by L. A. Fiore
Ripping the article from the wall, I headed to the kitchen, poured myself a glass of wine and let my temper simmer.
Cole returned a few hours later and by that time I had worked myself into quite a fit. He entered the kitchen, the start of a grin appearing on his lips until he saw the article on the counter. His face went completely blank. I could have probably been more delicate when I pressed the subject, but delicate wasn’t the way to handle Cole.
“Why do you still have this?”
“That’s personal.”
“Yeah, found it in your room. Why do you still have this?”
“Leave it alone, Mia.”
“No. Why?”
“It’s late.”
“Cole, you’ve shared my pain and now it’s my turn to share in yours. Why?”
It wasn’t just the wall he put up, but anger, so much anger that his voice was clipped with it. “Leave it alone.”
“Why keep the reminder of that man?”
Fury and just under the fury was self-loathing. “Back the fuck off, Mia.”
Done with the conversation, he turned and walked away but I didn’t let him go. He’d been walking away for far too long. Grabbing his arm, I struggled to stop him.
“Fuck, Mia, just leave it the fuck alone.”
“Was my dad a fair man?”
A growl rumbled in his throat and honestly I was a bit scared, but I had had enough of him silently torturing himself. “Was he?”
“Yes, you fucking know that.”
“Did he blow smoke up your ass to make you feel good?”
“No.”
“He called it the way he saw it, right?” Grabbing his face, I forced his gaze on me. “He told you this too, I’m sure, but I’m saying it now. It was self-defense. It was as much self-defense as me taking that gun and shooting an unconscious man. You told me that was self-defense, so if you really believe what you did to your dad wasn’t in self-defense, than what I did to that man wasn’t in self-defense either.”
He flinched at my words, like I’d hit him. “Think about that, Cole. We’re either both innocent or we’re both killers.”
Turning from him, I went back to the kitchen, but I heard the door close as he walked out again. I loved my dad even more knowing that he didn’t let Cole face the nightmare alone. It wasn’t just that Dad had saved Cole from that monster; he had just plain saved him.
An hour later, Cole returned. Still in the kitchen, I had spent that hour fighting my need to burn the article. He moved to the adjacent counter, leaning up against it, his focus on me. “You’re a lot like your dad.”
“Thank you.”
His head lowered, his voice pitched deeper. “I enjoyed it. Beating him, feeling his bones break, hearing the blood he was choking on, seeing the fear in his eyes…” his head lifted, “I enjoyed beating him to death. Had I to do again, I fucking would.”
And I could see that he had, saw a twisted kind of pleasure burning in his gaze. “How long had he been beating you?”
“As long as I can remember.”
“So even when you were just a little boy, not physically able to defend yourself, he beat you.”
“Yeah.”
“I enjoyed shooting that asshole’s dick off. Even with the blood, seeing it pooling on the tile, all that went through my head was that he wouldn’t be able to do what he did to me to someone else. The man was unconscious, the door was open and I could have fled, but I stayed. I consciously reached for his gun, released the safety, and shot him. In my head, I knew there was a good chance he’d die from the wound and I didn’t care. Do I regret taking a life? His life? No.”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to.
It took effort, but I didn’t go to him. I gave him the space that I somehow knew he needed. “I’m going to bed, I hope you join me.”
It was late when Cole joined me in bed, the faint scent of alcohol on his breath as he pulled me close, curling his body protectively around mine. And only then was I able to slip into sleep.
The following morning I was making an omelet when Cole entered. He settled at the counter but his focus was completely on me. My instinct was to ask him about last night, but Cole was like my dad. He’d talk when and if he needed to.
“Smells good.”
So did he, he’d just showered. My appetite shifted from the eggs to him, how I’d like to take a bite out of him. It was tempting, but I had something I wanted to discuss with him. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, how Dad wouldn’t have gone out that night unless he knew the person who called. Ever since his death, my birth mother, Cynthia, has been trying to talk to me. In fact her persistence is impressive considering the woman never once gave me the time of day. If she called, my dad would have been pissed but he would have gone. I want to hear what she has to say.”
“I’m going with you.” Whatever feelings he had about what I had said last night, he’d buried them, maybe to process later, maybe to dismiss completely, but there was no more I could do.
“Okay.” I wasn’t an idiot. Donny was after me, Cole could handcuff me to him and I’d be just fine with that.
“I mean it Mia, I’m your shadow.”
“Weren’t you already?”
“Not like this. I drop you at work, I pick you up.”
“It’s highly unlikely that I have a job waiting for me. My boss is a bit of a prick.”
“You’ll have a job.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ll explain the situation to your boss.”
It was on my tongue to protest, but I actually wanted to see Cole 'explaining how it was' to my boss. In fact, I might even bring popcorn because it had the potential to be one hell of a show. “Okay.”
His head jerked up to mine. “Okay?”
“You and my boss, totally okay with that, but please don’t make him cry.”
His head shook, like he used to do when I was younger. “Adorable and ridiculous, right?”
Tenderness swept his face, he remembered too. “Always.” Fleeting, that emotion because he was back to all business. “And your friend, Janie, I definitely will be around when you’re out with her. She’s a bit of a nymphomaniac.”
“No she’s not!” The denial was instinctual, the need to defend my friend, but honestly with how she’d been acting lately, she kind of was.
“Yeah, she is.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been watching you, remember?”
I don’t know why I said it, the words just kind of came out. “Are you afraid that condition is contagious, you don’t like to share?”
He was pissed now, or was he jealous? I kind of liked that look on him. “I’d like that about as much as you liked watching that bitch swallow my cock.”
“Touché.”
He never left his spot across the room and yet I felt him all around me when he spoke his next words. “You are mine.”
Even when being domineering, he made my heart skip a beat. “Yes I am.” Moving back to the original topic before I threw caution to the wind and jumped him, I continued, “Janie isn’t really a nympho, but she’s got some things going on in her life and she’s rebelling.”
“Rebelling? Fucking a stranger in the bathroom of a club is rebelling?”
She had done that, repeatedly.
“It’s not as bad as what I walked in on. Her sister’s getting married, the parents are putting on the pressure for Janie to tie the knot and she likes a guy, like in a way I’ve never seen her like a guy, but he rejected her. She didn’t take the rejection well.”
“Whatever the fuck her reasons, she’s welcoming trouble. It’s amazing she hasn’t gotten herself and you into some already. So again, when you are out with her, I am too.”
“You are as crude as she is.”
His smile came in a flash. Heart stopping, his smile was heart stopping. “You need to do that more often.” When my comment was met with a raised brow I added, “Smile.”
/> There it was again, the tenderness that took the hard edge off his features. I wanted to see more of that and his smile. I could try to pull a smile from him every day and just thinking about that daunting challenge caused my own lips to curve up into one. “Breakfast is almost done.”
“Does it bother you?”
“Your crude mouth? No.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I like it.”
He moved then, right up against my side, his finger lifting my face to his. He said nothing, but pressed his crude mouth to mine in the sweetest of kisses.
I wanted to snap the little shit’s neck. Mia’s boss, Frederick Nathaniel Tatum Jr. was a little prick. I stood in the back of the room, Tatum behind his desk and Mia sitting across from him explaining her absence from work—a fact he knew all too well because Bruce Knox had already been around to explain it. The little shit enjoyed watching Mia squirm, forcing her to sit in suspense as he held her future in the balance.
Detective Knox had visited Frederick Sr.; the man had demanded Bruce keep him in the loop after Donny’s visit. Mia had failed to mention that but with everything going on, I didn’t call her on it. The situation was unusual, but I liked that she had someone watching her back at the office. Not only was Mia’s job still hers, it was likely that Frederick Sr. would be promoting Mia into Freddie-boy’s position since the department had basically fallen apart without her. Bruce had shared that the father thought his son was brilliant, but really fucking lazy. Prick also seemed to have a problem with people encroaching on what he considered his even when he wasn’t taking care of what was his. Freddie boy, Mia’s nickname for him, was a fitting one.
“We discussed this, Mia. Personal problems have no place in the workplace.”
“I didn’t bring it into the workplace.”
“We’ve a reputation to uphold, it doesn’t look good to our clients to have an employee involved in such distasteful matters.”
As much as the prick was pushing my buttons, this was Mia’s fight, something she’d said repeatedly since leaving the house that morning. She wanted to deal with her boss in a professional manner, so the sight of Mia grabbing her chair to keep from launching herself across his desk, had a grin tugging at my mouth. Pissed was a good way to describe how she sounded next. “Distasteful.”
“I just don’t think you are the right fit for the company.”
“Fit?”
Mia was using single-word answers, a sign her temper was reaching the danger zone, another trait she shared with her dad. She was magnificent as she battled back her temper, sounding somewhat in control when she attempted once again to reason with the douchebag.
“My work is exemplary and I had no control over the events of the past few weeks. I would like to come back to work.”
“I’m just not seeing that happen.”
I’d had enough, but before I could rip the shit a new one, Mia snapped. “What is your problem? You’ve been on my case since I started. Why? I’ve never given you any reason to be such a dick and yet you are nothing but a dick.”
The prick couldn’t even get mad like a normal person and being called a dick, though justified, should have pissed him off. Instead he looked affronted; the expression probably the same one he had when the fairway at his golf club wasn’t mowed properly.
“Because his dad is planning to replace him with you.”
Two sets of eyes snapped to me, Mia looked confused, Freddie didn’t; the prick did know.
Mia’s question turned my focus on her. “What?”
“Despite this show your boss just put on, the only one in danger of losing his job is him.”
“But—”
“I stayed back, Mia, I let you deal with it but now I have a few words for him.”
Expecting an argument, I was surprised when a smile spread over her face; a fucking beautiful smile that nearly had me forgetting about Freddie because the urge to knock everything off his desk and fuck her brains out on it was powerful.
“By all means, have your words.”
Minx.
Humor fled when my attention turned to Freddie boy. “You and I both know she still has her job so for however long your father allows you to keep yours, you’ll give Mia a wide berth. If you need to address her, you will do so professionally and respectfully. If Mia comes home looking even remotely upset, I’m going to assume it’s because of you. Unlike you, I take care of what’s mine so for every minute of displeasure she feels from you, you’ll feel from me.”
Jackass was too stupid to appreciate his situation because the pansy-ass was affronted again. “Are you threatening me?”
“Not a threat, fair warning so when you end up eating from a tube, there’ll be no ambiguity as to why.”
“You can’t walk into my office and threaten me. You’ll be hearing from my lawyers.”
It took effort but instead of slamming Freddie’s face into his desk, my palms came down on it so hard they sounded like a gun blast. I leaned in; he nearly rolled his chair out of the window behind him.
“You sit here on a power trip, toying with good, hardworking people because you get off on it. Unlike, Mia, I’m not a good person and you can send as many lawyers as you want, you will never see me coming. But I promise you this, when I’m done with you, you’ll never forget me.”
Mia stood abruptly. “Well, I think that covers everything.”
Turning to her because her voice sounded odd, I discovered it wasn’t just her voice but her expression that seemed off.
“Cole, shall we?”
She grabbed my hand and started pulling me out of the office, down the hall to the stairwell. As soon as the door closed at my back, she jumped me—her legs wrapping around my waist, her arms banded around my neck and her mouth fusing to mine. It took a second before my mouth was moving under hers, kissing her as hungrily as she did me. My cock hardened. Curling my fingers into her ass, I pulled her closer. Pressing her back against the door, I rubbed myself against that sweet heat. The scent of her desire made my balls tighten. I wanted to take her right there, wanted my cock buried deep in her, but the first time I took her wouldn’t be in the stairwell of her office building. That said, I wanted her to come, wanted to hear it, smell it. Rocking my hips, my cock rubbed her from core to clit until her limbs tightened around me, the scent of her arousal spiking as her body spasmed; my cock twitched as I came in my shorts just like a green school boy and I didn't fucking care.
Three days after Cole and I met with Freddie boy, I was still unable to get the sight of Cole putting Freddie in his place out of my head. He’d been so freaking hot, so goddamn sexy, I lost it. I wanted him so badly in that moment I would have dropped my skirt right there in Freddie’s office. As it were, I’d still acted wantonly by jumping him in the stairwell. I came in the stairwell of my office building, a fact that should’ve embarrassed me but didn’t. It was the best orgasm of my life and I had been fully clothed. When we’re both naked, I might not live through it and I couldn’t think of a better way to leave this life.
I would be starting back to work in a few days, was actually looking forward to it, wanted to think of anything other than all the stuff that had been consuming my thoughts lately.
Cole and I were having dinner with Janie tomorrow night. I couldn’t wait to see her. We’d talked a few times over the past few weeks, but phone conversations were nowhere near as good as face-to-face. She’d mentioned Timothy the last time we talked; apparently whatever prevented him from acting on his feelings for her was no longer an issue. He was joining us tomorrow. I loved Janie, but she’d been getting more and more self destructive, so I really hoped that whatever happened with Timothy, it didn’t send her into a tailspin. I had avoided involving her family, but scenes like Cole described the other day, she’d be doing that more and more. My hope, it was a passing rebellious stage and now she was ready to move on. If not, I wasn’t going to have a choice but to involve her family.
Sitting in Cole’s
kitchen, I studied Dad’s records for the garage. Even with everything that had happened in the past few weeks, I felt so comfortable being here and loved that Cole wanted me here. And as if thinking about him conjured him, he entered the kitchen, heading to the refrigerator for a beer.
“Do you want wine?”
“Please.”
Retrieving our drinks, he settled across from me at the table. “Why the interest in your dad’s files?”
“Cynthia. Her persistence, she’s after something and my guess it’s money. Just wanted to make sure she doesn’t know something we don’t.” Turning my focus to him, I added, “Thank you for giving me this, I’m happy, despite what happened, I am happy and grounded and not the hot mess I could be and you’re the reason.”
The look he gave me in response set my body on fire. I was about to reprimand him on how he needed to stop torturing me with those hot looks when he stood and walked around the table. Reaching for my hand, he pulled me from my chair. His fingers threaded in my hair, pulling my head back, before his mouth slammed down on mine; his tongue driving through my lips to taste me. Excitement rolled over me, anticipation that made me wild because we were here, finally. Locking my arms around his shoulders, I curled my legs around his waist. I felt him, hard and thick. I wasn’t the only one eager; my hips moving instinctively, rubbing up against him. His hands settled on my ass as he walked us from the kitchen to the bedroom. Once we reached his room, he dropped me to my feet. I was on fire, every cell in my body humming, and then I looked into his eyes. Love burned through me to see all that I was feeling staring back at me. A delicate swipe across my cheek with the rough pad of his thumb had my heart hiccuping at the tenderness in that simple gesture. Cole Campbell, I couldn’t quite believe we were here, that we’d finally found our way here.
Moved by the moment, I spoke that thought out loud.
Regret threaded through his rough whisper, “I should have been your first.”