by Rylee Swann
Her eyes are wild, the pupils nearly blown in her passion. She thrashes against her restraints, an animal coming alive under me.
“Cole!”
I pound harder, giving it to her the way she likes it. Rough and raw. Reaching up, I pull on the chain of the clamps, and she arches into the pain.
“Cole!”
The word is a prayer.
“Yeah, baby?”
“Ah.” I watch her closely, looking for the first sign of distress. She likes it hard, likes it rough, but it can difficult to know if I’ve crossed a line. “Please. Come. Please.”
I grin. She’s okay. More than okay. I’ve driven her into a new universe.
As I thrust in and pull out, I feel her hot heat try to vacuum me back in. I thrust again, hard, and watch her breasts bounce on her chest, and know she feels them each time they move.
I’m so damn close to coming, but I don’t want to stop, I don’t want to leave this moment. This place in time where nothing exists but the two of us and our desire for each other. Our… love?
“Need. Touch. You.” She says the words between gasps and I grin down at her, knowing that the way I have her tied up is torture. Not that she doesn’t love it. She does. But she also loves to hold me, rake her fingernails down my back. She loves to sink her hands in my hair. Touch my skin.
“You will, baby. Soon, I’ll let you. And you’ll never let me go.”
Fuck. My balls tighten as an even more urgent need to come seizes me. My vision blurs, graying at the edges. It’s torture to wait, but I want her to come one more time.
She does, and I release the clamps. Becca screams as blood flow returns in an agonizing rush, increasing the pleasure of the orgasm. Then it’s my turn, and I pump once more, then feel the rush of semen releasing from my balls in its own beautiful agony.
One day, we’ll make a child like this, I realize, and my face burns with the knowledge that I have a future ahead of me. A future I refuse to fuck up.
I release her from the cuffs, sink back down onto her body as her arms and legs close around me, her mouth on mine. She’s mint and sweat and something else that is uniquely her.
“I’m starting anger management classes tomorrow, Becca,” I say against her lips. “I’ll begin seeing a therapist on Friday to help work past my issues.”
A tear falls, and I kiss it away. “I love you, Cole.”
And there it is.
The reason to live. Not just breathe in and out, but live life to its damn fullest. I kiss her again, stroking her tongue with mine, curling it into my mouth to suck and claim.
“I love you, Becca. And I thank you.”
She smiles up at me, pushing my hair from my forehead. “Thank me for what?”
“Saving me from myself.”
“I think we saved each other, Cole. We were both self-destructive in our own way, and I’m sure we both have work to do to release the past, to be better, do better… and we can. Together.”
I roll us until she’s lying on top of me, taking my heavy weight off the woman I love.
“Together.” Our fingers link.
She smiles. “Yeah. Together.”
EPILOGUE
Becca
“Cole Daniel James.”
I surge to my feet as Cole’s name is called out, and he walks across the stage in his cap and gown. He did it! It wasn’t easy pulling up his grades enough to make this day a reality, but he did it anyway. A two-point-two grade point average won’t set any records, but it is enough to give him the diploma that’s currently in his hands.
We learned that Cole is dyslexic. As I began tutoring him, I noticed the signs from an article I’d written on learning disorders the year before. I’d been amazed, and extremely pissed, that he’d never been tested before.
“Teachers just passed me,” he said with a shrug when I pointed it out. And they had. Barely, but enough for him to move on to the next grade, and the next, and the next. Being a star athlete has its privileges and its disadvantages. Being a star athlete for Cole James meant that he’d gotten into college while being functionally illiterate.
In my research, I learned that nearly one in four high school students can’t read at a functional level, and it’s not just a problem with inner city schools as one might think. It’s caused by a broken system in which parents place all the responsibility on the schools, and where good teachers are pushed to the brink of their sanity for students to pass standardized tests. If a student isn’t failing or causing trouble, it’s easy to for them to get lost in the stream of oversized classrooms. And if parents aren’t involved, encouraging their child to sit down and read to them… I sigh. Their child becomes another Cole.
Beside me, Mia gives me a squeeze. “He looks so handsome,” she says as he smiles for the camera, diploma in hand. He does. He smiles a lot more now, and that upward tilt of his mouth makes my toes curl.
As he walks off the stage, he finds me in the crowd. Our eyes meet, and I blow him a kiss while his fist pumps the air. I laugh. I haven’t seen him this happy since he was chosen by the Titans in the third round of the NFL draft.
It could have gone so differently.
Six months ago, Cole was on the edge of losing everything, but because of my asshole ex-boyfriend, we were brought together. In a few short days, both our worlds were upended in the best possible way.
Chaos had burned all around us, but we hadn’t run from the fire, we’d simply embraced the warmth, then trudged through the ashes to plant new hope, new memories for us to cling to.
I have Rob to thank for that, I suppose. During the times I want to hate him, I choose to remember that he facilitated me meeting Cole and giving me this new life. No, it wasn’t easy. After learning that Rob had indeed given me GHB, it wasn’t easy sitting in the witness box and testifying to how Rob had drugged me, invaded my privacy, and in a jealous rage, attempted to slander the college’s quarterback. It wasn’t easy being cross-examined by his attorneys, having every minute detail of my life examined and judged. It wasn’t easy seeing the pictures Rob had taken of me while I was passed out flashed upon a screen. But it had been worth it. Mostly.
I cried when I learned that he hadn’t been sentenced to any time in jail — he’d gotten time served, fines, and probation — but his “good” name had been muddied, which to a person like Rob Huntsman, was almost worse than time spent behind bars. At least I attempt to see it that way. Otherwise, I’d drive myself crazy with the unfairness of it all.
And through it all, Cole has been by my side, urging me into counseling too. Counseling I never knew I needed to process my father’s resentment of me, process his death.
Cole weathered his storm too. Once his drug test came back clean, he’d dealt with the naysayers who claimed he’d cheated the system with a grace that had astounded me. Part of his acceptance of their judgment was because he agreed with them.
“They’re right,” he told me one cold night while I was wrapped in his warm arms. “I did cheat the system, and it was only luck…” he kissed my forehead, “and you that I got away with it.” He carried a lot of guilt around that. Guilt he processed through counseling and through a program he joined to encourage high school students to stay off drugs. As he said, “I can’t change my past, but I can change my future, and maybe the future of a few other kids.”
To say I’m proud of him is an understatement.
“I’m going to miss you so much,” Mia says, squeezing me even harder against her side.
I wrap my arm around her shoulders and hug her back. “I’m going to miss you too.”
When we learned that Cole was heading to Nashville, Tennessee, I knew that’s where I wanted to be too. When he asked me to come with him, it was official. I applied for a transfer to Vanderbilt, and I learned just last week that I was accepted. We leave tomorrow, both of us ready for a fresh start.
A few days ago, Cole closed on the purchase of a pretty little condo with the signing bonus he received, and we were
blessed to be able to move in right away. So, after all the graduation festivities are done, that’s where we’re going. To start our lives. Together. I can’t wait. It’s only a little over a thousand square feet, but it feels like a mansion to us. It’s perfect, with tall windows and two bedrooms, giving me a studio/office in which to write. Since neither of us has furniture worth doing anything with besides dragging to the side of the road, we’ve been looking online for some deals before our big move. And it’s been fun choosing colors. Nothing white. Nothing drab. Never again.
After graduation, Cole’s football coach hosts a barbecue in all the team graduates’ honor. The food is delicious, and I eat so much I barely have room for a slice of cake.
“You did it!” I tell Cole, not for the first time today. It’s been a running theme in my head.
“We did it,” he reminds me. “You and me. Our own little team.”
After cake and ice cream, Cole yells to get everyone’s attention. He holds up his glass of beer and says, “I’d like to make a toast.”
When everyone is quiet, he begins… “Today we celebrate an important milestone in not only my life but the lives of some of my friends.”
I glance over at Troy, who is holding up his beer, still wearing his graduation cap. He winks at me. After that horrid night at the bar, we’ve become friends. In fact, I became friends with a number of the players, feeling like I had a bunch of big brothers around me all the time. Troy was able to quit the steroids, and his determination won him a contract with Buffalo. I’ll miss him. I’ll miss them all.
“I don’t think any of us reach our dreams in isolation. Behind us or beside us are people who help us along the way. Some offer a hand. Some who kick our asses. Some who simply take our hand and pull us in the right direction.” He looks over at me, and my heart skips a beat in my chest. “I’ve been lucky to have someone who does all of that and more. Because of Becca, I’m not in a gutter right now. Because of her, I found my direction, my path. And because of her, for her, I refuse to waver from it.”
Tears burn my eyes as Cole looks at me with so much love I feel my entire body will burst from the overflow of it all
“Today, I toast our team, my teammates, and the woman I love. May all of us be lucky enough to have a Becca in our lives.”
Everyone raises their glass, clinking them with their neighbors. “Here, here,” is chanted all around me, but I only have eyes for Cole, who is… oh my god, sinking to one knee.
The entire crowd grows completely quiet as Cole sets down his drink and pulls a little box from his pocket. I’m quite sure I’m going to hyperventilate on the spot.
“Becca. You saved me. You turned my life around. You gave me the strength to stand on the path I’d always dreamed of following. Join me on that path. Marry me. Be my wife. Please.”
I look down into his gorgeous face, and it blurs before me, then clears again as I blink away the tears that are trying to blind me. Tears have clogged my throat, my nose, my entire face and I can do nothing but nod my head, laughing and crying like an idiot. No, like a woman so grateful for the man in front of her.
The ring is beautiful, but nothing can ever sparkle as brightly as Cole’s smile as he stands and takes me in his arms, twirling me around. “Is that a yes?”
I cough and sniff, running a hand under my nose, then take the napkin the coach’s lovely wife hands to me. “It depends. Am I finally going to get that interview with the bad boy?”
He laughs, throwing his head back with the sound. “Yes.”
I grin. “Then it’s a yes from me too. It’s a great big yes.”
Cheers roar all around us.
Through the turmoil, Cole kisses me so softly I ache from the preciousness of the gesture. “We can wait,” he says so that only I can hear. “I know you want to graduate first, but I want you to know I’m in this for the long haul with you. I want you to move to Tennessee with me knowing I’m one hundred percent committed to you.”
I press my hands on both sides of his beautiful face, watching the diamonds catch the light, causing a sunburst of color on his skin. “I’ll follow you anywhere. Everywhere. You’re my life, Cole. And I’m grateful to you every day.”
He grins. “Thank you for saying yes.”
I laugh and kiss his sweet lips. “Did you really think I was going to say no?”
His eyes search my face, and he tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “I was hoping, praying, but yeah, there was a loud voice in my ear telling me you’d probably bolt.”
I step closer to him, exhaling as his arms go around me, pulling me to his strong chest. “I’m not going anywhere. We’re in this life together. For better or worse.”
He kisses me, again so softly I ache from this big man being so gentle. “Promise?”
I don’t hesitate as I look into the eyes of the man I love.
“Promise.”
THE END
Continue on to read a special sneak peek of my previous release, LOVER WANTED.
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
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And now, continue on for that promised Sneak Peek!
A Sneak Peek
Lover Wanted
Rylee Swann
CHAPTER ONE
Eviction.
I yank the boldly written notice off my door just as old Mrs. Peterson shuffles down the hallway toward me. She avoids my gaze, but I can hear her mumbling something along the line of “irresponsible young safe space jackasses” and I guess, in her eyes, I fall into that category.
I look closer at the letter. Thirty days to vacate the premises.
I sigh. I guess she isn’t wrong.
But dammit, she isn’t right either. I’ve tried so hard to keep up, working two jobs when I could just to make ends meet. I swipe at a tear as I stuff a key into the lock of my shabby apartment. Who gets fired from flipping burgers? Granted, I didn’t enjoy it—I’d always had a desk job—but it afforded me the privilege of living in the crap of luxury.
Tossing the letter down on the flea market coffee table, I collapse on the sofa and stare at my six year old laptop, remembering what I heard the two college students giggling about earlier. They’d used words like Fun. Sexy. Totally legit. And the most important word… cash.
What the hell.
Feeling like I had a thousand pound weight on my shoulders, I shove myself into a sitting position and boot the laptop up. Opening a browser, I begin to type. Then… holy shit… an ad appears, just like the girls said it would.
Question - For exhibitionists who possibly need some doe - m4w
My hand hovers over the mouse before I take a deep breath and click. An even more bizarre message appears next:
Can you fuck a fit white male while being watched for doe?
If so, write for details and tell me if you are truly capable of doing this.
I laugh at the typo, ready to move on to the next ad. Doe. I can’t help it. Julie Andrews singing Doe-Re-Mi pops into my head.
Then it hits me. It isn’t a typo. This guy means dough as in money. He must have typed it the way he did because it’s against the rules or against the law or whatever to solicit for sex on Craig’s List. I don’t know. It’s not like I peruse the casual sex ads on any site every day. Or ever.
I drop my face in my hands, glad no one is around to witness this moment of shame. Me… Kim Pond is lo
oking for casual sex on Craig’s List. Hell, I didn’t even know there was such a thing until today. I guess that’s what people do these days when they’re horny, have no husband or even a boyfriend, and no money to prowl the bar scene.
Straightening my shoulders, I take a deep breath and grab the guy’s alias to email him back. I’m totally anonymous. Surely it won’t hurt to just ask a question or two.
I read your Craig’s List ad and have questions, but I think I could do this. Just give me a couple of glasses of wine. Tell me more?
My finger hovers over the send key for a few seconds, then I just click it before I can change my mind. Email sent, and come what may. I’m nervous. What the hell am I doing?
I check my email to see if he’s replied in the thirty seconds I haven’t looked, then make a dash for the kitchen to see what I have chilling in the fridge. Ah, my salvation. A bottle of Chardonnay.
Is it just the cheap bottles of wine these days that are screw tops? Or does wine not come corked anymore? I wouldn’t know; I don’t have the budget for the expensive stuff. Ah, who am I kidding? I don’t have the budget for the cheap stuff either, but you have to take some pleasure out of life no matter how small.
I enjoy a good cold glass of wine and always have a wine goblet chilling in the freezer. I grab it and pour myself a generous amount. I take a sip, then another and then another.
The fact is I’m tired of being broke. So very tired of it. Glass of rapidly draining wine in hand, I go to the TV to lose myself in some mind-numbing sitcom. I grab the remote before remembering that I canceled my cable service a few days ago. It was either that or cancel my internet and then how would I work? How would I look for jobs? How would I connect? So yeah, cable had to go. Bon voyage, I knew you well.
Feeling even more depressed now, I make my way back to where my laptop beckons to me. Clicking refresh on my email, I take another gulp of the sour grapes… and almost choke. I cough and wipe tears from my eyes so I can read the reply from Mr. Doe Man.