I couldn’t resist. “Is that a short joke?”
“No. It isn’t.” He squeezed my hand again. “And you’re not weird. Plenty of people don’t like sappy stuff or want to be in constant physical contact. Everyone has a different comfort level with physical affection. Yours and mine might be different, but that doesn’t mean yours is wrong. Do I think you’re too in your head sometimes? Yes. Do I think that means you’ll wind up alone and unhappy? No.”
“Thanks. I think.”
He smiled. “As for love, I don’t know why you don’t believe. Maybe you won’t let yourself.”
“What?” My skin prickled with gooseflesh.
“Maybe you’re so good at being in your head that your rational mind has entirely overruled your emotions, and that suits you just fine.”
His words jogged my memory. “Margot said something like that to me about a month ago, when I was complaining about how you wanted to date me.”
He looked amused. “Oh?”
“Yeah, she said I don’t let myself enjoy sex with men I date because I don’t want to have a reason to give them a real chance. And that I use great sex as a reason to avoid dating them at all.”
“Like you tried to do with me,” he said, his eyebrows rising. “Very astute. She knows you.”
I frowned. “She does. But what does all this mean? Have I just been lying to myself all this time? Sabotaging my own chance to be happy with someone?”
“Hey.” He took my fingers and wiggled them. “No frowning. The point of the gift was not to give you an existential crisis. It was to give you a pretty little thing to remind you that what you give is what you get, and what I want to give you right now is an orgasm.”
Yes. That was enough to turn my worry into a different kind of tension—one I knew how to deal with, one that could be easily and joyously relieved, one that made me ache to get my hands on him. “Chances are good you’ll get one, too.”
“Just one?”
I lifted my shoulders playfully. “We’ll see what happens.”
We paid the bill and picked up our coats, and after he slipped mine onto my shoulders, he spoke low in my ear. “Your ass in that red skirt has me so hard right now.”
Giggling, I pulled on my gloves and spoke softly over my shoulder. “Patience, Mr. Wolf. Give a girl a little time to frolic in the woods before you grab her ass.” I turned to face him and rose on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. “Want to come home and frolic with me?”
He grabbed my wrist and yanked me toward the door without another word.
Twenty
JAIME
He loomed over me in the dark as I shivered on the kitchen floor.
“Nowhere to run, little girl,” he said, his tone dark but delighted. “I’ve chased you all through the woods. I’ve chased you out of your pretty clothes. I’ve chased you right onto your knees.” He was naked and hard, and now he took his dick in his hand, stroking it while I watched, open-mouthed and wide-eyed. “Now what am I going to do with you?”
On my hands and knees, I sat back on my heels. “What do you want to do with me?”
“Eat you, of course. Tear you apart.” He worked his hand slowly up and down his cock, and I felt my nipples tingling. “But I’m a patient wolf, and I’m not completely without a sense of decorum. Any last requests?”
I licked my lips. “Yes. One.”
“Which is?”
“I want to watch you.”
“Watch me?” Surprise colored his words, but I thought it might be pretend, since he kept his fist tight around his shaft and jerked hard a couple times. “What do you mean, little girl?”
Fuck, he was hot. My eyes had adjusted to the dark enough to appreciate the gorgeous lines of his body in the dark, the swell of the muscles, the motion of his arm. I’d given him a hand job before, but I’d never watched him (or any other guy) do it to himself, and suddenly it seemed like the hottest thing ever. I’d felt his orgasm inside me, heard the gasp and groan of it, tasted it on my tongue—now I wanted to see it. “I want to watch you do that.”
His hand slowed again. “You know I like you to be specific. Tell me exactly what you want or you won’t get it.”