It was lunacy really. Brave, valiant lunacy.
And he’d be a damned liar if he didn’t admit that he admired it.
He continued to watch her as she flitted between the stall gates, pacing and fidgeting to a near-excessive degree. She looked every bit as skittish as the horse he’d left in the corral.
He lowered his voice to a rumbling growl. “Out with it, warrior,” he ordered.
She sighed. “Well, I guess there’s no better segue than that.” She stopped her pacing and finally turned toward him. “I want you to tutor me.”
The statement caught him off guard. He’d known she would grieve the loss of not getting the position in the way she’d intended, but he hadn’t expected it to shake her confidence like this. “Sierra, your name wouldn’t have been put forth if you weren’t quali—”
“That’s not what I mean,” she snapped, her tone filled with a hint of annoyance.
Maverick fought back a grin. There she was. The Sierra he’d known as far back as he could remember, the one who’d always been so quick to point out when he’d made a misstep or gone too far. He’d always secretly appreciated that honesty and their bickering. When they’d been young, their constant back-and-forth banter had been the battle of legends, both always trying to best the other with a smarter quip.
She might have been eccentric and wild, but Sierra Cavanaugh possessed more than a bit of sharp wit. He’d never enjoyed the challenge of another opponent as much as her.
Until his role, his duties, and Rose had come along, changing everything.
Sierra continued, her tone more than a bit saucy, though at least that rooster had finally wandered off. “I know I’m qualified for my position, and I don’t need your validation.” She hesitated. “For that.”
Maverick crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the closed stable door. He wasn’t certain what she was getting at. “I don’t follow.”
She let out an exasperated huff, as if he were the one always being difficult. “I don’t want you to tutor me for my position as warrior. I want you to tutor me in something else.” Clenching her hands into fists as if she were prepared for battle, she met his gaze head-on, those glowing honey-brown eyes filled with the renewed confidence he knew so well.
She cleared her throat. “I want you to teach me how to pleasure a man.”
Chapter 8
“Come again?” It was several beats before Maverick managed to say anything.
“I said that I want you to teach me how to pleasure a man,” she repeated. “And with what I have in mind, hopefully you’ll be enough of a gentleman that if anyone is going to come again, it would be me.” She’d obviously intended for the play on words to be funny, but Maverick couldn’t have laughed even if he’d tried. She wanted him to…
No. He couldn’t have heard her correctly. “I still don’t follow.”
She momentarily buried her face in her hands. When she removed them, her cheeks had transitioned from a lovely shade of pink to crimson. “Jesus, Maverick, do I have to spell out every detail of it for you? I’m inexperienced.”
“Inexperienced?” For some reason, he could only repeat her exact words. But in his defense, with each additional phrase that passed her gorgeous lips, he seemed to be less capable of thinking about anything other than all the things he wanted to do to her.
Sexually experienced?
Christ.
She might as well as have asked him in no uncertain terms to mount her as furiously as that still-horny gelding of hers, because if the length throbbing between his legs was any indication…
He turned away from her. He couldn’t look at her. This conversation ended now.
Because if it didn’t…
“Yes, inexperienced,” she said, echoing the words back to him.
From the corner of his eye, he could see her trying to draw his attention as she stepped into his line of view again.
“Inexperienced. Unpracticed. Ignorant. Untried. Do I have to break out a thesaurus for you? Whatever you want to call it, when it comes to sexual experiences, I’m a…”
“Virgin?” he finally growled.
“Yes, I’m a virgin.” She breathed out another long-exasperated huff as if she hated that single word and all the baggage that came with it. “My V-card is still unfortunately intact with a big capital V.”
Maverick swallowed down the aroused growl building in his throat. He could think of a few things he could make into a big capital V. Namely, her legs. She’d be naked and bare, and he’d spread her wide beneath him as he buried his face in her…
No, he couldn’t allow himself to think that way.
“How is that possible?”
“Well, it’s simple anatomy really, despite the fact that virginity is actually only a social construct. But I’ve never had a man put his—”
“That’s not what I mean,” he snarled. He let out a frustrated curse.
How the hell the woman standing before him was still a virgin he’d never begin to guess. He raked his gaze over her. She was taller than many of the other females of the pack, all lean, muscled athleticism. At quick glance, from the ways she tried to hide her looks, many might have overlooked her as dull, plain even, save for her obvious physical strength. But as far as he was concerned, when a man had the patience to look beneath it all, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say she was the most gorgeous woman in the pack.
Did she have to have grown up to be so breathtaking? It would have made his life considerably easier had she been unsightly. But clearly nature hadn’t seen it fit enough for her to only be the smartest, the boldest, the bravest, the strongest, the craziest. The most everything.
It was a fucking nuisance, really.
But he couldn’t think of that. Not now. Because if he did, there would soon be a lot less talking and a lot more fuc—
“King of these mountains isn’t your title,” Sierra declared, interrupting his thoughts. “The only king on this ranch is Elvis, so you may be packmaster, but you’re not the only one who gets to make proposals. You need to hear me out.”
Considering his life was currently at risk for the entire pack, hers included, he didn’t appreciate having his title compared to that of a damn rooster, but he wasn’t about to interrupt her. He was too busy hanging on her every word. Hell, practically salivating like the wolf he was.
“You said you want a marriage of convenience. One night together and then we’ll have what we both want.”
He had said that. In that way, he supposed their goals weren’t opposed, but he didn’t see how proposing one night out of obligation to convince the council translated into him teaching her pleasure…
Pleasure.
That word stirred something low in his belly. In his mind, he was in the forest again, her lithe figure pressed against him. Her confidence and muscles were hard as steel, but beneath all the armor, she was soft, feminine curves in all the right places. Curves he hadn’t known existed until she pressed against him.
Sure, he’d seen her naked, technically speaking, on the occasions when all the pack shifted beneath the full moon, but that was different. During those times, he was so close to changing form that he was more wolf than man, and then he didn’t care about the gentle curve of human hips, soft swells of full breasts, or handfuls of firm ass that for a woman who spent every day training was too mouthwateringly full and round to be reasonable.
Until she’d kissed him in the damn forest. Then, all he’d known, all he’d been able to think about were those curves beneath her baggy clothes, or the way his tongue parted her, dipping inside the moist, wet cove of her lips until her breathing hitched, until she was moving and writhing against him.
His cock gave an eager throb and his mouth watered.
Clearly, he wasn’t thinking only about kissing anymore. He’d moved far beyond that the moment she’
d haphazardly thrown herself into his arms.
“Well, you’re wrong,” she said, drawing his attention again. “One night doesn’t get us both what we want. At least not me anyway. I want more.”
Of course she did. Didn’t she always demand more of him? “And what do you want, warrior?”
“Commitment. Passion. Loyalty.” She paused. “Love.”
He shook his head. “I can’t give you those things.”
“I never expected you would, which is why, if I have to marry you to claim my position, I have a proposal of my own to make.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. Not one damn bit. Maverick had never envisioned himself being proposed to. He was the kind of man who did the proposing, not received it.
“In a marriage of convenience, your plan is for us to live separate lives. Am I right?”
He grunted in acknowledgment. That had been in the initial plan. Until she’d uttered the word pleasure and thrown a massive wrench into it. That was her way of course. Thwarting, delaying, complicating everything he did. Now he felt that plan crumbling before his eyes. He shouldn’t have been surprised. He was a damn fool.
“In that case, it wouldn’t matter if I was in love with another, would it?”
The question caught him off guard. By that logic, it wouldn’t, but the idea bothered him, though he didn’t dare admit it. He’d already made it clear love wasn’t on the table, and he would never place his own pride above her happiness.
“Go on.” He regretted the encouragement in those words the moment he said them.
She plucked a stray piece of hay from one of the nearby stacks. “I want to have love in my life. I don’t just want my position. I want someone to share it with, someone to enjoy and spend my life with, but you’re right. Without the position, I know I won’t be happy.” She turned her gaze toward him. “Which is why after our marriage night, it’s my plan to take a lover.”
He snarled in response. The thought of her calling any other wolf, any other man a lover when he was supposed to be her husband angered him in a way it shouldn’t have. “Your plan is to cuckold me?” The question was filled with every bit of rage he felt at the idea.
“It wouldn’t be another packmember or anyone else at Wolf Pack Run,” she said quickly, as if that ludicrous amendment made anything she was asking of him better. “It’d be someone outside the pack. Maybe a rogue shifter or a wolf from another pack? Who knows. In any case, one night of you taking my virginity won’t be enough. I want to be able to have whoever I choose to love. I want to know how to seduce and pleasure a man, so I need to be experienced, which means…”
She needed him to seduce her, to give her that experience.
Christ.
She was chaos. Pure, fucking chaos. That was what she was.
He knew he had no right, no place to feel frustrated about the whole damn ridiculous situation. She wasn’t his, and even once they were married, he’d made clear it was a marriage of convenience only. She wouldn’t be his property to control. They were just words, ideas, projections. They were marrying out of necessity, nothing more, but despite that, he already felt cuckolded. And he didn’t like the idea one damn bit.
One night with him and she’d never want another man. He’d make certain of it.
He straightened from where he’d leaned against the door, his limbs wrought with tension as if he were a coiled viper prepared to strike. “And I’m your choice for such a task?”
“You’re my brother’s best friend, Maverick. You may have lived like a monk since Rose passed, but before you became packmaster, you had a bit of a reputation yourself.”
He growled. There was that word again. He’d had enough of his apparent tendency to collect reputations as of late, and he didn’t like hearing Rose’s name on her lips. Somehow, it felt wrong. He’d dreamed of this, of her. More than once.
Rose was never supposed to have been part of the equation.
“You’re a safe choice for me, someone I can trust to have honorable intentions. We may not see eye to eye all the time, and you may be a total grump, but I know you won’t hurt me.”
Him? A grump? He quirked a brow. No one had ever dared call him grumpy before…
And of course, he wouldn’t hurt her, but him? A safe choice?
No one had ever dared consider him a safe anything. Unless they had a death wish.
He growled. “There’s nothing honorable about my intentions, Sierra.”
Not to mention for him, there was nothing safe about this. He’d never been in more dangerous territory…
He shook his head. Sierra was Colt’s younger sister. He wasn’t supposed to want her at all. Period. End of story. He’d also sworn he would never marry again. His role didn’t make him an ideal romantic partner. He had to place the needs of the pack first at all times. For the sake of the pack, he was best off alone, his judgment unclouded, yet here he was, standing here with Sierra Cavanaugh, a woman who was now his fiancée in name alone, and not only was she proposing someday taking another man into her bed, but she wanted him, her future husband, to tutor her in pleasure as she’d so plainly put it.
She wasn’t just a madwoman. She was certifiably insane.
And apparently so was he, considering he wanted to take her up on her ridiculous offer. Far more than he should. In fact, he was so tempted, he had half a mind to suggest they start right now, which as far as he was concerned was the very definition of a marriage of inconvenience. Which meant he needed to end this. Fast.
This time, it was his turn to turn down her proposal. “No.”
Chapter 9
“No?” Sierra’s eyes shot to Maverick’s and locked there. She hadn’t been certain what to expect from him. But she’d never considered he would say no.
It stung her pride more than she cared to admit.
Maverick stood on the opposite side of the stall row, towering over her, his corded muscles primed with tension. His scarred brow twitched, making him look ruggedly masculine, but that wasn’t what held her captive. It was his eyes. They told a different story than the cold disinterest etched across his face. They flashed to the gold of his wolf, burning with a fire that kissed her with a thrill of danger, of pleasure, because whatever it was, despite how he tried to hide it, she’d made the growly, grumbling packmaster feel something.
And something she could work with.
“What do you mean no?”
“Sierra,” he growled in warning as she drew closer. His voice was low, feral.
But she’d be damned if she’d drop the conversation now.
She placed her hands on her hips. “I deserve an answer.”
“It means exactly that. No,” he snarled. He turned away, prowling the length of the stall block as he distanced himself from her. “Isn’t that an important distinction these days?” he tossed over his shoulder.
She blinked. Was he mansplaining consent to her? She let out a frustrated growl, charging after him as she caught up to his quick pace. She knew her proposal was a little…unusual, but she failed to see how it was all that different from sleeping together for a night to convince the council, and she’d make him understand that much.
One way or another.
When she caught up to him, he stood in the saddle room, surveying the leather equipment in search of a saddle he’d likely place on that bucking beast in the hold that wanted nothing to do with him. He was good at that. Agitating things, animals, people who wanted nothing to do with him—only to walk away when he was through.
That’d been exactly what he’d done to her years ago.
She should’ve said something then, made her feelings known, but she’d been young and too destroyed by his decision to marry Rose to tell him exactly how much he’d hurt her.
Not that it would have made a difference…
But now, she was older and a hel
l of a lot angrier, life having filled her with years of righteous feminine fury, and she wasn’t letting him off the hook so easily. Not this time.
She gripped a hand on the doorframe, blocking his only exit. “You said yourself you don’t have to like someone to want to sleep with them.”
His back was to her, and he didn’t bother to look over his shoulder as he answered. “That much is apparent.”
She frowned. The comment stung, though in her mind, it was also evidence he did want her, a least a little. If one could call the erection that had strained his jeans during their battle a little anything. There’d been nothing little about it.
“If you can suggest we have sex for obligation, why can’t I suggest that for instructional purposes, a few times we do…” She struggled to find the words. “Other things,” she finally supplied.
He quirked a brow at her choice of words, though he still refused to look at her. “‘Other things’? You’ll need to be more specific than that, warrior.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Could you stop repeating everything I’m saying like it’s so confusing?”
This time, he did look at her. “I will when you stop saying things that damn well warrant confused repeating,” he snarled.
She guessed he had a point there. “Yes, ‘other things.’ Obviously, considering your reaction, I’m not very good at this whole seducing-a-man thing, and we’ve already discussed that I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to sex, so to be fully clear, I figured why not make a list?”
“Logically,” he grumbled, picking up one of the saddles and testing its weight before he laid it back in place. “Why wouldn’t you make a list?”
She suspected he didn’t appreciate what a superior idea it was. Despite that, she removed the folded paper, a torn-out piece from her old leather-bound diary, and extended it toward him. He glanced down at the quivering note she held out. Her hands were shaking, and the gesture highlighted exactly how much. She may have seemed confident, but she wasn’t fully confident when it came to this. She was nervous, and he had to see it. But at least her head was held high and she was daring to ask for what she wanted.
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