Too Wild to Tame Read online

  “I’m going to—” Grace broke off, her body beginning to shake. “Don’t stop, please, please, please…”

  If his tongue wasn’t busy feeding his new addiction, he would have reminded her begging wasn’t necessary. If anyone should be begging, it was him. She was unreserved and unrepentant in getting herself up against his mouth, the kind of reaction he’d only ever fantasized about in a girl. No holding back or pretending he wasn’t fucking great with his tongue. Just all-out, relief-seeking, hip-writhing glory, and he could have mouth-banged her for a month straight without coming up for air. And all that was before she climaxed and her pussy cinched up around his tongue like a designer belt, her breath choking off, her thighs turning to thin, shaking columns of lithe muscle. Grace’s taste was better than the last drop of whiskey, it was the elixir that granted eternal life, and he lapped it up like a greedy motherfucker who would die unless he absorbed every ounce.

  He only stopped when her Grace’s hips listed to one side, rebounding off the leather seat. She was sobbing. Sobbing his name, God’s name, and damn if she wasn’t still begging.

  No. That was Aaron begging. The word please scraped from his raw throat, echoing off the frosted windows. He made a desperate grab for Grace’s shoulders with one hand, liberating his cock with the other. “Please. Please, I need to fuck what I just tasted.” Folding his legs beneath him, Aaron applied protection taken from his pocket, then braced himself on the roof and front passenger’s seat, very nearly spilling his come when Grace performed a little scoot onto his lap, both of them slick with sweat and her pleasure. “Reach behind your well-spanked ass and slide me home. You’re wet enough this time to take it without three pumps from me to get it in.”

  His last few words were slurred, his power of speech compromised by the smooth palm encircling his sensitive erection, the look of praise she sent back over her shoulder. A look that made him want to deliver another spanking, following by round two of his tongue between her legs. But as she sank down with slow devastation onto his thickness, that desire drained along with his will to ever leave the snug perfection of her pussy.

  “Oh, fucking Christ, Grace, don’t move. Just…” Aaron breathed through his nose, attempting a mental battle with the swelling in his balls and failing. “Stop clenching, baby.”

  “I c-can’t,” she whispered, bracing her hands on the window she faced, leaving behind prints as they slipped down, down. “I think I’m going to—”

  “Jesus,” he growled as Grace tightened up around him with her second orgasm. Or maybe just a continuation of the first. Not that it mattered because Aaron was going to die either way. Die trying to make it last. “Fuck it. Go on, baby. Ride it out. I can take it. I need to take it.”

  Saying and doing were two different things, though, and Aaron should have known by now to expect the unexpected with Grace. She threw herself back, head falling onto his shoulder, working up and down his hardness with hypnotic lifts and drops of her hips. The husky moans coming out of her were pure fucking decadence, capturing his senses and pulling him down into inescapable fever-lust. He was caught between letting his seed power into her rocking pussy or holding on any way he could, prolonging what would signal the end. The end. No.

  Aaron didn’t realize he’d sunken his teeth into Grace’s shoulder until she cried out, throwing a hand back to tunnel fingers through his hair. “Yes,” she urged. “Yes. More.”

  Operating on instinct, Aaron surged forward, flattening Grace—facedown—on the seat, bearing down with his starved body. His open mouth traveled over her neck and hair, delivering hot gusts of breath. “Might as well have your name tattooed on my cock because you own it, you fucking own it. Sent to ruin me, weren’t you? Ruin me and then get taken away. I’m going to die without you. I’m going to die.”

  He heard the words coming out of his mouth, couldn’t take them back. He didn’t want to. But any kind of response from Grace would obliterate his slim chances of escaping intact come tomorrow morning. When he would leave without her. No, he couldn’t deal with her reassurances or, hell, maybe even a suggestion that it didn’t have to end. God knew it did. He couldn’t keep expanding to let more love for Grace in or he would implode and take her down with him. He wasn’t built for love. Not Grace’s kind.

  She opened her mouth to say something, but Aaron slid a palm beneath her face and covered it. Regret lanced his chest, even as the relentless yearning for release, release, release stole his last remainder of sanity. Or he thought it had. Until Grace’s hand covered his, holding on tight with understanding. And that’s when everything—except for stealing every second of pleasure from Grace—slid away into an abyss. His body rolled over her, stomach gliding over the swell of her ass, delivering blow after blow between her legs. Rearing back and pounding into tight innocence he should never have been given and would never have again. They were one person united in the grinding, slapping, and abusing of flesh. Straining, gripping, grunting, Aaron holding on as long as humanly possible. “I might be leaving, but I’m yours. Wherever I am, I’ll be yours, baby, hippie, Grace. My Grace. Your Aaron.”

  She turned her face away from Aaron’s covering hand, whispering the word yes, and completion rose like a hot tide around him, robbing the oxygen he’d stored in his lungs, slaying him with the sharp knife of pain due to the magnitude of his orgasm, how long he’d held back. Agony twined with bliss, pressure slowly—too slowly—draining and shattering him under the loss of misery. The gaining of more relief than he’d thought possible. Complete. I’ve never been complete until now.

  But the very reason he’d abstained from release rose up like a monster to terrorize him in no time, Grace’s heated body cooling gradually beneath him, in some macabre symbol of his own upcoming death. Because in the morning, he would leave behind the man he’d become, the man Grace saw, and go back to being the person everyone hated. Including him.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Aaron stared through the front windshield of the Suburban and watched Grace walk away from him, getting smaller and smaller as she wound through the trees. Last time she’d walked away—in the very same spot—he’d all but dove out of the driver’s side door to get an explanation. There had been no words exchanged between them this time, however, just Grace leaning over to kiss his white knuckles on the steering wheel, before opening the door, letting in all the cold, and taking the heat of herself away.

  Cold. That’s all his brain would acknowledge once she finally disappeared from sight completely. That’s all, folks. If he squinted enough, he could probably see the ghost of himself—the man she’d woken up—trailing behind her. It would make sense for him to be dead, his soul moved to a higher plane, because he’d never felt less alive. Lethargy started at the top of his skull and draped down, like an unraveling blanket with weights strategically sewn into the edges. Down, down, down, until no amount of mental commands or attempts at motivation could make him put the Suburban into gear.

  He needed to leave. Belmont, Peggy, and Sage would require the Suburban to continue their journey to New York while he hopped on a plane. But the draped blanket kept pulling, dragging, turning Aaron into an immovable object on the seat. Driving away would be the final step in leaving Grace behind, moving on, pretending like she hadn’t come out of nowhere and made the world seem like a not-so-shitty place. If innately good people like her existed, were people like him meant to balance the scales? Even the odds? Because his every action now felt like a direct attack on all the positivity she represented and living like that going forward…fuck, he was going to be empty. So empty without her.

  But Grace wouldn’t be empty. She’d remain full and loving, especially without him around. His career, the cynicism he’d developed, would only taint her beauty and no way in hell could he live with that knowledge. One day, he would look over at Grace and find her watching him, watching him in that way that said, How does he live with himself?

  And she didn’t even know the worst of it.


  All you need is yourself.

  You’re just embracing your nature.

  Someone like you.

  Aaron flinched as his father’s words crept through his mind. The man had called Aaron’s methods from jump street, hadn’t he? Here he was, leaving behind the woman he loved in order to further his career in New York. It was almost poetic.

  Anger and righteous self-disgust rose like a dragon from its cave and breathed fire down the back of Aaron’s neck. His hands tightened into shaking balls, arm muscles flexing until he swore—he hoped—they would rip straight through his skin. Acid mixed with frustration in his throat, the deadliest cocktail ever concocted, until the taste made his mouth fall open, forced him to suck in air to hit his scorched insides with coolness. It didn’t work. His fists met the steering wheel, one after the other, following by his head.

  “Grace.”

  It was a shout in his head, but only emerged as a broken whisper. For long minutes, he simply gawked at the wretched man staring back, trapped among the speedometers. Until finally his eyes closed, visions of Grace dancing in the field twirling like slow motion ballerinas in his head. The image was too happy, though, and he didn’t ever want to feel happiness again. It would only be watered down, a fucking imitation. So he stamped out the dancing source of life and conjured a darker image of Grace, legs drawn up to her chest on the closet floor.

  “That’s where you’d have put her eventually…right there…again.”

  Maybe next time it wouldn’t be his words that hurt Grace. It could be a lack of communication. Or an inability to recognize when she needed affection. Or getting sucked into his career and not having enough time for her. A thousand different possibilities—and none of them would pack as much of a punch as his past. It lingered in the air like the smell of gasoline, making him nauseous.

  When sleep rose up and began to steal Aaron’s consciousness, he let it come, welcoming the merciful numbness.

  * * *

  It had been so long since Aaron slept late, the sunshine that blinded him upon waking was almost more disorienting than the steering wheel stuck to his forehead. A sharp ache speared both eye sockets as light rushed in, blinding him, bringing both of his arms up to block the intrusion. And then he remembered the previous night and both appendages fell like someone had shot them off.

  Christ. He had to get out of there, before someone on the senator’s security team made their way out into the woods and actually shot him. And even Aaron could admit that his physical safety accounted for only a small portion of dawning common sense. Mental safety was definitely in the lead. Last night, his course of action had been clear, but this morning everything appeared twice as stark, similar to the cold, frozen ground surrounding the truck.

  Beside Aaron on the seat, his cell phone vibrated. Peggy. Probably wondering where the hell he’d gone. Wondering when he was returning to camp with the Suburban, where all three of them were likely packed and ready. To leave. Just like he would be leaving Grace. Watching Iowa get smaller from the window of an airplane. Knowing if they ever saw each other again, the bond they’d built would be replaced by formal greetings and…distance. So much distance.

  Aaron’s stomach heaved violently and he barely got the driver’s side door open before the meager contents emptied onto the leaf-strewn ground. Jesus. Jesus, he was a shaking, fucking mess. Tremors gripped his hands as he climbed back into the truck and turned over the ignition, swiping at his mouth. Once again, the sun assaulted his vision, so he reached up to flip the visor down—

  His mother’s journal fell out, bouncing off the steering wheel and landing in his lap. What the hell? He’d left the notebook locked securely in his suitcase—had it sprouted legs and walked by itself into the Suburban? When Aaron noticed it was open to a specific page somewhere near the middle, his eyes narrowed. Someone had either been reading the journal in their spare time, or they’d left it in the sun visor for him to find.

  Maybe he was stalling because driving out of the woods meant leaving Grace, or maybe he just wanted to burrow inside his own misery and never leave. Whatever the reason, Aaron picked up the notebook and started to read the familiar, loopy handwriting of Miriam Clarkson.

  I’ve never denied being an arrogant woman. Mostly because it’s true. I’m a prize asshole when I choose to be. Maybe one day the culinary world will change and it won’t be so male dominated, but I’ve busted my hump to achieve greatness—without assistance—and sometimes I like to revel.

  My arrogance gene skipped three children but landed splat on Aaron’s psyche…

  Aaron took a deep breath through his nose, letting the journal fall against the steering wheel. Here it comes. He always knew it would. Just get it over with.

  But Aaron’s arrogance comes with a lemon twist. While I tend to rejoice in my inflated confidence, Aaron uses it to guard every other part of himself. You (whoever is reading this—have you lost weight?) will be shocked to know, I take the blame for this. I can pinpoint the day Aaron started turning inward. The day Belmont came home and shut the door in his brother’s face, and never really came out again, was hard on everyone. Aaron, a fixer by nature, took it harder than anyone. Even his brilliant mother. Maybe because I was so busy assuring myself everything would straighten itself out, I couldn’t see the branches of my family begin to grow crooked. Not crooked in a bad way, just diverted to a harder path.

  Aaron was born to rule the world, but if I’d paid closer attention, if I’d been as good a mother as a chef, I would have seen. He didn’t really want the world. He just wanted the world to spin the direction that would make everyone around him happy. And when that didn’t happen, when that couldn’t happen, he was forced to settle on just appeasing himself. Sometimes I look at Aaron and try to figure out if he’s really satisfied with that isolating cycle, though, and I wonder. Has he merely carved out a way to keep from being closed out again? Can anyone blame him?

  Here’s the good news. Men who were born to rule the world eventually figure things out. Perhaps they decide the world is a relative concept. Maybe it’s a person or a small place or every goddamn inch of the planet. Whatever it is, it’s theirs. Aaron never stopped coming back no matter how many times his differences were pointed out or scrutinized. He never stopped being a brother or a son because the going got tough. He stuck it out because that’s what a ruler does. They rule. My son rules.

  Aaron fell back against the driver’s seat, seeing nothing and everything at once. Flashes of those looks from his mother. Looks he’d always interpreted as disappointment or…bewilderment over his strident, no bullshit outlook. Miles away from his siblings, who wore their feelings like colorful party masks, even if they couldn’t voice them. Had Miriam been…proud of him? Had she been disappointed in herself, instead of him?

  My son rules. His throat constricted until he choked, and even though no one was with him in the Suburban, he attempted to disguise the sound with a cough. Fuck, he felt so light. Out of nowhere. Like he’d been inflated with helium. And he didn’t want to be alone in the Suburban. He wanted Grace to be sitting beside him so he could hand her the notebook, let her read the words that were making a valiant attempt to give him some kind of…peace. He wanted to say, You were right. She saw good. She saw good, like you, hippie.

  But he couldn’t do that, because Grace wasn’t there. A giant void sat where she should be, smiling at him with pink lips and green eyes. The wrongness of her absence hit him like a battering ram, square in the chest. His mother had been wrong about one thing. Aaron didn’t want to rule world. Not the one he’d created around him. Not alone, either. He wanted Grace to show him every facet, every corner of her world, so he could rule it beside her. With her. Always with her. And if Grace saw good in him, Aaron trusted her to be right. He had to trust the ability to hurt or taint or disappoint her didn’t exist inside him. Please don’t let it exist.

  Aaron couldn’t feel the notebook in his hands. It slipped through his numb fingers and fell into the
well, wedging beneath the gas pedal. Or at least he thought so, because he was already busy fumbling with the seatbelt that had remained attached the entire night. He cursed through his fumbles—ready to rip the nylon strap to get out of the car, if necessary.

  Need to get to Grace. Not going anywhere without Grace.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Grace shoved two fingers up against her forehead, praying the pressure would keep the room from spinning. She’d been foolish the night before, coming home and opening the bottle of red wine her sister had thoughtfully stocked in the kitchen months earlier. Her plan had been to consume one glass, just enough to stop the agony from expanding in her veins, making an explosion seem inevitable. A blast that would end with parts of her body all over the room. It appears she just…exploded. That’s what the coroner would say to her parents as they swept her up in industrial-sized dust pans from Costco.

  A hysterical laugh bubbled from her lips, escalating the throbbing in her temples until she felt sickness rise in her throat. She bent forward, positioning her head between her thighs. Breathe. Breathe.

  It was difficult—really difficult—considering all the eyes trained on her. She’d been woken by her father and asked into the living room, surprised to find half a dozen staffers loitering there. Even now, after they’d been talking for five minutes, she’d gathered no real information about what they wanted from her. What could anyone want from her, the morning after she’d had her heart sliced apart? It hurt to be awake, let alone communicate. Had she said hello? Offered them coffee? No…no, she was in a bathrobe trying not to cry or throw up or explode.