Chapter 12 COLE
COLE
There are a hundred things I should be doing right now—like finalizing the Morgan invoices, answering calls from my foreman, checking a material order that showed up wrong—but none of them register when Ella drags her lips down my neck the way she does at the bar.
This isn’t flirting or teasing anymore; it’s a claim, and I quite like it.
Her mouth is warm and fierce, and it pulls whatever restraint I had like a thread.
The room blurs, and the world narrows to just her.
She invited me out for drinks to celebrate my winning the bid, but that quickly shifted to something more charged the moment she got some liquid courage in her.
She laughs against my collarbone, breathy and dangerous. “We absolutely should not be doing this,” she whispers, but her hands are already undoing the top button of my shirt while her knees press against the inside of my thigh.
She’s right—we shouldn’t be doing this. She’s technically my boss’s daughter, for crying out loud.
I should be steering clear of her, but how can I when every inch of me wants to pull her closer?
We’ve already indulged twice, so what’s one more time?
We might as well take this celebration a notch higher.
Her laugh turns into something sexier when I hook my fingers into her waist and pull her up against me. “We should.”
I’m not philosophical; I’m practical. I like plans, hard hats, calendars, and schedules. But God, Ella’s chaos is a plan I can live with. “Come on. My place is the closest. I’ll make coffee in the morning.”
She smiles at me, soft and indulgent. “You’ll make coffee? How confident are you that I’m going to spend the night?”
“I’m not, but I’m hoping you will,” I grin back.
“What about Aria?” she inquires.
“I asked my mom to pick her up when I got arrested and keep her for the night,” I explain.
She eyes me for a moment before leaning up on her tiptoes and kissing me.
No ceremony, just warmth, heat, and the kind of hunger that’s been simmering for far too long.
Her mouth is soft and immediate; it’s the answer to a lot of questions I didn’t know I’d asked.
I taste tequila, the smallest hint of salt. I taste her.
We stumble—me guided by a gravity I didn’t plan on, her weight a perfect counterbalance—and we are out into the night before I even register the logistics.
I pull her through my front door with one hand, and my keys slam down on the counter, blueprints skittering like startled birds.
My house is a mess—boots by the back door, a stack of invoices on the kitchen table, a half-drunk cold beer on the counter—but none of it matters.
She bites my lip in the doorway like she’s sneaking something valuable, and I want to steal the whole thing.
“Wanna keep drinking?” she asks, voice thick with liquor and decision.
“No,” I answer before I think. “I want you.”
She blinks at me, surprised, and then surges, closing the distance between us in a single, feral motion.
Our mouths crash together. It’s all teeth, tongue, the kind of pressing that makes no room for thought.
Her hands rake up under my shirt, fingers splaying against my ribs like they want to memorize the shape of me.
I grab her by the hips and pull her into me, her insides flush to my front.
She groans into my mouth, and the sound is a match.
We fall toward the couch. She’s on top of me, and the world is out of oxygen. I don’t kiss her gently—I kiss like I’m trying to remember where she ends and I begin. Her hair smells like peaches and perfume, her lips soft and plump against mine.
The couch shifts, papers flutter, and the lamp throws a halo against the wall.
There’s urgency in every motion—our hands, tongues, the scramble of denim and fabric.
I press my palm flat between her shoulder blades, and she shivers, breath hitching.
I hook my fingers into her belt and start to unbuckle it.
“Cole—“ she breathes, a laugh breaking through, half protest, half plea. “Whoa. That’s—”
“Too much?” I ask into her hair.
“No,” she laughs, shaking her head. “It’s perfect, but you’ve never seen me fully naked before, and I’m scared you won’t like what you see.”
The word lands between us like an accusation she keeps firing at herself, and it should be a small thing.
I should let it be small. But the sight of shame flickering across her face is like a blow.
I yank her close until there’s no distance left, tilting my head so I can look at her.
The light plays over her skin, and I notice the faint pale tracks at the curve of her hip, the thin white lines along her stomach.
She waits for me to flinch with her or pull away.
Instead, I cup the back of her neck and kiss the hollow beneath her ear. “You’re amazing, every inch of you. You fit me, Shiloh. God, you fit me like—“
She grabs my face with both hands, eyes fierce with alcohol and something else. “Say it again.”
“You fit me,” I repeat. “And those marks? They’re just part of you. They’re lines that mean you’ve lived, and they’re beautiful.”
She swallows, the muscles in her jaw jump, and then she grins—a thief’s grin—before she smashes her mouth to mine like she’s taking possession. The urgency returns. The hunger in both of us is a physical thing now, and everything we do pushes and pulls between want and worship.
Her blouse rips loose under my hands, causing the buttons to scatter.
I trail my mouth down her throat, and she bucks against me like a wild thing.
We stop pretending we’re careful. I rip her jeans, because why spare a button when the night wants no modesty, and her panties slip sideways with one slick pull.
She moans when my fingers press into her, hot and slick, and the sound fuels me.
I don’t go for slow comfort. I go for hungry, needy, and earned.
My mouth finds the places she keeps secret: the soft hollow under her arm, the thin seam at the hip where the stretch marks begin, the pale ridge on her lower belly.
I kiss every single line and watch her face break open.
She grips the back of my neck, and her nails drag. “Cole,” she pants. “Please, don’t stop.”
And so I don’t.
I trace her with my tongue, kiss with heat, and when I lower myself between her thighs, it’s with reverence.
I take her pussy into my mouth like I mean it—slow, worshipful, then faster, harder, until the bedrock of it all trembles.
Her hands clutch my hair, her legs tighten around me, and the moans spill out of her, not like embarrassment but like something relieved.
“Cole!” She climaxes with a scream.
When she collapses against me, her whole body shaking, I let her rest a beat and then watch the hunger flare again in her eyes.
She’s not done, and neither am I. We keep discovering each other—mouths, hands, names whispered like desperate prayers.
There’s a roughness to our touches, an edge that says we’re not kids who don’t know how to handle this.
We are adults who have held back and are now paying with interest.
She pushes me back onto the couch and straddles me, and I have this insane urge to show her everywhere she belongs.
She grinds against me, using me like an anchor, and I catch her jaw in my hand, tilt her face down to mine, and kiss her with a possessive fierceness that’s almost tender.
Her breath is hot between us, and she whispers my name like a talisman.
“Cole, please take me,” she demands, sobering with intent. “Take me like you mean it.”
I do.
I hold her by the hips, lift, and guide her forward.
When I sink into her, it’s slow, an unhurried, full entry that makes the room hush.
The way she wraps her legs around me is an admission and a demand.
I set a rhythm: deep, long strokes that pound and release, and then soft, while my hands explore and memorize all of her.
Every time she cries my name, something in me loosens that had been taut for too long.
At one point, she leans forward, breathless, and kisses the inside of my wrist. “You’re… you’re rough,” she murmurs, a smile in the haze.
“Someone has to be,” I say, voice rough. “You’re soft enough for the both of us.”
She laughs, a shaky, stunned sound, and then reaches for me the way a drowning man reaches for a lifeline.
We move slower now, not because the fire is gone but because tenderness has its own force. I pull her down until we’re chest to chest. She trembles with release, and I can feel the shudder travel through her like a secret made safe.
Catching me off guard, she pushes off me, kneels between my legs, and takes me into her mouth with an attention that takes the breath out of me.
It’s not about speed; it’s about devotion.
Her hands smooth across my thighs, steadying.
I let myself fall into the sensation because she’s giving, and because giving back to her in any way is a privilege I don’t waste.
When she brings me to the edge and I beg for more, with my hands tangled in her hair, “Shiloh, fuck!”
She looks up at me, ferocious and tender at once. “I like taking care of you,” she admits simply. “I like this.”
“You do?” I rasp, and I mean every single syllable.
“Yes.”
She works me to where I can’t stand it, then climbs back on top, and together we move toward some slow, raw center.
I hold her close, whispering compliments about the shape of her shoulders, the way her belly folds when she laughs, the little freckle by her collarbone, and each one seems to stitch a tear in her doubt.
We shift from the couch to the wall, with her thighs clasped around my hips. The world compresses to the two of us, and she protests again, “I’m heavy.”
“You’re perfect,” I assert, my voice hoarse. “Tell me what else to say and I’ll say it. I’ll say you look good. I’ll say I like everything. I’ll say I want you. Over and over. And mean every word.”
“It’s not just words,” she replies. “I need… proof.”
Then she bites my shoulder—playful and fierce.
I give her the proof she needs by the way I lift her and press her to the wall, the palm of my hand at the base of her spine holding her steady. Her protest is a wet laugh, a breathy insistence that she’s too much, but her body contradicts every word as it molds to mine.
I slow the motion until she can feel every inch I give and every inch she takes. “This is proof,” I murmur into her hair. “You in my arms, against the wall. Mine.”
She breathes me in, and for a moment, I watch her let go. There’s a clarity in her face that stabs me with something like joy. We move together into the night until our muscles shake and the lamp finally snaps off in the dark because we’d forgotten our steadiness.
When we fall into the tangle of sheets and bodies, spent and raw, my hand finds her hip and she presses her forehead to mine.
“Thank you for getting Calista and Toby to drop the charges,” I whisper.
“I was just correcting a wrong, but you’re welcome.”
I didn’t want her to get involved, but she did anyway. I’d already called Matt, but we ran into him on the way out of the station. Ella is a force to be reckoned with, and I’m scared that I don’t deserve her. I have too much baggage, too much going on.
And yet, I hold her close, listening to her slow breaths, wishing this could be permanent.
I fold my arms around her, and she tucks her head under my chin. Her hand finds my chest, fingers splayed flat, and I feel the rise and fall of her breathing. The sound she makes is like surrender and victory rolled into one.
“You okay?” she asks, voice small and immediate.
“Yeah,” I say. “Better than I’ve been in a really long time.”
She smiles up at me, that sunlit grin that keeps breaking things down in me. “Good. Because I want more.”
I laugh, a raw sound in the quiet of my bedroom, and then kiss the soft skin of her forehead. “Give a man a second to breathe.”
“Okay, five minutes,” she relents, her lips finding mine once more.
I don’t get those five minutes, but I don’t complain one bit. We get lost in each other for hours before we tumble into sleep like exhausted children, limbs tangled, the night unpacking itself into a softness I didn’t know I needed.