Stepbrother Breaks Bad: The Complete Series Read online

  Colt smirked. “That where you’re headed? To see Miss Annabelle?”

  “Huey sent me a dozen roses and a poem,” I said, leaving Miss Annabelle out of it altogether. “Thought I ought to thank him.”

  “Roses?” Colt’s hands stopped working on the fence. “Jesus H. Christ. I only sent daisies.”

  “And you saved my life, too, don’t forget,” I said, hugging a bag from the Quick-Shop against my chest. “So a basket of flowers is kind of beside the point. I don’t think I got a chance to properly express my appreciation for your heroics.”

  Colt lowered his eyes back down again. “I coulda got you killed.”

  “But you didn’t,” I said, then blew a tendril of hair out of my face, feeling braver by the moment. “Truth be told, when you stared down the sight of your gun and our eyes met, I knew you were going to take the shot. I wasn’t afraid, Colt. I had faith in you. I’ve always had faith in you.”

  At hearing that, he leaned his long body against the fence post, and gave a shake of his head. “Don’t know why in the hell you’d put your faith in me.”

  “Because I know you better than yourself.”

  He snorted. “What is it you think you know?”

  “Well, for starters, I know you don’t want me to keep walking down this road to see Huey Tidwell. But that’s exactly what I’m fixin’ to do if you don’t invite me in the house.”

  “Goddamnit, Shelby,” Colt snarled, with a flash of teeth. “You’re a witness in my shootings. Until they’re cleared, I’m not even supposed to be talking to you.”

  “Suit yourself. I’ll tell Huey you sent your regards.”

  I started walking. I got only about three feet before he called after me, “Shelby, I know there’s nothing going on between you and Huey Tidwell.”

  “You’re right,” I said, turning over my shoulder to look at him. “There’s not. But there could be. See, I’m starting to think I deserve better than a guy who leaves me naked on a pool table. Huey’s a good man. He’s never been anything but sweet to me. And though he ain’t…you…he’s easy on the eyes.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  I bit my lower lip. “Nearly being shot has a way of bringing things into focus and opening one up to new possibilities. And when a man sends you roses—”

  “Stop trying to convince me that you’re gonna date Huey,” Colt said, taking his gloves off and dropping them in the tall grass. “You’re not.”

  “I’m gonna try.”

  Colt folded those muscular arms over his strong, sweaty chest. “No, you’re not.”

  “Why not?”

  He struggled for an answer. His throat worked. Then, finally, he shouted, “Because I don’t want you to!”

  The thrill of hearing him say it nearly made me float away on a breeze. But only nearly. I wasn’t going to let Colt get away that easy. “What’s wrong with Huey Tidwell?”

  Colt was working himself up into a temper, just like he’d done all those years ago and I saw him grind his teeth to hold it back. “Nothing’s wrong with Huey. Other than the fact that he’s apparently turned into a poet and, if memory serves, he can’t take a punch.”

  This time I wasn’t having any of his games. “If there’s nothing wrong with Huey, and he could be good for me, then why wouldn’t you want us to together? Because if all you’ve ever felt for me was brotherly love, then you should want me to be happy with some other guy.”

  Colt nearly spit the words out. “Oh, I’d say the ship of brotherly love sailed somewhere around the time I put you on your back in your daddy’s bar and had you screaming my name.”

  He just had to say it that way. Crass and vulgar. It made me want to slap him. But I was breaking him down and we both knew it. “Then if it’s not brotherly love you feel, you tell me why you don’t want me to walk up this road and into Huey’s arms.”

  “Because I want you in my arms, goddamn it,” Colt said, then, he was on me in two strides. He grabbed my arms and shook me. “I want you, Shelby Baker. God help me, I want you for my own. More every time I lay eyes on you. It’s like some kind of fever sickness that I can’t shake.”

  “Well, ain’t you a sweet talker,” I said, not sure I loved being compared to an illness. And even though the feel of his hands on me again, sweaty and nearly trembling, sent me into my own fever of desire, I wasn’t sure his admitting to his desire was enough. “You aren’t the only man in Boone County who ever wanted me.”

  “But I’m the only one you ever wanted,” he countered, cocky and a little furious, pushed to talk about his feelings, and not liking it one bit. “Which maybe doesn’t say much for your taste in men, but we both know it’s the truth.”

  I couldn’t deny it. Not when we were standing so close together. Not when his hands were on me. I couldn’t even think when he was touching me, so I took a step back. “So where does that leave us, Colt?”

  Once I escaped his arms, he wiped the sweat from his brow with one long, muscular forearm. “It leaves us baking in the sun, arguing like two idiots. You wanted an invitation. Well, you got one. Let’s go inside.”

  It was more than the sun that was making us both hot. “We go in that house, Colt, and we both know what’s gonna happen.”

  I expected him to deny it, but he reached for my hand and said, “I guess we do.”

  There’s something about knowing you’re going to have sex with a man—and him knowing it too—that lends an electric tension to the air. But whereas our encounter on the pool table had been quick and dirty, I knew this was going to be different from the moment Colt held the door open for me, one hand at the small of my back, gently guiding me inside.

  I waited until he’d kicked off his boots before I turned to kiss him. And though his eyes were so intent on me that I thought he might devour me alive, he returned my kiss softly, hesitatingly. “I need a shower,” he said.

  “I don’t mind.” A sweaty Colton Marbray was the stuff of fantasies.

  But he said, “I don’t wanna get you dirty.”

  I started to smirk, when I realized he meant something deeper by it, and he lowered his head, strangely tongue-tied. “I—I…Shelby, I wanna take this slow and do this right.”

  How he could infuse that statement with such earnestness and sex appeal was beyond me, but I felt a dampness between my thighs. “Well, alright then. Why don’t you go on up and get clean and I’ll put some supper on the table.” He raised an eyebrow until I held up the bag from the Quick-Shop. “Fried chicken. Your favorite. Not as good as your Momma’s but it’ll have to do.”

  Colt steadied himself on the wooden bannister, and gazed down at me with narrowed eyes. “You were gonna give my favorite supper to Huey Tidwell?”

  “You can’t ever let a thing go, can you Colt? I guess we could keep standing here talking about what I was or wasn’t gonna give to Huey Tidwell. Or you could get cleaned up and let me give it all to you…”

  He worked his mouth as if it had gone dry with desire, then started reluctantly up the stairs, after saying, “I’ll make it fast.”

  He did, too. I’d scarcely got our meal laid out on the old oak table by the time he came back down with clean damp hair and a new pair of jeans. But seeing the humble spread, he walked over to the cabinets and reached up into the top cabinet for the fancy plates with the rosettes.

  I eyed him warily. “Your Momma saved those for special occasions.”

  “This is a special occasion,” he said, calmly.

  And it made my heart flutter a little bit in my chest. By God, I wanted to throw everything off the table and climb up his body right then and there, and I got the impression he was thinking much the same thing. But somehow we forced ourselves to be civilized, sitting on either side of the table to share a meal.

  Colt must’ve worked up quite an appetite already, because he dove into his plate like he hadn’t eaten in days, crunching down on a big meaty drumstick while I nibbled at a wing because my belly was filled with more anticipatio
n than hunger.

  “Is it strange to be in this house again?” he asked.

  “It’s actually pretty nice.” I eased back into my chair and hugged my knees up to my chest. “Most of the best memories I’ve got happened here in this house. Feels like home in a way no place else ever did. Or maybe it’s just being here with you that feels so right.”

  Colt’s eyes drifted to the back porch, overlooking the field back there, and he frowned. “I remember when you used to sit on that back porch shucking corn. Letting the silk fly away in the breeze. When I was away, I’d always think of you like that.”

  I hadn’t known that he thought of me at all while he was away and I felt myself fall a little deeper to hear it. “It’s not a happy memory?”

  “It is. A real nice memory. Got me through a lot…”

  “Then why are you frowning?”

  Colt frowned deeper. Took another bite of chicken. Took a swig of beer. He took so long to answer that I wasn’t sure he was going to. Then he said, “There’s just a lot of shit going on in my head that crowds out anything good or happy.”

  “Shit like what?”

  “Like that kid,” Colt said, tilting his bottle to stare down the neck. “I can’t stop thinking about the kid and the fact that I shot him three times instead of one. He wasn’t getting up after one.”

  “You couldn’t know that,” I said, feeling something well up inside me. Maybe it was anger. Anger that he should have to torture himself about what he’d done in the course of saving my life. Something that I may’ve brought down on myself—unwittingly, but just the same… “If you’re looking for someone to feel sorry for that kid, you’re looking at the wrong girl. I didn’t feel a moment’s pity.”

  “We both know that’s not true,” Colt said, lifting his eyes to meet mine. “After you managed to get yourself off the floor, you crawled right to him to see if he was alive and cried over his body. Don’t you remember?”

  I did remember doing it, though I couldn’t exactly remember why. I think it was because my attacker was young. Because he’d made dumb choices that’d brought him to that place. And I knew a thing or two about making dumb choices. “I never thought for one moment that you did wrong, Colt. Whether you took one shot or three.”

  “I don’t wanna be that guy,” he said, seeming to abandon his plate. “I don’t want to be the officer who shoots in rage or fucks for revenge.”

  “Then don’t be,” I said, reaching for his hand.

  “It’s that easy to change?” He stared at my fingers on his, then slowly grasped them. “I shouldn’t want you, Shelby, but I do. I want you so much that it hurts. And I’m so afraid it’s gonna make me do the wrong thing.”

  “I’m not a wrong thing, Colt. Least, not if there’s more to it than want.”

  His fingers tightened on mine. “You know there’s more to it.”

  “Do I?”

  “You need me to say that I got feelings for you?” he asked, eyes suddenly rimmed with red, as if even the mere contemplation of saying it was an agony to him.

  I could’ve let him off the hook. I could’ve told him that I didn’t need to hear him say it. But the longing of a lifetime was swelling in my heart to the bursting point. “Only if you do. Only if you mean it.”

  “Well, I think I might be falling in love with you,” he said, making my world complete. Making the whole world center here, in this moment, in this kitchen, and filling it with joy.

  But I couldn’t leave well enough alone. “Since when?”

  Colton swallowed. “Since always. I should have said it before now. I realize that. I don’t know what’s wrong with me that I couldn’t say it until after I’d already hurt you. But when I saw that gun to your head… I just don’t want to hurt you again. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. Is that enough to make it right?”

  I hadn’t expected the question. Wasn’t sure what he meant by it. I guess I couldn’t ever really understand the conflicts in the heart of a lawman, but I knew the jagged edges that still cut mine. “Promise me you aren’t just using me to get at my father. Promise me that if you take me to bed, it’ll be to make love to me. And for no other reason. That’ll make it right enough for me.”

  Colt looked me right in the eye. “You’ve got my word.”

  Which I believed was as good as a blood sworn oath. Which is why, when he stood up, still holding my hand, I followed him up the stairs. We didn’t hurry, which somehow made it hotter. It was a sultry a walk as I’d ever made in my life, my whole body humming with anticipation. I loved the look of him as he climbed the stairs, those long legs of his. Those strong arms. That tight ass. That body that was going to be wrapped around me in a few moments…

  Once we chose a bedroom.

  We both hesitated at the top of the stairs, and then laughed, nervously. Colt was obviously staying in his Momma’s old room with the giant feather bed, but my father used to sleep there too, so that was all kinds of awkward.

  Then there was Colt’s old room, which was filled with boxes.

  Which left only my old room. “It’ll be like an girlhood fantasy come true,” I said, smiling a bit to see that the old purple wisteria wall-paper I’d chosen when I lived here was still up on the walls.

  “Uh, I dunno,” Colt said, when I lead him in that direction. “I don’t want to feel like some kind of—let’s just say that if I’m on top of you and see one of your stuffed animals it’s gonna kill the mood.”

  I laughed. “I was fifteen when my father married your mom. I never had stuffed animals in here. And by the time I was sixteen, I spent some time on that bed touching myself, imagining it was your hands on me…”

  Colt rubbed at the back of his neck. “Shit. You just made me break into a sweat. I’m not sure if I can let myself be as turned on by that as I really am. Nope. Can’t do it. Can’t think about it. Too pervy.”

  “We’re all grown up now,” I reassured him, moving into the circle of his arms. “This might feel forbidden, but it ain’t. We’re not wrong, Colt. We’re not.”

  “But I’m gonna do some very wrong things to you,” he promised, kissing me with a smolder. I tasted mouthwash on his tongue. Scented his spicy aftershave—realizing only then that he’d shaved that scruff for me.

  He walked me back into the room, slowly, hands working the buttons of my shirt. Undressing me slowly. Kissing every new patch of skin he exposed. The whisper of his breath over my body making me shiver as he worked his way down, down, down.

  And then I about lost my mind…

  Chapter Five

  COLTON

  She tasted like fucking sunshine. How the hell any woman could smell like orange and vanilla, but taste like a burning ball of light, he’d never know. But kneeling in front of her, his tongue lapping at the little pearl hidden between her pink folds, there was just no other way to describe it. Sunshine. And the noises she was making while he licked her…well those were definitely hotter than the sun.

  The way her knees started to buckle when he peeled her jeans all the way off so that he could get his tongue deeper into her…well, that was like a solar flare that sent his blood to boil. His cock was already so hard for her that he could hammer nails with it. And though he wanted to hammer her, he was bound and determined to take his time and make this good.

  He didn’t want to nail her. He wanted to make love to her.

  With all these emotions swirling around inside him, he needed to get this one thing right. His hands skimmed over her hips, up her sides, rough skin over extraordinarily soft skin. He worried that he needed to be gentler, so he used his fingertips. He worried, too, what the right words were to say to Shelby, or how he could ever really make this work between them. All he knew was that he was falling in love with her—hell, maybe he’d been in love with her all his life—and he felt like he could only show her with his body.

  After all, his words often failed him. But his body never did. He could kill for her or put his body in harm’s way to protect h
er— and he could use it to make her cry out with pleasure, which is just what she did when he lowered her onto the bed and buried his face between her thighs.

  She writhed helplessly in excitement, clamping his ears tight with her thighs, then apologizing and letting her knees fall apart again. “Don’t apologize,” he said, lifting his head up only long enough to say it. “Just come for me, Shelby.”

  When she did, grasping his hair, bucking under his mouth, it was so erotic that he just about came in his pants. But it wasn’t gonna go that way. He wanted to be inside her, and while she shivered with the lingering after-effects of being orally pleasured, he undressed, threw a condom onto the mattress beside her and crawled up into the narrow bed with her.

  “Why didn’t you use one last time?” she breathed, her eyes soft and trusting and curious.

  “Because I was a reckless asshole,” he said, as she began to stroke him near past the point of coherent thought.

  While her silky fingers worked their magic on the length of his manhood, she said, “I think it was because you were too afraid to choose me for yourself, so you wanted God to decide it for you.”

  Maybe she had a point. Because if he’d put a baby in her belly, that would damn well have changed everything. “Well, now I’m choosing you for myself,” he said, and ripped the condom wrapper with his teeth before rolling it on.

  Shelby smiled, and with the sunlight filtering in through the window, giving her naked body a pale, angelic sheen, she was the prettiest thing he ever did see. But that’s not why he wanted her. Wasn’t even why he loved her. That she could’ve grown up the way she did—the way they both did—without holding a belly full of rage every day of her life…well, that’s something he’d never understand.

  Shelby was loving, and loyal, and dogged. Hell, she’d worn him down to the nub of his own truth. And if this was wrong, well, he didn’t want to be right. His hands laced in her hair and drew her to him and his whole body tightened at the feel of her lips on his skin. Those soft hands stroking his sides, his chest, his face…and her heated sex pressing against his groin.