Chapter 7
COLE
Her mouth is on mine before I finish the sentence.
She tastes like beer and adrenaline and the laugh she let loose when we buckled Gerald into the truck. Her fingers twist in my hair, and I groan into her mouth, walking her backward until she hits the wall.
“Hi,” she says against my lips.
“Hey.”
“That was one hell of an exit.” She pulls back an inch. Her eyes are bright, and there’s still a smudge of powdered sugar on her collar from the fair. “My brother’s face.”
“Your brother can deal.” I press my forehead against hers. “Right now, there’s just you.”
She yanks my shirt up. I pull it over my head, and her hands land on my chest, fingers tracing the ridges of muscle like she’s memorizing terrain. Her thumbs drag along my stomach, and I inhale sharply.
“You’ve been walking around that apartment like this for three days.” Her voice drops. “Do you know what that’s been like for me?”
“Tell me.”
“Torture.” She runs a fingernail along the waistband of my jeans, and my cock strains against the denim. “Absolute torture. I’ve had dreams, Cole.”
“Yeah?” My hands find the hem of her shirt—my shirt, the one I handed her in Jared’s living room—and I pull it over her head. She’s bare underneath. The freckle below her left collarbone. The flush spreading down her chest. My hands are shaking again, same as on the couch, and I don’t care.
“Vivid ones,” she says, and the way she’s looking at me when she says it almost ends me.
I reach for her. She catches my wrists and holds them, looking me dead in the eye with the same directness that’s been breaking down my walls since Hatchet Jack’s.
“I want you to know something first.” Her thumbs press into my wrists. “This isn’t rebound. This isn’t me being reckless because my life blew up.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because I need you to hear it.” Her grip tightens. “I have never felt like this. Not with Jason. Not with anyone. You make me laugh and you show up and you buckle in a stuffed bear in your truck and I’m standing here shaking because I want you so badly I can’t think straight.”
I pull my wrists free and cup her face with both hands, kiss her so deeply her whole body trembles. She grabs my belt and yanks it open, gets my jeans unbuttoned, and shoves everything down. My cock springs free, and I groan against her mouth as her hand wraps around me.
“Bed,” she says.
“Not yet.”
I drop to my knees.
She laughs—surprised, breathless. “Cole.”
“Told you at the fair.” I unbutton her jeans, pulling them down with her underwear, and she kicks them off. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make you smile.”
“I don’t think smiling is what you’re about to—”
I press my mouth to the inside of her thigh, and the sentence dies. Her fingers twist into my hair, and her head falls back against the wall.
I take my time. Kissing the crease where her thigh meets her hip. Dragging my mouth across slowly enough that her hips chase me. She makes a sound that’s half my name, half profanity.
I smile against her skin. “Patience.”
“I’ve been patient for three days, you—”
I put my mouth on her pussy, and whatever she was about to call me dissolves into a moan that I feel in my chest. She’s wet and swollen, and I lick her slowly, learning what makes her grip my hair tighter, what makes her hips buck forward.
When I circle her clit with the tip of my tongue, her thigh drops heavy on my shoulder, and her heel digs into my back, pulling me closer.
I push two fingers inside her and twist. Her legs shake. She’s talking in fragments, my name mixed with moans mixed with please and right there and don’t you dare stop. Every broken word tightens the ache in my cock.
She comes hard, clenching around my fingers, my name tearing out of her raw enough to echo off the hotel walls. I hold her through it. Gentle. Slow. Easing her down until her leg slides off my shoulder.
She laughs, grabbing at my arms to keep herself upright. “I can’t feel my legs.”
“Good.”
“You look really proud of yourself.”
“Extremely.”
Dahlia walks me toward the bed and shoves my chest so that I fall back on the bed. She climbs on top of me, bare skin against bare chest, and reaches for the jeans still tangled around my thighs, yanking them the rest of the way off.
“My turn to show off.” She straddles my hips and pushes her hair out of her face. She grins down at me, flushed and confident and so gorgeous that my chest aches.
“Twelve for twelve?” I ask.
She laughs so hard that she drops her forehead to my chest. “Shut up.”
She’s still laughing when she reaches between us and wraps her hand around my cock, stroking once, base to tip, and squeezing the head.
My laugh turns into a groan that echoes in the room. “If you keep that up, this is going to be over embarrassingly fast.”
“Then I’d better stop showing off.”
She rises on her knees, positions my cock at her entrance, and sinks down so slowly that I see stars. Her pussy takes me inch by inch, tight and wet and so hot that my hands seize her hips, and a sound comes out of me that I don’t recognize.
“Fuck. Dahlia.”
She bottoms out, my cock buried balls deep, and pauses. Her palms flatten on my chest, right over my hammering heart.
“I can feel that,” she says softly.
“It’s yours.”
She starts to move. Slow rolls of her hips, grinding down, and the friction of her slick pussy around my cock unleashes a groan from deep in my chest. Her rhythm is deliberate and unhurried, like she wants to feel every inch. I put my hands on her hips and guide her.
“You feel incredible.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “Dahlia. You have no idea.”
“I have some idea.” She rolls her hips deeper, and my spine arches off the mattress. Her hands press me back down, palms flat on my chest, and she grins. “Stay.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She laughs, and the sound vibrates through her body into mine.
The squeeze of her pussy around my cock makes me clench my jaw.
She picks up the pace, riding my cock harder, and her breath comes in short gasps that match the rhythm of her hips.
I grip her thighs and watch her move above me—her stomach jiggling, her breasts swaying, her mouth falling open—and I have to close my eyes for a second because the sight of her is going to finish me before I’m ready.
“Don’t you dare close those eyes.” She slows her hips, and I groan at the loss of speed. “Look at me.”
I open my eyes. She’s looking down at me with that expression, wanting and daring me to match it. I slide my hands back to her ass and pull her down harder on the next roll. She gasps, and runs her fingers down my chest.
“There,” she breathes. “Again.”
I do it again. And again. Guiding her hips, matching her rhythm, driving my cock deeper into her.
Her head tips back, and a moan rolls out of her that I feel in every nerve.
She leans down and presses her lips to the scar on my collarbone, soft, the same way she kissed it on the couch.
Like she’s claiming every damaged part of me.
My throat burns, and my hands grip her perfect round ass tighter.
I lean up, closing my mouth over her nipple, and she moans, low and broken, her fingers gripping my arms. Her pace quickens as I circle my tongue around the stiff peak and suck.
I switch to the other breast, scraping my teeth lightly across her nipple before closing my lips around it.
She gasps my name and clenches around my cock so tight that my vision blurs.
“Look at me.” Her voice cracks. “Cole.”
I release her breast and look up and she’s right there. Eyes open, dark and shining, lips parted, hair falling around us. She rides me with her eyes wide open, and I see every wave of pleasure cross her face, every emotion she’s not hiding.
I slide my hand between us. My thumb finds her clit and presses.
She moans, and her rhythm breaks. I circle gently, matching her pace.
Her mouth falls open, and her thighs tremble around me.
She grabs my wrist and holds my hand right where she wants it.
She rolls again, riding my cock and my thumb at the same time, and the sight of her taking exactly what she wants while her eyes stay locked on mine is the sexiest thing I have ever seen.
“Stay with me.” I’m barely holding on. “Don’t close your eyes.”
She holds my gaze. Her body is shaking, every muscle wrapped tight around me. My thumb presses harder, and her breath catches. Her fingers dig into my wrist, and she’s right there, right there with me.
“I love you.” It rips out of me from the center of my chest while she’s wrapped around me and I’m buried inside her and her eyes are on mine.
Her eyes go bright as she whispers it back, staring deeply into my eyes. “I love you.”
She comes around my cock, her pussy clenching and pulsing, her whole body shaking over me. The feel of her pulls me over, and I come so hard that I see stars.
She collapses against my chest, her fingers moving slowly through my hair. I roll us sideways, and she tucks into me, her heartbeat hammering fast against my ribs, then slowing, syncing with mine.
She shifts, sighing contentedly against my neck. “Cole.”
“Mm.”
“We need to find an apartment.” She traces the scar on my collarbone. “We can’t live with my brother. He’d kill us both.”
I pull back and look at her. “You don’t have to ask twice.”
“Then we find a place.” She presses her lips to the scar. “Tomorrow.”
“I’ll do anything for you. Always.”
“I know.” She smiles against my skin. “That’s why I picked the biggest bear on the wall.”
I pull her closer. Her head settles into the hollow of my shoulder, her leg hooking over mine as her breathing becomes slow and even. The hotel room is quiet, just the hum of the air conditioner and her heartbeat against my ribs.
Six weeks ago, I was lying on Jared’s couch, staring at a crack in the ceiling, running out of reasons to get up. No mission. No team. No purpose. Just a guy with a skill set that didn’t translate, and a silence that was eating me alive.
Then a wrong number lit up my phone, and I drove twenty minutes into the unknown because someone needed help.
Dahlia drifts to sleep, her fingers curling against my chest. I press my lips to the top of her head and breathe her in.
I’ve found my home.
Thank you so much for reading “Wrong Number, Right Grumpy Navy SEAL”!