Chapter 12 Carter
I have Jamie bent over the kitchen counter, one hand fisted in his hair, the other gripping his hip hard enough to leave bruises. He's making sounds that are half growl, half whimper and pushing back against me with a desperation that's rougher than it's been.
"Harder," he says.
I give him harder.
The heat has been relentless, waves crashing over us both without much warning, but there's something different about this round. There’s a sharpness to it that tells me we're coming out the other side. Jamie's body is starting to return to itself. He’s still wanting, still needy, but there’s less of the soft, dreamy surrender that characterized the past few days.
I’ve helped omegas through their heats before and that is new.
Usually heats mean kinkier, harder, rougher.
They’re pure desperation on both sides. For us, it was different and I’m not sure why.
Maybe because we’ve already done the rough stuff.
I don’t know, but the last few days have felt more like mutual worship than anything else.
I yank his head back and bite down on the curve where his neck meets his shoulder. He shudders beneath me, clenching tight, and swears. Yeah, his heat is definitely fading, although we’re still getting plenty of pleasure.
I won't say I miss the tenderness. I won't.
I fuck him through his orgasm and find my own release seconds later, and we stand there panting, still connected, sweat cooling on our skin.
The kitchen is a mess around us—dishes from breakfast still in the sink, an overturned pepper grinder on the floor, a chair knocked sideways at some point during the proceedings.
Jamie straightens slowly, pulling away from me, and I feel the loss of him immediately. He braces both hands on the counter and catches his breath.
"Water," he says.
I get him a glass. He drinks half of it in one long swallow and sets it down.
Jamie turns around, leaning back against the counter, and studies me. His hair is wrecked. My marks are all over his throat and chest. His eyes are clearer than they've been in days.
"I need a shower," he says.
He doesn't invite me to join him. That's new too.
I clean up the kitchen while I listen to the water run. The domestic routine of it is strange. Here I am, washing dishes in my grandmother's cabin, listening to the man who is trying to destroy my career shower in the next room, already thinking about when I'll get to touch him again.
When the water shuts off, I dry my hands and wander to the living room. The fire needs tending. I crouch by the hearth and add another log, watching the flames lick up around the edges.
My phone sits on the coffee table. I've not looked at it in days—the cabin's signal is garbage, which is usually the point, but I'd put it in airplane mode anyway after the first night. Now I find myself glancing at it, wondering what's accumulated in my absence.
I don't pick it up.
Jamie emerges from the bathroom in loose sweats and a t-shirt, toweling his hair. He looks soft like this.
He catches me staring and raises an eyebrow. "What?"
"Nothing." I turn back to the fire. "Just thinking."
"Dangerous habit."
He settles onto the couch, tucking his feet under him, and I watch the flames for another minute before joining him. Not too close. We're both coming back to what we are outside this bubble.
"How are you feeling?" I ask.
"Better. Clearer." He tilts his head back against the cushions, exposing the column of his throat with its map of bruises. "I think the worst has passed."
"Good."
The fire pops and crackles. Outside, the wind has picked up, sending branches scraping against the windows. It's late afternoon and dark already.
The days are short this time of year.
The silence stretches. I stare at the fire, and my mind drifts to one of Jamie’s many media interviews.
It aired two weeks ago. I’d watched it alone in my apartment, bourbon in hand, trying to prepare myself for whatever damage control would be needed.
Jamie filled the frame, in the studio of a show that skews toward our critics.
He was wearing a blue shirt I'd never seen before, and his hair was slightly disheveled in a way that looked artless but wasn't.
He looked good. He always looks good.
"Let's talk about the Crane family specifically," the interviewer had said. "You've faced a lot of criticism for your coverage. People saying it's really about your obsession with Carter Crane the Third, especially after your scent match on the David Glass show."
Jamie's smile was sharp as a blade. "Carter Crane Senior built his career on backroom deals. Carter Crane the Second expanded that into shell companies and offshore accounts. And Carter Crane the Third—"
He paused. His eyes flicked away from the camera for just a second. It was a tell so small I doubt anyone else would catch it.
"Carter Crane the Third is poised to continue the family tradition. Unless someone stops him. And he needs to be stopped."
I remember how my heart stopped.
I know exactly when that interview was recorded.
I know because I had Jamie pressed against a bathroom counter less than an hour before it happened, my hand over his mouth to muffle the sounds he was making while I fucked him from behind.
I dropped him off two blocks from the studio.
I watched him walk away, still flushed, still catching his breath.
And then he went on television and said that.
I’d needed to hear it. I needed the reminder that Jamie Dean was still the ambitious journalist who didn't care how much damage he inflicted on the way to the top.
But now, watching him curled on the couch in my grandmother's cabin, it’s hard to reconcile this soft, heat-dazed Jamie with the one who looks into a camera and speaks with such certainty about my family's supposed crimes.
We’ve not spoken about his supposed expose. Not once since Point of Contention, but I know we’re both feeling the constant heavy awareness that comes with constantly and carefully avoiding a difficult subject.
Maybe I shouldn’t be such a coward.
"Jamie."
He opens his eyes. "Yeah?"
"That interview you did. For the Sophia Artemis Show. A couple weeks ago."
His expression shifts. Just slightly. "What about it?"
My stomach tightens and I feel heat rushing to my skin, but I have to ask. "Do you still feel that way? About me?"
The question hangs between us. Jamie sits up straighter, pulling his feet from under him to plant them on the floor. When he speaks, his voice is careful.
"Why are you asking?"
"Because I want to know." I keep my tone even, neutral, despite the tightness in my chest. "You said I needed to be stopped.
You looked into a camera and told millions of people that I'm a threat that needs to be neutralized.
And then you came here. I gesture vaguely at the cabin, at us.
"So I'm asking. Do you actually believe what you said? "
"I believe in my reporting and I’m tired of having it questioned."
"That's not what I asked."
Jamie's jaw tightens. "Yes. I believe it. The evidence is there, Carter. I didn't make it up."
"You got your facts wrong," I say. Okay, maybe not about Congressman Hartley, but I’ve not investigated that properly yet and it’s not like I’m going to give Jamie fucking Dean extra ammunition to aim at my family. “It’s all supposition.”
Wrong thing to say. I know it the second the words leave my mouth.
Jamie goes very still. "Excuse me?"
"The claims you’ve made don't match the actual—"
"Everything is corroborated by multiple sources."
"Then your sources are wrong."
He's on his feet now, all the softness gone. "My sources aren't wrong. Do you think the Times would have run it if they had any doubts?"
"I think journalists make mistakes." I stand too, because I'm not going to have this argument sitting down. "I'm not saying you lied. I'm saying you might have seen what you wanted to see."
"You're saying I'm incompetent."
"I'm saying you're human."
"No, you’re claiming I’m incompetent." Jamie's voice has gone cold. "And why the fuck are you bringing this up now? What’s the point? There’s no one to see it. Is that your next tactic? Claiming I’m incompetent? Is the ‘Jamie Dean’s just a hysterical omega’ angle not working anymore?”
I don't have a good response to that, because he's right. Warren's campaign isn’t working as well as it was.
"I haven't had anything to do with—"
"Bullshit." Jamie crosses his arms. "You think I can't tell the difference between organic criticism and a coordinated smear campaign?
Someone is paying for promoted tweets calling me an 'obsessed omega.
' Someone is emailing my editors with 'questions' about my sources.
Someone got a former colleague to go on record saying I have 'boundary issues. '"
“For fuck’s sake, Jamie. What did you expect? Did you think we weren’t going to defend ourselves?”
He stares at me. “You defend yourself by proving I’m wrong, asshole. You find actual errors in my work. That’s how you defend yourself. Not by character assassination.”
My silence is an admission.
"I didn't know the extent of it." The excuse sounds weak even to my own ears. "Warren handles that kind of thing. I don't get involved in the details."
"The details." Jamie laughs, but there’s no humor to it. "Someone called my editor's husband to suggest I'd slept with her to get assignments. Is that a detail? Someone left a dead rat in my mailbox. Is that a detail?"
"Jesus." I hadn't known about the rat. "Jamie, I'm sorry. I don’t think that was us.” At least, I don’t think so.
"You don’t think so. That means it’s a possibility. What kind of unethical, crappy campaign are you running, Crane?"
“We don’t send people dead rats.”
“Are you sure?”
No, I’m not sure. It doesn’t sound like something Warren would do. I think, but then whoever it was, was almost certainly motivated by the smears that the Crane family paid for.
"What do you want me to say?"
"Say no!" He throws his hands up. "Say you’d never do that and your family wouldn’t do that. Maybe acknowledge that while you've been fucking me, you’ve also been trying to ruin my life."
I step toward him. “I haven’t forced you to do anything. You didn’t want me to fuck you, all you had to do was not turn up, but you did. Every single time. You can’t expect me to take the blame for that.”
I’ve got him with that one. Finally, an argument I can win. I haven’t forced him into any of this. That’s one thing he definitely can’t hold over me. No one made him turn up to any of the hotel rooms. That was his own choice.
The look of disdain he gives me would be enough to curdle milk. “So I have sex with you and that means it’s okay to trash me in public.”
I feel my own temper flare. “Now, who’s being a hypocrite? I cancelled three fundraisers to be here. I’ve lied to my entire family about where I am. If anyone finds out I spent a week alone with you—"
"What?" Jamie cuts in. "What happens, Carter? You get some bad press? Your family has to spin it? Poor you."
"It would destroy any chance I have at—"
"At what? Following in your father’s footsteps?" His voice has gone venomous. "Maybe that's not such a tragedy."
"You don't know anything about my family."
"I know more than you do, apparently.”
"We should probably not—" I start.
"Not what? Talk about it?" Jamie shakes his head. "Yeah. Maybe we shouldn’t. Look what happens when we do."
He walks to the window, arms wrapped around himself, and stares out at the darkening forest. His shoulders are tense. His reflection in the glass looks hollow. Suddenly, I see his shoulders sag.
"Is that a threat?" he asks quietly.
"What?"
"You said if anyone finds out. About us.
Is that a threat? You'll tell people we're sleeping together to discredit me?
" He turns from the window, and his face has gone pale. "It’ll play right into the story your people have been building? Everyone will think I was so cock-drunk on you that I made it all up for revenge.”
"Jesus, Jamie. No." I'm genuinely appalled. "I would never—"
"Wouldn't you?" He takes a step toward me. "But that’s exactly your current playbook."
"That's not why I brought you here."
"Then why did you? What's the risk to you, exactly?" His voice is rising. "Because from here, it looks like you have all the power in this situation, and I have none."
"You want to play with the big boys," I hear myself say, and I hate the words even as they leave my mouth. "Did you really think there wouldn't be pushback?"
Jamie stares at me. His expression shutters closed.
"Wow," he says quietly. "Okay." He picks up his glass of water from the coffee table and drains what's left of it. Sets it down with too much force. "I should pack."
"The heat isn't fully over—"
"I’ll manage."
He walks past me toward the bedroom. I don't stop him.
I stand in the living room and listen to drawers opening and closing. The soft thud of clothes being shoved into a bag. My hands are shaking.
The fire pops. Outside, the wind howls.
Eventually, Jamie emerges. He's not carrying his bag—just himself, arms crossed, jaw set.
"It's dark," he says. "I'll leave in the morning."
"Fine."
"Fine."
He goes back to the bedroom. I sleep on the couch.
We have sex again in the night. I was right, the heat isn't completely done, and neither of our bodies seem to care about the argument.
I'm lying on the couch when I hear the bedroom door open and see Jamie's silhouette in the doorway.
Neither of us speaks. He crosses the room in the dark, climbs onto me, and takes what he needs.
His nails rake down my chest hard enough to sting.
I grip his hips hard enough to leave finger-shaped bruises. He doesn't look at me when he comes.
After, he gets up and goes back to the bedroom without a word. The door clicks shut.
In the morning, I come up behind him as he is making coffee for his travel mug, and the way he tenses, triggers the heat response in both of us.
I bend him over the counter and fuck him while the coffee maker gurgles through its cycle.
He braces his hands on the granite and takes it in silence—no moans, no whimpers, none of the sounds he made before. Just breathing.
I bite his shoulder when I come. He shoves back against me, grinding, until he finishes too. Then he straightens, pours his coffee without acknowledging what just happened.
"The roads should be clear," I say.
"I know."
He picks up his travel mug and walks to the door. I follow, because I can't let this end with nothing said at all.
"Jamie—"
He stops, hand on the door handle. Doesn't turn around.
"Jamie."
He turns. His expression is blank.
"What?"
I have no idea what to say so I screw it up completely. “You’re wrong, Jamie.”
He rolls his eyes. "Fuck off, Carter."
He opens the door and steps through it. I don’t follow him.