Page 57 of Lost and Bound
A month plus a few days after Arik’s exam, I tried to bring it up. I was sprawled across Calder’s chest, my legs spread awkwardly wide over his hips to accommodate the thickness of his knot lodged inside my body. My head rested just below his collarbones, and he had his arms around me, one hand dipping between the cheeks of my ass to feel where we were joined, and the other carding softly through my hair. I hadn’t gotten it cut yet, and it hung nearly as long as Calder’s. I’d used to wear it short, but he seemed to love running it through his fingers.
Anyway, I hadn’t gotten around to it.
But this had to be a good opportunity to find out what he had on his mind. He couldn’t possibly be planning to stay in this weird limbo forever…and he hadn’t shown any signs of trying to become a part of the pack.
Which meant he intended to leave.
I snuggled against his chest, nuzzling his warm, sweat-sheened skin. He smelled so fucking good.
Any second now. Any second, I’d ask him to—my eyes popped open.Ask him to stay. That had been the thought on the tip of my brain.
Calder slipped a finger fully between my cheeks and traced the rim of my hole where it stretched to the limit around his knot.
I shivered, and he kissed the top of my head. “Stop thinking,” he murmured. “You don’t have any decisions to make. I’m going to fuck you again in a second. Slow and deep. Punching my knot into you until you can’t think anymore.”
Yes, please, yes…but no, dammit, no. Ineededto think. I couldn’t do this every night and then ignore the obvious all day, able to do so because Calder made himself so scarce I didn’t have the chance to approach the subject.
“We need to talk, though,” I gasped, as he started to shift his hips under me, doing exactly what he’d promised. Punching his knot into me. Slow and deep. My body moving up and down on top of him, limp and receptive to every thrust of his cock… “Calder, please.”
He stopped moving, and I whined. Calder sighed. “Mixed messages, Jared.”
I lifted my head and peered into his face. He didn’t look angry that I’d stopped him from getting off again, but…that wasn’t his happy face, either. Not that he had one to my knowledge. But he didn’t seem calm.
He still had his hands on me, though they’d stopped petting.
“What are you planning to do?” The question fell heavily into the silence.
Calder frowned. “Pretty sure I just told you what I’m planning to do.”
“You know, you really suck at answering questions. Just once, okay,once, it’d be great if you’d cooperate a little!”
“And just once,” he growled, “it’d be great if you were specific.”
I glared at him, and he bared his teeth at me.
Suddenly, it struck me as funny, and my laughter shook us both. “Ow! No, your knot, it’s okay, I—baby,” I said, batting my eyelashes, “are we having our first fight?”
Something happened. A rumbling sound. His body vibrating under me. Oh, shit, he was going to fucking kill me…
And then I realized he was laughing. Actually laughing, with his teeth still bared and his eyes still gleaming eerily, but…laughing.Withme, not at me.
I was pretty sure, anyway.
“When we met, I almost killed you. And now you’re—our firstfight?”
I tried to keep it together, I really did. And then I collapsed back onto his chest, giggling helplessly, Calder shaking with his own laughter under me. I had to press my hips down to keep his knot from pulling too hard on my stretched skin, and then he got harder inside me, and then I was riding him again, until he flipped me over and fucked me on my back, kissing me and nuzzling my throat…and time went by in a blur of moans and grasping hands and his hot mouth suckling my nipples.
I didn’t know how much time, only that eventually we were lying on our sides with my head pillowed on his bicep, and his knot finally slipped out.
“Ugh,” I grumbled.
“I can always put it back in.”
I opened my eyes and met Calder’s serious gaze, his eyes fixed on me so intently I almost wondered if there was something wrong with my face.
“Not right now,” I said—with regret. Every minute I didn’t have that stuffed into me, I’d started to feel incomplete. But no. I’d already started this conversation once, and I wouldn’t have the balls to do it again. Either that, or I’d get distracted. Again. “Calder, I need to know what you’re planning to do. Big picture. You’re not acting like someone who wants to become part of the pack, but you’re not—” I stopped. I couldn’t force the word out.
“Leaving?”
