"You aren't damaged, babe. In spite of such an influence in your life, you've turned out quite gorgeous."

"You think?"

He flicked the tip of her nose. "I know."

She encircled his neck with her arms, threading her fingers into his hair. The sun had bleached some strands, turning them almost white. "Your hair is getting long, soldier."

"Yes, it looks kind of sloppy. It's just that these last months I've been too preoccupied with a certain spitfire."

"I doubt the buzz cut would be any good for holding on to you when you f.u.c.k me with that talented mouth of yours."

A snort escaped him. "As if you'd need to hold me by my hair to keep me between your legs."

"True," she a.s.sented with a half smile while he brushed his thumb over her lower lip. Unable to stop herself, she licked the pad of his finger, and he let out a hoa.r.s.e growl that sent shivers of excitement all over her body.

"Have I told you how much I love your mouth? These red, glistening lips alone are responsible for more lost time on the job than I care to count. The library would have been finished weeks ago if I could have managed to stop daydreaming about them. About you. You're too d.a.m.n distracting." His warm eyes looked at her with such a mixture of tenderness and hunger it startled her.

He softly kissed the corner of her mouth, then trailed his lips down to torment her throat, moving his hands all over her upper body. By the time he'd finished licking and sucking her nipples, she was shaking with need. Not that he was in better shape. His ma.s.sive erection was wedged between her folds, pulsing and twitching, his expression tight with l.u.s.t.

Suddenly he moved aside, got out of the water, and spread his gorgeous body on the wooden deck.

His eyes glittered with desire. "Come here and ride me, sweet thing."

She looked around. "You want me to jump out of the tub and come ride you?" He nodded. "Why don't you come back in here and f.u.c.k me?"

"Feeling shy?"

"You bet. Anyone could be watching us," she replied.

"This place is secluded. No one can see us," he said as he motioned with a very arrogant finger for her to come to him.

Christy so didn't want to give him the satisfaction of her coming to him, but she was burning up, her p.u.s.s.y flexing, her nipples so hard they hurt. She stood up. "I guess you should know. You must f.u.c.k all your dates in the tub, so of course you must have checked that your intimacy is protected."

His gaze never left hers. "I never bring women to my place. Too complicated."

That froze her. "And me?"

"You?" He shrugged. "Not complicated."

And that said it all. She felt a small pang in her stomach. She didn't even count as a fling. Not that she wanted to, she reminded herself. This was meaningless s.e.x, nothing more, nothing less, and she should keep that in mind before things got out of hand and the man broke her heart.

"Come on, babe," he continued, seeming totally unaware of the implications of his little comment.

She forced herself to shake his words out of her head. He was right. They had an agreement, and everyone here was getting what they wanted. She was getting s.e.x. He was getting a no-groupies buffer zone around him.

As she straddled him, he rolled them over. "On a second thought," he said, trailing down and forcing her legs open. "You didn't let me eat earlier and I'm hungry."

He kissed her core as if it were her mouth, deeply and thoroughly, claiming every inch of it with his talented tongue and lips, holding her by her a.s.s and lifting her up to grant him more access while she sobbed and writhed and he held her tight, making appreciative sounds, driving her desire higher and higher. When he fastened his lips around her c.l.i.t and began sucking, she was as good as gone. Her back arched, and with a ragged cry she came in his mouth.

"Yum," he said against her lips, the smell of her all over him, and then rolled them over again, grinning at her. "Now you can ride me."

Cole took himself in hand and rubbed the tip of his d.i.c.k on her tender folds as she lowered herself onto him.

"You feel like heaven, baby. I'm addicted to having your bare flesh around me. I can't get enough."

Her hands on his pecs, she began riding him slowly while her depths accommodated his ma.s.sive presence. She could feel the blood pulsing in his c.o.c.k, shooting arrows of need all over her, and soon her desire was reignited.

She might be on top, but as always, Cole was the one f.u.c.king her, thrusting up, gripping her thighs to ensure he set the pace. And she loved it.

She opened her eyes and saw his hungry gaze on her body.

"You are so f.u.c.king beautiful," he said, reaching for her, his fingers trailing over her chest and teasing her nipples. Caressing her as if he...cared for her.

For some reason that ticked her off. "You don't have to lie to me. I know what I am."

He stilled. "And what's that, sweetheart?"

Defective.

"Not totally up to standards."

Slap! She felt the sting of his hand on her a.s.s, radiating straight to her c.l.i.t, actually. "I told you not to do that again."

Trying to ignore the way her c.l.i.t throbbed, she snorted. "Do what? I know what I-"

Another slap. This one harder. She sucked her breath in.

He jolted upward against her, his eyes blazing with some emotion she couldn't decipher. He pulled at her hair, tilting her head back, forcing her to meet his stare. "Don't you dare. I won't let you put yourself down, you hear me? Next time I'll turn you over my knee and spank that pretty a.s.s. And it won't be a spanking you'll enjoy. Are we clear?" His hips slammed against her, harder and faster than before. Dazzled from the pleasure and his forcefulness, she could do nothing but nod.

"Now that we understand each other, I want you to come. Now," he ordered as he plunged inside her and, arms wrapped around her torso, ground his pelvis against her. She lost it on the spot, as if her body could not not follow his commands.

Before she'd come down from that powerful release, Cole had stood and was walking toward the house, still painfully hard inside her.

"What-"

"You managed to p.i.s.s me off, sweetheart. Be ready to work out all this anger on your knees."

He went searching for her and found her sitting on his outer deck, chin on her knees. She was wearing one of his old pajama tops, and his chest clenched at the sight. He liked her naked, but if she insisted on dressing, seeing her in his clothes was the next best thing.

Christy hadn't noticed him closing in, for she was looking into the distance across the lake.

As he sat on the chair near her, she turned to him but didn't say anything.

"Did I already weird you out?" After all, not everyone went for his special brand of s.e.x. Most women didn't appreciate being pounded into a bed for hours, much less restrained or overpowered. Not to mention that before they got to the bed part last night, he'd f.u.c.ked her bent over the sofa, hard, sideways from a mirror, her hair wrapped around his fist to force her to watch the show. Then he'd pushed her to her knees and come, shoved deep in her throat. He'd been so mad hearing her derisive comments about herself that he'd needed to show her how she affected him. How he went insane with l.u.s.t for her.

He'd let himself go, and he'd been rough. She'd enjoyed the s.e.x, coming apart in his arms many times, but now he found himself...uncertain. He searched her face. Was this too much for her? Did he have to tone his s.e.x drive down? Because he'd hate it, but for her he'd do it. He loved unapologetic s.e.x, but crazy as it might sound, he loved pleasing her more.

She smiled softly. "No, you didn't, soldier. You exhausted me, but you didn't weird me out."

Relief spread over him. "Good to hear."

They'd been f.u.c.king for over a week. He'd hoped that by giving in to Christy he would regain control of the situation. f.u.c.k her out of his system and move on, but no dice; this insane attraction hadn't worn off. If anything, it had gotten worse. Not only did he still want to screw her at every chance he got, but now he also wanted to spend time with her with their clothes on. It was frigging scary.

"Why aren't you in bed?"

"Can't sleep," she offered with a shrug. "So I decided to read a bit."

He glanced at the table nearby where her iPod, her iPhone, and her e-reader were-Christy and her gadgets. It was a miracle she hadn't fussed with them.

"I think I haven't seen you reading a real book yet." He could appreciate gadgetry-he was after all a man-but sometimes the simplicity of the traditional couldn't be beaten.

She clicked her tongue in annoyance. "This is a real book. h.e.l.l, it's better because there are three thousand books in it. It doesn't kill trees, it doesn't create storage problems, and it doesn't grow old and get damaged as fast as paper."

"True, but you have to recognize that that screen can't compete with the real thing. The smell of a book, how it feels in your hands."

A snort full of derision escaped her throat. "If the problem here is tactile and olfactory input, you just have to give some of my geek friends a couple of weeks and they'll come up with a way to solve that issue."

"I bet they could." Of that he was absolutely sure. They learned Klingon, for crying out loud. Sure as h.e.l.l they could come up with a way of fooling your mind into believing that a small computer was an actual book. "So what book are you reading now?"

"It's for the library's inauguration. Remember how I told you I wanted to organize some book readings, one for kids and another for adults?" He nodded. "There's a romance book club that meets in the library, so I checked their reading list and found out one of their authors lives in Boston. She's agreed to come read a chapter of her new book. It's called Bleeding Hearts Lost in Pa.s.sion." He scowled, and she laughed. "Yeah, I'm reading it now myself to make sure there is nothing that will send Mrs. Wilkinson straight to the hospital again."

"Do I dare to ask what's about?"

"It's about second chances. It tells about this guy who, after several bad breaks, grows bitter with the world. His life is all messed up, mainly by his own hand, plus he's having a h.e.l.l of a time in his job and kicking his drinking habit. The heroine tries to save him."

He couldn't have refrained from snorting even if he'd wanted to. "Delusional woman. She should cut her losses. Dump him and run like h.e.l.l in the opposite direction."

Her tone was amused. "Not big on second chances, are you?"

"Nope. There's no way to help someone h.e.l.l-bent on self-destruction."

"You have to have faith in people. Sometimes they just need a little help to straighten out their lives. A gentle push in the right direction."

Sure, or a hard shove down the stairs. "Sorry, I'm a firm believer that everyone has to go to h.e.l.l in their own special way. And alone. There's nothing you can do about it. No way to save them from themselves."

"Is it that you think people can't change?"

"Can't, won't, same s.h.i.t, honey."

"Yes, but-"

"I know what I'm talking about. I tried to save my mother. It didn't end well."

Chapter Ten.

Christy's eyes widened in surprise. "What happened?"

He had every intention of keeping quiet. He hadn't thought about that day for ages. He didn't want to now, but the memories rolled over him and he found himself opening up to her.

"I was twenty when I decided to search for my mother. G.o.d f.u.c.king knows why. She'd been gone for ten years. I guess I was still angry and resentful. I wanted to confront her and throw in her face how well I was doing without her. How well we were all doing without her."

To his surprise it wasn't difficult to track her down. She hadn't reverted to her maiden name and apparently hadn't remarried. He still remembered how his heart had thudded in his chest the whole three-hour drive. Excitement and dread and fear warring inside him.

While growing up, he'd thought she'd left because he and his brothers weren't good enough, that she'd traded them for a better family, a better life. He'd imagined her living in suburbia. Baking cookies and tending the garden. Content and satisfied. Spoiling her new kids and husband rotten.

Nothing was further from reality.

"She was living in a trailer park. She looked like a b.u.m. Chain-smoking and sloppily dressed."

Rachel, his mom, had left Sweden in a hippie bus, met Cole's dad while traveling around the US, and had settled down. He remembered Rachel as a young, vibrant, beautiful woman. As a mother he remembered her being distant and moody, easily angered and p.r.o.ne to fits and screams and tears, but sometimes also happy and smiling. Taking him with her to the salsa cla.s.ses, talking to him about the things she'd seen on her travels and the places she was going to take him to. Although maybe it was just his memory playing tricks on him. In any case, she hadn't been like that anymore when he found her. She was a haggard, prematurely old, devastated shadow of a woman. Drunk or high or maybe both. She'd looked unwashed and uncouth-bloated. Her once-beautiful strawberry-blonde hair had been bleached a horrible, yellowish mess that hung down shapelessly to her shoulders and around a sharp-boned face that had been carved with sour lines. Her mouth was missing many teeth, and the ones in it were rapidly decaying. She was...used up.

The badly patched-up heart he'd had left broke at the sight of her.

"She didn't recognize me at first. When she did, she tried to bring herself together, straightening her frayed robe, smoothing her tangled strands, but she might have deemed the endeavor useless, as she turned her back on me and began crying. I was totally unprepared for that. I expected her to have a perfect family with well-behaved kids. Or have a high-paying career in some important field maybe. Why else would she have walked out on us if not because we were dragging her down? Anyway, the owner of the trailer came. Loud, smelling of whisky, and got mouthy at her. I jumped up, and as he began insulting her and me, I told her to pack, that I was taking her away from there. The a.s.shole got aggressive with her, so I intervened. Cutting a long story short, the police showed up, she sided with him, and I got arrested for a.s.sault and battery. In the struggle the a.s.shole had dropped a packet of dope, and when the police found it, Rachel tried to pin it on me. Talk about a model mom."

She visibly winced. "I'm so sorry."

Yeah, no good deed goes unpunished. Or better yet, no stupid deed goes unpunished. "I spent the night in jail. Then I had to call my dad to bail me out." Thank G.o.d the police had figured out by then who the true owner of the c.o.ke was, or he would have been in much deeper trouble.

"What did your father say?"

"There was nothing to say. He knew where Rachel had been living all along."

Cole's dad had sat beside him in the cell, in silence first. He could still remember the smell of foul sweat that the cell exuded, the way his father had sat stoically there for a long time, motionless, his presence so comforting and so heavy to bear at the same time.

"I tried that several times, son," he'd said. "It didn't work."

Cole hadn't known what to say, and he just stared at the wall in silence. What was there to say? Nothing.

"That next day I enlisted in the marines." Until now he hadn't spoken about this with anyone. And f.u.c.k if he knew why he was telling her of all people. He was ashamed of it, always had been, a black dot in his life that didn't go away no matter how hard he tried. Rachel hadn't even come to see him the night that he spent in jail. Not to apologize or excuse herself or explain. Not even to berate him. No, apparently Cole wasn't even a blip on her radar.

The thing that had p.i.s.sed him off the most wasn't her behavior, which didn't scream mother of the year, but not getting answers to his whys. He thought he'd gone there to rub it in her face, but in reality he'd been searching for answers. Why? Why did she leave them? Then the reality had burned a hole in his gut; did they truly matter so little to her that she left them for a f.u.c.king life in a s.h.i.tty trailer being abused by losers? He'd never gotten an answer. And it'd been just as well. f.u.c.k the whys. He didn't need to know. h.e.l.l, he didn't want to know. He'd just gone into blowing s.h.i.t up for twelve years. He'd learned his lesson, though: allowing yourself to be emotionally vulnerable was a f.u.c.king dumb thing to do.

Christy seemed to be able to read his thoughts. She reached for him. "Some people can't deal with good things happening to them. That's probably why she left you."

"If you say so," he said with indifference.

She laughed softly. "Look at us. We're two of a kind. You're p.i.s.sed at your mom for walking out on you, and I'm p.i.s.sed at mine for not walking out on me."