Fueled(book two)(111)

“Stop.” His voice is stern, and I can’t help but look up to meet his bemused eyes. “Look, I don’t know how to explain it.” His voice softens and he shakes his head. “I can’t really. All I know is that with you, things were just different from the start. You broke the mold, Rylee.”

His words elate the feelings of hope inside of me, and yet I still feel the roots of inadequacy weighing down my soul. We sit here both trying to gain our bearings on the ever-shifting ground beneath our feet. “I know,” I interject, “I just—”

“You don’t get it do you?” he asks. “You may not have the experience but…” He fades off trying to find the right words. “…you’re the purest person I’ve ever met, Rylee. That part of you—that innocence in you—it’s so goddamn sexy. So f*cking incredible.”

He rests his forehead against mine, pulling my body further into his. He sighs and laughs softly, his breath feathering across my lips. “You know, a couple of months ago, I might have answered you differently. But since you fell out of the damn storage closet, nothing has been the f*cking same.” He pauses momentarily, his fingertip trailing down the bare line of my spine. “No one’s mattered before. Ever. But you? Fuck, somehow you changed that. You matter,” he says with such clarity that his words delve into places deep inside of me I thought could never be healed. Places and pieces now slowly stitching themselves back together.

I still as Colton’s warm arms wrap around the chilled skin of my back. He pulls my hair to the side and presses his lips to the curve of my neck. The scrape of this returning stubble sends shivers down my spine. “What is it with you and jumping to conclusions tonight?” he murmurs, keeping his lips pressed against my skin. The vibrations of his lips ricocheting across hypersensitive nerves.

I shrug without explanation, suddenly embarrassed at confessing my moment of blatant insecurity to him when he so obviously showed me tonight that I’m the one he wants. Silence settles around us for a bit as we breathe each other in. “If there’s something you’re not getting from me—that you need—you’d tell me right?” He leans back to look at me, his hands resting on my shoulders, thumbs brushing absently over the dip of my collarbone, question in his eyes. I continue, “When Tawny said—”

Colton’s eyes snaps alert. “Tawny?”

“She was in the bathroom,” I confess and see irritation flicker across his face.

“Fuckin’ Tawny,” he mutters dragging a hand through his hair. “Look at me, Rylee,” he commands. I raise my eyes up to meet the raw intensity in his. “Tawny’s just jealous that she doesn’t have a tenth of the sex appeal that you have. And the best part about it—about you—is that you don’t even realize it. Do you remember that night at the Palisades?” he asks and all I can do is nod, mesmerized by his words and the soft smile ghosting his lips. “That’s what I was struggling with. Why I was such an ass. How could I bring you there and treat you like everybody else when you were like no one I’d ever been with before? And then I walked over to you, and you were standing there trying to figure out what my problem was, looking so goddamn beautiful and unintentionally beguiling. And even though I’d been a dick, you stepped toward me and gave everything of yourself to me without a single explanation.” He reaches up and traces a line down my forehead and nose and then stops on my lips. “It’s such a f*cking turn on, Rylee. Like no one else I’ve ever been with. No one.”

I draw in a ragged breath, afraid to believe what he’s really telling me. That I give him what he needs. That things between him and I are different for him. A first of sorts for him. I swallow loudly before clenching my jaw. If I speak right now, three words he doesn’t want to hear are going to come tumbling out of my mouth. It’s been an emotional night, and I’m more than overwhelmed. All I can manage is a simple nod.