by Bella Andre
They weren’t a couple she would ever have put together just from looking at them. Ty was clearly a wild, dangerous bad boy to his core, while Julie was as polished as a woman could be. And yet, despite the fact that they shouldn’t make sense together, their deep affection for each other was powerfully clear, even to a bystander, as was their desire for each other, just barely beneath the surface but visible in the way he was constantly touching her and she was touching him back.
Hope lit Anna’s heart a beat before a bone-deep sadness settled in. It was all very well to wish that she could be as good a strange fit with Cole. But all it did to her was make the knowledge that it wasn’t ever going to happen more painful.
She could feel Cole’s eyes on her, dark with heat and concern. “Ready to go?”
They said their goodbyes, relief hitting her that she didn’t have to try to play the role of Cole’s wife anymore.
He took her out a door that bypassed the press and she got into his car. She had just put her seat belt on when he hit the locks.
“Finally, alone with my wife again.”
That was when she realized she should have made every excuse she could think of to stay in that room with a crowd of strangers.
Because even as he called his grandmother to find out how she was feeling and fill her in on the details of the game, as unsafe as she’d felt in the VIP box, she’d been a million times safer then than she was now.
Chapter Twelve
“Nothing I like better than Sunday afternoons. Especially after a win.”
On the surface, Cole’s words shouldn’t have made shivers run up and down her spine, but she could easily read the subtext, especially when his hand moved to her kneecap. He wasn’t grabbing at her, wasn’t doing anything particularly sexual, and yet her body was responding as if he had put his big hand down her pants—flooding with arousal, her breasts peaking hard and tight beneath her bra and top.
She didn’t respond, not when the idea of an entire Sunday afternoon alone with Cole had her almost panting with anticipation.
She could feel his eyes on her, the heat in them, as he turned down a narrow alley and pulled over in front of a small storefront. Her brain felt fogged up by all the unfamiliar desire rushing through her synapses and she hadn’t been paying enough attention to realize he hadn’t been heading straight back to his house.
“There’s something I want you to do, sweetheart.”
His warm, gravelly voice, already so thick with need it took her breath away, wrapped itself around her body like a physical touch.
“I want you to go into this store and buy something.”
Her eyes moved from that dangerous heat in his eyes to the almost dark storefront. “Where are we?”
She’d never heard her own voice so husky and Cole’s eyes flared with possessive desire as he ran the knuckles of one hand down the side of her cheek.
“A toy store.”
“But it doesn’t look like someplace children would...Oh.” She licked her lips nervously. “It’s not that kind of toy store, is it?”
His mouth turned up at the edges, but she wouldn’t have called it a smile. He looked at her like she was a delicious meal that he couldn’t wait to dig into.
Cole clicked open the lock to her door. “Go.”
But she couldn’t move. “I haven’t ever—” She shook her head. “I don’t know—”
His fingers moved to her chin and gently turned her face toward his. “But you want to.”
It wasn’t a question. And yet she knew he expected an answer.
She took a deep breath, feeling the way it shook inside her chest. And all the while, as she fought for the strength to tell him what he already knew, he watched her with that heat she’d never thought to see in a man’s eyes.
Finally, she whispered the shocking, difficult truth. “Yes. I’ve always wondered what one of these stores was like inside.” All the while knowing she would never find out.
He brushed his thumb against her lower lip and she couldn’t stop herself from lightly tasting his flesh. A small moan of pleasure emerged from her throat at the rough texture of his calloused skin against her sensitive tongue. And then he pushed his thumb into her mouth and by pure instinct she sucked him in deeper, taking his thumb between her lips and teeth as she had his penis.
He groaned and shifted hard in his seat. “So sweet, Anna. So damn sweet.”
She nipped at him, reaching up for his hand so that she could pull him in further and rain kisses and little licks all along his palm. He pulled away.
“No, baby. I’m not going to let you distract me.” He brushed his damp thumb across her lips. “Not yet.”
He reached over her, his hard muscles pressing into her in the most delicious way as he opened her door.
“You have five seconds to go or it’ll be me picking out your toy.”
His threat made her jump out of his car as if her seat were on fire.
But once she was outside, she didn’t move toward the front door. He rolled her window down and she had to give one more little protest. “This wasn’t what I meant when I said I wanted to be crazy with you.”
“Five minutes, Anna.” The window rolled back up.
She clamped her jaw shut as she pushed open the front door, trying to prepare herself for whatever shocking sights awaited her. But she was surprised to find herself in a perfectly normal-looking store. The middle racks all held clothes that didn’t look much different from what she’d seen adults wear to Halloween parties. One wall was full of books and videos, and while some of the covers were mildly titillating, they weren’t anything she hadn’t seen in her previous boyfriends’ closets.
But it was the display on the far wall that held her interest: dildos of every shape and size and color. Anna knew her sisters all had one—heck, for all she knew, her mother probably had one—but Anna had never been able to get over her embarrassment enough to actually go into an adult store and buy one. Even the “massagers” they sold at drugstores made her blush.
None of her previous boyfriends had even suggested they use sex toys. Then again, none of them had ever made her feel particularly sexual. And not one of them had looked at her like they wanted to burn her clothes and have her walk around naked all the time.
The knowledge that Cole wasn’t about to let her come back to the car empty-handed gave her the courage to walk across the store and study her options. Only, it was hard to concentrate on reading the descriptions of included features when she couldn’t erase the image of Cole using each and every one of them on her.
Her heart pounded so hard she swore she could feel it between her legs, a steady throb of arousal that only heated her up more.
Thankfully, the very normal-looking man behind the counter didn’t even seem to notice she was in the store. He wasn’t coming over to offer suggestions or looking at her like she was a pervert. If anything, he seemed bored and tired as he flicked through a magazine.
The clock was ticking down on her five minutes—and Cole would surely buy the most shocking thing he could find if he had to come in after her. She grabbed the closest box and took it to the counter.
“Cash or credit?”
“Cash.”
The man had no reaction to her slightly squeaky response. He simply told her the total. Anna quickly counted out the bills, then took the bag from him.
The heat of Cole’s gaze immediately hit her as she exited the store, almost making her stumble off the curb. A moment later, she slid into the passenger seat, tightly gripping her new purchase.
“Not knowing what you’ve got in the bag, but knowing it’s going to be damn good, whatever it is, is killing me, sweetheart.”
She looked at him, realized his knuckles were showing white on the gearshift. All because she’d gone in and bought a sex toy.
For him to use on her.
She closed the bag tighter. The balance of power had shifted between them. Yes, he’d all but ordered her to walk into the se
x shop and buy a toy, something she never, ever would have thought she’d want her husband to do.
But now she knew better.
It was exactly what she’d wanted.
He hadn’t just had her do it for him, solely for his own pleasure. Instead, he was forcing her to face her secret desires, so deeply hidden she hadn’t dared admit them even to herself.
He’d done it for her pleasure too.
Once more he was pushing her outside of her comfort zone. Not to a place she didn’t want to go—she already knew he wasn’t the kind of man who would ever do that. Instead, he’d walked hand in hand with her to another, higher ledge and told her it was okay to jump.
Her body was already so aroused, so sensitive to the slightest brush of fabric against her skin, that she hadn’t thought it would be possible for her feel more. But the swelling in her chest had nothing to do with sex—and everything to do with her heart.
A heart she’d vowed to protect at all costs back at the stadium.
* * *
Cole hadn’t come this close to losing it in his pants since early adolescence. But from the minute Anna had walked out of the sex shop holding that brown bag, he’d been using every mental trick he knew to try to hang on until they were back at his house, when he could put his mouth, his hands on her.
At this point, it didn’t even matter what was in the bag. He just needed to possess her, to feel her warm and soft beneath him, to drive into the wet clench of heat between her legs and know that she was his.
Somehow he let her walk from his car to the house on her own, rather than just cavemanning her and dragging her in by her hair so that he could fuck her like the savage he really was. But once the door clicked closed behind them, once she turned around with that look in her eyes that was part anticipation, part apprehension, he was lost.
Completely fucking lost to wanting her.
“Take your clothes off, Anna.”
Each word was clipped, his teeth clenched together so tight he was on the verge of chipping them.
She looked around the empty living room. “Here? But I thought—”
She stopped at the look in his eyes, at his slow approach. “Take them off before I rip them off.”
The brown bag dropped from her hands. “Okay, but shouldn’t we—”
“Not fast enough.” He didn’t have a prayer of keeping his hands off her, of stopping himself from ripping her silky shirt straight down the middle.
“Cole.”
He took her lace-covered nipple in his mouth even as his name left her lips, the single syllable melding with a moan. He lifted his head from her sweet breast and rasped out, “I can’t make it another second, baby,” the only warning he could give before he yanked apart the zipper on her jeans and tore them off her legs, her shoes coming off along with them.
Somewhere in the back of his head he heard her little yelp of surprise, but he couldn’t stop now, not when he was so damn close to what he wanted.
To what he needed so desperately he was going crazy with it.
She was over his shoulder a second later, then flat on her back on his wide leather couch. His hands moved without any help from his brain, ripping her panties and bra off, and then she was lying there, her eyes wide as she stared up at him, her thighs splayed open on the dark leather.
Cole could barely drag in enough oxygen as he stared down at the slick pink flesh between her thighs, her soft brown curls already slightly damp for him.
Maybe, he thought later, he would have been able to stop himself from taking her without any foreplay if he hadn’t already seen the proof of her desire. If he hadn’t known that she was just as desperate for this fucking as he was.
His zipper was down, his cock in his fist a moment later.
He positioned his throbbing head in the center of her drenched pussy lips and drove into her, high and hard, with such ferocity that she slid halfway across the couch.
“Cole!” Anna’s scream ricocheted through the high-ceilinged living room.
He gripped her smooth, naked ass in his rough hands so that he could hold her where he wanted her, then drove into her again and again, harder and harder.
Lost to everything but the feel of her clenching heat around his cock, so damn tight he could already feel his balls pulling up tight, the buzzing sensation at the base of his spine moving around the front of his groin, it took him several seconds to realize that Anna’s hands had come around his shoulders, that her fingernails were scratching down his back.
When had her legs come around his waist to pull him closer? When had she pulled herself up so that she could kiss him, driving her tongue into his mouth with the same pounding rhythm as his cock?
Her inner muscles contracted around him and then she was begging against his chest, “Please, Cole, oh God, more, more!” and then her tongue and teeth were scraping across his nipple.
The feel of her teeth flipped a switch inside, the one that meant he couldn’t hold back anymore, couldn’t protect her from his too-strong needs, his too-big body.
But just as he was about to unleash everything he was into Anna’s soft body, he looked down at her, her slim arms and legs wrapped so tightly around him, and saw just how small she was compared to him.
Fuck. He’d never taken anyone this hard. No matter how good the sex had been, he was always aware of how big he was. Knew how much damage he could do to a small, feminine body. Which was why, subconsciously, he’d always dated tall women, women that could handle him.
But Anna, his small, sweet Anna, was pushing him harder, and faster, than he’d ever let himself be pushed. His cock had never been this hard, on the verge of total obliteration. Jesus, it was going to kill him to pull back. But he had to.
Because he couldn’t hurt Anna.
Sweet, innocent Anna.
Stilling, he held her hips tightly in his hands. She tried to buck into him, but when he wouldn’t let her move, she looked up at him, confusion warring with desperate desire on her sweat-dampened face.
“Cole?”
“So small and sweet.” He had to lick at her lips, tasting the salt from her skin mixing up with her own sweet essence. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
He’d been saying the same thing to her since practically the first moment they’d met, and damn it, he didn’t think he could live with himself if he ever hurt her, if he accidentally ripped her apart because he’d needed her too bad to think straight.
“Then why are you hurting me now?”
His chest clenched with instant regret. “Jesus, Anna, I didn’t mean—too rough on—you’re too small for—” He was trying to force himself out of her wet heat as word fragments fell from his lips, but fuck, even knowing what he was doing to her, he couldn’t manage more than an inch.
“I love it when you’re rough, Cole. I love it when you can’t control yourself.”
He blinked hard, his brain working to convince him that he’d heard her correctly. “But I’m hurting you.”
“The only time you hurt me is when you stop.”
And in that moment as he looked into her eyes and knew she wasn’t saying what he wanted to hear, but was speaking the truth—he let the switch go.
All the way up.
The next heartbeat had him driving into her so hard that the entire couch slid across the floor. The knowledge that he hadn’t imagined her answering smile of pleasure had him ravaging her mouth with his lips and teeth and tongue even as he ravaged her pussy with a cock that was as hard as steel and so thick that he could feel her sensitive tissue working to stretch around him.
And then, through his own crazy thrusting and pumping into her, he felt it...the telltale way her muscles all clenched around his cock, the way her ragged breaths came to a momentary stop, hitching in her chest, the way her nails dug in deep along with her heels, the way her thigh muscles tightened on his hips. Any other time he would have focused on her pleasure, would have made sure she hit her climax before he did, but now that the bea
st was out, there was no locking him back into his cage.
Rearing up over her, he roughly cupped a breast in each hand, her hard nipples searing the centers of his palms, and he rode her like he’d never ridden anyone. Her head was thrown back, her eyes closed tight as she held onto his forearms and let him take her, riding the wave that he’d become. And instead of pain or fear, in that moment when a gasp left her throat as she began to climax and she opened her eyes and stared straight into his soul, he saw his own pleasure mirrored in those ocean depths.
A pleasure so deep that he wasn’t sure how either of them were going to survive without it.
His roar shook the windows as he exploded, her muscles milking him, and if he might have thought that he should pull out, that they weren’t really married and he shouldn’t be shooting his come deep into her womb, he didn’t hear it, wasn’t aware of anything but riding out the biggest, strongest orgasm he’d had in thirty-four years.
* * *
Cole shifted them so that he was lying beneath her on the couch and Anna was plastered over his big, hard body, still holding on for dear life, still trying to figure out how to breathe, how to think. She was still trying to figure out how it was even possible for anything—or anyone—to make her feel so good.
To feel so much.
If she were smart, if she had any sense of self-preservation at all, she’d be sliding off him, putting space between them, making sure she didn’t let him take her over, body and soul.
But that last orgasm must have obliterated a huge chunk of her brain cells. Because she couldn’t have left Cole’s warmth, the comfort of his arms around her, if someone had been holding a gun to her head.
Not when she was finally right where she’d wanted to be for so very long, held in the arms of a strong man who knew exactly what she needed, even when she hadn’t known it herself.
He pulled her tighter and she willingly curled into him, closing her eyes, her muscles relaxed, her breath coming more evenly as she realized just how much all of that crazy, extremely physical sex had worn her out.