Seducing the Bachelor (The Bachelor Auction Returns Book 3) (7 page)

Even in the
dark, moon hidden by the tree branches, he recognized it. His hand closed over the cube. It was one piece of his past he had wanted to take with him, but he’d been unable to retrieve the cube his last morning at the house. And rather than risk running into his uncle again, who in his mind had grown into an almost invincible monster, he climbed in the army recruiter’s van. Never looked back. Until today.

He slid the cube in the pocket of his jacket.

“Parker thought there was a treasure inside the heart of the cube.”

The way she breathed the word heart made his ache a bit, like it was too deprived of blood to pump properly.

“Parker has a good imagination.”

Talon unlocked the cabin and handed him the key.

“Welcome home, Colt.”

The words made him flinch. But it was just a building. Wood, nails, sheetrock, wiring. It held no power. The past wasn’t going to trip him up. Always move forward. He’d made that promise to himself the day he’d climbed into his recruiter’s van.

He made no move to open the door. Instead his entire focus was on Talon. He wanted her. Craved to kiss her until she quivered and moaned in his arms and begged him. He burned to bury himself in the heaven of her body all night to try to get some of the dark and the sadness out that he’d managed to hold off for years now. She’d made him remember, and now he wanted her to make him forget.

With her long, slender, and graceful body, she could drive all the demons away until they were both sated. He wove his fingers in her hair, imagining how she would look with her curls bouncing on her shoulders, tickling her bare breasts while she rode him.

“Colt?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t you want to go inside?”

“No.”

Her breath came in little puffs that he wanted to catch with his mouth, feed with his breath as he devoured her.

“Then what do you want to do?” she whispered.

“You know.”

“Yes.” Just a broken thread of sound, and he leaned in closer to her, and the little sound of excitement that escaped shot straight to his groin.

“Yes is my favorite word,” he said, trying to gauge her mood.

What he really wanted to do was cup her ass and lift her up so that those long legs of hers could wrap around his body like he’d been picturing all night, but he didn’t want to scare the hell out of her, and she seemed sweeter than that. Not like the women he’d been with. He should say good night and get the hell out of here, but she held him somehow.

He feathered his fingers under her jawbone, tilting her face up to his. Her skin was so soft. And her mouth. He gave her plenty of time to say no. But she didn’t, and the pierce of joy he felt when her fingers twisted in the front of his shirt at the same time her lips parted, was like a brand on his chest. Heat radiated, almost painful in its instant intensity.

His mouth slanted over hers, devouring her sweetness and her passion.

“Oh, god, yes.” She moaned against his mouth and the vibration of her words sang through his body.

His hands were in her loose hair, on her back, her hips. He couldn’t get close enough.

“Colt, please,” she begged, her hands already sliding under his shirt burning a trail across his abs, his chest, and when her fingers traced circles over his nipples, he thought he’d combust on the spot.

How could something so sweet burn so hot?

He gripped her butt and lifted her up, angling her against the door frame so he could get the perfect angle.

“You can’t lift me.” She panted. “I weigh a ton.”

“Can.” God, she felt fantastic. “Wrap your legs around me.” He commanded, barely able to squeeze out the words through his desperation.

“Oh.” He caught her little gasp in his mouth as her core came into contact with his erection. He didn’t try to hide his desire from her, and she definitely didn’t mind as she moved against him.

With one hand he pulled open the buttons on her shirt, and while they parted with a satisfying snap, she was wearing a pale pink thin tank underneath her shirt. But she was braless.

“I hate tanks,” he said, sucking one of her small, perfect breasts into his mouth through the cotton. She arched against him and cried out. Her fingers dug into his shoulders.

“Colt, stop. It’s too intense.”

He leaned his forehead against hers, their ragged breaths mingled.

“Sorry. I…”

“It’s okay.” He managed, pressing his finger against her lips. “I went too fast.”

Not like he hadn’t done that every time before, but usually it was the woman who was equally aggressive. He’d practically mauled Talon, he was so desperate to connect to her. He tried to smooth her hair. Rebuttoned her shirt.

“I felt so incredible,” she said in a small voice. “But out of control like I was going to fly apart and become all scattered like the stars.”

He stilled, not sure what to do with her honesty, but impressed as hell by it.

“I guess that’s what all the fuss is about.” She looked up at him, totally without guile.

He sucked in a breath. Dread filled him. Jesus.

“You’ve been with men before, right?”

“Oh. Ah. Yeah. Well, not men, exactly. More like boys. You know. In high school.”

He stared at her flaming cheeks.

“And my first year at community college, but by then Jenna had had Parker, and we were sharing an apartment. I was going to school and working, and so was she, and we were trying to make our schedules opposite so one of us could be with Parker so there wasn’t really time.”

He felt like the biggest jerk around, practically throwing her up against the door frame and taking her. She’d put her life on hold to help a friend and a little boy. Was doing her best to manage being a mom and a student and an employee and all he’d wanted was a moment of quick pleasure so he could lock up his darkness one more night.

He ran his hand through his hair. It was longer than it had been in years.

“I’ve never been kissed like that,” she said after a while.

Another nail hammered in his heart.

“You are an amazing kisser.”

“Talon, stop.”

He couldn’t stand it. She deserved so much more, and all she had was his sorry ass looking for a quickie before he blew out of town for good this time. She’d find a decent guy, he told himself. A man who would make love to her properly. Make sure the gutters were cleaned out on the house. Not leave for months on end.

Shit. Again hand through his hair. Wiping down his face. Like he’d find the words he needed there.

“I’ll walk you back to the house.”

“Did I do something wrong?” she asked as she paced beside him. “Are you mad because we didn’t…”

“Of course not.” He stopped. “No. I went too fast. I…” How did he put himself, his life into words. “I don’t have a normal life,” he said in the biggest understatement of the year. “I am away a lot.”

What the hell he thought that would explain he had no idea, but Talon seemed to be thinking about it.

“I just got back from an assignment.” He tried again. “I don’t always adjust right away.”

And there was understatement number two.

“You can’t blame yourself,” she said. “What you do is so challenging and heroic, and I think I was putting out some pretty ‘come here, baby’ vibes.”

They started to walk again. He inhaled deeply. He’d forgotten how crisp the air was in April at night. The smell of the grass and the dirt and the evergreens.

“I think you are really a special person, Colt.” She said as the lights from the porch came into view from the trees. “I hope that you stay in Marietta during part of your leave. I’d like to see you again.”

Obviously, she’d see him again. She still hadn’t had her date or whatever she wanted him to do. He had a feeling mutual orgasms were off the table. As they should be, he kicked his libido hard, which still hadn’t completely recovered from that cabin kiss.

“Maybe I could make you dinner again. You could tell Parker something about being a soldier.”

Most of his life was classified.

“I think I’m the one who’s supposed to be treating you,” he said, stopping in the tree line. “Lady’s Choice.” He reminded.

“Oh, that.” She smiled, and he noticed this time it had a touch of sadness in it. His fault probably. “That was a pretty amazing kiss.”

“You’re going to have to make me work harder than that, Talon.”

She smiled, and this time is was more genuine. “Okay, then. I’ll try to be creative.”

“Knock yourself out.”

He walked her to the porch. She turned to face him. He waited. She always had something to say. But she was silent, her expressive eyes searching his. He wondered what she saw. Then he did something he couldn’t remember ever doing. He kissed her cheek.

“Good night, Talon.”

She ran up the stairs and slipped through the door. He stared at the door for a while, thinking of the woman and child behind it. The ghosts. The nightmares. The memories. He looked at his truck. So easy to fire it up and drive. He’d done that his whole life.

Colt jammed his hands in his front pocket, avoiding his keys clipped to his belt loop and walked back to the cabin.

T
he next morning,
Colt looked at the etched words on the back of the hand-worked silver piece—
You are my world
.

He touched the tiny script, traced each letter as he’d done hundreds, maybe thousands of times as a young boy. It had been his mother’s necklace, at least he thought so. The only thing he had left of her except a few snippets of memory, and even those he wasn’t sure of. It could have been an aunt or a foster mom as sometimes the faces, the hair, the rooms were different. He hadn’t come to live at the ranch with his uncle, who now might not have been his uncle, until he was eight.

He didn’t regret tossing his uncle’s two letters in the trash unopened, but he hated the mystery. Thinking about it. Talon was making him think. This place was making him think. The homey house. The refurbished cabin.

He turned the necklace over and saw the deep blue orb inlaid into the silver casing. Iridescent green and turquoise swirled in the depths of the blue, with hints of metallic glint that caught the light streaming in the window of the cabin. He tucked the necklace back into the cube and turned several of the pieces in different directions, locking it back into place.

Immediately, his hand missed the feel and the weight of the necklace, the way the silver warmed in his hand. He cursed his sentimentality.

His mother had left him. Again and again. He didn’t even know if that had been her necklace. Not for sure. And he sure as hell had never been her world, but when he’d been a kid, he’d liked to think that somewhere at some time there had been a man who had loved his mother enough to think that she was his world. He’d also thought as a kid that they would find each other again, this man, his father, and his mother, and they would be happy together. Happy enough to come find him.

A childish dream. He’d known it even back them. Hope was a kick in the gut. Talon had probably had similar dreams. Both of them abandoned. Hoping to be reclaimed like luggage. He had shut himself off from hope. She still seemed to have it, embracing life and people, trying to make a connection.

How?

All he’d wanted last night was to be deep inside her body. That was all the connection he ever wanted, but he suspected Talon wanted a lot more than his inadequate best.

So why was he still here? He’d gone for a pre-dawn run. Had a shower. His eyes quartered the cabin. It looked like nothing he remembered. The last time he’d been here, the cabin had been unfinished. The roof had been solid. He had redone it, nailing on the tar paper and weather proofing, screwing in the tin sheets and adding the insulation, but the inside had never been dry-walled or insulated. There had been running water, connected to the second well, and it had been plumbed to connect to the septic system. But it had been totally rustic. Hot in the summer. Frigid in the winter.

Still, he had loved to sit in here on his free moments. Read a book, stare out the window and imagine himself like a cowboy of old, riding the range, driving the cattle higher to the spring pastures and then back down again in the late fall. He sat cross-legged and leaned against the wall of the main room, letting his gaze wander up to the loft area, where a fan now hung.

It wasn’t so bad here. He could breathe here. No bad memories here. No sounds either.

Until the quiet fall of footsteps on the porch.

“Hey, mister.” A small voice called out. “Mister Ewing?”

Colt allowed his eyes to close briefly. The kid. He knew it was coming. He hadn’t had to deal with a kid since… He broke off that thought and popped to his feet, bracing himself against the wall.

He opened the door.

“Wow! You’re tall,” was the first thing out of the kid’s mouth. “Mom says you’re a soldier. Are you for real? Have you killed anyone?”

The question wasn’t one he hadn’t been asked before, but it snapped him out of his relaxed contemplation of cataloging the changes in the cabin. Instantly, the tension was back in his neck, his shoulders, even though he’d tried to run out the knots this morning.

“Yes.”

The kid stared back at him in awe. Dark hair, widow’s peak, grey eyes. He had the stare of someone much older.

“My mom says killing is wrong.”

“She’s right.”

“She doesn’t even eat meat. Why’d you do it then?”

“My job.”

Again that solemn, judging stare.

“You want pancakes?”

He must not have answered quickly enough because the kid added. “Blueberries.”

*