Dark Sexy Knight (A Modern Fairytale) (15 page)

“Ryan knows horses,” said Colt, choosing not to correct Artie when he called Verity his girlfriend. “He’s good with them.”

“Yeah? Well, someone gave Éclair cabbage, and he’s farting like the world’s fucking ending. I’d need a gas mask to ride him tonight.”

“Cabbage?” asked Colt. “Do we even
have
cabbage back here?”

Joe shrugged. “Don’t know how it got in here, but Artie pointed out some shredded leaves that must’ve fallen on the straw. Horse ain’t digestin’ it well.”

Everyone knew you weren’t supposed to gives horses cruciferous vegetables like cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli. An experienced stablehand like Ryan would have definitely known not to.

Colt cocked his head to the side. “You have proof it was Ryan?”

Artie sneered. “No, but he’s a retar—”

“Then I suggest you shut your mouth about him until you know for sure who was responsible.”

Stepping forward, Artie sized up Colt with a mean look. “Are you fucking threatening me, Lane?”

Colt closed the distance between them, staring Artie down. “I’m telling you to shut your fucking mouth about Ryan Gwynn unless you have some solid evidence that he did something wrong. You hear?”

Their standoff lasted for a few more seconds, until Artie dropped Colt’s eyes and took a step back. “I don’t have time for this shit. I have to go saddle up Galahad.” He shifted his glare to Joe. “Remember what I said—he doesn’t go near my mounts anymore.” Then he shouldered past Colt, knocking into him as he left the stall.

Colt looked over his shoulder, watching Artie go, before he turned to Joe.

“What do you think?”

“That horse has some bad indigestion,” said Joe, wrinkling up his nose.

“No, I mean, was it Ryan? How’s he doing here?”

“Great,” said Joe. “Natural stableman. Been around ’em all his life, from what I can gather. Soothes ’em. Feeds ’em. Mucks out the stables when I say so. Cheerful. Hard worker. Couldn’t ask for a better helper. No idea what Artie’s got against him.”

Colt tightened his jaw. Self-centered assholes like Artie were uncomfortable around disabled people like Ryan and Melody, and they did whatever they could to make their lives hell. Maybe it was to establish their own power, or maybe it was to try to drive the disabled person away. Well,
that
wasn’t fucking happening. Not on Colt’s watch anyway.

“Keep an eye on him for me, huh, Joe?” asked Colt. “Let me know if Artie’s making trouble for him, okay?”

Joe nodded. “Yeah. I’ll look out for him. Probably he just has to prove himself. I had to do the same when I got here too.”

Colt sighed, wishing some people weren’t such monumental assholes. “I gotta go mount up.”

“Don’t worry, Colt,” said Joe, offering him a warm smile. “It’ll be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”

But two hours later, his victory behind him, Colt was still annoyed over the incident with Artie in the barn. He had gotten the feeling in the kitchen this morning that Verity objected to his fighting, but fucking hell, if Artie was harassing Ryan, if Artie decided to push things, it might come down to a fight. Colt’s anger boiled inside, rolling and hot, at the idea of Artie bothering someone as gentle as Ryan.

So fucking help him
, thought Colt,
he’d better find someone else to pester. If he doesn’t, he’ll be on the receiving end of my fists, and that’s a fucking promise.

It took concentration and effort to force his rage back down to a simmer, but he focused on Verity’s face in his head, on the fact that she and Ryan were probably hanging out by his car, waiting for him to change and drive them home. He thought about her lying next to him on his bed while they watched a movie together. He thought about what he wanted to do to her after the movie was over, when his room was dark and they were warm and drowsy. He thought about the taste of her mouth and the smell of her pussy after she’d rubbed it against his jeans. He thought of her tongue flicking out across the skin of his throat this morning and suppressed a groan.

Little by little, he traded his anger for lust, and by the time he’d changed back into his jeans and T-shirt, his thoughts of Artie had been replaced by excitement about seeing Verity. He strode from the castle into the parking lot, unable to stop himself from smiling when she saw him coming and waved.

“Hail the conquering hero!” she called.

“You know it’s a rigged show, right?” he asked, hiding a smile as he unlocked the car doors.

“A win’s a win!” She winked at him, her ponytail swinging playfully as she ducked into the car.

Colt reached for Ryan’s shoulder just before he opened his door and whispered, “Ryan, how’s Artie treating you?”

“Oh, Artie.”

“Okay? Not okay?”

“Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Sometimes people call me retard, but that’s their problem, not mine.”

Colt clenched his jaw but kept his face neutral. It upset Melody when he had a “thunder face,” and he didn’t want to upset Ryan. But if he ever heard Artie use the word
retard
in conjunction with Ryan again, Colt would deck him with pleasure.

“Listen, if he bothers you, I want you to tell me, okay?”

“Yeah,” said Ryan. “Tell Colton. You’re a friend.”

“That’s right.”

“Yeah. I’m tired.”

“Go on. Get in the car.” Colt released Ryan’s shoulder, and Ryan opened his door.

As they sat down, Verity turned to him with an impish grin. “What were you two talking about?”

“Artie,” announced Ryan from the backseat.

Grin gone, Verity’s head whipped back to look at her brother. “Is he bothering you?”

Colt looked at Ryan in the rearview mirror and watched as Ryan shook his head. “Nope.”

“You tell me true, Ryan Gwynn.”

“Nope,” he said again, leaning his forehead against the window.

She turned back around in her seat, looking at Colt with worried eyes. “Is Artie bothering him?”

Colt took a deep breath. He didn’t want to lie to her, but he didn’t want to upset her for no reason either. Artie had been complaining to Joe, not bothering Ryan. Until he actually saw Artie making trouble for Ryan, he needed to take his own advice and keep his mouth shut.

“Someone gave Éclair cabbage, and Artie was storming around the stables, all pissed off because he had to ride Galahad tonight.”

Ryan giggled loudly in the backseat. “Cabbage makes ’em fart.”

Colt looked up into the mirror again, narrowing his eyes and wondering if it was possible that Ryan had fed the horse cabbage to get even with Artie for some meanness. Was he capable of concocting such a plan? If so, more power to him. Artie deserved a little taste of his own medicine.

“You just steer clear of him,” said Verity as Colt pulled out of his parking space. “I don’t like him.”

This made Colt pause for a second because he’d never heard Verity say something this bald and unforgiving. He glanced at her sidelong for a moment, but she was staring out the window like her brother. Colt decided to let it go. If she was going to choose someone to dislike, he was glad it was Artie. Colt trusted Artie . . . not at all.

“Not a fan of Captain Wonderful, huh?”

“Ugh,” she said, making a retching noise. “Not even a little bit.”

“Not your style?”

She turned to him and grinned, her face lit up by a red light in front of them. “Hot, growly Vikings are
way
more my style.”

“Hot, huh?”

“
Way
hot,” she said, winking at him again, those two dimples so pretty, it made his breath and his heart catch. This woman. Fuck, but she made him happier than he had a right to be.

Taking another look in the backseat, he saw that Ryan was fast asleep. Reaching for her hand, he pressed the back to his lips, then laced his fingers through hers and held them for the rest of the ride home.

His heart thumped fiercely—like it knew something much bigger than how it felt to hold hands with Verity Gwynn.

And that was just fine with him.

***

Verity’s belly swarmed with butterflies, and the rest of the ride home was quiet but full of portent—of unspoken exhilaration with every adjustment of his fingers through hers, with every mile closer to his house. When he pulled into the driveway, he cut the engine and turned to her, still holding her hand.

“You want a glass of wine? I can open a bottle.”

She nodded, grinning at him. “I’d love one.”

“Popcorn?”

“Yes, please!”

“How about you get your brother settled and then come find me?”

“In . . . your room?” she asked, her heart fluttering with anticipation.

“Only TV in the house,” he reminded her.

“I remember.” She licked her lips to tease him. “And you’ll only jump me if I ask.”

“Will you, baby? Ask?”

She laughed softly, unlacing her fingers from his. “We’ll see.”

His face was soft but still somehow stern. “I don’t expect anything, you know.”

“I know,” she said.

“Just being with you . . . it . . .” He shrugged. “It makes me happy.”

“Colton . . .”

“Come to me quickly,” he said gruffly, then opened his door and left her alone in the car with her snoring brother.

Through the windshield Verity watched him go, his long legs, his tight ass, his shoulder-length hair gathered into a low ponytail. She leaned back in her seat and sighed.

She’d had three days to think about tonight, about what she wanted to do versus what would be smart. What she
wanted
? Ten to twelve hours of nonstop sex and occasional sleep sounded about right. His body, hot and naked, thrusting into hers, pillaging her depths and loving her raw.

Yeah
, she thought as her toes curled.
That sounded just about perfect.

But she sighed again, this time mournfully, because she’d already decided that sex needed to wait. No matter how much she wanted to ride Colton Lane like a rodeo queen, sex had the potential to make things really goddamned tricky.

And neither of them needed to add more tricky to this situation.

They lived in the same house.

They worked at the same place.

Since neither of them was looking for a casual fling, there was no point in rushing things, right?

Right.

Wrong!
screamed her libido.

She huffed in frustration. It was going to take all her willpower, and then some, tonight because, Lord, the things she wanted to do to that man and let him do to her . . .

“We home, Ver’ty?”

“We’re home, Ry.”

“Okay,” he said, opening his door and trudging into the house.

She followed him in and up the stairs, where she freshened up and changed into shorts in Melody’s room while Ryan took his evening shower, put on his pajamas, and brushed his teeth.

“Floss too!” she called from her bedroom.

“Aw, I hate it.”

“I don’t care,” she said. “Mama broke the bank for that pretty mouth.”

A few minutes later, he poked his head into her room. “You ready to tuck me in?”

“I don’t know,” she said pertly, just as she did every night. “You ready to go to sleep?”

He grinned at her, showcasing his sparkling-clean, white teeth. “Yes, I am.”

“Then what are you doing still awake?” she asked, shaking her head with wide eyes and pursed lips.

He cackled with laughter as he rushed to his bed and jumped under the covers. Verity pretended to run after him, arriving in his room just as he pulled the red, white, and blue plaid quilt up under his chin and beamed up at her.

“Who loves you, Ryan Gwynn?” she asked, sitting beside him on the bed and reaching forward to tousle his hair.

“My sister, Ver’ty.”

“Yes, she does.” She leaned down and kissed his forehead. “’Night, now.”

“’Night, Ver’ty,” he said softly, already half asleep. “I love it here.”

“Me too, Ry,” she whispered, pulling his bedroom door closed, leaving just a crack of light so he could find his way to the bathroom. “Me too.”

Taking a quick look at her face in the hallway mirror, she reached down to turn on the little airplane night-light and headed downstairs.

Colt had put a bottle of white wine in the fridge before leaving for work that morning, and it was nice and cold when he opened it and poured two glasses. He didn’t have a proper ice bucket, so he filled one of his aunt’s larger flowerpots with ice and wedged the bottle in the middle. The saucer attached to the bottom could collect the melted water.

After he placed the wine on his bedside table, he returned to the kitchen, took out the pot his aunt had used for boiling spaghetti, and placed it on the stovetop. He scooped out two tablespoons of coconut oil from a glass jar, shook it into the pot, and turned up the heat. After a minute or two, he added a cup of popcorn kernels to the melted oil, covered the pot, and listened to them quickly fill the pot. He’d sprinkle it with salt and sugar as he poured it into a bowl.

He’d straightened and vacuumed his room this morning while Verity and Ryan were upstairs getting ready for work. His bed was made, and his weights were neatly racked. The couple of old
Playboy
s he had on the bottom of his nightstand had been taken out to the trash, and he put fresh hand towels beside the sink in his bathroom.

He’d added a couple of extra pillows to his bed so they could sit back comfortably, but his bed looked massive and obvious in the middle of the room, and suddenly he wished he had somewhere else to sit, like a couch or beanbags or something—
anything
—that didn’t seem as suggestive as his bed.

Before, in the car, when he’d told her that he had no expectations, he’d been telling the truth . . . but he couldn’t deny that the thought of Verity in his bedroom made his imagination run wild. He had it bad for her—of course he wanted to fuck her. Hell, touching her was his current favorite pastime. But he was also falling for her. Falling
hard
, just as he’d forbidden himself to do. And there wasn’t a single fucking thing he could do about it. And frankly there wasn’t a single fucking thing he
wanted
to do about it—not a cell in his body that wasn’t ready to surrender to the addictive, adorable woman upstairs.

He was in unfamiliar waters, not ever having had a serious relationship with a woman, but that didn’t seem to matter to his mind or his heart, both of which were gunning for her to stick around indefinitely. In fact, his heart had fixed on her so fiercely that, in such a short amount of time, he felt like all he could do was hold on for dear life and see what happened next.

And “next,” as it turned out, was seeing her beautiful face peek into his bedroom, dimples denting her cheeks as she grinned at him.

“Hi,” she said, leaning against the doorway in bare feet with her hands shoved into the back pockets of denim cutoff shorts. On top she wore a simple white tank top with thin straps and a scoop neck, and her long blonde hair, which she’d been wearing in a ponytail at work today, was draped over her shoulders, the ends resting just over her breasts.

She was so effortlessly bright and beautiful, his breath caught. It seemed like, if she pricked her finger, she wouldn’t bleed red—she’d bleed sunshine. And it just about fucking leveled him that she was here, that this sweet goddess of a girl wanted to spend her precious time with him.

Not to mention, over the past week, she hadn’t worn shorts, even though it had been pretty hot. She wore a bathrobe in the morning and sundresses most days to work. He’d seen her in jeans too, but these cutoffs were new to him, and super-short, and his mouth watered as he stared at her tan legs.

“Colton?” she said, her voice filled with laughter.

“H-hey,” he stuttered, standing up from the foot of the bed. “You look . . .”

She shrugged. “Grubby?”

“Gorgeous,” he said, unable to look away from her blue eyes.

Her lips tilted up into a pleased smile, and she stepped into his room, looking around for a moment before pointing at the TV. “Only TV in the house.”

“It’s just been me here for years.”

Something passed over her face as she turned to look at him. Something soft and sweet that made his heart clench with longing. Verity Gwynn kept the loneliness he’d felt for the past few years at bay. Were he to lose her, he knew it would return again, only worse than before because now he knew how it felt to have her warmth in his space.

Don’t go. Stay with me.

“You have wine,” she said, dropping a glance to his bedside table.

“Still want some?”

“Sure,” she said over her shoulder, walking over to his dumbbells. She fingered them as he poured two glasses. “It’s like a mini gym in here. You work out a lot?”

“Yeah.” He held out the glass.

“It’s your favorite thing at the castle too,” she commented, taking the stem between her fingers. “The stables . . . and the gym.”

“You remember,” he said, sitting back down on the edge of the bed to give her a little space to explore.

“Of course.” She lifted her glass and grinned. “What are we drinking to?”

Colt raised his glass. “To you.”

“Why not to you?”

He shrugged, giving her a small smile. “To . . .
us
?”

“Okay. To us,” she said, lifting the glass to take a sip. “Ooh! Yummy! What is it?”

He flicked a glance at the bottle. He had no idea what it was. The label was bright yellow and had a cupcake on it, which had somehow felt like Verity. “White?”

She giggled. “That’s about all I know about wine too. It’s either red or white.” She took a look at her glass. “Really it’s yellow. But I guess that would make people think of pee, so they say white instead . . .” She sighed, wrinkling her nose at him. “I think I’m nervous.”

“Don’t be. No expectations, remember?”

She nodded, turning back to his weights and taking another sip of wine. “How come you work at
The Legend of Camelot
? Seems like maybe you should be working at a gym.”

“I probably should be,” he said.

She looked at him over her shoulder. “So?”

“I found my job pretty much the same way you found yours.”

“You and your desperate-for-work, developmentally disabled sibling went to a job fair ready to scrub toilets if you could find work at the same place, and a Viking Knight saved your skin instead?”

Fuck, but he loved the way she looked at him when she said things like that. It made him want to be the man—or even the knight in shining armor—that she saw in him.

He shook his head. “Nah. I was trying to get a job on a reality show called
The Gym
, but by the time I got to the recruiting table, they already had over five hundred sign-ups for open auditions and had closed the list. Next to them was the
TLOC
table, and Lynette asked if I had any interest in being a knight. The rest, as they say . . .”

“. . . is history?”

He sighed because part of him hated that it had worked out that way, and he wanted her to understand. “Look, working as a knight in a corny dinner show isn’t exactly my idea of a long-term career, but at the time I needed a steady job to take care of this house and . . .”

Melody.

Although Aunt Jane had purchased Mel’s apartment at Bonnie’s Place before she died, and left a trust for her care in Colt’s name, it simply didn’t cover everything. His paycheck was necessary to keep Mel comfortable. His aunt and uncle had taken him in when he had nowhere to go and cared for him like their own son. Caring for Mel was his way of repaying them their kindness, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way.

“And?”

There had been moments over the course of the past week when he’d almost told her about Mel, and he’d add
this
moment to that list, but the timing still felt premature.

He shrugged. “My car, living expenses. You know, the regular.”

“I know,” she said. “Bills and expenses. Try taking care of someone else too. It’s tough.”

“I admire the way you look after Ryan.”

“I know . . .” Her lips twitched, and she took another sip of wine. “I know he’s big and awkward and a little goofy, but he’s the only family I’ve got. When I was born, Ry was already eight years old, and he’d already had his accident. But he was always a gentle giant. And he
always
loved me. Loved playing with his little sister. Watching TV. Pushing me on the swing. Dragging me around in his red wagon. Singing songs to me. Leading our daddy’s horse around the farm with me on her back. I was . . . unplanned, and my parents were busy on the farm. Ryan was . . . he was my sweet place, you know?”

“Your sweet place?” whispered Colt.

“My hugs and kisses and smiles and songs and ‘I love yous.’” She’d been looking at him as she made her list, but when she said the words “I love yous,” her cheeks flushed and she dropped his eyes. Softly she added, “My sweet place.”

“I like that.”

“You do?”

He nodded. “A lot.”

“Well, you can borrow it whenever you like,” she said, her grin back in full force as she took another sip of wine. “What about you? Who’s your sweet place? Your cousin? Melody?”

No.
You.
Every day I spend with you,
you
become my “sweet place,” sunshine.
He wished he could say this to her, but he hesitated, afraid that such big words would scare her away. Instead he said, “She’s important to me, yeah.”

“Did you live here? With your aunt and uncle?”

He nodded. “My parents were in a car accident when I was ten. They died instantly.”

“No!” she cried, turning to face him and cringing with sympathy as she flattened her free hand over her heart.

“I was visiting here when it happened, so I just . . . stayed.”

He chose not to share that, just before the accident, his parents had left the restaurant where they’d just had dinner in a terrible hurry. According to the police, Colt’s father had gotten upset about something on the bill, picked a fight with the waiter, and belted him in the stomach when the waiter insisted it wasn’t a mistake. While the restaurant manager called the police, Colt’s father threw some money down on the table and pulled his wife out of the restaurant, dragging her out to the parking lot and speeding away like the devil was at his heels. Why? Because he’d already been arrested twice for assault, and a third charge would mean a significant prison sentence.

His father was racing away from the restaurant, probably looking in the rearview mirror, when a deer jumped in front of the car. He hit the deer and lost control of the car, driving off the rain-slick road, into a ravine, and smashing into a tree. Years later, when he read the coroner’s report, Colt was relieved to read that there was no way they could have survived the impact. They’d died instantly.

“God, Colton,” she said, taking several steps to stand before him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah. It was . . .” He ran a hand through his hair, pulling out the black rubber band and placing it on the nightstand. “. . . bad.”

His father hadn’t been just a mindless brute of a man, though, which was the toughest thing about Colt’s memories of him: they weren’t black and white; they were gray. And gray was so much harder to understand or explain.

Yes, he remembered his father’s eyes going black with fury when something made him angry. And he remembered the times his father had laid into him—they weren’t exactly forgettable, though they were always followed by “Sorry about what happened” a few days later. But Colt remembered lots of happy times too: Dad ruffling his hair after a soccer game or asking him what flavor of ice cream he wanted at the Memorial Day parade. If Colt concentrated hard, he could still feel the touch of his father’s lips on his forehead when he kissed him good night and the deep rumble of his voice as he read a bedtime story. There had been a lot of bad moments, yes, but not all. There had been tenderness inside his father too, and that softness made it impossible for Colt to blindly hate him.

What actually hurt more was remembering his mother. She’d been a sweet, soft-spoken woman, gentle and kind, saddled with a husband and son who both got angry too quick, too often. His last memories of his mother’s face made his heart twist because she looked so sad and tired and old, like life had sucked every bit of joy from her soul. He’d blamed her for sending him away, and yet it ached to remember her. So mostly he didn’t. Mostly he tried not to think about his parents at all.

The bed depressed a little as Verity sat down beside him, her thigh about six inches away from his. “I can’t imagine,” she said gently. “My parents were old, and they weren’t real affectionate, but they cared for us until we were full-grown. I’m . . . I’m just so sorry, Colton.”

“Thanks,” he said, looking away from her legs and reaching for his wineglass. “They died a long time ago, and my aunt Jane, well, she was really amazing, so . . .”

She took a deep breath and sighed.

He did the same.

“Wow,” he said, “that conversation tanked quick.”

She turned her neck to look at him. “Do you want to talk about them? Your parents?”

“Not at all.”

“Okay. Then talk about something else. Quick.”