A Bride for the Black Sheep Brother

Thirteen


Standing there, listening to Cooper talk about how much he wanted her, she knew there were a lot of reasons why she shouldn’t be falling a little bit more in love with him with every word. But somehow she couldn’t stop herself from hearing him. Couldn’t stop herself from believing everything he said. In fact, all she could do was reach for him. Give herself what she most wanted. In that moment. Which was to rise up onto her toes and press her mouth to his.

That simple invitation was all that he needed. He met her move for move, tracing the seam of her lips with his tongue until she let him in. He tasted like mint and sweet spring water. He stroked her tongue with his in a way that made her tremble. Cooper kissed the same way he did everything—with confidence that bordered on arrogance, with skill that made her mind spin.

He was fearless in a way that took her breath away. As if he’d never had a single doubt about kissing her. As if he knew this was exactly what she wanted.

And it was.

This time, when he kissed and touched her, he lacked the finesse he’d had the previous times they’d made love. Instead of skill, he was all need. Instead of expertise, he was barely controlled desperation.

His hands moved down her back, pulling her to him until she was molded against him. Only her hands were between them, moving across his shirt, exploring the rock-hard muscles of his chest.

And then his hands skimmed down her side to squeeze her hips before slipping around to cup her bottom. Pleasure spiraled through her, and a low groan was torn from her throat.

“Damn, Portia,” he muttered, his words nearly a groan, as well.

He lifted her up and against him, his mouth trailing a hot line of kisses down her neck. Each place his lips touched her skin lit a fire that spread through her body. She arched toward him. Then suddenly, she was off the ground. He’d lifted her clean off her feet onto the counter, and her legs automatically wrapped around his hips, pulling his hard length against her core. A shudder of raw pleasure coursed through her body. Somehow, he seemed to know exactly what she needed. Just how to touch her so that she came undone.

His kiss affected her in a way nothing else ever had. And maybe this was the last time she’d ever get to experience it. It was as though his very touch heated her blood and made her head spin. As though his kisses sucked the air right out of her lungs. She drew in quick, desperate breaths, but he only filled her senses more, the warm woodsy scent of him hitting her in the gut, making her greedy for him. She wanted him naked before her. She tugged at his shirt, pushing her hands under the fabric so that her palms could knead his bare skin.

And still that pressure inside her kept building until she was desperate. For all of him.

A moment later he was whipping her turtleneck up and over her head. The rest of her clothes followed so quickly she barely remembered them coming off. No man had ever seemed so eager to get her naked. And it felt good. Amazing to have him still wanting her like this. Cooper, who was like a rock star, who was so sought after that his assistant had to turn women away, who was handsome and accomplished and an amazing lover. And he wanted her. The experience was so heady, she didn’t even protest as her clothing fell away.

For the briefest instant, she wondered if this was really her at all. The entire experience seemed beyond anything she’d ever done. Even anything she’d ever thought about doing.

But none of that seemed to matter, not when he was touching her. His fingertips trailing down her body, into her body, pushed all thoughts aside, burying who she really was so completely that when he slipped her panties down and knelt between her legs, she was beyond thought, let alone protest.

Because this woman, this woman sitting bare-assed naked on the counter while he devoured her, wasn’t even her. That’s what she told herself even when she shattered into tiny bits.


* * *

Cooper had meant to stop. Or at least to slow down. Or maybe just to ask and make sure that this was what she really wanted.

Instead, he’d lost himself in Portia’s kiss. In her heated response to his every touch. To her low moans and greedy mewling sounds. To the cool flutter of fingertips and the hot thundering of her heart. To the soft mounds of her ass and the damp folds of her sex. To her desperation. Her need. Her surprise.

At every step of the way, he told himself he was going to stop. Just one kiss, he’d said. Just one peek at her breasts. Just one nibble on her neck. Just one taste. Until he felt her coming apart against his tongue as tremor after tremor of her orgasm rocked through her body. That’s when he stopped lying to himself.

He wasn’t going to stop. Not until he’d driven her mad with pleasure at least a few more times tonight. Not until he’d felt the last of her defenses crumble as she’d climaxed while he was buried deep inside of her. Not until he’d erased every other man from her memory and her mind.

He carried her up the stairs to one of the empty bedrooms and then slowly made love to her. All the while forcing from his mind all the reasons they couldn’t really be together. Not just the stupid, selfish reasons he’d always given to himself for not being in a real relationship, not that crap about not believing in love or happily ever afters. Those were the excuses he’d always given himself. The things that haunted him now were her reasons. All the reasons she didn’t want to be with him. The fact that she’d been hurt too badly. That she wanted to adopt. That she couldn’t see him as a father. That she couldn’t imagine him in her life long-term.

And as long as he kept touching her, he was able to forget them.

He kissed his way back up her body, leaving a trail of pink where the day’s growth of his beard scuffed her tender skin. Maybe he should have felt bad. Instead, he felt a deep surge of satisfaction at the sight. A sort of primitive pride that he didn’t remember feeling with anyone else. He’d marked her as his. Not for forever, but for now. She was his.

He pinned her hands over her head and waited until she was looking him in the eye before he plunged into her. He needed her to see him. To acknowledge that he was the one making love to her. That he was the one who brought her pleasure over and over again. Making love to her was almost too much pleasure and in the end, he was the one who looked away. Because as much pleasure as he brought her, just being with her brought him more.

* * *

Portia awoke alone in the bedroom in Bear Creek Lodge that she’d been staying in whenever she worked too late to call the driver to take her back into town. After what had happened in the kitchen, Cooper had swept her up into his arms and carried her here to make love to her again. At some point after that, she’d slept, Cooper’s body wrapped around hers, his hand clasping her breast possessively. Had she ever slept like that before? So closely entwined with someone else’s body so that she felt it every time he moved? Had she ever felt that connected to a man?

She didn’t think so.

She rolled over and buried her nose in the Cooper-scented pillow beside her and she was hit with another punch of that great scent. All pine-y and smoky. He smelled good. He always had.

He wasn’t here, but that didn’t surprise her. He’d probably gone out to see what Drew and The Friends were doing. He wouldn’t want them to come looking for her and then to have to answer the inevitable questions any more than she did.

Still, lying there in bed, she had to admit this wasn’t just sex. It was something so much more complicated than that. In the past few weeks, she’d grown to know Cooper. To understand how smart and driven he was. To respect him. To care deeply about him. What had started as a no-pressure fling had grown into something deep and complicated and nearly out of control.

But there was no room in her life for anything like that.

Things might have been different if he wanted a real relationship. She could have given herself over to the flame and let it burn her whole. But he didn’t want that. He only wanted brief and shallow. He wanted sex without love.

At least that was what he’d said when they started this. She’d thought this afternoon that maybe he’d changed his mind. That maybe he felt more.

And when he’d carried her to the room and made such beautiful love to her, she’d been sure he’d been on the verge of saying so out loud.

Except, he hadn’t. They’d had great sex and then he’d walked away.

She’d foolishly thought that she could let herself have this passionate fling, that as long as she knew going into it that it was just sex that she’d be safe. She’d been so wrong.

She was in way over her head. She wanted more. She needed more or nothing at all.

Settling for less than what she wanted seemed dirty and petty. It seemed small. It seemed disrespectful of her marriage.

Yes, her marriage to Dalton was over, but those ten years were still part of her life. It wasn’t as if she could get them back or unwind them. She couldn’t undo them. She wouldn’t if she could. She certainly wouldn’t turn her back on that part of herself. She had been so young and hopeful. Portia respected that person too much to settle for something like this with Cooper.

She wouldn’t settle for a cheap affair, but that didn’t mean she was giving up, either. Somehow, inexplicably, she’d fallen in love with Cooper over the past three weeks.

She was dressed and heading down the servants’ staircase in the back of the house when she heard the roar of snowmobiles outside the lodge. For just an instant, her hand gripped the railing. Was she ready for this? Ready to face the half-dozen rambunctious puppies as if nothing had happened?

Well, she supposed that was the good thing about puppies. Unless she met them on the porch wailing her heart out, they probably wouldn’t notice. A few deep breaths later, she exited onto the porch via the kitchen door and followed the sounds of their raucous laughter.

Cooper was with them. In his snow gear, he blended seamlessly with the group as they parked their snowmobiles under a nearby copse of trees and started loading their equipment back into the waiting van. There was a lot of backslapping and boasting about who had done the most work and who had been a dumbass. For the first time, she felt a twinge of doubt about the coming days, not just about her relationship with Cooper, but also about whether or not this party of hers was a good idea at all. And about Cooper’s idea for the lodge. He wanted to open an exclusive high-end lodge for snowboarders, but would snowboarders actually want to stay here?

Nothing about this group said exclusive or high-end. These guys didn’t look as if they’d know luxury accommodations if they bit them on the nose.

Not for the first time, Portia felt a heartbreaking panic. She had doubts upon doubts. Fears on top of fears. Because in that moment she understood something about her relationship with Cooper. Yes, he wanted Bear Creek Lodge, but he wanted it for all the wrong reasons. He wanted prestige, the social acceptability that would come with owning a high-end resort. It wasn’t the lodge he loved. It was the idea of the lodge. What owning the lodge would bring him.

Was his relationship with her just the same? Were they together because he wanted her, or because she represented success and wealth and privilege?

The idea made her sick to her stomach. But before she could flee back into the house, Stevey noticed her standing there and he nudged a couple of the other guys so they knew she was there, too. They settled down a bit. He bounded up the stairs to the porch.


“We finished! We’ll be back tomorrow for test runs and to shoot some footage for the doc. You’ll come watch, right?”

She glanced back down to see Cooper looking up at her, his expression unreadable. Then she smiled at Stevey, trying to hide her sorrow and confusion. “I don’t know. I’ll just have to see how things look here tomorrow.”

“You should come,” he insisted.

“I’ll try,” she agreed, but knew that try was the operative word there. She couldn’t make any promises until she knew how things went with Cooper.

A moment later, Drew and The Friends all piled into the vans and headed back down the mountain.

Cooper came up onto the porch, propping his shoulder against one of the rough-hewn posts that held up the roof. “What were you talking to Stevey about?” he asked.

“He asked if I was going to come watch them practice tomorrow.”

“What did you say?” he asked as he followed her in through the back door to the kitchen.

“I told him I’d have to wait and see.” She sucked in an icy, bracing breath and plunged into the conversation she knew he wouldn’t want to have. “I don’t think this is a good idea. But Cooper, you and I need to talk.”