21. Cole
COLE
The inevitable question comes quickly.
“Why?” she asks, curling against me in the cool, air-conditioned stretch limo.
There it is. The why .
But this skirts too close to that organ in my chest. The one that likes being in a time-out. That is accustomed to hibernation. To this long winter’s nap it’s been taking.
“Why what?” I answer, evading as I run my fingers through her soft hair, a futile attempt at distraction.
“Don’t play dumb. It doesn’t become you,” she chides, then turns her face to me, pulling away from my hand in her hair, her eyes locking with mine.
She’s as direct as she’s ever been. She’s not a woman who suffers fools. Nor is she a woman who settles for anything less than what she wants.
Knowledge.
But I know how to navigate around topics I’m not ready to tackle.
“Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“You know that’s what you’re doing, Cole.” She takes a beat, keeping those blue irises pinned on me. “Why do you want to fuck me with your friend? Because I can tell it’s not only a kink. It’s a need. It drives you on, beyond the sexual.”
No one has ever asked me that.
Not even Georgia.
No one has ever demanded to know.
To peer inside and find the answers.
Maybe no one else has needed them the way she needs them.
I lean back against the seat, drag a hand roughly through my hair, and consider her question, her observations, and if I want to answer.
And what this means. Because she’s keyed in on something, and the least I can do is try to give her some truth. She deserves it. And I suppose I want to let her in. I like having her in. Being seen, being understood feels good in a way I haven’t experienced in years.
But the truth is complicated. “This kink—it’s not as simple as pleasure. And it’s not as twisted as I’m fixing a hole in my heart ,” I say.
“Okay, I’m listening.”
I run a hand up her leg, craving contact.
“I do love touching you. That’s true. That doesn’t need to be deconstructed.
We don’t have to unpack that. Some things simply are .
” My fingers travel along her thigh, the same path they journeyed earlier in the night at the bar, and as she did then, she shivers.
“Agreed. Pleasure for its own sake is . . .” She stops, laughing lightly. “Simply pleasure for its own sake.”
I give her a faint smile. “Yes, it is. And that’s not a bad thing.”
She tap-dances her fingers up my chest. “Pleasure is a good thing. Too often, we focus on work, work, work. We don’t give ourselves chances to unwind. At least, many women don’t. We often deny ourselves pleasure and the exploration of it. But why deny it?”
She asks the question as if she’s fully processing it now —as if she’s asking it for the first time. Maybe because she’s letting herself fully experience a new kind of bliss.
“ Don’t deny it,” I say, an intensity in my voice, because I detest the thought of her doing that.
“There’s no reason to forbid yourself from having bliss.
And I am, admittedly, obsessed by it. I am consumed by the pursuit of pleasure at times.
I want the woman I’m with to feel . . . out of her mind .
” I slide my hand up her arm into her hair, threading my fingers through those locks, and I tug. Hard.
She lets out an enticing moan, a long, needy ohhh .
Then I chase it with my lips. I press my mouth to the column of her neck. Dust a soft, barely-there kiss over her skin. Let it turn into a trail of delicate, open-mouthed kisses along her throat, up to her ear, across her jaw.
As she murmurs.
As she sighs.
“Like that?” she asks, her voice going all feathery.
“Yes. Like that. I want the woman I’m with to feel spectacular,” I say, but that’s not enough. These statements don’t cover it. These statements keep her at a distance, and I don’t want her far. I want her near. She’s not any woman. She’s the one I can’t get out of my head.
Cupping her cheek, I turn her face closer to mine. “I want you to feel incredible. I want you to feel amazing. I want you to feel . . . undone.”
She nibbles on the corner of her lips when I change the focus to her. To where it should be. And as I say those words, I start to feel how deeply they resonate with me already. I want this woman to feel everything I can give her.
“I feel that way with you. Undone ,” she says, all soft and vulnerable, like a confession.
Pride suffuses me, spreads through my chest, makes me feel like something inside me is glowing. An odd feeling. One I’m not quite used to. But one I like. One I get with her.
“Good,” I say, then give her another kiss. On the end of her nose.
She laughs again.
“It’s hard to resist kissing you. I have a hard time resisting you in general,” I add, then quirk up my lips. “As you might have noticed.”
“I have,” she says, tracing her fingers over my chest once more. “But you still haven’t answered the question. And I want to know the answer. I want to know why,” she presses, urgency in her tone. “Because I don’t think we’re going to stop until both of you fuck me at the same time.”
That knocks me in the chest.
That steals my breath.
Because this woman is fearless.
She is brave and daring and so damn direct.
I clasp her chin, holding it. “And do you want that?”
She gives me that look. The one that says you know the answer . “More than a week ago, I’d have said I had no idea.”
“And now?”
She doesn’t answer immediately. She simply studies me. Her eyes are serious. “And now, I’m not sure how I can’t have it.”
A groan works its way up my chest. A hungry rumble. All my senses are firing at full speed, all my desires are living close to the edge of my skin as I lower my hand, sliding it down her arm. “You’re going to love it, Sage. Do you know why?”
“Why, Cole?”
I stroke her forearm, savoring the soft feel of her skin as my fingertips graze her. “Because of everything I said to Daniel at the bar. You love to be touched. Everywhere. All at once. You love to be so blissed out you can’t think. You can only feel.”
She trembles as I tell her this, then nods. “That sounds true.”
“And I think I know why.”
“You do?”
“I do,” I say, threading my hand through her hair again, letting her lean back, seeking out the contact she craves.
“Tell me.” It’s a needy plea from her. Perhaps a desire to understand herself.
And it’s far easier to focus on her than on me.
I meet her eyes again as the limo cruises slowly down the Strip, past the flashing lights of skyscrapers and billboards flickering beyond the tinted windows.
“You spend all day taking care of people. You work hard for your employees, for your hotel, for your family name. You care about the city; you care about giving back. You care deeply and immensely for your sister and friends, and your parents’ legacy. ”
“I do. That’s all true. And so?” She seems eager to hear what I have to say. She’s on the edge of her seat even as she’s in my arms.
“And at night, you want to be taken care of. Everywhere,” I say, running my fingertips down her chest, through the valley of her breasts, along her belly.
“And in every way. You want so much pleasure it blots out all the things you store up here all day long,” I say, returning to the side of her face, tracing her temple.
“You want to let go of your need to care about everything and everyone. Including your legacy. Including the ones you love most—your family,” I say, and her eyes widen, her lips flatten.
But not with annoyance—more with wonder.
Maybe even with an awareness that perhaps she’s been understood.
“And you can let it all fade from your mind. Fall away from this big, beautiful brain of yours.” I lean in close and whisper in her ear, my voice going low, harsh, even.
“And you like it when I can fuck it all away.”
Lifting her chin, she pulls back, locking her eyes with mine. “Stop reading my mind,” she says, a little curve on her lips.
I drop a kiss to her sweet, sexy mouth, consuming her kiss, her sighs, her murmurs.
She breaks the kiss and sets both hands firmly on my chest. “And is it my turn to analyze you?”
I laugh, then shrug. “Sure.”
“Were you trying to get out of answering the question, Cole?”
“No. I wasn’t,” I say, though that’s not completely true. Perhaps I was. “So tell me. Why do I want you the way I do?”
She slides her hand down my chest, resting it on my stomach. I brace myself for her to mention the last woman I cared for. For her to delve into how it felt to lose someone I was falling in love with.
“Because you want to prove you’re worthy.”
My eyebrows shoot up. Her answer came out of left field. “What do you mean?”
“You said your father told you that you weren’t good enough.”
“Yes, he did.”
“And I think you do everything you do to show that you are more than good enough. That you can build and create and make things happen. Now, pleasure is one of those things. I believe it’s part of how you see yourself. As a man who can give the most incredible pleasure to a woman.”
That’s interesting.
Perhaps surprising too.
I hadn’t thought of it like that. I suppose the sharing was always a game, even a bond, I shared with Daniel. Then it turned into something more after Georgia. A need. A craving.
An excessive desire to feel good and wipe away the hurt.
But was it always something else all along?
And if so, what of that?
Is this part of how I show I’m good enough?
There’s only one way to find out. I curl a hand around her head, a sly grin tugging at my lips. “Let’s see if you’re right, Sage. Let’s see if I’m that man who can give incredible pleasure to one woman. To you,” I say, then I lay her down on the seat.
“Yes, show me. Prove it to me.”
And I do, fucking her again, taking her over the cliff.
I’m not sure if this has anything to do with being good enough.
But I know this—being with her is almost too good.
For my head. For my body.
And it seems, most dangerously, good for my heart.