“Where do you think you’re going?” I said, smiling up at him. His face was as tortured as I knew mine had been minutes ago. Knowing I could make Cole feel the kinds of things he made me feel made me feel powerful in a way I’d never known.
“I need to jump in that water and calm my shit down again,” he said, squeezing his eyes together when I slid down him again. “Or else I’m going to tear those panties off and do you right here, right now.”
I swallowed the heat coming up my throat from my stomach. “Why jump into that frigid water again when I’m right here?” I bucked my h*ps hard against his. His grimace deepened, like this was actually causing him physical pain. “Come on in,” I breathed. “The water’s great.”
Who was this person and what had she done with sweet and innocent Elle Montgomery?
“Fuck, Elle,” Cole hissed through his teeth. “Would you please stop humping me through our clothes before I tear off both our clothes and do the real thing to you? The way I am right now, there’s no way I could be gentle with you. I’d want to do you so hard you’d be sore for a week and I’d never forgive myself if that was the way we did it our first time. I need to be careful with you. I will be careful with you.” His eyes slowly opened. They looked less tortured, but just barely. “And I will not have sex with you when you belong to another man. That’s not negotiable.”
I was touched, and I was kind of irritated, too. I’d heard enough sleepover talk to know losing your virginity wasn’t exactly a pleasurable experience, but right now, with the way my body was throbbing again for some kind of release, I didn’t really care if it hurt or if he wasn’t gentle with me. I wanted him to feel the same release he’d given me. I wanted to make him feel the things he’d made me feel.
The very non-prudish me came up with an idea. If he was adamant about not ha**ng s*x tonight, there were other ways to help a guy out. Right? I knew there was, although I’d never actively participated in any. Logan would have blown a gasket if I even tried to graze the erection he tried to hide when we made out.
Sliding my hand around Cole’s stomach, I lowered it to the button of his shorts. I tugged it free before lowering his zipper. For only having one hand and being crushed beneath him, you would have thought I was an expert at what I was about to do.
“Elle?”
Maybe he was going to say something else, but he was abruptly cut off when my hand dove into his shorts and grasped him firmly.
“Do you touch yourself?” I repeated his question back to him, bit my lip for him to watch, and slid my hand down the length of him.
He groaned so loudly outside my ear, it rang my eardrums.
“Do you?” I asked, finding a rhythm that he seemed to like best. More slow than fast, more firm than loose. This was the first time I’d ever felt a guy’s . . . manhood and it turned me on like I never thought touching one would. It was soft at the same time it was hard. Silky at the same time rough.
“Every damn day, Elle,” he panted, flexing his h*ps into my hand, guiding me as I figured this whole hand-job thing out. It was much easier than I thought. “But from now on, it will be your face I imagine when I come.”
His words and the speed his h*ps rocked into my hand had me sliding my other hand under my panties. Cole must have felt or seen what I was doing to myself because he cursed under his breath again before pumping against me even harder.
I had another question to ask him, his second that he’d asked me, but I never got a chance to ask it.
We both came around each other, our cries lost to the quiet night.
Chapter Seven
Sometime after we’d both managed to catch our breaths, Cole folded me tight into his arms, whispered a few more sweet things—and a few more dirty ones, too—before he fell into quite possibly the deepest sleep known to a freshly satiated man.
I tried to keep the guilt at bay, to keep remorse from sabotaging me, but they were powerful opponents. Not even five minutes after Cole’s chest was falling up and down evenly in sleep did I feel the guilt, or the remorse, or both, break through my defenses. When they did, they nearly crippled me.
All I could think about was how I’d betrayed Logan, my dad, the whole darn town if you really thought about it. The golden boy’s girlfriend had cheated on him.
Yes, if we were getting technical, Cole and I hadn’t done the exact deed most constituted cheating as being, but what we’d just done wasn’t exactly an innocent peck on the cheek either. I had cheated by some definition of the word and, as Cole’s face nuzzled deeper into my neck, making me sigh with contentment despite the guilt, I knew I was still cheating on Logan. Cheating wasn’t just physical. In fact, I’d say the most dangerous kind was emotional.
I might have just had Cole come around my hand, but that wasn’t the only way I wanted him. I didn’t just want him to be the boy I snuck off with to exchange naughty little deeds; I wanted him to be the boy who’d one day want to put that promise ring on my finger. I wanted Cole to be the one I got to walk around town with my hand in his. I wanted Cole to be the one my dad looked at like he could do no wrong. I wanted so much.
So much I could never have.
I had to think, to sort out ten million things that didn’t want to be sorted. But I had to try. Just because I was with Logan today didn’t mean I had to be with him tomorrow. If I decided Cole was indeed the one I wanted to gamble on, then I had to place my bet and not cringe when the dice rolled to a stop.