by CD Reiss
“She died in a prison fight.” She says it as if she’s trying to cast off the pain of it. As if it’s nothing. But she holds onto it at the same time, like a buoy of righteousness in an ocean of uncertain morality.
“I’m sorry. How old were you?”
“Sixteen. And there was a part of me, an awful part that I’m ashamed of, that was relieved to not visit her every other Saturday anymore. God, I’m a terrible person. I wouldn’t blame you for walking out right now.”
She can’t look at me. Her self-abuse lights a fire under my already hot sense of protectiveness. I want to protect her from her opinion of herself, but if I jump across the table and shout her doubts away I’ll make them worse.
“A sixteen-year-old girl probably wants to do fun things on Saturdays. Probably has to make up a story for her friends every other week about where she’s going.”
Cassie nods and bites back a quiver in her lower lip.
“The part of life when we define ourselves isn’t a fitting time to be lying about who we are.” I take her hand, and she lets me. “Trust me. I get it.”
“It was awful there. Dirty. Someone always yelling. And the last time I saw her, I was so mad at her for leaving me, even though she wouldn’t have if she could have helped it. But I was so sick of those visits and her stupid advice…” She wipes her cheek with the pads of her fingers. “I didn’t know it was the last time, so I was kind of a bitch. Why am I telling you this?”
“Because you think I’m an amoral criminal.” I hand her my handkerchief and she presses it to her eyes. “You don’t have to impress me.”
She doesn’t respond to the charge, but carefully wipes away her tears and dabs her nose like a lady. I wonder if her mother or her grandmother taught her manners. I wonder if she learned them from observation or a desire to distance herself from her humble beginnings.
The waitress slips a fake leather folder in front of me and slinks away as if I might bite her. If she’d interrupted, I might have.
“Are you all right?” I ask.
“Yeah. This was kind of purging.”
“You look…” I search for the right words. “Unguarded for the first time since we met. Your real self is beautiful on you.”
“For now, at least. I’m emotionally disinfected.”
I laugh as I open the folder.
“I have that.” She stretches for the bill, but I snatch it away.
“Thank you, but I have it.”
“Half then.”
“I appreciate you wanting everything to be even.” I reach for my wallet. “But I owe you.”
“For what?”
I close the leather folder. I’m about to do something I said I wouldn’t do when I walked into her house, but knew was unavoidable from the time she came through the door. “For what I’m going to do to your body tonight.”
The crackle and tingle of her skin is practically audible.
24
cassie
He helps with my coat, and we walk out to the parking lot.
The last time we walked out to his car, he tried to steal a kiss and I flipped him for it. Wondering what he’s going to do is as far as I get, because he’s quicker this time. There’s not a millisecond for a defensive move before his lips are on mine and his hands are on my face and his body is so close, all my thoughts basically melt into a warm puddle.
“All night,” he whispers in my ear. “I want you all night. Now until the sun. You promised me I wouldn’t sleep with you, and I plan on helping you keep that promise.”
Which I want. I want it badly, and I want it before I lose my nerve.
Keaton kisses my cheek. His lips pull electrical current over my skin, crackling gunpowder sparks down my spine until they all land and ignite between my legs.
I don’t push him away.
“I can get into trouble.” I say it because I want him to talk me into it. Give me a single, simple reason to risk my career to feel his body against mine.
“One night.”
That’s his single, simple reason. Odds are good we can get away with a night, but can we keep it to just that? Won’t it be worse? If it’s good, how will I control myself?
I can wonder about the future all night. I can regret the past for the rest of my life. His voice and his scent are a hard call to now. His hands are a demand that I be here. I can’t ignore it. I can’t turn away from it. In the parking lot outside a Doverton restaurant, there’s not a dream or ambition I ever had that doesn’t involve Keaton Bridge.
“Not my place,” I say. “And not your room at the club.”
He leans away. Even in the ugly light, he is beautiful, scruffy-cheeked, angular, lupine in his appetite. “We’ll take my car. I’ll drop you off in the morning.”
It can all be solved. I can have this. I can fold into tonight and disappear with him. In the morning, I can unfold back into my life.
I give myself the opportunity to change my mind, and decide I’m going for it. I don’t want to go home. Something happened over dinner that needs to be consummated. No more unfinished business.
He takes out his phone and says one word. “Yes?”
“Yes.”
He taps something into the glass while we wait for the car. When it comes, he puts the phone away.
“All arranged,” he says beside the open car door.
I get in, and he pulls onto the highway.
“Where are we going?” I ask, trying not to knead my hands together. They make their own sign language. Only I can understand it. They’re saying, It’ll be all right. It’ll be all right. When I clamp them still, they say, You’ll regret it if you don’t.
“Somewhere so secret, I bet you don’t even know about it.”
“I bet it’s crime-scene perfect.”
He flicks his signal and leans into the turn off the next exit. “I promise no one will hear you scream.”
It’s pitch dark on the service road. The cone of the headlights drown out color and movement, rendering the world in two dimensions. A two-lane strip cutting through flat, overgrown trees and bushes. No one will hear me scream, that’s for sure.
My nerves are dumb and blind, humming hard in the frequency of arousal when they should be generating a rational fear that will trigger a plan to get the hell out of here.
Fear of being seen in this little archipelago of towns.
Fear of being taken to the unknown.
Fear of being left for dead.
He reaches for my hand, turning long enough to look me in the eye. “You all right?”
Should I lie? Should I tell him I’m not afraid of the fact that I’m not afraid? That my confidence in him is what frightens me? “I’m good.”
“Good.” He slows by a sign with nothing more than the Doverton Country Club logo. It’s so small I wouldn’t notice it in broad daylight. He turns into an invisible driveway.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“The club keeps a bungalow behind the nature preserve.”
He slows before we reach the white-and-yellow gate.
There are cameras. I find them without even thinking about it. The little red lights glow like single eyes. They don’t make me feel safe from Keaton; they make me feel exposed to the conflicts of my decision.
He stops the car and reads my mind. “Do you want the cameras or no?”
“No.”
“Good.” His phone rests in his palm. He gestures to the camera to the left and taps his phone.
The red light blinks out. To the right. Same. The camera dies.
He pulls up to the gate and keys in a four-digit code. The arm goes up. I turn as we pass. The red lights flicker back on. I face front again, breathing easy.
A cute bungalow with a short porch and garden lights appears as we turn. He parks at the front door.
“Before we get too involved,” I start.
“Yes?”
He shuts the engine. It’s quiet. Dead quiet. Forest creatures are hibernating, and the crick
ets and insects are in their winter cycles.
“I don’t have any condoms or anything.” Which means I insist on them, and in the time it would take us to get them, I could change my mind. I might need that space to come to my senses.
“I have some.”
I’m concurrently relieved and discouraged.
He opens my door, and we walk up the steps together. The little porch is outfitted with two chairs and a table, with potted plants in the corners. The pots have the club logo engraved on them. A little home in the middle of nowhere.
Keaton unlocks the door with a code. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“If I wasn’t, you’d be on the floor with your arms behind your back.”
“Indeed.”
He shoves the door open and steps aside. A lamp is already glowing by the couch, illuminating comforting florals and homey paisleys. Behind me, Keaton shuts the door and yanks the cord on the blinds so they close like a stack of eyelids.
We are alone.
I’ve never done anything like this. I realize that when the door closes. I lost my virginity at seventeen to a “nice guy” named Mark Wayburn, who I stayed with for five years. Boring sex with a boring guy had been all I’d known. We broke up when I went to Michigan Law. He was afraid I’d make more money than him. That was an actual argument I was supposed to sympathize with. Then he couldn’t stand the idea of being with a federal agent because he didn’t believe in the federal government. I’d dodged a slow-moving bullet with that one, and I’d never looked back. I slept with a professor for a few months, a fellow student for a year, a seven-night stand with a guy I met in a bar. That was it, and it was never great.
Since entering the Bureau, I’d been too busy, too distracted, too ambitious to date. The few boyfriends I had after law school didn’t last more than a few weeks. One-night stands don’t suit me. The whole process is boring and unfulfilling.
I’ve never just gone to a hotel room for a night. And here I am, turning so a man can see me. Unlooping my coat’s belt while he watches. His eyes run over the center of my body, where the placket opens as I unbutton. The rush of fluid between my legs is so fast it hurts.
I let the coat slip down my arms. He takes it and hangs it on the wooden coat hanger by the door. I swallow. I’m not wearing anything special, just trousers and a blouse. Work clothes. The way he looks at me makes me feel as if I’m in black lace.
“Go on.” He takes his coat off efficiently, popping snaps and jerking it over his shoulders. “Take it slow.”
He hangs the coat, then pulls the cuffs as if he has no intention of taking it off right now. He leans on the dresser and crosses his arms, nodding as if I can start any time now.
Where is the blind passion that inspired him to kiss me in the factory parking lot? Why are his folded arms and leisurely commands even more arousing? I’m a rule follower, but I’m not blindly obedient either.
At least, those are the things I believed about myself.
I unbutton my jacket. I want to rip it off, but I’m trying to go extra slow because I’m wondering how turned on I can get. My underwear is touching sensitive skin. I feel like a bullet the moment the hammer hits the primer and the gunpowder ignites.
I reach for the fabric stretched over my hips, ready to pull down the skirt.
“Your blouse next.”
His voice reaches my ears just fine, but that’s not where it has the most effect. It vibrates everything below my waist, and my obedience comes not from the mind but from my bones. I fumble with the buttons. Undo two. Pull it over my head. I toss it away.
When I look at him, in my pale pink cotton bra, his arms are still crossed and the bulge in his pants is unmistakable. It’s then that I know I don’t need to drown this in kisses and unconscious decisions. I’m here for the night.
“You’re very sexy, Agent Grinstead.” He leans hard against the dresser and crosses one ankle over the other. Mr. Casual with a boner the size of a Glock.
“Thank you.”
“Have you ever been properly fucked?”
“Can I get back to you tomorrow on that?”
“Get that skirt off and we’ll see.”
“Are you getting undressed?”
“In good time.”
I pull down my skirt and kick it away. I have no idea what underwear I put on this morning and I can’t get my eyes off his erection long enough to check. When he takes a fast step toward me, I hold out my arms and get ready for a kiss. My lips are disappointed, but my mind is too busy to register the fail, because the floor disappears from beneath me as he scoops me in his arms. My lungs empty in one gasp.
Then he kisses me, laying his lips on mine as if asking for permission. With my fingers running through his hair and the movement of my mouth, I give it to him. His kiss is languid, patient, grateful. It’s the prologue of the night, telling me what’s inside these hours together.
The story is about us. About the outside world’s irrelevance. We are two bodies existing in a time outside the troubles of our choices. He carries me through the living room to a closed door. He opens it with the hand that’s under my knees.
It’s a closet. We laugh.
“I’m an idiot.”
“You haven’t been here before.”
I kiss him, and he kicks open the next door. It’s the bedroom, and he lays me on the floral duvet. Slipping his arms from under me, he drags his fingers over my belly, my underwear. I put my hands on his chest as he bends his fingers around the ends of the panties, to the crotch, where he slides them underneath. I’m so wet and bursting, I nearly come when he touches me.
His breath is hard when he feels it. “My God.” Curling his fingers around the crotch, he pulls down, exposing me. “I don’t know where to fuck you first.”
“You looking for suggestions?” Everywhere. He can fuck me everywhere.
Taking his finger from between my legs, he puts it in his mouth, curving his lips around it. He sucks me off him, then he kisses me. I taste myself, the sex, the arousal, the flavor of my musky tingling thighs.
I sit up on the bed. He undoes his belt. I quickly slide off my underwear. When I look back up at him, his cock is out in its full glory.
This erection is mine. I move his shirt tails out of the way and take it by the base.
“Have you ever been properly sucked?” I ask before running my tongue along the length of him and kissing the dot of salty juice off the tip.
He smiles down at me. “We’ll tally that tomorrow too.”
I hate to overpromise and under deliver. So I take him with my tongue, then lock my mouth around him, and suck on the way out. Slowly. I work him deeper and deeper into my throat, opening it for him, breathing and going in again. He pulls his shirt over his head, and I reach up with damp fingers to touch his flat stomach and grip his hard waist as I pull him in.
He groans, whispers to God, then jerks away with a gasp.
“Votes are in,” he says, letting his pants drop. “I was never properly sucked before tonight.”
He crawls on top of me and kisses me. My pussy can sense how near his dick is, noting its placement like a flower turning toward the sun. He pushes up my bra, kisses my tits, moves down, and now the placement of his tongue on my inner thigh is the sun and my body is a garden, focused on a moving source.
When he runs his tongue along my seam, my back arches.
“That’s my girl,” he says before he slides two fingers inside me and runs his tongue over my clit.
I dig my fingers into his hair, crying out when he sucks the tip. He opens my legs so wide, they hurt in the best way.
“I’m—” I can’t finish, but I want to tell him I’m close.
He reads my mind, saying, “Give me what’s mine.”
I come in his mouth, pumping and squirming, digging my fingers into his bare shoulders. When I push him away, he kneels above me and wipes his mouth with his wrist. A condom packet sticks out between two fingers. I have no idea where he
extracted it from or when he did it, and I don’t care.
“I’m on the pill,” I say.
His expression is a question as his hands freeze over his mouth.
“I’m not with anyone, at all,” I add. “It’s just that I don’t want to be the latest single mother in my family.”
“An abundance of caution is something I admire in a woman.” He rips the packet open. “I hope you can admire it in me.”
“Your hope is my reality.”
In the seconds it takes him to slide on the condom in his abundance of caution, we connect not over how interesting our differences are, but in the values we share.
“Can you remember something for me?” he says as he wedges his hips between my legs.
“Do I look like a reminder app to you?”
He arches over me. I spread my legs wider for him, sighing when his weight and force press against me.
“You are the sexiest reminder app I’ve ever tapped.”
I laugh, but I’m cut off when he enters me, and my giggle turns into a groan. I just came three minutes before, but my body responds as if it’s already hungry for another. My fingers dig into his biceps. I have to be taking skin. He has to feel it. But he’s controlled and slow, running his lips over my face and neck.
“Dee-seven-four-nine,’ he says into my ear.
“What?”
“Repeat it, love. When you know it, I’ll let you come.”
“Dee-seven-four-nine.” That was easy.
“Ex-four-two-two-eye.”
“Ex-four—”
“From the beginning.” He drives in harder, and the pleasure across his face is unmistakable.
“You’re joking. I…”
The words die on my lips when he stops and raises himself so we can see each other. His bemused smirk is more telling than a hundred status reports. He wasn’t joking. Not at all.
“What am I memorizing?”
“What’s the fun if I tell you now?”
I’m irritated, but also turned on by his little game. I like his control, and I like his attention. He could just blow his wad, thank me, and walk away.
“Dee-seven-something… I forget.” I run my hands over his chest, over the patch of hair in the center, scratching downward.
