Temptation (Club Destiny) (18 page)

“What’s the matter?” She asked, taking in his weary appearance.

“Did I wake you?” He asked, looking her directly in the eye.

“No.” Sierra took a step back so he could come inside. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me either.” He admitted, thrusting his hands into his pockets and strolling toward the window.

Despite everything that happened over the course of the last few hours, the pain that Sierra now felt deep down from Luke’s abandonment, one look at Cole and all negative thoughts vanished. The man had a body to die for, his broad back rippled with strength, and she could see the flex and give of his muscles beneath the thin fabric of his t-shirt. Tanned arms flexed with restrained energy as he turned to face her.

Sierra took a step forward, realizing exactly what Cole had come to her for. The same thing she realized she now wanted from him. Comfort.

“I want you, Sierra.” Cole said, a flash of insecurity fluttered on his handsome face before it was masked with a deep, dark hunger.

Sierra understood the vulnerability, and she suspected that he wouldn’t want her to know exactly how much Luke’s abandonment had affected him, as well. Standing before her, Cole’s emotions were masked entirely, but she figured they were weighing heavily on his mind. Neither of them could control Luke. Neither of them had the ability to help Luke understand that he couldn’t blame himself for so many things that were out of his control.

The feelings.

The need.

Just from the amount of time she had been around him, Sierra knew that Luke thought he could control everything, every situation, but then when he realized he was just as human as the rest of them, he panicked. Based on the concern reflected in Cole’s beautiful deep blue eyes, Sierra accepted what Cole already had. Luke wouldn’t be back tonight.

Unlike Luke, Sierra wasn’t going to walk away. Not from him and not from Cole. She needed to reassure Cole. He’d taken a chance coming to her room and if the words Cole had said that morning rang true, he wasn’t going to back down either.

Taking a step closer, she gauged his reaction, but he didn’t move. His eyes locked with hers and Sierra held her breath, waiting for that moment when he might push her away. Instead, he took a step closer and her heart pounded harder.

“Make love to me, Cole.” She whispered.

In an instant, Cole was on her, his hard body pressed firmly against hers, the feel of his erection pressed between her legs. Sierra latched onto him, melding her lips with his, relishing the comfort that she found in his arms. Without hesitation, he managed to rid her of her clothes, along with his own, claiming a condom from his back pocket before he had her flat on her back.

“I can’t be easy, Sierra. I need to be inside of you right now.”

“Please.” She whispered, pulling his head down, and when their lips touched once again, she realized just how much he had been holding back.

“I need to feel you.” Cole stated, pushing up from her as he opened the foil packet and sheathed himself before aligning his body with hers once again, driving into her in one hard thrust.

“Oh God!” Cole was buried to the hilt, filling the empty, lonely spaces that Luke had left when he had walked out on them earlier. And suddenly Luke no longer mattered because Cole was here.

Sierra pulled him closer, the weight of him on top of her felt like heaven. When he tried to pull back, she held him closer, wanting to feel all of him against her. Then he was kissing her again, gripping her hands and lifting them above her head as he drove into her over and over again. As her body tightened around him, he slowed his pace and then pushed back, allowing her to gaze deep into those all seeing, all knowing eyes.

 “I need you to love me, Cole.” The words were out before she could stop them, and the look on his face nearly broke her heart.

“Always, Sierra.”

~~  **  ~~  **  ~~  **  ~~

Sierra was happy to be home. Four days in Vegas was more than she could handle and considering the circumstances, she thought she had managed to hold herself together pretty well. When she and Cole had woken up Saturday morning, he’d excused himself to his room to shower before returning to walk with her to the conference. It wasn’t until then that he told her Luke had flown back to Texas, although she was pretty sure he had known it when he had come to her during the night. She had been glad he waited to tell her because the news broke her heart all over again.

Granted, the edges of her heart were still cased in anger and fury at the man, but the net of it was that he’d hurt her. Badly. The things Luke made her feel, both with the way he buried himself deep inside of her body, and eased his way into her heart weren’t normal for her. And because the man was just as out of control as she was when they were together, made it nearly impossible to think that he could have walked away so easily. Although that was awfully pretentious – or maybe just naïve – considering they hadn’t been in any sort of committed relationship before they had finally done the deed.

But now…

Now they definitely weren’t, and it hurt to even think about it. Despite her failed efforts to convince herself that casual sex with Luke and Cole was better than no sex, Sierra knew she wasn’t programmed that way.

Somehow, probably thanks more to Cole than anyone, Sierra managed to hold herself together for the rest of the weekend. He made going through the motions bearable. And when he stayed the last night with her, Cole managed to take her mind off of Luke completely. After hanging out at the Blackjack table for a couple of hours, then catching a late dinner, the two of them had retired to her room where they ended up ravishing one another numerous times on Saturday night, both of them realizing it could very well be the last time.

Her biggest fear? That her heart was already as attached to Cole as it was to Luke. On the other hand, no matter how amazing sex with Cole was, Sierra suspected they were both trying to find comfort in one another, a desperate attempt to compensate for the devastation that was Luke McCoy.

Her mother had realized something was wrong right away, but Sierra brushed her off when they came face to face at the convention center. She couldn’t talk about it, mainly because she didn’t know what had happened herself. The facts were clear, but Luke’s reason for running wasn’t. Unless it was because he was scared of what was happening between them.

Although she wasn’t the type to use sex as consolation, Sierra wasn’t so sure Cole didn’t see
her
as a stand in for Luke. He hadn’t given her any impressions that he was using her, but neither of them had spoken about Luke or of what had happened. Instead, they had consumed one another. Yet afterward, hidden by the dark shadows of night, Sierra’s mind had drifted to Luke numerous times.

The situation was unfamiliar. She had never been with another man other than her husband, yet she had been with two different ones in the span of just a few days. Initially, being with both of them seemed almost normal. But when Luke walked away, leaving her and Cole alone, she couldn’t help but feel as though a part of her was missing. Though she doubted he had even cared.

The one thing she refused to do was to settle. Not that she considered Cole a consolation prize by any means. He was so much more than that. She had begun to care about him, but she knew in her heart of hearts, things weren’t going to get any easier between them. The best thing for her to do would be to back off of both of them, no matter how much it hurt. In the end, the pain would be less than the total agony she would feel if she allowed something to develop that wasn’t based on true feelings.

Now the only thing left to do was to get back in the swing of things.

Her first networking gig was behind her, and she had a business to get up and running. In addition, her little rental house needed a little TLC. She hadn’t been able to part with her house in Nashville, the one she inherited from her grandmother, partly because she wasn’t particularly versed in dealing with ambiguity. Moving to Dallas was probably the biggest decision of her life, so not selling allowed her to keep the comfort of home within arm’s reach.

So instead of selling, she rented her Nashville house out, knowing that if it came down to it, she had a place to go back to. At this point, she wasn’t quite ready to put down permanent roots in Texas, which left her with a rental that she needed to make as comfortable as possible for as long as necessary.

Until she was ready to commit to staying in Dallas, she would give it her all. There were so many things that needed to fall into place before she would concede to staying – getting her business up and running, getting a feel for the lay of the land, and above all else, convincing herself that Dallas was home.

The ringing of her cell phone jarred her from her thoughts as she walked from room to room wondering how she could make the place feel just a little homier. Furniture would likely help.

“Hi Mom.” Sierra cheerfully greeted her mother. They hadn’t shared the same flight out because Veronica opted to go back on Saturday morning with Xavier while Sierra stayed until the end of the conference.

“You make it back alright?” Veronica asked, sounding a little worried.

“I did. I just got home a few minutes ago.”

“What happened to Luke? Xavier said he had an emergency and had to get back home before the conference was over.”

Emergency? She doubted that being a coward would constitute an emergency, but if it made Luke feel better, who was she to say anything different.

Nonetheless, Sierra felt the all too familiar ache at the mention of Luke’s name, but she did her best to hide it. “I’m not sure. Cole said he had something to take care of.” That wasn’t exactly a lie, but Sierra definitely wasn’t going into further detail. Not with her mother anyway.

“Is there something going on between you and Cole?” Veronica asked, always right to the point.

“Why do you ask that?” Although Sierra and her mother were close, she’d always found it difficult to talk to Veronica about matters of the heart. When it came to the fact that Sierra found herself in the middle of some sort of convoluted love triangle, she didn’t have the slightest idea what she would even say.

“I don’t know. The two of you seemed rather close on Saturday. I got the impression he was worried about you.”

“Cole’s a good man, Mom. And I’m sure he was just worried about making sure I was taken care of since my date had to leave so suddenly.” There, that was the truth. Cole had been worried about her, the same as she had been worried about him.

There was a moment of silence on the phone line before Veronica picked right back up, side stepping the personal issues as she always did. “Did you strum up any contacts at the conference?”

That question was so much easier to answer, so Sierra proceeded to tell her mother about the appointments she’d made with a few business owners in the Dallas area, including one personal consultation with a prominent Dallas lawyer looking to make some significant changes to her house. In the end, when it came down to how her business faired over the weekend, Sierra was satisfied.

If only she could say the same for her personal life.

After a few more minutes of mundane conversation, Sierra let her mother go.

With nothing else to focus on, Sierra’s attention was once again on the sparsely furnished rental she inhabited. Part of her wanted to run out and drop a chunk of change on making the house a home, maybe some furniture, some art work, whatever it took to focus on something other than Luke and Cole.

Instead, she gave in to her exhaustion, both mental and physical. Thanks to the time difference between Vegas and Dallas, it was already closing in on dinnertime, and Sierra hadn’t eaten since early that morning. A quick perusal of the refrigerator told her she would have to go to the grocery store if she wanted to eat. Since she was too tired to even do that, she opted for a slice of bread before heading to her room for a quick shower and then off to bed she would go.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Two weeks later, Sierra found herself riding on a high thanks to having landed a promising job with one of the two appointments she had gone on. She had also been hired by the Dallas lawyer, Susan, for a job that she anticipated would take at least three months.

The Monday after she came back from Vegas, she had immediately gotten on the phone with those potential clients and confirmed the meeting times. Her persistence had paid off, and she landed her first clients.

Immersing herself into work was the only thing that remotely kept her mind off of Luke and Cole. Not that she had heard from either of them since she got back from Vegas. Not hearing from Luke wasn’t surprising, but not hearing from Cole… she was almost speechless. Not that she would know what to say to them anyway. Especially Luke. And now, the distance she and Cole put between them would only make a reunion awkward.

Initially hope bloomed, but that was doused rather quickly after the first day when she never heard from him. She’d secretly willed her phone to ring, only to be disappointed time after time until finally she gave up completely. Sierra never was the type to pine after a man. Or two.

Once again her cell phone rang, interrupting her from her thoughts. She lurched for the phone, half hoping that fate, or karma, had heard her silent pleas and her random thoughts hadn’t been for nothing. Glancing at the phone, she didn’t recognize the number, and doubt settled in. Figuring it wasn’t Luke or Cole, she realized it could be one of her potential clients.