Chapter 9
Odin
I know I’m doing exactly the wrong thing, letting base instincts and desires rule me, playing the animal instead of a controlled, collected man.
I’m thinking with my cock, which is so hard that the head is punched into my zipper, jamming the piercing in the head at an angle that isn’t comfortable.
Only a few inches separate Willow from bumping against that iron bulge.
I’m kissing her, but this is as far as it can go.
I need to stop, get my shit together, and insist that we drive back to Hart. Immediately.
I swim my way back to sanity and it’s decided, but then she moans into my mouth, chasing my tongue with hers, a full body shiver vibrating all the way from her body into mine, and I. Am. Dead.
Dead slayed. Dead lost. Dead to reason.
This isn’t about fucking. It’s not just raw and primal. I haven’t gone months since I’ve been laid or anything. I might not have had someone special in my life, a person I’d consider my partner, who I’d want to go through life beside, but there are women and there were plenty of good times.
This is not that.
Just kissing Willow means so much more than getting laid.
She’s not kissing me because she’s horny.
There’s something deeper than mere desire at play.
For a second right before she turned into me and shocked the fuck out of me by pressing her lips to mine, it was like she was seeing straight down to the bottom of me, and I was looking right back into her.
That doesn’t mean that she’s not so intoxicating that I’d gladly give up what little of the soul I have left if it meant having her right now.
Guiding her down on this blanket and shimmying that dress up to reveal all her golden skin.
I’d lick and bite her, suckle her thighs and worship her with kisses before pressing my mouth to that sweetest part of her.
I’d leave her an inch shy of coming, a panting, wrecked, beautiful goddess, before I’d peel the dress over her head and lavish her hard nipples.
I break away before I can let my thoughts take me further.
To do anything more would be to tarnish her.
Not because I think I’m damned or impure or nonsense like that, but because I’m an old man compared to her, and she’s still grieving.
I know she’d never use me as a rebound to get over her hurt, even though I’d be okay with that.
She had ideas about things when she drove down here, but I saw how quickly that faded away for her.
She’s not anything less than genuine right now.
There’s no trap. No expectations. No using me in any way.
All I feel is kindness flowing through her, sweeter than a caramel apple, which is pretty much my favorite treat in the world.
When I pull away, I take in her disheveled hair, flushed cheeks, and ravaged lips. I still have my hand on her shoulder to steady her, and she still has both of hers on mine. Her eyes are blown wide with desire. There’s absolutely no artifice there, but that only makes all of this worse.
I’m not supposed to want her, and in no world, is she ever supposed to want a scarred up, grizzled old man who’s seen the best years of his life pass him by, all when she’s just starting hers.
I feel like a creep just touching her. Like I’m tainting something pure, meant for far greater things than I could ever even dream of. I’m stealing her time just by being here with her. Stealing her effort. She went to a great deal of it to plan this for me, all to make me feel special.
She tastes like hot summer days drenched in wine and freedom, like fresh air and open skies.
She smells like watermelon and mountain streams, like crisp leaves, fresh pines, and earthy moss.
I watched her dance and twirl, splash in the water, and lose herself entirely.
I was privileged to be able to capture those moments, where she bared her soul unabashedly, knowing all the while how rare of an experience it was that I was playing witness to.
All of that, combined with her natural beauty, her soft curves, her sparkling deep blue eyes, delicate features painted into being, has me at a loss.
I don’t know how to stop this.
I don’t know if I want to, especially not when she’s looking at me with the same genuine need that I feel. Telling her that she doesn’t know her own mind would be rude, and I know that she’d scoff at anything I could offer about me being too old.
Next to her, I feel like a mere mortal while she’s a goddess, but I know that she’d also dismiss that with a scoff and an easy laugh. She’d probably pick up that cupcake, ram it into my mouth to shut me up, then lick the sweet icing off my mouth.
Fuck.
If I wasn’t so hard that my whole body aches straight to my temples, I am now.
She’s known me less than a day, but this woman already has my number. She doesn’t try arguing with me.
She knows what she wants. She eases back on the blanket.
She never tears her eyes from my face as she slips the straps of her dress down over her shoulders.
It’s stretchy fabric and it peels away from her breasts, revealing pert breasts and hard nipples that has my cock leaking all over my boxers.
There’s zero room in my jeans for anything anymore.
My zipper is more than just a small bite of pain.
She grasps the box my birthday cupcake is in. She takes it out, ridiculously careful not to ruin it, before she slams it straight into her chest. My mouth falls open to protest, especially as she smears it all over her breasts.
I would never have pegged her for a tease.
I thought she’d be shy, not bold like this.
Not wild and fun. She slicks her index finger through the icing and cake mess before bringing it to her mouth and sucking all that sugar off her fingertip.
It emerges from her mouth, glistening with her own saliva.
I’m frozen in place, my mouth watering for that sweet treat that I wasn’t going to eat because cake isn’t my thing. It’s my thing now. It’s really my fucking thing.
She arranges herself on the blanket, her golden hair fanned out so far past the edge that it rests on the moss. It will be full of debris if she moves at all. She’ll look like a wood nymph.
She turns her face, cracking an eye open. “You had best come and clean me up before the insects and the bears get me. That wouldn’t be fun at all.”
“You could go clean up… in the stream.” I can’t believe I even get the words past my clenched up throat, and they’re coherent yet.
“I could. Is there a part deep enough for swimming? Or should I just throw myself into it and wallow like a pig in mud? That might be fun too. Hmm.”
Why does the thought of her, dripping wet and covered in muck, send shivers of pleasure spiking through my bloodstream?
“If you wait any longer, this is going to get weird. I might have to lick it all off myself. Do you think that I could get my own breast into my mouth? I don’t know. They’re sort of on the small side.”
Fucking Christ.
I surge forward, shooting off the edge of the blanket.
I sink down to my knees in the moss, but the only part of her that I touch is her feet.
They’re so delicate and tiny, perfect just like the rest of her.
I take one in my hand, and only then do I realize how hard I’m trembling.
She sits up, her breasts smeared in cake, so fucking tantalizing.
They rise and fall with breaths she’s trying to control to keep them even, but they betray her excitement anyway.
Her dress pools around her waist and her golden hair flows over her shoulders.
She extends a hand and buries it in my hair, tugging me closer, but when I don’t rock forward, she cups my face, worry tugging at her smile.
“It’s okay. I want you to touch me.”
“I don’t mean to say that you don’t know your own mind.”
“I know.”
“It’s just that, I’m almost fifty.”
Her smile breaks wide again, the corners of her indigo eyes crinkling with it.
“You’re forty-eight. I’m currently covered in your birthday cupcake, and I did plan this surprise and all, so I know how old you are.
Your age isn’t going to change how much I want you.
It’s not going to ruin my life. It won’t hurt me.
I might long to be back here, in this space and in this moment, but that’s just what makes it real and special.
It would hurt me not to have this with you.
Will it hurt you, wanting this, knowing that I still have to leave? ”
It’s been a long time since anyone looked at a man like me and treated me like I have tenderness to give.
Not that I’m seen as a lump of meat at the club or anything.
We’re all treated like human beings. But the guys treat me like a brother.
Some, more like a father figure, or a way older brother to look up to.
It’s been my honor to try my best to fill that role in a way that does me proud.
For sure, no one comes to me for sappy shit.
No love advice, no talk about feelings, no confessions of the heart.
I’d have shit all to offer on that front.
I don’t know that anyone has ever looked at me the way Willow is looking at me now. Her gaze is like a knife, cutting through old scars and layers, peeling me down to the tender core, revealing thoughts and feelings to me that I didn’t even know were there.
I can think of one word for the way that I’m holding her foot right now, my thumb gently stroking over the arch. Intimacy.