The Walls of Jericho

Out-maneuvered

“I’m actually glad you’ve agreed to come, Jericho,” Channing tells me when we reach the cottage.

“Hold up. Do my ears deceive me?” I follow him inside and into the bedroom he selected for us to sleep. “Did you just say you’re happy about me being pushy?”

 He laughs, a relaxed amused sound that sends my suspicious nature into a five-alarm frenzy. “No, of course not.” Lifting his suitcase, he dumps it on the bed and opens it, then roots around inside.

I give a soft, appreciative, “Oh!” as my gorgeous GQ cover-model lover peels his long-sleeved t-shirt off. Tugging it over his head and tousling his hair in the most fetching way possible, he drops it to the floor without another thought.

“If this was an inside job and they used our own stuff to get around our security, there’ll be an electronic trail,” he says, rooting around in his suitcase until he finds what he wants—a crisp white button-down, a pair of neatly folded trousers and a silk tie. “And my technomage mate is a wizard with electronics.”

There’s no doubt about the smug pride in his voice. It eases my concerns over why he seems so damn pleased about Avernus having been robbed and the single-most critical piece of equipment they own having been stolen. Crossing my arms over my chest, I shift my weight onto one hip and continue to enjoy the show as Channing unbuttons his jeans. He pauses with his hands on the last button, his glorious abs flexed to mind-boggling perfection as he’s hunched over.

“You know I don’t care at all if you watch while I change clothes, but you should know, I’d like you to change into something more professional looking too. If you watch the show that means my hands are free when you’re putting on yours.”

I give a startled squeak at that thought and he laughs, that low warm sexy sound I love caressing over my eardrums. Channing takes a seat on one side of the bed as I grab my suitcase and hoist it up onto the opposite side as he’s done.

Since Her Royal Rudeness Rebecca considers me completely incompetent— which I have to confess, I am— she’s packed the outfits she’s prepared for me in neatly-folded, plastic wrapped bundles, with everything I need to complete the outfit contained inside. She’s also labeled them on the outside as to the contents and given suggestions as to appropriate circumstances to wear them.

I set aside the one labeled ‘cocktail dress’ a little reluctantly after catching sight of the deep green velvet inside. Much as I prefer simple, comfortable clothes, the cocktail dress is gorgeous, even on my flat-chested curveless body, and the inkling of the kind of circumstances where I’d wear it provided by her notes makes me yearn for the opportunity just so I can see the look on Channing's face.

Across from me, Channing’s hiking boots—his equivalent of my Converse All-Stars—hit the floor with a couple heavy ‘thunks’ as he removes them. He stands again, facing me, and his jeans slither over his narrow hips and muscular thighs to the floor. His eyes light on the plastic-wrapped green velvet. “Mmm, I’m looking forward to seeing you in that tomorrow.”

“Wait. What? Tomorrow?” Peering at him across the bed, I tear through the plastic covering over the clothes labeled ‘business suit’. “What’s going on tomorrow?”

He flashes me one of his male supermodel grins that positively smolders, nearly leveling me where I stand. “I’m taking you to dinner tomorrow. Someplace nice. You should wear that.” Giving me a wink and a flick of that scarred brow, he snaps his business slacks free of their fold, stuffing one foot into them.

By the time I’ve removed my shoes and socks, my jeans and the clip from my hair, Channing is dressed in everything but his shoes. Naturally, that means he comes around to my side of the bed to interfere with the process of me changing clothes which isn’t yet halfway done.

He traps both my arms up near my head and inside my hoodie as I attempt to pull it off, and holding me there, proceeds to molest each exposed barely-there breast. “My God, Jericho,” he murmurs, his half-lidded blue eyes sparking with white-blue whorls in wild little bursts as his heated gaze follows his hand roaming wantonly over my body. “If I’d have known you weren’t wearing a bra under that ratty red hoodie all those years you waited my table at Esteban’s, I’d have carried you off long ago.”

“We’re—ah!—we’re not going to get—mmm—to the—oh God—.” My thoughts completely derail as he ducks his head and teases the crests to turgid little peaks with his tongue. I can’t help my loud groan as his hand slips inside my panties and his clever fingers find their way unerringly to the sensitive little bud there, strumming it to grab my body’s attention. “Channing.” His name is a breathy pant of desperation.

“Fine.” His fingers withdraw and his grip on my hoodie relaxes. He makes me watch as he sucks the taste of me into his mouth, the tiniest lecherous upward curl to his lips. “I’ll be back to collect on that later.”

I gape at him, nearly choking on my words as a hot flush washes over me. “Collect?” I finally manage.

“On our bet. The one I won. Did you forget what you promised? I’ll be happy to remind you with a physical demonstration.”

“You already collected!”

Despite his feigned expression of shock at my outburst, it’s clear this is exactly what he anticipated. He’d banked on it. The proof is plain and easy to read. The Alpha had planned meticulously, calculating exactly what route he’d use to bring his wayward mate and Luna to heel, then executed his strategy flawlessly. “There was no statute of limitations applied to our bet beyond ‘rest of the trip’.”

“You didn’t play fair,” I remark, my back stiff. I can feel my eyes sparking with hot flares of outraged magic.

Channing doesn’t even flinch. In a measured, even voice, he asks, “Are you refusing to pay up then?”

It’s abundantly clear he relishes the thought, and that gives me pause. I’m proud of the fact that I really have only one weakness—the competitive nature I inherited in a double dose from both my mother and my father. Of the few people I’ve met with the intelligence to wage a successful challenge against me—like Damien, for example— none have ever taken the bait.

Which makes my sudden realization that my beefcake mate has out-maneuvered me in a battle of wit and will particularly hard to swallow. All his crafty rejoinders in that easy-going self-deprecating way he’s perfected and his utter disregard for my surly attitude were merely enticement to get me to drop my defenses. For the wolf to lure me in like prey, ripe for the kill.

Pretty damn smooth, beefcake, I praise him mentally because I’d never say that s**t out loud. God knows how much it would swell his ego. Then I plot how I’ll torment the hell out of him to extract my payment for his getting the better of me. “I’m not reneging. I’m stating for the record that you cheated.”

“You set the terms,” he reminds me magnanimously. “So tell me, if I’d have lost, would you have excused me of my obligations after one meal and clean-up?”

This I meet the only way I can—with silence. I can hardly deny that I would have expected to see him doing the cooking and cleaning for the rest of the trip. I’d have held him to the bet too.

“Or are you proposing a rematch to win your way out of your obligation? That’s kind of shady, Jericho.”

Primed to his strategy now, I recognize the hook he dangles in front of me. I’d let him win at backgammon because I was concentrating on winning the information game I’d been running in the background. While I thought he'd been oblivious, maybe he actually knew. Which means he knows he didn't win fairly too. “You’d grant me a rematch?”

“Sure,” he replies confidently. Then, as if reconsidering, he retracts it. “I mean, no. Why would I do that? I’ve got a pretty good deal going here for the remainder of our vacation.”

“Double or nothing?” I offer enticingly, then arch my back and flex my hips to disengage his thinking head and re-engage the mindless one already tenting the fabric of his pants.

His heated gaze brushes over my flesh like the caress of a warm breeze. “Tempting as that is, why would I wager two guaranteed days and nights of all-I-can-eat at your delectable body’s buffet? I stand to lose more than the value of what I can potentially gain.”

I roll my eyes and sigh. “What do you want then?”

“That bargain—all the s*x I want, anywhere, any time—becomes permanent.”

Laughing wickedly, I correct him. “The bargain was all the s*x you want, any time, anywhere as long as it was private. I’m not putting on a show for anyone besides you. That’s not negotiable, Stark. And I’m not wagering two days of you cooking and cleaning for the rest of my life banging you under those terms, no matter how good in bed you are.”

“Eh, I was only checking to see if you were paying attention. And it’s marginally entertaining you’re still assuming you’ll lose.” He grins and that scarred brow of his flicks up. “A month then? Say, the next month?” he offers, licking his lips eagerly as his fingertips trace a mind-erasing circle around the pert tip of one breast.

That little jab about losing scrapes like a cheese grater over my pride. Then the open door potential of this suddenly hits me.

Avernus has lost the dragon tracking device and the plans for it. They’re back to square one, even further behind than they were when the dragon stalked me to south Crossroads on the night Channing and I were supposed to go on our first date.

Now that I work for KDS, a month would give me lots of time using the Heritage databases to try to hunt up the oracle. It levels the playing field between my dragon mate hunt and Avernus’ dragon killing hunt, and I’m confident that the odds in that game of chance are in my favor. It’s a sweet, down-dirty bet that I can’t lose.

“Conditionally,” I counter, just to ensure he’ll take the bait. “You have to be around to use it.”

“Be clear, babydoll.” His hand makes a detour south into my panties again. “What are you saying?”

My head falls back and I gasp in the sheer volume of delirium-inducing pleasure his nimble fingers can conjure within seconds.  “You only won the last bet because you cheated. It was completely unfair, and you know it,” I egg, arching my hips to take more of his seeking fingers into my core. “If we’re going to double down, you don’t get to skip out on your part of the bargain by jetting off to Ireland for most of every week. We each have to be where the winner gets the full utility of their prize.”

He flashes me another taunting smile. “I’m beginning to think you’re planning on purposefully losing just to get a few more all-expense paid, s*x-filled vacations in Ireland where you don’t have to cook and clean anyway.”

“No!” I blurt out, mortified at the breathless way it sounds when his fingers are massaging my insides to a tingling ache. Hiding my flushed cheeks by turning my head away from him, I retort, “What I meant is just the opposite—you don’t get to skip out on your part when you lose.”

He adds his thumb, gliding wetly over my aroused hooded nub, to the stroking he’s doing inside me. “So—we have a deal then? You get out of the remaining obligation on this debt against the chance you’ll be repaying it for an entire month?”

“I still d-don’t think those—t-terms are f-fair,” I force out in broken whimpers.

“Fair or not,” he replies, his fingers turning me into a twitching agonized mess, “As the winner hedging my prize against its loss, I set the terms. Now, do we have a deal or not?”

This position is new to me, upright and all but draped against him as he’s building a climax inside me. And he’s made it damn near impossible to keep track of what I was bargaining for in my agitated and high-strung state. My mortification is quickly overcome by the desperate need Channing’s built inside me and I struggle to stifle the wild desire my beautiful tormentor has aroused, to keep from shouting out ‘yes!’ just so he’ll give me the release I crave like a potent drug.

He shifts his body, both to support mine more and to get a better angle for his hand between my legs, his long strong fingers working me both inside and out. I tighten my thighs around him, thinking to force him to stop, but it only makes the stirrings stronger, driving me to the agonizing brink of fretful madness.

“Babydoll,” he coos sweetly, close to my ear in that ear-candy tenor of his, and it’s almost enough to trigger my orgasm on the spot. “Do we have a deal?” His fingers still.

“No!” I gasp, referring to his frozen fingers, then realizing my mistake, choke out, “Yes! Yes, we have a deal.” My head hangs, my body aching in wretched need. “Please, Channing. Don’t stop.”

“Look at me, Jericho,” he murmurs against my ear. “I want to see it when you come.”

Channing captures my lips in a brutal kiss as his fingers resume their feverish ministrations. He drives me to the point I’m dangling against him, twitching and trembling, and only upright because he’s kept me that way.

I moan softly into his mouth, an incoherent plea for my release from the excruciating ache he sends pulsating throughout my body with each pass over the sensitized points of pleasure both inside and outside of me. A surge of excitement gushes over his already soaked fingers.

This time Channing groans. “Relax into it, babydoll,” he orders, holding me at the edge of my climax and waiting as I force the tense muscles in my body to unclench. “That’s good. Now, come for me.”

My aching core burns with electric pleasure as he tips me into the generous abyss of it that he’s created just for me. My limp body convulses as the savage waves rock me from head to toe, over and over, again and again. The only reason I’m still upright is because he’s holding me that way, strong and steady, his fingers unrelenting despite the rippling around them.

As I tremble through my orgasm, his fingers continue plunging into me, harder and harder, his thumb demanding with its rough rubbing at my hooded peak. “Oh God!” I gasp, realizing he’s riding it—he’s riding my climax vicariously through his fingers and the powerful electric pulse of the mate bond constantly running between us. “What are you—what are you trying to do to me!? Oh God!”

I shudder violently as another climax breaks over me, this one more powerful than the last.

“That’s what I want.” His low growl is rough and harsh against my mouth and his alpha glow burns into my eyes. “Come again.”

A wracking sob escapes me. “I can’t! I can’t take anymore!” The second wave piles against the first, crashing over me so hard that my body curls around his hand between my thighs.

“Oh, yes you can,” he assures me, rubbing furiously at the sensitive bundle of nerves. “As many times as I tell you. You won’t stop until I’m satisfied.”

My weakened pleas for mercy only serve to harden his resolve. The damp rivulets dripping over his fingers to soak my panties and running down my thighs only heighten his arousal. It throbs, pulsing against my hip, rock-solid and burning like the surface of the sun through his slacks. I want it—need it—stretching and filling me. I crave the hot gush of him burning into me. “Channing—.”

“No. Just come.”

Exhausted as it is, my feminine core clenches and spasms obediently around his relentlessly pumping fingers, the tinging burn intensifying by another order of magnitude we can both feel.

“Yeeesss,” he hisses softly, his fingers stroking harder and deeper, teasing the biggest climax yet out of me with his come hither motions.

My head falls backwards with my scream as I ripple around his fingers, vicious, exquisite wave after wave of pleasure buffeting me to and fro in the storm of it that he’s released. Completely spent, I collapse against him, battered by the unrelenting tingling release.

I barely notice when Channing’s fingers abandon my deliciously abused body to scoop me up and lay me out on the soft bed coverings. He kneels at the side of the bed where my lower legs dangle over the edge and pushes my legs apart.

I feel his wolf rise to the surface, held just at the instant before he shifts, but there’s nothing left of me to resist it. His fingers slide my soaking panties aside.

His tongue glides along my wet petals, once, twice, then seeks deeper, feeding upon the proof of my contentment. He chases the slowly drying rivulets of my pleasure along my thighs, consuming each one with hot swipes of his tongue and light sucking.

Involuntarily, I shudder and convulse when his tongue probes me, deeper than humanly possible. Grasping frantically at the bedclothes, my thighs tense lustfully. Then he’s drawing another orgasm out of me with the long drags of his rough-soft tongue along my inner walls, literally consuming my desire.

My thighs constrict around his head and my eyes spring open. Then my scream fills the cottage’s bedroom. Channing sucks hungrily at my nether lips, repeatedly invading my conquered nether mouth. Almost frantically, he feeds upon the hot ecstasy burning out the circuits in my body, at last satiating his wolf, now drinking deeply of the wet proof of my gratification.   

He lets me rest while he tastes his fill of my wetness, the slick juice proof of his ownership. But once he’s done, his long thick tongue taking one last victory lap over the surface of my soft petals, dragging slowly over my hooded bud, he tucks my panties back into place. Rising, he crawls up over me and I can feel his warm breath caressing over my lips.

“Jericho, look at me.”

I open my eyes and feel slammed in place by the searing alpha glow I find in his. He owns me, it says. Now. Forever. And I better not dare try to escape. I can’t help my smile.

Channing brushes his lips over mine and the taste of me lingers on my lips. It sends a soft shiver of delight rippling over me.

At my ear he whispers, “You wear those panties, just like they are, all wet with the pleasure I gave you. That way you don’t forget who you belong to.” He kisses my cheek, then starts to crawl backwards to stand up, taking the opportunity to swipe his tongue over his mark at the hollow of my collarbone when it presents.

Standing over me, he simply gazes down. “Even when I’m looking right at you, I can’t believe how beautiful you are,” he murmurs. His gorgeous blue eyes linger a moment longer, then he strokes the outside of my thigh with a large warm paw. “Get dressed, babydoll. We’ve got work to do before we meet at the backgammon board to see who wins this bet."