I roll my eyes again, but since I also start kissing him right after, I’m not sure I make much of an argument. Not until a few minutes later when we’ve both broken away panting for air. “Wait.” I put a hand on his chest to keep him at bay. “The little bird. If you think I’m the wolf, then you think there’s another person out there, too?”
He nods while trying to chase my mouth.
“That you’ll love?” I confirm, staying just out of his reach.
“We,” he corrects. “Thatwewill love. It isn’t them unless we’re both infatuated.” He sighs, still smiling. “You’ll find her first. That’s what I saw in the dream. She appeared with you and then came to me.”
“She?”
“Just a feeling.”
“Cy, it was a dream. It wasn’t…” I start to say, then immediately regret it, not wanting him to think I’m belittling whatever he had to believe to survive.
“And yet, here you are.”
I frown, unable to dispute that point even if I want to dispute the argument as a whole. For the most part.
Ihadbeen honest about being with multiple partners before. Helped, sometimes. Made everything that was overwhelming a bit quieter. But even so, none of those times were for more than a night, me moving on before the sun was even up. None of them were like Cypress, and I have trouble imagining that there could be another person I could love the same way…that could love me.
“A bit greedy, don’t you think?” I ask him, the hand I had against his chest skimming lower. “Not that I would mind some reinforcements.”
“There’sthreechairs,” Cypress mutters, taking my cue and moving to help with our clothes. “You may not believe in fate, Aiden, but it seems you have been planning for it all the same.”
I shake my head, sitting up so I can tug my shirt off, then his. “Would you stop talking about the chairs?”
“Sure,” he obliges, letting out a heady sigh when I lunge for him, lifting his hips so I can rid him of his pants, too. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Right now?” I ask, kissing him once more before lying on my back again so I can free myself. “Nothing that doesn’t end in you sayingplease.”
“Ah, well, you see…” He rolls, quickly straddling me in a surprising show of speed for someone who had another brush with death not more than two weeks ago, though I suppose nothing at this point should surprise me about Cypress. “I think it’s my turn.”
“Your turn?” I ask, watching him reach for my discarded shirt and twist it into a makeshift rope. He holds it out in a line over my chest, eyes on mine while he waits for me to place my hands in the center. Once I do, he wraps the fabric around my wrists and knots it.
“Quick release,” he murmurs, guiding my bound hands over my head. “You want me to stop…all you have to do is say.”
I nod, a bit of nerves but mostly anticipation pooling in my gut as his hands trail slowly back down my arms and chest, exploring in a way that someone who didn’t know him better might interpret as lazy. “Why do I have a feeling that nothing else about this is going to be quick?”
“Why rush things?” he asks, taking me in as his teeth press into his bottom lip.
My thoughts skip, darting around for something to do, because surely there’ssomething. “We should—we should plan out our next steps. Go into town. Resupply. Get word to Dolly.”
Cypress makes an affirmative noise, though he doesn’t seem to be focused on anything other than my eager response as he skims his fingers lightly across my abdomen. “Dolly will have figured out what happened to us. Just like she will have already punished those responsible. She’ll trust us to make our way back.”
“Even so,” I argue, not sure why. “We need to—”
“Wolf?”
I realize that I’ve closed my eyes, arching my back to try to guide him. “Hm?”
Cypress grins. “Thought you didn’t want to talk.”
We don’t for a while after that. Not until it really is his turn to hear me sayplease. My knees and my still-bound hands in the soft dirt as he takes his time in taking me from behind. His chest against my back, his mouth once more against my ear, as he murmurs in return, “That’s it. Just like that, wolf. So perfect.”
Never like this, I think again.It’s never been like this.I’ve never let it be, never could have. With anyone but him.
“You liked that, didn’t you?” Cypress continues, running that damn mouth again as he thrusts into me hard and deep. “Watching me?”
Fuck, I had, and I’d like to tell him just how much I’d liked watching him work himself up while he straddled me, how much I’d liked waiting for him to put me out of my misery, to let me touch him while I was completely at his mercy. I understand now exactly why he’d said that position was his favorite.