She Took Down the Rogue, Now He Can't Look Away novel · Chapter 2 of 3

Chapter 2: Steam and No Patience

In the private washroom of the tracker lodge, Jamison cleans the blood from Passion's wound, and his hands cross the boundary they have guarded, teasing her to the edge and stopping twice before she admits she wants him to continue.

The latch clicked behind us, and the sound of it was louder than the whole forest had been.

The washroom filled with steam before I could catch my breath. It rose off the old copper pipes in thick white curls, fogging the mirror over the sink, clinging to the tile walls. The room smelled like cedar soap and wet stone and the copper bite of hot water. Jamison set me down on the edge of the deep basin, but he did not step back.

I caught his wrist before he could reach for the clean cloth folded on the shelf.

His skin was warm under my fingers. Warmer than it should have been after the cold walk through the trees. I held on a second too long, and he let me, his pulse steady under my thumb.

'You are still bleeding,' he said.

His voice was low, the way he always spoke when he did not want the rest of the pack to hear. But there was no one else here. The door was closed. The steam curled around us both.

'I know.'

'Then let me work.'

I let go of his wrist.

He reached past me and took the cloth from the shelf, then folded it once, slow and precise, the way he did everything. The water ran hot into the basin, and he soaked the cloth, wrung it out, and turned back to me with his jaw set.

'Lift your shirt.'

The words landed in the steam between us. I did not move.

He waited. Jamison Adamns was a man who knew how to wait. He stood there with the cloth dripping in his hand, and the silence stretched until I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears.

'You carried me through the forest,' I said. 'I think I can manage a bandage.'

'You cannot see the wound. You would make it worse.'

'I've patched myself up before.'

'I am aware.'

There was something in the way he said it. Not the usual cold distance. Something else. Something that made the heat in the room press closer against my skin.

I lifted my shirt.

The flannel was torn and stiff with drying blood. I pulled it up over the bandage, hissing when the fabric pulled at the wound. The black tank underneath was sliced through, and I dragged that up too, baring my side to the warm wet air.

Jamison went very still.

The gash ran along my ribs, deep and ugly, the edges raw where the rogue's teeth had caught me. Blood had soaked through the bandage and smeared across my stomach in a dark red streak. It looked worse than it felt. Or maybe it felt worse than I was willing to admit.

He did not say anything.

He just pressed the warm cloth to my skin, and the heat of it made me flinch. His other hand settled on my waist to hold me still. His palm was broad and rough, and it covered more of me than it needed to.

'Breathe,' he said.

'I am breathing.'

'You are holding your breath.'

He was right. I let it out in a long, slow exhale, and my body sagged against his hand without my permission.

The cloth moved over my skin in small, careful circles. He cleaned the blood away from the wound first, then the smears lower on my stomach, then the dried tracks that had run down toward the waist of my jeans. His touch was methodical. Clinical. But his thumb moved once, just once, along the bare skin above my hip, and it was not clinical at all.

I felt it everywhere.

'You should not have gone alone,' he said.

'I told you I could handle myself.'

'You were bleeding in the snow.'

'And the rogue was dead.'

He looked up at me then, his dark eyes meeting mine over the steam. His hand stayed where it was, warm and heavy on my waist.

'You could have died,' he said.

The words came out rough, like they had torn loose from somewhere he kept locked. I had never heard Jamison Adamns sound like that. Not in three years of standing in the same rooms with him, taking his orders, watching him keep the whole pack at arm's length.

'But I didn't,' I said.

'No.' He dropped the cloth into the basin and turned back to me. 'You didn't.'

His hand moved.

It slid up from my waist, slow enough that I could have stopped him, and his fingers traced the edge of the wound. Not pressing. Just feeling the shape of it. The heat of his skin against the heat of mine.

My stomach tightened.

He noticed. Of course he noticed. Jamison noticed everything, and his eyes came back to my face with something dark and knowing in them.

'Does it hurt?' he asked.

'No.'

The word came out too fast. Too breathless.

A muscle moved in his jaw. 'You are a terrible liar.'

'I'm an excellent liar.'

'Not with me.'

His thumb swept down, away from the wound, over the unbroken skin below my ribs. My whole body went taut. The steam thickened around us, and I could smell him through it now, pine and woodsmoke and something warmer underneath.

'What are you doing?' I asked.

'I am cleaning your wound.'

'That is not my wound.'

'I know.'

He said it so simply. So flatly. Like there was no point pretending, like the pretending had already ended somewhere back in the trees when I stopped telling him to put me down.

His hand slid lower.

His fingers traced the line of my stomach, just above the waistband of my jeans. Slow. Deliberate. His eyes never left my face.

'Tell me to stop,' he said.

I didn't.

The steam curled around us, and I watched his hand move over my skin, and I did not tell him to stop. I couldn't. My body had already decided, arching toward his touch like it belonged there, and my mind was a long way behind, still trying to catch up.

'Passion.'

My name in his mouth. He said it like a question and a warning all at once.

'What?'

'You are trembling.'

I was. A fine tremor ran through me, and his hand on my stomach felt it, and his eyes darkened with something that made the room spin.

'It's the cold,' I said.

'There is no cold in this room.'

He was right about that too. The washroom was a furnace, the old pipes rattling with heat, the mirror gone blind with steam. I was not cold. I was burning.

His fingers found the button of my jeans.

He did not open it. He just rested his thumb there, right at the edge of everything, and looked at me.

'This is a very bad idea,' I said.

'Yes.'

'You're my Alpha.'

'Yes.'

'This could ruin everything.'

'Yes.'

But he didn't stop. And I didn't stop him. The button came open under his thumb, and then the zipper, a slow metallic sound in the quiet, and his hand slid inside.

The first touch of his fingers through the thin cotton made me gasp.

He stopped.

Not all the way. Just enough. His hand stilled against me, and I could feel the heat of him through the fabric, and I could feel how close he was to where I wanted him, and he did not move.

'What do you want?' he asked.

'You know what I want.'

'Say it.'

The word came out rough, and his hand pressed against me just hard enough to make my hips jerk toward him.

'No.'

'Then I will stop.'

He started to pull back. I caught his wrist the way I had caught it before, and I held him there, and the sound that came out of me was not a word at all.

'That is not an answer,' he said.

His voice was low and steady, but I could see what it cost him. The tension in his shoulders. The way his other hand gripped the edge of the basin so hard his knuckles went pale. He was holding himself back, and it was taking everything he had.

The power in that made my head swim.

Jamison Adamns, the Alpha of the whole damn pack, standing in a steam-filled washroom with his hand down my jeans, waiting for me to tell him what I wanted. Waiting like it mattered. Like I mattered.

'Please,' I whispered.

'Please what?'

'Please don't stop.'

His fingers moved.

The cotton was soaked through from the steam, and I could feel every ridge and line of his hand through it. He found me with the kind of precision he brought to everything, and I bit down on my lip to keep from crying out.

'That's it,' he murmured. 'Let me hear you.'

'I can't.'

'You can. There is no one else here.'

He was right. The door was closed. The steam swallowed every sound. And the way he touched me made it impossible to be quiet anyway.

He worked me in slow, deliberate circles, his eyes on my face the whole time, watching every flicker of pleasure cross it. He was learning me. Mapping me. Finding the exact pressure and rhythm that made my thighs shake and my back bow.

'You are so responsive,' he said, and there was wonder in his voice, a rough edge of awe that undid something in my chest.

'Jamison.'

His name broke out of me, and his hand stilled.

I made a sound of pure frustration, and he laughed, a low, dark sound that vibrated through the steam.

'Not yet,' he said.

'You're cruel.'

'I am thorough.'

The second time he brought me to the edge was slower. He pulled my jeans down over my hips, just enough, and then his hand was on bare skin, and I stopped caring about the wound in my side or the blood on my shirt or the three years of distance I had built between us.

He touched me with his fingers inside me and his thumb working me in tight circles, and I came apart against his hand with a cry that echoed off the tile.

But he didn't let me fall.

He caught me, one arm around my waist, holding me up while the world went white and then slowly came back. The steam was so thick now I could barely see him, but I could feel him everywhere, solid and warm and real.

'Why did you stop?' I asked, when I could speak again.

'I did not stop. I waited.'

'For what?'

'For you to be ready.'

His hand was still beneath my clothes, still pressed against me, and he moved it now in a slow, deliberate stroke that made my whole body clench.

'Jamison,' I said again, and this time my voice came out clear and steady, with no room in it for mistake. 'I want you to continue.'

He went very still.

The steam curled around us, and for a long moment the only sound was the drip of water from the old copper pipes.

'Say it again,' he said.

His voice was rough, almost broken, like the words were being dragged out of him.

'I want you to continue.'

I said it slowly. Deliberately. The way he had touched me. The way he did everything.

And his hand began to move again.

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