Chapter 12
Willow
We make it to the truck. Barely. His mouth is on my neck as we walk, and my hand is in the back pocket of his jeans. We’re not being subtle, and I don’t care.
The back seat of a truck is not built for this. It’s cramped, and I bang my knee on the door handle, and he hits his head on the roof. Neither of us stops. The urgency has stripped away anything as civilized as logistics.
I yank his shirt over his head. His chest is beautiful—tanned, hard, all lean muscle and taut rippling skin.
I start at the base of his throat and then go lower.
Kiss his chest, his ribs, drag my tongue along the ridge of muscle above his belt, and feel him suck in a breath.
His hand tangles in my hair. Not pushing. Holding on.
My shirt goes next. His hands cup my breasts through my bra, and I shove it up myself because his pace isn’t fast enough. His mouth closes over my nipple, and I make a sound that would embarrass me if I had room for anything except the heat of his tongue and the scrape of his teeth.
“I want to feel you,” I say, back arching as I press his face closer to my breast. I groan, low and throaty as his breath heats my skin. I fumble with the button of his jeans, and he lifts his hips to help me.
We strip in the cramped space—elbows and knees and cursing as denim catches on boots. Then he’s between my legs in the half-dark, and the windows are already fogging. I can feel the head of his cock nudging against me, hot and thick, and my whole body clenches with want.
“I need you inside me,” I tell him, because I’m past the point of subtlety. I wrap a hand around his shaft, guiding him along my slick entrance.
He hisses as he pushes in. Slow. The stretch of him filling me, inch by inch, has my breath catching in my throat. He’s big—bigger than the angle at the Railhead let me feel—and the fullness of him seated deep is almost too much. Almost.
“Fuck,” he breathes against my hair. “You feel—”
“Move. Please. Move.”
He moves. Rolling his hips, pulling back, driving in deep. The truck rocks on its suspension. I wrap my legs around him and match his rhythm, and the wet sound of our bodies meeting fills the cab—slick, obscene, undeniable.
“Harder,” I whisper. “I can take it.”
He gives me harder. His hands grip my hips, and the pace shifts from deliberate to relentless, each thrust driving the air from my lungs.
The angle is deep enough to hit a spot that makes my eyes roll back.
I dig my nails into his back—too hard, drawing lines—and he groans and fucks me harder for it.
My wolf is silent. The same terrifying contentment from the Railhead—settled, still, home. She’s found what she wants, and she’s not going to explain herself.
“Yes. Fuck yes!” I grind out past gritted teeth. He grunts each time he bottoms out, and the sound is raw and bestial in a way that pulls at the deepest part of me.
The orgasm builds in layers. His thumb finds my clit and works in tight, knowing circles while he drives into me, and the dual sensation—his cock filling me, his thumb on the spot that makes my toes curl—winds the pressure so tight I can’t breathe.
Then it breaks. I come in a full-body contraction that rips a cry from my throat.
I bury it against his shoulder, teeth on his skin, tasting salt.
My pussy clenches around him in rhythmic waves that pull him deeper.
He lasts another thirty seconds. His thrusts go uneven, his breathing ragged, and then he buries himself to the hilt and comes with a sound that vibrates through my chest. I feel him pulsing inside me. Hot. Deep. Stickiness that mingles with my own juices and drips from me.
We lie tangled in the back seat. Breathing hard. Windows opaque. The truck smells like sex and sweat and the chemistry of two people who’ve just done something they probably shouldn’t have.
My wolf is purring. An actual vibration in my chest; low, sustained, satisfied. The sound of a wolf who’s exactly where she wants to be.
I hate it.
He lifts his head. Looks at me. “Come home with me.”
I should say yes. Every selfish part of me wants to… his bed, his warmth, hours instead of minutes. And the operative in me calculates the access: his house, his unguarded conversation, what he might say in the dark when his defenses are down.
That thought disgusts me even as I think it. Using his bed for intelligence. Using sex for the mission.
But then… he’s a Forrester. A purist. His pack toasted to keeping things pure and strong while I smiled and ate their cornbread.
Whatever sympathy his grief earns him, he’s part of a system that considers my bloodline a corruption.
I shouldn’t feel guilty about a man who’d turn me in if he knew what I carry.
My wolf disagrees. Loudly.
“I can’t,” I say. “I’ve already let this go further than I should have.”
His expression shifts. Not hurt; disappointment he’s trying not to show. He nods. Pulls back. The separation, when he slides out of me, leaves a physical absence that makes me want to pull him back in.
We dress in the cramped space. He hands me my bra from where it got wedged behind the headrest. I find one of my boots under the passenger seat. The mundane logistics of reassembly after sex… they shouldn’t feel intimate, but they do.
He walks me back to my truck. There’s no way we could go back to the barbecue now without everyone knowing exactly what we just did. We don’t talk much. His hand brushes against mine, and I don’t take it. My wolf wants to. I don’t.
He rests his forearm on the roof of my truck and peers in at me once I’ve climbed into it. Engine running. The dashboard light catches his face.
“Willow.”
“Yeah?”
“This isn’t just—” He stops. Starts over. “Whatever this is. It’s not casual for me.”
I should dismiss it. Should reinforce the wall, keep the distance, protect the mission.
Instead, I say: “It’s not casual for me either, Conner.”
Which is the most dangerous truth I’ve given him yet. I don’t look back at him as I drive away.
My head is still spinning when I get back to the motel. I get out. Walk to the motel door. Try to pull myself together before opening it.
Briar is awake. Of course she is. I swear the woman doesn’t sleep. She looks at me—flushed, mussed, smelling like him—and yet again, says nothing.
I go to the bathroom, strip, and step into the shower. Wash my face, my arms, my chest, between my legs.
I just fucked a Forrester purist in his truck fifty yards from his pack’s compound, and told him it wasn’t casual.
What the hell were you thinking, Willow?
I leave the shower, dry off, and pull a robe around myself. Then I check the ward I set around our room when we first arrived. A basic perimeter. Nothing elaborate, just a thin line of magic designed to alert me if anyone crosses the threshold.
It’s still holding.
It shouldn’t be. I set it over a week ago. My wards fade after two, three days at most. Brenna’s hold for weeks. Mine burn out fast. I don’t have the power to sustain them.
This one is holding. Stronger, if anything, than when I laid it down.
I touch the thread of it with my awareness. It hums. Solid. Fed by something I didn’t put there.
I pull my hand back. Stare at the wall where the ward sits invisible, and try to make sense of it.