Chapter 16
Jameson
“One day, if I’m broke,” I muse aloud, “will we still hang out?”
Cole cocks an eyebrow at me. If that alarmed him, he doesn’t show it. “Brother. I’ve been broke. The food’s not as good and the women aren’t as fancy, but they fuck just the same.”
I swallow a groan.
When Cole got home from LA yesterday, I didn’t bother telling him that I asked his sister to be my fiancée, more or less on order from my brother. Though Cole’s family is nothing like mine, he knows mine now, so maybe he’d even understand. Even he calls Graysen “the boss.”
Not to mention that he was disappointed as hell to hear she’d moved out. Maybe if he knew I’d gone as far as to propose to win her back, he’d forgive me for not talking to him about it first?
One can hope.
But there’s nothing to tell, really.
She said no.
And that answer clearly isn’t changing anytime soon.
He slaps my shoulder and gets up, stretching. We’ve been lying out by the pool after eating dinner and shooting a few hoops, but it’s getting late.
“See you at breakfast?”
“Yeah,” he says. “We can eat before I leave for the airport.”
He’s heading out of town again, just like that.
“Okay. Good night.”
“G’night,” he says.
I watch him cross the patio and disappear into the house. I usually travel more myself. Right now, though, I’m feeling pretty damn antisocial.
Without that fairy-tale engagement to splash across the internet, I don’t want to risk igniting any gossip because I’m seen in public in the vicinity of a female and someone takes a photo of it. Graysen’s way too worked up about the whole thing right now.
I just need to lay low and work this out. I’m still convinced I can win Megan over, somehow, but maybe that’s just my stubborn pride talking.
She’s already shot me down an embarrassing number of times.
Is this my life now?
I drop my head back on the cushioned chair with a groan. The bruised purplish sky in the west fades to black as I sip my still-not-quite-there whiskey and slowly absorb how much my life has changed since Granddad died.
I didn’t want it to.
I’ve tried to pretend it didn’t.
Just like when Dad died.
But pretending doesn’t alter reality. It just delays the inevitable truth: that sometimes terrible shit happens and you just have to let your heart break so it can go about healing.
When Granddad died, we knew it was coming. Just not so soon. His health was failing, but he had the best care a man could get. We thought we’d have more time with him.
The tragedy was that we didn’t.
I never even got to say goodbye to him in the end, it was so sudden.
Or thank him.
Fuck, I should’ve said thank you more.
Before it was too late.
Everything was just rolling along… and then it felt like everything derailed, so unexpectedly.
I’ve only been derailed like that two other times in my life. But those were major fucking derailments.
When Dad died in the helicopter crash.
And when Mom remarried.
No.Not when she remarried.
When she abandoned me for another life. Another family.
But if there was one thing I learned from losing my dad so young, life is short. And it’s never a good idea to let a good thing slip away. Any more than it’s a good idea to hang on to the bad.
I finally head up to bed, feeling stuck in a way that I hate.
I keep trying to come up with some other approach, some way to win Megan over. But I’m running out of ideas.
Clearly, dinner and drinks, money and all the job offers I can conjure just don’t do it for her.
She likes plants, right? Flowers? I could send her a ton of them, but then maybe she’ll think I’m in love with her or something.
Too romantic.
There has to be something else she wants, something I haven’t offered her yet. Something I can do for her.
Something only I can do for her?
As I’m stepping into the shower, an idea occurs to me, and I pause to send her a text.
Me:What if I help you deal with your ex?
She doesn’t answer.
Me: You arrived here with that one little suitcase. But you must’ve owned more than that when you left him. I can get you a good lawyer. Send someone to collect your things.
Again, she doesn’t answer, so I get in under the water and let the heat pound down on me.
I know, in these moments, alone and without any distractions, when my thoughts converge on nothing but her, that I’m far more interested in her than I’ve let myself believe.
I feel oddly off-kilter.
It’s like some corner I didn’t see coming has been turned, but when I look back to see where it happened, it’s all murky.
All that’s clear to me is that every time she says no to me, it fuels me.
My motivation has shifted, from my loyalty to Cole to my personal desire to win her back. To win her over. Even the pressure from Graysen is starting to take a backseat to just winning one with this girl.
When I get out of the shower, a thrill runs through me when I discover she’s texted me back.
Megan: That’s a really generous offer. And I appreciate it. But it’s not necessary. I don’t want anything from him.
I think about those words as I lie in bed, and I hear the unspoken message.
I don’t want anything from you.
* * *
I stay up for hours, plowing through book two.
Rowan is still a virgin.
Wolf is still a dick, in a way, but he’s saved her life so many damn times, I’m falling in love with him.
Rowan seems to be struggling on the issue.
Megan hasn’t said another word to me about her books or asked if I’m still reading them. I keep hoping she’ll bring it up so I can ask her more questions.
But when she doesn’t, it just reinforces the truth of what she told me. She extended trust to me when she told me about her books, because I asked, but she never brought it up again, because writing is deeply personal for her.
And I keep trying to glean her secrets through the pages.
But I still haven’t figured them out, and it’s been a book and a half already.
“Turn the other way,” Rowan says, trying to order me around, as usual. “Don’t look.”
“Whatever you like, princess.”
“I don’t want you to see.”
“Why not? Do you think your cunt is so much more special than every other girl’s cunt?”
“Stop saying that word.”
“Vagina. Is that better?”
She just fumes and stomps around.
“I’m sorry, you’re right. I shouldn’t call it a cunt. That’s too fierce. I bet you have a lovely little pussy. Pink and demure. Like a flower bud that hasn’t opened. Like a little pink kiss.”
She throws the food pot at me. The pot. She misses because I dodge in time, but really. “Those are some manners for a Lady.”
Oh, she hates it when I critique her manners.
“Manners! You don’t know the first thing about manners.”
“Really? Seems to me I’ve been traveling for weeks, alone, with a young Lady, who we’ve established has a fresh pink pussy, and I haven’t even tried to rape her once. What more manners do you want from a savage like me?”
“Stop looking at me like that!”
“How am I supposed to look at you?”
“Like a gentleman! Like a man my brothers entrusted with my life!”
I pick up my phone and send Megan a text, despite the late hour. She doesn’t have a job to get up for early in the morning, right?
Me: These two fight a lot. Are they ever just going to fuck already? Obviously, they want to.
I keep reading, combing for hints into her psyche, but I’m not sure it’s getting me anywhere. Even when something seems to resonate, I’m not sure why.
She’s still too much of a mystery and it’s driving me a bit crazy.
I don’t like not getting what I want, that’s all.
Maybe I’m like Wolf that way. Because he sure as shit wants to fuck Rowan by now. How could he not? He’s been traveling with her, one moment from death at almost all times, for weeks now.
My phone chimes.
Megan:I know. It’s delicious.
I keep reading, skimming hungrily through the next few pages.
Wherein Rowan catches Wolf with his dick in his hand, in the woods.
I almost laugh out loud.
Especially when he tries to play it off so cool.
“Was that about me?” Rowan demands.
If it was or it wasn’t, it doesn’t help me for her to know. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
She seems unconvinced. “I’m the only person around.”
“It doesn’t have to be about anyone specific, you know. Sometimes it’s just taking care of an urge.”
“How many… urges… do you have?”
“What do you mean, how many?”
“Well… have you been doing that every time you say you’re going off to piss?”
“Not every time.”
My phone chimes again.
Megan:Okay what’s happening? What part are you at?
Well, shit. She finally asked.
Me:You wrote it, Jessica.
I let that hang for a minute as I almost get sucked back into the scene and forget to answer.
Me:Rowan just caught Wolf masturbating. I thought she was going to watch. But she freaked out and ran away. And now they’re arguing again.
Megan: If I’m not mistaken… I think you’re enjoying my book.
Me: Books.
She doesn’t reply, and I keep reading.
“So, you’re nineteen? And you’re still fresh?”
She glares at me. “That’s really none of your business.”
“How’s that possible? No one ever slipped you a finger? Nothing?”
“You’re just being crude to get a rise out of me.” She nibbles at her drumstick, tearing the meat off in little strips and licking her fingers.
“But how do you manage your urges? Don’t you have them? I knew a girl who used to play with carrots when she went too long without cock.” She stops eating and just stares at me like I’ve grown a repulsive second head. “You do anything like that?”
Her face is so pink, she could be broiling in the fire. “My ‘urges’ are also none of your business.”
“So you do have them, then. How do you go through years of urges and not do a thing about it?”
She keeps eating and kind of rolls her eyes.
“That doesn’t sound very healthy to me.” While I eat, I decide to regale her with the way we do it in my tribe. “In my tribe, we become adults at sixteen. It’s a rite of passage having sex on your birthday. You do it in a tent while the whole tribe dances outside.”
She tosses her bones into the fire with a lot of fat and gristled meat still on them. The stuff I would’ve gladly eaten. “Sounds perfectly savage to me.”
“It’s so you understand sex is a part of life, and your body isn’t something to fear. And you don’t have to be afraid to express your sexual desires. It’s natural to have one lifelong lover, or as many as you want. There aren’t any rules about it.”
“Sounds to me like you just can’t control yourselves.”
I laugh. “Serious?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Right. I’m gonna turn into an animal right before your eyes and savage you.” My grin fades when I see how she’s staring into the fire.
Sheis serious.
“If I was planning to savage you, Lady Rowan, wouldn’t I have done it by now?”
She glares at me, her cheeks flaming red now, hot with anger. “My Aunt Rose says savages are always in heat.”
“Sounds like a woman who knows.” I stretch out on my back. The stars are bright in a clear, black sky above.
“What does that mean?”
I hear her gasp over the crackle of the fire when I say, “It means, maybe a nasty savage broke Aunt Rose’s heart.”
I check my phone even though I don’t hear a chime. Megan hasn’t texted me again.
It’s almost two in the morning.
I should be sleeping.
The chapter ends with Rowan pissed off at Wolf again, and I start another.
We walk the next day in endless silence, tension sharp in the air between us.
At dusk, Wolf makes a fire in the mouth of one the largest caves we’ve come across, and we settle in to take our supper there. While Wolf prepares his now-infamous rabbit stew, I clear some stones out of the back of the cave and arrange the furs for sleep, giving us each half of them and hoping the fire will warm them before we go to sleep. The temperature has steadily plummeted all day and it smells of rain outside, though not a drop has fallen.
Over supper, we still don’t speak.
I still haven’t forgiven him for what he said about Aunt Rose, and he doesn’t seem to mind the silence like I do. He never does.
I’m still entirely grateful for his company, for the knife in his boot and his capable hands and the food he provides without complaint, but I don’t know how to tell him so without making myself seem weak.
I’d die before I’d admit how much I need him.
After supper, I wash the one pot and two spoons and lay them out on a rock to dry while Wolf pokes at the fire. I strip down in the cave, behind his back, and wrap myself in a fur. Then I go outside to take care of nature between the trees while I chew on a mint leaf.
When I return to the cave, Wolf is already lying down in the back, his leathers and his clothes slung over a rock. He’s doused the fire with dirt, and only a few embers are left glowing, making just enough light for me to stumble to my furs. When I wrap myself in them, I realize he’s given me one of his, but I don’t say anything.
I don’t want to thank him for this or anything else.
Thanking him will just make him think he’s in the right, that all his rudeness has been forgotten.
We lie head to head, stretched out in opposite directions, and I can hear him breathing. I can smell his warm smell, too, the scent of his leathers and the fire smoke in his hair and his male musk beneath.
I inhale deeply, savoring it, trying to do it without making a sound.
I stop and set the tablet down. I’m pretty sure it’s about to get smoking hot in that cave.
I decide I need to quit reading. Now.
And possibly delete this book from my tablet.
I pick it up again and skip ahead a few pages, just checking.
“Talk to me,” I practically beg. “Keep talking.” I want him here with me, and it’s fierce, this wanting.
“Keep touching yourself,” Wolf says. “Don’t stop. Imagine… imagine someone’s kissing you down there. Imagine their mouth?—”
“Who?”
I listen to his hastened breathing in the dark. “Whoever you want.”
“Tell me who.” My voice sounds awfully desperate as I stroke furiously between my legs. “Tell me who’s kissing me.”
I want him to say it. Please say it.
“I am,” he whispers. It’s so quiet, I almost miss it under the ripples of thunder outside. The rainstorm is growing stronger. I shudder with the thought of his mouth on my flesh, the pleasure surging through me. “I’m kissing you. I’m trying to… but you won’t let me.”
“Oh…” The groan escapes me without thought.
“I want to kiss you and lick you between your legs, but you keep stopping me,” Wolf says. “I’m on my knees and I’m begging you. Just one taste. Then I’m kissing you. I’m licking you, and you taste so good. But you tell me to stop. You’re being cruel. I lick you again, but you tell me I’m a dirty, filthy savage. I keep licking you anyway. I love how you taste. I can’t get enough. I taste you all over my lips, you’re so wet, and I keep licking you?—”
I cry out, my body exploding, arching, my flesh spasming beneath my hand. I gasp and groan and writhe, unable to stop myself. I keep rubbing, keep squeezing as my body quakes, as the thunder rumbles through the night.
Spasms ripple between my legs, my tender flesh throbbing, my heart pounding in my chest. I’m so wet, all over my thighs, my hand.
I can smell my arousal, and at the back of my mind, I wonder if Wolf can, too.
I slam the cover on the tablet shut.
Yup. I’m going to sleep.
I toss the tablet on my bedside table along with my reading glasses, turn off the lamp, and roll over.
Then I get up and go jerk off in my bathroom because there’s no way I’ll be able to fall asleep with this hard-on if I don’t.
As I stroke myself to climax, I’m weirdly twisted up inside.
Part of me still can’t believe I proposed to Cole’s sister behind his back.
Another part is pretty sure I’ve got a crush on Megan Hudson that doesn’t really fit anywhere in my life.
And there’s a tiny, possibly insane part that wonders, in the heart-pounding silence just after I ejaculate, if fucking her would be worth losing everything anyway.
If it would be worth trading every dollar I have just to touch her.