Color My Heart: A Red Hot Summer story.

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

Macon GA 31201

Color My Heart

Copyright © 2008 by Red Garnier

ISBN: 1-60504-041-X

Edited by Jennifer Miller

Cover by Scott Carpenter

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: June 2008

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Color My Heart

Red Garnier

Dedication

This one is for my husband, the man who put the color in
my
heart.

You make everything beautiful.

Color My Heart

Chapter One

Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing?

Pablo Picasso

Billy Hendricks slammed the door of his red Toyota Camry and crossed the parking lot toward the two-story apartment complex. Looked like it was about to rain. Odd for this time of summer. Clouds—heavy and angry—gathered in gray clusters above him.

Good thing he’d decided not to wash the car today, he thought with a grunt, and slapped the magazine he’d picked up at the corner store to his thigh.

Taking the stairs two steps at a time, he reached the second-floor landing and heard whimpers. A figure was huddled down the hall, looking more like a sack than a human being. Frail shoulders racked with sudden, jerky movements, while sharp, heart-wrenching sobs tore into the air.

Billy moved forward, rolling the magazine into a tube and slipping it into the back pocket of his jeans. “Hey,” he said gently, on his knees as he cupped one bony shoulder in his hand. “Are you all right?”

Her head snapped back and a pair of wide blue eyes that shimmered with tears looked up at him through a fringe of wet lashes. He’d expected a kid, but he found a woman.

Young, maybe in her mid twenties, with a tiny nose and a very small, plush mouth.

Her hair was cropped, so that maybe looking at her from behind, she’d be mistaken for a boy. Yet Billy found nothing boyish about her face. It was delicate. Pretty. Not sexy, not beautiful, but pretty all the same. It was smeared with mascara and moistened with tears.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She stopped crying and gave one last sniffle before she wiped her hand across her face. “I’m fine.”

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Billy required no PhD to know she was far from fine. She looked vulnerable and lost, and by the way her shoulders slumped, he guessed she was in sore need of a friend. “You don’t look fine. Can I help with anything?”

She gave him a quick once-over, as if debating whether he could deliver or not. “No, I-I’m fine. Really.”

“Do you live here? Are you waiting for someone?”

She put a thumb out and pointed farther down the hall, then grudgingly said, “I’m at 221.”

“Really? I’m 229.” Strange he’d never seen her before. Or had he? She was small, a bit on the plain side, easily overlooked perhaps.

She tried to return his smile, but hers was brief and broken, the kind you shouldn’t even bother with in the first place. “Guess I’d better get back to my place,” she said as she scrambled to her feet.

Billy followed her up, noting the top of her head didn’t even make it to his chin.

Thunder rolled across the skies, the soft pitter-patter of rain hitting cement and the scent of dampened soil stirring in the air. “You sure you’re all right?” he insisted, falling into step beside her.

She nodded, and her eyelashes pointed toward the pair of old, unlaced sneakers she wore. Billy scrutinized her profile, wondering if the pain etched on her face had been put there by a man. It pressed all his buttons in the wrong way, making him want to do something violent—maybe even illegal. Her nose was tiny as a button, and her doll-like features provided an interesting contrast to the loose green cargo pants she wore.

She halted at the door, her back to him as she opened it.

Billy lingered there as she entered, waiting for some sort of indication, a sign that she’d be all right.

She turned to him slowly, her eyes downcast. Then her lashes rose and her gaze—

now a vivid, electric blue—shocked the air right out of him. And then she jumped him.

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Color My Heart

Billy staggered back from the impact of her weight, her ravenous mouth all over his face at once. His mind reeled as he clamped his hands on her arms. “Whoa, now hold on a sec.”

She held on, all right. She held on tighter. Her arms firmed around his neck and her legs clenched tight around his hips, her ankles locking behind him. Her mouth—which moments ago he’d thought a tiny, delicate thing—felt like it was devouring him.

Every organ inside him froze from the shock while his cock responded with a jolt.

No one
had ever jumped him this way. He’d had come-ons. One night stands. Plenty of girlfriends.

He was tall, well-built, had a smile his female friends claimed was an open

“invitation”. But never in his twenty-nine years had he been attacked this way.

Her mouth felt hot, wet, frantic. Her hands moved up to clutch his face and hold him still for her voracious kisses. She rocked her hips against his, scraping his erection. She gripped him so tight if she’d had any more force in those slim hands, his jaw might have cracked.

And
fuck
. She made the most amazing sounds. Little mews that put him in a fever. In sudden response to her lusty attack, every fiber in him exploded, and his body fairly screamed at him to touch and taste the wanton female against him.

“Okay, hang in there, sweetheart.”

Taking control, he grabbed a fistful of soft black hair and pulled her head back. He kissed his way up her jaw and licked her damp skin as he headed for her mouth. Hungry for it. No, starved.

Her sigh sounded almost reverent. “Oh, yes, please.”

“You afraid I’ll leave you like this?” he murmured and urged her lips apart with his.

Their mouths blended and their tongues met in a decadent, calescent tangle. He pushed and retreated and then swept up to the roof of her mouth to leave no part of her untasted.

She trembled as he ran one big hand down her hips and grasped the side of her thigh.

He could feel her warm flesh through the fabric of her pants, the lean muscles in her legs www.samhainpublishing.com 7

Red Garnier

under his palm. Their tongues played, melted, and her smooth vanilla bean flavor warmed every cell in him to a burn. “God, you’re so sweet. I’d be a fool to walk away right now.”

With a complete lack of finesse and moves made clumsy by arousal, he moved them in and somehow managed to shut the door behind him.

The little package in his arms whimpered as he pushed her back against the door and her hips rocked restlessly against his cock. The tiny hard balls of her nipples strained against her white cotton tank top and his mouth watered at the sight.

With a deep, guttural growl, he charged for one and latched his lips around it, sucking it into his mouth along with the worn fabric. Billy was known to be a casual, laid-back kind of guy, and that was just the way he’d enjoyed sex—until her.

The woman from 221 burned for it.

She was lusty and desperate and she wanted sex now.

Even through their clothes, her pussy felt like fire, scraping up and down the length of his pained dick. The sounds she made would make one think she was dying. All of a sudden as frantic and mindless as the wanton in his arms, Billy set her down and grappled with her cargo pants while she pulled off her shirt.

He couldn’t do it fast enough. Get her naked. Get inside her.

He shoved his jeans down to his ankles. His hands trembled as he tore at a foil package—which he always carried with him because frankly, a man just never knew—

and then he hauled her back to him, his mouth crushing hers.

She hooked one leg around him, then the other as he boosted her up and braced her back against the wall. Wrapped around him like a vine, she frantically kissed every inch of him she could reach—his neck, his jaw, his ear. His cock twitched hungrily between their bodies and all that fragrant flesh surrounding him made something inside him snap.

And Billy knew he needed to fuck her. Fuck her now.

Seizing her wandering lips, he plunged his tongue into her sweet mouth and clutched her hips to push his hard dick inside her. Holy shit, it was glory.

Silky, moist heat curled around his cock as he penetrated her.

She tensed from the intrusion and gave a wanton cry into his mouth.

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Color My Heart

A deeper, more primal, sound rumbled up his throat when she began to ride him. She clutched him and screwed herself down on him hard, her urgency evident in the sharp tips of her nails digging into his shoulders and her throaty moans and gasps. Her breasts were small, nipples pointy and quivery as she bounced over his cock, her small frame jolting at each impact.

Her whimpers filled the dense sex-tinged air around them. “Please, yes,
yes
!”

Hell yes, baby.
Billy pitched his hips forward and met her thrusts, hammering her with his cock again and again. He moved his hands from her thighs to curve tightly around her ass cheeks and gained leverage to push in deeper, fuck her harder, bury himself up to the balls. He’d never fucked anyone so fast, so damned hard. It was as if he knew all she needed was a good quick fuck, and that was just what he was giving her.

When he drew back to gaze down at her, fresh tears stained her cheeks. Her eyes were pressed so tightly shut her pretty features looked slightly distorted.

Billy had an eerie sensation of not being in the room with her.

He got the distinct impression that those helpless whimpers tearing out of her at each thrust were meant for someone else. Not for him.

And he would not have it.

“Open your eyes, sweetheart,” he said raggedly. “Open your eyes and look at me.”

She did. Their gazes locked—hers damp and hazy, his hot as fire.

And he brushed her trembling lips with his own, and whispered, “Say Billy, baby.”

He lengthened his thrusts and dug his fingers into the flesh of her ass. His cock was hard as a steel rod and she was so tight he found himself gritting his teeth to keep from coming. “Say my name just this once,” he urged.

She moaned in protest, as if it would be painful to say.

He nuzzled her face with his as his breath tore out of him in hot, haggard pants.

“Come on, don’t be shy. I’m inside you. I know what you smell like, what your pussy feels like… Say Billy for me.”

“Billy.” It was just a breath, but once out, it returned with more force. “Oh, yes, Billy.”

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Red Garnier

His balls throbbed, hardened like rocks from the sound of his name on her lips. He grunted, then groaned and quickened his pace, pushing against her slick grip, glorying at the fierce ripples of her pussy around his cock. “You’re so tight, so fucking soaked.”

And so soft in his arms.

He breathed her in with each strained breath, and her soapy, flowery scent intensified his need. She licked a path up his neck and traced a thickened, pulsing vein up to his jaw.