I shiver, remembering the first time that Cole told me that. I want to trust him. I do.
“I wish I could take it all back,” he continues softly. “I wish… damn it… I wish that I could change it all and start all over but I can’t. I’m trying to prove that it’s not like that with us, but I keep fucking everything up, don’t I?” His shoulders seem to deflate a bit.
I swallow down the lump in my throat and shake my head. “You’re not fucking everything up, Cole.”
He raises his brow and slides his thumb down to my chin. “I’m not?”
“No.” I bite my lip, the burn from his fingertips beginning to liquefy my body. “I can’t pretend to be completely okay but you’re right that you can’t go back. None of us can. And, honestly, your life isn’t my business.”
“Not your business?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Aimee, come here,” he says gruffly, eating the remaining space between us and hooking his arm around the dip in my lower back. He lowers his face to my hair and inhales deeply. After a minute, he whispers, “I want to be your business.”
“Was she anything to you?” I ask into his chest.
Cole thinks about my question for a long time. His arm tightens and his hand comes up to cup the back of my head. “No, Aimee. Don’t you get it? No one has ever been anything to me until you.”
***
We leave the party early and Cole drives us back to my place.
“Come inside.” I’m awkward but determined.
Cole’s quiet. He moves his hand over that small bump in his nose and makes a funny sound. “I can’t seem to make myself tell you no, can I?”
“Is that going to be a problem?”
He laughs and follows me up the walk to the townhouse. As I search for the keys, I can feel his breath moving over the back of my neck and the delicate pressure of his fingers at my waist. A force moves inside of me, rocking me back into the channel formed by his arm and body. His warm hand comes around me and slides down my ribs to graze the sensitive skin under my shirt.
“Focus,” he chuckles soft and low, plucking the keys out of my open purse and placing them in my quivering fingers.
By the time I manage to get the door open, my lungs are pumping rapidly and I’m a bundle of hemmed in tension. I move through the hall quickly and stop at the threshold of my dark bedroom. Cole is behind me, breathing as hard as I am, using his right thumb to make a jagged path up my arm.
“I love the way that you taste,” he says as he pushes my hair aside and kisses my neck.
In one fluid movement, I turn my body, slip my hands under the bottom of his shirt, and press my hungry mouth to his. The floor shifts beneath my feet as Cole walks us through the doorway into my room. We stumble in the dark and collide with the edge of my dresser.
“Oomph.”
“This way,” I rasp out.
Not breaking our contact, my entire body burning with want, I urge him toward the bed and pull his weight down on top of me. Cole flattens his palms on either side of my waist and pushes his knee between my legs. My fingers brush across the soft line of hair that disappears under his waistband and travel up to explore the smooth skin of his chest. When I graze his hardened nipples, he makes a low sound from the back of his throat and flexes his arms. His face dips to my neck and I feel his tongue move across my collarbone and over the raised skin of my scar.
Too hollowed out to fight my impulse or be embarrassed, I let my thighs fall open and push my hips up in a request. “Please?”
“If I don’t stop soon, I won’t be able to,” he warns in a croaky voice as he rubs his thumb over the button of my jeans.
My pulse is jumping up and down. I tangle my fingers in his hair and pull his head against my tingling breasts. “I—I don’t want you to stop.”
Silence. A draft of cool air sneaks in over my skin.
Finally: “Are you sure?”
I’m sure that I want Cole Everly’s hands on me—on all of me. I can just make out his eyes shining and the outline of his face in the shadowed room. I trace a line down the center of his body, over his neck and sternum and the rigid contours of his chest, until my fingertips are resting below the waistband of his pants. I can feel the soft, silky fabric of his boxers and the crest of springy hairs.
“I’m sure.” I lean in and nip at his earlobe.
“Fuck.” Cole moans and automatically grinds his pelvis in a circular motion against me.
“I remember telling you that I wanted you to stay over tonight.”
“That was before the party. I didn’t want to assume that the offer still stood,” he grits out, his control clearly as frayed as mine.