Said heart is beating wildly out of my chest right now.
He nods. “Yep. I’m gonna find a way to tame the cougar.”
“Is that a challenge?” I feel a bit woozy.
“Nope, it’s a promise.”
Sixteen
So he’s faster than me
I feed Sam a grape.
“Did you know, merlot is made from this grape?” Sam asks me, and he traces the curve of my neck. He gives me goose-bumps and I shiver.
“Nope. But Merlot is delicious.”
“You’re delicious,” he clarifies, and he licks me to prove it. “Sweet like honey.”
“But ornery like the devil.”
He chuckles. “I can’t argue with that.”
“You’re like merlot,” I tell him thoughtfully, eyeing his masculine jawline and sexy day-old stubble. “You get better with age. Eff the young bucks.”
He bursts out laughing at this.
“Why, Miss Sara, you’ve done quite the three-sixty.”
He announces that like a southern belle and I giggle.
“I was misguided,” I admit. “Age really is just a number. I like your number.”
“Which number is that?” he asks. I grin.
“Eight, for inches. Thirty-eight, for years. Two, for orgasms in a row. Need I go on?”
“My shoe size is thirteen,” he tells me. “And you know what they say about big feet.”
“Yeah, they require big shoes,” I snort.
He pins me to the bed and nuzzles my ear.
“What else?”
“They mean you have very good understanding.”
He chuckles again. “Lies!” he announces. “A wive’s tale. I have terrible empathy and understanding.”
I think about the way he handled the blue hairs at the wedding, and I beg to differ.
“I like you,” I tell him abruptly.
“I like you, too,” he answers, and his words are soft and firm and sexy. “I knew I would, from the moment you ran into me in the wine cellar dripping wet and spitting fire.”
“I don’t spit fire,” I tell him. “I breathe it.”
He shakes his head. “Either way. I knew I’d like you.”
“You didn’t show it. You said I was too old.”
The words taste like poison in my mouth and he laughs.
“I had to get your attention somehow.”
“Well, mission accomplished.”
We kiss for a while, then he slides his hand between my legs and strokes me into an inferno.
“You’re insatiable,” I tell him.
“You like it,” he answers.
He’s got me there.
I hike my leg and accidentally stick my heel in his ass. He winces, but continues.
He uses his fingers to make magic, then plunges inside of me with nary a how do you do. It’s fine. He knows I like it that way.
I like primal things.
And sexy things.
When we come, we shudder together, forehead to forehead and somehow, it feels special. And that specialness makes me scared.
Like, terrified into silence scared.
Like, I’m rootted to the ground and can’t move scared.
Like, I can’t breathe scared.
You get the picture.
So without another word, I get out of bed, put a t-shirt on, and head for my car. It’s the only logical thing to do when a person is that scared. I’ll get my stuff (and pants) later. Right now, I need to run. I need to get out. I need to claw at my throat and rip my trachea out so I can breathe.
That would be detrimental to my status of being alive, so I settle for slamming on the accelerator.
I’m tearing down the driveway in a cloud of dust when Sam emerges from the house, and I see the confusion on his face in my rearview mirror. It tugs at my heart, but that’s a bad sign, too.
I don’t have a heart. Or if I do, it’s ice.
I don’t feel.
That leaves one open to pain.
I turn the radio up and drive, and when I come to a cross-roads intersection five minutes later, I’m surprised when Sam’s truck comes roaring up behind me.
The dust clouds billow around him and he gets out of his truck like an avenging angel. I scramble to the passenger side to leap out, but my high heel gets caught on my e-brake.
Damn it.
I try to yank my knee up.
In doing so, I knee myself in the cheek.
Hard.
I see stars.
Sam laughs from behind me.
Damn him, too.
Hands grab my ankles and pull me out backward.
Sam turns me around, staring into my eyes.
“You’re not running,” he tells me seriously. His thumb tilts my chin up so that I have to look at him. “First, you’re not wearing pants. Second, I’m good for you and you know it.”
“I don’t know it,” I argue. “You could be like Ebola for me. You could melt my internal organs.”
He’s bewildered by that, but shakes his head and continues.
“You’re not a coward,” he tells me. “And right now you’re acting like it. Stop being a chicken shit, and get back in that car, and come back and have lunch with me.”
“Or?” I lift my nose.
“Or you’re a chicken shit,” he shrugs.
“That that back!” I hiss.
“Nope. You’ve got to prove it’s not true.”
“I do not.”
But I do.
I can tell I do.
Because no one calls me a chicken shit and lives.
I allow myself to be manipulated.
I can’t help it. My non-chicken-shitedness is on the line.
“You’re a monster,” I growl as I climb back in the car.
He laughs.
His giant truck follows me back.
When I crawl out, I snap at him. “Only tiny dicks drive such big penis extensions.”
He’s non-plussed. “Oh, I think my manhood has already been established.”
Damn it all.
As soon as I take one step inside, Sam pins me against the wall and kisses me breathless.
“You’re never going to want to drive away from me again,” he tells me firmly, his hand between my legs, cupping me.
After a minute, I’m so breathless that I can’t argue.
We have sex in the foyer, in front of the door, with the hardwood floor scraping my back. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters but for the mind-blowing orgasm and sense of intimacy that shrouds this room.
“Don’t melt my organs,” I whimper to him when we’re done.
“I would never,” he promises. “I like your organs the way they are. Especially this one, and this one, and this one…” he shows me which one he likes with his fingers and his lips, and before I know it, we’re having sex on a sofa. I don’t even know how we got to the living room.
All I know is that I’m here in the sun with Sam, and he’s beautiful and strong and funny, and there’s no place I’d rather be. I almost wish my organs had melted. I’d feel less vulnerable.
“Is this what it feels like to like someone?” I ask hesitantly, my fingers poised over Sam’s thigh.
He chuckles. “I think so, yes.”
“God. That means I have a heart, after all.”
He chuckles again. “We’ve known that all along, Sara. You’re not fooling anyone. Also, your eye is turning black. Let’s get you some ice for it.”
I’m horrified, but Sam rushes to reassure me.
“Don’t worry about it. You look fantastic in black.”
“All devils do,” I nod, because that makes total sense.
He laughs. “You’re my devil now. I’ll use your evil for good.”
“Prove it,” I tell him. He smiles.
“Challenge accepted.”
Epilogue
Alli
“Oh my gosh, I’m tired,” I sigh as Alex and I pile through the back door of our home. “What
an amazing time, but man, you wore me out.”
Alex sets out suitcases down and hugs me.
“Thank you for the honeymoon,” he kisses my forehead. “And for being such a beautiful bride.”
I grin, and as I do, I see a note on the table, and Sara’s haphazard handwriting.
“Uh-oh,” I groan. I pick it up and read it.
Alli,
So, your brother is beautiful and amazing. We’ve taken another ten days off so that we can go on a few weekend trips together. (I mean, if you think about it, ten days is just five weekends strung together.) Taylor is going to keep on eye on things here, and we’ll be back next week. I’m still trying to decide if I forgive you for hiding Sam from me. I probably will.
I hope your honeymoon was amazing.
Ta!
Sara
“Good lord,” I hand the note to Alex and he grins as he reads it.
“You had to know she’d be good for him,” he says.
I sigh. “I knew she’d either be good for him, or she’d kill him. And that verdict is still out.”
“No, it isn’t,” Alex objects. “You saw the way he was looking at her at the wedding.”
“Yeah. If she hurts him, though…”
“He’s a big boy,” Alex reminds me. “And Sara is a big girl. She’s impetuous, but she has a good heart.”
“Yeah,” I admit. And her good heart, urging me to get back into the dating world, is how I met Alex. But still.
“Still, she’s wild and untamed.”
“I think Sam is going to tame her.” Alex digs in the fridge for a water. “The only question now is… what do you think of the fact that you and Sara might truly be sisters one day?”
The thought slams into me, and I find it actually makes me giddy.
“I’d love it,” I admit. Alex smiles.
“I know.”
“You’d should probably start putting together wedding notebooks now,” he suggests. “I know how you like to plan.”
The thought of catalogued and organized binders full of plans makes me giddy, too.
“You know me so well,” I tell him.
“I sure do, Mrs. Harris. But before you get on that, let’s organize our afternoon, shall we?”
There’s a promising and sexual look in my husband’s eyes and my belly flip-flops.
“Didn’t you get enough on our honeymoon?”
Alex shakes his head.
“Nope. I’ll never get enough of you.”
With that, my new husband leads me to our bedroom and we close the door behind us.
About the Author
Courtney Cole is a New York Times Bestselling author of all kinds of inappropriate fun. She writes angsty and sad, she writes funny and wild… the point is, she writes. A lot.
To learn more about her, please visit www.courtneycolewrites.com
@Court_Writes
courtneycolewrites
www.courtneycolewrites.com
[email protected]
Also by Courtney Cole
To read the beginning of the Cougar Chronicles, please read Confessions of an Alli Cat… the full-length novel that started the wild fun.
Confessions of an Alli Cat
If you’d like something a little more serious, something that will bend your mind and turn you upside down, check out THE NOCTE TRILOGY.
The darkness begins with Nocte… book one.
AVAILABLE ON AMAZON
SAVE ME AND I'LL SAVE YOU....
My name is Calla Price. I’m eighteen years old, and I’m one half of a whole.
My other half-- my twin brother, my Finn-- is crazy.
I love him. More than life, more than anything. And even though I’m terrified he’ll suck me down with him, no one can save him but me.
I’m doing all I can to stay afloat in a sea of insanity, but I’m drowning more and more each day. So I reach out for a lifeline.
Dare DuBray.
He’s my savior and my anti-Christ. His arms are where I feel safe, where I’m afraid, where I belong, where I’m lost. He will heal me, break me, love me and hate me.
He has the power to destroy me.
Maybe that’s ok. Because I can’t seem to save Finn and love Dare without everyone getting hurt.
Why? Because of a secret.
A secret I’m so busy trying to figure out, that I never see it coming.
You won’t either.
*****
LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR:
Dear Reader,
I once considered not writing this story. It was too dark, too twisted, too much, too, too, too.
Obviously, I changed my mind. But I re-wrote it in four different ways first, trying to make it different, more easily palatable, softer.
It didn’t work.
So I went back to my original idea, the idea that I loved. The idea that I dreamed about and lived and breathed until it was done the way I wanted it, the way it has to be.
I know you’re capable of reading it. I know you’re capable of putting yourselves back together again when it’s all over. I have faith in you.
Is this story dark?
Yes.
It is twisted?
At times.
Will it slap you in the face?
Absolutely.
Will it have you flipping the pages, trying to figure it out, trying to get to the climax, trying to breathe?
God, I hope so.
I wrote this story the way it needed to be written. I couldn’t sugarcoat it. I couldn’t water it down. It is this way because the story demands it.
I’m not sorry.
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