CHAPTER FOUR
I'm dozing off with my head against the window when Jeremy speaks, startling me.
"Stay here, I'll book us a room."
Before I can do more than turn to him, he's out of the truck and slamming the door shut before striding off toward a dimly lit motel reception.
Part of me is appreciating his ass in his blue jeans, but a larger part of me is thinking about what he just said.
A room.
I could run after him to check, but I think I'd know what the answer would be.
We're going to be spending the night together. Presumably sharing a bed, since something tells me he's not going to be booking us two rooms.
As I lean my head against the seat-rest, I consider booking a room since it isn't like I don't have money of my own. But it isn't hard to see how that's going to work out. Badly.
After telling him he's replaceable with just about any guy in a bar, I can't imagine that's going to work out well for me.
When my phone vibrates, I reach for my bag and pull it out.
Even though it's late, nearly three, I know who it is before I look. My agent, Paulo, who's in the middle of trying to set up a new job for me.
This is the job that will give me the perfect excuse to stay away from Hardin for a while. A good long while.
Most girls would kill for the opportunity to be based in Paris for six months with one of the biggest designers in the world, working as the in-house model to prepare for them launching their next season's line at Paris Fashion Week.
The job comes with everything, an apartment, insanely generous pay, working with designers that will launch any model to supermodel status.
Yet, instead of telling anyone that I want to leave Hardin because there are too many ghosts, I push for a job that means I won't have to admit it. And this dream job will do that.
His text message is brief. Nothing solid yet gorgeous. But soon.
I try not to feel too disappointed as I tap out a quick reply. No worries. Speak soon.
After I've sent the message, I sit there, staring down at my phone.
It was too much to hope, I guess, that Paulo would text me to say everything was good to go, and I'd disappear to Paris where Jeremy wouldn't find me, and eventually, he'd give up and I'd be free.
But that didn't stop you from hoping anyway, did it?
When there's a knock on the passenger window, I jerk in surprise to find Jeremy stood beside the truck.
I shove my phone in my bag, and he pulls the door open, giving me not nearly enough space for me to step out. Once again, putting us closer together than I'd like.
"Anything interesting?" he asks, his eyes going to my bag.
I edge around him. "Not really. Which is our room?"
Only, I don't get far. Jeremy's hand snaps around my wrist, halting me.
I make a sound of frustration. "Is this you being jealous, because really, I'm too tired and hungry to deal with it right now. So, can we please just get inside?"
A line forms between his brow, but he doesn't let go of me. "Why didn't you say you were hungry, I would've stopped."
I pull at my arm, so he knows I want him to let go.
He doesn't. At this point, I think I'd be surprised if he did anything I wanted him to.
"Jeremy, can we please just-"
"Get in the truck. I saw a diner still open a few miles back."
Thinking he's being ridiculous, I huff and start complaining. Only I stop when I see the genuine concern in his eyes.
"It's not your job to feed me," I murmur instead.
Jeremy lifts a hand to my face and traces his fingers along my jaw. "Yes," he says, distinctly, his eyes on my mouth. "It is."
Arousal stirs in my belly at the heat in his eyes. I swallow. "Well, there's no need. I'm fine."
He steps closer. "You said you were hungry," he says, his voice deepening.
My mouth goes dry at the thought of him kissing me. "I'm more tired than anything else. Really, I'm just ready for bed."
Seconds after the words leave my mouth, I realize talking about bed with Jeremy gazing at me with heat in his eyes was not my best idea.
The sexual tension ramps up even higher as Jeremy bends his head lower, and I wait with bated breath for his lips to touch mine.
Only, I feel eyes on me, and my gaze shifts over his shoulder to find a guy behind the counter, standing with a candy bar in his mouth, his eyes locked on me.
"Stop. A guy is staring at us," I murmur.
"And here I thought you didn't have a problem with me touching you in public," Jeremy says gruffly, lifting his head.
I turn to face him as a blush spills over my cheeks. Once again, his eyes are laughing, though it doesn't reach his mouth.
"You don't have to keep bringing it up all the time, you know." I place my hands on his chest. At the warmth I feel radiating from him, a heat I'd forgotten, I pause.
But when I realize what I'm doing, I do what I'd intended on in the first place and shove. "Back up."
Jeremy doesn't move an inch. "Or what?"
I gaze up at him. He's too big and likely too strong for me to move.
"Considering you've claimed to be concerned with feeding me, keeping me pinned to your truck when you know I'm exhausted goes against this idea it's your job to care for me."
A slow smile stretches across his lips at my mild rebuke. "Feisty," he says. "I like it."
With that, Jeremy turns and rounds the truck to the bed.
"I wasn't trying to be feisty," I tell him, letting out a silent sigh of relief.
"I know. What the hell do you have in here? Rocks?" Although he's grumbling as he lifts my suitcase out of the back, there's nothing on his face to suggest he's struggling.
"Books. And there's no need to get it out if we're only here for one night. I have a change of clothes in here." I hold up my bulging purse, where I shoved a t-shirt, panties, and a few of my toiletries while I was packing back in Hardin, anticipating we'd be staying overnight in a motel.
"I didn't know models knew how to read," Jeremy says as he returns my suitcase and removes a small black duffel from beside it. His clothes, I guess.
Since I know he's just saying that to provoke a reaction from me, I choose not to comment on it. "So, which is our room?"
He slams the tail gate shut and eyes me for a couple of seconds in silence before starting for the line of motel rooms.
On the way, he stops to glare at the guy still staring from behind the counter, and who soon disappears from view. "I thought you'd have a problem with us sharing."
"Which I guess is why you did it, huh? Well, I'm not going to make it easy for you." I wait beside him as he unlocks the motel room and shoves it open before indicating I step in first.
"Does that mean you're not going to bite?" Jeremy asks, following me in and closing the door behind him.
I take a second to scan the simple motel room with the one bed I was expecting, little in the way of furniture and a closed door I'm guessing leads to the bathroom.
My eyes go to his throat, and I bite my lower lip. "Is that what you were hoping? For me to bite?"
At his silence, I shift my gaze to his face, and his eyes are dark with heat. I know he's remembering the time he pinned me against the wall, and I felt the urge to bite him, right on his throat, and he just about lost his mind. I don't think I've ever come so hard in my life.
His bag hits the floor, and he moves forward a step. "I'm open to suggestions," he growls.
I force myself to turn away. "Sorry, but no thanks. I won't be long in the bathroom."
Although I wait for him to tackle me to the ground, or stop me, he does neither, and so I go to the bathroom and close the door behind me so I can brush my teeth and get myself ready for bed.
Minutes later, when I step out and find Jeremy laying naked on the bed, I freeze.
"Come to bed, Savannah."
I don't move. It was one thing knowing I'd be sharing a bed with Jeremy, but the idea of actually doing it is something else.
"Are you afraid you'll like it?" The amusement in his voice has me gritting my teeth.
Yes.
"No. I just know you won't keep your hands to yourself, and I'd like to sleep."
"I have no intention of getting in the way of you and your beauty sleep."
He's mocking me about being a model. Again. But I refuse to let him get to me because the moment I snap back, he'll just keep on.
"Whatever," I mutter, and cross over to the bed, doing all I can to ignore his nakedness stretched out in front of me.
"Can you move over, please?" I ask when he doesn't move.
Like in Hardin, Jeremy folds his hands under his head and gazes up at me. "No."
Which means I'm going to have to climb over him. That's what he's hinting at, since there's no other way of reaching the space he's left on the other side of the bed.
"You're being really immature. You do realize that, right?"
"Is that what I'm doing?"
We stare at each other for several seconds, and I realize he's not going to budge, which means I'll have to. If I want to get any sleep tonight, that is.
I put my knee to the edge of the bed, intending to crawl over him as fast as possible.
Only, the moment I've thrown one leg over his hips and I'm astride him, Jeremy's casual pose falls away, and his hands lock around my hips, halting me.
"I have no complaints if you wanted to stay there," he murmurs, his gaze going to my mouth.
At the intimate press of him nestled between my legs, for a moment I don't speak, so I shake my head instead. I realize I've made a mistake. I should've just slept on the floor or found some other to get around him.
"No? You sure about that?"
My body is screaming out for his, and there's no doubt he can smell my arousal with me wearing nothing more than a pair of lace panties and a t-shirt.
The problem isn't that my body wants his, but that the rest of me doesn't.
"I'm sure," I say, fighting the need to rock against him.
"So, you're telling me that if I were to strip these panties off you, I wouldn't find you so wet I wouldn't even need to touch you to get you ready for me first? That I wouldn't just slide right to the hilt? Is that what you're saying?"
Moisture floods my panties in response to his words because it's all too easy to remember him doing just that, filling me so utterly, I nearly cried at how good it felt.
Jeremy inhales and at his low growl, I can't stop myself from shifting on him as I fight back the urge to tear my panties away and sink down on him.
"Savannah?" One of Jeremy's hands glides up my back and bunches in my hair, tilting my head up so we're eye to eye. "Tell me that isn't what you want."
I'm desperate to just give in because the sex between us was incredible. But this won't be no strings attached sex. I'll be having sex with my mate.
A mate I never wanted.
And every time we do, we'll be getting closer. I'll be letting the mate bond develop to the point that walking away won't be an option anymore because he'll be in my head, as much as I'll be in his.
It'll be permanent, no rejection possible. Not ever.
The knowledge of what would happen if I let something happen between us again is enough to harden my heart, if not cool my body's response to his.
"I don't want this," I tell him, looking him in the eye. "And I don't want you."
He gazes up at me in silence.
Although my words come dangerously close to my outright rejecting his claim, he doesn't say a word.
When I stare down into Jeremy's eyes, something warns me that rejecting him would only be one part of it.
He's already tracked me down once before. Would he let me walk away, even after I'd rejected him? And what would happen with the mate bond?
I'd always have the bite on my throat. But what would happen if he refused to let me go? And if he bit me again? Would that trigger a new mate bond?
Since I've never heard of anything like that happening before, I wonder if that isn't a future I'm looking at now.
As I tense, eyeing Jeremy's expressionless face, I'm not expecting him to pull his hands away. "Go to sleep, Savannah."
Without another word, I slide off Jeremy and turn to face the wall, grabbing for the sheets to cover myself.
"And lose the shirt."
At his words, I freeze, then I glare at the wall. "No."
"You don't wear a shirt to bed from now on. Out of the kindness of my heart, I'll let you keep the panties. But no shirt."
Out of the kindness of his heart?
"But I-"
"Or I'll take the panties when I tear that shirt from you."
Which means we'll both be naked.
I squeeze my eyes shut at the memory of his naked body draped over mine, clamping my legs together as I hope he doesn't notice.
"Not a chance."
His words have me jerking my head to his side, heart-pounding, terrified he's read my thoughts.
I find him gazing up at the ceiling with a smile curving his lips. "Are you worried I'm reading your mind, sweet?" He shifts his gaze to me, and there's still heat in them.
"No." I search his eyes as I try to convince myself he just got lucky.
It took Dayne and Talis weeks before their mating bond strengthened enough for them to be able to read each other. There's no way mine and Jeremy's would snap into place while thousands of miles separated us.
When he raises his eyebrow, I jerk my gaze away and go back to staring at the wall. For about two seconds, that is.
"The shirt."
I grit my teeth. "I don't see why-"
"I guess that means the panties are coming off." I feel him shift, and panic races through me.
I hurry to sit up and slip the shirt over my head, leaving it at the bottom of the bed so I won't need to crawl over Jeremy in just my panties the next morning.
Then I tug the sheets up over me and go back to staring at the wall.
When Jeremy doesn't move, I relax, thinking he won't.
But, just as I close my eyes, he turns over and tugs the sheets down to my waist before curving his body flush against mine.
My eyes fly open, and I tense.
Jeremy wraps an arm tight around my waist. "Go to sleep," he murmurs, pressing a kiss to my mate bite that has me biting off a moan.
"I can't. Between you and the sheets, I'm too hot."
I realize I shouldn't have said anything when Jeremy peels the rest of the sheets off my body, leaving him as the only thing covering me.
"There you go," he says. "Now go to sleep."
"That isn't what I meant."
I don't even know why I'm arguing since nothing about the arm Jeremy has clamped around my waist gives me any indication he's intending on moving it.
"Hmm." Although he sounds half asleep already, I'm not convinced, especially when I attempt to wriggle away, and in response, his arm tightens.
I growl in frustration and feel his lips curve into a smile against my shoulder.
Minutes pass. Then an hour, and my eyelids get heavier and heavier until finally they close as I relax into the overly soft bed.
Despite the wall of heat at my back, and the hard ridge of Jeremy's cock tucked against my ass, tiredness overwhelms my resistance and I fall asleep.