by Jo Raven
She stills, her chest heaving, and I smirk against her skin.
Then I release her neck and tear down her bra to trace her nipples with my tongue, first the one, then the other. I close my teeth lightly over one hardened nub, and this time I slide my hand over her mouth when she squeals, to keep her quiet. The door isn’t locked, and it’s a sign of exactly how much she distracts me from dark thoughts that I never think to lock up.
That I feel so safe with her. That I’m fucking nuts about her.
With a tiny, breathy moan, she arches off the sofa, pushing her tits into my face, and I suck on them, flick my tongue over the sensitive tips—so damn turned on by her taste, her body, her obvious pleasure at what I’m doing to her that my dick jerks, leaking in my pants.
Fuck. I won’t last much longer. I can feel it in the tightening of my body, the clenching of my abs, the maddening pressure in my balls.
She strokes her hands up my arms to my neck, and her fingers tangle in my hair, tugging. I wince, my vision blurring, the room and her form fading in a wash of gray. Broken white tiles, smears of blood and dirt, flickering overhead neon lights.
No.
Shit, no. I’m with Cassie. She’s with me. She gave me her pendant. Blindly, I reach for it, and pant with relief when my hand closes around it.
It’s okay.
Her hands drift down my chest, light pressure, warm touches, and my eyes slowly clear.
She’s sat up, looking into my face.
Then she grabs the hem of her dress and pulls it off in one movement.
Christ, this girl. Her tits are spilling over her bra, and then she reaches behind her and unclasps it, taking it off. Then she pushes down her panties, and she’s naked and so beautiful I don’t know what to say.
“How do you want me?” she asks, her voice a little hoarse, and I press the heel of my palm down on my still clothed dick to ease some pressure.
“Turn around,” I say, my voice no less rough. A memory of a dream, of me sinking inside her on the floor, pounding into her. “On your hands and knees.”
She licks her lips, glances down at my hard-on, and then turns, giving me her slim back. She puts down her hands, lifts her heart-shaped ass, and I sit back on my heels, staring at her.
“Hot damn,” I whisper, fucking awe-struck and lost for words. Shakily I shove down my pants and briefs to wrap my hand around my dick. “Fucking hell.”
The head of my cock nudges her opening, and she shudders as I sink into her, a slow, smooth plunge that drives the air from my lungs. Buried balls-deep in her hot pussy, bent over her sinuous back, I don’t care if I never move again.
But she shifts, gasping, and ripples around my cock. The urge to move, to find friction, slams into me, takes over my body, and I rock my hips.
We both groan.
“Faster,” she breathes, and I’m already pulling out a fraction only to push back in, molding my chest to her back.
Throwing an arm around her waist, I haul her back, onto my lap, and she cries out. Again I put my hand over her mouth even as I pant harshly, so deep inside her my dick twitches, burning like fire.
A shout sounds from somewhere outside the room, then laughter.
We should stop. I should get up to lock the door.
The hell I will. Let anyone walk in on us, let the world crumble for all I care. There’s no fucking way I’m pulling out of her now.
Not when she grinds back against me, her pussy clenching around my cock, slick and tight. I rock in and out of her, and she bites lightly at my fingers that are pressed over her mouth. I slide my hand down to grip her waist, while gripping on to the back of the couch with the other, pounding into her, feeling the need coiling at the base of my spine.
The pressure is mounting, making my balls ache. I’m holding on to her hard enough to bruise her fair skin, riding the razor-thin edge between pain and pleasure.
Then she reaches up to fondle her breasts. I can only see the movement, rhythmic, circular, hear her breath stutter, feel her walls squeeze around my dick, but it’s enough.
Enough to shatter the pressure and bow my back as my dick pulses and pleasure burns a path from the tip to my balls and ass. I’m coming, bursting inside her, flooding her with my cum, and she’s still rocking her hips, wrenching a gasp from my throat.
Oh God.
She’s still riding me, and I’m still half-hard. On instinct, I reach down between her legs, circle her clit, and then she’s moaning out my name and fluttering and contracting around my spasming cock.
Killing me. Dragging sounds from me I never thought I could produce in pleasure—a keening cry first that dissolves into a moan that comes from deep inside of me, clawing its way up my chest.
“Cass…” I clutch her to me, and we move together until the pleasure ebbs, leaving my body heavy. “Cass…”
Don’t leave me.
Chapter Eighteen
Cassie
The next days are madness. When I wake up on Sunday morning on a dusty couch, naked, with Shane wrapped around me like a blanket and my head pounding from the tension of the previous day as if I’d drunk a bottle of tequila all by my own, I get a call from Mom.
She’s sick. Oh and heart-broken. She wants attention.
Seriously?
But she’s the only family I have left. So I inform Shane that I have to drive back as soon as possible, and he tells me that’s fine with him.
We say our goodbyes to those few awake, swallow some coffee and get back into my car to drive back to Madison. We’re lucky there isn’t any ice on the road. The ride to Shane’s apartment is quiet. When I turn sometimes toward him, I find his eyes on me.
Still haven’t entirely gotten over yesterday’s fear that something had happened to him. Even during the near-violent sex we had later—the memory heating the tips of my ears—the ball of tension in my gut is still present.
What I’d like would be to go upstairs with him and cuddle on his sofa in front of the TV. Hold him and stroke his hair and kiss him until I’ve convinced myself he’s all right, really all right and not just faking it.
He’s good at faking he’s okay. But he would tell me if he wasn’t, right? I mean, apart from the bits and pieces of the conversation I overheard him having with Seth and Zane. His fear that he’s losing his mind. His decision to see a therapist.
He looks calm, if tired, the skin under his eyes bruised. I wonder if he sleeps enough. If the nightmares haunt him every night or once in a while. If he eats enough, and healthy. If he drinks. If he spends his nights drawing, and what his drawings reveal.
The desire to know him, really know him, is growing with every little thing I find out about him. Like the fact he doesn’t smoke. He never talks about his Mom but kept her note. He doesn’t play games.
If he isn’t playing games, then what is he doing with me?
Not fair, I guess, to ask more of him right now, but still… I’m so confused. After telling a boy you love him, what does it mean when he says nothing back? When he barely talks to you and then fucks you roughly in a dusty room? Is this a mistake? Should I run?
If it was any other guy, I’d say he’s a douchebag and walk away with my head held high, but this is Shane. With his flashbacks and nightmares and his fear of losing his grasp on reality.
Patience. Bravery. These are the synonyms of love.
How long do you wait, and how much do you take before you call it a day and leave? How do you do it when you’ve given away your heart?
How do you live without it?
A few months ago I’d have slept with a guy and not given it a second thought the day after. Now not only I can’t imagine sleeping with anyone but Shane… I can’t stop thinking about it. About him.
Crap.
“Here we are.” I park outside his building, try to smile, even though I’d rather stay here with him rather than go see what got my mom’s panties in a twist. “Will you be okay?”
He seems to be thinking about it. “I�
��ll do my best,” he finally says, and one side of his mouth tilts up in one of those faint, sweet smiles he sometimes gives me and makes me melt.
I like that he’s so honest about all this. He may try to hide his trouble behind glares and stony fronts, but with me he’s open, laying it all out on the table.
As if daring me to back out.
But his gaze is soft, not challenging. As if it’s the opposite. As if he’s daring himself to bare himself to me, laying his fears before me and bracing for the worst.
“Mom says she’s sick,” I say, although I told him that already, right after she called me. “I need to check on her.”
He’s looking at me, long lashes shadowing his eyes. “She’s your family,” he says simply.
“My only family,” I mutter, the thought returning. “She’s all I have left.”
“What about your dad?”
“He left.” I shrug, pretending I don’t care. “He left after Angel died. Didn’t leave an address.”
It hurts after all these years. I understand that he couldn’t deal with it, or the fact my mom was changed by Angel’s death, but he left us. Left me to deal with it, and I was just a kid.
“I didn’t know,” Shane says, his voice warm, so warm I want to wrap myself in it. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”
He reaches for my hand on the wheel, covers it, his palm hot and rough. “I won’t leave.”
His statement hangs between us, vague and mysterious. What does he mean? He won’t leave me? He won’t take his life? He won’t get out of the car?
But then he draws back his hand, opens the car door and climbs out.
I wish he’d climb back inside, that we could lock ourselves in here and ask all the questions and find all the answers. Touch and kiss and not need anyone or anything else.
But life isn’t that way, and we don’t always get what we want. I should know that by now. He nods at me, closes the door and zips up his jacket, then turns and ambles toward his building, dragging the hood over his head, his long hair escaping at the sides and flying in the wind.
Nothing for me to do but to go.
***
“Are you frigging kidding me? You called me back to town for this?” I point a finger at my mom who’s sitting, perfectly healthy and slightly tipsy, on her bed, and wish my finger was a laser saber like Luke Skywalker’s. “You lied to me about being sick, so you could rant about some random guy who ditched you?”
“It wasn’t some random guy”, she says in a voice husky from too many cigarettes. “It was Josh. I told you about Josh.”
“No, as a matter of fact, you haven’t. And it wouldn’t matter if you did.”
“Josh is different, baby. He cares about me.”
“I thought he ditched you. Hello?”
“He was upset.”
“And why might that be, I wonder?”
“Because he saw me kissing another guy.”
My sarcastic smartass comment dies on my tongue. “You what?”
“I kissed, like you said, a random guy at the club, and Josh saw us. That kiss… it didn’t mean anything. I don’t understand why Josh took it so badly.”
Oh God. My mom and I, we’re the same. This is tragic. And horrifying.
“Mom, of course this Josh got upset, if he thought you were together and you went off kissing another man. Why wouldn’t he?”
“Because he’s a man,” my mom wails, and dear God and baby Jesus, when will she get over this nonsense?
“Men have feelings, mom. When will that get through that thick skull of yours?”
“That’s nonsense, Cassie. If your dad could just walk away, what more proof do you need to believe me?”
“When are we going to stop taking my dad as the proof for anything? He was one man, Mom. Just one. That doesn’t make him prime example of manhood any more than your actions make you a model of motherhood.”
Oh boy. I said it. I hadn’t meant to.
Holy crap.
Mom is staring hard at me, her eyes so like mine, her hair a bleached white-blond. She’s my mirror, an old and cracked reflection. Who I could be in the future if I follow her path.
“Is this because of that boy you’re obsessing over?”
“I’m not obsessing,” I say, because she’s right, I am.
Smitten. Head over heels.
In love.
“Has he told you he loves you?” She swings her bare legs over the side of the bed. She’s dressed in a fluffy pink robe, a lacy nightie underneath, sexier than anything I’ve ever worn. “Has he, huh?”
“No.”
“See?”
“So what? Maybe he’s not ready yet.”
“Have you told him you love him?”
I swallow hard. “I have, but…”
She throws her manicured hands in the air. “So he thinks you’re an easy lay. Just like any other guy.”
Her words shouldn’t make my face burn and my stomach churn. She’s the one who taught me sex doesn’t matter, kissing doesn’t matter. Men don’t matter.
So why am I feeling ashamed and mortified just because she’s hinting that men only want me for sex?
“Why are we talking about me?” I ask, my voice shaky. “You brought me here to talk about Josh and what a douchebag he is.”
“And you moaned and stomped your foot like a three-year-old. Why would I interrupt your party to complain, right? Why not always talk about you?”
“Oh please, Mom.” The burning of embarrassment is turning into anger. “When do we ever talk about me?”
“All the time!”
“That’s not true!”
We glare at each other. Mirror and reflection, and what if she’s the real deal, and I’ll end up just like her?
What if I end up being her? So sad and angry at the world?
“Don’t be an idiot, Cassie. This boy you’re in lust with, even if he told you he loved you, he’d still be lying.”
“So it’s a catch twenty-two? No way to win?”
“It’s not the words, baby. It’s the actions. Has he treated you well, brought you flowers, bought you a ring? Is he talking about a future together, babies and a house with a picket fence?”
“Even if he had, you’d tell me again he’s lying.”
But my chest is so tight I can barely breathe. The thought of Shane bringing me flowers makes me want to laugh hysterically. Buying me a ring… a future together, that’s wishful thinking on my part, isn’t it? Guys don’t care for this stuff, do they? Different brains. Different needs.
And since when do I need a house and kids?
Since Shane. Since I realized I have feelings for him.
Oh God, Mom is right. I’m the one thinking and wishing for things, not him. I guess I knew it from the start: he’s going to break my heart.
***
Mom manages to keep me busy all day. She isn’t feeling well. She needs me to pick up a bag she forgot at a friend’s house, check her medication for expiration dates. I think of Shane, of everything he’s been through and is going through, and I want to grab her and shake her. But I don’t.
Right when I’m about to start screaming in frustration and tell her she’s a big girl and isn’t sick after all, she orders my favorite Korean food and starts talking about Angel.
This never happens. We never talk about my brother, never mention his name. It’s a code, a rule. A law.
Which my mom chose to break, and even if it’s a ploy to keep me by her side for the day, I can’t leave yet. Not even she breaks out the photo album, one I didn’t know she had, with photos of Angel since he was a little boy, all blond curls and wide blue eyes, chubby cheeks and hands.
My eyes sting as I trail my fingers over his photos as he grows, giving the camera mischievous looks, dressed in his boy scouts uniform or his pajamas. I don’t appear in the photos until he’s ten. Then he’s usually guarding me like a sentinel, looking proud to be a big brother, or holdi
ng me in his arms.
Then three grainy photos from the front, and a few more of him when he returned.
Followed by empty pages.
I hang my head. “Why didn’t you show me these before?”
“I wasn’t sure you wanted to see them,” Mom says, sliding into the chair across from me, cradling a mug of hot tea.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
She shrugs her bony shoulders. God, she’s so thin. How have I never noticed before? “You didn’t want us to talk about him. You once yelled at me that you couldn’t stand hearing about him, that he was dead. That he gave up.”
I slap a hand over my mouth to stop a sob. “Oh God.” It’s true. A vague memory is surfacing, of myself yelling, kicking at things.
Telling my mom that he was gone, and that I didn’t want his ghost around.
Because it hurt too much. Thinking, remembering him hurt like a hot blade in my chest, and I chose to bury him deep inside my mind.
“Not everyone can come back from the dark places,” she says. “Angel couldn’t.”
And what if Shane can’t, either? If he gives up? What then?
“I loved Angel,” I whisper. “Still do.”
“I love him, too. I’m his mother. Did that help him any?” She takes a sip from her mug, her eyes distant. “You have to want it. Want to live.”
“But sometimes without help, you won’t make it.”
“Nonsense.” She puts her mug down. “We did all we could for Angel. He still didn’t make it.”
“Not everyone’s mind works the same way, Mom.”
Shane won’t give up. He wouldn’t.
“Did Angel ever tell you what happened to him in the Army?”
I stare at her. “I thought… I thought it was seeing his friends dying. Seeing war. Why? What else is there?”
“He did see war. A shell exploded and took out his friends. He saw a little girl lying in a pool of her own blood. And he didn’t break. Until he returned here, home, and found out his girlfriend had left him for another. Love,” Mom tsks, “ruins you, baby. Not war. Love. See where I’m going with this?”
I put down the album, something bitter in my mouth. “Don’t, Mom.”
