Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
AND I’LL FOLLOW
SEBASTIEN
My wife’s pulse hits my thumb like a drumbeat. It’s fast, panicked, alive, and I can’t tell if it’s because of Annaliese’s mad dash through the trees—or because I have her under me like this, knee lodged between her thighs, my hand a collar for her pretty, pretty throat.
My pulse is thudding, too, but I know why. As I peer down into her wide brown eyes, all I can think is: she ran away from me, but she didn’t get that far.
That’s okay. Let her run. I’d chase this woman to the end of the world, and it’s about time she figured that out.
“What are you running from?” I rasp, leaning in until our chests touch.
Her thighs close around me. She gasps, eyes fluttering shut for a second, her throat flexing under my fingers. But then she pops them open again as she whispers, “I don’t know.”
“Yeah, love,” I answer, my body over hers until only a few inches separate my forehead from hers, “you do.”
I let my thumb stroke the edge of her jaw. She shivers under my caress.
“You’re scared of what this is,” I say. “Scared of wanting something again. Scared it’s gonna blow up in your face like last time. But, let me tell you something, Mrs. Reynolds: it can’t. It won’t. Because I’m not him.”
Her breath catches. Out here in the darkness, in the quiet, in the woods, I hear it. It’s a a small, broken sound that Annaliese tries to swallow, but it’s not us.
She’s not running from me. She’s running from the bastard that hurt her. She’s running from the promise of forever I offered her when I placed that pendant around her neck.
From the moment she proposed a marriage of convenience, spelling out her expectations in that marital agreement that I took pure fucking delight in burning, I could tell that she’d been hurt.
She was wounded. I didn’t know if she could ever love again, but I crave her affection like Adrian used to fiend for a hit of nicotine.
I’m addicted to Anneliese Reynolds, and there’s no amount of rehab in this damn world that will get me to stop wanting her.
I’d hoped I could go slowly. I could, well, court her…
woo her… take her on dates, show her my sweet side.
Even when I was fucking up, making bad decisions or dealing with the aftermath of being blamed for Julie’s death, I never quite lost that part of me.
Oh, I hid it. I covered it up with a cocky attitude, fighting anyone who got too close unless they were one of my brothers.
And then I looked into Annaliese’s brown eyes as she sat down one stool away from me at the Last Prayer.
She was lost, but determined, and by the time I had a taste before she fucking walked away, I knew that I’d never forget her.
I didn’t. Three months later, I was still obsessing over a one-night stand, and when I had the second chance to keep her—to Claim her as only one of the Owed can—I jumped at it.
Fuck it. I’m nothing if not an opportunistic bastard, and I prove that I am more than ever while keeping her pinned beneath me.
Turning into her, I press my body to hers. Just like that afternoon by the waterfall, I don’t let her escape the proof of how much I want her. How much I’ve always wanted her.
Shifting my hips, I dig my erection into the soft side of her belly, near her hip.
She gasps, hands flying out to clutch my t-shirt.
I smirk. Beneath me, my wife is wearing one of my dress shirts. Considering I’m so much wider, so much broader than Annaliese, it hangs on her frame. As I move my knee, making her ride my thigh, the shirt rising, falling, rustling in time to her frantic breathing as I stimulate her pussy.
She’s not scared, though. I asked her once. Is she afraid of her husband… and when she told me she wasn’t, I believed her. I’d be a piss-poor husband if I frightened my own wife. All I want her to know is how serious I am. How much I hunger for her… how much I want her… how much I fucking love her.
“Do you understand me, love? I’m not the man who hurt you.
I’m not the man who threw you away. I’m stupid, but I’m not that stupid.
I have you. I told you back at the cabin the only way you can get rid of me.
Where’s the knife, Annaliese?” I squeeze her side.
“Did you bring it? Or are you all alone with me, completely defenseless?”
I would never hurt her. She has to know that. If she didn’t, I would have much bigger problems than I already have. I’m teasing her, both with my words and the way I keep dragging the denim of my jeans along the thin material of her leggings.
Her mouth trembles. Her fingers tighten in my shirt.
I press her deeper into the tree with my body so that neither of us can go anywhere. I’m still not trying to frighten her. Nope. I’m anchoring her there, keeping her from running, keeping her from pretending that I’ve reached my limit. I want her. I caught her.
Now I’m going to take her.
I give my wife one chance to stop me.
“Say something,” I beg, the seductive edge obvious in my voice.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she gasps.
“You could say ‘stop’. You could tell me to let you go. You could tell me that you don’t want me… I just want honestly, love. That’s all I’ll ever want.”
Besides her. I will always want this woman, and I’m sick and tired of pretending that I don’t.
Marriage of convenience?
Fake marriage?
Never—and now she knows it.
Annaliese looks up at me. Her eyes are big, wide doe eyes, as she says softly, “If you want honestly, Sebastien, then I can’t say any of that.”
Fuck it. That’s all the permission I need.
Dropping my head, I release my hold on her throat at the same moment that I crush my mouth to hers. Instead, I brace my palms on either side of her face, the bark scratching at my skin, the taste of her mouth enough to make me ignore the scrapes as I dig my fingertips into it.
Her hands fly up, gripping my shoulders, nails digging into my skin. Without my leather jacket, I feel it as it cuts into my flesh; feel it, and revel in it. Especially when my wife arches into me, kissing me back like she finally gave herself permission to want me, too.
This is different. Since the night at the Court when she showed me her jealous side, having that slap fight with Hilary, I’ve been fucking Annaliese regularly.
She just needed to know that I wasn’t sleeping with the Used on the side.
Once I promised her that I wasn’t… once she realized that she trusted me enough to believe me when I told her that I didn’t want to be with anyone but my wife…
she’s been sleeping in my bed, curling up next to me, and if part of me has a hard time getting past the idea that she’s only doing it to satisfy a clause in that goddamn contract, I ignore it because at least I’m burying my cock inside of my wife every chance I get.
Including now.
Only… this is different. Because when I fuck Annaliese—when she lets me—it’ll be with the understanding that the contract is gone.
It never existed, sure, but she’s wearing the remnants of it around her neck.
I want to fuck her becuase I love her, and not because a perk of being her husband is getting my hands on that sexy little body whenever she’ll let me.
Dragging my hands over her shoulders, down her side, I pause when I reach her hips. Shoving my hands behind her back, cushioning her, I pull her harder against me. Back to kissing her, her surprised gasp is swallowed by my lips.
I only pull back only when breathing stops being optional. Lightheaded and so fucking horny, I’m prepared to fuck through the tree to get to her.
But, first, I glance down at her.
Her face is flushed, eyes glazed, lips swollen from my kiss.
“Sebastien…” she breathes. “Babe.”
My cock twitches to hear her finally give me a pet name of her own. “Yes?”
She swallows. “I shouldn’t want this.”
Lifting my right hand, I brush her hair out of her face, trailing my knuckles along her cheek. “But you do, don’t you?”
Her eyes close. And quietly, so very quietly, she says: “I always have.”
I smile down at my wife. It’s slow. It’s dangerous.
It’s hungry.
“Good.”
Letting go of her, relying on her aroused yet boneless state to keep her right where she is, I crouch down.
A hand on each side of her leggings and, whoops, there they go.
I get them around her ankles before I lift up her right foot, slipping off her shoe.
Settling back on the grass, I grab her left foot, getting rid of that sneaker.
Doing the same thing again, I take off her leggings.
Another grab and her panties are off, tossed into the darkness behind me.
I stay low. Curving my hand around the back of her calf, I stroke her silky soft flesh, smiling to myself as she shivers. Oh, love. I’ll give you something to shiver about. In one quick motion, I lift her leg up, settling it over my shoulders, baring her pussy to me.
I bury my face in it, nuzzling her curls, dipping my tongue in between her folds, warming her up with my mouth.
She gasps, falling forward enough to cling to me, fingers threading through my hair as I lap at her cunt.
“God, Annaliese…” I breathe against her. “You don’t have any idea what you do to me.”
Her answer is a keening cry as she goes up on the tiptoes of her other foot, rocking her pussy against my mouth.
I guess the small gap I put between us to speak wasn’t good enough for my wife.
I blow a warm breath out, enjoying the way her cry sharpens, how her fingers tighten in my hair, tugging, yanking, urging me back where I was.
“Please,” she gasps. “I need…”
I nuzzle her clit. She chokes. I smile. “I know exactly what you need, love. You just let your husband give it to you.”
She doesn’t answer me.
Hm.
I don’t think I like that.