Chapter 19
19
Devin had a plan. Alex wanted to keep him at arm’s length? She wanted to pretend there was nothing between them but some not-so-sacred mission? Clearly, this woman was afraid of her feelings. Well, tough nuts, honey, because he was gonna woo the shit out of her. There was something between them. Something good. He was gonna be romantic as fuck until she saw him as more than a passing amusement. Because Alex made him want to be someone real. The kind of guy who drove her to work during storm season because her shitty little car couldn’t handle wet roads.
Except, once you’ve sponsored a girl’s favorite nonprofit and publicly defended her honor in a dunk tank, renting a cabin on the lake for the long weekend felt like pretty small potatoes.
Devin did it anyway. There was nothing romantic about his hotel room with adjoining conference suite, and no offense to Isaac, but Devin would really rather rail Alex without her dad fifty feet away.
He knew he’d need a different approach to make her see that he actually cared about her, not just what she could do for him. A few hours before they headed out of town for their third trial, aka marathon sex session (because let’s be real, while he did want to prepare as much as possible for the full moon, they probably could have skipped this one once they decided they were against the more violent options for re-creation), he made himself a list.
- Listen to her when she talks.
- Ask her questions.
- Let her pick the music in the car.
It was the little things that mattered, he’d decided. Grand gestures were kinda cheap, especially since he was rich and famous.
Devin picked her up in the truck. Alex looked a little surprised when he took her bag, but carrying it made him feel like boyfriend material.
Overall, he could mostly resist the urge to press his nose against her skin and simply content himself to be near her, hooked up to a steady stream of the feel-good pheromones he got from her scent. Only occasionally did an extra-strong whiff make him go jelly-kneed.
Her bag smelled of her, warm and dark. As he brought it toward his face, trying to sneak a subtle sniff, the weight of it made his forearms pull. What did she have in here? Whips? Chains? It didn’t clank when he shook it.
“What are you doing back there?” Alex called, twisting around in the passenger seat.
“Nothing.” He tossed the thing in and closed the truck lid.
Everything was going according to plan until about fifteen minutes into the hour-long drive when Alex brought up safe words and Devin almost drove off the side of the road.
“Guess I need one of those, huh?” He’d seen Fifty Shades of Grey . That dude had a whole contract.
“Yes, definitely.” Alex leaned down and pulled out a notebook from the backpack at her feet. “Let’s talk through what we’re comfortable trying and what we’re not.”
“I’m really not into pain,” Devin admitted, “giving or receiving.”
His ex had brought home a pair of nipple clamps at one point near the end of their marriage. He tried the tiny metal device on himself before agreeing to use them on her and ended up biting his tongue so hard from the pain that he couldn’t eat spicy food for a week.
“Me neither,” Alex said. “I think we can just focus on control, making sure you can give it up.”
“Do you have, like… scenarios in mind?” Man, he was too old to be this sheepish discussing sex, but Alex was nearly a decade younger and she had all those tattoos. She probably liked stuff he’d never even heard of.
The air in the cab filled with the metallic scent of Alex’s nerves as her pulse elevated. Her knee bobbed a few inches from the hem of her skirt. Devin didn’t tease her for dressing up, but he damn sure noticed.
She tapped the pen against her mouth. “How do you feel about being restrained?”
“Uh…” His dick pressed against his zipper just from hearing her say it. “Positive?”
Maybe she did have ropes in that bag. Devin tried to create the vision in his head and met an instinctual resistance to the physical vulnerability, especially in an unfamiliar environment with unknown threats.
“My wolf might be a baby about it,” he warned her.
Devin’s primal side didn’t like the idea of leaving Alex unguarded. He didn’t realize how well she could fend for herself.
Alex nodded. “That means we’re on the right track from a trial perspective.”
Right. The trial. Alex always managed to sew their intimacy up with tight little boundaries.
I might not even get off.
Yeah, not if he had anything to say about it.
They spent the rest of the ride discussing everything from STI status (negative) and birth control (Alex’s IUD plus condoms) to aftercare preferences (Devin’s: cheese). Even the non-sexy stuff was somehow sexy in Alex’s husky voice, trapped in the car with the scent of their mutual desire.
Who knew discussions of consent could be like foreplay? Listening to Alex talk about what she wanted to do to him, telling her what he liked in increasingly breathless detail. By the time they pulled up to the Airbnb, Devin’s dick was leaking in his jeans.
He opened the car door and gulped fresh air, trying to clear his head enough to enter the house’s security access code.
Aside from the advantage of being set on forty desolate acres with an electrified perimeter fence originally built to keep out (other) wild animals, the place they currently occupied had sixteen-foot wood-beam ceilings, a giant stone fireplace, and plenty of cozy, if rustic, furniture in shades of cream and forest green.
Too bad Devin couldn’t stop pacing long enough to appreciate any of it. He kept picking up things—candlesticks, the remote, a coffee-table book on elk—and putting them back down in different places.
His skin felt too tight, the air blowing across it too much. How was he supposed to prove himself to Alex when he was already this close to the edge?
He went for a run at noon, trying to exhaust himself. Devin didn’t bother measuring in minutes or miles, just kept cutting through the trees until his muscles burned and he couldn’t catch his breath.
After a shower, during which he took great pains not to think too hard about Alex getting up close and personal with certain parts of his anatomy, Devin threw on a new clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt that stretched across his chest and biceps.
On second thought, he added underwear. Alex mentioned orgasm denial in the car, and he didn’t need his hard-on getting cheese grated against his zipper.
He wandered into the kitchen to find her laying out a big salad and opening a bottle of red wine at the massive dining table.
“Good thinking keeping things light,” he said a few bites in, crunching Tuscan kale and crisp, tart apple. “I don’t feel sexy after I eat a lot of carbs.”
Alex’s mouth twisted up around the rim of her wineglass.
She watched him wash the dishes with a similar note of amusement.
“What, you think just because I can afford housekeeping, I don’t know how to be polite?”
“I didn’t say anything,” she said, leaning back against the counter and openly admiring his ass.
“Mm-hmm. Pass me that dish towel.”
After, Alex led him into the lodge-style living room. She’d placed a heavy-looking armless wooden chair with a wide, smooth seat and thick block legs in the center of the room’s woven rug. A length of nylon rope sat innocently coiled on the seat.
She picked it up and slipped her forearm through the center.
“Have a seat.”
Devin’s heartbeat broke into a sprint.
He was going to lose control tonight, one way or another. Worse, he wanted it.
Once he followed her directions, Alex knelt before him holding his gaze, her little skirt keeping her thighs pressed tight.
Okay, the size-medium T-shirt he’d picked for tonight might have been a mistake; he was basically a bosom-heaving pirate wench over here.
With someone else, this would have been weird. The squirming anticipation, the chance for the power exchange to fall flat. But because it was Alex, Devin forgot to be self-conscious. He was too caught up in her proximity. In the shiny sheet of her hair as she pushed it behind her shoulder.
The flimsy silk top she was wearing left her back exposed, slipping down past the wings of her shoulder blades. His palms itched with the urge to slide across the warm, naked skin there, tantalized by the fact that he couldn’t, not until she said so.
With deft, confident movements, she tied his ankles to the front legs of the wooden chair using complex knots, explaining as she went about different methods involving columns and squares. Either Alex had a sailing background he didn’t know about, or she’d done her homework. He wanted to ask if she’d tried this kind of thing before with other partners, but the wolf didn’t want to know the answer. Possessive animal.
Alex paused before moving on to securing his arms, tilting her head as her gaze raked over him.
“Take off your shirt,” she said, only a hint of hesitation undercutting the casual command.
He looked down at her with his chin lowered, mock innocent.
“You don’t want to do it yourself?”
Alex huffed through her nostrils but reached for his hem. She let her fingertips graze beneath his navel, teasing the coarse hair above his waistband until he sucked in a rough gasp, contracting the muscles.
She leaned across him, letting her hair brush his neck, giving him a heady whiff of her scent on purpose . “I don’t need to.”
Touché. Devin chewed the inside of his cheek and reached to do her bidding.
He threw his T-shirt onto the overstuffed leather sofa across the room. Cool air from the AC raised goose bumps on his bare chest. He let his arms fall backward and flexed his fingers in invitation.
Alex moved to kneel behind him. The tease of not being able to see her but having her scent so close, her breath against his neck, somehow got him even harder than watching her bend over. He’d been so worried about the wolf getting skittish, but the beast trusted Alex. He was content, as Devin was, to sit and let her lead.
Alex looped each of his wrists several times in the coarse rope, then knotted between them so they were held neatly in place without chafing together. Devin almost swooned. She was so fucking competent.
“How does that feel?” Alex got to her feet when she was done, backing up to examine him from different angles.
Devin tested the knots, tensing his muscles and trying to force his body up, straining, until finally he slumped back in his bonds.
“Impressive,” he said, proud that his voice didn’t shake. Whatever she’d done was strong enough to hold a werewolf a week out from the full moon and yet still remarkably comfortable. He could probably break the chair by slamming it against the ground if he really wanted to get out of this thing, but not without giving himself some serious injuries.
After spending so much of this month half-convinced he was about to shatter into a million pieces, suddenly he felt secure, safe, the physical sensation of being tethered and completely in Alex’s care kinda blowing his mind.
Alex walked back toward him, more than the usual sway in her hips. He braced himself for her to touch him. His whole body pulled taut like an arrow, and she was due north. Devin zeroed in on her scent, her pulse, all the signals that told him she was alive, here, wanting him.
In the seconds while she closed the distance between them, he had time for a thousand different fantasies.
Alex on her knees, taking him into her sweet, mean mouth.
Alex kissing him, biting at his lower lip.
Alex sinking down on him with her arms around his neck, her eyes closed and his name rolling across her tongue.
She didn’t do any of that.
Alex stood between his legs and reached back to unzip her skirt. The purr of the metal teeth parting was enough to make Devin dizzy.
She bent forward, her mouth coming almost within kissing distance as she shoved the material down toward her bare feet. Until she stood before him in nothing but that tiny top and a very pretty pair of panties. If Devin had his hands, he would have reached up to thumb across the thin black lace at her hip. He would have grabbed her ass and hauled her toward him, burying himself in the sweet V of her thighs so he could lick her through the fabric. Instead, all he could do was groan.
The word “trial” took on new meaning. It felt carved into his skin. He’d withstood pain, had leaned into his instincts, but this was about denial, about waiting, accepting scraps when he wanted to feast.
“Show me your tits,” he said, flashing her his best “fuck me” eyes and trying to sound coaxing.
“Sorry.” Alex shook her head. “You don’t get to give orders right now.”
She was not sorry. Devin could smell how not sorry she was.
“Fine.” He clenched his jaw, counted to seven. “Show me your tits, please ?”
At least he made her laugh. Alex straightened up so he was at eye level with her breasts as she reached for the bottom of her top, pushing it up to show a sliver of her stomach.
Devin swallowed, tight and painful, his throat raw with wanting, tensing and releasing against the urge to howl.
He expected a strip tease, the delicious agony of having to wait while she revealed herself in millimeters. She didn’t seem to have the patience for that. Alex’s cheeks were flushed, her brown eyes consumed by pupil as she tossed her shirt behind her in one smooth movement. Her bra—which, like every other piece of her clothing, was black—followed suit with a deft twist of her fingers.
Blood roared in Devin’s ears.
His vision wavered.
He bit his tongue and tasted salt.
“Have you had your fucking nipples pierced this whole time?”
Alex gave the cruelest little nod he’d ever seen.
His gaze flickered between the lush curve of each of her breasts, the tight pink buds of her nipples, the shiny metal bars begging for his mouth: he immediately got a head rush.
She pushed her arms together and leaned over him until her tits almost brushed his chin. “Do you like it?”
“Oh fuuuuck you.” If Devin liked it any more, he was gonna pass out. He strained against the bonds, knowing that wouldn’t give him the distance he needed to get his mouth on her.
Alex grinned. She looked fucking wicked, so damn pleased with herself.
Devin’s dick was gonna get sawed in half at this rate, and he didn’t care. He loved making her happy.
She brought her thumb to her mouth and bit it. “Should I sit in your lap?”
Devin made a noise that he was not proud of.
“I swear to god you’re asking me these questions just to make me an accessory to my own suffering.”
“No.” She straddled him, her thighs over his, the weight of her warm and soft and so fucking fragrant. He could taste her in the air on every inhale. “Not just.”
She brushed her nipples across his lips, the petal-soft flesh, the cool metal, but pulled back before he could open his mouth.
Devin had never begged before. Had never wanted to.
“Please.” The word ground out of him.
Was this weakness? For once he didn’t care.
The wolf buzzed under his skin, but to Devin’s surprise, he didn’t struggle for control. He was a guard dog, his power held in check for a singular purpose, a beast built to serve one master.
Alex combed her fingers through his hair, brushing it back and away from his face, trailing her nails gently down his neck. She leaned forward, rocking herself against the line of his aching dick until Devin could just barely nose at the ripe curve of her breast, could extend his tongue and lick at the seam of her cleavage.
Her breathing was hectic, uneasy, like it was taking all her control not to give him what he wanted.
Devin traced his bottom lip, made it wet in invitation while she sat looking down on him. His cruel queen.
She gasped at the sight, shuddering a little, the tiny vibrations from her legs to his lap an exquisite agony.
“Let me,” Devin said, straining his neck for her. Because his desire made her feverish, squirming and dark-eyed in his lap.
His arms ached with the need to hold her, to keep her close, but the bonds held true. He already needed to come so bad his body hurt all the way to his molars, but the pain was good. Bright and sharp and vital.
Alex arched her back so he could get his lips around her nipples. She was so sweet in his mouth, sensitive to every swipe of his tongue. He closed his lips and found the pressure she liked, following the rolling motion of her hips until Alex writhed in his lap, her hands fisting in his hair.
“Sorry,” she said again, this time earnest, when she realized she was pulling, a tight, tingling pressure against his scalp.
“I’m not.” Devin leaned back to blow across her damp, heated skin, watching her tighten for him around the shiny silver bar.
“Alex,” he said, pressing his damp forehead to her sternum, closing his eyes and trying not to lose it.
What are we doing? he wanted to ask. What is this? What’s happening between us?
She’d been no one to him when they met. Nothing more than a means to an end.
But now?
She had the power to make or unravel him. It was more than he’d ever allowed. Ever felt safe to hand over.
There were many things Devin didn’t know. If he’d work again. What would happen if he didn’t. How to be a real person instead of a character brought to life in carefully crafted vignettes.
How to love someone. How to ask them to love you back.
But he knew he could be good for her. That he wanted to be.
Tonight. For as long as she let him.
He grew woozy off her pleasure, the scent and taste of her damp skin, the frantic movement of her in his lap. It was everything he’d ever wanted, the way she let him nuzzle her neck, bite gently at the underside of her chin.
Not having his hands free meant Devin had to work harder, dialing in further to her fervent gasps, her hungry little mewls as she rode his denim-clad lap. He made himself go slow, listening to the staccato of her heart as he gave her pleasure, calibrating his lips and teeth and tongue against her breasts by degrees.
“I’ve never seen anyone get as worked up as you do for me,” he said against her throat. “You’re gonna come just from me playing with your tits, aren’t you?”
Devin meant it as a compliment. He fucking loved how sensitive Alex was, how she responded to him.
Her wide-open face shuttered. She stumbled off his lap on shaking legs.
“This is supposed to be a trial,” she said, breathless, rough. Like she was reminding herself.
“I know.” Devin couldn’t make sense of her shift in mood. She’d been close; he’d felt it. God, her tits were shiny from his mouth.
Alex reached for his zipper.
“Whoa, hey—what—” But she was flicking open his button, pulling his dick out, and, “Oh fuck, Jesus, Alex—”
After the friction of her grinding against him for so long, he was beyond sensitive.
She slid to her knees between his legs.
“Oh god, you’re not really gonna—”
She was.
His world narrowed to hot, wet suction as Alex wrapped her hand around his root and took him into her mouth.
“Baby, don’t.” Devin didn’t know what he meant. Don’t tease me. Don’t stop.
But he had a safe word—“motorcycle”—and this wasn’t that. Wasn’t “no.”
Even though the sensation was so much and he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t pull back or twist away.
As Alex traced her tongue around his head, featherlight and mean, Devin’s vision wavered, colors dimming by degrees.
Oh god. Not this. Not now.
“Alex—” he said, tight, desperate, trying to warn her that he couldn’t fight off the shift when he was this close to the edge.
But she just looked up at him from under her lashes and took him deeper between her slick lips.
Devin’s hips bucked involuntarily, sliding him half an inch farther, the movement halted by his bonds.
The push and pull was perfect torture, exactly what he wanted held just out of reach. He could hope, be patient—but, god, he was shit at both of those things.
Alex’s dark hair swung gently around the bare caps of her shoulders, brushing the tops of her perfect tits, still pink with his beard burn.
His wolf went feral at that, his mark on her skin.
Devin clenched his hands into fists, straining across his shoulders and chest as his claws popped.
Fuck fuck fuck.
“It’s too good.” Sweat slid down his collarbones, across his pecs. “You’re too good at this.” It didn’t matter how many times he’d gotten himself off before they got here; he was hanging on by a thread. “You gotta slow down.”
Alex sat back on her heels and blew across the damp head of his dick, the cool air across his heated skin a clear call back to how he’d teased her tits.
“I don’t think so.”
He could feel the phantom weight of her in his lap again, how her thighs clenched around his hips as she rode him, getting closer and closer—
He could taste her in the woods, falling apart for him on his fingers, his tongue.
It was good that he couldn’t reach down and rub at the seam of her lips where her mouth stretched around him. He was so close. Too close. He was the wolf in that moment, in feeling if not in form. Wild. Caught in her trap.
The scent of her desire spiked in the air as she bobbed her head in his lap.
Devin could deny himself almost anything, but the beacon of Alex’s pleasure was impossible to resist—his fangs dropped.
God damnit.
She’d stop now: she’d have to. The eyes were subtle, his claws behind him, but Alex was watching his face so closely. No chance would she miss the final piece of the partial shift. He braced himself to see the revulsion in her eyes.
Devin Ashwood made her hot, not the monster inside him.
But Alex didn’t pull back, didn’t look away.
She held his gaze and reached down to rub herself over her panties.
“Oh fuck.” He curled forward against the ropes, making a guttural animal noise as his orgasm punched out of him. The restraints meant there was nothing he could do but sit there and spill for her.
Alex swallowed around him, her throat working as she brought herself off with her fingers. The scent of her pleasure made his better, sharper, sweeter.
He’d assumed submission would be another battle, like fighting the Change, only more foreign. But there was freedom in this, and a choice. A power in not just letting go but choosing to surrender. To Alex. For Alex.
When he played Colby undergoing this trial, his submission had been nothing but rage and tension. An indignity to be withstood.
But what if submission wasn’t about sacrifice, not really? This—Alex reaching over to carefully undo his bonds—this was about trust. He’d made himself vulnerable because he trusted Alex, but also, in some part, because he trusted himself.
And that, more than turning into a werewolf, made him feel newly made.