Chapter 4
Willow
No matter what kind of mood I’m in, watching Odin set up the tripod and reverently take out a gorgeous camera from a fancy black leather bag, fit a lens to it, and then bend over the whole thing with the intensity of a scientist and the gentle touch of a lover, is never going to fail to be moving.
His huge hands are so capable, so gentle, that sitting in this chair, my head swimming even more violently from the whiskey settling into my bloodstream, I can’t help but have thoughts so wicked that they feel blasphemous.
I suck in a gulp of oxygen to steady myself and clear the fog.
The basement is like most old buildings.
Slightly musty, maybe a little bit damp from all the rain Washington gets.
That’s all I should be able to breathe in, but overriding that is a darker, spicier scent that I know is all Odin.
I know what expensive cologne smells like, but it’s not that, and I’m weirdly glad.
He smells earthier, in a good way. Like air and soil and trees, but also less elemental.
A little bit of oil maybe. A lot like the garage I used to walk past every day on my way to work when I waitressed in high school.
My hand flutters against the edges of my vest nervously, but all I end up doing is fumbling my fingers over the top button.
I nearly jump-scare when Odin raises his head and gives me a thumbs up. “We’re good to go.”
I leap out of the chair and smooth my skirt. My palms are absolutely soaked. Thinking about touching him with them makes me cringe internally. This is fake, but I want to act like I’m not a scared, sweaty girl half his age who just cried her eyes out and begged him for the most absurd favor.
Even if that’s exactly what I am.
What little chill I have left deserts me completely as Odin walks over to the far wall and picks up a length of rope I didn’t even notice was hanging there. It’s old and thick, not smooth looking at all. The fibers will probably chafe the shit out of my wrists.
Why does that thought send a jolt of straight lightning arrowing straight between my legs? Whiskey or no whiskey, that’s definitely wrong.
I walk over as neatly as I can on my wobbly legs. I stand right beneath the hook and raise my hands in the air. I clasp them together and give Odin a steady look that I hope says that I’m ready.
It’s hard to breathe when he approaches.
He’s absolutely menacing holding that length of rope, one of the largest men that I’ve ever been near.
There were plenty of rough men coming into the restaurant where I worked, but none of them looked like him.
Not like they could wrestle a bear. Or maybe like he is the whole damn bear.
My pulse goes crazy, but the part of my brain that I’ve rarely ever had an opportunity to use other than for survival mode, kicks online.
The animal part of me wonders what it would be like to be strung up by this man for real.
To have his hand come around my neck in a collar to restrain me, his massive body utterly dominant, my own so ready to submit to him, to let him do anything he wanted to me because I know that he’d be gentle and make the pain sweet.
I have no idea what that is.
The whole BDSM thing isn’t my jam.
But there is a part of me that thrills at the rush of danger this man represents, even if it’s a false picture in my head.
I’ve never been with anyone who could tear their own control away, growling and fucking like an animal.
I don’t know why I think he could. I don’t even know why my brain keeps going there relentlessly.
If this is what hard liquor does, then I need to put it on my list of things to never repeat again.
Odin wraps the rope around my wrists, tying it so lightly and gently that I barely even feel the hard rasp of the frayed strands. None of it bites into my skin. The only discomfort I feel is the pins and needles of having my arms raised in the air.
He makes an effortless loop and slings it over the gleaming hook.
He steps away, his body heat leaving with him, the basement cold for the first time since I followed him down here. He’s going for the chair, so I can stand on it like I said, but I stop him.
“Just heft me up. It’s all good.”
He gets the chair anyway. When he turns around, carrying it over, his expression is almost guarded and a little bit wary. Of me?
I step up onto the chair the second he puts it down. Standing on it in my heels puts me an inch or two taller than him.
Before either of us can overthink it, I lean into him, balancing my shoulder against his, and wrap a leg around his waist. I’m not as coordinated as I usually am, especially not in the towering heels on a wooden surface.
The chair skids out, slipping sideways, but he catches me.
His strong arms band around my shoulder and waist. I wrap my legs around either side of his hips, clenching my heels together tightly.
One shoe still falls right off my foot. I kick the other off, planting my bare feet into his jeans for grip. I’m a little bit frantic, not used to not having any hands.
“Whoa. I’ve got you.”
I laugh a little hysterically. “Sorry. I guess I’m more of a disaster than I realized.”
“It’s alright.” His hand splays over my shoulder, fingers burning against the bare skin of my back that the vest doesn’t cover. “You’re going to be okay.”
He sounds so sure, so steady, so damn steadfast, that I want to believe him.
I want to lean into him and soak up his heat.
I want to tuck my face into his neck and bask in his scent, his strength, and his safety.
Maybe that’s the real thrill of letting someone dominate you.
It’s the giving up of control willingly, surrendering it to another person because you trust them so inherently, that you want no barriers between you.
It’s not one person using another. It’s two people truly coming together.
That’s a crazy fucking thought given that this man is a stranger, and his son—the man I was going to marry, who I had known for years—never truly made me feel that way.
There was always this barrier between us, a chasm that I couldn’t cross.
I don’t even know if I wanted to cross it.
I was going to share my life with Preston.
I shared my body, but when it came to anything deeper?
I never felt like we had that. I thought I loved him, but there was a good chance I had no idea what love even was.
Preston betraying me and me cutting him out of my life?
It’s not just shock that dimmed the pain.
I feel it. It’s raw. It’s horrible. But I know that in a few weeks, or maybe a few months, I’ll be fine.
There’s not something irrevocably lost, or pieces of me that are always going to be forever broken now that I’m not with him. Not like when my dad died.
Even if he hadn’t fucked my mom and had just told me one day that it was over, that he didn’t love me, would I have been heartbroken or just passingly angry and disappointed?
I know, without a shadow of doubt, that he never knew the secret parts of me. He never wanted to. He never tried to reach them, and I never tried to give them. He saw what he wanted to see, but that was never the real me.
Not that that’s what’s happening here. I’m just digging deeper inside myself, trying to understand and make sense of my new reality.
I guess it’s the fact that my body is running hotter and colder than it ever has before.
I’ve never felt my insides tighten like this, never ached so wildly, never felt like it’s impossible to catch my breath.
It’s more than just the whiskey, the rope, and the illicit thrill of this. That’s all just an illusion. Well, maybe the whiskey took the edge off, but surely to freaking goodness, it’s not that powerful.
The rest is just me.
My body. And whatever being this close to Odin, is doing to it.
I force my lips apart so I can breathe. I can calm my racing heart and the heat spiraling through my veins, and the relentless ache that’s now settled somewhere near my ribs. I can choose all of that because I’m the one in control of my thoughts, hormones, and my body.
But that’s before I squirm just a little, to hoist myself up higher and get on with the whole fake photos.
I edge myself a little bit too far to the front, a little bit too hard.
Without my hands, I have almost zero control of the motion.
I take myself by surprise. I catch Odin by surprise too.
I end up swinging almost around to the front of him, crashing directly into the hard bulge in his jeans.
Instead of swinging myself away, I freeze. Full stop. My stomach flips over, but not in the way that grosses me out. Not like it did, pinching and lurching like I’d been gut punched, when I found Preston and my mom.
Part of me wants to press myself closer to this man and let him hold me.
Getting cheated on wasn’t a me problem. There’s nothing wrong with me, but all the same, it’s a blow to my confidence.
That’s not entirely it. Part of me just wants to be close to someone who is warm, smells good, and is pretty darn kind from what I know.
If I’m being honest, my relationship lacked intimacy, and that was a me problem.
I don’t know why I always had to hold something back.
Maybe because of all the times he asked me to change, or give something up, or fit into the mold he needed.
This rough-around-the-edges beast of a man with the softest smile wouldn’t ask me to do that.
He’s the kind of man who would accept me for who I was and get sweet about it, like he was when he talked about his club and the people who make it a family.
This man could accept someone if they were real and like them better for it.
There’s a good chance that I’m being absurd.