“Oh, my God,” she gasps, closing her eyes.
“Look at me when I’m fucking you, Lennix.”
Her eyes open, flaring at the commanding, possessive tone I can’t suppress any longer. She was right about me. I am a wolf in wolf’s clothing, and I’ll consume her if she’ll let me. I won’t leave even a crumb for another man. She is mine.
“I gave you what you wanted,” I say. “Now you give me what I want.”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Cade?” she asks, her voice teasing, husky.
I brush a few flyaway strands from her face. “Don’t shut me out ever again.”
Surprise flits across her expression. I move inside her, pushing deeper until we both groan and grip each other like this could end at any moment.
“Okay.” Her breathing is labored and thin. “I won’t shut you out.”
That’s all I want from her.
Oh, and this pussy.
“I want this.” I hook my elbow under her knee and press our foreheads together as I burrow deeper inside, as deep as possible. “Just this.”
I plow into her, and my cock is relentless in its pursuit of satisfaction. I lose my train of thought in the bliss of her body. Her legs tangle with mine. I kiss her, and it’s so tender, the way she opens for me, the emotion in something as simple as the glide of our tongues together, it makes my chest ache. I slip one hand between us, stroking her, clasping her neck as the rhythm of our bodies turns frenetic, a churning chaos of arms and legs and pussy and cock. The rich intercourse of our scents and the sounds we make enshroud us in a world that blocks out everything but this. We make a universe of our own. It’s just us, and this is where I want to be.
She is where I want to be.
I’ve spent my entire life chasing answers, solutions, truth, money, success—you name it, I’ve been driven to gain it. That drive is as much a part of my DNA as my father’s green eyes. But right now, buried inside the woman who feels like a part of me, contracting around me, our heartbeats pounding in synch, my body spilling all its secrets to hers, I gain the one thing that has eluded me all these years. A perfect stillness. An end to the searching. A found-ness, a seen-ness I didn’t even know to look for.
So this is contentment.
49
Lennix
I’ve had sex, but it’s been years since I woke with a man in my bed.
Much less a wolf.
A wall of muscle warms my back and hard arms hold me tightly, possessively and with the utmost care. I trace the bulge of Maxim’s bicep, the golden skin and fine hairs dusting his forearms. When I find the tiny scar that introduced us, I smile. That seventeen-year-old-girl who gaped at this gorgeous man through clouds of tear gas and a rain of rubber bullets had no idea she would end up here with him. Naked between love-mussed sheets.
“You up?” Maxim asks, leaving tender kisses on my back, neck and shoulders, his hand roaming my stomach and sliding between my breasts. His cock digs into the curve of my butt.
“I see you are up.” I laugh.
His chuckle rumbles through my bones like a car, revved, idling. “Don’t mind him,” Maxim says. “He has a one-track mind.”
I turn over in the decadence of million-thread-count silk sheets, in the biggest bed I’ve ever slept in. Maxim doesn’t do anything on a small scale, and the plane last night and this hotel are no exception.
“Which track is that?” I smile into eyes that mirror my own satisfaction.
“The you track.” His smile dims a little, but the contentment doesn’t. “Pretty much just you, Nix.”
“The me track has to get out of this bed if I plan to make my meeting. I’m in Ohio to work for your brother, buddy. Sorry we don’t get more time together.”
“I have an idea.” He dips his head and nibbles my ear, sending a ripple of lust I don’t have time for through my body. “You could skip the service trip to Costa Rica, and come with me to Paris for this climate change summit instead.”
“You do realize you just suggested I renege on my commitment to building schools in an impoverished village to run off to Paris with you?”
“And that’s bad?” he asks with a straight face and sly humor in his eyes.
I slap his shoulder. “You know I can’t. I committed to this trip before I took on Owen’s campaign, so it’s not the best timing, but I have to honor my word. If for no other reason than I can’t let the San Carols students I’m taking with me down.”
“And Wallace?” Maxim runs a finger along my collarbone, not looking up when he asks the question.
“What about him?”
“Ten whole days in a hot jungle with your ex-boyfriend sounds sexy.” A humorless smile pulls his mouth into a stiff curve. “Maybe old feelings stir. Things happen.”
“Hey.” I pass my thumb over that unnatural smile he’s wearing. “Foster step-cousin, remember?”
His smile is genuine for the first time since we started discussing the trip.
“It’s not like that with Wall and me,” I tell him. “It never really was. We just . . . tried.”
“Well, there’s no trying with me.” Maxim gently pushes me back into the pillows. “There’s no stopping this.”
His kisses descend from the curve of my neck to the tilt of my breast, melting my core, and my hips start circling, subtly finding an ancient rhythm of want. His fingers wander from my knee to inside my thigh and higher. My breath hitches when he strokes between my legs.
“Doc,” I groan, giving the watch on my wrist a half-hearted glance. “My meeting. I have to get up. I have to go.”
“Not yet,” he whispers and kisses my neck, sucks my nipple, squeezes my ass. “Give me a little more. Two more minutes.”
Two turns to ten. His tender, nibbling kisses devour me. Light touches ignite our bodies to burn. Our hearts pound and our passion overwhelms us. A little more becomes everything, and before I know it, we’re lost in a tangle of I am his and he is mine, insatiable, inseparable.
Perfect together.
50
Lennix
“So do you hate me yet?” Wallace asks.
——The look I shoot him is part affection, part exasperation, and no hatred whatsoever.
“Of course not.” I scoop a spoonful of rice and beans into my mouth, a staple here on the Bribri reserve, and chew before continuing. “It’s been a great trip.”
“Not too rough?” He takes a bite of potato wrapped in banana leaf and waits for my reply.
“The hardest part was getting here.”
After we landed in San Jose with our group of twenty—a few doctors and scientists like Wallace, some adult volunteers like me, and ten students from the San Carlos reservation—we took a bumpy five-hour bus ride on rugged terrain into the mountains, swerving to avoid the occasional bull or chicken in the middle of the road. Then a raft carried us deeper into parts of the village only accessible by water.
“Paco said we’re lucky it’s not the rainy season,” one of the students, Anna, says, her wide smile gleaming from the metal of her braces. “We might not have been able to cross the river.”
I smile at the young women from the San Carlos reservation who have conducted themselves with such dignity since we arrived. A few of them speak Spanish, which is what the people here speak primarily. I listen with fascination and some wistfulness when I hear the people of Bribri speaking their native language, too. I know some Apache, and am constantly learning more, but I, like many of my generation, am not fluent. The devastating legacy of colonialism in America is so vast, but one of the worst parts is the gradual disappearance of our languages. We were forbidden for many years to even speak our tribal tongues, and many of our languages could be extinct within the next decade. The people of Bribri may not have much materially, but I love seeing they still have their culture, their ancient ways, and their language, even as they attempt to embrace modern necessities.