Chapter 20 After the Kitchen Closes
Nora POV
Jules watched me come down the last step, and the heat in his eyes made me glad I’d worn the skirt.
The overhead light was off. A small lamp threw gold across the countertops and over the dinner he’d made for me. The trout, fresh bread, and glasses of wine mattered less than the care he’d taken with all of it.
“You wore a skirt,” he said.
“I own one.” I crossed the kitchen floor, aware of the cold wood under my bare feet and the heat coming off the stove. “Don’t make it a thing.”
“I’m absolutely making it a thing.” Jules pulled my chair out.
The grin was there, but something ran beneath it, an alertness I hadn’t seen during our working hours.
He was nervous. Jules Duquette, who could talk his way through any tense meal or awkward silence, was nervous because I’d put on a skirt and come downstairs with my hair wet.
I sat. He sat across from me and poured more wine into his own glass, though it was already half full.
“The trout is lemon butter,” he said. “Green beans with garlic. Bread’s the same dough I started this morning.”
“You planned this before I said yes.”
“I planned the bread before you said yes. The rest I planned after.” He picked up his fork, set it down again. “Eat. Tell me if it’s good.”
I cut into the trout. The fish was perfect, flaky and clean with the butter just short of browned, and the lemon cut through without drowning it. The beans had char on their edges. The bread tore soft and yeasty, still faintly warm from the oven.
“It’s good,” I said.
“How good?”
“Better than anything I’ve eaten in Pine Harbor. Don’t tell Bette I said that.”
Jules leaned back in his chair and let the grin spread. The lamplight caught the scabbed cut above his left eye and the bruise along his jaw, both souvenirs from a fight he’d entered to protect me. He hadn’t mentioned them once.
We ate. He told me about the worst meal he’d ever cooked for Wade’s pack, a pot roast so badly burned that Hank had quietly scraped it into the trash and made oatmeal.
I told him about the time I’d rebuilt a carburetor for Gordon’s truck and accidentally swapped two vacuum lines, turning the engine into a backfiring mess that scared every wolf within a quarter mile.
Jules laughed with his whole body, head tipped back and eyes shut, and the sound filled the kitchen the way his cooking filled the house.
The wine went down easy. We split the last of the bread. Jules cleared the plates and washed them at the sink while I dried, standing so close our elbows bumped, and neither of us moved away.
When the last dish was put up and the towel hung on its hook, Jules turned toward me. The crooked grin was gone. His expression was open and direct. He wanted me and had decided not to hide it behind charm.
“Now what?” he said.
I didn’t answer with words. I stepped back until my hips met the edge of the heavy pine worktable and pushed myself up to sit. The skirt rode above my knees. I spread them and hooked my fingers into Jules’s belt loops and pulled him forward until he stood between my thighs.
His hands found my waist. Mine went to the sides of his face, thumbs tracing the bruised jaw, and I kissed him.
This kiss was different from yesterday’s.
Yesterday had been a declaration, something said out loud for Rafe and the cold October air and the open bond to witness.
Tonight was only us. I caught his lip in my teeth and felt him grin against my mouth, and then I was grinning too, a laugh caught between us.
“You taste like wine,” he said.
“You taste like butter.”
“Romantic.”
“Shut up and kiss me again.”
He did. His hands slid from my waist to my ribs and up along my sides, following the fitted shirt until his thumbs found the curve beneath my breasts.
I pulled back far enough to look at him, his dark eyes gone wide and focused, and unbuttoned his shirt from the collar down.
He was lean under it, olive skin over hard muscle, a body shaped by hauling boats, splitting wood and work that asked everything of him.
I pressed my palm flat against his chest and felt his heart hammering.
“Still nervous?” I said.
“Terrified.”
“Good.” I dropped my hand lower and stroked him through his jeans. He was already hard, the shape of him straining against the denim, and when I ran my fingers along his length he made a sound low in his throat that sent heat flooding between my legs.
Jules kissed me harder. His hands cupped my breasts through the shirt, thumbs circling my nipples until they peaked, and I arched into his touch.
The playfulness was still there in the way he nipped my jaw and murmured something in French that sounded filthy, but the heat was winning.
I could feel it in his grip, in the quickening of his breath, in how his hips pressed forward against my hand.
I slid off the table. Jules reached for me, but I dropped to my knees on the kitchen floor before he could pull me back up.
“Nora.”
“Yeah.” I opened his belt, then the button, then the zipper. He was thick and flushed dark when I freed him, and I wrapped my fingers around his base and looked up. “I want to.”
His hand settled on my hair, not pushing. I took him into my mouth.
The sound he made was worth everything. A ragged exhale that turned into my name. I took him deeper, working my tongue along his underside, finding the rhythm that made his thighs tense and his fingers tighten in my hair. He tasted like clean skin and salt and want.
“Fuck,” Jules whispered. His hips moved in shallow, involuntary thrusts, controlled but desperate enough to tell me he was close. “Nora, I’m going to—”
I didn’t pull back. I gripped his hip with one hand and took him as deep as I could.
His hand tightened in my hair as his body went rigid, and my name broke from him twice while he came in my mouth.
I swallowed, licked him clean, and sat back on my heels feeling powerful and aching and so wet I could feel it on my inner thighs.
Jules’s chest heaved. He stared down at me, stunned and hungry.
Then he moved.
He pulled me to my feet, lifted me onto the table in one motion, and pushed my skirt to my hips before I’d finished catching my breath. His mouth was on mine, tasting himself on my tongue, and his hand was between my legs, fingers sliding through the slick heat he found there.
“Jesus Christ, you’re soaked,” he said against my mouth.
“Your fault.”
He pushed two fingers inside me and curled them, wiping my mind clean.
His thumb found my clit and pressed and rolled while his fingers worked, and I grabbed his shoulders and held on because the table had stopped feeling solid beneath me.
The pleasure built, each pass tighter than the last. Jules watched my face with fierce concentration, changing the curl of his fingers at each gasp.
“Right there,” I managed. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t stop. He added a third finger and curled harder and rubbed his thumb in a rhythm that matched my pulse, and I went over with my mouth on the round of his shoulder, my teeth sinking into muscle while my body clenched around his hand.
The orgasm shuddered through me, heavy and long, and I felt Jules’s free hand on the small of my back, holding me upright while I shook.
By the time my breathing steadied enough for me to open my eyes, he was hard again, thick and insistent against my thigh. The grin was back but different now, edged with hunger.
“Already?” I said.
“You bit me,” he said, like that explained everything. Maybe it did.
Jules pulled my shirt over my head and laid me back along the table.
The pine was smooth and cool against my shoulder blades, and his hands were hot on my thighs as he spread my legs and pulled my hips to the edge.
He draped my legs over his shoulders, lined himself up, and pushed inside me slowly, all the way.
He filled me differently than Wade had, finding angles and depth I hadn’t expected and making my breath come out in a stuttering gasp.
“Good?” he asked.
“Move.”
He moved. Long, deliberate strokes that pulled almost all the way out before sliding home, and every thrust sent the table creaking against the floor.
I gripped the table’s edge above my head and arched my back and let him watch what he was doing to me, because the look on Jules Duquette’s face while he fucked me was something I intended to remember.
His hand knocked a cast-iron pan from the edge.
It hit the floor hard enough to make us both freeze before the laughter hit.
Jules dropped his forehead to my calf and shook with it, and I pressed my hand over my mouth and laughed until my stomach hurt, all while he was still buried inside me and my legs were still draped over his shoulders.
“Real smooth,” I said.
“I’ll put it back later.”
He resumed. Slower now, rolling his hips in a way that ground against my clit on every forward stroke. I reached for his hair, got a fistful of his curls, and pulled him closer. The angle changed and deepened, and the laughter burned off into something raw.
“More,” I said.
Jules braced one hand on the table beside my hip and drove into me until the table walked.
Deep, heavy thrusts, and his other hand found my breast and rolled the nipple between his fingers.
I knew the open bond was carrying every second of this across the yard to the bunkhouse where Rafe lay on his cot.
I knew he could feel my body responding to another man, the way he’d felt it with Wade. I didn’t slow down. I didn’t want to.
The second orgasm built from the base of my spine.
Jules felt it in the way I tightened around him, and his rhythm faltered into something harder and less controlled.
I pulled his hair until he looked at me, and I held his gaze when it hit.
My back lifted off the table and my legs tightened around his shoulders, and the pleasure tore through me so hard I lost sight of the ceiling.
Jules followed. He thrust once more, deep enough to make my teeth click, and came inside me in silence, his eyes on mine and his mouth open. His body shuddered against my thighs while his hands gripped the table until the pine creaked.
The kitchen was very still afterward. Jules stayed inside me until our breathing began to settle.
He lowered my legs gently and bent over me, pressing his forehead between my breasts.
His breath came hot and uneven against my skin.
I ran my fingers through his curls, damp with sweat, and stared at the ceiling.
The cooling pipes ticked. Wind off the lake rattled a window somewhere upstairs.
Wade’s footsteps crossed his room and went quiet.
Wade knew where we were. He’d felt it through the bond, or heard us, or both. The knowledge sat in my chest without guilt. He had told me my choices were mine, and he’d meant it.
I sat up. Jules straightened, cupped my face in both hands, and gave me a lingering, thorough kiss.
“We should clean up,” I said.
“We should.”
We stayed there for another minute. Then Jules retrieved the fallen pan and set it in the sink while I wiped the table down with a damp cloth and straightened the chairs.
We washed the wineglasses side by side at the sink, the way we’d washed the dinner plates earlier, except now my legs were unsteady and his shirt was still unbuttoned and the kitchen smelled like sex and lemon butter.
I turned off the lamp. Jules took my hand in the dark, and we climbed the stairs together. We went to my room.
In the narrow bed, Jules pulled me against him with my back to his chest and his arm across my waist. His breathing evened out before mine did. I lay in the dark, listening to the house and feeling the bonds layered through my body.
Wade’s was close and golden, a low fire on the other side of the wall, awake and aching but not angry.
Rafe’s stretched thin across the cold yard to the bunkhouse, carrying his leftover arousal and his humiliation.
Jules’s breath was warm against the back of my neck. His hand rested over my hip, easy and possessive in sleep. We shared no bond. I had wanted him, and he had met me with the same hunger.
Outside, Lake Superior threw itself against the rocks. The October wind pressed at the window frame. The western road remained under guard, and in the bunkhouse, Rafe lay with whatever the bond had given him.
I closed my eyes and let Jules hold me and fell asleep without deciding anything at all.