Dark Sexy Knight (A Modern Fairytale)(36)

Her name was truth.

Reaching for her waist, he held her gently as he drew back his knee, supporting her until she opened her eyes and looked up at him.

Her breasts rose and fell quickly as she took short, shallow breaths, staring up at him with wonder.

“Good night, Verity,” he said, lowering his arms and stepping away from her.

For just a moment he hesitated, his dark eyes locked on hers, and she wondered if he’d pull her into his arms again. Part of her hoped so, but another part of her wanted the epic kiss that had just irreversibly shifted the axis of her world to be tonight’s finale.

As if he could read her mind, he grinned wickedly at her, then backed away into the shadows of the living room, his footsteps moving toward the kitchen.

“Good night, Colton,” she whispered into the darkness, placing her palm over her heart as she watched him go.





CHAPTER 9


Colt slept like shit. Again.

That kiss.

That kiss.

That white-hot f*cking kiss had shocked the shit out of him.

Beneath the girl-next-door sweetness of Verity Gwynn, there simmered volcanic levels of heat that had totally floored him. Colt wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but she had answered his hunger with a fierce desire of her own that he never saw coming. He’d felt her arousal—the hardness of her nipples through her dress and his shirt, the heat of her * pressed against his jeans, the f*cking sounds she made, the pressure of her hands buried in his hair, the way she arched against him and gyrated against his thigh wedged between hers. That kiss had escalated so fast, it made his head spin. And it made his body want. So. Much. More.

But all he’d gotten was a super-shitty night’s sleep.

After he’d cleaned up the back patio and kitchen, he’d stripped down for bed, but his body was too wired, and his f*cking cock wouldn’t give up its futile f*cking hopes for more. Snapping on the light, he benched for thirty minutes, but that didn’t really help either, so he jerked off, clenching his eyes shut, remembering the slide of her tongue, the way she moaned into his mouth and swallowed his groans of pleasure, the way she’d feel, tight and hot, if the day came when he made love to her. He came quickly in his hand, but his fantasies didn’t quit and he hardened again. It took beating it again in the shower to finally take the edge off his hunger, but he still slept like shit because he couldn’t stop thinking about her, his foolish f*cking head imagining a life that included her until he finally drifted off to sleep after two.

When his alarm sounded at 6:15, he slammed the palm of his hand over the snooze button, but thankfully he’d disabled it before bed last night, and the alarm continued to blare in his ear and forced him to wake up.

Melody was up at seven o’clock every morning, rain or shine, and Colt had promised to be the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes. After leaving her abandoned last night, the least he could do was be there on time this morning.

Sighing deeply, he pushed off the covers and reached for the jeans he’d worn last night. He stared at the denim in his hands for a moment, then held them up by the waistband, taking a moment to figure out which thigh he’d wedged between Verity’s legs and then pressing the fabric to his nose. And f*ck. He could smell her.

Clenching his jaw tightly, he closed his eyes, inhaling her scent deeply and thinking she smelled so much like f*cking heaven, he couldn’t wait to taste her too. His body tightened in response to that sexy f*cking thought, and he pressed the denim up to his face, practically bathing in the remnants of her scent.

Fuck.

Fuck f*ck fuuuuuck.

He was falling for her. Hard.

Disgusted with himself, he balled up the jeans and threw them in the laundry basket, then opened a drawer and pulled out another pair of jeans, dragging them up his legs. He grabbed a plain white T-shirt from the top drawer, then pulled a black button-down shirt from a hanger in his closet, shrugging it over his shoulders as he slipped his feet into the leather thongs he’d been wearing last night.

Five minutes later, he was pulling away from his house, his eyes fixed on the still-dark window that used to be Melody’s bedroom, and he hoped that Verity had enjoyed a better night’s sleep than he had.

Whatever thoughts he’d had about not falling for Verity were laughable at this point. It hadn’t taken long for him to get in deep—he was in way over his head—and unfortunately, after last night, he had zero interest in getting back out. His body was on fire for her. His mind couldn’t set her aside for more than a moment. His heart raced when he thought of spending time alone with her. The only direction he wanted to move, where Verity Gwynn was concerned, was forward.

And yet their discussion last night had added a whole new level of challenge to the possibility of a relationship between them. He and Verity had important things in common that she didn’t know about yet, but the way they handled those similarities was wildly different. So different, in fact, he had purposely kept certain vital particulars about his life to himself after she’d gotten upset with him about Ryan and group homes. And now, in the bright light of day, he wasn’t certain he’d made the right choice. He didn’t ever want her to think that he was deceiving her by omission. But the reality was that the situation was f*cking delicate, and he didn’t want to f*ck it up.

With almost no cars on the road this early, he had an easy twenty-minute drive north to Norcross. He slipped his access card into the card reader at the entrance to Bonnie’s Place and watched the black gate slowly slide open.