Girl Least Likely to Marry

by Amy Andrews

  Tuck thought about the fiery, passionate relationship of his own parents and couldn’t even begin to imagine them just co-existing. He thought about how passionate his relationship with Cassie was, and the vibrancy of their in-between times too.

  Their conversations.

  He knew he would never survive in a relationship where everyone co-existed and nobody lived.

  Cassie shifted against him and heat traced through his groin with all the urgency of a meteor shower. ‘Well, I guess it takes all types, honey,’ he said as he let his hand drift from her arm to her side, under her shirt and up her ribs to the smooth rise of breast.

  Cassie shut her eyes and moaned as his thumb taunted the stiffening peak of her nipple. The stars were forgotten as her nose brushed against his neck, inhaling a mega-dose of pheromones and suddenly her desires went from cosmic to carnal.

  She turned in his arms, crawling up his body until she was straddling him. His erection nudged the apex of her thighs and she ground down a little. The harsh suck of his breath was loud in the eerie Arizonian desert and when she lowered her mouth to his their passion ignited.

  Before she could blink her shirt was up and off her head and her breasts were bared to the cool night air and to him, and they were kissing and pulling at each other’s clothes, and then he was inside her and they were making out on the hood of the car, oblivious to their exposure, driven by the intangible force of nature all around them and their own innate drive to be one.

  And Cassie did indeed see fireworks as she came, hard and fast, her head thrown back, her gaze open wide to the stars as they blended in a kaleidoscope of colour and came showering down around her.

  NINE

  It felt like hours later that Cassie stirred from her post-coital doze, but it was probably less than thirty minutes. The cool air was caressing her exposed skin and she needed to take her medication.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Tuck murmured as her warmth left his side. He reached for her as she sat up and tugged on her T-shirt.

  ‘Just taking my tablet,’ she said as she shrugged into the warmth of the fabric and eased down off the side of the car.

  She delved into her handbag, located on the passenger seat. Cold air nipped at her bare legs and crept icy fingers beneath her hem and onto her naked butt as she opened the internal zipper where she’d placed her tablets that morning. She pushed out a small blue pill into her palm and washed it down using the bottle of water that Tuck had bought at Barringer.

  She hurried back to Tuck and his big warm body, spread on the hood so invitingly. She dived in beside him and sighed as he gathered her into his chest and pulled the covers up over them.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d need that to sleep any more,’ he said, kissing the top of her head. Her hair was cold against his face. ‘I thought I was your drug of choice?’

  Cassie smiled. ‘You are. But I still need the other one.’

  Tuck stroked his fingers up and down her arm as he gazed absently at the stars. ‘Sounds like addiction to me.’ He tsked, his voice low, teasing. ‘You might have to go cold turkey.’

  Cassie tensed against him. She needed it. Going off it just wasn’t an option.

  ‘I know just the thing you can use as a substitute,’ he murmured, his hand stroking lower, moving onto her naked hip.

  Cassie didn’t even feel the light brush of his fingers as her brain vehemently rejected his suggestion. She pushed herself away, coming up onto her elbow. ‘No. I can never go off them. Never.’

  Tuck blinked at her. Her face was scrunched into a fierce frown, the stars behind her forming a crown.

  ‘O…kay…’

  ‘I need them. They keep my brain from racing. They shut it down so I can sleep.’

  He grinned again, picking up a lock of hair that had escaped her scrunchie and fallen forward over a bare shoulder. ‘That’s exactly what an orgasm does. Best sleeping pill there is.’

  Cassie sat, pulling her knees up, tucking them against her chest. ‘I mean it. The pills and I are a package deal. I learned the hard way a long time ago that my sanity depends on them.’

  Tuck paused. Cassie was rocking slightly, and she looked all wild-eyed beneath the moonlight. ‘Hey,’ he said, dragging himself up into a sitting position too, ‘it’s okay. I was just teasing.’

  ‘It’s not funny.’

  Tuck put his arm around Cassie’s shoulders and felt her resist for a moment or two before relaxing against him. He could feel a slight tremble running through her and he didn’t think it was from the cold. ‘What happened?’ he asked, his palm running up and down her arm, warming her.

  Cassie didn’t say anything for a while. She hadn’t really told anyone about that time in any detail. Not because it was a secret, but because she hadn’t been close enough to anyone to share it. Apart from that reference to it at the breakfast table at the Bellington Estate, she hadn’t even told her college girlfriends.

  ‘I was fourteen. I wasn’t a typical teenager. I never really slept a lot—my brain was always busy—but I became convinced there was an error in a textbook that I’d been studying. I became obsessed with it—up all night on the computer trying to cross-reference, e-mailing hundreds of experts in the field trying to prove I was right, e-mailing the publishers, constantly harassing them to have it fixed. My brain was full of it. My schoolwork was ignored and I couldn’t sleep. I was surviving on less and less each night until I wasn’t even getting an hour’s respite.’

  Cassie stopped. With the benefit of time and clearer thought-processes she could see how trivial it had been, and how fanatical and irrational she’d become, but it had felt like a matter of national importance at the time.

  ‘It was all I talked about, all I thought about. I barely ate. I couldn’t sit still long enough to eat. Eventually I was admitted to hospital with dehydration. But I was rambling about it…raving, I suppose is a better word. And from there I was admitted to a psych unit.’

  Tuck’s hold on her tightened as her voice, husky in the silence of the night, gave away the turmoil not evidenced in her dispassionate words. He guessed this kind of thing was the flipside of genius.

  ‘They drugged me up. I lost days…weeks…where I was this zombie. Where I had no say or control over my life. I couldn’t think. My mind was blank. I could barely feed myself.’ She shuddered. ‘Eventually they got my medication right and I came out of the fog. It was scary.’ She looked at him. ‘And I never want to go there again.’

  ‘Shh,’ Tuck said, kissing her forehead, amazed at what she’d been through. At how susceptible her genius had made her. ‘I understand. The medication gives you control.’

  Cassie nodded. ‘More than anything, I learned that my brain needs sleep to be healthy, to perform at its highest level. To be me. And if that means I have to swallow one little pill every night for the rest of my life, even if I have to wake up to do it, then that’s what I’m going to do. Because the alternative…’

  Tuck felt her shudder again and pulled her harder against him, wrapping both his arms around her shoulders. This was the first time he’d ever seen her vulnerable and he couldn’t help but feel that they’d taken a major step forward.

  ‘Is unacceptable,’ he finished for her. ‘I know,’ he agreed. ‘I know.’

  The distant rumble of an engine from the direction of the RV park woke Cassie at six the next morning. She was snuggled into Tuck’s side, her head on his shoulder, all warm and cosy despite the cool air on her fa
ce. She stretched and rolled on her back. The inky obsidian of last night had morphed into a crystal-clear desert dawn, with a slight blush of pink tingeing the pale blue arc that stretched endlessly to the distant horizon.

  She smiled as Tuck rolled towards her, his big arm clamping around her waist, his lips nuzzling her neck.

  ‘We have to get going,’ he murmured into her hair, reluctant as all hell to leave their deliciously warm cocoon. He felt closer to her this morning after her revelation last night than he’d ever felt. But they had a Gulf Stream to catch. ‘The plane leaves in an hour.’

  Cassie nodded. Ordinarily she would have sprung up and been keen to get back home. To Cornell. She was essentially losing two days out of her academic schedule by taking this time out. But she wouldn’t have missed this in a million years. Being here, seeing Barringer, having a truly magical night under the stars…

  And all because of Tuck.

  Lying here, in his arms, she was grateful that she’d have this amazing memory to take back home with her. But more than that she was beginning to think that maybe there might be more to life than twenty-four-seven study.

  And, surprisingly, it didn’t scare the hell out of her.

  A minute later Tuck kissed her neck. ‘Come on—time to shake a tail feather.’ And he hauled himself up into a sitting position.

  ‘I don’t know where my clothes are.’ Cassie yawned. She’d lost her shirt again not long after her confession to him last night.

  Tuck threw back the covers and looked down at her naked body, stretched before him. It had a predictable effect on him and his body snapped to instant awareness.

  ‘Clothes are overrated,’ he said as he trailed a hand down her body from the hollow of her throat to her pubic bone. He eased himself back on his elbow, leaned in and kissed her neck, his hand easing back up her body to cup a breast.

  Cassie shivered as the cool morning breeze sizzled across her heated skin. She stretched her neck to give him better access, and when his hand travelled south again and slipped between her legs they opened eagerly. When the pad of his thumb stroked against her centre she moaned. When one finger probed, then slipped inside, she arched her back. When another joined it she called his name. And when his head followed the path of his hands and settled between her legs Cassie surrendered to the maelstrom.

  She built quickly, the speed and strength of her orgasm multiplying as visual data from all around bombarded her senses. The perfect arc of blue sky, the vast flatness rolling all the way out to the horizon, the eerie quiet broken only by her delirious cries, the cool breeze, and Tuck’s blond head between her legs doing that thing he did that pushed her over the edge every single time.

  The overpowering visuals coalesced and ripples of release fanned through her belly. She lifted her hips as they became hard and unrelenting. She cried out, jack-knifing up as they flung her into space and her whole world threatened to collapse in on her. She thrust her hand into his hair, holding him fast, riding the wave and the hard edge of his tongue until her body shattered and fell and twirled back to earth. She collapsed back against the hood, shamelessly spread before him and the sky above like some pagan sacrifice, overwhelmingly sated.

  Another engine noise caused her to stir a little while later and she opened her eyes. Tuck was kissing his way back up her body. ‘We really do have to go,’ he said against her neck as he dropped her shirt on her belly.

  Cassie was fairly incapable of speech. She could see the highway not far away, and the first RV of the day turning on to it, heading in their direction.

  Tuck lay down beside her, lifting his hips as he eased his shorts up. ‘I think I’ll need to investigate the bottom of the sleeping bag a little more thoroughly to find the rest of our clothes,’ he said.

  The RV pulled to the side of the road, in their direct line of sight, but still probably a hundred or so metres from them. Tuck looked up, frowning at the intrusion into their private little bubble.

  ‘Come on then, Cassiopeia,’ he said as he heard a car door open and close. ‘If these people are stopping to ask us if we’re okay we’d better be dressed.’ He swung his legs off the hood and jumped to the ground. ‘Of course…’ his gaze fanned over her again ‘…if you just want to stay here for ever like that with me then I’m sure I could arrange that too.’

  Cassie shook herself out of her post-coital daze at Tuck’s reminder that there was a world for them to get back to. That Cornell was waiting. She pulled her shirt over her head and Tuck held out his hand to help her down.

  The wind caught her shirt and it billowed out as Tuck lifted her down. Cassie felt the breeze cool places that were still quite overheated, but was thankful that she favoured baggy shirts—she didn’t fancy giving the man at the side of the road an eyeful, no matter how distant.

  She stumbled against Tuck as her feet hit the dirt and one of them found a sharp little rock. ‘Ow!’ She cursed, screwing up her face at the jab of pain.

  ‘You okay?’ Tuck asked, grabbing her by the arms to steady her.

  Cassie nodded as she breathed through the pain. ‘Fine,’ she said on a sucked-in breath.

  Tuck grinned down at her. ‘You’re kind of cute when you cuss.’

  She glared at him, but his hand was sliding onto her jaw and his mouth was descending and his kiss swept the indignation, the pain and every IQ point she owned into the ether. His pheromones filled her head and Cassie clung to his naked chest as they made her dizzy.

  Tuck pulled away, groaning against her mouth. ‘We have to go.’

  A minute later the RV left, and ten minutes after that they were on the road back to Flagstaff. Within the hour they were wheels up and winging their way back to Ithica.

  Two nights later Cassie shut the lid of her laptop around ten. Tuck was sitting up in bed, his long, muscular legs crossed at the ankles, watching a Thursday night game on the massive big screen television that dominated the wall opposite their bed. He had the sound turned down low for her benefit, but he really needn’t have bothered. Cassie easily became consumed in her work to the exclusion of everything else. The street could have exploded and she’d have been oblivious.

  He gave her a goofy grin, one of several he’d given her since she’d come home, and she frowned. He’d been mysterious about his day too. ‘You’re up to something,’ she said.

  Tuck feigned a hurt look. ‘Not me.’

  Cassie smiled at his obvious lie. ‘I’m having a shower.’

  ‘I’ll be here waiting for you when you get back,’ he said.

  Cassie eyed him suspiciously as she headed for the bathroom. She was tired. Good tired. Ready to go to sleep tired. She’d never felt tired prior to meeting Tuck. She’d always been a little on the wired side and her need for that one little pill had never been questioned. But Tuck was right. Sexual satisfaction was a powerful sedative—a pity they couldn’t bottle it.

  Cassie was in and out of the shower in ten minutes, padding back into the room in just her underwear, her hair in its regulation ponytail. She could feel his eyes leave the television and follow her every movement as she went through the drawers searching for a shirt.

  ‘You shouldn’t bother with a shirt,’ Tuck said, eyeing the swing of her breasts, football game forgotten.

  Cassie turned to face him, her nipples responding to the blatant strain of sex in his voice. ‘Oh?’

  Tuck laughed at the slogan on her underwear. It had a Pi sign and read ‘I speak geek’. He held out his hand.
‘Come to bed just like that.’

  Tuck was wearing a pair of boxer briefs and nothing else and Cassie was drawn across the room, his voice wrapping silky strands around her waist and slowly tugging. She detoured around to her side of the bed and peeled the sheet back as she climbed in. Tuck flicked the TV off with the remote and Cassie reached out to snap off the lights, plunging the room into darkness.

  Except there wasn’t complete darkness. An eerie green glow lit the ceiling and Cassie gasped as she looked up and saw hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stars covering the huge expanse of ceiling in the very large room.

  She looked at Tuck. ‘You did this today?’

  He nodded. ‘I paid one of the astronomy majors to do me an exact replica of our solar system. You like?’

  Cassie squirmed down until she was lying on her back. ‘Cassiopeia,’ she said, pointing to the constellation as familiar to her as her own name.

  Tuck lay down beside her and they star-gazed as they had that other night in Arizona, except indoors this time.

  ‘Are you even allowed to do this?’ she asked, glancing at him as they exhausted the solar system. ‘Defacing a rental apartment?’

  Tuck shrugged. ‘I’ll pay to have them removed and the ceiling returned to all its boring plainness if they want when we’re done here.’

  ‘Yes, it was kind of boring, wasn’t it?’ she murmured as the stars glowed down at her. ‘But not any more.’

  Tuck nodded. Just like his life. It had been boring and predictable before Cassie. He knew that sounded ungrateful, that plenty of people had lives that were barely tolerable and that his life had been very good. There’d been many years when he’d enjoyed it and the perks that came with it. But being on the celebrity treadmill, going through the motions, was about as appealing now as a plain white ceiling.

  If he wasn’t careful he’d forget that they had an expiry date.