Page 24 of Rejected Sold Mate
I grabbed my robe and shampoo from the guest shower and hustled to Jayce’s room, grinning the entire time. Maybe someday soon I’d be brave enough to just ask to use the jacuzzi, but for the moment, it felt like a reward for all the trials I’d been through since sleeping with Jayce.
His bedroom door was shut, but it opened silently when I turned the knob. The bathroom door was slightly ajar, and I pushed it wider, humming happily to myself as I did so. I paused when steam curled out, humid and warm, but the significance of it didn’t hit me right away.
But Jayce did.
As soon as I pushed the bathroom door open, Jayce was there, and I all but walked into him. We were both barefoot, and I lost my balance first, instinctively grabbing for his shoulders so I didn’t fall. I barely had time to look at him—hair wet and slicked back, towel slung low over his hips, and all the planes of his muscles on full display—before I tried to jump back and caused us both to fall.
He caught me around the waist before we could both hit the ground hard, taking most of the impact on one hand so my head didn’t hit the tile. I yelped, shocked.
“Jayce!”
“Rhie,” he responded, but his tone wasn’t surprised. Inside, it was low and rumbling, practically dripping with heat.The world started to filter back in, and each little detail made me breathe harder and harder.
I could feel the cool tile under my back, a sharp contrast to Jayce’s burning hot body all around me. Every inch of him seemed to be pressed against me, his palm under my head, his other hand on my waist, and his thick thigh wedged between my legs. He was wearing basically nothing, and when he moved even a little bit, the towel shifted dangerously.
I froze, afraid of making it worse, because if that towel had moved any more, we’d both be in huge trouble. My brain was screaming at me to say something, anything, but I couldn’t conjure up a single word. All I could feel was my racing heart and Jayce.
He looked deep into my eyes, and I looked back. He wasn’t annoyed that I burst in on him, or angry that I’d caused us to fall. Instead, there was a burning intensity in his gaze that had me shivering from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. Jayce’s eyes went lower, lingering on my lips, and in that moment, I was so aware of how close his mouth was to mine…and how long the two of us had gone without speaking, tangled up in each other like the roots of a tree.
If I closed my eyes, maybe raised my face towards him just a little bit…
“Rhie,” Jayce repeated, and I could feel the rumble of his words where his chest was pressed against mine.
It would be so easy to just give in…but no. We’d come so far, and I couldn’t let it all be undone just because of some primal desires. “You…you should probably get off of me, Jayce.”
“Yeah,” he replied, swallowing hard before he shifted his leg, where his thigh was between mine, and the pressure change made me gasp. “But what if I don’t want to?”
Chapter 12 - Jayce
Having Rhie beneath me, her scent flooding my nose and her body soft and warm against mine, must have been the finest form of torture ever created. At the same time, it just felt right. She was my mate, and that was exactly where she was supposed to be.
Time slowed to a crawl as the wolf and man inside of me went to war against each other. I’d told myself over and over again that I could give her space and keep things cordial like she wanted. Even if her bond was screaming at me to claim her, my self-control had stood firm, and I’d kept her at arm’s length.
I’d silently made the promise to keep things casual between us, but the moment I had her in my arms again, that promise burned to the ground. I wanted her. I wanted her, and I didn’t know how much longer I could go on living without having her.
I said her name twice, and nothing else. My head was empty outside of thoughts of Rhie and how well she fit against me, and how her breath caught in her throat when I shifted my leg to better angle us together. I was hard as stone, and there was no way she hadn’t noticed. Hell, I’d been spending way too much of my time hard for Rhie as of late, and having the physical proof that she wanted me, too, wasn’t going to make things any easier.
My hand slid from her waist to her hip, and I buried my face into the crook of her neck, her soft hair brushing against my cheek. She was wearing leggings that left barely anything between us, and I swore I could feel the heat of her core when I shifted again. Rhie hummed her approval at the extra contact, and I was thrown back to the night we’d spent together. I knew what she sounded like when she was close, how her face lookedwhen she fell over the edge into ecstasy, and I was hungry to experience it all over again.
I’d been dreaming of her every night, waking up in my own sweat, or so hard that I had to finish myself off before I could get any more rest. In my fantasies, I’d had her on top of or against every surface of my home, but it wasn’t enough. I needed it to be real.
I inhaled deeply, lips brushing the column of her neck as I filled my lungs with her scent. I flexed my fingers to make sure that I wasn’t dreaming again. But Rhie was really there, body wrapped around mine, and it would take almost nothing to tug her leggings down, shift my hips, and bury myself into her slick heat.
My mate. My Omega. She wanted me, and I wanted her. Why in the fuck was I holding back?
Carefully, I removed my hand from the back of her head and braced it on the floor beside her. When I lifted my head to look at her, she didn’t move, but her lips parted slightly, and when her pink tongue darted out to wet her bottom lip, I almost came undone.
I was going to kiss her. I knew it as certainly as I knew that the sun would rise in the morning. I was powerless with her against me, and when I tilted my head to do just that, to cover my mouth with hers, I swore she breathed my name.
Then, thefucking alarm went off.
I’d left my phone on the bathroom counter while I’d showered, and if it had been a phone call, I’d have happily ignored it. But the sound was unmistakable—someone had tripped the alarms around my house, and my security app was screaming its alert.
I’d have ignored almost anything for her, but Rhie’s safety was the single thing that could shake me out of the haze of lust I had fallen into.
Reluctantly, so damn reluctantly, I pulled away from her, cursing under my breath. Rhie’s hands moved to my bare chest, like she wanted to hold me there, but they fell away as I rose to my feet.
It might have been the hardest thing I’d ever done.
