CHAPTER THREE
Charlie
I spent the early part of Sunday morning pretending not to be affected by the man I’d kissed the night before.
I wiped down the bar for the third time. The same ring of condensation got scrubbed harder than it deserved. I was restless and aching in a way that had very little to do with chores and everything to do with a certain gruff lumberjack who’d won a bet fair and square.
Late last night, after tossing and turning four hours, I’d touched myself not only thinking about the bet kiss, but yesterday’s down payment kiss. I’d wanted to give in then, drag him into my bedroom and pay up tenfold. Of course, that was information I was going to take to my grave.
The bell above the door chimed at nine on the dot and I gripped the edge of the bar to keep from running toward it like a woman with zero dignity.
He walked in with his toolbox and that same controlled expression, dark hair still slightly damp from a shower, wearing a grey t-shirt that was doing nothing to conceal the kind of shoulders that made most women sigh.
The morning light hit him, and I decided that whatever I’d done in a past life to deserve this kind of problem, I was choosing not to resent it today.
“Morning,” he said, his voice doing that thing to my insides.
“Morning. Coffee?” I was already reaching for the pot.
“Thanks.”
I poured him a cup and pushed the sugar and creamer tray toward him. He took his coffee black, which somehow didn’t surprise me at all.
“What’s first?” I asked, like I wasn’t painfully aware of him standing there in all his muscular glory.
“Ceiling fans. Then the back door lock.” He looked up at the fan over the pool table, already assessing. “After that we’ll see what else needs doing.”
I wanted to move myself to the top of that list. I needed doing.
By noon he had his shirt off.
He’d fixed the back door, giving me a stern lecture on safety and then moved to the ceiling fan over the pool table — the one that made a noise like a dying animal. Somewhere between the second and third trip up the step ladder the grey t-shirt had come off and been tossed onto the pool table.
The bad girl in me wished he’d toss me on the pool table. Or bend me over it.
I thought about the bet. The one that really mattered.
Was I confident enough to be taken by this lumberjack?
Brave enough? I’d dated. Had some one-on-one time with guys that didn’t quite make the cut so to speak.
It wasn’t as if I was clutching my v-card like a string of pearls.
No. It was more honest than that — I’d gotten close, twice, and both times something in me had pulled back at the last second.
An old reflex. The particular wariness of a woman who’d learned that wanting someone was easy and trusting them with your body was a different thing entirely.
I’d never found a man I trusted enough for the second part.
Colt was the right man.
He was tall, muscular and made me feel feminine just by standing beside him. Apparently being a lumberjack was a sure way to build muscle all over your body. His thighs, his ass. His shoulders, his arms, and his back. Muscle that came from hard work, not from a gym.
And the scars.
I’d spent the morning trying not to stare.
Of course, I was taking in the golden flesh, and hard muscles first, but then, I noticed the scars.
A long curved one below his right ribs. Something smaller on his left forearm, the kind of scar that looked like it had been stitched in a hurry.
And on his left shoulder, a tattoo. A military insignia.
Precise and formal and clearly meaningful.
I looked away before he caught me.
I looked back thirty seconds later. So, sue a girl. He was too hard to resist.
He came down off the ladder and turned and caught me staring.
His mouth curved into a wicked grin that had me immediately wet.
I might not be experienced, but my body knew exactly what to do when confronted with a man like Colt.
I picked up my inventory clipboard with the casual confidence of someone who had definitely been looking at the clipboard the whole time. Not at his broad back.
“You can ask,” he said.
“I wasn’t—”
“Charlie.”
I set down the clipboard. “The tattoo. Ranger insignia?”
He looked down at his shoulder like he’d half-forgotten it was there. “Yeah.”
“And the scars. From the military?”
“Mostly. Some from the trees.”
I nodded. He had a dangerous job. “How long were you in?”
“Almost ten years.” He picked up his coffee, leaned against the bar. Not closing down, not deflecting. Just — answering. Like he’d decided I was someone he could answer. “Three deployments. Last one was the worst.”
“The scar on your ribs.”
“Kandahar.” He said it flat, the way people say the names of places that cost them something. “Surgery for six hours. I was told afterward it was close.”
“Were you scared?”
A pause. Something moved through his face — not pain exactly.
More like the memory of an absence that he couldn’t fill.
“No. That’s the part I couldn’t explain to the therapist afterward.
I wasn’t scared. I was calculating. Who needed to know what, what needed to happen next.
” He looked at me steadily. “They trained the scared out of me a long time before that.”
I held his gaze. “Did it come back?”
He was quiet for long enough that I thought he wasn’t going to answer. He gave me a significant look. “Parts of it. The parts that matter.”
I thought about that, knowing he wasn’t talking about the military anymore. Was he talking about me? Did I scare him? And how did I scare him?
He went back up the ladder.
Just like that. Done. He’d opened a door, let me look inside, and closed it again — not harshly, just cleanly. Like that was all he had available right now and he knew it.
He worked through the afternoon while I did all the things I never had time to do during the week.
We moved around each other in a comfortable rhythm that had developed faster than it had any right to.
At some point I made sandwiches and we sat at the bar and ate and talked about nothing important — his brothers, my uncle, the particular personality of small Montana towns — and it was easy in a way I hadn’t expected from a man who communicated mostly in silences.
He’d checked off most of the repair list, except for the loose floorboards upstairs and downstairs.
That would take supplies he didn’t have with him.
He fixed the loose shelf bracket behind the bar, which put him on my side of the counter.
Close enough that I had to turn sideways to get past him when I needed something.
I needed a lot of things, apparently, and we were both absolutely aware of that fact.
“Excuse me,” I said the first time, squeezing past with a bottle of whiskey that absolutely needed to be moved right then. I made sure I had my ass to his front.
He shifted. But not much.
I allowed myself a small smile.
“Excuse me,” I repeated a second time, this time reaching for a bottle of tequila that had been in the wrong spot all week. I stood on my tiptoes and stretched. The move pushed my hip out.
That move earned me a grunt.
The third time I didn’t even have a reason. I just needed to get to the other end of the bar and he was in the way. I turned, scooted beneath his arms, my breasts brushing against his chest and neither of us pretended that was an accident.
He dropped his arms, one hand going to my hip, holding me there.
“Charlie,” he said, my name like a warning in that deep, dark voice of his.
We were close, but our bodies still weren’t touching. Just a whisper of space and we would be. While I hadn’t said I was ready to pay off my bet, yesterday had been him deliberately touching me, arousing me.
I thought payback was fair in a situation like this.
“What’s wrong, Colt?” If I’d been one of those women, I would have batted my eyelashes at him and pouted.
“You have plenty of room to get past me.”
“I really don’t. These hips don’t negotiate.”
His gaze dropped to my chest and back up again. “You could ask me to move.”
“Could I?”
“Sure.” The corner of his mouth curved. “I might even do it.”
I looked up at him. At the controlled patience on his face, the heat underneath it—and something else. Something quieter. Darker. He was the kind of man who waited because he knew he’d get what he wanted.
Was I really stupid enough to poke at that?
I guess I was.
I turned around to grab another bottle—who cared what—and pushed myself back against him. I had to bite my tongue when I felt the hard length of him pressing back.
The sound he made could only be considered a growl. I had yet to encounter a bear, but I knew that was exactly the sound they would make.
I squealed a little as a big arm wrapped around my waist and I was lifted off my feet. I didn’t have time to even consider what was happening before I found myself sitting on top of my bar, Colt between my spread legs.
Instinctively, I grasped his shoulders.
Then he kissed me. Again.
Not the bet kiss. Not the down payment kiss from yesterday.
Not demonstrating or proving anything. This was just — him wanting me and not hiding it, his hands on either side of my face, his mouth moving over mine with a thoroughness that made thinking impossible.
I grabbed his shoulders and held on like I always had to do.
When he finally lifted his head, there was no denying we were both affected.
“I’ve been wanting to do that all day,” he said against my mouth.
“So why didn’t you?”
“Because I wanted you thinking about kissing me again.” His hands slid from my face down my neck, my shoulders, lingering on the sides of my breasts. Slow and deliberate, learning every inch on the way down. “Did you think about it?”
“Possibly.”
“All night?”
“Colt—”
“All night, Charlie?” His hands settled on my hips, and he pulled me to the edge of the bar until our bodies were touching at the most intimate of places and I felt exactly what yesterday’s down payment had been promising.
“Yes,” I said. “Fine. All night. Happy?”
“Getting there.” His mouth found my jaw, my throat, the spot below my ear that made my eyes close. His hands slid under the hem of my shirt, warm against my waist. “Tell me what you were thinking about.”
“I’m not — I can’t—” His thumbs were tracing slow circles against my skin and it was genuinely difficult to form sentences. “I’m not telling you that.”
“No?” He lifted his head and looked at me, and his hands moved — one staying at my waist, one sliding down over the front of my jeans, cupping me through the denim. I gasped. His expression didn’t change. “Was it something like this?”
“That’s—” I grabbed his wrist. Not to stop him. Just to hold on.
“Tell me.” His hand pressed, and I bit my lip hard. “Or I’ll stop.”
“Don’t stop,” I said, before I could stop myself.
“Then tell me.”
“This,” I managed. “I was thinking about this. About your hands. About—” He moved his hand and thought dissolved. “About you.”
“Good girl.” I shivered at his words and I felt them everywhere. His fingers found the button of my jeans, and he worked it open and pulled the zipper down.
Then without warning, he thrust his hand down my jeans.
“You’re so wet,” he said, rubbing his finger along my slit over the cotton of my panties.” Because of course I was wearing cotton panties. I had not anticipated this. “You’ve been like this all day.”
“Shut up.” That earned me a harder press of his finger.
“It’s not an insult.” His fingers moved and my head fell back against the shelf behind the bar. “It’s the best thing I’ve felt all day.” He found my clit and started rubbing. I grabbed his arm with both hands. “Do you want me to make you come, Charlie?”
I bit my lip then looked up at him. “Yes,” I said. “Please.”
“Please.” He said it like he was tasting it. “I like that.”
His fingers moved in a slow, devastating rhythm, watching my face the whole time. “You’re going to say that again. Later. In my bed.” His mouth brushed my ear. “When I’m finally inside you, you’re going to say please, and I’m going to give you everything you’re asking for.”
Then his fingers were moving faster, harder, bringing me closer and closer…
I came apart.
My release crashed through me hard and sudden, and I buried my face in his shoulder and he worked me through every second of it, murmuring low things against my hair — good girl, that’s it, I’ve got you — until I wasn’t shaking anymore.
I sat on my bar catching my breath while he buttoned my jeans back up with the same methodical focus he brought to everything, completely composed, like he hadn’t just taken me apart entirely.
“Colt,” I said finally.
“Yeah.”
I didn’t really know what to say. No man had ever touched me like that.
He looked at me steadily. “And that was just my hand, Charlie.” He picked up the screwdriver from the bar. “Think about that tonight.”
He went back to work on the shelf bracket.
I sat on my bar for another thirty seconds, then slid down, smoothed my shirt, and went back to my inventory.
And yeah, I thought about him all night long that night.