Chapter 14
fourteen
. . .
“You’re kidding me,” Danny hissed. “Honey, he’s getting in the cage. He’s going to fight you. You are going to lose.”
Well, I’d probably made enough money. I could call it quits. I shouldn’t fight Josiah in the cage because touching him while I was like this, kind of buzzing from pain and adrenaline, it would make me touch him more than necessary, and I’d have a really, really hard time stopping. We’re talking, maybe getting naked in the cage while everyone watched. I loved rolling around with him so much. I should walk away. Absolutely.
But then he’d ducked into the cage, standing straight instead of his usual casual slouch, so you got to really see the breadth and height of him. He was so magnificent, so absolutely gorgeously deadly. He ticked absolutely every one of my boxes.
“Get out of there!” Danny whispered, sounding panicked. “You aren’t going to win this one. He knows you too well. You can see how well he knows you by the way he’s shifting his stance. He has no weaknesses other than you. Maybe if you talked dirty, you could get him distracted by your sex appeal.”
I was shocked enough by that suggestion to send Danny a sharp look through the bars of the cage where he was gripping the balcony with white fingers. Well, conversation wouldn’t hurt.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Joe, circling away from him, fists rising.
He smiled, such nice teeth between such soft lips. “I heard there was an amazing fighter in the ring. How could I resist such a challenge?”
I licked my lips because his voice went through me like a knife, stirring up all my delicate organs, like my heart. “You feel the need to personally challenge any amazing fighter?”
“Of course.” His eyes glimmered with amusement and something else. Rage probably. Also possessiveness. That’s what he smelled like: possessive, hungry, angry. I really needed to leave this cage before he truly conquered me, made me forget everything. He could have been licking me when I woke up naked. If he had, I would have succumbed to his charms. I’d had a weakness for him from the beginning, even when I’d been fifty pounds underweight and healing from all the abuse. Paranoid of men, I’d still automatically trusted him until he shaved his beard and I’d gone to his house and seen his cage collection. Jane had shown me, like she wanted me to know, to understand part of the guy I’d married.
I needed to leave the cage before he pinned me to a mat. I edged towards the door, but then the scream went off and I punched him in the stomach instead. He let me instead of blocking, then he grabbed me and threw us down.
He didn’t land all his weight on me. No, he rolled us, so most of the weight went on him, being gentle with me like he always was.
I growled at him, but he only smiled back at me, satisfaction in his gleaming eyes, because I was beneath him on the mat, my body struggling against his, where I belonged. He smelled so good. I was going to lick him. I was going to bury my face in his neck and just inhale him to death.
Instead, he rolled off me to his feet, so smooth and strong, flexible, ideal. I got to my feet, but the other fights had taken their toll. Danny was right. No way I’d be able to defeat Josiah when he was fresh and I was already beat. Not that the odds were very good, even if the situation was reversed.
“Hey, sexy,” I said and felt like an idiot. Was I actually trying to throw him off his game by flirting? I’d always been the worst flirt in the world.
His brows rose for a moment and he brought up his mitts. “It’s the bare chest. Your wolf has ripped off every shirt she’s seen me in.”
I stared at his chest for a moment while my heart beat too fast and my mouth watered. His chest had scars, lots of scars, but that only added to the appeal. Of course it did, because I’d always been like that with scars. He was everything I’d ever wanted, plus an octopus shake. “Weird. I’d think it would be the pants she needed to rip off.”
His lips twitched. “They’re made of sterner stuff.”
“I remember all about your sterner stuff.” Oh my goodness, had I actually said that? I sounded like Danny and his burrito innuendos. Not that his whole body hadn’t been, um, very solid.
Danny kind of choke-snorted in my ear, but Joe gave me a small smile that I needed to taste, and not with my gloves.
“How are you so beautiful with your eyes swollen shut? I think I need to take you home and lick you all better.”
Okay. Now my whole body was on fire, and itchy, needing to be licked by him. His tongue had always been ridiculously delicious, so if he?—
He moved too fast, a strike to my left side throwing me off balance, which is when he grabbed me in a lock. I couldn’t get out without breaking my arms, and even then, his grip was so good, so perfect. He’d had me in this position once before, so long ago, actually the first time I proposed to him. Not marriage. I’d asked him if he’d let me take him to bed, and he’d told me that he was waiting for marriage.
I stared up at him, breathing hard, struggling, but not willing to break myself against him. “Did you really wait for marriage or was that just something you said to na?ve girls who were too young for you?”
He studied my mouth for a beat too long before meeting my eyes. “I was giving you a chance to stay untangled. From the first time I saw you, my dark wolf claimed you. Most females were offensive to him, but you, sweet, determined, fierce, beautiful Honey, I wanted to take and keep forever. I haven’t tasted anyone else for a hundred years.” He lowered his face and inhaled my neck, the brush of his beard sending a rush of awareness and aching through me.
I arched up into him, wanting more. The buzzer screamed, and the match was over, before it had even really begun.
He rolled off me and I lay there, stunned by the lack of his warmth and weight. I felt naked without him, unbalanced with the bright lights, the hungry snarls of apathetic people who scorned me for being so pathetic in the face of Joe’s flirting. He was way better than I’d ever be. I should have broken my arms and nose on his face. I should have done some kind of damage, but instead I’d just succumbed to his beautiful beard. And chest. And the rest of him.
“That’s got to be cheating,” Danny muttered. “Still, you did good until he came and messed up your fighting streak.”
Joe was almost to the door, like he could defeat me and then walk away unscathed. How dare he seduce me and humiliate me and then walk away? I growled and was on my feet, launching myself at him. I hit his back and wrapped my arm around his throat, pulling him back.
He turned and twisted me so I was over his shoulder, holding my face against his bare beating heart, beating so fast, so hard, so beautifully. His heart was so precious to me. I licked it, ignoring the crowd, the fact that my butt was sticking in the air over his shoulder, my legs held in one hand as he carried me away.
I would have struggled more, but as I licked his skin, nothing else mattered very much, at least not until he threw me into a limo, literally threw me so I hit the back cushy seat and bounced a few times while he got in and settled across from me, his eyes glowing gold as he crossed his knees, still without a shirt.
He pulled out a pile of cash, counted out ten thousand, which he handed to me and I took absently, because the way his chest was looking in the angle of streetlights, money was not very interesting. Why wasn’t I still tasting him? My whole mouth ached for him.
“I have a deal for you,” he said, counting out money and then hanging over about a quarter of the stack he had. “Since I won that last fight, I get that particular bounty, which was exponentially higher. Gotta love a cascade. I’ll give you my winnings if you give me what I want.”
I frowned at him, at the money spread all over my lap and the seat. I should gather it up and put it somewhere secure, but he still didn’t have a shirt, and my mouth hurt to be touching him. “What do you want?” I asked, reluctantly gathering up the bills.
“Your kiss.”
I froze and looked up at him. His mouth on mine? He’d give me his mouth and the money? How did that make sense? It didn’t matter because I abandoned the bills and was on his lap, smoothing back his hair and running my fingers through his beard. “What kind of kiss?”
He raised a brow and I could smell the desire beneath his iron-hard reserve. “Whatever you think is worth the money. That’ll be over a quarter million for you to put in the bank if you kiss me.”
Oh, I was going to kiss him, with or without money. “I guess I’ll have to be very thorough.” I brushed his lips with mine and slow, sweet happiness trailed through me. This was how it had always been. His lips were soft, his chest so strong and cuddly beneath my fingertips, but he wasn’t holding me in his arms. Why wasn’t he holding me in his arms?
I put his hands against my sides and then linked my fingers behind his neck, taking my time with the sweetest mouth in the world.
His lips parted beneath mine and I tasted his tongue. A shock of electricity went through me and I tightened my grip on him, hooking his thighs with my feet like I could pin him to the limo seat while I tasted him. He wanted my kiss? Why? Not that it mattered. There was literally no reason I would ever not kiss him when I got the chance. How did he taste so good? Probably his cooking had seeped into his soul, so he was like this, absolutely irresistible in every way.
Could I only kiss his mouth? He hadn’t been specific, just said that he wanted my kiss and that it should be worth a quarter of a million dollars.
At first I was very conscientious, kissing his mouth with thorough thoughtfulness, but then my monster came out and ripped off his pants, and bit his mouth, and licked him like I’d never stop. I was drowning in the wolf, and Joe, my mate, my husband, he only encouraged that part of me, growling and scraping his teeth against my skin, sending bolts of prickling happiness through me that I couldn’t resist. The wolf didn’t take over. No, she was just there to help out with the process of getting my mate where he belonged, which was as close to me as humanly, or magically possible.
Intimacy. I hadn’t been with anyone for over a decade. I forgot about the money, the deal, everything but the desperate need I had to sink into his love and never resurface. He was everything, his touch, his taste, and he wanted me as desperately as I wanted him.
When his control snapped, he touched me, frantic, holding me close, trying to get every part of me inside his mouth, his hands, every other part of us connected. He was too big for the limo seat, so the position was probably awkward, but none of that mattered while he was on his knees worshipping me like he wouldn’t ever stop.
“I love you,” I whispered, gripping his hair with one hand, his shoulder with the other. I bit his neck, sucking and pulling the sweet skin into my mouth, rolling his flavor on my tongue while he stiffened up like he’d been tasered.
He pulled away, frowning down at me with a glower that was only slightly softened by his beard. “Freely?”
I blinked at him. What did that mean, and why had he stopped kissing my shoulder? “What?”
“You freely choose to love me?”
Free was a funny thing to talk about when we were rolling around in all the money. Why was he so far away, further and further the longer it took me to answer? “Where are you going?” I asked, grabbing his beard because he had no pants to hang onto.
“You earned the money with your kiss. You don’t need to use words to please me,” he growled, covering my hand with his and untangling my fingers from his beard.
What? We weren’t done. Kissing was so good, but it wasn’t enough. He was naked! I wasn’t about to not take advantage of him, but he was pulling away, now? I grabbed him around his chest, under one arm and over the other shoulder, linking my hands so he’d have to break my wrists to get me to let him go.
“I’m not done with you.”
His eyes glowed with so much anger and rage as his wolf struggling to come out and make me his. “And when you are? You want to earn money so that you can leave me. Are you going to ask for a divorce? I’m not casual about you. You’re right. I want to cage you to keep you from running away. I want to make you mine so absolutely and utterly that you can’t think of leaving me without having a mental breakdown. I could do it. I have the experience and you have always been easily affected by me. I want your heart, your soul, mind, body, forever. You have me. You can’t play with words like love, throw them down casually when you’re still thinking how you’re going to leave me. I only have so much control, and you’ve always taken all of it. Don’t push me with words like love unless you want me to show you what love is to a dark wolf.”
His words shook me, cutting me open and leaving me raw and aching on the floor. Everything felt so cheap and wrong, how much I wanted him, how scared I was of losing myself in him, and the money, all the stupid bills scattered around, a hundred-dollar bill stuck to his knee. He had such strong, beautiful knees.
Did I let him go? Did I allow my fear to control me? Did I succumb to my wolf, his wolf, and commit to this unbelievable lifestyle? Besides the fact that I couldn’t control my wolf enough to say no to him, I could hardly control myself. I’d always wanted him and I always would. It wasn’t an accident that I’d never found another man to have a relationship with. I didn’t want anyone else. But could I actually commit to him? Could I trust him to not hurt me when I’d been hurt so much by someone else? Were those old wounds still raw? Was I still incapable of trust and faith in another man?
He sighed heavily and then, with a shimmer and a shake of his head, he shifted into this beautiful large wolf, big, beautiful, and not even a little bit bad. He put his furry head on my shoulder and curled up in my lap, snuggling into me with his massive weight.
Tears stung my eyes while I struggled with my breaking heart and squeezed him tight. “I’m sorry.” I did love him. But I was still afraid. He licked me across the face with his big tongue and nudged me with his nose until I rubbed behind his ears. As I petted him, my heart stopped beating so fast and hurting so much.
“Maybe once I’m used to your different shifts, I’ll stop wanting to run away,” I mumbled into his fur.
He licked me again and then flopped over on me, almost crushing me. I laughed and hugged him tight. “You are so big. And sweet. And beautiful.”
The limo stopped, the back door opened, and Joe the wolf gave me one last lick before he jumped out and trotted across the sidewalk and up the steps to the apartment my dark wolf had trashed, leaving me behind in a pile of money and a feeling of defeat.