My Mate Cut My Brand Off, So the Outcast Wolf Claimed Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Nothing Owed

In his truck and at his kitchen table she breaks the first of his terms and he gives her the first orgasm she has ever felt for herself; he opens the bedroom door and does not follow.

I left my Ford at the Reinholt fence and let him drive.

My hands were shaking too hard to hold a wheel.

Rod's truck smelled of hay, dog and cold coffee, and the heeler lay across the bed behind us with his chin on the toolbox.

For ten miles neither of us said anything.

The sun went down behind the Wind Rivers and the road turned from gravel to two ruts.

Rod reached across me without a word, opened the glove box and pulled out a clean bandana.

"Give me your arm."

I held it out.

He drove with one hand and wound the cloth around my wrist with the other, tight, and tied it off with a quick square knot.

His knuckles brushed the inside of my forearm.

Nothing in me had moved for eight days, not at the fire, not at Cade's hands, not at the Caller's iron.

Now my stomach dropped for a man's knuckles.

At the Reimer gate he stopped, set the brake and left the engine running.

The headlights lay on the pasture, and the dog jumped down and waited by the gate for someone to open it.

"Terms," Rod said. "I say them once."

"Say them."

"The room at the end of the hall is yours. The door locks from your side. You work my cows or you don't, your call."

He kept his eyes on the windshield.

"You can walk any night and the stand holds. Nothing else is owed."

"Nothing else," I said.

"Not a hand. Not a night. Not a thank-you."

I looked at the side of his face in the dash light.

It was a hard face, broken nose and heavy brows and a mouth that didn't give much away.

He had not looked at me once since the fire.

"I have been touched by one man in eight days," I said, "and he cut me."

His jaw moved.

"I know."

"So come here."

He turned his head.

I took hold of his canvas collar in my good hand and kissed him.

For a moment he didn't move at all.

Then his hand came up and closed around the back of my neck, careful and huge.

He kissed me back slowly and took only what I gave him.

His mouth was warm and tasted of coffee.

I made a sound against it that I did not recognize.

I pulled myself across the bench seat and climbed into his lap with a knee on either side of him, my back against the wheel.

He went rigid underneath me.

"Marit."

"I'm paying," I said. "You said nothing else is owed. So I'm paying."

I kissed him harder.

His other hand slid under the hem of my shirt and flattened across my bare back, hot and rough, and I arched into it.

Every nerve in my skin woke at once and wanted more.

His thumb ran along my spine, up and down, and I felt him get hard against the seam of my jeans.

I rolled my hips once.

He groaned into my mouth, low, and his grip on my neck tightened.

"This isn't why I stood," he said against my lips.

"I know why you stood."

"I mean it," he said.

"I know you do."

I pulled back far enough to look at him.

His eyes had gone dark and his breathing wasn't steady.

"I stood in front of two hundred people and felt nothing but sick," I said.

"Right now I feel something and I don't want it to stop."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Is that what this is?"

"Yes. I want to feel something that isn't a lie."

Something shifted in his face.

"Then I'll drive," he said roughly. "Because I'm not doing this in a truck seat."

I climbed back across.

He drove the last half mile with his hand on my knee, and I did not tell him to move it.

The house was a log-and-frame place with a deep porch and one light on in the kitchen.

He carried me in.

I let him, since I could have walked, and since I wanted the weight of his arms.

He set me down on the edge of the kitchen table and stood between my knees.

For the first time he looked at all of me, openly, and I let him.

"You're sure," he said.

It was the one check-in he got, and I answered it by pulling my shirt over my head.

He made a sound in his chest.

His hands came up to my ribs, the thumbs just under my bra, and stopped.

"Look at you," he said quietly.

"Get on with it."

The corner of his mouth moved.

He unhooked my bra with one hand and the straps fell off my shoulders.

His mouth closed over my breast and I gasped and put my hand in his hair.

He sucked, slow and hard, and rolled the other nipple under his thumb until I was pushing against him.

"Rod."

"I've got you."

He kissed down my stomach, and I leaned back on my elbows on his table among the feed catalogs and a coffee cup.

He unbuttoned my jeans and I lifted my hips so he could drag them down with my underwear.

My boots hit the floor one after the other.

Cold air touched me, and then his breath.

He lowered his head between my thighs.

His tongue went flat and slow along my pussy, from the bottom to my clit, and my whole body jerked.

"Oh, God."

"Louder," he said into my skin.

He did it again, and I heard myself make a sound that carried through his kitchen.

He put his big hands under my thighs and spread me wider on the table.

His tongue circled my clit, slow, then faster, then slow again when I started to shake.

He knew exactly when to ease off.

I grabbed his hair with both hands and pushed his face against me.

He groaned into my pussy, a deep sound that I felt in my spine.

"Don't stop."

"Wasn't going to."

He slid two thick fingers inside me.

I was so wet I heard it, and I came undone a little more at the sound.

He curled his fingers up, found the place and pressed it, and his mouth went back to my clit and sucked.

My thighs clamped around his shoulders.

"There," I said. "Right there. Right there, Rod."

"Come for me."

I'd never been told that in a voice like his, rough and certain and not asking.

My whole body answered it before my mind did.

I came with my head thrown back and my heels digging into his back, and I said his name in a voice I'd never used.

He did not stop.

He took me through all of it, his fingers deep and his tongue slow.

When the last shudder let go I lay flat on his table, panting at the ceiling.

He stood up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

He was breathing hard.

The front of his jeans was straining, and he made no move to do anything about it.

I sat up and put my hand on it, and he caught my wrist.

"Not tonight on a table," he said. "You've had a day."

"I've had a day and I want to have the rest of it."

"I know." His thumb passed over the bandana. "Then not this way."

He lifted me down and held me against him for a moment with my face in his chest.

I could feel his heart going hard.

He carried me down the hall to the end room, put my feet on the floor and pushed the door open.

There was a made bed and a quilt and a window with the curtain pulled back on the dark hills.

He stepped back into the hall and stayed there with one hand on the frame.

"It locks from your side," he said.

I looked at the lock.

I looked at him, standing in the hall of his own house without crossing the line he'd just drawn.

He wanted me so much it showed in his shoulders.

Then I walked past the room he'd given me, down the hall to the door at the other end, and turned the knob.

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