Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 116535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116535 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Camden slipped his cell back into his pocket. “Done.”
She patted his chest. “What a good boy you are.”
Camden felt a chuckle build inside him. He bit her lower lip. “I’ve never been good.” Seeing the imprint of his teeth on her mouth made his cock twitch. It surprised him how seeing her marked could both soothe and arouse him at the same time. “You know, I’m grateful Sam healed you earlier, but I don’t like that all the bite marks and bruises I gave you are gone.” Camden felt his good humor flee. “I shouldn’t want you bruised, should I?”
Her face went all soft. “Plenty of people like mixing pain and pleasure. Some don’t go beyond spicing up vanilla sex with some scratching and a few spanks. Others are into whips and canes and all that jazz. None of that is bad unless it isn’t happening in a consensual environment. You like your sex rougher than most, I know. But if you thought I didn’t like something you were doing, you would stop. If I told you to never bruise me again, you wouldn’t.”
“Babe, you have no idea how rough I can get.” She no doubt thought she’d seen him at his most intense. She was wrong. He’d held back with her so far.
“So tell me.”
“I don’t just want to take you hard and fast,” he admitted, a slight growl in his voice. “I want to fuck your throat. Leave handprints on your ass. Choke you until you’re gasping for breath.” He thought that would earn him a grimace at the very least. The one thing he had not expected was for her pupils to dilate. Jesus.
She swallowed. “Okay. Well. Good to know.”
“Good to know?”
“What, you want me to be horrified? I’m not.”
“You should be.” His words came out on a low snarl. “I’m telling you that—as much as I hate myself for it—I’d get off on hurting you.”
“It’s not like you want to beat me up or something. You would never like doing to me what you did to Grant, would you?”
Camden recoiled. “Fuck, no.”
“And you wouldn’t enjoy seriously injuring me or seeing me in excruciating pain?”
“Of fucking course I wouldn’t.”
“Exactly. This little kink you have doesn’t make you cruel. Hell, it’s not even a full-on kink in this instance. Not really. It’s more that you like spicing up rough sex. There’s no shame in it as long as it’s consensual.
“The consensual part is important to you. You wouldn’t get off on causing me a little pain if you thought I wouldn’t like it, would you? Part of the thrill for you would be that I’d want it. That I’d be trusting you not to take it too far. Yes?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“And has it occurred to you that I might like my sex to be a little rougher than most people do?”
Camden combed his fingers through her hair. “It did occur to me last night. And this morning. I was rough. You took it. You wanted it.”
“I did. I’ll want it again in future.”
It was absolutely impossible to keep his dick under control when she said stuff like that. Christ, the woman would be the death of him. He curled his hand around the side of her neck. “You have to promise to tell me immediately if I ever do something you don’t like. You just say stop, and I’ll stop.”
“I promise. You don’t have to worry that I’d suffer in silence just to please you. I’m not that sort of person. And it would be pointless anyway, because you’d later realize I’d lied, and then you’d feel like shit for hurting me. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
Satisfied, he nodded, knowing he could trust her word. He was about to speak again, but then her phone rang.
Without moving away from him, Aspen grabbed it from the counter. “It’s Havana.” She answered simply, “Hey.” Her face fell. “Shit … So, what happens next?” She puffed out a breath. “All right.” She fired a quick look at Camden. “Yeah, I’ll tell him … Okay, see you tomorrow.” She ended the call.
“What was that about?” said Camden.
“Luke’s had no luck getting an address for your uncle, but he has one for Wayland.” She set the phone back on the counter. “The polar no longer lives in Minnesota. His home was sold seven months ago.”
“Where does he live now?”
“River isn’t sure,” she said, referring to an Olympus cat who worked for the human police—police who were completely oblivious to the fact that he was a shifter. Humans didn’t even know that pallas cat shifters existed. Or bearcats, for that matter. “There’s no paper trail. Wayland hasn’t rented or bought another property. He hasn’t used any of his credit cards since then.”
“So, essentially, he’s gone off the grid.”
“It would appear so. This doesn’t mean he’s our guy, or even that he’s doing anything bad. He could have simply decided to go traveling in his animal form for a while. The wolverines often do it. Well, unmated wolverines. But it’s kind of suspicious that he’s nowhere to be found at a time when you’re being targeted like this.”