AMARIS STORME
Mate!
The voice came from within me as my wolf leaped in joy.
I was still getting used to having a wolf and I didn't even know how to control her, sometimes I felt she was the one controlling me and this right here was one of those instances.
"Aren't you going to let me in, Amaris?" Ryker said, already making his way in but I placed my hands against the door frame blocking his path.
I was definitely aware against his broad shoulders, tall height, muscular body and those biceps, my lean hands and slender body were no match; he could easily shove me aside with a finger.
A grin appeared on his face, almost that of amusement, "Come on, Amaris." He spoke in a baritone that didn't sound anything like the condescending tone he had on earlier during breakfast.
"I don't want you anywhere in my room. Last time…" my words trailed off to thoughts. Do I really want to acknowledge what happened last time?
Somewhere in the back of my head I was still in denial, still choosing to say it was a dream.
"Go on, Amaris," He was standing straight now, a few inches away from me, his presence was already becoming all-consuming and there was something about it–him that sucked the very air out of the atmosphere leaving it with just the smell of him. Fur.
It seems they both had a distinct smell. Rowan smelt like apples and he smelt like fur, fluffy, smooth and cuddly furs.
"Amaris, get out of the way, or I would make you," his voice shifted back to the tone he had earlier on. But it wasn't harsh, it was daring.
"How would you make me?"
I regretted the words the second they left my mouth.
He moved before I could process it, his hand closed around my wrist and he pulled me from the doorframe like I weighed nothing at all, which honestly was humiliating, and walked me backwards into the room with the kind of unhurried ease that suggested he was having fun doing this.
I stumbled back on my own feet trying to keep up with being manhandled and before I could locate a single useful protest he had turned me around and pressed my back against the now shut door, his arm braced above my head, his body close enough that the smell of him wrapped around me immediately.
That damn fur smell, he was warm and consuming and deeply unfair.
"Let go of me," I said, which sounded significantly less authoritative than I intended.
"Keep your voice down," he said it quietly, almost lazily, his eyes dropping to my face with that infuriating calm of his. "Unless you want to explain to whoever is in that hallway why I am in your room and exactly what we are doing."
My mouth closed.
He smiled. I hated the smile.
"You should leave," I said, lower this time. "I don't want you in here."
"Is that right?" It wasn't even a question, he said it like he was turning something over in his mouth and finding it mildly entertaining.
"Yes that is right, get out of my room Ryker."
He tilted his head slightly and looked at me and there was something in his expression which hinted at mischief.
"Why are you acting like you didn't like it, Amaris."
My eyes went wide before I could stop them. "Like what?" I said.
His eyes dropped to my face, or was it my lips I couldn't tell. He towered over me and I knew trying to wiggle my way out was useless.
The best thing to do was stay calm and act unbothered.
Even though I was deeply bothered. Bothered that my wolf was enjoying the thrill of my discomfort. Bothered that my knee was growing weak before him. Bothered that my body wasn't cooperating with my mind. I was bothered that standing so close to him now I could see every part of him that I hadn't noticed the first time.
Dark hair that fell slightly across his forehead, jaw cut that made his chin more defined, a mouth that looked like it had never once in its life formed an apology it actually meant.
There was a scar near his collarbone that disappeared beneath his shirt and I hated that I noticed it. His eyes were the worst part, dark but magnetic, they pulled you in their force field and entrapped you in them, they were enchanting.
Ryker tilted his head to mine, stopping inches away from my ears, he whispered. "Tell me Amaris, when my brother and I had you pinned to that bed, and I had my hands on those…"
His eyes lowered to my chest, and they fell on my breast. I had worn a fairly appropriately covered dress but right now his gaze penetrated every layer of them, I felt them inside of me, my nipples hardening.
"Those round breasts of yours, and you couldn't help but moan out in pleasure. Tell me, Amaris, did you like what my hands did to you."
"Please," a plea escaped my lips but I wasn't sure if I was pleading for him to stop or go ahead.
I had read books, growing up in Stormshadow with no friends and a father who locked me indoors more than he let me out, books were my only company. I had read every kind of man fiction had to offer. The brooding ones, the tortured ones, the ones who showed up at the right moment with the right words and saved the girl and rode off into whatever metaphorical sunset the author had prepared.
Ryker was not that kind.
He was the other kind. The one who didn't save the girl but instead found her, decided she was his, and locked the tower door from the outside with a smile that suggested he was doing her a favour.
A smile carved itself into his lips, slow and deliberate. "Say please, Ryker," his tone dropped, hoarse and not sounding like a request but an instruction.
I should have gathered every last piece of myself and resisted him. I knew that. My mind knew that. My wolf however, had completely abandoned me and was practically rolling around in whatever this was.
"Ryker, please let me go," I pleaded in a low tone that sounded pathetic even to my own ears.
"Your mouth says one thing, Amaris," he said, "but your body says another."
"You can't read my body," I shot back, "you don't know what I feel."
"Oh I can," he said simply as a matter of fact.
His hand lifted and his fingers traced slowly from my cheek downward, stopping at the base of my neck where his palm rested still against my pulse point. "You feel the heat here," he said quietly, eyes dropping to where his hand sat. "That is your body begging for more."
I swallowed the lump in my throat and hated myself for it.
"Can you stop," I said.
"Say please."
"Please," I murmured, sounding like a helpless fool and I knew it.
His hand moved down and found my breast through the fabric and his touch was intense, shooting sparks in my vein and I heard myself make a sound that I would be taking to my grave because it left me with no shred of dignity.
His fingers were gentle and then not so gentle and my back pressed further into the door on its own somehow both responding to his touch and finding a way to accommodate him.
"Yes," he said, low and quiet, "there it is. Your desire coming to the surface."
His hand traveled back up then, along my throat, my jaw, until his thumb rested lightly against my lips and he looked at me, his expression shifting to a deadpan serious gaze.
"This is where your craving lives," he whispered. His eyes stayed on my mouth. "Tell me Amaris, have you ever been kissed in a way that drives you completely out of your mind."
I shook my head once, slowly, detesting my response and every second of how honest that answer was.
He leaned in, my lungs collapsing to almost nothing, I gasped for air and my eyes dropped to his mouth against my own will and I waited, every nerve in my body pulled tight like a string about to snap.
When he was just a breath away from locking his lips to mine, he stopped and then he pulled back with a slow smile that made my stomach churned and my eyes widened.
"My father really found himself a whore."
I blinked. "What."
"You want it all don't you," his voice had shifted back to that cold detached tone he had, and his dark eyes glaring at me. "Get to warm the old man's bed and still find time for his sons."
The heat that flooded through me then had nothing to do with desire I had just felt. My hands came up and shoved at his chest, "Get out of my room."
"Keep your voice down."
"Get out," I said, louder, "get out right now or I will scream and I do not care what anyone thinks."
He let out a chuckle, and the sound of it made my skin prickle. Then he stepped close, closing the distance I had just created between us and dipped his head so his mouth was near my ear and his voice came out barely above a whisper.
"I will be back, Amaris."
"Why," the word cracked in my throat before I could harden it. "Why are you doing this? Why won't you just reject me? Please." My voice dropped an octave, feeling the frustration of the desire and rage all at once. "Please just reject me. Both of you. Just end it."
He was quiet for a moment and when he looked at me again his eyes went dark.
"I won't reject you, Amaris."
He pulled me gently from the door, opened it, then paused in the frame with his back half turned and that infuriating smirk back on his face.
"Not now anyway." Those were his infamous last words before closing the door shut and I fell against them, collapsing to the floor.