Chapter 32
thirty-two
ISABELLE
It was official: I was being crushed. Not everyone was designed to fit in a dorm bed, and Cole was just one of those people.
His feet were hanging off the end of the mattress, his arms were over the headboard, and I had to cling onto his chest just to stay up there. He turned and dragged me with him.
“Hey!” I squealed, burrowing closer and slinging my leg over his thighs to straddle him, the only surefire way not to end up on the floor.
“Hmm, I might like this setup. I might need a new bed at the cabin,” he murmured, taking in our position appreciatively.
“No way. I love your bed. This is far too tight,” I protested.
“True, but my bed doesn’t guarantee waking up like this,” Cole murmured and slid his hands down my sides to grip my ass.
I only had a long T-shirt on, and it was rucked up to my waist. My legs were spread across his thickly muscled thighs, lining my bare pussy up with his hard-on.
He slid his hands in circles on my ass cheeks, then used that pressure to position his tip at my entrance.
I gasped, biting my lip as he pressed shallowly inside.
“This is how I want to wake up from now on,” he murmured. “Balls deep in my old lady.”
“Excuse me, sir. I know you’re getting on in age, but I have to remind you, since it’s slipped your mind, you’re the old one around here,” I said, my tone sweetly sarcastic.
He chuckled and smacked my ass with both hands at once, making me yelp.
I jerked on his cock, making it sink deeper.
“I might be older and wiser than you, baby, but in my world, you’re still my old lady.”
I squirmed on his dick. “I’ll give you older, but I contest wiser. Call me old again and I’m going to start referring to you as grandpa—hey!”
He rolled us over in one smooth motion, sinking fully inside me at the same time. We ended up with me on my back, completely impaled on his dick, as he cupped my face with two hands.
“You’re my old lady. There isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. It’s too late. I told you that you’re mine. I meant it, Ms. Lancaster.”
He was pressed deep inside, but not moving, and it was driving me crazy. I raised my hips and scratched his back, and tried everything to get him to move, but he wasn’t budging. In my distraction, my mouth was running, like always.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be Ms. Lancaster, since my father is looking to disown me. Hey, maybe if I’m your old lady, you’ll let me work at The Clutch?” I babbled away. Cole’s stillness took on another quality.
“What?” he asked, still not fucking me.
I realized what I’d just said. “Nothing. I’m just talking shit—”
“Are you having money problems, Goldilocks?”
I snorted. “If you mean am I totally ignorant of real-world financial issues and dependent on daddy dearest, then, yes, sadly, but I’m going to fix it. You don’t have to worry about it.”
He shook his head slowly, sinking a hand into my hair and tugging my head back as he thrust firmly into me.
“I’m not going to worry about it, baby,” he said in a deep, sinfully hot growl. “But I am going to take care of it.”
“Take care of it?” I repeated, having trouble focusing now that he was fucking me properly.
“Yeah, take care of it. My woman doesn’t worry about money.”
“I won’t take money from you,” I bit out, gasping as he changed tempo and thrust slightly harder.
“You won’t have a choice in the matter,” he muttered, and then swore. “I’m out of condoms.” He started to pull out.
“Wait, I’ve got some,” I panted and reached toward my bedside table, groping around. I pulled out the same box Cole had bought before.
“I saw these and thought of you,” I murmured, and then squealed with laughter as he lunged across me for the box, sending his dick even deeper.
“Thank fuck for that, otherwise I was going to suggest a quick family planning chat.” He pulled out and rolled on a condom while I stared at him.
“Very funny,” I managed after a second. I got what he meant; stopping was torture, but having a kid was hardly an appropriate solution.
He grinned at me as he lined back up with my pussy and sank inside.
“What’s so funny? You, me, a cabin in the woods, a kid to run around barefoot and wild. We’ll swim in the wild, and pick berries, and make fires…”
I stared at him. “You’ve thought about this before?”
He paused with his dick sunk deep. He cocked his head to the side.
“I’m thirty-two years old; of course, I’ve thought about having a family. What man doesn’t long for that?”
“I feel like a lot of men don’t long for that. You don’t date though,” I reminded him. He hadn’t exactly been looking for a wife, or so it had seemed.
He sighed, and moved his cock lazily inside me. “Longing for something, and knowing it can’t be a reality for you, can happen at the same time. Before I met you, I knew that kind of life was out of my reach. I wasn’t going to be like Finn’s dad, and leave behind a widow and child.”
“And now?” I wondered, curling a hand around his neck.
His blue eyes stared steadily into mine. “And now… I don’t know. I warned you not to infect me with your goddamn optimism, and you went and did it anyway.”
My heart clenched hard in my chest at those words.
Cole smoothed a hand down my cheek and cupped my face.
“You’ll have to take responsibility for that, Isabelle.
It’s your fault. You’ll have to deal with the consequences.
” Then he drew his hips out and thrust back inside me, reminding me exactly what we’d been doing before the conversation took a swerve.
“But I’m in no hurry, so back to the job at hand… I want to hear my little sneak scream.”
And he did.
Hours later, I breezed through the doors of the Herald with a stupid grin on my face. I could feel it, but I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
Alanna raised an eyebrow at me as I approached, matching my smile with one of her own.
“You’re in a good mood, and I guess I know why,” she said as I took the coffee she offered me.
“Hmm, is it that obvious?” I wondered, thinking about the couple of orgasms I’d had this morning.
“Of course, it’s obvious. If I’d been working that long at something and finally got my big break, I’d be grinning all day too.”
“For sure,” I murmured before her words registered. “Wait, what?”
Alanna chuckled as she set down her coffee and picked up her phone.
“Look at the message I sent Emmit. The piece is getting so many hits online. There’s no way he’ll be able to deny you a featured writing spot now.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what the hell is going on,” I confessed, puzzled.
Alanna rolled her eyes. “Sure, you don’t. Sending your article from outside the internal network was a nice touch. It came off as very restrained, despite having the scoop of the century.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded, fear skittering down my spine.
Alanna blinked at me, taken aback by my serious tone.
“Your article about the Harbor Hounds. The one I ran last night without Emmit’s approval…
the one that’s got everyone talking. The one you sent from your private email.
You really can’t be doing that, by the way.
I made an exception this time.” Alanna pulled a face.
“Has Marcus spoken to you yet? He already called here this morning to get the article pulled.”
“Let me see,” I muttered numbly, pulling at the open paper on Alanna’s desk. Most of the Herald’s followers were online and over their social platforms, but we still had a few paper copies kicking around.
I flipped to the front page, and forgot how to breathe.
“Gunrunning, under our noses. The Harbor Hounds and Hade Harbor underworld: An exposé.”
Then there it was, right under that horrifying headline.
Story by Isabelle Lancaster
“No, no, no, no,” I murmured. I felt like passing out. “What is this?”
“Your article. You emailed it to the Herald just yesterday.”
“This isn’t my article. I haven’t seen it before.”
“It was from your email address,” Alanna said, clicking things on her laptop. She pulled up the email and showed it to me.
“That isn’t even my private email,” I told her, panicking now. “That’s just some random email anyone could make with my name! You didn’t verify the source?”
Alanna blanched. “Shit, are you serious? But you were working on your big break, and this article, it has insider information in it. I thought you’d finally hit on something even Emmit couldn’t deny was brilliant.”
“Does it sound like my writing?” I demanded wildly.
Alanna shrugged. “I mean, it’s not funny, and it needed a lot of editing… shit,” she trailed off. “Fuck!”
She whirled around and headed toward the IT area of the office to hunt down someone to help. “It’s coming down!”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket. There were no missed calls. Did Cole know already? Did he think I’d really written this? I couldn’t call him. I needed to see him in person to explain this.
“Is it down?” I called to Alanna, grabbing the paper copy from her desk.
“Working on it!”
Ok, now all I had to do was get to The Clutch, and Cole. Before it was too late.