26. Dana

Chapter 26

Dana

T he stain of snot and drool on the breast of my robe was exactly why I was wearing it over my dress.

Drew coughed in my arms, his little mouth buried against my collarbone. The medicine his doctor had prescribed seemed to be doing nothing. "It's just a cold," Dr. Sinclair had said. "He probably picked it up in Costa Rica," adding that I just needed to give the medicine a bit more time.

I stared down at the two dozen red roses in my free hand. The stems crinkled in my grip, mangling themselves. Just the sight of them made me want to vomit regardless of who they were from. I'd never liked the smell of roses.But it was the little tassel hanging from the plastic that encased the tops of them that made it so much worse.

To Dana: I hope I didn't give you the wrong impression. Maybe I'll see you out running again soon. Love, Robert.

Fucking psycho.

If he genuinely thought I'd just gotten the wrong impression, he was out of his mind. The man was insane and incessant, and the more often these showed up—it was the fourth time this week—the more I wanted to tell Cole. But he had too much going on in his own life, too much for me to keep up with, and I didn't want to add to that. We just had to get through this evening, and then maybe, somehow, things could start to calm down.

Maybe then, I'd tell him.

Making a mental note to contact the police at some point, I shoved the bundle of roses into the garbage can and slammed the lid.

"Please don't tell me you're going to the launch wearing a robe."

Drew coughed again as I looked over my shoulder at my sister. She collapsed onto the sofa, her shorter, wavy locks flying up into her face from the movement. How she'd managed to stay here this long without moving on was beyond me. In any other scenario, she'd have gone on to the next location, following wherever her heart or phone led her, but it had been months now. I was thankful, at least.

"No," I chuckled, turning on the spot and pointing to the damp patch over my breast. "Just keeping my dress clean until I leave."

She looked me up and down. I must have looked ridiculous—my fluffy pink robe with a hint of my black dress poking out from underneath, shimmering black heels, my hair swooped up with little tendrils hanging around my face. I'd even managed to get a full-glam makeup look on while Drew was napping.

"Damn," Vee grinned, giving me a little whistle as I spun in a circle. I parted the bottom of the robe a bit to give her a better idea of what I was working with. "You look hot."

"Had a bit more time than usual," I chuckled. I shuffled Drew on my hip, lifting him a bit higher and easing the weight. "He napped for ages."

"Probably just fighting off his cold." She shrugged and reached for the remote, flicking on the television. "When are you heading out?"

I pulled my phone from the pocket of my robe and checked the time— shit. "Cole's driver should be here any minute."

Carefully, I popped Drew into his swing and released the sash of my robe, shucking it from my shoulders. Before Vee could even take it in, a fit of coughs erupted from his tiny mouth, spittle and snot flying at high velocity right into the dangling fabric of the robe.

Almost using it as a shield, I kneeled down in front of Drew, my worry for him only growing. I hadn't heard him cough like that until that moment. It had all been dry and irritating, the only mucus in sight coming from his nose. But this cough was wet, deep, and angry. He sputtered out a little cry before another round of coughs hit him. "Hey, hey, you're okay," I cooed, wiping the little bits of snot hanging from the corners of his mouth.

"That's good," Vee remarked, and I swear I could have killed her.

"How is that good? He sounds worse."

"He's finally getting the phlegm out. It may sound bad, but honestly, it's probably an improvement. Poor guy's just coughing out the devil."

"You can't still think—" I cut myself off, breathing in deeply and trying to center myself. "Maybe I should stay home."

"Dana. He's fine," Vee sighed, pushing her body weight up so she could get a good look at both of us. "I'll keep a close eye on him. The thermometer's in the medicine drawer, right?"

I tightened my lips as I watched Drew. The fit ended and he calmed, his demeanor changing back to his usual, happy-go-lucky self as he reached out for his giraffe.

Things would be fine.

Vee was right.

"Yeah, it's in the drawer." I sighed and pushed myself back up to my feet at the same moment a honk came from outside.

Vee nodded toward the door. "Go. It's fine."

I hated this. Hated the conflicting feelings swirling in my gut, the need to be in two places at once to support the ones that needed me. "Promise you'll text me updates."

"Of course."

I took a deep breath and grabbed my purse from the countertop, quickly double-checking I wasn't taking anything Drew would need with me. "Alright."

————

Having Lottie and Hunter by my side was enough to keep me distracted from constantly worrying about Drew. I almost wished they'd brought Brody but a part of me wondered if I'd give him Drew's cold from the amount of doting I'd do on the poor kid.

The center of the brewery had been cleared of workers and their stations to make room for the soft launch party. Banners hung from the ceiling, decorated with the images that would be on our cans and bottles when the drinks landed on shelves in a few months. Shareholders and people much higher up than me littered the floor, all in suits or fancy dresses that likely cost much more than mine. The wait staff of the restaurant worked the floor with hors d'oeuvres, passing them out to whoever simply stretched out an arm.

Apart from me.

They seemed to have picked up on our relationship and weren't exactly happy for us.

"Who's that Cole's talking to?" Lottie asked, saddling up beside me as she sipped at a bottle of fruit-infused IPA. She hid her scowl fairly well, most wouldn't realize how much she hated the stuff.

"You don't have to drink that, you know," I laughed, following her line of sight until I spotted him.

His dirty blonde hair poked up from the crowd as he spoke animatedly with another man I didn't recognize. Even from where I was standing I could tell Cole looked a little better—no massive bags under his eyes, the color in his face had returned, and even the stubble that he'd neglected for weeks had been clean-shaven. The cut of his jaw was harsh again, and the way he spoke… it was like someone had breathed life back into him.

"I don't know who that is," I said, taking the bottle from Lottie when she tried to sip at it again. "Probably a shareholder."

Hunter's hand snaked its way around her waist as he presented her with a fresh IPA, no fruit this time, and she beamed back at him. "What'd I miss?"

"Just trying to figure out who that guy is," Lottie said, keeping her voice low as she pointed in Cole's direction.

"That would be our good friend, Cole," Hunter grinned. "Drunk already, sweetheart?"

Lottie's expression soured. "You're so annoying."

His lips pressed against the side of her head before he took a swig of the beer. A part of me was almost jealous—there wouldn't be a time when Cole and I could be like that: easy, free, drinking if we wanted, making jokes about it. It seemed like such a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but it felt almost as if the normalcy of it was calling out to me, shouting at me for the first time in weeks, that I was going down the wrong path with him.

"That's Dale Hawthorne," Hunter finally said. "He's been our liaison with local businesses for the agriculture stuff."

"I feel like I should know that" Lottie mumbled.

"You just stick to breeding, horse girl," Hunter laughed, resting his chin on top of his simmering wife's head.

"You're Dana, right?"

I spun on a dime, instinctively plastering on my customer service smile and came face to face with the man who'd been here the night Cole had turned up unannounced three months ago.

Tall, built, and just an inch shorter than Cole, I wondered why I couldn't have fallen for this one instead until a pretty little girl about the age of four with blonde braids poked out from behind him, a little stuffed rabbit clutched in her fingers.

"Uh, yeah," I said, giving the girl a small wave before she tucked herself further in behind him. "You're Cole's friend."

"Grayson," the man grinned, all dimples and hard lines as his cheeks shifted. I'd heard about Grayson, he's Cole's best friend. He'd picked him up from the airport when Cole came back from rehab. Did something in… sports? "It's nice to meet you. I've heard a lot about you."

He stuck his hand out to me as an offering. I took it gently, his palms making mine look as small as a doll's. "All good things, I hope?"

"You really think Cole would have a bad thing to say about you?" he laughed. Grayson placed a hand on his daughter and pulled her out from behind him. "This is Penny, my daughter."

She held up her little rabbit toward me.

"And Thomas, her rabbit."

"Nice to meet you, Penny and Thomas," I said, briefly shaking hands with the stuffed animal.

"You've not seen Bobby around, have you?" he asked, his brows creasing as he scanned the room.

Who the fuck is Bobby? I followed his gaze, watching the crowd for a moment. I wanted to ask, wanted to know who he was talking about, but if Cole hadn't told me himself maybe there was a reason. "I haven't really been paying much attention," I said instead.

"Let me know if you see him." He picked Penny up, her legs wrapping around his abdomen as she snuggled into the side of his suit-covered chest. "Cole doesn't like it, but I just can't stand the guy. And this is the last place he should be."

Wait, is Bobby the roommate?

"Why?" I asked, pressing just a little. I wanted to know more. If there was an issue with the person Cole was spending the majority of his time with, surely I should be privy to that.

"He's just… not right. Fucking leech, if you ask me," Gray said, and within a second his daughter erupted into a fit of giggles. "Don't repeat that, Pens."

"And he's living with Cole?"

"Yeah, he's?—"

Grayson stopped speaking the same moment a hand came to gently rest against my waist, and before I could even turn, Grayson's mouth warped into a smile.

"There you are."

That same hand pulled me roughly back, nearly knocking the wind out of me as my back collided with a rock-hard chest. I knew it was Cole, that much was obvious, but his cologne was different tonight, muskier. Had it not been for his voice, I almost would have panicked.

I turned, looking up at him and taking him in. He looked so fucking good, so healthy, so Cole . "Hey," I grinned, and he gave me a little smirk in return, his green eyes shining.

"I need to talk to you, if you don't mind," he said, the crease by his lip deepening and springing his dimple to life. "Alone."

Lottie snorted as she sipped at her IPA. "Just say you want to fuck her. We're all adults here."

My cheeks heated as he pulled me back again. "Okay." He leaned down, his lips puffing warm breath against my ear, and every part of me lit like a fucking fuse. "I'd like to fuck you in my office, if you don't mind."

Jesus fucking Christ, he is feeling better.

I didn't get a chance to answer before he turned us around and began walking me in the direction of the brewery's central elevator. "Shouldn't you stay down here? You know, lead the group and all that?" I asked, my throat going dry as he pressed the up arrow.

His cheeky grin turned on me, but the shimmer in his eyes had died. Instead, they were darker, half-lidded, and made me feel like a piece of meat.

I didn't necessarily hate that.

"They'll be fine," he said as the elevator dinged.

————

I didn't even have a moment to ask him how he was doing before his hands were on me, fisting the fabric of my lacy dress to lift it up to my hips. I gasped as he pressed me against the wall of windows in his office, his mouth at the base of my neck, his teeth and tongue lashing against my skin.

"Fuck," I breathed. My face heated as I watched the people mill about on the street below us, never quite looking up enough to see what was happening on the other side of the glass, grateful that it was tinted, nonetheless. "Cole?—"

Gripping the back of my panties in his palm, he gave one swift tug, tearing them at the seams.

"I liked those," I mumbled, the breath of my words fogging the window in front of my face.

The rest of the cotton fell away as he tugged at the remaining threads, and before I could comment again, his fingers were reaching around the front of my hips, sliding down the bare skin between them until they met their mark.

Pleasure filled my veins in an instant.

"I was getting so fucking impatient waiting for you to arrive," he rasped, his voice gruff and deep as he dug the fingers of his free hand into my hips and pulled them further back toward him. His front pressed into me, the hardness of his cock against his slacks impossible to ignore. Already, my head began to swim. "You didn't even come over to say hello."

"You looked busy," I whined. The neediness was already growing with every swirl of his fingers over my clit. I hadn't seen him in almost a week, and although I'd had incessant thoughts of him fucking me in every way a girl could imagine, a part of me had wanted to actually talk to him, too.

His movements were preventing me from formulating any rational thought I may have had.

The sound of his belt buckle unclasping nearly had me moaning in anticipation. I pushed my bare ass back against him, rubbing against the hardness in his pants.

He pushed forward, shoving me into the glass of the window a little too hard, as his hands grasped for my arms and pulled them harshly behind my waist. "You want me to go back down there with your pussy juice staining my slacks?" he seethed. His belt slipped from the loops of his pants, and before I could say a word, the soft leather was wrapping around my forearms.

"Cole," I hissed, but the ache from my arms melted away the more he touched me, the more his fingers worked, sliding further down, teasing my entrance while he unbuttoned himself.

"I need to be inside of you." The way he spoke, the sound of his voice, it was as if something else was driving him, something more desperate.

He didn't give me a single second before sliding every inch of himself inside of me, filling me so entirely that I felt like I couldn't breathe. He grasped the leather of his belt, his fingers grazing my skin, and pulled me further up as he pushed us forward, my hips nearly touching the glass. He moved, burying himself in me as if his life depended on it, his free hand keeping up with my body and dragging me closer to release with every pass over my clit.

"So fucking beautiful," he said, the words melding together as I looked over my shoulder at him. He pressed a kiss to my temple and I lifted my chin, hoping for the same against my lips as a moan slipped past them, but he turned his head toward the window instead. "Show them how pretty you look with my cock inside of you."

I could feel the makeup on my face slipping off and staining the glass with each thrust. I pulled at my arms, meeting resistance from the leather, but with the brief help of his hand I was able to slide one out with ease, allowing me leverage to separate myself from the window and turn my body just a hair.

I tried to kiss him again as my release nearly peaked, forcing my legs to buckle, but his touch stopped just a second before I could tip over that edge. He moved, slipping from me with ease, his rigid cock dripping with my wetness.

"On the desk," he growled, grabbing me with a fistful of my dress and whipping me around. I blinked, trying to keep up, trying to make sense of his words but feeling lost in the haze of the abandoned orgasm.

"What?"

"On the desk," he repeated, the words like venom as he pushed me forward onto the wood.

The moan that shuttered through me as he sank himself into me once again shook me to the core. "Oh my god," I breathed. We hadn't fucked like this in over a year—the roughness, the callousness of it—spinning my thoughts in every goddamn direction. I didn't dislike it, and I didn't want it to end, I just wasn't expecting it when he'd dragged me up to his office. "Please, please, I was so close before."

"What's the matter? My baby doesn't want to be edged?" he mocked, beginning his onslaught once again as a hand snaked up the back of my dress. "Maybe I just shouldn't touch your clit again at all tonight. Maybe I should just leave you aching and desperate and dripping my fucking cum."

Oh, god, why did I want that?

"No, no, please, Cole," I rambled, searching behind me with my one free arm for his hand and grabbing it. "Please, fuck?—"

A hand fisted the back of my updo and pulled at the same moment the other found my clit. I hissed in air through my teeth, the pleasure canceling out the pain, every nerve firing at once. "You beg so sweetly."

Rapidly, I shot toward my release, teetering on the edge in record time. His movements grew rougher, angrier, as if he was chasing something he couldn't quite catch up to. My muscles seized, the ecstasy of it reaching newfound heights, every sound pouring from my mouth nothing more than nonsense and babble.

"Come for me, baby," he demanded, his pace quickening with every thrust. "Come around my fucking cock right now or you're not coming at all."

My breasts ached as they slammed against the wood before everything in me broke. My orgasm tore through my body, blinding me, forcing a high-pitched sound from my throat before he covered my mouth. I shuddered, sensitive but riding each wave of it as he gave his last few thrusts, his fingers still moving against my clit and making me spiral. I couldn't think straight. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't care less about anything other than riding it out.

"Fucking hell," he hissed, his grin widening as he lost all control inside of me.

He groaned as his hips sputtered, as his fingers released my clit, as he found his release so intensely I could feel it dripping down the side of my leg.

With both hands on the desk on either side of me, he gasped for air, his cock twitching inside me but not retreating. "You okay?" he asked, his voice barely more than a breath.

"Yeah," I managed. I shimmied the leather off my forearm and sat there, feeling every muscle tightening around him, every beat of my heart. "That was… different."

He slid out of me in an instant.

Once I'd caught my breath, I pushed myself up from the desk, body aching from his desperation, and let my dress fall back down over me. His face had turned darker, a bit of red tinting his cheeks as he buttoned his slacks back up and began snaking his belt through each loop.

He was right. I had stained his slacks a little.

"Cole?" I said, but he didn't look at me. "I'm not—I'm not upset about that. You would have known if I didn't want it."

"I know that" he replied, but he didn't sound sure. He fumbled with the buckle of his belt, missing the hole, and as I wrapped my hands around his to help him, he batted them off. "I'm fine."

"You don't seem fine." I took his face in my hands and forced him to look at me in the dim light of the office. His eyes weren't dark from desire anymore, there was something else. And the bags beneath them were back. I gently reached up and touched his face, feeling the tell-tale sign of concealer. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, baby," he said, the words coming too easily as he pressed a kiss to my forehead. "I just haven't seen you for a little bit. I'm fine now that you're here."

There was an emptiness to him, to his words, that I couldn't shake. He was lying. I could feel it in every bone in my body. I didn't know what to do as I held his face in my hands, his fingers still struggling to lay his belt buckle flat, his cum still dripping down my thigh. It didn't feel right. Something was off.

It felt like last year.

My heart hammered in my chest. "Cole," I breathed. "Have you?—"

"No."

How did he know what I was going to say? "You didn't let me finish my sentence."

"I didn't need to," he grumbled, his eyes darting from mine as he pulled his face from my hands.