I hear my mom’s voice. It seeps into my head and my hand stills in Rylee’s hair. I swear I stop breathing. “Colty. I know how much you love me. How much you need me. That you understand that love means doing whatever the other person tells you to. So I’m telling you that because you love me, you’ll go lay down on my bed for me and wait like the good little boy that you are. You want food right? It’s been days. You’ve got to be hungry. If you’re a good little boy—if you love me—you won’t fight this time. Won’t be the naughty boy you were last time. If you’re bruised up, the police might take us away from each other. And then you won’t get anything to eat. And then I won’t love you anymore.”
Rylee’s hand tracing absent circles on my tattoos jolts me back to the here and now. The irony in that—her touching the tattoos that represent so much—is enough in itself. I force myself to breathe calmly, try and clear the revulsion in my stomach. Quiet the tremor in my hand so she doesn’t notice. Shit. Now I know the feeling earlier really was a fluke. How can I want to protect and take care of Rylee when I can’t even do that for myself? Breathe, Donavan. Fucking breathe.
“I wonder if we’re drawn to each other because we’re both fucked up emotionally somehow,” she murmurs aloud, breaking the silence. I can’t help the breath that hitches in my chest. I swallow slowly, digesting her words—realizing they’re just a coincidence—but how true they ring for me.
“Well gee thanks,” I say, forcing a chuckle, hoping to calm both of us with some humor. “Us and everyone else in Hollywood.”
“Uh-huh,” she says, snuggling deeper into me. The feeling is so soothing I wish I could pull her inside of me to ease the pain there as well.
“I told you, a seven forty seven baby.” I leave it at that. I can’t force any more words out without her catching on that something’s amiss with me.
She moves her hand from my tattoo to tickle through the slight smattering of hair on my chest. “I could lie here forever,” she sighs out in that throaty morning voice of hers. I pray for my dick to stir at the sound. Need it to. Need to prove to myself that the unexpected reminder of my mother and my past can’t affect me anymore. That they aren’t who I am.
My thoughts flicker to what I’d normally do. Go call up my current flavor and use her. Fuck her into oblivion without a second thought of her needs. Use the fleeting pleasure to bury the endless goddamn motherfucking pain.
But I can’t do that. I can’t just walk away from the one person that I want and fear and desire and have grown to need. Balls in a fucking vise.
And before I even think, the words are out of my mouth. “Then stay here with me this weekend.” I think I’m as shocked as Ry is at my comment. She stills at the same time I do. The first time my lips have ever uttered those fucking words. Words I never wanted to say before, but know without a doubt I mean right now.
“On one condition,” she says.
One condition? I just handed her my balls on a platter in exchange for the whip to her pussy and she’s going to add a condition? Fucking women.
“Tell me what a voodoo pussy is.”
For the first time this morning I feel like laughing. And I do. I can’t contain it. She just looks up at me, with those eyes that do wild things to me, like I’m crazy. “Shit, I needed that,” I tell her, leaning down and pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
“Well?” she asks in that no-nonsense tone she has that usually turns me on. And I breathe a slight sigh as I start to harden at the thought of her wet heat I plan on taking advantage of in mere moments.
“Voodoo pussy?” I choke on the words.
“Yeah. You said it last night in the garden.”
“I did?” I ask, unable to hide the amusement in my tone, and she just nods her head subtly with her eyebrows arched waiting for an answer. Oh yeah. Definitely hard and raring to go now. Thank Christ. “Well…it’s that pussy that just takes hold of your dick and doesn’t let go. It’s so good—feels, tastes, everything good—that it’s magical.” I feel so stupid explaining it. I don’t think I ever have. I just say it and Becks knows exactly what I mean.
Rylee laughs out loud and the sound is so beautiful. Beautiful? Fuck. I am pussy whipped. “So you’re telling me that I have a magical pussy?” she asks as her finger trails a circle around my nipple before looking up at me and licking her lips. I can’t manage a word at the moment because all of the blood needed to supply a coherent thought in my brain has just traveled south, so I just nod my head. “Well maybe I should show you—”
The cell phone on the dresser rings—it’s a different ring than her normal one—and something about it has her scrambling off of the bed in a flash. She’s breathless when she answers. And fucking breathtaking. She stands at the wall of windows looking out to the beach down below, her phone to her ear, and the sun bathing her naked body in its light.
The concern in her voice pulls me from my perverse thoughts of all of the ways I can take her. Position her. Corrupt her.
“Calm down, Scooter,” she soothes. “It’s okay, buddy. I’m okay. I’m right here. Shhh-shhh-shhh. Nothing’s happened to me. I’m actually sitting on the beach right now, looking out at the water. I promise, buddy. I’m not going anywhere.” The concern in her voice has me shifting in the bed. She notices my movement and looks over and smiles apologetically at me. As if I’d be mad that she left me to talk to one of the boys. Never. “You okay now? Yes. I know. Don’t be sorry. You know that if I’m not there, you can always call me. Always. Mmm-hmm. I’ll see you on Monday, okay? Call me if you need me before then.” Rylee walks back toward the dresser as she wraps up her call. “Hey, Scoot? I Spiderman you. Bye.”
I Spiderman you? Rylee hangs up her phone and tosses it on the dresser before walking back to the bed. My eyes roam over the line of her curves, thinking how lucky I am to have her naked and walking toward me with an extremely durable bed beneath me.
“Sorry,” she says. “Scooter had a really bad dream and was afraid that I’d been hurt. That I was going to be taken away like his mom was. He just needed to make sure that I was okay. Sorry,” she says again, and I swear that my goddamn heart twists in my chest at her apologies for being selfless. Is she for fucking real?
“Don’t be,” I tell her as she climbs into the bed beside me and sits on her knees. I tell myself to ask now before I become distracted at the sight of her sitting there looking so damn obedient. “I Spiderman you?”
She laughs with this adorable look on her face. “Yeah.” She shrugs. “Some of the boys have trouble with affection when they come to us. Either they feel like they’re betraying their parents, regardless of how fucked up their situation, by having feelings for their counselors, or feelings in general had a negative connotation from whatever situation they came from… It all started with Shane really, but it kind of caught on and now most of the boys do it. We take the one thing that they love more than anything and use that as the emotion instead. Scooter loves Spiderman so that’s what he uses.”
I look at her with bemusement, a little unnerved that she has these kids pegged so well—me, so well—if I allowed her to look close enough. She’s just unknowingly fucked with my mind so much that my eyes haven’t roamed south of her face to take in her gloriously naked body below as they normally would.
She mistakes the look I give her to be that I don’t understand so she tries to clarify. She shifts off of her knees and situates herself closer to me. “Okay, for instance pretend you are one of my boys—tell me one thing that you love more than anything.”
“That’s easy.” I smirk at her. “Sex with you.”
The smile spreads on her lips and her cheeks flush. So sexy. “Well, that’s an answer I’ve never gotten from one of my boys before,” she jokes, laughing at me. “No seriously, Colton, g— ive me the one thing.”
I shrug, saying my first and only love. “I love to race.”
“Perfect,” she says. “If you were one of my boys and you wanted to tell me you loved me, or
vice versa, you’d say ‘I race you, Rylee.’”
My heart stutters again at hearing her say those words, and I think she realizes what she’s said the minute the words are out of her mouth. She stills and her eyes dart to me and then down to her hands twisting in her lap. “I mean...” she backpedals and I’m glad this conversation is making her as nervous as I am right now “...if you were one of the boys that is.”
“Of course.” I swallow, desperately needing a distraction. I reach out to trace a finger down the midline of her chest—from her neck, down between the center of her breasts, and stopping at her bellybutton.
I race you, Rylee fleets through my mind. Just to hear what it sounds like for no other reason than to see how one of the boys would feel saying it. The tightening of my chest forces me to focus on the one thing that always allows me to forget. There will be no racing between Rylee and I. None. I look up from where my finger rests on her stomach to meet her eyes. “Now, I think you were just about to show me just how magical that pussy of yours was before we were interrupted.”
THE RINGING OF MY CELL phone startles me awake, and in the muted light of the dawn, I fumble for it on my nightstand. “Hello?” I mumble groggily, afraid that even though it’s not the designated ring, something is possibly wrong with one of the boys at The House.
“Good morning, sleepy.” Colton’s velvety smooth rasp fills my ears. I can hear his smile through the line, and it sends shivers straight down my spine to the tips of my toes. I’m definitely awake now.
“Morning,” I murmur, sinking back into the comfort of my warm bed.
“Do you have any idea how much I wish I was tangled up with you in that bed of yours? And that I was waking up with you and having lazy morning sex rather than just calling your cell?”
His subtle yet seductive words serve their purpose as I shift in my bed to still the ache he’s just unfurled in me. “I was just thinking that same thing.” I sigh softly, my mind wandering to how much I already miss him. How much my body automatically responds to the sound of his voice. I look down at my cotton camisole and panties and smirk. “Considering I’m very cold and very naked and I know you’d know exactly what to do to warm me up.” A little lie never hurt anyone when one was trying to keep the fires burning, right?
I hear him suck in a hiss of a breath. “Sweet Jesus, woman, you know how to make a man want,” he says quietly as I hear other voices in the background and realize that he’s not alone.
It’s only been four days since our blissful weekend together, but it feels like forever since I’ve been able to touch him. He drove me home on Monday morning on his way to the airport, and since then I’ve had to survive on texts and phone calls that leave me bereft and acting like a love-struck teenager.
“I’ll be right back,” he tells someone off the speaker, and I hear the chatter fade into the background. “I’m not sure that the people having breakfast here in the hotel want to watch me rub one out because my girlfriend’s so fucking hot,” he chuckles that seductive bedroom laugh of his through the line and I let it wash over me.
And then I still when the one word he said breaks through my sleep hazed brain. Girlfriend. I want to ask him to say it again so I can hear the word that is so simple but just literally took my breath away. But it’s the fact that he’s said it so casually, as if that’s how he thinks of me, that I don’t want to draw attention to it.
I sink further into the comfort of my bed with a huge smile plastered on my lips. “How’s Nashville?”
“It’s Nashville,” he replies drolly. “Not bad, just not home. I’m sorry to wake you up with the time difference, but I’m going to be crazy busy all day, and I wanted to make sure that I got to talk to you. To hear your voice.”
His words soften my smile, knowing that he’s thinking about me even though he’s doing work and prepping with his top sponsor. “Your voice is definitely a better wakeup call than my alarm clock…” I falter, holding back before I say screw it and just say what’s on my mind. “I miss you,” I tell him, hoping he hears what I really mean behind the words. That I miss more than just the sex. That I miss him as a whole.
He’s silent on the other end of the line for a moment, and I think maybe I’ve expressed too much verbalized affection for Mr. Stoic. “I miss you too, baby. More than I thought possible.” His last statement is said very quietly as if he can’t believe it either. I smile broadly and snuggle deeper in my covers as his words warm me. “So what are your plans for the day?”
“Hmmm…sleeping some more and then a run, laundry, cleaning house...Maybe dinner with Haddie.” I shrug although I know he can’t see it. “What’s your schedule like?”
“Brand meetings with the Firestone team, sponsorship junkets, a trip to Children’s hospital—best part of the day if you ask me—and then some formal dinner thing tonight. I’ll have to check with Tawny on the exact order.” He sighs as I roll my shoulders involuntarily at her name. “The days just all run together sometimes on these trips. It’s all important but it’s also rather boring.”
“I bet it is.” I laugh. “Next time you’re nodding off in one, just picture what my mouth did to you last Sunday,” I murmur to him in my breathiest voice. Images flash through my mind and I can’t fight the smile that comes with the memory.
A strangled moan comes from the other end of the line. “Jesus, Ry, are you purposely trying to make me walk around with a permanent hard-on today?” When my only response is a contented sigh, he continues, the edge in his voice expressing his unsatisfied desire. “When I get back, I’m locking you in my bedroom for an entire weekend—tying you up if I have to—and you’ll be my sex slave. Your body will be mine to use as I please.” He chuckles. “Oh and don’t worry Ryles, your mouth will be used and then some.”
Hello, Mr. Dominant! “Why are you limiting us to just your bedroom? I believe you have numerous surfaces in that large house of yours that are usable.”
The groan he emits causes need to coil inside of me. “Oh, don’t worry about where. Just worry about how you’re going to walk afterward.” His laugh is strained and sounds like how I feel.
“Promise?” I whisper, my body heating up at the thought of it.
“Oh, sweetheart, I’d stake my life on that promise.” I hear his name called in the background. “You ready, Becks?” he says away from the speaker before sighing loudly. “I gotta go but I’ll call you later if it’s not too late, okay?”
“Okay,” I reply softly. “It doesn’t matter the time. I like hearing your voice.”
“Hey, Ry?”
“Yeah?”
“Think of me,” he says, and I can hear something in his voice: insecurity, vulnerability, or is it the need to feel wanted? No, not wanted. He has that all of the time. Maybe it’s the need to feel needed. I can’t decipher it, but that little request has my heart constricting in my chest.
“Always.” I sigh, a smile on my lips as the line goes dead.
I sit with the phone to my ear for quite some time, so many thoughts running through my head about Colton and the sweet and affectionate side of him. The side that I’m getting glimpses of more and more. I can’t help the broad smile on my face as I hang up my phone and sink back into my bed. I will myself to go back to sleep, but thoughts of him and endless possibilities prevent it.
The next time I glance at the clock, I’m startled an hour has passed while I’ve been lost in my thoughts, thinking about our time together. About how in such a short time he has brought me from such maddening lows to the incredible high like I am feeling now.
I finally start to drift off to sleep when my phone rings again. “Seriously?” I groan until I see who the caller is.
“Hey, Momma!”
“Hi, sweetie,” she says, and just hearing her voice makes me want to see her again. I feel like it’s been forever since I’ve been able to hug her. “So when were you going to tell me about the new man in your life?” she asks, tone insistent.
Nothing like ge
tting straight to the point. “Well don’t beat around the bush or anything.” I laugh at her.
“How do you think I felt when I was flipping through last week’s People magazine and lo and behold, I thought I saw a picture of you. So I flipped back and sure enough there you were, my daughter, looking absolutely breathtaking, on the arm of that tall, dark, and sinfully handsome Colton Donavan.” I start to talk but she just keeps on going. “And then I read the caption and it said that ‘Colton Donavan and his reported new flame heat up the night at the Kids Now charity function.’ Do you know what a shock it was to see you there? And then to think that you’re dating someone and I don’t even know about it.”
I can hear the shock in her voice. And the hurt over not telling her about my first date since Max. That she had to find out from a magazine. I glance over to my dresser where the copy of People sits. “Oh, Mom, don’t be silly.” I sigh, knowing I’ve hurt her by not confiding in her.
“Don’t be silly?” She scoffs. “The man has donated a boatload of money to bring your project to fruition to get your attention and you’re telling me I’m being silly?”
“Mom,” I warn, “that’s not why he donated the money.” She harrumphs on the other end of the line at my answer. “No, really. His company picks one organization a year to focus on, and this year it happened to be mine. And I wasn’t not telling you…things have just been crazy.”
“Well, I think it’s rather telling that you told me about his company donating the money for the project, but neglected to say that you’d actually met him…so?” she asks skeptically.
“I met him at the charity function,” I answer without giving more away.
“And what happened at that function?”
“Have you been talking to Haddie?” I ask. There is no way she knows what to ask without having talked to Haddie.
“Quit avoiding the question. What happened at the function?”