Chapter 16 Calder #2
“Feel your wild core reaching for theirs. Giving and absorbing. Pulling and wanting. That’s it .
. . soak and savor in the wanting,” Maxwell’s voice lulled through the fugue.
Encouraging something that needed no encouragement, only an excuse.
“Feel the barriers dissolving between you. All those restraints and reservations . . . feel them melt away.”
In spite of what she said, I tried to hold on to them. I tried to grip them like a rock in my hand, only to realize what I held was nothing more than a fistful of sand, the particles of resistance slipping right through my fingers.
“In the wild, you take fully. You give fully. It is the only way. The only true connection. The only path to pure passion.”
Lara’s grip tightened on my shoulders. My hands slid higher, burying completely against her bare torso. Our heads bent closer, breaths colliding.
“Now, I want you to tell your partner one thing they do that attracts your wild core—that ignites it.”
This session, however long it was, wasn’t going to be long enough for me to tell Lara all the things that made me ache for her in every way I shouldn’t.
Lara pressed her hand to the side of my face, and the world stopped on its head.
“This,” she murmured, pressing her fingers to the muscle on the side of my jaw. “The way it pulses . . . It’s a wonder you haven’t cracked.”
Not a wonder. A goddamn miracle.
My gaze tracked over every inch of her face. The tint of her blush. The dust of her freckles. The heady pulse of hunger in her stare.
“Maybe I have,” I murmured quietly, like it would stop her from hearing me; it wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
She sucked in a breath, her gaze widening, and I found myself toeing the same line both of us knew we shouldn’t cross.
“It’s your eyes. They’re like Dopplers for your emotions. They show every calm. Every quickening. Every storm. Always have.” All those years ago, I could read her emotions in the pools of her gaze, right down to all the times those pools had reflected disbelief when she heard her sister lie to me.
Her stomach trembled against my fingers, spurring them into a revolution of slow circles on her waist, tracing and teasing along the boundary of her pants. A revolution, all right . . . against all sanity.
“And what do they show now?”
Lust. Ache. Desire. The list could go on, but it was better left in silence. The situation we were in . . . the position . . . was already too precarious to confess what I saw in her eyes.
“Whatever it is,” I began, my voice low and guttural, “I don’t think I’ll survive it.” And considering survival was what my family was known for . . .
“Calder . . .” Lara murmured, and too late I realized what it was: a plea. One that came just before she rocked in my lap.
It was the slightest, shortest motion. One single roll of her hips to try to quench the ache between her thighs. And it struck me like a bolt of lightning. Pure, white-hot lust straight to my cock.
“Fuck,” I grunted on a rough exhale.
There was no hiding—not even the chance for polite ignorance of—my erection. Not when, with a slight nudge of my hands, I bade her to do it again.
To grind against me. Her hips to mine. Her heat to my hardness. My mind to the brink of insanity. Friction against the forbidden.
“Feel the ache in your partner and nurture it. There is nothing more primal, more primordial, than physical connection. Than sexual satisfaction with a partner who knows your whole self.”
With a broken exhale, Lara’s forehead dipped to meet mine, our breaths battling—beating into one another.
Was everyone else like this? Completely oblivious to the group? Consumed by their partner?
Or was it just me? Consumed by her . . .
“This is the plateau you want to reach. An erotic equilibrium of all your senses . . .” Maxwell went on, her voice ebbing in and out of focus until it was nothing but an auditory fog.
“Lara . . .” My husky whisper tangled in her exhale as her forehead rested on mine.
My hands tightened on her waist, knowing I should stop her but only dragging her harder along my length.
It was a contradiction. A perilous exception to my rules. Like everything else I felt about her. Never before had my logic differed so drastically, so dangerously, from my instinct.
My hand slid higher, cupping over her bare ribs, my thumb tracing the edge of her bra, coaxing her to keep moving. To forget everyone else around us. To forget anyone could see our primal desire bleeding from every seam.
“Gentlemen, she should be your sole focus. Her wants. Her needs. This is the garden you must water before anything can grow . . .” The mention of garden caught my ear, but not enough to shake me from Lara’s trance.
“Calder.” Her whisper stamped her warning to my lips.
To move. To turn. To take control.
Dragging my other hand to her head, I brushed her hair back from her face and bracketed my palm to the side of her throat. Here, I could read her pulse. The rapid-fire Morse code that signaled for help. For relief. For another taste of this thing that neither of us seemed to be able to stop.
I angled my head to take her lips. There was nothing holding me back, nothing strong enough to keep me from kissing her again.
Nothing until a loud shout and cry spiked my adrenaline from pleasure to protection.
With one swift movement, I slid Lara off my lap and rose up on my knees in front of her, quickly tucking my cock into the waistband of my pants. Thankfully, everyone’s attention, including Lara’s, was on the commotion on the other side of the gathering space, where Trent was making a scene.
“This is fucking ridiculous. You get off when I get off—that’s how things work.
” Trent’s chauvinistic snarl wormed like a sour weed through the clearing as he shoved Sarah off him; she was in the process of moving, but he wanted her to feel small.
Like he couldn’t get away from her fast enough.
He wanted that humiliation for her, and I wanted to introduce my fist to his face.
Unfortunately, he was already gone, and Maxwell had swooped in to calm Sarah.
I turned to Lara. “You okay?”
Her blown-out pupils flared. Okay was a relative term.
“As you can see, this journey isn’t for the faint of heart,” Maxwell addressed the group, stealing everyone’s focus from Trent’s dramatic exit.
“But with every great and wild relationship, there are speed bumps. Sometimes they slow you down to find something deeper and more meaningful. At other moments, they show you it’s time to take a different course. ”
My brow furrowed as I listened—and watched.
Tracking a person’s emotions was similar to tracking their physical location.
The important clues were in the details.
The trail of Maxwell’s eyes, stealthily roaming around the group until she mentioned slowing down, then swiftly plummeting to the ground before resurfacing on Sarah.
The break in her projected facade that didn’t go unnoticed. At least, not to me.
She was thinking of someone when she’d mentioned a speed bump. Possibly her relationship with Adam, given what I’d heard.
“We’ll conclude this morning’s session and get you into your reflection time a little early. Like before, please find somewhere secluded and quiet to reflect and journal about the feelings and emotions that this morning’s session brought up for you.”
I stood and offered my hand to Lara. She jerked her chin, a wordless instruction to look behind me.
Maxwell was talking to Sarah.
Taking Lara’s hand, I quickly guided us in their direction.
“I would like to speak with you privately, Sarah, after this morning—” Maxwell stopped abruptly as we got close and looked to Lara and me.
“Great work this morning, you two. I have to say, there are very few couples that I can feel a wild connection from the very start, but yours was all nails and teeth. Good job.”
Dammit. Fortunately, Maxwell was too concerned with her wounded disciple to notice how uncomfortable her remarks made Lara and me.
I wished I could’ve said they were too off base, but it was more like they struck too close to home.
“I’d like to have another session with the both of you now. Matthew will take you to the Sanctuary, and I’ll join you in a few minutes.”
I managed a sound to acknowledge her as Matthew appeared to do her bidding and led us away.