Chapter Fourteen
JASON
Riley hadn’t been as interested in the mining camp as Jason had expected.
But that was okay, because Jason had also struggled with that.
While he’d watched Riley poking about in one of the dilapidated wooden structures, at least half of Jason’s mind had been on how his jeans hugged his ass and how he wanted to strip Riley out of his clothes and do what they’d done yesterday all over again, and more.
When he pulled up outside Riley’s motel room, a part of his brain noticing how Riley’s car was slewed as if he’d been in too much of a hurry to park properly, the palms of his hands were damp and his mouth dry.
He’d wanted Riley yesterday, but it had been a pale shadow to this need racing through him.
Now that he knew what it felt like to be with Riley, he never wanted to be without him again.
Jason stepped inside and closed the door behind him with a quiet click. The room was dim, the air heavy with heat and something humming just beneath his skin. Riley was backlit by the glow of a bedside lamp, and Jason couldn’t look away.
“Hey,” Jason said, the word catching slightly in his throat.
Riley smiled, slow and sure, and Jason’s breathing hitched. He’d barely got it back under control when Riley crossed the room and touched his face with a feather-light brush of his fingers.
“Hey,” Riley echoed, and leaned in.
The kiss wasn’t rushed. It was soft, almost careful, like Riley was testing the shape of Jason’s mouth, wanting to savor every second.
Jason melted into it, letting the heat coil inside him, slow and warm and steady.
He fisted his hands in Riley’s shirt, not pulling him closer so much as anchoring himself.
Riley pulled back slightly, eyes searching Jason’s. “Still good?”
Jason nodded. “Better than.”
“Okay,” Riley said, voice low and steady. He kissed Jason again, slower this time, deeper. When they finally broke apart, Jason was dizzy with it.
Riley cupped Jason’s jaw, his thumb rubbing softly against his skin. “What do you want?” he asked.
Jason’s throat ached. No one ever asked him that, not really.
“You,” he said. “I want to feel you. I want…” His cheeks burned, but he made himself go on. “More than last time. If that’s okay.”
Riley’s breath caught, his eyes darkening. “Yeah,” he said, voice rough. “That’s more than okay.”
He kissed him again, slow and searching, like he was trying to taste the meaning in Jason’s words. Then he pulled back just far enough to look at him.
“You mean…?”
Jason’s heart thudded. “I want you to fuck me,” he said, barely above a whisper.
“I want to feel that. I want you.” And then he added in a panicked rush, “If that’s something you want, too.
I don’t know if you—if that’s your thing—” He broke off, mortified.
“Sorry. I just—don’t know how people do this. ”
Riley let out a low, fractured sound, somewhere between a groan and a curse. “There aren’t any rules,” he said, voice wrecked. “Just us.”
He kissed Jason again, rougher now, his hands sliding down to frame Jason’s hips. “And yes,” he said between kisses. “That’s my thing. You’re my thing. You have no idea how much I want you.” Then he sucked in a steadying breath. “We’ll go slow. You say the word, and I stop.”
Jason swallowed hard, his chest tight with a warmth for Riley that overrode all his nerves. “I want this,” he said, needing to be clear for both of them just how much he did. “With you.”
Riley closed his eyes for half a beat, like the words hit somewhere deep, and when he opened them again, they were shining dark with something Jason couldn’t name. “Then yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Let me get a condom and the lube.”
Jason shook his head. “We don’t need condoms. Shifters have enhanced healing—we don’t carry infections.”
Riley’s gaze slammed into Jason’s, searching, weighing. Then Riley was kissing him, his tongue licking into Jason’s mouth until he groaned helplessly.
They stripped one another, but Jason’s fingers were too eager, too shaky, and it turned into a tangle of clothes and failed coordination.
He fumbled with Riley’s buttons, caught his finger in a belt loop, and elbowed him in the ribs, but none of it mattered.
He was too far gone, too wound up to laugh about it, too desperate to feel Riley’s skin against his.
When Jason lay back on the bed, Riley hovered over him, eyes wide, mouth parted. “Look at you,” he whispered, brushing his knuckles down Jason’s side. “Tell me if anything doesn’t feel good.”
Jason could barely breathe, but he nodded. Though he couldn’t imagine anything with Riley wouldn’t feel good.
Riley kissed his way down Jason’s body, trailing heat over every inch he touched.
He pressed his mouth to Jason’s cock, delivered a little lick as he was there, his eyes dark yet teasing, but his attention was elsewhere.
Jason shuddered, eyes closing of their own accord as Riley’s finger brushed over his hole. It felt…
“Please,” he said.
Riley stretched and grabbed a small bottle from the nightstand, and then Jason could scarcely breathe, because this was really going to happen.
Riley was careful, gentle, coaxing Jason open with patience and praise, even when Jason was trembling around his fingers, deep inside. It was a strange feeling, intimate and overwhelming, but not scary. Not with Riley’s fingers moving slow and steady, with his voice so gentle.
“You’re doing so good,” Riley murmured, kissing the inside of Jason’s knee, his hip, his belly. “So damn good.”
When Riley finally eased forward, the heat and pressure of his cock filled the space his fingers had left, slow enough that Jason’s breath came in sharp, broken sounds.
The stretch burned in the best possible way, and he clutched at Riley, pulling him down into a kiss that was all teeth and desperation.
“Move,” Jason begged, and Riley did, slow and deep.
Every thrust pushed pleasure through him like a wave.
Jason couldn’t stop the sounds he made, couldn’t stop his hands from tracing every inch of Riley he could reach.
He wanted to remember all of this, the way Riley grunted with each push inside, the heat of his skin, the strength in his arms, the times his rhythm faltered and his eyes squeezed shut, lost to it.
Jason came first, sudden and fierce, his whole body arching, a cry tearing his throat. Riley kept moving, fast and needing, chasing the edge that Jason’s release had pushed him toward. His breath grew ragged, before he pressed his face against Jason’s shoulder with a low, broken sound.
Jason held him tightly, but then Riley was moving, pulling slowly out of him.
And it felt… strange, the heat and pressure that had been his whole world suddenly gone.
He let his legs down, unsure of what happened next, of the rhythm of any of this.
Riley lay down beside him, and the space between them felt both too wide and painfully small.
He was still lying there wondering what he should do when Riley propped himself up on one elbow and brushed his hair back from his forehead. “You okay?”
Jason nodded, throat too tight to speak. That had been… he had no words.
Riley kissed his temple and lay back beside him. Jason pressed against his side, and his breath caught as Riley’s arms came around him, holding him.
Even though he didn’t know where this thing between them was heading, how it could head anywhere when Riley was just passing through, Jason let himself hope.
He wanted to stay like this always. Well, maybe without the rattle of the air-con unit that sounded like it was on its last legs, but everything else was perfect.
Being wrapped in Riley’s arms, warm and naked.
With another kiss, Riley sat up and reached over the edge of the bed. “Almost forgot,” he said. “I need to set an alarm after yesterday, make sure you don’t miss supper again. I take it you weren’t grounded or whatever.”
Jason snorted. “No, but I wouldn’t like to miss dinner again,” he said, with feeling. He’d never before done anything to earn Matt’s disapproval. After the taste he’d had of it yesterday, he would never again risk it.
Riley’s brow creased slightly as he sat down on the bed, programming his phone and putting it on the nightstand before lying down again and facing Jason once more. “You have to make dinner for them again tonight?” he asked.
“I’m supposed to make it five nights out of seven, but I usually do the other two as well because I’m there anyway, and if you ever tasted Bryce’s or Christian’s attempts at cooking, you’d understand.”
“Wait, so they just expect you to cook for them the entire time?” Riley asked. He looked concerned.
Something inside Jason blossomed softly into life. No one save his mom had thought Jason worth sticking up for. But with Riley beginning to look like he was about to wage war for him, Jason better get his act together and answer him.
“Not like that—I’m not some sort of Cinderella, made to slave for the pack, I promise,” he said. His voice was hoarse, because out of nowhere, that soft feeling had been replaced by something darker, uncomfortable, writhing inside him. Wasn’t that precisely what he was?
Not Cinderella, exactly. He knew the pack cared about him.
But maybe he was just the pack’s cook. Aside from Jesse asking about Riley, he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had talked to him about something that wasn’t cooking or food.
And the conversation with Jesse had only started because Jason had been burning dinner.
“It’s a paid gig?” Riley pressed, almost like Jason’s doubts were showing.
“It’s a part-time job, like at the diner, and Matt pays me for it, the same way he pays Christian and Dave for working the ranch.
He just takes out food and utilities,” Jason told him.
“Jesse’s taken to looking after the horses and the chickens, though I think if Matt tried to give him money for it, the whole town would hear the fight.
” Which was probably the understatement of the year.
He grinned at Riley, suddenly buzzing with excitement that Riley was going to meet his pack. The two most important things in his life were going to come together, and he couldn’t wait to share them with one another.
But there was still that tail of unease somewhere deep inside about his place in the pack. He didn’t know where it had come from, and he didn’t know how to get rid of it. It didn’t matter—if he ignored it long enough, it’d be bound to disappear.
RILEY
Riley was itching for his notebook. He used his fingers to outline Jason’s words in long, curving loops over Jason’s skin, thinking that way he could commit it to memory better. Or if he couldn’t, at least it would give him something to trace with his tongue later.
“Do you all work for Matt, then?” he asked.
Jason wriggled, Riley’s fingers evidently tickling. “Well, Bryce is a deputy in town,” he said. “Tristan’s at college, so no, not those two. I don’t know what his arrangement is with Karl.”
“And the rest?”
Jason raised his head and looked at Riley, puzzled. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s the pack.”
Riley stared at him. “Eight shifters is a pack?”
Jason frowned, like he wasn’t sure if Riley was judging them or merely surprised.
“Yeah, well, that’s us. I guess Matt never meant to form one,” he explained, running his fingers along the fine blond hairs on Riley’s forearm, making Riley shiver.
“He just took each of us in when we needed somewhere, no questions asked.”
Sudden jealousy burned in Riley. God, what he would give for there to be a human version of Matt Urban out there somewhere, someone who would welcome people who needed to lose their past and find a new beginning.
If he looked Jason in the eye right now, he wasn’t sure what he’d give away, so he concentrated on the path his fingers were mapping over Jason’s body, grounding himself in the warmth of his skin.
He frowned slightly when his fingers trailed over the puckered scar on Jason’s side. He’d meant to ask about it before, but he’d had more important things on his mind.
“What’s this from?” he asked.
Jason stiffened. “We had a run-in with another pack a couple of months back,” he said. “It ended up in a fight.”
Fuck. He’d heard stories about shifter violence—who hadn’t—but Jason? He wasn’t like that.
Riley looked at the scar again, then back at Jason’s face. “You fought another shifter?” It didn’t seem possible.
Jason held Riley’s gaze. “It was them or us,” he said, a rough edge to his voice. “They attacked us and wanted to kill us.”
Riley’s stomach turned. Jason had needed to fight for his life?
“Fuck,” he said, and hugged Jason close. “It doesn’t happen often, does it?”
Jason was squirming, and Riley realized his arms were like bands of steel around Jason’s ribs. “Sorry,” he said, and loosened his grip. Slightly.
“It’s the first time I’ve witnessed it,” Jason said. “But it does happen sometimes.”
Riley was still holding onto him, reassuring himself Jason was unhurt, safe, and alive. And, he realized, he didn’t want to let him go. Jason was his.
He closed his eyes briefly, wondering what had happened to him, because he didn’t do possessiveness. He didn’t do serious. But right now, with Jason, it seemed that he did.