Page 3 of Rejected Sold Mate
On four feet, I bet, but neither of us had even spoken about being shifters, and apparently, he didn’t want to change that. “I did.”
“Give me your keys. I’ll drive.”
Secretive. It didn’t surprise me that he didn’t want to give me directions to his house, and if I weren’t so full of adrenaline, it might have been funny. He was really serious about hiding his identity, not even knowing I knew who he was from the jump.
I threw him my keys, and he caught them effortlessly. I followed Jayce out to the parking lot, but we didn’t even make it to the car before he was on me, lips crashing down on mine as he backed me against the brick wall of the bar’s exterior.
His mouth was hot and insistent, and he tasted like rye whiskey. There was no teasing, just the swipe of his tongue against the seam of my lips, and I let him in eagerly. There was a hunger in the way he kissed that had me buzzing with need, and when we broke apart, he rested his forehead against mine.
“Are you still sure?”
I couldn’t help the laugh that slipped out. “Are you kidding? If I wasn’t convinced before, that would have done it. Let’s go.”
The drive was longer than I expected, and Jayce switched back and forth between telling me how badly my car ran and letting his hand slide up my legs as he drove. Despite the distance, the eagerness didn’t fade, and I didn’t even blink when he pulled into the dirt driveway of a small cabin deep in the woods.
“You live here?” I asked when he came to the passenger side and opened the door for me.
“Sometimes.”
I knew good and well an Alpha didn’t live in a one-room cabin with a wood-burning stove, but I wasn’t supposed to know he was an Alpha, so I kept my mouth shut and let him lead me inside. Plus, maybe it wasn’t a total lie. Jayce might have lived at the cabin sometimes. How was I supposed to know otherwise?
Inside, it smelled like cedar and ash. The cabin was small but clean, and Jayce clicked on a tall lamp in the corner that filled the space with golden light. The bed, barely big enough for the two of us, was covered with a red plaid comforter, and we were both looking at it before we looked back at each other.
“I know it’s not much—”
“I don’t care.”
He smiled again, but this time, instead of predatory, it was warm and hypnotic. I wanted to see him smile like that again, and again, and again.
“Good. Then come here, Rhie. I’ve waited long enough.”
I didn’t complain, but simply slid off my heels and approached him, looping my arms around his neck as he lowered his head to mine and captured my mouth in a much slower, more sensual kiss than before.
After all, we had all night. There was no need to rush, and as Jayce swept me into his arms and carried me to the bed, I had the distinct feeling he planned on taking his time.
***
Hours later, the eastern edge of the sky had just started to go from black to silver, and I was in the cabin bathroom, splashing cold water over my face as my legs shook like a newborn foal.
Jayce had given me everything I wanted and then some, and it hadn’t taken long for him to have me a panting mess beneath him. He was every bit the incredible lover I had expected him to be, but what I hadn’t expected was how intensely it affected me.
Each time he brought me to the peak, I felt a rush of emotion totally out of place for a random hookup. I wrapped myself around him until we were as close as we could possibly be, and still, it felt like I needed more. It wasn’t pleasure—he gave me plenty of that—but something unnamable.
At the end, he chanted my name into my ear as he spilled himself inside of me, and it felt like I was near tears at the thought of it all being over.
What in the world was wrong with me?
“Rhie,” Jayce called from the bed, and I rubbed my hands over my face one more time before returning to him. The water hadn’t helped. I was still feeling desperate, thinking that our time together was over, and I was having a hard time accepting it.
Maybe it didn’t have to be, though. As mixed up as Jayce had me feeling, I still felt free of the tension I’d been looking to forget about. Besides the thread of anxiety involving the hookup being over, I felt better than I had in at least a week.
Being with Jayce had been the perfect outlet, and he still didn’t know who I was. Maybe we could work something out, midnight meetings where we gave each other what we needed and nothing more. Jayce never needed to know my real identity. We could be…friends with benefits, I guess. It seemed too silly a term for the intensity of my feelings, but that’s what I needed from him, wasn’t it?
Heck, not even friends. Mysterious strangers with benefits.
“Rhie,” he murmured again when I climbed under the blanket with him, letting Jayce wrap me in his strong arms, humming in contentment as I ran my hands over the muscles of his chest and stomach for what must have been the hundredth time that night. He was impossibly handsome, like he was carved out of stone, but his skin was soft and warm, and when he kissed me, there was nothing cold about it. “I don’t want you to go yet.”
I felt a pang in my chest, and that connection reared its head again. “I don’t want to, either. But I was, um, thinking…”
