Crashed(book three)(62)

He brings a hand up gently to cup the side of my face and brushes his thumb over my bottom lip. He leans in and whispers his lips over mine tenderly before kissing the top of my nose. When he pulls back I see the wicked grin on his face. “Now it’s my turn.”

“Your turn?” I ask as his fingers play over the buttons of my top.

“Yep. It’s question and answer time, Ryles, and it’s your turn in the hot seat.”

“I’d like a turn in your hot seat,” I say back to him, earning the lightning fast grin that pulls on every hormone in my body like a magnet.

“Watch it, sweetheart, because I’m a walking case of blue balls that wants nothing more then to be buried in that finish line between your thighs.” As he speaks, he leans forward, close enough to kiss but doesn’t grant me one. Talk about sweet torture. When he speaks next, his breath feathers over my lips. “It’s best not to test my restraint.”

Every part of my body angles into him—wanting, needing, daring him—but he proves he still has control when he chuckles out a pained laugh. “My turn. Why haven’t you seen the boys yet?”

Of all of the questions he could have asked me, I had not expected this one. I must look a little shell-shocked because he’s right. I do desperately want to see the boys, but I don’t know how to see them without bringing the circus with me. The circus that their already fragile lives don’t need and can’t handle.

“You need me more right now,” I tell him, not wanting to give him the exact reason, so that he doesn’t have something besides recovering to worry about.

“That’s bullshit, Ry. I’m a big boy. I can be left alone for the night. Nothing is going to happen to me.”

But what if it does? What if you need me and no one is here and something horrible happens? “Yeah … I just,” I trail off, needing to say it and at the same time not wanting to offend him. “I don’t want your world to collide with theirs. They don’t need cameras in their faces telling everyone they’re orphans—that no one wanted them—or any of the fallout I’m sure would come with it.”

“Ry, look at me,” he says as he lifts my chin up to meet his eyes. “You and me? I don’t ever want it—me, the craziness around my life, the press, whatever—to come between you and the boys. They are what’s important, and I understand that more than most.”

Between telling me he needs me and then this declaration, I swear I could have just won the lottery and it wouldn’t matter because those two things just made me the richest person in the world. He really gets me. Gets that my boys make me who I am and that in order to be with me, he needs to love them. Beckett says I’m Colton’s lifeline, but I think he just proved it goes both ways.

I swallow back the lump of tears in my throat as he continues staring at me, to make sure I hear what he’s saying. I murmur in agreement, my voice robbed of emotion. “I’ll figure something out,” he says, leaning in to brush a kiss to my lips. “I’ll make sure you get to see the boys soon without interference, okay?”

I nod my head and then curl myself into him as my mind whirls with numerous questions when one jumps out at me. “My turn,” I say, wanting and fearing the answer to the question.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“That first night,” I pause, undecided about how to ask the question. I decide to dive in head first and hope I’m in the deep end. “What were you doing with Bailey in the alcove before you found me?”

Colton barks a laugh followed by a curse, and I think he’s a little surprised by my question. “You really want to know?”