“Olivia,” he kept saying. “Olivia. Olivia, please, Olivia.”
He let me struggle and thrash for another minute or so and then there was no more hysterical laughing, I was just crying, the kind of crying that once you started was almost impossible to stop, and he set me down and I turned around and my head was on his chest and he was smoothing my hair with his hand. “Shhh,” he said. “Shhh, baby, you’re okay. It’s okay.”
But I wasn’t okay.
I was never going to be okay again.
“Colt,” I said, and my knees were weak. “Colt, he was… he wasn’t…”
“Shh,” he whispered soothingly, and his hands were still smoothing my hair.
“It was all a lie,” I whispered. “Everything I thought, it was all just a big lie.”
And then he was wiping my tears with his thumbs, and he was leaning in close to me, and then somehow his lips were on my skin, kissing my tears off my cheeks, forehead, my chin.
The whole time I was still sad and devastated and I couldn’t believe it about Declan, couldn’t believe that this whole time everything I’d thought would save me wasn’t real.
But underneath that crushing disappointment, the emotion that welled up and overtook it was relief.
Relief and happiness.
Happiness that Colt was here.
I pushed my body into his and he pulled back and looked deep into my eyes and then he was kissing me again, this time on my lips, and his kiss was getting hotter and more insistent, and I wanted to drown myself in his touch.
My nails dug into his back and I was pushing myself into him, and I could feel my body igniting into a flame, that’s how badly I wanted to lose myself in him.
He pulled back and his chest was heaving.
“Colt,” I whispered. “What am I going to do?”
His answer was immediate. “You’re going to come home with me.”
The car ride back to Colt’s apartment was silent, controlled.
I stared out the window, not crying, not laughing, not upset, not happy, not anything.
I was numb.
Once we arrived at his apartment, Colt closed the door and locked it behind him, then tossed his keys onto the kitchen counter.
His eyes slid down my body to my wrists. My cuts had stopped bleeding, but the bandages hung in tatters around my wrists. Colt disappeared down the hallway and returned with a washcloth. He ran it under the warm water and then he washed the dried blood off my skin, pulling the ruined bandages off and tossing them into the garbage.
My cuts were still raw, but they were already heading, the new skin already starting to form over the wounds.
“You need to eat something.”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”
“You’ve been through a lot today.”
“I don’t need food,” I whispered, and I raised my eyes to his, and I felt myself falling into his eyes, tumbling over and over, not caring about anything but him.
He knew what I wanted.
I could tell from the look on his face that was wrestling with it inside of himself.
I wanted to fuck. I wanted him inside of me, wanted him pushing into me, taking me, making me forget.
But he was struggling with the implications of that, of what he could give me, of what he could promise me. He didn’t want to hurt me anymore than he already had.
What he didn’t understand was that if he didn’t take me, if he didn’t kiss me and fuck me and take over my body, then he would be hurting me even more.
I didn’t need a promise from him.
I needed a release.
And he was the only one who could give it to me.
“Fuck, Olivia,” he said, and then he was crossing the room to me and he was pushing up against me, pushing my back against the counter, the same way he’d done that morning, but this time he wasn’t teasing, he wasn’t pretending, he wasn’t doing it just to torture me.
This time I could tell he was going to finish what he started.
He cupped my chin in his hand and rubbed the pad of his thumb over my bottom lip. “You want to fuck, baby?” he murmured, and I loved it, loved the sexy way he was talking to me, loved the dirty words he was saying.
They pulsed through me, his touch, his words, scorching my veins and making me feel alive in a way no one else ever had.
I nodded.
“Say it then.”
“I want to fuck.”
He licked his bottom lip and then he swallowed, and I could see his Adam’s apple bob and a his jawline hardened and then he was pushing into me again, and this time he was grinding on me, his cock already hard through his pants.
He kissed me, his tongue in my mouth, his hands in my hair, the two of us tangling together.
When he pulled away, his dark eyes were a raging storm, and there was no more indecision there, no more struggling with whether or not what he was about to do was right.
Instead, he led me to his bedroom.
Once we were there, he kissed me again, his hands snaking down to my ass and lifting me up and then throwing me down onto his bed.