Secret Baby Daddy (Part One) Read online

  “Who took you to that first fancy dinner?” I ask softly. “Was it the big film producer who ‘discovered’ you?”

  “You say that like he dug me up instead of seeing me walking down a street in Portland. And, yeah, Charles was the one who initiated me into the decadent world of gourmet dining.”

  Silence steals over us once again, but it’s deeper this time. The laugher has faded, and so has the easygoing groove we’d found.

  As we go back to eating, the music from the car isn’t enough to erase the awkwardness that’s returned yet again. I know what Colt is thinking about—how him being “discovered” was the beginning of the end. It happened after I went back to school after that wonderful summer, and I can’t count how many times I’ve wondered what our lives would be like if Colt hadn’t been walking down that street and if Charles Hoffman, that big-budget Hollywood executive, hadn’t seen Colt and thought that he had “it.”

  Our entire history changed when Charles Hoffman gave Colt his business card and said to call because he had the perfect part for Colt in a new movie set to begin filming in just a few weeks. The actor originally booked for the role had just fallen through, and Hoffman said he could “feel” that Colt would be a perfect replacement.

  I was excited, because Colt had always wanted more than just his dead-end job, so I encouraged him to do it, and within days, he was booked for an audition and flown out to LA to meet the director. After reading and screen testing, he got the part, shooting alongside two of the biggest stars of the decade on location in Europe for three weeks.

  He was getting paid real money, and this was his shot at something new and meaningful, so I was behind him the whole way. I knew that this movie would take him away from me. Sure, I was back in school anyway, but still— I would be here when he returned.

  Little did I know that the film shoot would go so well that Colt would catch J.Page’s eye and she would introduce him to her agent and management, who would offer him representation. They became the “hot new thing” and she introduced him to the “in crowd” and Colt became one of them, partying together in Europe and then back in LA. After that, he started getting offers to model, act…everything, and he wanted me to come to Hollywood.

  Me—his small-town girlfriend.

  This was the life he wanted, and he was finally happy. I can still remember how excited he was on the phone as he said, The only thing missing is you, Serena. We haven’t ever gone public, so we have no idea how it could feel to really be together. Let’s tell everyone, even your brother, we’re a couple. Come to LA with me.

  And I said no.

  God, I wasn’t only knee deep in my final year of college, but unbeknownst to him, I was pregnant.

  After I put him off, it only got worse, with him flying back and showing up unannounced at my door. When he saw my baby bump, I saw the look in his eyes—the shock, the realization that his life was about to change, and I’m not sure it was in a good way.

  So I had to do what I did.

  I lied. For him and for me. But mostly for him.

  Even after he told me that he wanted to be together to take care of the child and I could still come to LA with him and raise a family together, I just couldn’t do that to him; a new wife and baby would ruin whatever he had with Jennifer Page, and all these new, amazing, life-altering offers would probably dry up. He was the new fantasy boyfriend for a clamoring, blossoming fan base, and I couldn’t kill the fantasy. I couldn’t take away the charmed life he had now, especially after I’d also seen something painful in Colt’s eyes—the memory of a father who had left him. I wasn’t sure if he wanted to stay with this baby because he wanted to show everyone that he wasn’t like his dad at all or if he really wanted us.

  So I lied to him about the baby’s father and sent him away thinking that I’d cheated on him. After he went back to LA and his career started to explode, I thought I’d made the right decision too. But here’s Colt now, right next to me, smelling so clean and masculine and sending waves of heat through me until I feel like I might wither. Something is ticking inside my belly, building, expanding until I’m biting my lip to keep back a low moan of need.

  Colt isn’t eating anymore. He throws the rest of his chocolate shake away from him, and I go completely still. When he looks at me, his gaze is dead serious.

  “How’s the baby, Serena?”

  The moment I dreaded is here. This is why he got back into my good graces tonight after all—to ask this one question.

  “Don’t, Colt.”

  “You never post pictures of your child on Instagram. I thought you would.”

  “I keep Sebastian far away from social media.”

  “Sebastian,” he whispers, and there’s pain in his gaze now.

  My stomach is churning as I put what’s left of my burger in the cardboard tray. “I think it’s time for you to take me home.”

  “How is he?” he asks in that tortured whisper.

  Tears rip at my throat, and I can hardly swallow, much less talk. “I don’t think we should go there right now.”

  “All right.” His gaze is intense in the glow of the headlights. “Fine.”

  Just as I’m relaxing because he’s backed off of asking, Colt’s gaze flares, and before I know what’s happening, he digs his fingers into my hair and pulls me against him, stealing my breath away with a bruising kiss.

  Chapter 4

  As Colt passionately ravishes me, my mind bursts with flashes, white, hot, and shocking. His lips are soft, yet hard and insistent, and all I can do is grip his wrists and hold on for dear life as something wet and wicked implodes in the very center of me.

  Colt…my first love, my only love… I can’t breathe. I can only feel myself go boneless with desire as I become fully his once again, whimpering in the back of my throat.

  It’s as if he knows exactly what he does to me, because he pauses the kiss, his mouth still against mine as I keep my eyes closed. I hear a thumping in the air, and I think it’s my delirious heart. Then I realize it’s the music from the car and that my lips are tingling and the tingles are spreading all over me with electric vibrations.

  “What was that?” I ask mindlessly.

  “A fucking kiss.” He sensuously rubs his mouth over mine then whispers against me. “I needed to get it out of the way.”

  “It was…in the way?”

  He laughs, his breath caressing my lips, and I shiver, gripping his wrists tighter. I love to hear him laugh, because I’m not sure he does it very much these days. But after a few loaded seconds pass by, I realize that there was something in his laugh that was cutting, and now I fear what he might say next. I’m also anticipating it like the naughty girl he makes me.

  His fingers are still in my hair, and when he slips his other hand to the small of my back, I nearly collapse.

  “I fucking hate that I want to kiss you after all this time, Serena. I hate that I want to hear you cry out for even more than that.”

  He runs his fingers from the curve of my back up the zipper of my dress. I tremble and bite my bottom lip hard.

  “All this time,” he murmurs against me roughly, “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about your body. Your long legs, your curvy hips, your perfect breasts, your sweet ass, your hot pussy…”

  I hitch in a breath, because he’s never talked to me like this before. His hands are still taking their slow time with me: his restless fingers in my hair, his other hand sliding back down the zipper until he comes to my bottom. He eases underneath to cup my cheek, and his fingers are so close to my juiced sex that I groan as it tightens and throbs.

  “I also missed your soft lips.” He kisses me harder, then gives me a slightly cruel nip. “The lips that told me to get out of your life…”

  I want to tell him how sorry I am, but when he runs the tip of his tongue through my lips and opens me up, all I can do is take him in. His tongue sweeps all the way into my mouth, and I meet him in a long, dirty kiss as I arch my hips off the c
ar. But Colt is obviously in the mood to ruthlessly tease me, because he pauses once again, pulling back on my hair so my chin is lifted and pressing against his own.

  I let out a shaking breath, a tremor running down the center of my body until it bolts through my belly and down to my pussy. My clit knots up, and I go wet. So damned wet for him.

  “Serena,” he whispers, “I would’ve never guessed you had it in you to do what you did to me.”

  As he inches his fingers from the curve of my bottom toward my pussy, I part my legs for him, but he only toys with the flesh of my moist inner thighs. The lining of my belly quakes while he pulls me in closer to him…so close that my sensitive breasts brush against his hard chest. I hold back another agitated sound.

  He lowers his mouth to mine again so I can feel him smile, and it’s not pleasant. “You were a sweet kid, and it was only when you turned eighteen that I saw you as something more than my best friend’s little sister… Fuck, you were so vivacious, so sexy, and the way you looked at me told me how you felt about me.”

  As if to punish me for being the sweet kid who turned bad on him, he removes his fingers from my thighs, trailing them over the back of my leg. One of my hands helplessly goes from his wrists to his shirt, and I pull at it, trying like hell to control myself, even though there’s a carnal pressure building in my core, pounding in a desperate, needy rhythm. He reaches up to my zipper then lazily starts to undo it. The sound undoes me at the same time, and I wiggle my hips, trying to get closer to him.

  Maybe he’s got an Academy Award in his future, because he still seems so cool and detached while taking me apart. Or maybe I made him this cold.

  “I always knew you had a thing for me,” he says, “but you were always off limits. For a while, you were like my little sister, not just Jack’s. Then…” With the zipper undone, he separates the back of my dress, letting the summer air breathe over my skin. I pull at his shirt until I can hear seams crackle. “Then a funny thing happened, Serena. You went away to college, and we somehow got closer while Jack and I grew apart. Even then, I still couldn’t have predicted what you had in store for me.”

  I’m on edge, not only because desire is eating away at me, gnawing at my clit and setting every inch of me on fire, but it can’t be this easy with Colt. I know he hasn’t forgiven me. He’s still angry, and God help me, but even his anger is getting me hotter.

  He tugs one side of my dress down, revealing my bra strap. When he hooks his thumb under that, I make a soft, pleading sound.

  “Even if I would’ve known what you’d do to me,” he says, “I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself a couple years later from having you. Big fucking mistake, wasn’t it? If I were smart, I would’ve stayed away. But no one ever accused me of having brains.”

  I want to tell him that isn’t true—he’s got a real sharp mind and is a lot more sensitive than anyone ever gave him credit for— but he’s slowly pulling down my bra strap. As the lace cup skims over my distended nipple, I suck in a breath.

  His gaze is fixed on my exposed breast. “Goddamn it.”

  I’m fighting to breathe now, and the feral look in his eyes isn’t helping. My breasts are bigger than the last time he saw them, swollen after having my baby, and it seems like Colt has been gut punched, not just because of lust, but because of the reminder that I had a baby that supposedly wasn’t his.

  He smooths his fingertips under my breast, lifting it, and I bite back a moan.

  “Do you like it when I do that?” he says from between his clenched teeth.

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  He flicks his thumb over my nipple, and I wince as lust pulls itself tight inside my belly. My clit feels plumped to the point of anguish.

  He circles my nipple and coarsely whispers, “You probably like this even more.”

  “Mmhm…”

  “And if I were to do this…?”

  With a shockingly fluid move, he bends down to take me into his mouth, and I arch against him, letting out an agonized, “Oh!”

  The pressure inside my core expands with every beat of my ragged pulse. The wet sounds of Colt’s mouth on me, his tongue circling my nipple, his mouth sucking and teasing…all of it drives me crazy as I squirm and hold my breath and pull at his hair until it’s out of the band that tied it back. When he lowers me to the hood of the car, I wrap my legs around his toned, hard body. He keeps working my breast with his mouth while expertly reaching under my fringed skirt. As he pulls my panties off, my pussy gushes even more.

  When he sucks off of my nipple, I raise my head to look at him. There’s a fierce light in his eyes as if he’s triumphed over me, or maybe because…

  No. I doubt he’s feeling anything. He couldn’t be. This is Colt’s revenge, showing me what I missed by telling him that I cheated with another guy and that guy got me pregnant. This is my delicious purgatory.

  He watches me as he pushes my dress up to my waist. The backs of my thighs are slick against the car, and when he slides his thumb into the sopping folds of my pussy, I lift my hips, moving with him as he massages me. I hear how soaked I am, and I drop my head back to the hood with a soft bang.

  “Now this is familiar,” he says with grit in his voice. “I remember how you could never wait for me to fuck you.”

  He rubs his thumb around my clit, and something dangerous in my belly folds. But it doesn’t flip all the way. Colt seems to know how to suspend the brutal sensations he’s creating as he drags his thumb down, around, spreading my cream, then stroking back up to taunt my clit again.

  There’s that twist in my belly, a seething wave that’s on the point of breaking.

  “Tell me how much you liked to be fucked by me, Serena.”

  All I can do is make a distressed sound. I’m far beyond words.

  “I’ll just take that as an I liked it a lot, Colt.”

  As if to reward me, he strokes a long finger into my pussy, and I rock up as if another wave is carrying me. Slowly, he pumps his finger in and out, and I churn with him while gasping. Through my half-closed lids, I can see him watching me, smiling that cruel smile, teaching me a lesson. I don’t know how much longer I can hold back that wave, because it’s threatening, starting to roar.

  He slips a second finger into my pussy, and I slap my hand on the car. He starts to bang me more urgently with practiced, smooth strokes. I groan with every thrust, inching up the hood, my skin burning against the paint job. Harder, faster, more please more and… Oh, shit, I’m so close to bursting that I smack the car with my palm again, then again. When he curls his fingers inside me, he hits a little button that makes my mind and body pop, and I spread my hand out on the hood, clawing at it because I can’t take this: the feel of his fingers, the flashing heat in my veins, the sloppy sound of my juices as he goes back to pumping me…

  “Come for me,” he whispers, using his thumb to massage my clit now. He’s got his other hand spread over my belly, lightly pressing his palm right above my pussy in a tender spot that’s making me gasp even harder. “Come for me like you used to, Serena…”

  I can’t bear it any more, and that suspended, roaring wave finally pounds down and splashes everywhere, sending needled jolts through me, soaking me through and through. My body is a wire, and the deluge is making electric sparks bang and burst, my mind sputtering to a strobing blackness as I keep coming for him.

  Coming hard and wet and fast…

  Coming again and again…

  It’s only when I’m done that the music from the car filters back into my perception. I feel Colt taking his fingers away from me, feel the air breathing on my still-throbbing pussy, feel him moving aside the fringe on the bottom of my dress…

  Then I feel his gaze on my most private parts.

  As my blurred sight focuses, I see that Colt has been fully consumed by the wild side—his longish hair is loose because of the way I ran my fingers through it, and the look on his face is completely tormented. I don’t know if he’s about to fuck me�
��please, yes—or if he hates himself for losing the iron control he had with me earlier.

  When his gaze finally links with mine, yet another wet shock jolts me, and I press my thighs together, fighting to keep myself under control.

  Something clicks in his eyes, darkening them. With a scowl on that breathtakingly gorgeous face, he tugs down the fringed hem of my dress, covering me up, then pulls me down the car by my hips.

  Then he picks my panties off the ground and stalks away.

  As I sit there on the hood, utterly bewildered, he curses under his breath behind me. Then I hear his heavy boot steps on the ground right before he pulls the strap of my bra back up and zips my dress. The car dips as he gets into it and starts the engine.

  The motor growls beneath me, and my clit hums. I’m not about to let myself get turned on again, so I brace myself, embarrassed at how easy it was for him to do what he did to me. Then I realize that, somewhere along the line, we knocked the food and cardboard trays to the ground. I should clean it up, so I slide off the hood and start picking up the litter.

  After I’m done, Colt revs the engine, and I blink, then get into the car, putting the trash on the floorboard. He gives me back my panties, turns up the music, and with that between us, drives me home.

  It’s only when he pulls up to the curb of my parents’ craftsman house that he turns down the stereo, and I brace myself for him to kick me out of this car and his life. But there’s not a sound.

  I risk a glance at him, and when I see the brandied light from the porch caressing his stoic face, my heart dips.

  “I want to see the baby,” he says.

  END OF PART ONE

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