Page 73 of Lost and Bound
“Anything.” I kissed his neck, and he fuckingshivered. I held him tighter.
Fuck, I’d used to be the kind of guy who got off on having power. A little bit of it, like being Ian’s second-in-command, had gone to my head and made me a total asshole. I’d wished I was an alpha, and I’d tried to compensate for it. And having other people tell me what to do had pissed me off, in large part because deep down I’d kind of enjoyed not having to take too much responsibility, and I’d hated that about myself, and I’d tried to compensate even harder.
I’d had a lot of time for self-reflection over the past two years, and part of becoming a realist, which you really had to in my situation, had been accepting myself for what I was. And part of why I loved Calder so much was that he’d accepted me too, and liked and wanted what he saw in me.
So I wasn’t that guy anymore. But…having that kind of power over someone like Calder, someone who always stayed in control—that felt headier than being drunk.
Maybe he called the shots most of the time, and maybe I liked it that way.
But I could make him shiver just by kissing him. Just by handing him the reins and letting him do whatever he wanted with me.
Maybe I could give myself over without any shame and without any regrets, because I owned him as much as he owned me.
Calder relaxed a little at last, letting out a long sigh, stroking his hand down my back and letting it rest just above the swell of my ass. Oh gods, yes, he was going to tell me to do exactly what I wanted to do…
“What if I told you to share the pizza?”
He had to be fucking… “Are you serious right now? Did you just—” I popped up and stared at him in disbelief. “Did you just make ajoke?”
Calder’s lips quirked up, and his eyes shone, an odd vulnerability in them. “I never joke about pizza.”
My laugh started as a vibration in my belly and rose up to take me over, until I was laughing and crying and clinging to him, way out of proportion to the cause.
And Calder laughed with me.
***
I’d never seen anyone eat as much as Calder, not even Ian—or me, for that matter. He demolished everything that’d been left over, grabbing a shower while I went down to the kitchen to fetch it for him along with a whole gallon bottle of water.
He polished that off too, sitting on the bed naked, while I curled up next to him. Eating that much and that quickly with one arm wrapped around me had to be a challenge, but he managed. Neither of us wanted to let the other go.
At last he fell back against the pillows, pulling me with him. I eyed his naked body. He’d almost died; in fact, reading between the lines, I was pretty sure a human doctor would’ve called it, and that only the faintest thread of magic had kept him on this side of the veil.
So he had to be too worn out to fuck me.
Just like I had to be too worn out to get fucked, right?
My cock was half hard.
And his…well, his always looked half hard, it was so goddamn big.
I stroked a hand down over his chest and his muscled stomach, feeling weirdly shy now that all the mundane washing and eating and drinking was out of the way.
He hadn’t initiated anything. He just…held me.
And I loved that. I loved him, full stop, so much that it was filling me to the brim, spilling over into my helpless smile and the way I felt like I’d die if I stopped touching him. But he’d always been the one to tell me when he wanted me, and not the other way around, except for that one time I’d pushed him up against a tree and sucked his cock. He’d told me what to do, and sometimes I’d fought it and sometimes I’d given in to it without a fight, but I’d always ended up taking what he gave me. And loving it. Loving him for letting me let go like that.
I’d selfishly let him give me everything, and all I’d given him had been me—I hadn’t shown him how I felt.
I rolled over, pressing my lips to the dip between his collarbones, mouthing over his skin.
“Jared?”
One of his hands found my ass, gently massaging, and the other carded through my hair.
“Let me,” I murmured into his chest, still unable to look up at him. My courage and my resolution would fail if I let him hypnotize me into lying back and taking. “Let me, love.”
I kissed my way down, soft and sweet, submitting to him in a way I hadn’t ever realized I wanted. Giving, instead of taking, or allowing myself to be taken. Cherishing him the way he’d cherished me from the very start, even when everything about him promised violence and brutality. I kissed each of the muscles in his stomach, one at a time, tracing the ridges with my tongue. Stroking his powerful thighs, caressing him until he lay back with a deep moan and let his legs open for me a little bit, enough for me to nestle between, face to face with his cock.
