Chapter 20
Jameson
Sleeping next to Megan without being able to touch her?
Stupid isn’t even the word for it.
This is much, much worse than stupid.
I can’t sleep.
My cock throbs, half-hard, teased by the constraint of my boxer briefs, the cool weight of the light summer sheets, the awareness of her lush body so close to mine.
Even with a careful space between us, I can smell her soft feminine smell, and it’s driving me wild. It’s a hint of the same bodywash I use, which she obviously showered with, and her own natural scent. It makes my mouth water.
I want to devour her whole.
My cock wants to plunge deep inside her warmth and stay all night.
I stir, agitated. I’m not used to sleeping with underwear on. It’s snug and annoying.
My whole body thuds with the urge to release all this tension. I can’t believe how loud my heartbeat is in the dark.
She’s been silent a long while. The clock on my nightstand says it’s after midnight. I haven’t slept a second since we got into bed.
I just keep thinking about everything she said tonight.
How cute she is.
And how fucking brave.
I’d like first dibs.
You can touch me if you decide you want to.
Fuck me. Why the hell did she have to say that shit?
I like an honest woman.
Actually, there’s probably nothing I value more in a relationship with a woman than mutual trust.
But shit.
She’s so sweet and earnest. So kind and considerate.
She also has a lack of ego that’s fucking refreshing given the people I usually spend time with.
And no list of Megan Hudson’s finest qualities would ever be complete without mention of her petite but luscious body. Those high, bouncy tits jiggling under that thin shirt. That plump, round ass. Those goddamn creamy thighs.
And I’m starting to realize that those aren’t even the most beautiful things about her.
Though she’s here for the money, at the end of the day, she’s not really here for the money. She clearly has morals and values that even staggering amounts of cash couldn’t sway.
She’s here because she imagines a better future for herself, one year from now, even though her past hasn’t been all that good to her.
I admire the hell out of that.
That unshakable optimism.
He cheated on me.
I realize I’m grinding my teeth as I replay what she told me about her ex. Not only did he steal from her, he cheated on her, too. She could be bitter and broken, guarded as hell from the shit she’s been through.
Like me.
But she’s not.
It doesn’t help matters that she’s got the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever fucking seen, those light-amber eyes that just get more beautiful every time she stares at me like she’s melting from the heat between us.
Thoughts like these are not helping the erection situation.
Every time I think about that look, and her soft, supple body under the sheets, her warm pussy so fucking close to me, my cock grows hard, aching, and hungry.
Like it is right now.
I breathe through it, trying to think about something else.
Harlan.
He emailed me about some bullshit today. On a fucking Saturday. He wants receipts for the last party I threw on the yacht. As if the CFO of a multibillion-dollar company chases anyone for receipts. He has minions for that.
He just likes crawling up my ass any chance he can get.
There. The hard-on has definitely softened.
Then Megan stirs in her sleep, and my cock throbs again.
I can’t go on like this.
I’ll get no sleep.
That, or I’ll fall asleep, get hard again and maybe come all over the sheets in the night. I haven’t had a wet dream since puberty, but I wouldn’t put it outside the realm of possibility under the circumstances.
An image of Megan pops into my head—my come dripping down her naked tits.
It’s stunningly easy to picture.
My cock throbs with want.
I roll onto my side, away from her, and grab the tablet from my nightstand, along with my glasses. I crank the screen brightness way down so I won’t bother her and start reading as a distraction.
It rains that day, and our trek is slow.
Late morning, I find a cave to wait out the rain. Neither of us wants to be inside or wants to sit.
So we stand, restless, at the mouth of the cave beneath an overhang of rock, where we’re dry. Her to one side of the cave and me to the other.
We don’t look at each other.
There’s an urgency building to get to our destination, maybe because we both know we’re almost halfway there. And something’s changing between us, the balance tipping so fast, if we just keep going, maybe we think we can somehow outrun the inevitable.
It’s been different since I talked to her like I did the other night. Since she touched herself while I talked her through it.
Since she came as I guided her there.
“How is it you know nothing about sex?” I sound irritable and angry, which is exactly how I feel. I’m getting shittier at hiding it. The miserable weather isn’t helping.
“I never said I know nothing about it.”
“The other night, I was afraid I was gonna have to draw you a map.”
“Well, we don’t exactly get a sex tent for our sixteenth birthday in my tribe,” she snaps. “My mother died when I was six years old. My father died when I was eleven, and he always treated me like some angel who was too good for every boy in the world. He was hardly going to tell me about sex. My brothers only ever talk about themselves. And my Aunt Rose left when I was twelve. All she ever told me was to stay away from savages.”
“And did you?”
She just keeps staring out into the woods, avoiding my eyes. “Until now.”
“You don’t need to be embarrassed about what happened.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why won’t you look at me?”
Finally, she looks at me.
“What you did, people do it all the time,” I tell her.
“It just… feels weird.”
“What does?”
“Taking pleasure from myself. Using my body that way.”
“You talk about it like your cunt’s not part of you. Like it’s not you.” My gaze skims down her body and back up to her pretty face.
The longer we’re out here… the wilder she gets, her uncombed golden hair falling loose from the terrible braids she still struggles to make… the prettier she becomes.
“I know it’s me,” she says softly.
“Then you should touch it more. You should look at it. Get used to it.”
“What do you mean, look at it?”
“Have you ever really looked at what’s between your legs?” Her silence is my answer. “Because you should. You should touch yourself and watch, over and over again.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you should know what you like, before someone else decides for you.”
I shut the cover on the tablet.
I glance over my shoulder at Megan, lying asleep next to me.
I’m really starting to like this Wolf guy. Not only has he saved Rowan’s life like a dozen times already, he gives solid sex advice.
And the way Megan’s mind works…
I slip off my glasses and rub my eyes. They’re sore from reading in the dark, and I’m hard as hell.
Fuck it.
I have to end this torture.
As quietly as I can, I slip out of the bed, careful not to wake her. I don’t want to wake her when I walk across the hard floor, so I take a moment to make sure she’s sleeping soundly before I go.
I turn to the window, taking a deep, quiet breath.
In the stillness of the night, here with her, I know this whole thing is going to be way harder than I thought.
Having her near me is too much temptation.
And I never would’ve thought she’d be so willing, so damn fast. I thought telling her we wouldn’t have sex would put her at ease, and put her off. She didn’t seem like the kind of girl to jump into such things, or to push for them.
Eleven yearswith one man, for Christ’s sake. One man who turned out to be a cheating, abusive dipshit.
And now she wants “first dibs” on being my next lover.
I wonder if he took care of her in bed. If he was good to her that way. Or if their sex life fizzled out long ago.
And why she’s so damn willing to let me touch her.
The possible reasons for that don’t help.
Maybe he was a terrible lover. Maybe he wasn’t even having sex with her anymore, just cheating with other people.
Maybe she hasn’t had good sex, or any sex, in way too long.
Thinking about it just makes me want to fuck her even more than I already do, to show her how good it should be.
If I’m not fucking careful…
Thirty-one days.
I glance at her again. I can see her face in the moonlight, snuggled into her pillow. Her eyes are closed.
I ease into the walk-in, then on into my bathroom, emerging into the cool moonlit space as the automatic lights come up. The nighttime setting is a soft glow that doesn’t quite reach the corners of the room.
It insulates me, makes me feel an aspect of privacy that isn’t really there.
But I can be quiet.
I blow out the breath I’ve been holding. What the fuck am I doing?
If I run the shower, I might wake her. And she knows I already had a shower tonight, when she got me out of the pool.
Sitting on the toilet to jerk off in hiding just seems fucking lame.
But my cock is not going to let me put the idea aside.
I turn to the mirror over the sink.
I’ve really fucked myself over here.
I thought the whole engagement idea checked off so many boxes. That it was brilliant, on so many levels. Maybe I let Graysen convince me of that.
But Graysen isn’t the one who has to share a bed with Megan while not having sex with her.
Fucking ridiculous.
If I knew she was coming here tonight, maybe I would’ve relieved myself of this tension in preparation.
But maybe I didn’t fully realize, or want to acknowledge, how much tension there would actually be, until she got into my bed.
I hook my fingers into my boxer briefs and tug them down.