“It’s not about me,” he said, kneeling up then and the vista he presented did not make me want to keep my hands where he’d put them. I started to reach for him but he batted them away. “This is about you.”
“And what if I want to touch you?”
“Not tonight, not this time,” he said, then let his eyes rake over me. “This about me discovering my mate.”
I remembered what Sophie had said and baulked at his words.
“And what if that never happens?” I asked, going up on my elbows to talk seriously with him. “What if I don’t accept you as my mate.”
“Then I better make the best of this while I can, hadn’t I?”
His hand went to my sternum, pressing me back down onto the bed and, as soon as I complied, I was rewarded. Long fingers slid across my skin, skating over the hollow of my armpits before twirling up my arms. The skin was sensitive and I shivered in response to it all, but yet it wasn’t what I needed. He wasn’t quickly, methodically getting me off. Instead, he made me feel.
His hands were so big as the fingers closed around my wrists, like warm manacles, as if to accentuate how small and powerless I was in comparison. He hummed to himself as he slid his palms against mine, letting my fingers grab at his before he pulled them away. His fingers dived into my hair, digging into my scalp until I went limp beneath him, swept away in the sensation. Then when my eyes closed, his hands slid down my throat, his thumbs pressing down lightly on my windpipe before moving down.
“It’s OK to feel pleasure, Lily.”
I frowned then as his fingers danced across my decolletage, tracing my collarbone and the hollows of my neck.
“It’s OK to be looked after and pampered.”
My eyes blinked open and I stared up at him.
“I know that.”
“Do you? You don’t want Evie to know we’re here, because then she’ll make assumptions.” His hand slid around the curve of my breast, the irritation and pleasure mixing in a way that felt odd. “But there’s ways around that. We can care for the cub, keep her safe and happy, wait until we have something solid before we all start living together, but…”
He watched me oh so closely with eyes of silver as he rubbed his thumbs across my nipples, a smile forming as I gasped.
“You could have one of us slinking in your room after she’d gone to bed, making sure your needs got met.”
“Jasper…”
“You’re still a woman.” One hand pinched down on my nipple, massaging it between his fingertips until it was hard and aching. “You still need. You pack it all away and are so good for the cub. You put her first every time.” His free hand slid down my body, across my softened stomach and then down between my legs, spreading them wider. “But who takes care of your needs? That’s our job, it's what we were born to do. We’re supposed to make sure you have every damn thing you need. So that you’re never left crying in a hallway, not alone anyway.”
My eyes opened to see Jasper staring very seriously down at me.
“We’re here now and we’re not going anywhere and soon you’re going to work that out.” He lifted one leg, pressing a kiss to the inside of my knee before pulling my knickers up and off me, then setting my ankle against his shoulder. “I need you open for this.”
Both hands smoothed over my inner thighs making me aware of the tension there, before he added to it.
“Such a pretty little cunt.” His thumbs moved in, splitting me open, revealing my most intimate flesh to his eyes. “I’ve been dreaming about it since Damon came home, bragging about the way you taste.” One thumb dipped in, just momentarily, before he pulled it away and sucked it clean. He let out a little groan and when his eyes opened again, they were heavily lidded. “But I’m not doing that today.”
I admit to feeling a little pang of disappointment, something that had him smiling, but he leaned forward, the rough denim of his jeans pressing into me as he hovered above.
“How would you get yourself off at the end of a long day?” he asked.
“What?”
“You’re lying here, feeling trashed, but needing something to take the edge off and go to sleep. What would you do?”
I could see exactly what he was talking about, his smile widening as he caught that, then he followed my eyes to the bedside table.
“No, no, no…” I started to say as he reached over and then slid open the bottom drawer.
“Well, well, I hoped you’d have something, but looks like you exceeded my expectations.” He started pulling out sex toys with wild abandon and I jolted each time one plopped on the bed. “Hmm…”
He eyed the piece de resistance from my collection, a dildo I couldn’t always take, but when I did… It was made by a small company run by betas with an alpha knot kink, so the sex toy was long, girthy, then flared out to form a massive knot made of a kind of silicone that was about as close to the real thing as possible.