I sighed just so he knew I was irritated. “U dub, Wazzu, and University of Oregon,” I said. “Now that I’ve told you something, you tell me something. How did you know?” I hadn’t told anyone about the applications I’d sent in last fall. Not even Dad, Logan, or Dani knew. Especially not Dad and Logan.
“You may have everyone else fooled, Elle Montgomery,” Cole said, his voice vibrating through me. “But not me.”
So it seemed.
Without another word, Cole grabbed my hand and pulled me down the remainder of the hall. I went with him not because it was what he wanted, but because of what I wanted. It was a foreign concept—doing what I wanted and not what I guessed, assumed, or knew what someone else wanted.
It wasn’t long before we burst through a door. Inside might have been dark, but the sky was clear, and one of the few things that made the prospect of spending the rest of my life here in Winthrop bearable was that I could stare up at a night sky like this at the end of every day. No clouds plus no city lights equated to a sky so bright with stars it was almost more light than dark.
Cole took in the sky for a couple moments with me before pulling me along again. I started laughing, for a hundred little reasons and one big one.
I felt free.
I was free.
I couldn’t comprehend how running with Cole’s hand wrapped around mine late at night could make me feel freer than I’d ever felt when, in truth, nothing had changed. I was still Elle Montgomery, promised to Logan Matthews, expected to manage and run the diner when Dad retired, the girl who would be born, die, and everything in between in this town.
But it did.
I was still laughing when Cole’s jog slowed.
I’d been so busy staring at the sky and him I hadn’t realized I was on a runway. Or about to run into a small plane.
“A plane? Really?” I said as Cole led me up a ramp before opening the plane’s door. “Is this where you take all the girls?”
Elle the Witty had come back out to play. She was growing on me.
Cole gave me a twisted little grin. “Only the girls that make me work really hard for it,” he said. Before my mind could get carried away with what “working hard for what” entailed, Cole grabbed my hand and pulled me inside the plane.
I knew I shouldn’t follow him inside. I knew what being in another dark, confined, quiet space would make me want to do with Cole. I knew the electricity shooting through my hand from his touch would only compound if we touched anywhere else.
I knew so many things.
But darn if my heart, or my soul, or that rebellious Elle inside of me, wasn’t outwitting my mind at every turn tonight.
“You jump out of this?” I asked, looking outside the tiny door. I felt sick at the thought and the plane wasn’t even in the air.
“Well, the other guys jump,” he said, stepping up behind me. “I fly out of it.”
He was close, too close. I couldn’t feel his body against my back yet, but I felt the heat coming from it. My eyes closed when I imagined Cole’s chest pressing into my back, the rest of him sliding into position. Another flash of our first meeting went through my mind.
My breathing had just picked up when my body acted without my consent. No longer able to bear the line of distance between us, I stepped back until I felt his body hard against mine. I took one more step because now that I felt him, I wanted to feel more.
Cole inhaled sharply, but that was all the surprise he showed. His hands slid down over my hips, and when his fingers curled deep into me before he shoved me harder back into him, I gasped.
Apparently we could get closer and feel even more of each other.
I was breathing so hard I had to open my mouth to keep from passing out. Cole’s h*ps pressed into my lower back and I felt something hard against my spine that both made me blush and moan.
My hands covered my mouth immediately. Where the heck had that come from? I didn’t know I was capable of such a sexual sound.
Cole’s mouth dropped to my neck. His breath was so hot against it, I felt the muscles relax.
Well, they relaxed until something wet and firm slid up the curve of my neck. I tensed for a moment, but then his tongue played with the tip of my earlobe before he gently sucked on it.
I moaned again, louder and longer, but this time I didn’t cover my mouth. I didn’t want to fight anymore. I was done ignoring the way Cole made me feel with a simple look or a not-so-simple touch. I hadn’t been exactly successfully ignoring him as right now—his hands gripping hard into my h*ps and his lips doing things to my earlobe I didn’t know could be done—proved.
“That’s it, Elle,” he breathed as one hand slid up my body before forming around my cheek. “Don’t fight it. I can see the person you are, the one you’re fighting.” He took my earlobe back into his mouth, but this time, his teeth sunk into it carefully. Of course, my only response was another p**n -worthy moan. Or groan. Or sigh. I don’t know how the heck you would classify the sounds I was making, but I did know they were the opposite of innocent. “And that girl makes me all kinds of crazy.” Cole’s hand guided my face closer to his. I couldn’t decide what I wanted to stare at: his eyes or his mouth. Both were tempting on so many levels.
“I’m going to kiss you now. Unless you stop me,” he said, lowering his mouth to mine. It was so close, I could taste his lips. But I wanted to feel them. I wanted to feel them move over mine. I wanted to feel him suck at my lower lip the way he’d just done with my ear. I wanted. I wanted too much, and what was worse, I wanted what I couldn’t have.