by Chloe Hawk
I swallowed, my pulse pounding.
“When I found out where the money had come from, I kicked Jeffrey out and gave the money back to that group of investors. But it was too late – they knew I didn’t approve of what they were doing, and they wanted to make sure I kept quiet.”
“And now Jeffrey’s working with these people? Are they trying to hurt you?” I couldn’t stand the thought of someone trying to hurt Cole.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure if Jeffrey’s working with them, or if he’s trying to cut a deal with the FBI, to turn me in and save himself.”
I almost laughed out loud. The thought of the FBI being after Cole was just too absurd. “The FBI? What are you talking about?”
“Jeffrey could be trying to get information on me, make it seem like I knew more than I did so he can protect himself. I think that’s why he stole your phone.”
“Well, why don’t you just tell on him first?”
“It’s not that simple.”
He moved my hand away from his tattoo, and I shivered, even though there was a blanket over us. I couldn’t believe I was lying naked in bed with my stepbrother. I’d dreamed about this growing up, all those nights Cole had brought home other women, all those nights he’d stayed out late night with some girl, and I knew exactly what it was he was doing.
I wanted to ask him about Lucy Caro, about what she had to do with all this, about how long they were engaged, about what she’d meant to him. But I’d pushed Cole far enough.
“You’re coming back to the city with me,” Cole said. He rolled over so that his body was on top of mine. I loved the feel of his weight on me, strong and solid.
“I want to,” I said.
“Then you are.”
“I don’t know…” I trailed off, an ache filling my chest. An ache for what I wanted there to be for us – a real relationship, a normal situation. But that could never be.
“Avery,” he whispered, his eyes serious, “I want to treat you the way you deserve to be treated.”
The way he was looking at me, coupled with the way he’d said my name – full of longing and softness, which encapsulated the exact emotions that were pulsing through me – made my resolve start to weaken.
The thought of him leaving me here, of me being without him… it was too much to bear.
He shifted his weight so that my legs were forced open, and I could feel his dick, rock hard against my leg. He moved gently, pushing inside of me slowly, so slowly I could feel every inch of him as he went.
He kissed me, his mouth crushing against mine, but this time the kiss was softer, gentler. He was still in charge, but the intent was different. This time, he wanted to show me that he was trying to give me what I wanted – vulnerability and openness.
He continued to move inside of me, stroking my face and kissing my lips, stopping every so often just to pull back and gaze into my eyes. With every stroke, I could feel him slide against my clit, and the sensation was the most erotic one I’d ever felt.
“I’m going to come,” I whispered.
“Come for me, baby,” he murmured, his eyes half closed. “Come right on me, Avery.” My orgasm came a second later, cresting waves of ecstasy that sent vibrations of pleasure thrumming through my entire body.
He came, too, again filling me up, not stopping until I’d taken every last drop of him.
When he was done, he kissed me softly on my forehead.
“Was that okay?” he asked.
I nodded, loving that he’d decided to be soft with me like that, when I knew it was against his natural urges.
He kissed me again, and then rolled off of me.
I watched as he sat up and slid his legs over the side of the bed, his back muscles flexing as he moved. I knew what was coming next, and I dreaded it. I wanted to stay in this moment forever.
“We should go,” he said.
“Cole,” I said, reaching out and touching his back.
He turned and looked at me, but I didn’t know what else to say.
So instead I just nodded, and then climbed out of bed.
I would get my stuff.
And I would go with him.
Because the truth was, no matter how wrong it was, I couldn’t stay away from him. And trying to pretend I could was useless.
***
I was in my room getting dressed when I heard the sirens. They filtered through my window, from seemingly far way, and at first the sound hardly even registered. It wasn’t unusual to hear sirens in my neighborhood, wasn’t strange for the police to be called at all hours of the night.
I slid a long-sleeved t-shirt over my head, then grabbed some of my clothes and slid them into my old backpack. If I was going back to Cole’s, I should at least have some clothes that fit.
When I got into the hallway, Cole wasn’t there, but I could hear those same rustling sounds coming from Gordon’s office.
I walked toward the open door just in time to see Cole take some papers out of Gordon’s filing cabinet and slip them into his back pocket.
“You ready?” he asked, not making any move to hide what he was doing, but not giving me an explanation for it, either.
I thought about asking him what he was doing, but again, I knew it would be no use. So instead I just nodded. “I’m ready.”
He took my hand and we began walking down the stairs. He put his finger to his lips as we skipped the squeaky step near the top. But it didn’t matter.
As we passed through the living room, the light on the end table in the corner switched on.
Gordon was sitting on the couch wearing jeans and no shirt, his legs spread out in a casual position. An open beer was sitting on the table next to him. “Well, well, well,” he said. “What do we have here?”
“Ignore him,” Cole instructed me, pulling toward the front door. His hand tightened around mine as we walked, and my heart thrummed in my chest.
Gordon stood up and stepped in front of Cole, blocking his path.
“Don’t do this,” Cole said. He didn’t sound threatening – instead, he was calm and measured, which almost made it scarier. Cole was here to do what he needed to do, and if that meant going at it with Gordon, he was going to – no threats needed.
“Don’t do what?’ Gordon asked.
“Don’t try to stand in my way.”
Gordon laughed, a loud sick laugh that permeated the room. From down the hall, I heard the click of a light switch and saw my mom’s bedroom light come on. Stay in there, I pleaded. Please don’t come out here.
She was going to pay either way – if we got out of here, Gordon would take his anger out on her for letting me come back. And if Gordon somehow ended up hurting me or Cole, he would still take it out on my mom, blaming her for pushing him to do something he always swore he didn’t want to do.
The difference was, if she stayed in her room now, I wouldn’t have to see it. It made me selfish, but if she came out, if I had to see her and look into her eyes, I might never leave. I understood how fucked up it was, wanting to stay and protect my mom, a person who’d let me get abused over and over again, who’d just told me a couple of days ago that I’d pushed my stepfather to do horrible things to me, that I wasn’t allowed back into my house even though I had nowhere to go.
But it was what it was.
“Stand in your way of what?” Gordon asked Cole now. He slid his hands behind his back and stretched, almost acting nonchalant.
“We’re leaving,” Cole said and we pushed by Gordon. He let us go no problem.
But I knew it wasn’t going to be that easy.
Once we were outside, the sirens I heard earlier got closer, and a second later, a police car pulled into our driveway.
Cole sighed next to me.
“Cole,” I said, wrapping my hand around his arm.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
“What’s going on here?” the cop asked. I didn’t recognize him from around town. He must h
ave been new. He had a dark crew cut and his nose was too small for his face. His voice was deep, commanding, and his eyes narrowed at us suspiciously.
“This man broke into my house.” Gordon’s voice came trailing across the yard from the porch, and I turned to see him standing there, leaning against one of the rotting beams.
“Do you live here, son?” the cop asked Cole.
Cole shook his head. “No. I came to get my stepsister.”
The cop looked at me, his eyes lingering on the way I was holding onto Cole. I loosened my grip on Cole’s arm.
“You want to leave with your brother, miss?” the policeman asked me.
I nodded, afraid to speak.
“She wants to stay here,” Gordon said. “She’s afraid to say it.”
The cop nodded, and I glanced back at Gordon, watching as he raised his eyebrows every so slightly at the police officer. And that’s when I understood. Gordon and this cop knew each other somehow, and the cop was going to take Cole away, just because Gordon wanted him to.
“Sir, I’m going to need you to put your hands on top of the car,” the officer said. He spit onto our driveway, and the phlegm was dark and green, like he was a heavy smoker or had a cold.
Cole did as he was told, and the officer patted him down.
“You have anything on you that could hurt me?” he asked. “Any needles or weapons?”
“No,” Cole said.
I remembered the papers he’d taken from Gordon’s office, wondering what they were, if Cole was going to be in trouble if the cop found them.
“Stop,” the cop said. “Stop struggling.”
“I’m not,” Cole said, sounding confused.
And he wasn’t. He was just standing there, his hands up and spread against the cruiser.
But the next thing I knew, the cop took out his baton and smashed it into the back of Cole’s legs.
“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop it!” I turned to Gordon. “Tell him to stop, Gordon, please!”
“Avery,” Cole said, his voice a warning. “It’s okay.” Our eyes met, and he shook his head at me slightly. I could tell what he was saying – that Gordon and the cop were trying to provoke him, that they wanted him to lose his shit and do something. But that we both needed to stay calm.
I nodded, letting him know that I agreed, but a second later, the cop turned Cole around and punched him square in the face. There was a sickening snap as blood began pouring from Cole’s nose.
Cole was twice the cop’s size – he could have fought back. But instead he stood there as the cop pulled back and went to hit him again.
I couldn’t just stand there and do nothing.
I rushed the cop, grabbing at his arm. He was too strong for me to really stop him, but my action must have taken him by surprise.
“Avery!” Cole yelled. “Stop!”
But it was too late. I was holding on to the cop’s arm as tight as I could as he tried to shake me off. Finally, his meaty hand reached back and grabbed my jaw, squeezing my cheeks so hard it hurt. He pushed me off of him and sent me sprawling to the ground, my butt hitting the concrete and knocking the wind out of me. My palms scraped against the driveway, slicing off tiny ribbons of skin.
“You want to play, too, huh, sweetheart?” the cop asked me. “You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you?” I stood up and he reached out and ran his finger over the top of my shirt. “Probably why your brother here can’t keep his hands off you.”
He turned to look at Cole again, and before I could figure out what was happening, Cole punched him hard in the face.
The cop went crumpled to the ground and then lay there, motionless.
Cole and I looked at each other, the desperation shining bright in his eyes.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Is he okay?”
Cole knelt down over him. “Yeah, he’s okay. I just knocked him out.” He shook his head. “You shouldn’t have done that, Avery.”
“I had to,” he said. “He was going to hurt you.”
“He was just trying to scare me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Gordon called from the porch. He lit up a cigarette and took a long drag. “Resisting arrest and knocking out a cop. Real nice, Cole.”
His voice dripped with hatred, and I was once again shocked at how much he seemed to detest his son. Why? What had happened to make him like that? Was he just born pure evil? Or was there some kind of history between him and Cole I didn’t know about? Was that why Cole had been lurking around Gordon’s office?
Before I could contemplate the answers to those questions, three more police cars pulled up to our driveway, and six officers got out, their guns drawn as they ran up the driveway.
“Get down on the ground!” they yelled at Cole. “Get down on the ground!”
Cole got down on the ground, but it didn’t matter.
The officers converged on him with their sticks and their fists and their guns.
I was helpless as I watched them begin to beat Cole.
All I could do was stand there and scream.
End of Book Five. Look For Book Six, Coming Soon
In the meantime, click here to check out the hot and sexy new series WHAT HE WANTS by Hannah Ford
Twenty-one-year-old law student Charlotte Holloway isn’t the type of girl to lust after things she can’t have. But when she starts working for the sexy and mysterious Noah Cutler, Charlotte can’t help but dream about the gorgeous billionaire, even though she knows it’s just a fantasy. Men like Noah – gorgeous, dark, and driven-- usually aren’t interested in women like her.
Noah Cutler is a man who doesn’t take no for an answer. His drive to go after exactly what he wants has made him one of the most powerful men in the city. And while he could have his pick of any woman, his sights are set on Charlotte. And he won’t stop until he’s taken control of every inch of her deliciously curvy body…
EXCERPT:
“You are so fucking sexy,” Noah rasped. “Come here. Come to me.”
I got up and crossed the room to him, and he pulled me into his lap. His hand
slid up my thigh, pushing my skirt with it. His other hand slid up to the back of my head, and pushed me toward him. “I’m going to fuck you again, Charlotte,” he said. I could feel his cock hard against me, and I moaned. “This time I’m going to fuck you for a long time. Do you think you can handle it?”
“Yes,” I breathed.
“Tell me you want me to fuck you.”
“I want you to fuck me,” I said. “Please, I need you to fuck me.”
“Say my name.” He dipped a finger into my mouth and I sucked on it softly, watching his eyes blaze as I did it.
“Fuck me, Noah,” I whispered. “Please, I want you to fuck me.”
He kissed me then, softly, which was a surprise after all the dirty things he’d been saying to me. His tongue was warm and perfect, his mouth exploring mine, probing hungrily.
I pushed myself against the hardness of his dick, but just like he had earlier, he reached out and held my hips, stopping me. “No,” he said. “You don’t get to control this. I do. And we’re going to go nice and slow.”
He began to unbutton my shirt, stopping as soon as my breasts were exposed. He ran a finger over my cleavage.
“I’m going to explore every single inch of these hot, sexy curves of yours. Do you understand that, Charlotte?”
“Yes,” I said. I was dripping now, so turned on that I was afraid I might come without him even touching me.
He stood up, his hands grabbing at my ass. I wrapped my legs around him and he picked me up like it was nothing, like I was as light as a feather. I buried my face in his shoulder.
I hesitated for a just a second, right before he carried me into his bedroom.
If I did this, there was no turning back…
Click here to read more!