Chapter 14 Lara #3
It had been so long since I’d been kissed—even longer since I’d felt anything that made me hungry for more.
I gripped the coarse fabric of his shirt, pulling him tighter. Every breath was a mixture of forest and midnight and masculine, heady how it mangled my senses like a weed of want.
But Calder’s kiss . . . it was nothing like I’d expected. Nothing like what Rachel had hinted to me. Not that a person’s kiss, or their experience, couldn’t evolve over twelve years, but the parts Rachel had described to me weren’t the details, but the tenor. Restrained. Reserved. Proper.
This kiss was born of those things but had grown into something more. Something ravenous and raw and possessive.
A knee pressed between my legs, and my back butted up against a tree. I was pinned. A prisoner to his untamed beast. A willing captive to this feral storm.
I didn’t need more encouragement to grind on him. To use him to ease the ache that he’d caused.
It was cold out, yet I felt nothing but his heat. Nothing but the burn of something I couldn’t stop. Even if I could, it might blow our cover, and because of that, I didn’t have to admit that I didn’t want to stop it at all.
“Fuck, Lara.” His low groan entered my mouth with a quake, and a shift of his hips allowed me to feel the hard length of him against my leg.
“Hey!” The rough shout was like the slap of a cold wave straight to the chest, dousing the heat and knocking the air from my lungs. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Ben approached, his roughshod steps smashing into the forest floor.
“Let me,” Calder muttered as he slowly pulled away, making sure I was completely shielded by his big body. And consequently, keeping me encased in its absorbing warmth.
“Sorry, Ben. Went to the bathroom and then got . . . distracted,” Calder said with a husky chuckle, giving off an air of ease the rest of him clearly didn’t feel.
“It’s past curfew. You need to be in your tent,” Ben hissed, coming around to the side of us to where he could finally see me. Like he wanted to see me.
Bile rose in my throat when I saw his weapon was drawn. Even seeing us hadn’t prompted him to holster it, as though he liked the subtle display of power.
“What can I say, except that we were listening to our wild cores?” Calder murmured, letting a wry playfulness into his voice.
“Yeah, well, there’s a curfew for a reason. I told you, it gets dangerous out here.” Ben waved his gun around like it was a wand that could make wolves and bears appear from the surrounding woods. In front of me, Calder went eerily still, watching him.
“I’m going to have to report you to Dr. Julia for breaking curfew.” The barrel steadied on us. “There’s going to be repercussions for not listening to me. There are rules here. You can’t just do whatever—hey!”
Calder lunged, grabbed the barrel of Ben’s weapon, and, with a flick of his wrist, emptied the chambered bullet and dropped the magazine to the ground.
It happened so fast that both Ben and I couldn’t fully react until it was over and the gun was hollow and useless in his hand.
“What the hell? What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the younger man blustered, scouring the ground for the fallen clip. “I wasn’t going to shoot—”
“Never aim a weapon at something you don’t plan on shooting,” Calder warned, frost coating his voice. “If you tell them about curfew, I’ll have to tell them you have no idea how to properly handle a weapon and you put our lives at risk.”
Taking my hand, Calder led me away from the scene, at all points shielding me from the guard and his furious string of curses.
“I’m watching you,” Ben swore, and I heard him ruffling frantically through the debris for the clip.
“Just keep walking,” Calder said from behind me, his steady hands on my waist, guiding me through the forest back to our tent.
I didn’t take a full breath until he zipped the flap shut with a single swipe of his arm.
“Do you think—”
“No, he’s not going to say anything.” Calder strode over to the table and picked up his reusable water bottle, uncapping it for a drink but pausing before lifting it to his mouth. “You shouldn’t have come looking for me.”
My slack jaw snapped shut. “You should’ve told me you planned on going to Maxwell’s RV tonight.”
“It wasn’t going to take two people to search through her things.”
“It would’ve gone faster.”
His eyes flicked to mine, and their normally serene golden-green was now mottled with anger. “With greater risk.”
He lifted the bottle to his lips and took several swigs. My eyes ran over him. He kept himself still partially facing away from me. My pulse fumbled, and my legs pressed tighter together.
He wasn’t the only one still feeling the lingering effects of that kiss. Mine just weren’t as visible.
“Calder—”
The water bottle landed with a thunk on the table.
“I’m going out to send a message to Callum. I’ll be right back. Stay here.”
This time, he didn’t leave anything up for interpretation. Not his instruction. Not his anger. And definitely not the evidence of his attraction straining against the front of his pants.