”

  “Consummated?” Right now I’m too damn hungover, and it’s too damn early for me to even think about what that word means.

  “I’m still a virgin.”

  “And?”

  “Our marriage isn’t official, yet.”

  How in the hell did anyone let me, apparently drunk as shit, enter into any kind of contract? “Oh.”

  She glances around the room, then down at the sheets before peering at me through her lashes. Flirtation is nowhere in her posture or gaze. “So what do you want to do—make me not a virgin or get an annulment?”

  Epilogue

  Ten years later

  Cole

  “I carried her right off stage and into, well, when you’re old enough, I’ll tell you the rest of it,” I say, not meaning a word. No way in hell I’d tell her about that.

  My four-year-old daughter looks at me, all wide-eyed. Her front two teeth are missing and her hair’s done up in pigtails, reminding me of Kelly at the same age.

  “Like a fairy tale,” she breathes.

  Rae laughs, kneeling down beside us in the backyard. She ties Sadie’s shoes and gives her a kiss on the cheek. Biologically, Sadie Violet Morgan was conceived from a random egg donor and me, but she’s all Rae’s daughter.

  Rae signed the adoption papers right after she was born. We paid a woman to carry her, all legal and on the up and up.

  Rae even did a documentary about it, much to the amazement of her parents. “There’s no shame in not being able to conceive. And there’s no shame in options either—the legal ones that is,” she had been quoted as saying.

  We’re expecting our second child, a boy this time, next month. Sadie is excited and so is Kelly. She can’t wait to be an aunt again while my brothers are excited about being uncles.

  Yeah, br
others. Plural.

  Poor Sadie has so many aunts and uncles that she’s rotten. Not sure who’s the worst about spoiling her—Wyatt or Beau? But we spoil their kids too. Four-footed or two-footed—it doesn’t matter to us.

  As for their fairy tales, that’s for them to share, not me. But I like to think I had the easiest row to hoe out of all of us, though I worked the hardest.

  Wyatt, of course, would disagree with me. He and Lacey—

  “You know your daddy,” she says with a smile, pulling me out of my head. “He’s a romantic.”

  “Mommy?” Sadie asks, light brown hair shining in the sun. “One day will I have a fairy tale?”

  My wife of nine and a half years gazes at me, love in her beautiful blue eyes, then she turns her attention back on our daughter. “Yes, only for you, the frog will turn into a prince a lot sooner.”

  Exclusive Never Before Seen (unedited) excerpt from TRUE FOR YOU (Boys of the South Book 3), coming October 2013, starring Jackson “Jaxon Hunter” Morgan and Bliss Davenport:

  Bliss

  The only thing worse than waking up nude with a guy who can’t remember the night before, is waking up married to him.

  I glance down at the wedding ring on my finger. It’s beautiful, white gold or platinum, with diamonds all over it. And it’s the first piece of jewelry I’ve ever owned.

  Although, how long it will stay mine remains to be seen.

  “No, I did not plan this,” Jackson growls into his cell phone as I slip on my glasses. He comes into focus and I blink. I’m not sure who exactly had my glasses fixed, but a big part of me wants to believe that the man standing by the bed had something to do with it.

  “It just happened, Everett. That’s how,” he snaps.

  Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine I’d end up here, in Charleston, South Carolina with country music’s golden bad boy, Jaxon Hunter.

  In private, though, I think of him as just Jackson.

  My heart skips a couple of beats when his dark blue gaze rakes over me. Strawberry blond hair sticking up all over the place, a morning beard makes his face all adorably scruffy.

  Dark blue jeans hang on his narrow hips as he paces. Tight abs, with an, oh holy crap, eight pack in the making leaves my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth. Then there’s the tattoos. Don’t even get me started on the tattoos, but I want to get started on them.

  He tilts his head and smirks, as if he knows exactly what I’m thinking, sending my heart into overdrive.

  As if he could ever be just Jackson.

  I’m not stupid though, despite agreeing to marrying him while I was perfectly sober and he was perfectly drunk off his ass, to think that what will happen next will be all hearts and flowers.

  But I was desperate. I’m still desperate. And I’m tired of living on the street, tired of homeless shelters and crashing in bustops. Since I left the tour, I have no place to go. No place to live, unless I go back home to Forrestville.

  A shudder racks my body as I think about what waits for me at home. No, not my home, not anymore.

  My Uncle Brian drags me by the hair, across the floor. I wrap my hands around his wrists, trying to ease the stinging in my scalp. My glasses are barely hanging on my face. “You were supposed to stay for a week, maybe longer if you’d been any good.”

  Pain slices though my heart from where he’d beat me when I’d turned up this morning.“Please, don’t send me back,” I beg. I’d rather stay here and take my uncle’s abuse than go back.

  Aunt Helen stares at me with vacant eyes as she opens the door. “You’re sixteen. Old enough to earn your keep.”

  “You told me I was hired to clean his house,” I scream.

  “Don’t you backtalk your aunt.” Uncle Brian grabs my shoulder and throws me outside. I land in the dirt, air rushing from my body in a painful woosh.

  The frame of my glasses are painfully tight against my now raw skin face. Lifting my head, I blink and can barely see a thing. The gravel I landed on has scratched the crap out of them.

  “I’ll have to give that bastard his money back, you worthless little bitch. Knowing him, he’ll want his pound of flesh, too, and he ain’t getting it from me or Helen.”

  I spit out a mouthful of grass and taste blood. Fear courses through me and my stomach turns. I can’t go back there. I just can’t. I’d rather slit my wrists than go back.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen next: I’m going inside to finish my breakfast, then make a phone call. In the meantime, I expect you to get your ass back inside and shower, put on the dress Helen bought you and be ready to go back.”

  “I’m never going back,” I say through gritted teeth.

  Brian’s face grows dark and before I can move, he’s outside with me, fingers digging painfully into my skin. “If I have to hog-tie you, I will, Bliss. You ain’t anywhere to go and no place to live. Do you really think anyone cares about you? You’re nothing.”

  “I hate you.”

  His hand draws back and before I can brace myself for what’s coming, he slaps me across the face. My glasses go flying.

  A hand lands on my shoulder.

  I scream and scream, the sound jerking me back to reality, back to the warm bed I’m sitting in. Slamming my hand over my mouth, I make myself stop screaming.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Fall down seven times, get up eight,” I whisper.

  “Bliss, hey, hey…it’s me; it’s me. It’s Jackson,” he says, his voice still rough from sleep and his hangover. He’s rubs my back over and over again with the palm of his hand. “Are you okay?”

  Breathing deeply, I bend over, putting my forehead on my knees, wrapping my arms around my legs. My glasses dig into my nose, but I don’t care.

  “Fall down seven times, get up eight,” I whisper again.

  “Talk to me, baby doll,” he pleads.

  Turning my head a little, I stare at him, though dry eyes.

  I stopped crying four years ago.

  Read how it all began, with the first book in The Boys of the South Series, available everywhere and in print!

  On the surface, twenty-two year old Cole Morgan is exactly what any girl would be proud to take home to meet her parents: He’s charming, intensely handsome and goal-oriented...Only he has some secrets of his own, which include provoking bar fights and a former drug-addict of a mother slowly wasting away in a medical facility.

  At barely twenty, Violet Lynn is Country Music's hottest star, until one night of partying gets out of control. Violet ends up in jail and on TMZ. Suddenly, she’s the girl least likely to be invited anywhere. Sick of the drama and keeping secrets, she runs away from the prying eyes of the paparazzi to her grandmother’s home in Forrestville, North Carolina.

  A chance meeting knocks Cole off his feet, but he doesn’t recognize Violet for who she is. In fact no one does and Violet plans to keep it that way.

  Circumstances, however annoying, keep throwing Violet and Cole together. Unable to stop themselves they give into the inevitable.

  But when Nashville is ready to forgive and forget, Violet is forced to choose between Cole and claiming her spot as the new and improved Princess of Country Music.

  Will Violet and Cole have the courage to live for their dreams...Or their hearts?

  Up next in The Boys of the South series:

  True for You (October 2013) – Jackson “Jaxon Hunter” Morgan and Bliss Davenport

  All For You (a Christmas novella, Nov. 1st) - West and McKenzie

  Wish for You (January 2014) – Wyatt Tanaka and Lacey Evans

  Series Order:

  Boys of the South Series

  Live For You

  Only For You

  True For You (October 2013)

  All For You (Nov. 1, 2013st)

  Wish For You (January 2013)

  If your idea of a great book includes, sexy heroes that make you swoon and sassy heroines that make you laugh, then you’ll love Marquita’s internationally bestsellin
g Holland Springs Series.

  Holland Springs Series

  Seduction of the Billionaire

  Drive Me Crazy

  Driving To You

  Twice Tempted

  Third Time’s a Charm

  His Christmas Wish

  Just Desserts

  Not Over You (December 9th, 2013

  Acknowledgments

  I couldn’t have written this book without the love and support of my wonderful husband, Matthew. Or the amazing patience of my little ones while Mommy was on deadline.

  Andris Bear, Carly Phillips, Sawyer Bennett, Andrea Thompson and Amanda Clark—you guys are THE COOLEST, THE WISEST and quite frankly, HOTTEST crit partner and betas readers EVAH.

  Special thanks to my editor, Cynthia Shepp, for putting up with my wild changes and encouraging me to even try it.

  New York Times Bestselling Author, Marquita Valentine, writes sexy heroes that make you swoon and sassy heroines that make you laugh. She's the author of the bestselling contemporary romance series, Holland Springs, and the new adult romance series, Boys of the South.

  Marquita met her husband aka Hot Builder at Sonic when they were in high school. She suggests this location to all of her single friends in search of a good man--and if that doesn't work, they can console themselves with cheesy tatertots. She lives in North Carolina in a very, very small town with Hot Builder and their two children.

  You can find her all over the Internet, starting here: www.marquitavalentine.com

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  She also loves hearing from her fans: marquita.valentine@yahoo.com