Dark Sexy Knight (A Modern Fairytale) (8 page)

She had urges like every other red-blooded woman. And right this minute? She wanted Colton Lane’s arms around her body, his lips moving insistently on hers, his tongue sliding into her mouth as he pushed her against the car and ground his hips into hers. She wanted to feel the swell of his sex against her belly, so she could dream about what it would feel like to have him buried deep inside her. Her skin flushed, and under her yellow T-shirt her nipples beaded into tight points. She wanted him. Bad.

As though he could read her mind, his eyes narrowed, and he bent his head toward her. Reaching for his neck to guide him closer, her fingers landed on the slick, taut skin under his hair, and she pulled him closer—

The car door opened. “Ver’ty? We goin’ home, or what?”

She froze, her eyes snapping open to find Colton mere inches from her face, blinking at her, as though shocked from the same consuming fog of lust as she.

“Um,” she murmured, her voice breathy and dazed. “Yeah. In a sec.”

“I’m tired, Ver’ty.”

“Coming,” she said, gulping as she found Colton’s eyes focused on her lips, the muscles under both of her hands coiled and tense.

“Thursday,” he muttered, his breath soft on her lips, his hand sliding across hers as he let it fall from his chest.

She relaxed her palm on his neck, caressing his throat with the tips of her fingers as she took a step away from him and whispered, “Thursday.”

With a ragged, frustrated breath, she walked around the car to open the passenger door.

“Verity,” said Colton from over the top of the car.

She looked up at him.

“We’re a bad idea,” he said, his scowl back in full force.

“Why?” she asked.

He looked like he was about to say something, but instead his shoulders slumped, and he opened his car door. “I can’t . . .” He stopped, shaking his head like he couldn’t find the right words. Finally he said, “You could do better than me.”

Had she believed him unhandsome when they first met? She stared at him over the top of the car—at his long hair, square chin, and broad shoulders. Her body still tingled from the kiss they’d almost shared, and her heart clutched from his quiet denial when he was—in every way she could imagine—her living and breathing knight in shining armor.

“I don’t think so,” she said, opening her door and slipping into the car before he could say anymore.

***

But Colt wasn’t so sure, and as they rode home in silence, he mulled over the reasons why getting involved with Verity was such a very, very bad idea.

It had started when he was in grade school: the quick, hot, red rage that would rise up inside him like a flash storm over the sea. His mother claimed it came from out of nowhere—the slightest provocation would bring on a reaction so overinflated, there was no time for anticipation. She could barely brace herself before he’d swing into a full-blown tantrum, which often led to the damage of material things, like furniture or clothing, and sometimes even threatened her safety when a plate or mug went flying. His father’s answer to such episodes was to yell louder and hit harder until Colt submitted, cowering in the corner with a black eye and bruised limb, his anger subsiding and tears falling. His mother’s approach was to take him to a psychiatrist while his father was away on a business trip.

At age nine, he was diagnosed with a condition called intermittent explosive disorder, a condition in which a child or a young adolescent is unable to resist angry impulses, resulting in explosions of rage that are disproportionate to the situation, leading to the possibility of dangerous or destructive behavior.

When his mother shared this diagnosis with Colt’s father and asked for his permission to pursue treatment, she was backhanded across the face for consulting a “quack” and Colt was told to “get himself under fucking control,” or his father would take “treatment” into his own hands.

In the end, his mother took things into
her
own hands, sending Colt from their home in Seattle to live with her sister, Jane, in Atlanta the summer after his tenth birthday. Though his mother’s plan was to have him stay for the summer, hoping the distance between father and son would cool them both down, Colt’s parents were killed in a car accident a month later, and he ended up remaining at Aunt Jane’s indefinitely.

And while his aunt had tried to get him to open up about his feelings for several weeks following the accident, Colt simply hadn’t
felt
very much—or, more accurately, hadn’t
wanted
to feel very much. It was all too overwhelming. He’d barely gotten his head around the fact that his mother had chosen to send
him
away and stay behind with his father. How did he
feel
? He felt like ignoring their deaths, and despite Aunt Jane’s pleas, he refused to go to the funeral with her, opting instead to stay in Atlanta with his uncle and cousin that weekend. He felt like pretending that they were alive, still living their fucked-up, corrosive, codependent lives together in Seattle.

Finally Aunt Jane gave up on talking to him about them, just as she’d given up on trying to get him to attend the funeral. She told him that when he was ready to talk about his parents, she’d be ready too. That day never came, however, because Colt chose
not
to think about them, and living with Aunt Jane, Uncle Herman, and Melody made it easy for Colt to move on.

Unlike his father, Uncle Herman didn’t believe in hitting back, and unlike his mother, Aunt Jane didn’t believe in psychiatry, she believed in action. She believed that the key to controlling Colt’s impulses was inner strength and natural supplements, so under her supervision, he practiced yoga twice a week, took Saint-John’s-wort daily, and drank two cups of chamomile and lavender tea before school every day and before bed every night.

With Aunt Jane’s gentleness nurturing him, Colt worked hard to get some measure of control over his outbursts. There were still fights at school from time to time, and freak-outs over homework assignments, but Aunt Jane and Uncle Herman’s home was so warm and loving, Colt was able to develop coping techniques when he felt the rage building—physical exertion helped, and acting in plays, where he could give his fury free rein playing a villain or warrior.

Plus, he learned to conceal his outbursts, letting his anger build until he was in a “safe” place to explode—the woods half a mile from his house, in his car at the deserted quarry, or in the basement of his aunt’s house, where he had a much-abused punching bag hanging from the ceiling. All were safe places to let his anger burst forth uninhibited.

But even when restrained, Colt’s anger was still his constant companion—simmering inside like a kettle on an always-warm stove. By following his Aunt Jane’s recipe, he was
mostly
able to control himself, but there were still situations that felt beyond his control, and when someone he cared about was threatened, he lost control almost completely.

The fights he had in high school (including one in which he broke a fellow student’s jaw and another’s arm) were almost all in connection to his cousin, Melody. He would never forget the day his Aunt Jane sat down with him at the kitchen table, two cups of chamomile-lavender tea before them, after they’d returned from the courthouse.

“You were acquitted,” she said, toeing off her Sunday shoes under the table, “because the jury was persuaded to believe you were acting by proxy in self-defense of Mel. She couldn’t defend herself, so you did the job for her.”

“They had her hair,” muttered Colt, staring at the table. “They had her by the fucking hair.”

While Aunt Jane generally reprimanded him for coarse language, she’d let it slide that time.

“And those strands of red hair caught between Bobby Callahan’s fingers are what saved you from prison.”

Colt nodded, remembering how it felt to go looking for Mel after school that day, only to find her on her knees behind the cafeteria by the Dumpster, one boy about to zip down his pants while the other held her ponytail in his fist so she couldn’t escape. Colt could barely remember what happened next. When his brain cleared, Mel was begging him to stop, her sobs breaking through the haze of his fury, while Bobby Callahan and Steven Riley lay in bloody heaps on the asphalt.

“You love her,” said Aunt Jane with soft, heartbreaking simplicity, and Colt nodded, reaching up to swipe away the tears that gathered at the corners of his eyes. “It means the world to me that you love her so much, Colton, but you cannot
take on
the whole world for her sake.”

But I will
, he thought.
I will take on the whole fucking world for Mel if that’s what it takes to keep her safe.

“If you do, you’ll end up in jail. And if you’re in jail, you’ll be
no use
to her,” said Aunt Jane, reaching for his hand. “You understand me, Colton? You hear me?”

“I hear you, Aunt Jane.”

“Here’s what I need from you, Colton Lane: stay out of trouble and make a decent living. Can you do that for me, son?”

It hurt when she called him son. It hurt in a good way.

“I can.”

“Your heart is so big, but you have to be careful how much you love. The more you love, the more you have to lose, the more you strike back.” She was staring at his face—he could feel the severity of her eyes on him. “One day I will be gone, and I am counting on you to take care of Mel. If she doesn’t have
you
, Colton, she has no one.”

He looked up at her, locking his eyes with hers. Aunt Jane had been his salvation. Without her, he’d have spent his childhood in juvie, he’d have gone into foster care, he would have been utterly abandoned after the deaths of his parents. The simple and seminal truth was that he would do absolutely anything for her.

“Melody will
always
have me. I’ll make certain of it.”

“Promise me.”

“I promise, Aunt Jane.”

She nodded at him, her eyes and smile sad, at odds with the steel in her voice when she continued, “Remember your promise. Be careful who else you love. Be careful that loving someone else doesn’t put your promise to me in jeopardy.”

His aunt’s words echoed in his head as he glanced over at Verity, who looked out the windshield with a dreamy half smile on her face.

She was a bad idea.

Such a bad idea, because in the very short time he’d known her, she’d gotten under his skin in ways he couldn’t have possibly anticipated.

Be careful who else you love. Be careful that loving someone else doesn’t put your promise to me in jeopardy.

There was only one solution, he thought resolutely, looking away from Verity’s pretty face. He could help her. He could date her. He could even fuck her, if that’s what she wanted. But under no circumstances could he fall in love with Verity Gwynn.

Verity sat behind the counter of the
TLOC
gift shop taking princess dresses out of plastic bags, adding a price sticker to their labels, and arranging them on hangers. She’d wanted Thursday to come so badly, but now that it was here, she was . . . nervous. Excited, but nervous.

The gift shop manager, Beverly, looked over from where she was arranging plastic swords in a wooden barrel for display. “Think you’re ready to work a real shift on Saturday? Gets real busy here for the five o’clock show, with all the kids. And they’re mostly brats who get whatever they want by having tantrums.”

“I think so,” said Verity, looking up after putting a price sticker on a light blue, glittery princess gown. She’d grown accustomed to Beverly’s sourpuss over the last few days. “I finally understand how to do a void on the register, and where to find everything in the stockroom.”

She finished the last dress and gathered the pile of pink, yellow, mint-green, and baby-blue tulle in her arms, carefully hanging the dresses on a rack next to the flower crowns. Fingering one that had pink rosebuds with hot-pink and powder-pink ribbons, she wondered what Colton would say if she came down the stairs tonight dressed as one of the serving wenches.  Would it get him into her pants any faster? Because seeing him daily was doing nothing to take the edge off her hunger for him.

Chuckling softly to herself, she walked the long way around the jewelry counter, stopping, as she almost always did, to take a look at the Viking jewelry. It sat between the medieval and Celtic collections, and she found herself drawn to it, wondering how many ladies stopped to buy a ring or earrings after watching Colton in the show. She’d seen the show three times now, always sitting in the yellow section, and always leaving after Colton lost to Artie. It was a shame that she’d be working during the show on Sunday and wouldn’t be able to see him finally win. Then again, she thought, fingering a necklace that bore a charm of the mythical tree Yggdrasil in pewter, she got to see him every morning and every evening.

“You like it?”

Her neck snapped up, surprised to find the object of her thoughts standing beside her in flesh and blood, looking down at the pendant she was touching.

“Where’d
you
come from?”

He looked up from the display, and her heart sped up. He looked handsome tonight. There was a shadow of blond beard on his strong jaw, and from this close she could see the delicate blond eyelashes that were out of sync with his otherwise rugged, unpretty face. But when his eyes went soft on her, as they just did, something inside her clenched hard in anticipation. Handsome. Yes.

And hot. Oh God, this man had hot down to a fine science.

His hair looked shiny and soft, held back in a ponytail with a simple black band, and he smelled like soap and cotton, clean and masculine. Instead of his usual T-shirt, he wore a white button-down shirt, rolled up to his midarm, showing off the sexy veins that wound around his muscular arms. His jeans were faded and fit him like a glove, pooling a little over dark brown leather thongs. She stared at his feet for a moment, realizing that she’d never seen them before, and smiling because they were another beautiful part of Colton, complete with a black tribal tattoo on the right one that was, if she was honest, a little badass.

“Are you staring at my feet?”

“You have a tattoo,” she said. “I didn’t know that.”

“It’s not my only one.”

She ran her eyes up his body lazily, finally meeting his eyes. “Where are the others?”

He leaned closer, his voice a low growl. “You’ll have to find them.”

Her breath caught at the insinuation that she might be in a position to find them tonight.

“Do you have any?” he asked.

“Only one.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

She nodded, her lips tilting up at his surprised expression. “What?”

“I don’t know. You seem sort of . . . sheltered.”

“I’m not as sheltered as I might look,” she said.

“Is that right?” He dropped an elbow to the glass display case as he let his eyes trace down her body slowly. She could feel the heat of them through her merchant costume, which consisted of a royal blue and red princess gown with a tight, gold-embroidered bodice around her chest and waist. His eyes lingered on the soft, small swell of her breasts before meeting her eyes again. “So? Where is it?”

She dropped her elbow next to his and leaned in until they were almost nose to nose. “I guess you’ll have to find it.”

His eyes widened and dilated to black, his nostrils flaring as he stared back at her.
Sexy beast
, she thought.
There you are.

“Colt, quit leaning on my display case unless you’re buying something,” said Beverly with annoyance, walking around the counter to face them.

“I’m buying something,” he said, without looking away from Verity, who straightened away from him and blushed.

Though there wasn’t a rule in the employee handbook against dating coworkers (yes, she’d checked), and everyone already knew she and Ryan stayed at Colton’s house, she wasn’t anxious to get the rumor mill grinding any more than it already was by adding a budding romance to the equation. She’d just as soon they keep a low profile until she figured out what was happening between them.

“What’ll it be?’ asked Beverly.

Colton pointed to the pewter Yggdrasil. “That one.”

“Ah. Verity’s favorite.”

“Oh, it’s not my—”

“You’re only looking at it all the time,” said Beverly tartly, taking it out of the display case and arranging it in a little black velvet box. She looked up at Colton. “You want a bag?”

He shook his head no, pulling out his wallet and handing her two twenty-dollar bills before tucking the small box in his jeans pocket.

Beverly gave him his change with a shit-eating grin.

“Guess you can go for the day,” she said to Verity, “since your . . .
ride
’s here.”

It occurred to Verity to set Beverly straight and tell her that she and Colton were just friends, but the word
friend
sounded so hollow in her ears—so different from the way she actually felt about Colton Lane—she couldn’t make herself say it.

Instead she smiled warmly at Beverly, unclipping her name tag and putting it on the counter in front of her supervisor. “Thanks. See you tomorrow?”

“I’ll be here,” said Beverly, picking up her phone and typing out a text as Verity followed Colton away from the shop.

“She’s going to talk about us,” said Verity.

“Everyone’s already talking about us,” he answered.

“Buying that necklace was just more grist for the mill.”

“Maybe it’s not for
you
,” he muttered.

“It’s unnerving . . . to be a topic of gossip.”

They were halfway across the empty hall when he put his hand on her arm and stopped walking. She turned around and faced him, searching his face, surprised to see anger etched into his features.

“Are you rethinking tonight?” he asked.

“No.”

“Because if you don’t want to have a date with me,” he almost snarled, “just say it. Don’t blame it on rumors that already—”

“Stop.” She took a step closer to him, surprised by his outburst and anxious to reassure him. Her hand wanted to touch him—to move to his arm, to his cheek, to his neck—but Beverly was still looking on, so she clenched her fingers into a fist and met his eyes instead, pouring everything she was feeling into the way she gazed up at him. “I can’t stop thinking about tonight. It’s all I’ve thought about since Monday. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you all day. I’m not rethinking anything.”

He’d been holding his breath as he waited for her to speak, and now he released it in a hiss, nodding his head. “Okay.”

She smiled. “I’d reach for your hand right now if Beverly wasn’t looking.”

“Fuck Beverly.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “We work here.”
And I still don’t know where this is going.

“Fine,” he said, turning toward the side door that led to the stables. “Then let’s get your brother and go somewhere we
don’t
work, deal?”

“Deal,” she said, falling into step beside him, feeling happy again and excited about tonight. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

“What?”

“How come Artie gets to win every night?”

“I win on Sundays,” he reminded her.

“Right, but doesn’t he win, like, ninety percent of the shows?”

Colton nodded. “He’s the Head Knight.”

“Why not you? Haven’t you been here longer?”

“It’s not about seniority. I wasn’t interested in mentoring the other guys.”

“And Artie
is
?” she asked, incredulity heavy in her voice because she had seen a good bit of Artie this week and she wouldn’t exactly choose him as a molder of young warriors. The way he walked around the castle like he owned the place made him seem super-conceited, and she gathered he didn’t value the same discretion she did when it came to dating on the job. She overheard two bartenders in the ladies’ room talking about his most recent conquests, which suddenly made her wonder . . .

“Have you dated a lot of women here?” she asked Colton. “You know, coworkers?”

“What’s a lot?” he asked, pushing open the door and holding it for her.

Two. One.
Any
. Her heart dropped. Had there been tons? And wait. Was she just another casual work relationship for Colton? She bit her bottom lip because the thought was so . . . painful.

“Never mind,” she said, looking around the practice yard for her brother. Two out-of-costume knights in training jousted with rubber lances.

“Does it matter?” asked Colton, his voice close to her ear.

No.
She lifted her chin.
Yes, goddamn it.

Artie approached them, his Colgate smile fixed on Verity. Regardless of her frank and repeated disinterest in him, he hadn’t backed off, and she was both charmed and annoyed by his persistence.

“If it isn’t the prettiest merchant in Camelot,” he said, taking her hand and pressing it to his lips, as he always did when they ran into each other at the castle. He winked at her before flicking an irritated look at Colton. “Isn’t today your day off?”

Colton shrugged. “I missed you, Artie. Couldn’t stay away.”

Artie pressed his hand to his chest. “Alas, Viking Knight, my heart belongs to another.” Then he winked at Verity again.

“If you two will excuse me,” she said, rolling her eyes at them, “I’m going to go look for my brother.”

The question of Colton’s previous girlfriends still niggled at her as she walked around the practice ring. Had he dated Beverly? Daphne? Marty? One of the many other sexy wenches with huge breasts and tiny waists who were his perfect physical match? The bartender with a snake tattooed up her arm (as opposed to the small vine of wild strawberries on Verity’s hip bone, which suddenly felt ridiculously sweet and safe next to the tribal tattoo on Colton’s foot)? Who had he dated? And how seriously? And for how long? And did she pass Verity in the hall every day, smirking, remembering how it felt to be Colton’s choice? To lie beneath him? To feel him inside? To fall asleep beside him?

Her jaw clenched and her jealousy flared, tight and hot, making her heart race.

Why does it bother you so much?

Colton Lane doesn’t belong to you.

She didn’t have a right to this much jealousy over a possible ex-girlfriend, and yet the thought of him with someone else—with
anyone
else—was strangely heartbreaking, like her heart had already called dibs on his, regardless of how long they’d known each other. It didn’t seem to matter that they were still new to one another. All that mattered was that she liked him more than any other man she’d ever known, which told her something important: tonight wasn’t casual for her. Whatever happened with Colton, she didn’t want it to be casual. And she couldn’t help but wonder if it was casual for him.

Her thoughts were scattered by the sound of her brother’s voice nearby, and she ducked into a nearby stable entrance, where she found him standing beside Joe, their backs to her as they looked into a stall together. She backed up against the stable wall behind her to eavesdrop.

“He ain’t pawin’ at the ground no more, Joe.”

Joe nodded. “That’s right.”

“It’s been twenty minutes, Joe, and he ain’t pawin’.”

“He’s lookin’ real good, huh?” asked Joe in his deep Southern drawl.

“Yeah. He don’t have the colic no more,” said Ryan, his voice full of relief.

“Oh, he’s still got it, son. But it ain’t the serious kind. You remember what I told you?”

“We give him the painkiller. If he stops pawin’ the ground, the colic’s gone.”

“No, Ryan. If he stops pawin’, means the colic’s
managed
. For now. Means we don’t need to call in the veterinarian tonight. Means most likely the horse’ll pass whatever ails him. But we still need to keep an eye on him tomorrow, right?”