She didn’t, however, go right to sleep. He could see that she had the light on when he looked out his bedroom window. She was up quite late, in fact, as was probably her habit, he realized, and as long as she was up, he was up – in many different ways.
It had gone better than he’d thought it would, he had to admit, considering that he should never have invited her here in the first place. She was smart and funny and a damned hard worker, he had to admit. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to come home to, but it hadn’t been a much cleaner house and an amazingly good meal, and despite her disappointment at what she considered to be a distinct lack of entertainment choices, she’d been a good sport and seemed to have enjoyed time they spent playing games. She hadn’t even much bitched about having to get up extremely early, which he bet she was very not used to.
Then he admitted to himself that what he’d thought to himself was a lie. He’d know exactly what he’d expected to come home to – a repeat of what the first potential wife he’d brought here had done – absolutely nothing. She’d had her nose stuck so far in the air that he didn’t even care what she thought about the condition of his home – there was absolutely no embarrassment in showing her, just anger at her snooty reaction – to him, to Billings, to the ranch . . . She’d thought that he would take her into town to wine and dine her, as if she hadn’t bothered to read his ad at all, and had told him as much. Nothing had been touched around the house at all, and when his back got up about her expectations, she’d told him she thought it wasn’t going to work out, and demanded that he take her back to the airport so she could catch the next flight home.
He’d been just as happy to do so. It had been a complete bust, and had made him even more wary of the opposite sex than he already was.
But she seemed to be Little Miss Jayne Sunshine, and it left him wondering when the other shoe was going to drop.
Considering the way she looked, he might be willing to put up with more than he might otherwise of what he considered to be bad behavior in order to be able to sleep with her every night. She was gorgeous, and he couldn’t believe she was even considering moving out here to live alone, ninety percent of the time, with him.
Although he had his occasional lucid moments, most of the time all his filthy mind could think about was how much he wanted to make love to her, what she’d feel like beneath him . . . would she scream when he made her cum, or sigh blissfully? He was ruthless with himself and figured he’d last an embarrassingly short amount of time, at least at first, but he’d be willing to risk that complete humiliation in order to be close to her.
And as he was building the fantasy of making love to her, he saw the light dim in her room, but seconds later could hear her stepping carefully down the stairs – and no matter how hard she tried – or he had tried as a kid – those stairs were too old and creaky for either of them to get away with it.
He knew when he was trying to sneak past his parents as a kid it was to go outside and get into trouble down by the barns, but he doubted that was her motivation.
Trieve let her pass by the short hallway where his bedroom was, then began to follow her. Who said his Marine Corp training had gone to go to waste? She had no idea he was there.
She was using something as a flashlight that wasn’t a flashlight, and it took him a minute to realize that it was her smart phone. He watched her open the back door and make her way carefully across the verandah – which was in better condition there than out at the front door – to stand, with the cold wind whipping the housecoat and nightgown around her legs and look up at the sky.
He was almost to her when she turned around and walked right into him, nearly dropping her phone, but he sank down and caught it inches from the ground.
“What are you doing here?” she asked as she stood there shivering.
“I saw you go out of the house and wanted to make sure you were alright.”
Jayne sighed and turned away from him again. “I’m fine. I just realized that Montana is big sky country, and I forgot to really look at it in the light. I wanted to see how different the night sky was from Vermont’s.”
He was only half listening to her explanation. “You’re in your slippers. They’re going to be soaking wet and you’re going to catch your death of cold.”
“Thanks, Mom,” she replied sarcastically as she rolled her eyes and turned around at the same time, completely unprepared for what he did next, which was lift her into his arms and carry her back into the house. At least he had had the sense to slip on his boots and not stand in the snow getting pneumonia while looking up at the stars.
“You’re welcome, Jaynie,” he said, apparently in no hurry to put her down as he stood in his kitchen – that still smelled of her wonderful cooking – and held her in his arms.
A horrible thought popped into her head. “You’re not going to spank me for that, are you?”
His eyebrow rose, and he appeared to be thinking very carefully about his response, and, not knowing him all that well, she couldn’t tell whether he was serious or not. “Well, I’m not sure yet, really. It appears you need more looking after than I might have thought at first.” He squeezed her gently closer, certain not to hurt her even accidentally.
She bit her lip, and he was more charmed by the unconscious gesture than he wanted to be. She was an independent, successful woman, and he couldn’t imagine she spent very much of her time being indecisive.
As she looked up at him, awaiting his decision, he found that he had hit the dead end of his rope and could no longer deny himself a taste of her.
Jayne watched him bend towards her, giving her almost too much time to raise any sort of objection, which she wasn’t about to. When their lips met, she whimpered at the delicacy of the kiss, lifting her head a bit to deepen it herself and hearing his echoing groan, and it was as if she’d found the key to the floodgates. She’d never felt possessed by a man merely through his kiss, but he managed it without a hitch. Her arms reached unconsciously up to settle just behind his neck, the fingertips of one hand exploring him tentatively there, the other boldly buried in the thicket of dark hair she found there, feeling every strand flowing through her fingers as she dragged them through it.
Trieve found himself fully and completely capable – he had been since he’d seen her picture. But he didn’t want this to be one sided at all.
After devouring her mouth eagerly, he held back for a moment, not letting her entice him again until he’d said what he wanted to say. “I want you, Jayne. More than almost anything I’ve ever wanted in my life. I just want to make sure that you want it, too.”
Jayne shook her head and tried to reach up to kiss him again, but he wouldn’t allow it. Instead, he said something that would have had most women crawling right out of his embrace and back to wherever they came from.
“But my making love to you doesn’t mean I’m going to marry you.”
She was unable to control the way she stiffened in his arms. It was automatic when she felt insulted, apparently - not that she didn’t think she had a bit of understanding about this man, even after so short an acquaintance. The hard edge he wore so often was comfortable to him – it kept people – mostly women – at bay, and that had been fine with him for quite a while, she’d bet. Someone had hurt him badly, made him a wary and distrusting man for the rest of the female population to deal with.
Frankly, though, she didn’t much care at this moment whether or not this was going to result in happily ever after. She just wanted him to lay her down on his bed, strip off her nightgown and merge his body with hers. She didn’t care if there was a blizzard coming, or a nuclear winter, or an evil, axe wielding snowman.
She just wanted him, every bit of him she could get for as long as she could get it.
Til she finally let the thought through, the inevitable moment when he invited her to leave, or threw her out. She let herself realize with a sudden, painful clarity that he really didn’t think she’d fit the bill for what he had in mind at all, despite the fact that he’d invited her up here, and that this month was a hard won indulgence for a man who didn’t want a wife and a partner as much as he wanted an egg donor he could keep at arm’s length.
But she knew that even admitting those distasteful facts to herself didn’t change things a bit as far as she was concerned. She felt as if she was caught up in something much bigger than herself, that she had no control over. She could no more stop what they’d started than she could
“I don’t give a damn, Trieve. I just want you to make love to me. Please.”
The last word was whispered achingly, and he was sorry that he’d made her feel she needed to beg for him, when every cell in his body craved nothing more – and nothing less - than every inch of hers.
In answer, he walked with her to his bedroom. It had been his parents’ while he was growing up, then his Dad’s once his Mom had left, and now his. It was one of the biggest rooms in the house, with an attached bathroom, and the biggest bed he could afford, which his feet still hung off of if he didn’t position himself just right.
But none of that mattered right now. All he cared about was that he was about to have her, here, beneath him, and that she apparently wanted him just as badly as he did her, although he found the idea absolutely amazing.
She reached up and tried to help him off with the t shirt he’d slipped into to trail after her, but he brushed her hands away in favor of reaching down to her upper thigh and beginning to gather her warm, soft nightgown in his big hand, raising the hem as excruciatingly slowly as he raised his hand, exposing the most intimate parts of her till she helped him get it off over her head, wishing the entire time she’d remembered to bring pajamas that made her more easily accessible instead of being cute.
The only scrap of material she still had on was her panties, and they wouldn’t have protected her from a soft sigh, much less someone the size of Trieve. But he surprised her by not reaching for the bows that decorated each of her hips, holding the front and back – what there was of them – together. Instead, he stretched out beside her and kissed her, leaning a bit towards her but not jumping on her, as if he didn’t want to overwhelm her.
Trieve wasn’t at all sure how long he could keep up his tame pussycat demeanor, but he hoped it would be long enough to bring her to the same heights he had long since scaled, although, judging by the eagerness of her response, she wasn’t necessarily that far off. She returned each kiss and more, pressing back eagerly, arching against him but not trying to brush those tight tips against him – yet anyway.
As he continued to kiss her, slowly, more languorously than before, he let his hands begin to claim her, inch by slow inch, beginning at the top of her head, where his fingers mirrored her own, losing themselves in her soft, shiny hair, cupping the back of her head and using his hold to keep her still for a kiss, and that had her writhing more violently than anything else he’d done, so he continued to do it – teasing her, testing her, watching and reveling in every one of her reactions.
He held her still, with her neck and back forcibly arched by the way he positioned her head as his lips dropped first down onto her collarbone, then a bit lower each time until he began to climb the impressive slopes of her breasts, alternating wet, warm kisses between the two until the only places that remained untouched by those his eager lips were her nipples, which was where she must wanted him to kiss her.
But he ignored their silent enticements in favor of the flat of her stomach right beneath them, and all the attention her poor, aching peaks got was the feel of his hair as it was dragged over them as he descended to greener pastures.
She wasn’t too proud to beg. “Trieve, please. My nipples. Please.”
He looked up at her with a benevolent smile, then returned to what he had been doing. “Not right now, Baby. Not right now.”
It was the first time he’d used an endearment with her, but she couldn’t really enjoy it because the only thing she could think about was how much those tender, tightened tips cried out for him – any part of him. Even just his breath over them would have been fine with her, but he wasn’t even offering that.
Somehow, Jayne hadn’t considered that she would be expected to obey him in the bedroom, too. That was something that bore more thinking about . . . sometime. Definitely not right at this moment, though, because he was descending, full steam ahead, into an area she wasn’t at all sure she wanted him to become acquainted with the first time they made love, especially since she hadn’t had a chance to take a shower before he did so, and, as he slid between her legs, forcing her open naturally, she said as much to him, despite the fact that she could feel how her cheeks flamed while she made her admission.
Not that he seemed as if he was going to let her little confession stop him. No, he continued to do what it was that he had set out to, until she lay there, completely exposed to him, not exactly actively protesting his presence at the altar of her womanhood, but reaching down occasionally to push him half-heartedly away, sometimes twisting as if she was going to try to get up.
But he put a stop to that quickly by swatting her behind every time she tried to turn and move away from him. There was no other possible way to remove herself – her head was up against the headboard, and there was nothing else she could to in order to escape, until he finally said, quietly, firmly, “Stay still.”
She collapsed back onto a bottom that was decently reddened, despite how she tried to protect it as she tried with an alarming lack of success to extricate herself.
Trieve positioned himself so that his outspread, bent arms held her down without much effort as he leaned forward, between her well spread legs to nuzzle her mons for a moment, then begin to gently, very gently, flick the tiny pebble he found there.
His efforts were rewarded when he heard her gasping for breath within seconds. She writhed and twisted, but he knew it wasn’t a continuation of her attempts to get away from him. Her entire body was arched, taut strings, expertly played by the relentless bow of his lips and tongue and mouth.
A surprisingly short amount of time later – before he’d even begun to really explore the lush expanse before him, she was begging him – but it didn’t seem as if she wanted to say what for.
She just kept repeating the word “please”.
He did like it when a woman said that to him, especially in bed, so he wasn’t at all sure whether or not he wanted to stop her, but he did look up at her for long enough to ask huskily, “Please what, Jayne?”
Then he returned to the very pleasant task at hand – or rather mouth – without waiting for her response.
Jayne herself wasn’t at all sure she could answer him. It seemed entirely beyond her to do more than she already was, and when he paused for a long moment again, a little while later, she couldn’t take the loss of stimulation, the loss of that warm, wet, live cocoon with which he had surrounded her.
“I asked you a question, Jayne, and I expect an answer.” Not accusing, not angry, but firm and quiet – and immutable.
How could he possibly sound so goddamn sane when she was slowly but surely losing her mind?
She tried. She really tried to give him a more complete thought, a more complete sentence, but it was just behind her at the moment. She was too far gone.
But Trieve knew exactly what to do to help her recover her sanity.
So he flipped her over, very abruptly and rudely, onto her tummy, and began to spank her.
Hard - much harder than he had before.
She struggled to get away – this time with much more impetus than a few minutes ago – but with the same stark lack of results. She quickly realized that she was well and truly caught, and it didn’t seem that he was in much of a mood to be lenient.
Quite the contrary.