Page 41 of Wilderness Daddy

“Up.”

She looks bereft at the loss of my cock. I grab her, spinning us both and sit, pulling her to straddle me. When I guide her hips to lower her tight pussy down on my shaft we both moan. Her face, glowing with pleasure, makes my heart pound. I help her, my hands grasping her hips assisting her to rise and fall as I pump from beneath, her breasts bouncing enticingly before me.

We’re slick with sweat, slippery, as I flip us. When she’s on her back, I take over completely, driving my cock deep into her. She calls out, grasping my shoulders to hang on. Her pleasure-filled howl speaks to me on a carnal level, making my cock impossibly harder. I yank her leg up and pump deeply inside again before finding a rhythm that has her panting out cries of pleasure. When she goes over the edge, her nails dig into me painfully but I barely notice as my own orgasm rips through me.

As we lie there, spent and lulled by bliss, and I run my nails along her smooth skin, she stirs. She’s curled into me and I never want to let her go so I pull her closer.

“Tell me you won’t marry Hattori.” I whisper the words into her hair.

“Landon?” My name is just a whisper on her lips, too. Does it hold as much worry as mine?

“Yes, baby girl?”

“Something’s bothering me.”

“Yeah, something’s bothering me too. You not telling me you won’t marry Hattori.”

“I won’t have you sacrifice your happiness for me, Landon Steed. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“If you marry him, I’ll be miserable. Tell your father you’re not marrying anyone.” My hand finds her face and turns it up to face me.

“I can’t. He’ll never forgive me. He’ll never speak to me again. I’ll be out of the family.” She twists in my arms to look more comfortably at me. “I don’t regret this though. We may be pawns in their game, but my feelings—our chemistry—that’s real.”

I press a kiss to her forehead, squeezing my eyes shut. “As real as it gets, honey.”

“Listen, when you said you had bloodwork done a month ago...” There is something in her voice that makes my gut clench. I shift, rising on my elbow. She rises too, but onto her knees.

“Why did you have it done?”

I want to say it’s a strange question, but there’s a niggling in my abdomen that gives me the answer. I reach for her arm, but she pulls back. “Your father told you it was for the company insurance policy? That the policy needed updating?”

She takes in a breath. It’s swift and hard. “Yep.”

She swears and turns, the urgency in her movement making me rise to my knees and reach for her, but she’s off the bed and rushing for the scattered piles of clothes on the floor. The implication of our conversation hits me in the sternum, but what hits me harder is her reaction. Her emotions over it. I feel that in the very air around us, in the electric charge that seems to take over the room.

“He... he... had us checked before he decided on the marriage.” There’s a quiet fury in her voice. I swear now too. She’s tossing clothes before she finds her panties.

“We’re like livestock,” she says and this time there’s no quiet in her fury. She lets out a frustrated cry or growl or a mixture of the two as she stumbles trying to get her leg into her panties. “I’m nothing more to him than a prize cow he needs bred. I’ll never be anything more.” Her eyes dart to mine. Her face is shadowed but I don’t need to see it to feel the hurt and anger she’s suffering. I reach for her again but she shoves my arm away.

“Listen, you’re angry and I am too, but you need to calm down. Let’s talk this through.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. We’d never have looked twice at each other if it weren’t for them.”

I turn on the lamp on the nightstand. “I know,” I answer and pass her the T-shirt from the floor as I grab my own jeans and pull them on. “But that’s only because we had assumptions about each other.”

She laughs, but it’s angry. “Oh, you’ve got that right.” She shoves past me to grab her pants. “I thought you were a playboy like your brother. A dumb oaf, if I’m being honest.”

I grab her, stilling her. “And I thought you were a stuck-up spoiled princess who wanted the world handed to her on a silver platter. But we were both wrong.” I shake her once, not harshly, but hard enough to break her from her anger for a moment. We stare for a few seconds, our eyes locked, breathing rapid, bodies tense.

Her shoulders fall suddenly and she looks out through the now dark window. “And who says I’m not?”

“Me, honey. Me,” I say, resolve in my voice. I put my finger on her chin to direct her eyes back to mine. “I see a woman fiercely determined to show the world she’s not what her family paints her to be; you’re an intelligent, beautiful, and strong-minded individual capable of great things. You’re also a woman who is loyal to her family even though they don’t deserve it in my opinion. You take criticism, although not necessarily with grace, but you think logically once you set aside your emotions and then choose to work on your faults. But none of this is your fault. None of this is because you’re not good enough. This is something else. I don’t know what yet, but it’s not you.”

Her eyes lower a moment before coming back to mine and piercing me right through the chest into my heart.

I soften my tone as well as my expression. “I also see a little girl who needs love and care. I know you crave boundaries, but not the kind that stifle you. The kind that keep you safe—remind you someone cares and wants you to succeed in everything you attempt.” I break our intense stare a moment as I notice the envelope her father had couriered to me on the nightstand. I grab it, yank my report out of it, and shove the envelope with the original papers at her. “Show him who you are and what you’re capable of.”

Her gaze lands on the yellow envelope and she swallows hard as she takes it with a shaking hand.

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