Fan Service

Chapter 21

21

Between the foray into BDSM and the emotional confessions last night, Alex was prepared for things to be different between her and Devin when she came downstairs the next morning for coffee.

She was not prepared for his first words to be “For the record, don’t think I didn’t notice that you cheated last night.”

Several long seconds passed before her sleep-hazy brain figured out what he meant. When she caught on, her cheeks betrayed her by heating.

“I don’t know that we have to call it cheating.” Hunting in the fridge for almond milk had the dual benefit of hiding her face and cooling her down. “I came, didn’t I? I thought you’d be smug.”

Objectively, Alex should feel good about the success of last night’s trial. She’d topped. Devin came without blacking out. By all accounts, the humble girl from the village helped the strapping prince tame the wild beast. Unfortunately, she couldn’t help hating every minute that brought her time with Devin closer to an end. He’d been clear from the beginning—as soon as he got the werewolf stuff under control, he was leaving. The full moon was in five days, and he planned to be in LA when it happened; the end of her fandom fairy tale was rapidly approaching.

They’d gone to their separate rooms last night, but she still woke up with her palm pressed to the wall that divided them.

Alex took a seat at the island countertop and tried not to look morose.

Devin narrowed his eyes at her, steam from his own cup making the hair at his temples curl gently.

“Are you punishing me for something?”

“What?” Alex took a scalding sip. “No.”

“You sure?” He leaned against the doorframe. A criminal offense against her ovaries. “Because if you tell me what I did to piss you off so bad that you won’t let me make you come, I’ll apologize.”

“I’m not mad.” Alex sighed, pushing her mug away. “These trials were for you. To help you manage your wolf. You don’t owe me orgasms.”

How could she explain that it hadn’t felt fair to indulge herself when she was supposed to be the one in control last night? Wasn’t it true that if she gave it up in that moment—was exactly as agreeable as he’d suggested—the whole guise of a trial would fall apart? Leaving all her plans, all her pride, unraveled like so much unspooled thread.

Back when they’d been together in the forest, Devin, a Hollywood heartthrob notoriously lacking in self-control, had been able to forgo his own orgasm entirely on the off chance he might lose his head and let something bad happen. Shouldn’t Alex be able to do the same?

She was terrified of what would be left if they dropped the pretense that getting naked together helped Devin harness his supernatural abilities. That agreement was the only thing protecting her from ending up right back where she’d been seventeen years ago: hopelessly pining for Devin Ashwood.

“You don’t seriously believe—” Devin shook his head. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. We finished the trials last night. We did it. I passed. Professional engagement over.” He swiped his arms in a definitive X motion. “The next time we have sex can be about you.”

Alex froze. He said “next time” with such authority.

She could have replied with a whole host of reasons that “next time” was a bad idea.

I’m not sure we should make this any more complicated than it already is.

I’m falling for you, despite my best efforts. Despite knowing better. Despite the fact that I loved you once already and can still feel the burn of your indifference all these years later.

She could have said, What if you only want me because I’m keeping your secrets? Because you think you’re a monster and no one else could ever know and still leave their door open at night, inviting you in.

But she didn’t say any of that.

“Okay,” Alex said. To sex with Devin Ashwood without pretense.

“Yeah?” He nudged her mug back toward her hand. “You want to?”

“I want to.” Falling for him again was simultaneously the most mortifying thing Alex had ever done and somehow the nicest she’d ever been to herself.

Because there was healing in this—

In him making a mess of the Airbnb kitchen trying to serve her avocado toast.

In the way he leaned over to intrude on her crossword with wildly incorrect suggestions. (“Why can’t eight down be ‘watermelon’?” “Because the space is four letters!”)

In learning that he folded his socks (!!) and talked around his toothbrush, poking his head into the living room, bristles still working, to ask her if she wanted to go for a walk or maybe fishing later (and in his subsequent apology for inadvertently offending her “vegan morals”).

Any plans she might have had for the rest of the day went out the window when she discovered the giant stack of fan fiction he’d printed out and packed in a three-ring binder.

“Who are you?” she demanded, positively brimming with glee.

“It’s comforting,” Devin said, chasing her around the kitchen island in his (no longer folded) socks, trying to get the binder back. “I’m nervous, okay? About the full moon. But it turns out a lot of people have explored that beyond the show, and Colby always ends up okay in these versions. He usually gets to be in love.”

Alex could tease him for almost anything, but not that. He deserved to find comfort in Colby fix-it fic as much as the next person. Maybe more.

They ended up on the couch, with Alex showing him advanced search features on AO3.

He kept asking her stuff. Like first-date questions from someone who had never been on a first date. Could she play any instruments? Did she own scrubs in every color? Who was in charge of clearing her porn cache when she died?

Not everything she learned about him was flattering.

He took forever to blow-dry his hair and left an army of beauty products littering the double vanity shared between their rooms.

“Stand there and judge all you want, but you could use a vitamin C serum,” he said when she commented on this.

“Excuse me?”

But she let him rub the obscenely expensive product across her cheekbones, down her nose.

“This is the first time I’ve given a woman a facial,” he said, smirking like a dirtbag.

Alex scowled. “Do not start.”

All in all, though, spending time with him without work or an agenda wasn’t as strange as it should have been.

By the time the sun set, Alex’s whole body was liquid from being around him all day. From the casual touches they’d both allowed themselves: arm grazes, his hand on her lower back, her foot wedged below his thigh on the couch.

One minute she was opening the fridge, saying, “Are you hungry? I brought some stuff for tacos, or if you want we could try to order—” and the next Devin was gripping her chin, firm but gentle, and kissing her—Devin Ashwood was kissing her!—and the fridge was still open, cold air all down her right side, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the soft coaxing of his lips, the way his hand found the dip of her waist as he hauled her against him, taking the kiss deeper, claiming her mouth like something precious he’d thought he’d lost.

And it was good he was so strong, had all those extra senses working for him, because somehow he managed to close the fridge with his knee and push her up against it while Alex clung to him, both of her hands in his hair, her whole body pulling forward, succumbing, finally, to the undertow of him.

Arguably, they’d touched each other in ways more personal than this—more explicit—but suddenly Alex could appreciate how back in Regency days one kiss was enough to ruin a reputation. This was sharing a breath. What was more vital, more intimate, than that?

Then Devin’s pleased little groan when she opened her mouth, the way he pressed his thumb exactly over her pulse point, like he wanted to mark the spot where her heart raced for him.

“I wanna give you whatever you want,” he said, low and urgent and earnest. “Whatever you like.”

Alex didn’t know how to say It’s just this. It’s just you. More than any other fantasy.

So she said, “Can you maybe—” and he was looking at her, green eyes and blown pupils, his mouth already red from kissing her, saying, “Yeah,” before she’d even finished the sentence.

“—touch yourself?”

His brows rose a little, and then a brilliant shit-eating grin broke across his face and Alex was hiding against the warm, spicy scent of his neck saying, “Forget it—”

“Oh no,” Devin said, rubbing her back and then grabbing her ass—groping, really—like she belonged to him. “You want me to stroke my cock for you?”

In this, more than almost anything else, Alex saw the split between him and Colby. His character, for all his sterling virtues, would have balked at such a flagrant request. But Devin bloomed under attention, shameless .

He used the hand that wasn’t on her ass to circle around her nipple, teasing, strumming across her piercing in a way that zapped like an electric current between Alex’s legs.

“What else do you want, baby?” he said, mouth on her neck. “You want me to lick my palm, make it wet so you can hear it?”

“Devin,” Alex gasped, genuinely scandalized. In a thousand lifetimes, she never would have imagined the mouth on this man.

But he just picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, marching her out of the room.

“Where are we going?”

“I’m not kneeling on the fucking tile, Alex. I’m forty-two.” He swatted her ass. “Think of my knees.”

Devin took her into his room. To the big wooden canopy bed with soft cotton sheets.

He tossed her on top of the comforter, not particularly gently, and followed her down, both of them bouncing a little, rolling in, already reaching for each other.

He crawled on top of her. God, he was strong, solid, hot like a furnace, like a fever. Alex didn’t have super senses, but she liked the way he smelled too. Like salt and sweat and sex. And the way he sounded—gruff and frustrated as he tried to get her clothes off without ripping the flimsy lace of her panties.

“Devin,” she said, half to get his attention and half because she’d secretly always liked his name, before shimmying out of them herself, giving him what he wanted, like it was easy. Like it cost her nothing.

He kissed her again, dirty, grabbing under her thighs and hauling her closer, so she could wrap her legs around his waist, dig her heels into his lower back.

Alex nipped at his bottom lip, not totally prepared to abandon her previous request. “I thought you were gonna—”

“I am.” Devin swore, breathing hard, tearing himself away. “Sorry, it’s hard not to touch you when I have permission.”

He already looked mauled, the neck of his T-shirt hanging wide from where she’d tugged on it, hair mussed in every direction, a warm-honey strand flopping in front of his brow. While Alex scooted back to recline against the pillows that smelled like him, he made quick work of his own clothes and then knelt on the bed.

Alex couldn’t believe this was happening, that he was doing this for her . That thought alone made her dizzy, desperate.

Moonbeams spilling in from the window painted him in contrast, light and shadows, as he wrapped a hand around himself, set a loose, easy pace.

Up close he had some sun damage on his shoulders. He was both leaner and softer in the middle than he looked on TV, still muscular but not washboard ripped like Colby. There was a jagged pink scar under his left pec, shiny and new. The brown hair across his chest and down his stomach had the faintest sprinkling of gray.

He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

Devin’s eyes trailed across her skin, from her mouth to her neck to her breasts to the V between her thighs. “I love looking at you.”

Alex pressed her thighs together. It was as if somehow the way she felt about him was so big, so all-consuming, he’d caught it like a cold.

“It makes me fucking feral, thinking about you watching the show, reading all that filthy little fan fiction—”

“Hey,” Alex protested, “it’s not all filthy!”

“It’s filthy enough.” Devin laughed, warm and pleased. “Open your thighs for me.”

Alex bit her lip. It was one thing to look, another to be seen. In the forest they’d both been frenzied, half-afraid of him losing control. A bed felt more personal. More real. Alex knew Devin better now. She liked him, impossibly, better now.

She’d felt less unmoored last night when she’d been the only one making demands.

But Alex did what he asked, let her legs splay open even though it felt outrageous while holding his gaze.

Devin was so close, kneeling less than a foot from her feet, concentrating his caresses on the head of his cock, his abs clenching, throat bobbing with each ragged breath.

He groaned at the sight of her, which was so mortifying it felt like swallowing a sun. She could feel how damp she was just from looking at him, from having him want her.

“You’re embarrassed,” he panted, not a question, and oh right, he could smell her feelings. “Don’t be.” He looked unabashedly at the place between her legs as he got himself off. “Alex, I’ve come from the scent of you lingering on my shirt.”

He thrust a little into his hand, his grip tight enough that Alex wondered if it hurt. “Whatever’s happened to me, whatever I am now, I want you more than any human ever could.”

She watched him work himself over with this new knowledge: that Devin Ashwood had done this before, gotten off fantasizing about her. The role reversal was wild. A reckless, woozy happiness spiked in her blood.

It wasn’t conscious, pushing herself off the pillows and grabbing his face, kissing him with both of them on their knees.

“Now,” Alex said against his lips, reaching for his hand and redirecting it between her legs. “Please, now.”

He grunted at the feel of her, curling two fingers inside, watching her face as she took them, her mouth falling open, her eyes closing at the stretch.

“Fuck the moon,” Devin said, kissing her cheek, her neck, the hollow of her throat. “I’d like to spend the rest of my life howling at your door.”

Before Alex could call him out for hyperbole, for the kind of promises that could give a girl the wrong idea, he pulled himself away, fumbling in his suitcase for a condom, coming back with his fingers in his mouth.

Alex rolled her eyes. “You’re incorrigible.”

“I don’t know what that means.” He smiled lasciviously, sitting down and then taking her hands, urging her to straddle him.

“What happened to all that werewolf super strength?” she complained, climbing into his lap anyway, her thighs twinging at the breadth of his hips.

“Alex, please.” He rolled the condom on, holding his cock at the base for her to mount him. “What am I supposed to do? Not play with your nipple rings while I fuck you? Be serious.”

She didn’t have a good argument for that, so she braced herself with her hands on his shoulders as she took him in inch by inch.

There was a difference between knowing intellectually that Devin had a big dick—between riding him through layers of fabric—and this. The way he held still, letting her adjust to him by degrees. Alex held her breath until her ass met his thighs.

Devin ducked his head to kiss across her breasts, tender and then, when she leaned into him, just the right side of rough.

Alex fought to keep her eyes open. Devin Ashwood was inside her, and it was better than anything she’d ever had, anything she could have imagined. He rocked into her slow and deep, like he wanted—impossibly—to be closer. The feeling of fullness, the way he was looking at her like she was something precious, something amazing, it was so good. Too much. His mouth on her breasts, his hands curling around to her ass, gripping, guiding her against him.

He was the only werewolf in the world and he could read her from the inside out. Every movement of his hips, every smooth, deep thrust, was calibrated to her heartbeat, the flush of her skin, the scent of her desire.

Alex arched her back, winding her hand into a fist in the pretty, sweat-damp waves of Devin’s hair.

She tightened her knees around his waist as he sped up his thrusts, pinning her lips together so she wouldn’t moan anything she couldn’t take back.

Sitting back slightly, Devin sucked his thumb into his mouth, making it slick before slipping his hand between them to wind her up with small, quick circles across her clit.

That was it for Alex. Her whole body bucked as her orgasm crested. Devin wove his fingers into the hair at the base of her neck, kissing her to capture each whimper as it fell from her lips.

He murmured against her neck as his strokes inside her grew more frenzied, more wild. How beautiful she was, how sexy, how he’d never wanted anyone the way he wanted her. But when he came, it was her name on his tongue, over and over, a groan that shifted, suspiciously, into something like a growl.

People said don’t meet your heroes, and for seventeen years, Alex thought she knew what they meant. Don’t meet your heroes because they’ll never live up to this perfect ideal you’ve built in your head. The version of them you crafted, collecting scraps of stories, knitting them together into a single malleable fantasy.

Meeting your heroes was a recipe for disappointment Alex had experienced firsthand.

Nobody said don’t meet your heroes because they’ll ruin you for everyone else. The truth was, Devin Ashwood didn’t measure up to her expectations. He was more, in every sense of the word. Flawed in ways she never imagined, perfect in ways she didn’t anticipate. And whatever falling in love with him smelled like—juniper or pink pepper or cedar—Alex hoped, as they lay there together in bed, that he couldn’t parse it apart from all the other ways she wanted him.