When Rae took Wulf into herself, when their bodies linked, Rae breathed.
Rae watched Wulf’s so-blue eyes as he pressed into her, stretching her body around him. Her body trembled with wanting him, and she almost came when his cock pushed inside her to the hilt.
This was it, the last moment, the last time.
She tried to match her breath with his when he exhaled. Every time he breathed, the very last second of his exhale trembled like a gasp, but his eyes were clear, and he gazed at her as he took her—so intense, so controlled.
Rae tried to absorb everything about each moment: each thrust, each sigh. He smelled like vanilla and cloves and a green meadow, and yet she could smell that elemental, animal scent of man under it all. His body slid as he eased himself into her.
She stayed in the moment, desperately trying to drink it all in, to take all of him into her body. She laid a hand against his cheek. Blond stubble that she couldn’t even see was rough on her palm.
He watched her eyes, that she thought he must also realize that this was their last time.
His body rose and fell above her like surging waves breaking on the shore. Her pussy tightened around his cock, fluttering, but she didn’t want it to end so soon. Oh why, why had she rushed all their love-making, so eager to find out what was next and to climax, when she should have savored him?
They moved together, finding their rhythm, and Rae thought she might burst any second but held on, drawing it out. Every time he slid into her, she whimpered and tightened, almost there, but she stopped.
She wanted every last moment.
His lips parted, revealing his straight, white teeth, and his eyes clouded with passion.
“Come with me,” he gasped.
“Oh, yes,” she said, her body twisting inside, coiling so tight that she could barely breathe. He did that thing where he rose at the top of each thrust, dragging his body across her clit and pushing against her inside. She couldn’t hold back and gasped, “Oh, yes!”
Her body rushed into a tight knot and then blew into flecks of light. She cried out and couldn’t keep her eyes open. Darkness waved through her body, and she clutched Wulf’s warmth to her, holding onto his strong shoulders while she fell. His cock throbbed in her as he came, and his breath on her throat turned almost to a sob.
Her body flowed like waving seaweed, and she couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. His breath washed over her throat. His arms cradled her.
She held on, floating. His weight pressed on her, but it almost seemed to her flooded mind that he was speaking something else, Arabic or German, because her thoughts couldn’t wrap around what he was saying.
She barely heard him whisper into her neck, “Come with me to Paris.”
He murmured some more, but the words disconnected in her head.
His bass voice finally coalesced, and he said, “Say you will,” in her ear. He rolled off her, withdrawing, and he laid his head on the flat pillow beside her.
Rae curled when he dragged his dick out of her. She pressed her legs together to quell the ache. “Wh—what?”
He whispered again, and his breath felt like feathers brushing her ear, “Come with me to Paris next week.”
At first, she thought he was mocking her, but surely he wouldn’t be so unkind. He must know that her heart was breaking. “No.”
He held her hand. “Come with me.”
Practicality presented itself as a defense. “I can’t. I have to go to class.”
“That week is your spring break,” he said.
“Oh, yeah.” Air trembled in her lungs, and she spread her fingers on his chest, just to touch him. “Wait, how do you know that?”
“The Devilhouse closes during spring break.” He pressed her palm over his beating heart. “All the girls go to Mexico or Powell Lake.”
“Lake Powell,” she said, even though that was so beside the point and she only said it because she couldn’t think straight.
“What is the attraction of Lake Powell?”
“Houseboats.” She couldn’t seem to focus, but she was pretty sure that he had invited her to go to Paris, as if this wasn’t their last night together, and she was busy squelching the joy that bubbled up because she was surely wrong and her heart would break all over again.
And that was why she should not go anywhere with him.
“Houseboats?” he echoed.
“Don’t ask. You’d be shocked. Drunken debauchery that would put The Devilhouse to shame. Did you say Paris?”
“Yes.” The deep blue of his eyes was like the warm and brilliant Sea of Cortez on a sunny day. The room smelled like the clean, deep ocean from their love-making. “Come with me to Paris.”
“I’ve never been to Paris.”
“Smashing. So you’ll come.”
She recoiled, so afraid that he was mocking her. “I don’t have a passport.”
“We can have it by Tuesday morning. We’ll leave Friday. Plenty of time.”
Unease wormed into her heart. “How can you do that?”
“I will call friends of mine in Helvetica, who will call their counterparts in this government. It would help if you had a birth certificate. We could have someone open the courthouse for us.”
He sounded like he had everything arranged, or like he could arrange anything he wanted, anything at all. Like he could magic up sandwiches after every diner had closed. Like he could produce government documents on a Sunday with a phone call. Like he could walk away from killing two people. Like even within her church, he could raise three men to their feet to defend her like he was conducting an orchestra.
It creeped Rae out. The only people she knew of with that kind of influence were involved in the drug cartels, and yes, that included her two uncles, Mayor and Sheriff Harding, among others.
People who crossed drug lords were sold into slavery or murdered in the desert.
Her guts twisted into what felt like strength for the first time. She had lost her family. She might lose the money to open her autism clinic if Wulf threw her out of a job before he sold off The Devilhouse.
She wouldn’t get involved with a drug lord, ever, for anyone, not even if Wulf was one, not even for only two weeks.
Rae sat up because panicked ultimatums can’t be delivered lying down. “No more secrets. I need to know everything that you’ve been hiding, and I know that you’re hiding a lot, that you hide everything. If you don’t tell me all of it, I’ll leave. I’ll call my brother to come get me.” Surely Ezekiel would drive her back to college, “And I went to high school here. That girl working the hotel desk was my senior class treasurer. I have fifty cousins. I can find someplace to crash for a night and some way to get back to school.” She hoped that was true.
Wulf scooted himself up the bed to lean against the headboard. He rested his hands behind his head, and his biceps bulged. His abdominal muscles rippled down his stomach. “What do you want to know?”
Her worst fears boiled over. “You’re involved with drugs, aren’t you? The money, that huge house, The Devilhouse, the guns, the guards, knowing my uncles, everything. When Sheriff Harding ran your license plates, he called someone on the phone. That’s weird. No one does that. You’re some kind of drug lord.”
Wulf shook his head. “I’m not involved in drugs or anything else illegal. I never have been. I have a small connection with the Swiss consulate as an economic emissary that affords me certain immunity privileges, which is why your uncle spoke to someone there. The phone number is attached to our vehicle licenses.”
“Then why do you have so much money?”
Wulf pulled his lower lip into his mouth, deliberating. Finally, he said, “If I tell you, you might not believe me. Let me show you.”
“No. Tell me now. I want to know now.” Rae waited, trembling.
He reached out to her and held her arms above her elbows. “Rest. Eat some proper food. Let’s not do this now, near midnight, after this terrible day.”
“Wulf, I want to know. I have to know,” she begged.
His hands moved up, and he cupped her neck. “One more night, Reagan. Tomorrow, I will show you. Not now, not when you’re so tired, not when you’re so scared.”
“I’m not scared!”
“Of course not.” He rested his forehead against hers. “It’s a difficult thing. It’s a complicated thing. Let me have you for one more night.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me everything.”
His eyes were closed. “Agreed.”
She sank into his arms and laid her head on his shoulder, limp and afraid to know whatever he didn’t want to tell her.
A part of her didn’t want to know because she wanted to go on just as she was, blissfully stupid, but she shouldn’t make decisions without knowing whatever he was hiding. It was stupid that he wouldn’t tell her, and she was stupid for not insisting on it before, and this whole situation and all these stupid secrets and the crazy fear in her head were pissing her off.
One last night, she thought. She would give him and herself one last night, because tomorrow, everything would change.
He stroked her hair and soothed her until she slept.