Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
OLIVIA
I trail behind Rhett up the narrow staircase behind Wild Coyote, listening to each step creak as we climb. A spark of anticipation catches when I see a closed wooden door at the top of the stairs, and my focus zeros in on the simple black knob.
When Rhett reaches the top, he turns around to face me over the shoulder that bears the strap of a dark backpack, his gray eyes glittering with the reflection of the wall sconce beside him. He doesn’t say anything, and it prompts me to ask, “Is this where you bring all your girls?”
He smirks, but the curve of his mouth slips away just as quickly. “You’d be the first.”
I don’t believe him for a second.
“I need you to understand something,” he says quietly. “You can leave at any time. You can . . . stop this at any time, if you?—”
“Rhett,” I say.
But he keeps talking. “Tell me that you will. If you need to.” His tone is insistent. “Tell me that you’ll stop this and leave if you need to. I’ll take you home, no questions asked, and we can never talk about any of it again.”
I nod, mouth dry. “I will. I promise.”
His stare lingers for a lifetime before he turns back to the door, unlocking it with a small key he produces from his pocket. I follow him inside, the smell of warm spice and stale dust enveloping me—it’s like stepping into another world. The apartment is a small studio, with a kitchenette and bathroom to the right and a bed shoved into the corner on the left. The blankets are rumpled, clearly recently slept in, but the room is cold.
It looks lived in, but it feels empty. Deserted.
Rhett must see the question on my face. “My grandpa had it built on top of the bar decades ago. I think he used it to sleep off the late nights he spent working downstairs.” He shrugs. “My family never really used it. But I started sleeping here on and off a few years ago.”
“Why?” I look around, eyeing the sheer curtains that hang from the single small window, embroidered with roses. The knotted hardwood floors creak with each slow step I take. It’s beautiful but ghostly. The cozy warmth I felt at the ranch—even outside the big beautiful house—doesn’t seem present here.
I find Rhett staring at me, face unreadable. “It’s quiet” is all he says. “Do you want a drink?”
I nod, nerves spiking as my gaze catches back on the bed.
Rhett swings the bag he pulled from the bike off his shoulder, dropping it on a narrow dresser pressed up against the wall. He unzips it and pulls out a bottle of whiskey and a single plastic cup.
After pouring about a shot’s worth into the cup, he hands it to me. And then he leans against the wall, a picture of patience, and waits.
My fingers tingle as I tip the cup to my lips and drink it all in a single swallow.
His mouth twitches, eyes sliding down my neck.
“Another?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “That was just to calm your nerves. I can feel your heart pounding from over here.”
“Oh.” I smile around the burn in my throat.
He pushes off the wall, bottle still in hand, and closes the distance between us in two long strides. “My turn,” he says, still eyeing my throat. He lifts the bottle between us and I think he’s going to drink straight from it, but then he tips the neck of it in my direction and whiskey spills over my bottom lip and chin. Down my neck. Into the front of my dress.
And then he’s on me.
I barely register the thud of the bottle before his hands grip my hips, hard , pulling me toward him as he bends to lick me chest to chin. Lapping the whiskey off my skin with a low, rumbling groan. He sucks against me with wet lips, chasing open-mouthed kisses with more of his tongue, and I fucking melt .
Dropping the cup to the floor, I lift my hands to his face, tunneling my fingers into his thick, black waves as he buries his face in my throat. His grunt is sharp as he finds my lips, and I swear he wants to swallow me whole with the way he licks into my mouth.
He pulls away, heart flying against mine. “Breathe,” he orders. And I suck in air, completely unaware that I’d been depriving myself of it. His eyes dance across my face, and he looks . . . almost panicked. “I don’t . . . I don’t normally kiss on the mouth,” he says, voice low. Shaky.
I nod, careful to hold attention to the words. “Okay. We don’t have to?—”
I’m cut off by another searing kiss, one that has us both pressing further into each other, desperate for something to hold on to. He pivots to pin me against the nearest wall—his favorite place to trap me—and I open my lips to let him in, hearing the deep groan that climbs up his throat as his tongue slides against mine again. His hands are flighty against my body, quick flares of pressure before release as they travel to new places, like he’s not able to get what he wants fast enough.
My stomach swoops with something silky as my ribs tighten.
No one has ever been this desperate for me.
Or this rough .
He must finally regain control over the operation of his hands, because they coordinate together and curl around the backs of my thighs, lifting me until our waists align. I wrap my legs around his middle, squeezing tight, and barely feel the loss of direction as he moves us.
It’s not until I feel myself falling that I gasp out my surprise, my shoulders hitting something soft before the rest of my spine follows. I open my eyes and find myself on the bed, angled a bit diagonally. The scent of clean linen and lilac surrounds me from the soft comforter, and it settles some of the raw emotion. Rhett’s standing over me, eyes roaming, chest heaving. “Do you trust me?” he asks, raspy and unfocused.
“Yes.” I don’t even blink. I think it surprises him, but it’s hard to tell for sure because he’s reaching for the backpack. When he pulls the rope out, a replica of the one attached to Champ earlier, my body bursts with pleasure. I sigh out a breathy whine, a sound I’ve never heard from my own lips.
He smiles. “You want this.” It’s not a question, and I don’t give him an answer. When he bends himself over me to steal another kiss, I whine again as the rope drags up my knee. Glides along the inside of my thigh.
“Rhett,” I whisper, closing my eyes at the scratch of it against my skin.
He rumbles out something I don’t quite catch, lost in the trail the rope is blazing up my leg. He drags the end of it higher, over the hem of my dress, my ribs, until it dangles along my throat. Collecting both wrists with his free hand, he moves them high above my head and then uses the rope to fasten them to the iron frame of the textured headboard. While he works, I take in the detail, the intricate carvings of horses and cowboys giving chase.
Once he’s satisfied with the knot, he stands to his full height and looks at me, pleased. His eyes catch mine and he asks, “Is this okay?”
I’ll admit, a small trace of fear winds its way through me. But it’s not Rhett—not at all. I’ve just . . . I’ve never been in a position like this, at the mercy of someone. I don’t know what comes next, having zero frame of reference for what to expect. And his words from earlier come creeping back in.
I’m a little worried it’ll be too much for you.
Is this what he’d meant?
But if I’m really honest, I can also admit that nothing has ever excited me more. It’s what drives my eager nod. To whisper “Yes please” in a way that reveals my desperation.
He hooks his hands behind my knees and yanks until the rope pulls taut and my hands hang suspended in the air half a foot above the mattress. Dropping to his knees, he shoves my dress up around my waist and skims his fingers over my underwear, tracing along the whirls of lace. “So pretty,” he mumbles before pulling them down my legs.
My cheeks burn hot at the way he looks and looks and looks . I’ve never had anyone so blatantly absorb my body like this, the thoughts rushing through my mind oscillating between blinding lust and heady regret. I study his face carefully, looking for any sign of what he’s thinking, but all he does is look at me.
“Rhett,” I plead.
He closes his eyes, takes a minute, and then asks, “Are you real, Olivia?”
The question hangs over us, too bright to look at directly. My mind spins as I try to form an answer, but he lets me off the hook when he leans forward and licks .
I yelp, instinctively pulling against the rope. But his knot holds true, and when he cups my ass to press his face deeper into me, I’m completely defenseless against his mouth’s assault.
“Rhett,” I gasp, frantic. No man has ever done this to me before. I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing. “I don’t . . . I don’t know?—”
He stops immediately, his mouth leaving my body. “You don’t like it?”
“ No , I do. I really do.” My words sputter through shaky breaths. “I just . . . I’ve never?—”
“Ah,” he rumbles, understanding. A dark smile transforms his face. “Olivia, any man worth a damn will give you pleasure in all the ways you want it.” He darts his tongue out for a long, languid stroke, and the rope tugs once more. “He won’t stop until you get it, no matter how long it takes or how hard he has to work for it.” Another lazy stretch of his tongue, this time circling around the bundle of nerves that has me bucking off the bed. “I’m going to help you find all the ways you like to be pleased. We’re going to learn together.”
And then he lifts my hips, burying his face into me.
I’m a boneless, mindless mess of flesh and bones, so devoid of thought that there’s no agency over the curses and shouts that flow from my mouth, no regard for the bar full of people—including two of Rhett’s brothers—right beneath us. The way he works me is an art form, his unhurried licks and sucks winding me higher and higher until I feel like I’m floating outside my body. I start to flutter, clenching around nothing, so wound tight with a desperate need for more so I can crest the edge of this cliff and fucking fly.
“Be good, peaches,” Rhett tells me, feeling my tension. “Don’t come. Not yet.”
I suck in air as frenzy takes over. He must not understand that I can’t come, that he’s playing my body into a crescendo that it can’t reach without just a little more . . .
It’s not until he whispers a soft and filthy “Good girl,” plunging a finger in and curling it to wield the first wave of my orgasm, that I realize he’s been toying with me on purpose.
I’m still soaring when he stands, when the words leave his glistening lips. “I want to fuck you, Olivia, and I want to feel you when I do. I don’t want to use a condom.” His voice is assertive and strong, but the question in his eyes is real. “Can I fuck you the way I want to?”
I’m not capable of much thought at the moment, but something about his words still snags. “Does that line always work?”
His eyes sharpen. “Line?” he asks, shaking his head. I watch his intense focus scan along my ribs. My thighs.
“You know . . . with other girls.”
Something fractures through the light shining in his eyes. “It’s not a line, Olivia.” He inhales sharply, wrapping a warm hand around my shin, dragging it higher. “I might want to fuck you bare, but don’t think for a second it’s not another first for me.”
A first . Maybe he’s really never had a girl up here before. The weight of that truth prickles along the base of my neck. He’s going to respect my answer either way—I know it without a doubt. But I want to give him this. To see him come as undone as he’s making me feel, especially if he’s trading some of his firsts for mine. It’s not like I’m not on birth control. I tilt my chin up and stare right at him. “You can fuck me however you want to, as long as you do it right now .”
His pants are off in under ten seconds and he’s on me in another two. His nose grazes along my jaw as he inhales deeply. “You smell so good. You know that?”
“Peaches,” I say, smiling. Happy to tell him I know.
I feel him grin against my cheek. A small nod. “Peaches.” He bites into my neck when he pushes into me, barely making it inside an inch before there’s simply no more room. “ Fuck ,” he hisses, utterly, painfully still, panting against my collarbone.
My pulse skitters beneath his lips.
“I don’t—I’m not—” I babble before Rhett shushes me, pressing a warm finger hard into my lips.
“You can take it,” he murmurs, the soft tone of his voice a clear offset from the second hard thrust he spears into me, slipping in another inch. I think I might rip in half from the delicious pressure of it, at once painful and impossibly magnificent. He kisses me sweetly, tenderly, before he rolls another hard slam of his hips. “You can take me, can’t you?”
On the next thrust, I cry out.
Again . Another inch.
“Tell me you can take it.”
A tear slips out the corner of my eye, and I’d be embarrassed if I wasn’t mush-brained. As it stands, all I can do is mumble out a half-hearted plea for more, needing to feel him deeper.
Rhett kisses me again, lips wrapping around the hinge of my jaw. “Such a good girl,” he murmurs. “So sweet.”
Hearing his praise a second time sends me into another dizzying spiral. I come around him, mouth wide in a silent scream. He presses more soft kisses all over my face: my eyelids, my nose, the corners of my mouth. Tender and rewarding and so pure.
He doesn’t give me much time to come down from it before he pulls out and flips me over, the rope biting into my wrists as it makes a full twisting rotation. His knees bracket around mine and close my legs together, and I’m almost scared this is over. But then I feel the head of his hard length nudge against my ass as he palms both cheeks to spread them wide before settling himself between them.
And then he spits . Wipes his saliva over himself. Over me.
He starts to move again, thrusting—not inside me, but between the fleshy muscle of my ass. His fingers sink deep into my skin as he works himself over and over again. I concentrate on the way he grips me, pushing himself between my cheeks as his hips rock forward with every thrust. The sounds of his breaths turn sharp and wild as he seems to blow a lid off his need, chasing a release that’s right there for him to find.
“You’re so pretty, peaches,” he says somewhere above me. I can’t see anything from this angle, but I feel everything . “Your skin, I can’t?—”
He grunts, his movement sputtering as if he’s surprised himself, and I feel his release paint the length of my back. He drops his forehead between my shoulder blades, his weight settling over me, and it takes him several long minutes to regain control of himself. Before he’s able to move, to breathe with a steadier rhythm.
His fingers wind through my hair as he works to calm himself, gently brushing it along the tops of my shoulders as his lips press against my spine, and my skin ignites in a riot of goosebumps from the featherlight feel of it. Eventually he pushes off me, pulling the end of the rope loose from where it’s anchored to the bed. And then he grabs a washcloth from the bathroom, drowning it in warm water.
The way he uses it to clean me up is almost reverent. Like he knows I can hardly think straight, let alone make the necessary moves to help myself. When he’s done, he pulls his boxers on and curls himself around me underneath the covers, scooping me closer into him. I almost laugh when I realize that, besides the loss of his jeans, we’re both still nearly fully clothed. “Do you feel this?” he asks, lifting my palm to his chest, pressing it against two buttons of his shirt. “My heart beats so fucking fast for you, Olivia, I feel like I’m dying.”
I can’t help but smile, hiding it beneath his bicep. “Mine beats fast for you too,” I whisper, closing my eyes.
It’s the last thing I remember before I fall asleep.