They say a girl’s first love isn’t the first person she kisses or the one she gives her virginity to. Her first love is the guy she’ll compare all others against. He’s the one she never forgets, even when she convinces herself she’s over him and moved on.
As Cole rests a hand on mine and leans so close I smell the recognizable scent of his skin, I know with certainty I never got over him.
The heat radiating from him, the dark depths of his gaze drilling into mine, his very presence speaks to my soul, enchanting and ravishing and slaying. It’s the sweetest torment, drugging me into a Cole-induced stupor.
If he kisses me, I won’t be able to stop him. I haven’t tasted his intoxicating lips in four and a half years, and I’m helpless against the magnetic pull he has over me.
I still haven’t come to terms with the fact that he’s here. Sitting on the floor in my kitchen. Alive and real and a kiss away from spiraling me into total bliss.
“Danni.” He stares at my mouth, and his tongue slips out to wet his own. “I need you so fucking much I can’t see straight.”
I whimper, angling closer, until all that separates us is a finger-width of air and a head full of uncertainty. My uncertainty. Given the way he’s looking at me, the only thing he’s worried about is his ability to strip off my clothes before I change my mind.
His fingers glide around my neck and twist through the hair at the base of my skull, his breaths growing shallow, heated. He edges closer, oh-so slowly, deleting the minuscule distance between our lips.
I close my eyes. Part my mouth. Tense against a riot of nerves. And jump at the burst of noise on the kitchen counter.
Try by Pink blares from my phone, sounding an incoming call.
“Ignore it.” Cole clenches his hand in my hair.
But I’m already pulling back, shaking out of my trance and scrambling for the distraction.
I was going to kiss him. With Trace within hearing range. What the hell is wrong with me?
Grabbing the phone, I groan at the caller ID.
“My sister.” I hit ignore and peek at Cole.
He drops his head and clutches the back of his neck as frustration ripples through his bent posture.
“I haven’t talked to her since you returned.” I crouch beside him. “I need to tell her what’s going on.”
He slides his hands to his face, scrubbing his forehead as if struggling to dial back his temper.
That’s where he and Trace differ the most. Trace is the master of self-restraint. Hell, he spent nearly every day with me for four months burying his feelings for me.
Cole would never do that. I don’t think he can. He has zero control over his emotions. When he wants me, he takes me, and the claiming is a powder keg of hunger and ferocity. At least, that’s how it used to be.
Nothing is different between us, the chemistry and passion just as wild and uncontainable as the day we met. Yet everything has changed. When he died, part of me died with him, leaving behind a ghost of the woman he fell in love with. I can’t connect with him when it comes to his career, and he’ll never be part of my relationship with Trace. We didn’t have those separations before, and in some ways, it makes us strangers.
That doesn’t mean he isn’t the one for me, but it’s a scary revelation. I might have gotten him back, but that doesn’t mean our relationship is recoverable.
“You better call Bree,” he says, “before she shows up and pisses herself when she sees me.”
“You need to walk me through the cover story.”
Ten minutes later, I’m alone in my bedroom, listening to Bree’s heavy gasps through the phone.
“Holy shit cakes, Danni.” She makes a strangled noise. “All that time in an Iraqi prison? Is he okay? Mentally, I mean. Surely, they’re providing therapy for him.”
“He’s doing okay.” I hate lying to her. It goes against every instinct I have. But I don’t know the truth, and that’s probably a good thing, because I’d be tempted to confide in her.
In the next room, the shower turns on, the pipes groaning through the walls. That means Cole’s in there. Removing his pants. Revealing inch after inch of his mouth-watering physique.
Does he still go commando? I haven’t seen him without jeans on since he returned. Is there a black snake still tattooed around his thigh or did he have that one removed, too? What does he look like now without clothes on? Thinner? Harder? Any new scars?
I have so many photos of him, pictures I stared at for days on end after he left. But none are of him naked. He doesn’t have a body one could easily forget—broad chest, narrow cut of hips, and a well-endowed package between powerful legs. Nevertheless, I ache to see him in the buff again.
The door to my bedroom opens, interrupting my thoughts as Trace steps in, wearing only a towel.
Bree continues to blabber in my ear about what-ifs and what-nows, but my attention fixates on Trace, on the definition of muscle along either side of his spine as he stands in my closet, selecting something to wear.
I feel like a hussy, imagining one naked man and two seconds later, ogling another. My ability to switch so easily from Cole to Trace and back again is upsetting. It shouldn’t be that way, but I don’t know how to shut off my feelings.
“Are you shitting the bed right now?” Concern spikes through Bree’s voice. “Oh my God, does that mean you’re engaged to both of them?”
“I don’t know what it means.”
“Oh, Danni. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. You love them both so much.” Her whisper rasps through the phone. “There’s no way you can choose between them.”
Cole suggested I keep his connection to Trace a secret. It opens too many questions that would raise suspicion. Since Bree thinks he and Trace just met, she has no idea how deep the heartache goes. Whoever I don’t choose doesn’t just lose his fiancé. He loses his best friend, too.
Trace releases the towel at his waist and drops it to the floor. My nostrils widen with a sharp breath, my gaze sliding over the hard flanks of his backside. He’s ridiculously, beautifully sculpted, with layers of lean muscle, a high tight ass, and long legs, all enwrapped in taut flawless skin.
He glances over his shoulder at me, and whatever he sees on my face makes him smirk. Without looking away, he slowly, methodically, pulls on a pair of black boxer briefs, followed by charcoal slacks, letting both hang low on his butt without zipping up.
“Tease,” I mouth.
His smirk transforms into a full-fledged grin that cartwheels across the space between us and hits me square in the chest. His smiles are so rare that when he gifts me one, I hold it tight to my heart.
“Do you want me to come over?” Bree asks. “Angel has a soccer game in a couple hours, but I’m free until then.”
“No, they’re both here, and I need to hash things out with them.”
Trace loses his grin and turns back to the rack of clothes.
“This is crazy.” Bree exhales. “Do you have a plan?”
“Do I ever?”