Chapter 28
Jameson
As soon as Megan disappears into her bathroom, I notice something on the floor of the walk-in closet.
Something she dropped.
Panties.
Just turn around and go.
I walk over and pick them up. Little lacy black panties.
What she wore to dinner tonight, under that gorgeous dress?
Put the panties down and walk away.
I bring them to my nose. I can smell her faint sex smell, and my hardening cock spasms violently.
Fuck.
She’s right in the next room.
I squeeze the panties in my fist as my body goes into autopilot mode, and I stalk into my bathroom. I didn’t masturbate while she was in the shower. Instead I had a long-ass argument with myself about whether or not I needed to. Or should.
I’d convinced myself that after draining myself last night, and again today after we picked out her diamond ring and she looked at me the way she did, I didn’t need to. And shouldn’t.
That encouraging myself to keep fantasizing about her while I did it was a slippery slope, and one I shouldn’t be letting myself plummet down.
Too late.
I go straight into the room with the toilet and close myself inside, undo my belt, take out my cock, hold the panties to my face, and start jacking myself off. This isn’t sex, right? She’s not here. Just her pretty little panties.
It doesn’t take long to get the job done.
Breathing in her faint scent, with her pretty face in my head, smiling at me… flashing me that fire in her amber eyes… it’s all I can do to get her panties on the counter before my cock shudders in my hand, my body quaking as I come. I slap a hand on the counter for balance as I unload with a groan.
I keep stroking as my pulse races, squeezing out another shock of pleasure that has me biting back a growl.
When I’m finished, I realize how hard I’m panting. My breath huffs raggedly from my chest, and my heart races, blood thundering through my limbs.
I blow out a breath and hang my head, drained.
My body relaxes all at once, and I release my cock.
When I open my eyes, I glimpse the mess I’ve made. I blink at Megan’s panties on the counter, decorated with my come.
Then I glimpse myself in the mirrored wall. My heavy cock, still half-hard, and aching dully.
Strangely, I feel no real relief.
Just like last night…
I thought it would help. It weirdly doesn’t. Not as much as you’d think.
I’m still so fucking hungry for her.
Jesus.
Now that my cock is softening, I can think a little more clearly. And I can see what’s happening here.
I’m losing control of myself.
I’m slipping, inch by inch, succumbing to my attraction to her. Getting up to masturbate in the middle of the night, when she could’ve easily heard me if she woke up. Not telling her that her nipple was in full view at breakfast for long minutes, so she wouldn’t cover up, and I could glut myself on the view.
Asking her if she enjoys being spanked.
Jacking off on her panties like an overwrought animal with zero consideration of the consequences.
I try to tell myself that there will be no consequences. She doesn’t know. I’m masturbating to save my sanity. To save me from fucking up and touching her.
And plummeting right off a cliff, to a place I can’t come back from.
No.I can’t afford that.
But every time I climax while thinking about her, it only makes me want her more.
* * *
Okay, jerking off was one thing.
Now I’m reading her book, for the sex scenes, in lieu of touching her.
It’s getting pathetic.
Also, I’m avoiding her. I know she’s in bed, so I draw a bath and strip down in the bathroom, sink back into the heat of the water, and open my tablet like a crack addict desperate to steal a hit.
She hasn’t asked me if I’m still reading her books. I’ve seen her writing, though. On her ancient-looking laptop, today, before she got dressed to go to dinner.
I wonder which book she’s writing now. Number four? Or is she already on five?
I’m still on book two of the three that she’s published, and I’m really trying to slow down and savor it instead of gobbling it up like I did the first one.
“Just come get under the furs with me,” Wolf growls. “Unless you actually want to die tonight. Or we could argue about it some more. ’Cause that’s fun.”
He’s so snarly tonight.
“Is this some ploy to get me naked?”
“It’s a ploy to keep you warm and alive.”
Of course it is. Because if I’m dead when he delivers me, he won’t get paid.
I want to say it just to continue the fight, try to push him to refute it, to dare to admit that he’s not doing this just for the money.
That he actually cares even a drop about me.
But I bite my tongue. I sigh like he’s putting me out, but I’m really shivering. “Fine. Don’t look.”
He shuts his eyes.
“I can’t tell if you’re peeking, so cover your eyes.”
He throws an arm over his face.
I strip down completely. Quickly. “You better be naked under there, too.”
“I didn’t know you cared.”
“I mean, this better not be a trick.”
I slide in under the furs with him. He’s lying on his side, facing me, and I feel the heat coming off his body. I glimpse his bare chest and bump against his bare legs.
I turn over so my back is to him and try to curl up, leaving a little space between us, but it’s too cold this way.
So I roll over to face him. The tips of my breasts touch his chest. I don’t care if he likes it or if he doesn’t. “I have to go this way. You’re so warm.” I bend my leg and rest my knee on top of his for balance.
He’s deathly quiet.
It unnerves me when he just stares at me in the dark.
“Is this okay?” I ask him.
“Not if you know what I’m thinking right now.”
“What are you thinking?”
“That you have the body of a savage.”
“Stop looking!”
“Too late.”
I pull the fur around me, but my breasts are still touching his chest.
“You act like a Lady, but your body is ripe. Your breasts and the flesh between your legs… like you’re ready to be taken. If you were raised in the wastelands, you’d already have been fucked. A lot.”
“You’re being vulgar again.”
He carefully picks the loose strands of my hair from my neck and smooths them over my shoulder as he speaks. “You think your new husband won’t be vulgar? You think he’ll be gentle? That he’s not gonna take one look at you and claim you hard and fast?”
A shiver runs through me as his fingers linger, grazing the line of my jaw.
“You think he’ll give one thought to your pleasure? That he’ll take his time? He’ll get on his knees and kiss you? Caress you? Taste you? He’ll watch you, to see how you like it, because he cares? He’ll make you come again and again until you’re satisfied, so spent, you beg him to stop?”
“Stop talking to me like I’m one of your savage girls,” I say weakly.
He runs his fingers down my neck. I shiver against him again. “You respond like a savage girl when I touch you.”
“Then don’t touch me.”
“If you prefer, I can just talk to you like I did the other night.”
“Don’t.”
“Why not? You liked it.” He runs his thumb lightly over my lip.
“How do you know?”
He laughs, and his breath is warm against my lips. “Rowan, you almost brought the cave down on top of us.”
“Do you mean to ruin me for my husband?” I twist my face away from his hand. “And bring war to my homeland?”
“Your betrothed is a pig who doesn’t deserve you,” he growls softly.
“Let’s not talk about him if you can’t be civil.”
“Do you think anyone is gonna talk to you about anything else once you’re his bride? His possession?”
I start to pull away, but he catches me by my hip.
He shifts to lean on his elbow, staring down at me, his eyes burning in the faint firelight. “Don’t go.”
“You want me to be your possession instead?” My voice quivers a little.
“I want a lot of things. Right now, I want to make you warm.”
“How?”
“Let me touch you. If you don’t like it, you can tell me to stop, and I’ll stop. I’ll stop whenever you want me to.”
Well, well. Wolf; he’s really a tricky bastard.
Megan had explained it like Rowan had seduced Wolf. And she did, in a way. She’s definitely peppered him endlessly with questions about sex, ever since he opened that door. When they’re both fully dressed.
Innocently, and sometimes not so innocently.
But they’re both toying with each other pretty good by now.
“You can’t fuck me,” I tell him.
“I wasn’t going to.”
His hand claims my breast beneath the furs, and my breath catches. He strokes my nipple in gentle, teasing strokes. Then he pinches it.
I let out a little cry of pleasure without meaning to, and his eyes glaze over in a way I’ve never seen anyone’s do.
“If I do something you don’t like,” he says, his voice low and husky, “or if I hurt you, tell me so. I’ll stop.”
I nod, unable to locate my voice.
He disappears beneath the furs.
I hesitate there.
Then I skip ahead.
I don’t know why. I lap up every word of Megan’s books. The knife fights, the grueling hand-to-hand battles, when Wolf nearly gets killed to save Rowan’s life? The long treks through the wilderness as they grow low on food? The hunting, the hunger, the endless bickering? Every. Word.
But for some reason, I have trouble reading the sex scenes in their entirety. I just can’t seem to keep from skimming faster and faster, devouring them, searching for clues about Megan, like I’m starving and her words are my only sustenance.
“Does it feel good?” he asks between licks.
It does, and I whimper.
“You’ll like how it feels when you come this way, I promise.” And with that, he licks me toward my peak.
I didn’t know it would be like this.
I explode against the affections of his mouth before I know I’m going to, my flesh clutching at the fingers he’s slipped inside me, and I cry out again and again. Because he has control, the pleasure is so intense, I don’t know how to contain it.
I scream and cry and buck.
He kisses the sensitive skin of my inner thighs, watching me, as I try to catch my breath, then starts licking me again. He draws his fingers out partway and curls them forward, caressing me inside. He rocks his hand back and forth, stroking me as he takes my softest flesh in his mouth and suckles me until I explode again.
My hips lift off the ground and I cry out his name.
When I’ve stopped writhing, he slips his fingers out and kisses my soft, spent flesh as I shiver, the sudden cold raising goose bumps on my skin.
He draws the furs over me and I curl against his chest, stunned and panting.
“I’m sorry I called you savage” is the only thing I can think to say as his heart beats against my ear.
“I am savage.”
I meet his eyes in the firelit dark. “I want to know how to make you feel that good,” I whisper. “Teach me.”
He softly kisses my face, but doesn’t say anything.
So I reach down, my fingers drifting along his hip. He catches my hand and lifts it away. “You told me not to fuck you.”
“You fucked me with your fingers.”
“It’s not the same, believe me.”
“Maybe you should show me.”
“You’re not thinking clearly. You’re all blissed out on come.”
“So? You can be, too.” I reach for him again, and he grabs my hand again. This time, he presses it against his chest, and I feel the ferocious beating of his heart.
“If you do that, I will fuck you.”
“Wolf,” I whisper, “I want you inside me.”
His green eyes on mine are so fierce, it takes my breath away. But his words are soft. “If we do that, I’m going to bind to you. I’ll get attached.”
He lets me go and flips over, turning his back to me.
I curl against his warmth, pressing my lips to the hair at his nape, inhaling his scent.
“Like, how attached?”
“If you have to ask, you’re not ready to know.”
Well, shit.
I stare blankly at the tablet for a long moment, until I realize I’m not seeing the words anymore.
Steam rises from the bath. I’m coated in sweat, and my heart is pounding. My reading glasses are steaming up, and I take them off, swiping a hand over my flushed face and setting the tablet aside.
I drop my head back, and look up at the ceiling, not really seeing that either.
I’m still in some firelit cave, wrapped in furs.
* * *
I walk into the bedroom in a T-shirt and boxer briefs.
Megan’s lying in bed with her lamp on. I can tell she’s been politely waiting for me to come to bed, but her eyes are sleepy, her eyelids heavy, like maybe she dozed off.
“Wolf’s falling in love with Rowan.” My voice is unaccountably scratchy.
A soft smile transforms her face into a thing of staggering beauty. “Yup.”
I walk to the bed and drop the tablet on my bedside table.
She laughs softly. “Why do you look like you just hiked a mile uphill to find there was nothing at the top?”
She’s wrong.
There’s such mind-bending beauty at the top, I’m mildly horrified. Because I want it so bad, yet it’s out of my reach.
I can’t touch it.
I can’t make it mine.
Even if I could… I’m not sure I’d know how to.
“I didn’t know he’d start falling so soon.” I scrape a hand through my hair. “He fights her so much.”
It’s not soon. It’s book two.
Maybe I just wasn’t ready for it?
What’s happening to me?
“Maybe that’s why he fights her.”
“And you think you’re not writing a romance.” I sit down heavily on the edge of the bed. It’s not even that late. Eleven thirty. I feel weirdly ancient.
What’s wrong with me?
“Hey, just because you skip the other three-quarters of the book to get to the sex scenes,” she teases, “don’t put that on me.”
I give her a warning look.
“I read every word,” I purr. “Jessica Rivers is my favorite author.”
She laughs, exuberantly. “Liar!” Then her smile fades. “Please don’t try to stroke my ego. It’s not that delicate.”
“I’m not lying. I don’t read fiction.”
She blinks at me. “You don’t?”
“You live with me. Have you seen a novel anywhere?”
The bookshelves by the fireplace across the room, same as the ones in my office, are lined with nonfiction books on business, economics, politics.
“I mean, you could be reading one on your tablet,” she ventures.
“I am. The ones you wrote.”
She smiles so brightly, the arrow that strikes my heart isn’t even as painful as I always thought it would be.
* * *
An hour later, Megan is fast asleep.
I’m watching her sleep.
Because obviously, I have it bad.
I reach over and cover her bare shoulder with the sheet that’s slipped off.
She stirs in her sleep, and my reaction to the sound she makes is like a rush of pure heroin through my blood.
I mean, I’ve never done heroin but I can imagine. This feeling is pure, savage pleasure. It’s euphoric as it floods my system, and it’s startling in its intensity. It’s every shade of warm there is. It’s terrifying, and it’s addictive.
All I want to do is melt into it and make it stay, no matter how dangerous it is.
It doesn’t even matter if I touch her or not, or if I fantasize about touching her or not. That much is becoming disturbingly obvious.
It doesn’t matter what I think or what I plan or what I do.
I want her.
The truth is, Megan Hudson is everything I want in a woman.
She’s as cute as she is fucking beautiful.
As luscious as she is sweet.
As clever and multilayered as she is real.
How can I be falling in love with someone I’ve never even kissed?
Someone I had zero intention of falling in love with?
I’ve definitely never done that before. I’ve never even been in love. Never allowed myself to fall in love. That’s never been more clear to me than right now.
And I never imagined it happening like this.
Everything is backward.
I met her, talked to her, before I knew who she was, or she knew who I was.
I hired her before I knew where her talents really lay.
I asked her to be my fiancée before I dated her.
And I started feeling things for her, long before it should’ve been possible to feel them.
This falling in reverse…
I’ve never felt anything like it.
I try to remind myself I barely know her. That I haven’t known her that long.
But it doesn’t make a damn difference to that fucking arrow lodged in my heart.