Chapter Fifteen
Noa
“Happy?” Caymen asked when he walked out of the bathroom dressed in the white tank top (my personal preference) and a pair of his new jeans.
“Not yet,” I said. “You need to be fixing something. That’s part of it.”
He snorted a little laugh but walked over to the table, flipped the chair upside down on it, and started to tighten the wobbly leg with a butter knife.
“Like this?”
“Oh, yeah. That’s working,” I agreed. “I mean, it’d be better if you were dirty, but I can work with this.”
He shook his head at me, but he was smiling as he finished the chair and set it back on its legs.
“Hey, babe?” he called when he looked up at me standing there ogling him.
“Yeah?”
“My turn.”
“Your turn?” I asked, head tipping to the side.
“Yeah, my turn,” he said, his voice doing that low, deep thing it did when he was turned on.
“Your… oh! Oh. Okay,” I agreed, feeling a thrill of desire.
It was late that same night, both of us too restless to sleep after having a small meal and cleaning up.
There was no news from the club.
So, well, I decided he needed to dress up for me.
“Noa?”
“Yeah?”
“ Run .”
Oh.
Oh!
Suddenly, the look he’d shot me when I’d cuffed him to the bed and made my way to the door made so much more sense.
It hadn’t been anger. Or even frustration. But it had been oddly charged.
Because I was running.
And he liked to chase.
My belly flipped.
And I turned and bolted toward the front door.
He totally gave me a chance to get away first.
He was longer-legged and faster. He could have had me before I even stepped foot out into the darkness.
But where was the fun in that?
He gave me a head start.
And I tore off down the grass path we were calling the driveway.
I heard it when the door slammed closed.
I couldn’t help but to glance over my shoulder, watching him stand there on the doorstep, a wicked glint in his eye, a smirk tugging at his lips, as he watched me.
I saw the way his muscles tightened just before he broke into a run.
With a hitch in my heartbeat and a strange little squeal, I pushed my legs to carry me faster and faster, remembering to zig and zag like I was taught growing up, since it was much easier to catch someone running in a straight line.
I could hear his footsteps, pounding like thunder. Gaining, no matter how hard I pushed myself.
So I bided my time, waited until he was closer, then shot out to the side and ran back, passing him in the process.
He made a grab, but I stayed just out of reach as I flew back toward the overgrowth on the side of the driveway.
I heard his pleased little chuckle as a shiver in my belly as I leapt over a downed tree limb, while bushes and brambles bit at my calves.
It didn’t matter.
I barely noticed.
All I felt was the way my lungs started to burn, how my thighs ached.
Yet he was still gaining on me.
Branches cracked behind me.
Close.
Way too close.
I shot off to the side, hoping the darkness acted as camouflage as I pushed myself harder still.
It was a fake chase.
But the fight-or-flight instinct kicked in hard, the adrenaline racing through my veins, making my vision tunnel, blurring everything around the edges, making static sting just under the surface of my skin.
My foot caught something—twig, rock, who knew—and I went flying.
I fought the urge to fling my hands out. I was going too fast. When I crashed, I would risk breaking my wrists.
I locked my hands into fists and threw out my forearms.
I went down hard, my knees and elbows burning, breaking open. There was a warm trickle of blood.
I ignored it as I scrambled back up, stumbling for a few feet, then breaking into a run again.
I thought he was still behind me.
But the arms grabbed me from the side, twisting me, and yanking me violently back against his chest.
His breath was hot in my ear.
His hands were crushing.
“Got you,” he hissed in my ear, a little winded, but nothing like how I was panting for breath. “You’re mine now,” he said, reaching down and inching up my skirt.
I could barely suck in a breath, but a moan somehow still escaped me at his rough touch, at the night air kissing my bare skin.
“Caymen,” I whimpered as he grabbed a handful of my ass, squeezing hard.
“Arms up,” he demanded.
I didn’t even think of not obeying as the desire pooled.
He found my wrists in the dark, grabbing them in one hand, then pushing them forward until I felt bark on my palms.
“Hold onto the tree,” he demanded.
I was happy to do as I was told.
I heard the crinkle.
Then felt his hand on my hip.
Before I could suck in a breath to prepare, he was slamming inside me—hard, deep, taking every last inch of me, creating a delicious pinch that had my walls tightening, that had a low, throaty moan escaping me.
If I thought that Caymen against the counter had been uncontrolled, this was him at his most primal.
His fingers bruised.
His thrusts were borderline violent.
His hand grabbed a handful of my hair, using it to keep me from slipping away with the force of his fucking.
And me?
I was drenched.
Shaking.
Moaning.
Overwhelmed.
The first orgasm tore through me, my cries drifting out through the quiet forest.
But Caymen wasn’t done with me.
He used my hair to pull me back against his chest, his hand sliding around to grab my throat, his breath warm in my ear as he kept fucking me.
“You can’t get away from me,” he growled in my ear, making my belly twist deliciously. “I will always catch you,” he said, punctuating each word with one single, hard thrust. A whimper escaped me as my thighs went wobbly. “Understood?”
“Y… yes,” I gasped.
“Now you’re going to come over and over until you’re begging me for mercy.”
Then he set his plan in motion.
The second orgasm had his arm catching me when my legs went too weak to stand on my own.
The third had short, choked whimpers escaping me.
The fourth was completely silent, my whole body seizing up as the pleasure bordered on pain.
“Caymen…”
“Ready to beg?” he asked, teeth nipping my ear.
“Please.”
My head was light.
I was so drenched in sweat that I wasn’t sure how he was still holding onto me.
My nerve endings frayed.
“One more first,” he demanded.
“I can’t.”
“It’s not a choice,” he said.
His hand slid between my thighs, engaging my clit as he fucked me, the clash of our bodies mingling with the harsh rasps of our breaths, and the weird, frantic chirps that were escaping me, my throat too raw from crying out to manage anything else.
“There you go. Good girl,” he murmured as my walls clenched around him over and over.
I swear I damn near blacked out.
Because I couldn’t tell you when or how hard he came, just that when I was finally fully cognizant again, his arms were wrapped tightly around me, holding me up since I was incapable of doing it myself.
“You’re okay,” he murmured, his lips teasing the shell of my ear. “I’ve got you.”
He did.
So I just gave in to the urge to accept his strength, to give my body the time it needed to come back to rights.
“You took it so good for me,” he said, his face nuzzling into my hair, not seeming to care about how sweaty I was.
Little by little, my breathing evened out, my heartbeat slowed, and the strength returned to my legs.
Sensing the shift, Caymen’s arms loosened.
He adjusted my bodice, pressed a kiss to my shoulder, then stepped back.
“How much am I going to hate this walk back?” I asked.
“You lucked out. At some point, you swung back toward the cabin. See?” he asked, holding out an arm.
Sure enough, I could see a light coming from a break in the trees.
“Oh, thank God,” I said, exhaling hard, and starting to walk.
My flip-flop was broken and I was clinging to it with my toes on the slow walk back to the rear door of the cabin.
It wasn’t until I was throwing them away that Caymen’s voice cut through the quiet space.
“ Noa .”
There was something sharp in his tone that had my heartbeat fluttering, worried there was some kind of trap I’d walked right into.
But even as I turned, I found him beelining for me, not reaching for any kind of weapon.
“What are—”
“You’re bleeding,” he said. He gently grabbed my forearm, just under where I was starting to feel the sting of the cuts on my elbow. I’d been a little distracted by the ones on my knees, burning with each step I took. “Why didn’t you tell me you were bleeding?”
There was something soft in his voice, as if it pained him to think I’d suffered in silence. In reality, I’d been distracted enough to temporarily forget all about it.
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. What happened?”
“I fell.”
His brows pinched as he inspected one elbow, then reached for the other.
Then he lowered down in front of me, scrunching up my skirt to inspect my knees.
“Why’d you keep running?” he asked, running the pad of his finger down the outside of my knee. I swear I felt the same sensation slide down my spine.
“You weren’t going to catch me that easily.”
“You’re not supposed to get hurt.” He slowly got back to his feet.
“I’m fine. Really.”
He made some grunt at that, then reached out and scooped me into his arms.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting you cleaned up.”
“Caymen, we’re not both going to fit in that bathroom.”
To that I got another grunt.
It turned out we could. Just barely. And only once he’d set me in the shower enclosure.
He reached for my dress, pulling it up, careful not to snag it on my elbows, before tossing it to the side.
He turned on the water, waited until it was warm, then gently pressed me under the spray.
Then, I kid you not, this man moved close… and washed me.
If you told me a few days ago that I would let a man wash me, I would have laughed in your face. I was a grown woman. I didn’t need someone to lather me up.
But there was something unexpectedly intimate about it, about how careful he was with me, how soft such a hard man could be.
And, well, I did need a shower. I felt gross.
Once they were clean, the cuts stung a little less too. Even as Caymen carefully toweled me off, slid panties up my legs, then a tank over my head, before lifting me up onto the sink counter.
His face was so serious as he located the first aid kit we’d picked up at the store and set out the items to sanitize and treat the cuts.
I reached up, pressing a finger to the parallel lines between his brows.
His gaze flicked over.
“Stop being so serious. It’s not a big deal.”
“It is serious,” he said, using a little tube of saline on each of my knees, then blotting the excess away with gauze. “I don’t want you getting hurt for me.”
“You made up for it,” I reminded him.
I was sore from how well he made up for it.
His lips curved up slightly at that.
“Still. If you’re hurt, I want you to tell me.”
“Caymen, you’re acting like I broke my arm or something. It’s a few scratches. Also, that was more fun than I expected,” I admitted. “But you owe me new flip-flops.”
“Shouldn’t have let you run in them.” He reached for some antibiotic cream and slathered it on the cuts. “It’s probably why you fell.”
“No, that would be the thick underbrush and my determination to make you work for it.”
“You did that,” he agreed. This time, the smile hit his eyes. “You run track in high school or something?”
“Nope. That was pure adrenaline. But I’m thinking maybe I should take up running.”
“Oh, yeah?” he asked, his smile going devilish.
“It might come in handy.”
“It might,” he agreed, placing the last gauze strip on my knee, and securing it with tape.
“I can walk!” I insisted when he scooped me up again.
“Yep.” But he kept carrying me until he set me down on the bed, gently pulled the lightweight blanket over me, then turned the box fan toward me and set it on low. “Now keep your ass here.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, being playful, but something flashed in his eyes that had my chest swooping.
“I’m gonna get cleaned up,” he said, leaning down for a quick, hard kiss, then walking off.
Alone, I pressed a hand to my chest where something warm and heavy had settled.
As I listened to the splash of water in the shower and the white noise of the fan, I had a sneaking suspicion I knew what it was.
Caymen came back out a few minutes later in a pair of basketball shorts, pausing only to grab a gun, both our phones, his wallet, and the car keys to set on the nightstand, before he climbed onto the bed.
Then he turned on his side, snaked an arm across my stomach, and rested his head in at my neck.
The warm sensation amplified as I leaned my head onto his.
And, softly, easily, so unlike me, I drifted off to sleep.
Until the crack of the door kicking open woke us both up.