But he'd promised her he wouldn't.
And an alpha always kept his promises.
Any alpha who was worth a damn, anyway. Now there was a thought that distracted Cade for a second or two—there was one sick, worthless, doomed fucking alpha out there who had no idea what was coming for him.
But for the moment, Sloan would keep.
There was another reason Cade hadn't forced the issue: he wasn't looking for anything less than everything. He wasn't interested in a rushed encounter or one that left even a trace of a misgiving. He didn't want Emily holding back or keeping him at a distance.
He wanted her out of her mind and begging for it. He wanted to feel her adorable little fists hammering against his chest, wrapping her sweet thighs around his hips, screaming his name like she'd seen salvation driving the devil out of town.
Oh, and he wanted to take his time helping her unlearn every moment she'd spent with that piece of shit. He wanted her to explore his body, play with him, stroke him, tease him to her heart's content—right up until the second he showed her what a real alpha tasted like.
Goddamn. The images of Emily's long blonde hair bobbing against his hips as her cherry lips strained to encircle him was too much.
Cade ground his teeth in agony, trying to hold back a roar of frustration. He couldn't stay here another minute, listening to her soaping herself and drinking in her scent, and not tear that door off its brass hinges. But doing that would only scare the hell out of her and make her retreat even further.
So Cade turned away. He flung open his front door and stepped out into the early summer evening. A part of him wished the temperature would drop all the way down to zero and freeze his balls.
Instead, the forest around him was rich with the scent of new life, taunting him with blossoms and honey-sweet growth—the perfect complement to Emily's alluring fragrance.
But it wasn't the fault of the season that Cade couldn't cool the fire inside him. He could dive into a six-foot snowbank in the middle of January, and the heat in his blood would melt it all away.
There was only one way to get any relief from this kind of desire: it had to be spent.
Cade planted his feet at the edge of the garden, yanked open the fly of his pants and grabbed his raging cock.
He was already so primed and ready that merely the act of wrapping his fingers around his shaft took him nine-tenths of the way there.
His head fell back as the sounds from her bath found him, having followed him outside as if they knew how hard it had been for him to leave. He inhaled the scents of soap and skin and—holy mother—her slick drifting into the bathwater, luring him like the sirens coaxing sailors from their goddamn rock.
It should be him in there washing her body, tenderly stroking her perfect breasts, working down to the sacred cleft between her legs.
Not one more drop of slick should be sacrificed to the bath, not when he'd scale the whole damn mountain range in the distance for a taste of it. Cade squeezed his eyes shut and whipped his cock to a frenzy, pretending it was her soft hands, her lush cunt, her hot, wet mouth. He gripped the sturdy post holding up the deer fencing, his fingers leaving deep grooves in the wood, as the pleasure became too much.
He ought to be there already. He ought to be past there. Goddamit—Cade needed some relief from the need that woman caused in him.
Then he heard the softest sigh of pure pleasure turning into a faint, rhythmic hum. There were soft splashes as she started touching herself, her humming turning to moans.
The thought of her making those sounds because of him—all for him—rocketed Cade over the edge.
There was a ground-shaking crack as the force of his grip split the post he was holding onto, but Cade barely noticed as he shot past the peak, and blinding pleasure pulsed through him.
Wave after wave of come shot from his cock, spilling into the earth, bathing the soil with his own seed.
And then, when it was finally over, Cade nearly doubled over with the agony of realizing that it still wasn't enough.
He'd come like a Mack truck, but his cock felt like it had gone for a tricycle ride. He knew what he'd felt just now was only a pale shadow of what was possible with Emily.
Jerking off with the thought of her in his head was like dying of thirst under the Niagara Falls. To actually be inside her? To fill her with all that come? To lock their bodies together with his knot and feel them become one? Cade would die for the chance.
And anyone who had that chance and squandered it was an abomination who didn't deserve to breathe the same air.
As Cade jammed his still-half-hard cock back into his pants and zipped up, it occurred to him that there lay the real trouble.
Sloan was a tyrant and a coward for taking his rage out on his omega. His words had been as ridiculous as they'd been cruel.
But no matter what the bastard said or did, and despite any insult he hurled at her, Cade knew for a fact that Sloan would never willingly give Emily up.
The reason was as simple as it was irrefutable. There was simply no way an alpha—even one as useless as Sloan—could walk away from an omega so powerful that even fantasizing about her caused another alpha to splinter a solid redwood post.
Emily was right: the bastard would come for her.
But that didn't mean that Cade would let him have her. No fucking way.
Emily had been to hell and back. Cade was a realist—he knew there were traumas from which it was impossible to recover, wounds that never scabbed over. But it didn't matter. Even if Emily never healed from her past enough to truly be his, Cade was afraid he was already hers.
The water had cooled, her fingertips had pruned, and Emily knew that it was time to get out of the tub.
The relief she’d sought by touching herself had been short-lived. She hadn’t done that since before coming to the Boundarylands—Sloan had managed to demolish any such urges left in her—but it was impossible not to be moved by the presence of a gorgeous alpha, even if the most he’d done was to carry her a few dozen yards.
But touching herself hadn’t done anything to relieve Emily’s craving. If anything, it had only heightened it—and that was dangerous.
She could not afford to be distracted when she was with Cade. She reminded herself that he didn't consider her lazy—not yet, at least—but worry still nagged at her. She didn't want him thinking she was an inconsiderate guest for staying in the bath so long.
Guest. Was that what Emily was?
She knew she wasn't his omega. From the first hour in his house, Emily could tell that their relationship would never be like the one she had with Sloan.
Somehow guest didn't capture her role here either...but it was the best she could come up with. After all, Cade hadn't forbidden her from leaving, so she wasn't a prisoner.
Emily was still a little fuzzy on the details of being an omega. For instance, she'd heard that once an omega started to bond with an alpha, she physically couldn't be apart from him until the claiming process was complete. But that had never happened between her and Sloan.
Emily had expected—dreaded—the formation of the bond as she endured her first heat with Sloan, but when she finally came out of it, she couldn't detect any sign of attachment to him.
She'd tested herself by waking before dawn the next morning and hobbling as far away as she could get, something like pride budding inside her the further she got. Even when Sloan woke up and came after her, catching her near-collapse two miles down his drive, the fact that that terrifying bond hadn't formed kept a tiny flame of hope alive inside her.