Colton: Wordsmith Chronicles Book 2 (The Wordsmith Chronicles) Read online

  Colton

  The Wordsmiths Book Two

  Christopher Harlan

  Contents

  A Wordsmith.

  The Wordsmiths

  The Brotherhood

  Quote

  Prologue

  1. Colton

  2. Colton

  3. Colton

  4. Harley

  5. Colton

  6. Colton

  7. Colton

  8. Colton

  9. Colton

  10. Harley

  11. Colton

  12. Colton

  13. Colton

  14. Harley

  15. Colton

  16. Harley

  17. Colton

  18. Colton

  19. Colton

  20. Colton

  21. Colton

  22. Colton

  23. Colton

  24. Colton

  25. Colton

  26. Harley

  27. Colton

  28. Colton

  29. Colton

  30. Harley

  31. Colton

  32. Grayson

  33. Rowan

  Features

  Connect with Christopher Harlan

  My Work

  Colton

  Book 2 in the Wordsmith Chronicles

  By Christopher Harlan

  Cover Design and Formatting by Jessica Hildreth

  Beta-Reading by Lauren Lascola-Lesczynski and Laura Albert

  Proofreading by Jessica Kempker

  This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to anyone who did not purchase the book outright. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or any other means not listed specifically herein) without the express written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental. All people, places, and events contained herein are a product of the author’s imagination and are completely fictitious.

  Warning

  This book is intended for those 18 or older. It contains explicit sexual content and adult situations. Discretion is advised.

  Dedication

  To anyone who’s read any of my books, and to the indie writing and reading community, these words are most certainly for you.

  To my wife and children, without whom none of this would be possible.

  To my fellow members of the R&E Fraternity, for helping to inspire these words and, in some cases, these characters. In particular, thanks to Golden and Scott! You guys are awesome as always.

  And a very special thank you to a loyal reader for her support and help with this book, Laura Albert—your contribution helped make this what it is.

  A Wordsmith.

  I had nothing until I had her.

  Harley. My Muse.

  I used to remind myself to never let my feelings get intense or serious. Not over a woman. Never. That’s not the man I am. But she changed everything.

  It all started with a single stolen glance at my book signing. My gaze never left her that afternoon, and an innocent meeting ignited a spark inside of me that I still haven’t recovered from.

  The words that filled the pages of my novels, words that had ceased to exist, started pouring from me when I met her.

  But the ghosts of my past have crept back into my life unexpectedly, jeopardizing my ability to be with her, and the future I know we can have together. I want to fight for her—for us—and to be the man I know I can be.

  I’m a Wordsmith.

  Let me tell you our story.

  The Wordsmiths

  Colton Chase

  Author of the MMA themed Battle Tested series featuring alpha bad boy Aidan Paul. Book 1 is titled “Fist.” He’s currently working on book 2, “The Gentle Art”

  Co-author of the Wordsmith Chronicles Anthology

  Grayson Blackman

  Author of the Rom-Com series Benefits for Friends and the Dark Romance “Stolen” series

  Co-author of the Wordsmith Chronicles Anthology

  Michael Knight

  Author of Into Your Eyes, the Lost Lovers series, the bestselling ForEver, and an upcoming new series (TBA)

  Co-author of the Wordsmith Chronicles Anthology

  The Brotherhood

  KL Steiner

  Roland Rays

  Johnathan Logan

  Authors & Models

  True North

  Author of The Furious Pricks series, The Rotten Scoundrel series, along with 50 other novels

  Greg Olden (‘G. Olden’)

  Author of the Flexed series/renowned photographer/fitness model

  Owner of Fierce Fotos Photography Studios

  Brody Charles

  Famous indie romance cover model currently featured on the cover of the Wordsmith Chronicles Anthology and over 30 covers this year

  Quote

  “They are the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen. I have tried often to get you to look at me, just to have that feeling of excitement it causes in my stomach. When I close mine, I can see them. I dream of them. I know them well.”

  —Iain Pears, Stone’s Fall

  “So tear me open, but beware,

  There’s things inside without a care,

  And the dirt still stains me,

  So hold me

  Until It Sleeps”

  —Metallica, Until It Sleeps

  Prologue

  There’s nothing that can replicate the feeling of another man holding you down—his weight pressing on you, suppressing your best efforts to stand back up again, robbing you of your breath and energy as you do your best not to panic. It’s easy to panic. How often in life are we held down against our will? How often are our most Herculean efforts to right a situation met with abject failure, despite exhausting all of our best ways to get free? But I’m doing what you need to do in this situation.

  I’m being patient.

  I’m breathing.

  Panic spells the beginning of the end. If I were to freak out underneath this guy and start flailing around like a fish out of water, the match would be over in seconds. I’d make sloppy mistakes, expose myself to all sorts of submissions, and I’d be abandoning all the years spent learning the correct way to improve my position.

  There’s a saying in Jiu Jitsu—surviving is winning. It means that when you’re under attack, winning isn’t something to be concerned about, but surviving certainly is. Winning is for competition. Real life is different. When you’re faced with an opponent whose only goal is to hurt you, then simply avoiding that end is a form of victory unto itself. Surviving is winning. I breathe deeply, even though it’s counterintuitive. Once I can breathe I can think, and once I can think, then I know what my next move is.

  I trap his right leg with my left leg, hooking it around and pulling it tight. He makes a critical and basic mistake when he rests his right arm on my chest. As soon as I hook that with my arm and bridge my hips, the tide of the match turns. In Jiu Jitsu this is called, appropriately, the ‘trap and roll’, and it’s a basic move to avoid getting your ass kicked when a bigger, stronger person is on top of you. Today, it’s saving me from having to tap out.

  But it isn’t just my technique that saves me—the technique is ancillary. What saves me is staying calm. What saves me is breathing. What saves me is remembering that you’re never truly defeated.

  Jiu Jitsu is a metaphor for life.

  The man I was underneath a second ago w
as real, but he’s also very much a symbol. I’m struggling to write my next book, I’m facing a lawsuit and potential jail time for something I did when I couldn’t control my emotions, and I may have alienated my best friends and writing partners in the process. A month ago, I was on top of the world, and now everything’s come crashing down. At least that’s what it feels like.

  But then I remember one more time—surviving is winning.

  What do you do when you’re on the ground, a seemingly unbearable weight pressing down on you, and nothing you do to free yourself seems to work? Simple.

  You wait.

  You breathe.

  You stay patient.

  And after that comes the techniques to free yourself.

  And if you do those correctly, you end up on top once again.

  1

  Colton

  RAAC—A Month From Now

  She crashes against me.

  There’s no other adequate way to explain it.

  Her body hits me like a cresting wave, and despite the fact that I’m so much bigger than her I’m thrown backwards against the wall of our room. It makes an incredible sound when I slam against it, the unmistakeable sound of a person hitting a wall, shaking the cheap paintings that hang ever so crooked. I can imagine the people in the next room—readers most likely—looking up from their kindles or smartphones, wondering what the hell that sound was in the next room. Thank God they don’t know it’s me, and thank God they can’t see what’s about to happen.

  My name is Colton Chase, and I write romance novels as part of a writing fraternity I’m in with my best friends, called the Wordsmiths. That’s the reason I’m in this hotel room in the first place. But at the moment I’m not writing anything. Right now I’m living one of the scenes in a book, and I’m loving every second of it.

  When I hit the wall my eyes open wide in a moment of temporary shock. She catches me, smiling that devious smile of hers and raising an eyebrow as if to say, just you wait—that was only the beginning. I’m so intrigued that I don’t bother to move. Instead I stay put like a human shadow on the wall, waiting for her to make the next move. I like the feeling of her taking charge. It’s one of the things that drew me to her in the first place—that, and how fucking hot she is.

  I’ve known a lot of beautiful women in my life, and I’ve had my share of hook-ups, girlfriends, and one-night stands, but I’ve never been around someone like her. I get turned on every time I’m in her presence, and she has this effect on my heart that no other woman ever has. It starts beating faster than a heart should beat, as if I’d just finished the NYC Marathon. Right now my heart feels that way—as though it’s working overtime to pump the blood to all the right places in my body. She’s standing in front of me, only an arm’s length away, and as I look her up and down she takes her shirt off. Underneath she’s wearing a black lace bra, and my eyes are glued to her skin. She knows that she has me, and I stand there, staring like an idiot.

  “You’re so fucking beautiful,” I tell her, despite the fact that I’m barely able to form words.

  “Thank you,” she responds, before taking two steps towards me, very methodically, and the mild erection I had a second ago becomes full blown wood, so much so that I can feel it more than any other part of my body. She sees it immediately as she looks down. “He looks like he wants to come out and play.”

  “He does.”

  “Well, then,” she tells me. “I guess we need to make him happy, don’t we?”

  There are no more words after that. She’s right up on me, only inches away. With a gentle hand she clenches her fingers over my cock and starts rubbing, slowly but firmly, on top of my pants. That first touch is electric, the culmination of every fantasy and every thought I’ve had of this moment ever happening. My eyes close as she’s rubbing me. It’s involuntary—I couldn’t focus if I tried, and I don’t want to try. I want to experience the pleasure she’s giving me before I give her plenty of her own. I don’t have to wait long, even though every second feels like an eternity.

  With her other hand she unbuckles my pants, and as soon as they’re undone she reaches in and traps my cock with one of the most powerful grips I’ve ever felt. She has me under her complete control. She loosens her grip, but only a little, only enough so that she can slide up and down, from the base of my shaft all the way up, slowly, to my throbbing head. When she gets to the tip she adds some pressure back in her grip, enough to make me moan, but it only lasts a second before she’s moving back down again. She repeats this three times, and I’m standing totally still for the whole thing, imagining what I’m going to do to her when I can move again.

  I didn’t think it was possible for us to get any closer, but she takes one more small step towards me so that our bodies are touching. Her breasts are pressing into me, her bra meeting my shirt, and I can smell the sweetness of her hair as she buries her face into the nape of my neck. Her lips press against my skin, and I take in the deepest breath my lungs will allow. She smells like lavender. She smells like everything I’ve ever wanted. I’ve had enough passivity. It’s time to take charge.

  I take her by the arms and spin her around so that it’s her back to the wall. Never letting go, I hold her arms against the wall and don’t allow them to move. Now I’m in control. She keeps making eye contact, never letting the intensity of her gaze leave mine, waiting for what I’m going to do next. I rip her bra down, exposing her gorgeous milky breasts. Her nipples are pointed at my chest, and I push my body flush against hers so that I can feel their hardness. That’s when I start to kiss her—hard. Our lips aren’t just touching one another—there’s nothing gentle about what’s happening—instead they’re grappling with one another, fighting for dominance as our tongues fight in each other’s mouths. To say that my cock is hard is a silly understatement.

  My cock only exists for her right now.

  I let her arms go only so that I can remove my own clothes, starting with my shirt and followed by my pants. She doesn’t move, but just stays where I left her, watching me with those eyes like I’m the sexiest thing she’s ever seen. She’s certainly the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen, and I’m about to let her know that in no uncertain terms. She reaches her newly freed arms around my neck as I step back into her, her nipples pressing directly into my skin now, and we start to make out hard again. I’m growing tired of the foreplay, so I decide to scoop her up in my arms and take her over to the bed. She knows where I’m going, but she stops me.

  “I’m dirty from before,” she whispers in my ear, nibbling it ever so slightly after she lets out the last syllable. “I really need to get clean.”

  I understand what she’s telling me. I put her down on the floor and she gets completely naked, throwing her bra, pants, and underwear to the side. I pick her back up again, and instead of the bed I carry her to the bathroom. I put her down and turn the shower on as hot as it’ll go. As the steam starts to fill the room I turn around to find her on her knees, and before I can even perceive what’s happening she takes my manhood deep inside her mouth. It’s so warm inside her mouth that I’m comforted and turned on at the same time. She starts to stroke with her hands while she moves me deeper and deeper in her mouth. I start to fuck her face, pushing my hips harder and harder towards her, and she takes every inch of me like it’s nothing. She cups my balls with her other hand as the saliva starts to drip from the side of her mouth, falling on her bended knees. I’m so fucking turned on that I can hardly stand it. The mirrors start to fog over as the steam overtakes the empty space in the room.

  Then, just as quickly as she started blowing me, she stops and gets back to her feet. “See,” she says softly. “I’m so dirty. What are you going to do about it?”

  “I like you dirty,” I whisper back. “But it’s time to get you clean. Get in.”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “Oh, I’m not asking,” I say forcefully. She likes it. “Get. In.”

  “Yes, sir.”

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nbsp; When she turns around I slap her ass so hard that it makes her jump and leaves a red impression of my hand, but she smiles back at me before getting into the steaming hot shower. She faces the nozzle as the water hits her bare chest, covering her breasts and dripping down her body. As she turns around and I stand there, every bit of a voyeur, taking in her hotness as the water hits her. It’s time to jump in.

  As I step my leg over the bathtub and land in the shower I think for a second about how we got here. I think about how this amazing moment came to be, and how it’s not nearly over yet.

  And then I step inside, her wet, naked body only inches from my own, and as the first droplets of water touch my leg, I can’t focus on anything but what’s before me. It’s her. Harley. Naked. Water pouring over her bare breasts, down her nipples, and dropping to the floor.