Chapter 18
eighteen
COLE
Isabelle’s scream when she jumped off the rock into the water echoed off the surrounding cliffs. It was a calm day, and the water was like a pool.
“It’s so cold! You made it look warmer than this!” her accusing voice came to me.
I chuckled, floating over to her as she pushed her wet hair back. Fuck, she was somehow even more stunning soaking wet.
It was a small cove I often swam in. There was a natural rock jetty where you could jump into deep water.
“Cold is good for your muscles,” I told her, swimming away when she splashed me.
“It’s horrible and so are you!”
“Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you.” I caught her around the waist and pulled her into my naked body. Her legs drifted around me naturally.
“I meant you’re horrible for not warning me about the water, that’s all,” she sighed. Waterdrops were caught in her eyelashes. She narrowed her eyes at me. “In fact, I’m onto you.”
“Are you?” I wondered, angling my hips just right so the head of my cock slipped into her entrance.
How I could get hard in this kind of temperature was truly a testament to how much this woman turned me on.
Nothing and no one could compare. I’d never experienced anything like it, and I had a feeling in my bones that I never would again. It was her, and only her.
“Mm-hmm, you’re this big, bad, scary biker, but you built your home piece by piece, and you make sculptures in your free time. You have a wall of books in your sitting room, and protect random strangers who wander into your bar from gunshots by putting your own body between them and the gun.”
I pressed just inside her, her heat making my balls fucking ache.
I couldn’t tear my eyes from hers. I’d been good about using condoms, but fuck, being bare inside her felt like nothing else.
I’d just fuck her a little, just with the tip, just until she came again.
I loved to watch the way her skin turned pink, and the way she clung to me. I loved all of it.
“One thing, I don’t get…” she muttered slowly.
“Ask away,” I said. “I’m an open book.”
“The boy. Finn? Why not let him become part of the MC?”
I nearly stopped moving, the question was so unexpected.
“Because, I want more of a life for him than that,” I answered slowly. “His father died before his time, and it was my fault. He took a bullet meant for me, and it robbed Finn of his dad. I owe that boy a life debt.”
Isabelle was watching me carefully, holding onto my shoulders, her breasts pressing into my chest. Her expression didn’t change when I told her it was my fault. She didn’t frown, or accuse me. She just watched me with a soft expression.
“So, I won’t let him live the same life his father did and risk the same fate. I won’t, no matter what.”
It was all I got out before she kissed me. Softly, perfectly, she kissed me. Then she tightened her thighs around me and raised herself up, then sank down slowly, taking me deeper than I’d been before.
“Goldilocks, it kills me to remind you, but we don’t have protection—”
“It’s ok,” she murmured, making my heart beat faster. She blinked up at me with those starry eyes, right now as lush a green and gold as the sunlight falling through the pines.
“Just pull out after I come, simple,” she grinned.
I laughed. “Simple,” I agreed. Then, I lost the ability to hold back and kissed her.
I cooked dinner for us, and we ate outside on the deck.
Issy’s busy plans seemed to have stopped mattering.
It felt good to know she’d turn her back on her world for me.
Too good. She was wrapped in a blanket, my clothes falling off her shoulders.
My clothes had never looked so good. I could hardly tear my fucking eyes off her.
She laughed too fucking loud, and saw too much.
She watched me with the prettiest, most insightful eyes I’d ever known.
She saw my house, and my useless hobbies, and called them art.
She wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met before.
“That was amazing. If I stayed here any longer, I’d gain fifty pounds in a week,” she said, pushing her empty plate away.
The food had been simple enough; it was all I knew.
Mashed potatoes with butter, and fresh green beans.
A steak bigger than her face. But she’d enjoyed it, and there was something satisfying about seeing this woman eating the food I’d cooked, wearing the clothes I’d provided, in the house I’d built.
I had a bad feeling that it wasn’t something I’d get over quickly.
“And that’s a problem, because?” I drawled, enjoying the way her cheeks turned pink as I let my eyes run over her. I didn’t bother to hide how much I wanted her. It was pointless to even try.
But as much as I was enjoying her company, I knew it couldn’t last. Arianna was on her way.
Marcus had mentioned that his fiancée had forgotten something and would be dropping by.
As would Gage and Maddox. Just as I was thinking how unwelcome the intrusion would be, I heard the sound of gravel crunching under tires.
The bikes came along the road first, followed by Ari in her car.
Gage and Maddox took their bikes around back, while Arianna got of out her car below and waved up at us.
Issy waved back and stood from her chair.
Time’s up. I had the most insane urge to grab her, toss her over my shoulder, and lock her in my workshop, just until I could send Arianna on her way.
“We didn’t know you had company! Should we go and leave you to it?” Gage called, appearing with Maddox around the side of the house and looking up at us.
I suddenly became aware of the precious sight they were seeing. Isabelle, dressed only in my oversized henley and socks.
“Avert your eyes or lose them,” I called down.
Gage cackled, as Maddox complied.
“I think that’s my cue to go and get dressed,” Issy said with a half smile. She disappeared upstairs as my unwanted guests made their way into the house.
“Shit, man. I can’t believe you finally took my advice,” Gage said, coming into the sitting room and immediately lounging on the couch.
“I think you’ll find it was my advice,” Maddox drawled from the place he’d taken up by the archway to the kitchen.
“I think you guys will find that I was the one who oraganized the party yesterday, so you can thank me. Though, to be fair, I had no idea there was something going on between you guys,” Arianna added.
“I hate to interrupt the gossip, but my ears are burning,” Isabelle called from the stairs as she made her way back down.
She’d folded the borrowed clothes she’d put back on after we’d fallen back into bed earlier, and had them in a neatly piled stack in her hands.
“Should I take these and wash them?” she wondered.
I shook my head and tugged them away from her. Those wouldn’t be getting washed again. They were my souvenirs of our time together.
“Don’t worry about it. I know how to do laundry. I am an adult,” I told her.
She scoffed dismissively. “I know plenty of adult men who couldn’t say the same, my father included.”
“She’s talking about you,” Maddox muttered to Gage, and received a middle finger in return.
“I guess introductions are in order. Gage, Maddox, this is Isabelle.”
Isabelle, somehow ballsy and naive at the same time, walked right over to Maddox first and extended her hand to shake his. He complied with a surprised look on his face. Gage actually stood up to shake her hand next, points to him, grinning all the while.
“Nice to meet you, Isabelle. We’ve seen you at the clubhouse, though something tells me we’re about to see a lot more of you. What?” Gage protested as Maddox slapped him on the shoulder to shut him up.
“I’m walking her out. Alone,” I told Gage and Maddox as we passed them. Arianna headed upstairs to grab whatever she’d left, and I took Isabelle out onto the deck.
I tugged her toward me and slid my hands down her body, squeezing her ass as I went. She sank into my arms with satisfying abandon. She might have a wicked little tongue, but I knew she felt what I did when we touched. This kind of chemistry was undeniable, once-in-a-lifetime kind of shit.
“You don’t take care of me, Goldilocks. I take care of you. That’s how I work.” I leaned in and inhaled the hollow between her shoulder and ear. Fuck, that was good.
“Does that mean you’d do my laundry too?” she mused, and giggled when I sank my teeth lightly into her shoulder.
“Move in and see,” I heard myself murmur before I knew what I was saying.
What the fuck?
“Very funny,” Isabelle said, pulling back to look up at me. “I didn’t know you were a comedian.”
“I’m not. I’m really not,” I muttered, struck by my own words. What the hell was I even thinking?
“Sorry, I really need to get back to town.” Arianna’s voice was an anchor, dragging me back to the ground, sending me stepping back from Isabelle and the wild direction of my thoughts.
Isabelle turned to see her friend, her cheeks redder than ever.
“Me too! We were just… saying goodbye,” she said lamely, avoiding my eyes. Hell, it was awkward. I’d made it that way by losing my mind for a hot second.
As she turned away, I reached out and tugged her cell from the back pocket of her jeans.
I held it to her surprised face to unlock it, then quickly called my own number. My phone rang somewhere in my room. I saved my number to Isabelle’s phone and then handed it back to her.
She was watching me with narrowed eyes. “Most people ask if they want someone’s number.” Her tone was tart.
“I am not most people,” I told her firmly.
I looked over at Arianna. “Get this girl back to campus. I’m sure she’s stressing about missing class,” I told Ari.
My future sister-in-law raised an eyebrow at me, her smile far too knowing.
It should annoy me, but strangely, it didn’t.
I wanted her to know, I realized as I watched them leaving.
I wanted someone to know what had happened here the last eighteen hours.
It made it more real.