“Okay. You’re right. Though my gut instinct is to beat down any asshole who harasses you, I know you’re tough enough to handle it and I’d never want to make things worse. But if you ever want my help—with anything—all you have to do is ask. And if you ever want to blow off steam, I’m here to listen.” He pressed his lips into a line, hoping she wouldn’t turn this into a joke per their norm, because this was important to him.
She stared at him as if evaluating his offer, and the seriousness in her expression mirrored what he felt in his gut. The pounding drumbeat of the rain on the roof above them drowned out all other sound, giving the moment an almost suspended quality. “Okay. I’ll try,” she finally said. “But I’m used to holding all this in, so it’s not easy. I don’t like to be seen as weak or incompetent.”
Satisfaction roared through him at her serious reply. He felt like something important was happening here, something real, something—for once—not hidden behind layers of snark and humor. Colton didn’t have anything real or even particularly meaningful with a woman—nor had he ever before. And that made what was happening between them right now stand out.
Not that he didn’t have plenty of opportunities for casual encounters with women interested in dabbling in the rougher stuff with him, but none that made him want something more, something deeper, something real. Mostly, that was a good thing, because his parents’ miserable marriage had seriously damaged his belief in the institution. His mother excelled in passive-aggressiveness and guilt trips, while his father was a master of actual aggression and yelling. Most of the time, they’d directed their venom at each other, but he and his sister Sophie had gotten caught in the cross fire plenty of times. Even after his parents had divorced and his father had moved to Tennessee, Colton had continued to get trapped in the middle of their disputes during the summers he spent there. If it hadn’t been for his good friends Reed and Brock, those summers in Tennessee would’ve been miserable. So, Colton hadn’t even been eighteen before he vowed he’d never spend even a minute as an adult putting himself in the situation he’d been forced to live through as a kid.
His gaze scanned over Kady’s beautiful face. The woman standing in front of him was the only woman who’d ever inspired Colton to consider anything more than a one-night stand or being fuck buddies, and that made Kady both incredibly dangerous to his world order and one of the most important people in it.
“I don’t see you that way. Not even a little,” he said. Allowing himself the pleasure of her skin, he brushed his knuckles down her cheek. So fucking soft.
Her head tilted into his hand and she smirked up at him, one eyebrow arched.
“Okay, ‘little’ was a bad choice of words, wasn’t it?” he said, cupping her cheekbone in his palm and running his fingers into the edge of her hair.
She nodded, but the smile that played around her mouth made it clear she’d understood his intent. Licking her lips, she stared up at him.
Arousal shot like an arrow through Colton’s body, spiking his pulse and sending blood south. As if Kady picked up on the shift in his mood, her lips parted and her skin flushed where he still held her. The air suddenly crackled with heat and tension and promise.
Colton’s gaze zeroed in on her mouth, and an urgent need had him wanting—no, needing—to taste her. To claim her. To devour her. Without telling his body to move, he leaned down and his fingers slid into the silk of her hair. He met her gaze and he nearly roared in victory when she tilted her head back to receive him. Closer. And closer yet.
Her fingers fell on his lips. Her eyes bored into his, the beautiful green filled with desire and something else. Challenge? Determination?
“Don’t do this unless you mean it, Colton,” she said in a voice so low the beat of the rain nearly drowned it out.
The words pierced through his desire and kick-started the thinking part of his brain. Unless you mean it. Colton froze. What would “meaning it” mean to Kady? Something intentional. Something that might go somewhere. Something serious.
Regret and longing settled like an anvil on his shoulders. He slowly dropped his hand from her hair and pulled back. Need throbbed through his body, but his heart protested the lost promise of this moment even louder. Because he knew with Kady, sex would never just be about bodies and actions, it would be about feeling, connecting, sharing.
Kady was tough and brilliant, and she was also a happily-ever-after, two-point-four-kids, white-picket-fence kind of woman. Unlike his, her parents’ marriage had been fantastic, and the Dresco house had served as a home away from home more than once for him and his sister Sophie. So Colton totally got why Kady would want the same. More than that, she deserved it. Which meant she deserved more than him.
“Like I said”—Kady’s voice jolted him from his thoughts—“let’s not let this conversation make things weird. Okay? I just needed to say that stuff.”
He nodded. “Right. Of course,” he said. Did she hear the grit in his voice? And what would she think it meant if she did?
She gave him a small smile and stepped around him, opening a clear path between him and his reflection.
Colton looked himself in the eye. Could you give a relationship a meaningful try for her? he asked his mirror image.
His gut gave a squeeze of alarm at the thought, not because of the idea of being with her, but because nothing he’d seen growing up had taught him how to be a good half of a whole. And he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he gave her anything less than the happy future she deserved.
And that wasn’t the only question worth considering.
Could you dial the roughness down for her?
Another squeeze. Not really. He’d had “regular” sex before, and it could get him off. But no way he could only have regular sex. Something in him required the release of aggression that rough sex gave him. And for him, it was so much more…exciting, satisfying, fulfilling.
He couldn’t change. Not this. And trying probably wouldn’t serve his cause, either—instead, it was likely to create the same kind of tension and conflict that had cracked the foundation of his parents’ marriage and slowly but surely rotted everything from the inside out.
If you couldn’t be your true self with the person you planned to spend your whole life with, you shouldn’t be with them in the first place.
Problem was, he cared about Kady Dresco—about what she needed and what she thought of him—too damn much to put their relationship at risk.
…
Kady busied herself with
the ten new emails that had come in while she’d dealt with Bob and then Colton.
Colton. Who had almost kissed her.
Why the hell had he almost kissed her?
More importantly, why had she stopped him?
Kady’s fingers pounded harder against the keyboard than perhaps was strictly necessary.
She knew exactly what she’d just missed. Colton Brooks kissed in an all-consuming way that stole her breath, demanded her surrender, and blocked everything else out until the only thing she saw or heard or felt or knew was his lips, his tongue, his hands, his body. Him. After all this time, she could still remember the almost aggressive way he kissed, claiming her with his mouth, his harsh grip, the hard press of his chest and hips and thighs against hers. Just the memory of it made her heart flutter.
And she’d just turned him down.
No, he’d just withdrawn. Again. Though, she respected him for being honest, at least, even if that led him to a different decision than the one she wanted. Much better than him taking advantage of her interest and willingness and putting them back in that awkward place they’d had to navigate after their ill-fated encounter at the party.
Which was exactly why she’d turned him down—or at least, made it clear what proceeding meant to her. Because as much as she’d seriously consider selling a kidney for one night of no-strings-attached sex with him—just one—she knew she wouldn’t be able to weather the blow if he did anything that communicated that the fact he was with her wasn’t important. And she suspected her ego might never recover if he pulled away midstream like he had the last time. It had taken Kady a lot of phone calls with Julie, who was hands-down the best listener among all her sorority sisters, long talks with her roommate Christine, quite a few pints of Ben & Jerry’s, and therefore, lots of trips to the gym to make up for said emotional eating, to realize that what had happened between them that night had absolutely nothing to do with her.
But having worked so hard to achieve that insight, she wasn’t putting it at risk again unless Colton actually saw her, actually wanted her, and actually intended to follow through. If she could put a check mark next to all three of those boxes, she would sign up for that ride in a heartbeat—and get on and off as many times as she could. Heh.