Only One (13 page)

Cole

It was just past seven when I couldn’t take her silence anymore. I grabbed a hanger and bent it until I was satisfied that it’d do the trick. AJ and his friends had taken off just after five, and I’d been trying to get Belly to come out ever since. She flat out refused and I was pretty sure she expected me to talk to her door all night. I couldn’t believe she was still mad at me. Was she pissed about the dunking, the decision to have a little fun in the ocean, or both? That was just not the way I operated. She should know better. It surprised me that I’d waited this long, because that sweet little memory of seeing her fall apart in the ocean wasn’t leaving anytime soon.

When that girl came it was so beautiful I’ll never get that memory of her expression out of my head. I knew she enjoyed taking a walk on the wild side. She was starting to piss me off, ‘cause we only had a short amount of time left. I knelt so I could see the keyhole and stuck the sharp point of the hanger into the knob. Her door flew open. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

She was all sexed up, so I was thinking my night might be turning for the better.

I grinned, rising from my knees. “Breaking in.”

She rolled those sexy, green eyes at me. She started to slip past me, but I yanked her back.

“What’s this?” I gestured to her outfit and shoes. I did a double take down at what looked to be really tall, and hard to walk in high heels.

“I’m going out.”

“With who?”

“Just myself. There’s a band playing down at the hotel at the end of the beach.” That smartass look crossed over her face like she thought she was winning some trophy for putting me in my place.

“All right. Do you need a ride?”

That cocky ass smile shifted for a blink of an eye, but then she put it back on. “No, I’ll be fine. I’m sure someone there would love to give me a ride,” she drawled out the word love, making my dick flinch in my shorts.

“Okay, but I was getting ready to make your favorite meal. I got two lobsters and some corn on the cob, and even made a fancy salad for you. But if you gotta go, you gotta go.” I smiled, turning and hoofing it down the steps, waiting for her next play.

I stood in the kitchen, sipping on a Corona, trying to hold my grin back, watching her peer over the railing. The food was sitting out in clear view for her to see that I wasn’t lying.

“I guess I should eat before I go out. It’s not good to drink on an empty stomach,” she yelled down.

“Good idea,” I lied, almost choking on my beer at how easily she had given in.

The sun was dropping some and the salty air surrounded me as I heated up the grill. It was a little old and beat up, needing a lighter to get it ignited, but it still did the trick. The sound of the door sliding open had me looking over my shoulder.

“Hey,” she said before working her way over to the patio table with a beer in her hand. My eyes followed her as she put an extra sway in her hips and then proceeded to bend over to expose parts the shortest shorts I’d ever seen in my life couldn’t cover.

I gulped and shut the lid. I came up behind her to wrap my hands around her waist. My crotch against her ass teased her as I ground into her. “You bend over one more time like that and I’ll teach you something else that you’ll like.”

Belly wasn’t an innocent, I knew that, but she was inexperienced when it came to sex and I wanted to enlighten her in every possible way. She unwrapped my hands, shaking her head.

“No thanks. I have to go after I eat.”

“I’ll bet you that I’ll have you naked before the sun goes down,” I challenged her, because Belly could never say no a challenge.

She pretended to be drinking her beer, but I could tell she was thinking hard, since that little crease on her forehead popped up.

She placed the bottle on the table. “You’re on.”

I rubbed my hands together, anticipating different ways to get her naked. I could throw her into the pool, drop her into the Jacuzzi, hold her down and strip her clothes off with my teeth, piece by piece.

Something would come to me to make sure she’d do it willingly.

Belly continued to tease me by flaunting her practically naked body as she bent over the railing while I finished up cooking. I pretended to ignore her, but it was damn hard to focus on anything but her.

We both remained silent as we ate. It wasn’t that we had nothing to say, but the food was superb and I’d been busy thinking about my next move. Belly was a little on the dramatic side, dipping her lobster in the butter and slowly sticking it in her mouth, only to pull it back out and then push it back in, moaning with each bite.

Mission accomplished.

Point one to Miss Woods. I was hard as a rock watching her tease me with that damn lobster.

“Let’s play a little game,” I suggested.

“Like what?” She sat back, her hand on her tanned belly that was peeking out from her ridiculously short, tight shirt.

“Every time I guess something right, you take a piece of your clothes off and vice versa.”

“Cole, that’s not fair, we know each other too well.”

“Nope.” I wagged my finger. “Can only guess stuff from the last three years that we haven’t seen each other.”

“How many girls did you sleep with the first three years of school?” she blurted out.

I guess we were playing
. “Including you, about fifteen, twenty.”

“Twenty? Are you serious?” Shell-shocked eyes stared me down.

I shrugged. “After you stopped calling and we lost touch, I fucked around to get you out my head. Didn’t work, in case you were wondering.”

She sank back into her chair. Hurt sketched across her pretty little face. “Sorry,” I quickly added the apology.

She looked out to the ocean, but then she came back to me. “How come you aren’t taking anything off?”

“You asked a question and I answered it. You were supposed to guess how many for the game to work.”

“That’s just a technicality.”

“My game, my rules. You’ve never been taken from behind.”

Belly eyes narrowed, but she took off one of her heels. Progress! “You broke up with Hannah to be with me.”

I rolled my eyes at her lack of creativity, but chucked off a flip-flop. “You hated leaving me, but you did it anyway.”

Her other heel kicked off. She thought for several minutes. “You’d rather play professional football than work for your daddy.” Nothing came off and she looked legitimately surprised, which shocked me. I always thought she knew.

“But…”

I decided to answer, because my response at not removing any clothing had her looking sad. “There’s nothing wrong with a nice house, a couple kids running around, working a real job and having a wife you love to come home to. I’d give football up in a second for all that.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me that?”

I tsked. “You’re losing sight of the game.”

She shot me daggers, but remained silent.

“You were never in love with your agent.”

Belly gripped the hem of her shirt and lifted it over her head. I looked out to the sky, noting the sun was about to drop in a few minutes. It was so hard to concentrate with her and her perfect body sitting right across from me, covered in a sexy, white bra that I almost wanted to give in and let her win.

“You regret sleeping with those girls.”

I kicked off my other shoe, because even though it was fun at the time, I’d happily have passed each one up if she had remained in my life.

Belly contently smiled.

“The night before I left for college and we were together for the first time, you cried when you got home.”

She shimmied out of her shorts. “You cried when you figured out what I was doing.”

I pulled my tee off and tossed it aside. I hated admitting it to her, but I did. I cried like a fucking baby.

“You made yourself sick to lose weight.”

Her face dropped, and when she looked up a tear fell on her cheek at the same time her bra came off.

And I wanted to take back my question immediately.

“You would’ve given up on your own dream to make mine come true.”

I stood, shaking out of my shorts. “You plan on running again.” Everything remained in tact, so I breathed a sigh of relief.

“I want you to finish college,” she stated firmly.

“What? I will. Keep going,” I said quickly. I checked out to the sky again. The sun was almost gone.

“You got all your gossip about me out in Hollywood from my mama?”

I grinned and got into my birthday suit. “Deep in your heart you knew we would end up together someday.”

She tilted her head and removed nothing, until I heard that soft sigh that I’d grown to know so well over the years. She slipped out of her panties a second later and tossed them on top of my shorts. At the same time the sun fell behind the horizon.

I smiled widely. “I just got you naked before the sun went down.”

“I don’t have anything else to take off, Cole.”

I stood up and held out my hand and chuckled. I turned her around to look out to the ocean and wrapped my arms around her and held her there looking out to the water. “I meant that I won.” I pulled away from her a minute later and took her hand. “Come with me, babe.”

Annabelle was the only girl who had ever held the exact key that fit perfectly into my heart. As much as I wanted to make her scream tonight, I wanted to show her how passionate I was about her. How I was so in love with her that I could barely breathe sometimes. Making love to the one person that I’d been the closest to my whole life, the one who blew me over with just the roll of her eyes was my mission tonight. As much as I wanted to take off those sweet, little panties she was sporting earlier with my teeth, I was just as happy to have nothing between us.

Moments later Belly lay sprawled out on my bed, her hair spread all around her, looking as beautiful as ever. I just stood, unable to move, looking down at her waiting for me to join her. “Take a picture. It lasts longer,” she teased as she ran a finger down her stomach.

That was a thought.

“You’re so beautiful, Belly. I feel like this week has all been a dream and I’m going to wake up to find that you’re still out in L.A.”

“Cole,” she whispered. “I’m not a dream. I’m just Annabelle.” She held out her hand for me to take.

Once I was on the bed, I turned to her and pulled her in by her waist. “You might just be Annabelle to yourself, but to me you’re something so much more. You ran though every one of my dreams growing up. I thought about you when I was awake, when I was supposed to be doing chores, or taking tests, but every night you were there, too, when I closed my eyes. You touched every piece of my heart, Annabelle. And I’m so afraid you’re going to break it again.”

She ran her hand through my hair. “Oh, Cole.” And then she pulled me on top, her hands roamed over my ass. “I won’t break it. I promise.”

And then I made the sweetest love to her that I’d ever made in my life.

The sun woke me up, so I jumped into the shower, letting Annabelle sleep in. A piece of me wanted to pick her up and carry into the shower so I could take her in there to give myself a real good start to the day, but she looked too peaceful lying there in my bed. I didn’t have the heart to stir her.

Seeing the door open to the room the boys had been crashing in, I quietly pulled it shut, not wanting to wake them. With the coffee going for Annabelle, I grabbed my stuff and headed up onto the roof.

It wasn’t until I stepped back inside to grab a bite hours later that I realized all the doors were still shut. No noise. No nothing. Checking the beach out the window real quick and not seeing her, I made my way up the stairs. Part of me wanted to turn around and get back to work, because I was wondering if she had taken off without my noticing. Fear and panic almost had me not push the door open to my room, but I did. Annabelle was sitting up, her legs crossed and holding a box of tissues. Puffy red eyes shot up when I stepped in.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” I sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for the bad news to follow. All thoughts ran to something terrible happening to my folks or hers.

“Daddy called about an hour ago.”

I rubbed her arms up and down, trying to coax her to continue. Belly buried her head into my chest. Tears dripped down, soaking my shirt.

“Hey, now. Belly, look at me.”

She shook her head.

“Baby, please look at me and tell me what’s going on?”

She shook her head again.

“Do you want me to call your daddy?”

“No!” she shouted, finally looking up.

“He knows about us, Cole,” she whispered between drying her tears with my shirt.

In a daze, I cupped her face. “Baby, who cares? I told you I’ll talk to him and he’ll understand.”

She shook her head violently this time. “He’s not mad about that. It’s how he found out.”

I gripped her arms and leaned her away from me. “What are you talking about? Did AJ say something?”

“No.”

“Babe, spit it out already. I’m about ready to jump out of my skin.”

She swallowed hard and sat up straight. “Someone slipped a picture of us from last night under the office door. It was in an envelope addressed to him.”

Still unsure of what the hell she was talking about, I prompted her. “Okaaaay,” I drawled out the word, trying to put the pieces together.

“Naked, Cole. Somebody took a picture of us playing that game outside.”

I fell back onto the bed. “Fuck!”

“Yeah, fuck!”

“Who would do that?” I was completely bewildered at the bomb she’d dropped.

She shrugged as another tear fell.

Pulling her to me, I wiped it away.

“Hannah?” she suggested.

I shook my head. “Nah, she has no clue where I am.”

“What about you? Anyone after you? Pay backs or something?” I was racking my brain, when my phone came alive in my pocket. I checked caller I.D. to see it was my mama. I hit ignore. I’d deal with her later. “Paparazzi?”

She rolled her eyes and it got a little laugh out of her. “No one would want to stalk me, Cole. I’m sure I’m all forgotten.”

“Well, you won’t be much longer. You’ll go back after summer and make it big. And I will be your biggest cheerleader.”