Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Emma
I sit there alone, watching the fire burn down. The snow keeps falling.
The thaw starts slow—fat droplets sliding off the eaves. The crunch of melting snow pulling away from the roof. Daylight cutting through the fog of the storm.
I sit by the fire, knees hugged to my chest, pretending not to watch him. He’s at the table, hunched over his phone again. Same messages. Same silence.
He hasn’t told me what kind of job could pull him across an ocean in the middle of winter. In the middle of this.
I sip lukewarm tea and ask before I can talk myself out of it.
“What kind of jobs do you take, Owen?”
His thumbs stop moving, but his eyes don’t lift.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
He finally looks at me. The room feels smaller when he does. More dangerous.
“Who’s asking?”
My pulse skips. I make a show of shrugging. “The girl you’re fucking.” I try to play it off as teasing, flirting even, but the words hang between us, raw and biting and a little desperate.
His jaw tightens. “That’s not what this is.”
“No?” I ask, my voice too light. “Because it feels like that sometimes.”
He stands and walks over slow, kneeling in front of me, hands on either side of the chair. I can smell cedar and smoke and something darker underneath.
“You want answers?”
I nod, my heart hammering.
“I do work that pays well and keeps people safe. I take contracts. I disappear when I’m told. I show up when it matters. That’s all you need to know.”
So… illegal shit.
It’s not enough. What is he hiding from me?
But it’s the only version he’s willing to give me.
The silence stretches. Water drips from the gutter outside. Somewhere, snow sloughs off the roof with a heavy thud.
I don’t press again, but the weight of it lingers between us.
He starts to move away. I stop him with a toe hooked behind his knee. He looks back with a warning in his stare.
I tilt my head and smile like it doesn’t feel as if I’m flailing and trying to hold onto what I want so desperately.
“You always this dramatic when someone asks what you do for a living?”
He huffs once. Not a laugh, but close.
I stretch and yawn… long, lazy, teasing.
“Well,” I say, dragging the word out, “I guess I don’t care what you do as long as you come back in one piece. And don’t get blood on the sheets.”
His gaze sharpens.
“You think this is a feckin’ joke?”
“Little bit. You always took everything so damn seriously.” I shrug, knowing I’m pushing every one of his damn buttons. “Maybe lighten up a feckin’ bit, eh?”
His huge, rough, sexy-as-sin hands anchor on his hips. “You think you’re cute?”
“Sometimes.”
“You think mouthing off is gonna feckin’ save you?”
He grabs my ankle and yanks me down in one swift pull.
I gasp as my back hits the rug, legs tangled in the blanket, arms flailing. “Hey!”
He’s on top of me before I can move, pinning me down like he did in the snow. I bite back a squeal and a giggle because I have him exactly where I want him, and something tells me he’s not bothered by that.
“You want to play, little Emma?” he growls.
My pulse spikes. My thighs clench.
I grin. “Depends. What’s the punishment?”
He flips me fast, and my cheek presses to the rug. His knee parts my thighs. His hand lands hard across my ass.
A sharp slap. Then another. Heat blooms under my skin.
Oh fuck yes.
I moan.
“Count,” he says, his voice low.
Eeek. Count?
“One,” I say with a choked breath.
His palm cracks again.
“Two…”
“Louder.”
“Three.” I gasp, squirming.
He bends close, his breath scalding my ear.
“You throw snowballs, you mouth off, and now you tease me about blood and sheets?”
Another hard spank that makes my clit throb.
“You think you can get away with that?”
“Maybe,” I whisper.
“Not today.”
He yanks the leggings down to my knees. My heart thunders in my chest when I’m bared to him, and cold air licks across my skin. His hand kneads the sore, heated skin before striking again. This time lower, rougher, catching the top of my thigh.
My body jolts. Heat rushes between my legs. I’m so fucking wet, so fucking needy, my voice tangled in a moan.
“Four.”
I arch back into him. Shameless. Desperate.
“Look at you,” he murmurs. “So fucking wet from a little discipline. You like being handled like this, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Like being used like my filthy little toy?”
Owen’s dirty talk is the foreplay I didn’t know I needed. I can’t even think straight, words tumbling out of my mouth just to keep him going.
“Yes. Mmm.”
His fingers slide between my thighs, finding just how soaked I am. He groans, low and ragged.
“Fuck, Emma. You’re soaked. Dripping. You want to be fucked like the dirty girl you are?”
“Yessss.”
He pulls me up onto my knees and yanks the rest of my clothes off like they need to go yesterday. My cheek’s still pressed to the rug, my body burning.
“Say it again,” he growls, gripping my ass just right.
“I want to be fucked like a dirty girl. Like your dirty girl.”
His growl is animalistic when he reaches into his pocket and, to my surprise, pulls out one of my handmade coupons and flips it around to show me. “Cashing this one in.”
His eyes flash at me, halfway between wanton sadist and sexy lover. “Beg.”
“Please. Please fuck me. I need it. I need you to ruin me. Please, Owen,” I plead, pouring every ounce of want into my desperate begging.
He doesn’t make me wait. Not this time.
He slams into me hard and deep, stretching me, dragging a cry from my throat. His grip bruises my hips. Each thrust brutal, relentless.
“You want to be filled, lass? Used? You want my cock to make you forget your own fucking name?”
“Yes, god—yes.”
“You like being bent over like a whore, don’t you?”
I choke on a moan. “Yes. I love it. I love it when you fuck me like this.”
His hand slides around to my throat. Not tight, just there. A claim.
“You’re mine,” he growls. “No one else gets to see you like this. No one else hears these sounds. You come for me, baby. No one else.” His voice is hoarse and thick with arousal and something I can’t quite name. “Tell me you’re mine.”
“Yours. Only yours.”
He pounds into me until I’m shaking. Until my body gives out and I collapse into the rug, gasping. He follows, coming with a curse, emptying into me.
His forehead meets my back, and his arms surround me. My cheeks are wet. I don’t know when I started crying.
He doesn’t let me go, just pulls me into his lap, wrapping the blanket around us.
The snow’s still melting. Every drop feels like a grain of sand in an hourglass.