thought she had been, Cass had expected fireworks and exploding, bone rattling orgasms. That hadn’t happened. It was just ho-hum and basically doable with Wade .
In, out. Up, down. Baby, oh baby. Was it good for you? Yawn, roll over, lights out.
Since breaking up with him, Cass hadn’t given much thought to having sex again.
But lying on top of Evan with a deliciously hard dick pushing against her? “If we do
this once—”
“If? Once? Are you saying you want me?” Evan’s voice was softly mocking.
“Do you want me?” She’s already had one man pass her over for another woman.
That’d hurt. She didn’t expect forever but Cass did want to be more than an available
body to be filled.
In answer to that Evan, grabbed her tight and rolled her over onto her back. “I
want to fuck you senseless.”
Looking up into his deep blue eyes, Cass knew the senseless bit wouldn’t be
hard. She was already giddy from the sheer rush of the man. “About sex—” Cass felt
the tip of his dick push against her wet opening.
“Yes?”
“I’m not great at it and I’m not expecting much and—” She choked on her next
words as hard dick pushed up inside her, filling her completely. Cass caught her
breath and lifted her legs to wind around his hips. “Ohhhh…”
“Cassie?” Evan’s lips hovered above hers.
“I don’t expect—”
“I do. You will get everything I can give and you should expect nothing less.”
“But—” Cass was about to ask how he could say that and what did he know that
she didn’t, when his mouth met hers and all questions were silenced. It was like sex
for the first time. Two lovers new to each other and yet both knowing exactly what to
do and what the other needed. It was a slow and sweet with deep thrusts and soft,
sucking wet kisses. She cried out when his mouth left hers and his lips dropped down
to tug on her nipple. Wade had rarely done that. To Wade, breasts were objects to
hold onto as he drove his dick hard inside her body. While Cass liked it hard, she also
craved the soft, slow fondling of Evan. It made her feel like she was a woman he
cherished and desired above all others. In that moment she knew in her heart that his
was what making love actually was. Two bodies joining and moving together as one.
“Oh, Evan—”
“What do you need?” He whispered against her breast, his gaze on hers.
“Just you.” Tomorrow, undoubtedly, she would probably think twice about her
words and the emotion. But now? Now was different. This one man, a stranger, had
turned everything upside down and she liked it. Cass cupped his ass and pulled her
against him. “Please—”
“Anything you want, Cassie.” His mouth was on hers once more.
His lips slid down her neck and sucked against her flesh, his dick plowing away
inside her.
Each upward stroke, jolted against her clit and she trembled as spirals of pleasure
started to pulsate through her body. Cass held Evan tightly against her, not wanting
the connection to break. As his seed pumped into her body, she cried out. It was
probably wrong to love the rush of the man inside her but at that moment ‘probably
wrong’ felt pretty good to her. She felt like a whole, sexy woman being loved well
and truly by a man. Cass cried out his name as she came against him, trembling
uncontrollably as she held on to his body. “Oh, Evannnn…”
He chuckled and pulled out from her.
Cass reached for him. She didn’t want it to end. Evan spread her legs and watched as his semen ran from her body. The fierce look of possession in his eyes
thrilled her. I am owned.
“Mine,” he growled, one long finger sliding inside her vagina.
At that moment, Cass would have gladly sold her soul to him. She held out her
hand to him. “Please—”
“You want me inside you again?”
The look of raw need in his eyes thrilled Cass. “Yes. I need you.”
Evan plunged inside her once more. He wasn’t as hard, but it didn’t matter. That
they were sweaty, hot and sticky was irrelevant. She just needed that connection to
him.
Evan rolled them onto their side, their bodies joined. “Sorry,” he breathed against
her lips.
“I’m not.” Cass curled against him. She had never had a lover want to stay within
her. That connection felt right. She felt no need to move nor did she feel awkward. It
was delightfully messy yet perfect. She sighed against his skin, feeling at peace in the
arms of a man who yesterday had been a stranger to her.
Evan’s fingers pushed the tendrils of hair from her face. “We should have used a
condom. I should have protected you but I wasn’t thinking with the correct part of my
body.”
Nor had she been. Cass was as responsible as he was. “It’s okay.” Now was not
the time to tell him about not taking the pill due to the side effects it had on her. The
likelihood of her getting pregnant was remote anyway. Her own mother had taken
years and many disappointments to have her. If genetics followed true, Cass would be
the same. “I’ve always wanted to know what it felt like.”
“No man ever came inside you like that?”
“No, I never wanted anyone until—” Cass stopped. She was saying way too
much to someone she barely knew.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For letting it be me.” His gaze was soft on hers. “If anything happens—”
She smiled at Evan to reassure him and herself. “It won’t.”
“I’ll want to know.” His hand linked with hers.
In the one moment, Cass knew she was in danger of falling in love with Evan.
Chapter Five
“Neither I nor Flo noticed the hickey on your neck,” Jo murmured as Cass walked into the office.
Cass knew her face was bright red. “Good of you not to say anything about it
then.” She had showered and changed and walked with wobbly legs to the office. She
knew that the two women had to have been wondering what she had been doing for so
long in one room. No bed took that long to make.
“No, and we’re not wondering why it took so long to make one bed either.” Flo
winked at her.
“Fuck.” Was it that obvious? Cass felt bad. She was employed to do a job, not to
fuck around with Evan. That she had hated him one minute and was screwing him the
next confused the hell out of her. Am I just desperate or a slut? It’s not like it could
be love for god sake. I barely know him, er, well his mind that is.
“Did you?” Jo toyed with the pen in her hand, her eyes bright with interest. “Was
Evan good?”
“He is one of the few men I’d swap teams for,” added Flo, patting the chair
beside her.
Cass smiled and sat down. “Really?” She arched her brow at Flo.
“Oh yeah, I could tell you some stories about my past and men.”
“She was a slut,” Jo informed Cass.
Flo grinned. “Yeah, I was.”
“What changed you?” Cass didn’t care who loved who with what body parts.
Love was as it was. It came from the heart and pigeon holing people into stereotypical
gender rules was of no interest to her.
“This chick called Jo came along—”
“And I was so amazing that you knew you’d be mad to let me go.”
“That’s sweet.” She could see the deep love and affection when the two women
looked at each other. “The thing is—” The two sets of eyes locked on hers. Do I lie?
Tell the truth? Feign ignorance? How complicated do I want my life to get? She had
been in town for just a day and yet already her whole life was turned upside down. By
a man. She hadn’t been ready for that. “…it didn’t mean anything.” Liar. It meant so
many unexpected things that her head was still spinning from what had happened. Her
body still felt the imprint of Evan on hers. It was sluttish but she had loved the sticky
feel of his semen between her thighs. It made her feel real and right and that hadn’t
happened in a long time.
They rolled their eyes. “Piss weak lie,” Jo told her.
Yeah, it was. “Okay I didn’t mean it to happen.” She could have blamed Evan for
being naked and charming. But naked and charming she could have deflected if she
wanted to. And that was the thing. She didn’t want to.
“The best sex happens that way.”
“Yeah, well, anyway we had sex to prove a point.” Though, at that moment she
couldn’t remember exactly what it had been. All Cass could remember was the delicious taste and feel of a hot male body on and in hers.
Flo arched her brow. “And that is?”
Cass pursed her lips in thought. How do I explain this when I’m not sure myself?
“Well, I guess it started out to prove I wasn’t attracted to Evan and it was just about
bodily functions and pheromones.”
“Uh-huh, and how did that go?”
“Not great,” admitted Cass. She found it easy to talk to these two women even
though they were strangers who knew nothing about her life but what she told them. It
was like starting afresh. “It’s kinda messy.”
“Yeah, love can screw with your mind,” agreed Jo.
“Not just your body,” added Flo.
Cass shook her head. “God no, it’s not love. It’s sex.” Sex did not necessarily
have to lead to anything. Besides she’d thought she had been in love with Wade. That
had been a complete mess and waste of time. How do I even know what love is? “Sex
and love are not mutually exclusive.”
“It’s fun when they are.”
“I’m not in love with Evan.” Hot, sticky thighs and hard thrusts did not make a
forever romance. But damn, it made forever memories.
Flo nodded. “No, of course you’re not. That’d be crazy.”
“Why?” She rubbed the hickey on her neck. Cass had never been marked by
passion before. She’d liked it.
“Why do you care is the question.”
Good point. Why do I? It was just sex of the mind blowing kind. “I don’t.” Cass
looked from Flo to Jo and back again. “Aw crap, I can’t fall in love with someone
after having sex once.”
“Why not?”
“Needy bunny boiler types do that.” Cass knew she was neither. She shook her
head as if to rearrange her brain cells. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about this again.”
“Ah yes, avoidance tactics are always good,” added Jo, with a smile. “I’m so glad
we hired you. You’re a pip.”
“But let’s just keep this I’m-not-in-love-sex between us. It’s the last thing Adele
needs to know,” Flo added in. “We don’t need any dramatic Sicilian vendettas. Mind
you, I think she’ll be too busy with the annual Throcker Thrashing anyway.”
Cass looked surprised. “The what?” She should have been making up for lost
work time but the two women fascinated her.
Jo was happy to tell the story. “Well, in the mid 1800’s a young bloke called Jack
Throcker had owned a property about twenty kilometres from town. He turned up in
Mundabucka with the story that he had jumped on a ship in Liverpool, England, and
made his way to Australia. Local theory was he was a convict transported out for theft
and he ran away from the prison farm he was placed on just outside of Sydney.”
“No one blamed him, of course,” Flo interjected. “It was a harsh world back then.
People got transported for the smallest things. Britain back then was an overcrowded
mess of slums and poverty. Those who made a new life in Australia did quite well—
like Jack.”
Cass had learned about convicts at school. She knew that only the strongest
survived and prospered in the harsh new world they had been thrown into. Australia
back then was a hard, barren land that broke the sprits and backs of many. “So, how
did he get all the way up to Queensland and more importantly, how did he come to
own a property?” Way back then, convicts had no money or welfare benefits. They
had to survive on what they could scrounge or sheer, rat cunning.
“Word is Jack was a bushranger who had a habit of finding useful stuff he could
sell on for a profit. Today they would call him an entrepreneur.”
“He was an alleged bushranger who happened to know a lot of other ‘alleged’
bushrangers. Nothing was ever proven that he was one,” Flo explained. “Reading
through the old Queensland Police Gazettes, Jack Throcker was an interesting man
who wasn’t adverse to the odd bit of mischief.”
Cass was fascinated. “Like what?”
“Things had a way of disappearing when Jack was around but he always, without
fail, had an alibi when neighboring livestock went missing. And if stray cattle turned
up on his farm then it wasn’t his fault. It they got ‘accidently’ branded with his mark
then it wasn’t his fault that they legally became his.”
“Quite a rogue he was,” Flo continued on a gleam in her eyes. “There’s a tale that
a large haul of gold is buried on the property. It was said to have been on a bullock
cart making its way down to the big smoke of Brisbane. It never got there. Jack was
droving around that time and mysteriously wandered off only to return months and
months later a rich man with money in his pocket and a new bride on his arm. The
only problem was the old bride was still living. Word is the first Mrs. Throcker, Jane,
took it badly until Jack explained to her that the new bride, Maisie, was married under
one of his other names and technically she was the only real Throcker wife.”
“Other names?” Did Jane stick around, Cass wondered. Would any woman do
that having a new wife appear, different surname or not? But then how did women
survive back then without the aid of a man?
“Jack was quite a jack the lad. Women loved him. Men either feared him or
wanted to kill him. By all accounts, Jane Throcker just went along with the other
woman, each bearing children to Jack. And, I suppose, in those times, there wasn’t a
lot she could do about it. Stay married or be a fallen woman.”
“And the gold?”
“No one ever really knew what happened to it. After Jack died, because no one
was game to do it beforehand, people searched his land but nothing was ever found.
Jack was too cunning for most and sometimes for his own good. If there is gold still
buried out there, then he never got to use it or he blew the lot and is having a good
laugh now in the afterlife.”
“Hence the annual Throcker Thrash.” Cass understood now. Legend an
d greed
were powerful motivates. History was on one side and great wealth on the other.
“Yes, once a year, everyone in the district comes together to search for Jack’s
treasure on his property. The old homestead still exists.”
“If Adele’s family is so wealthy, then why does she go looking for the Throcker
treasure?” Added to that, from the little she had seen of the other woman, Cass
doubted she was the type that ever got her hands dirty.
“She’s greedy. Pure and simple,” Flo explained to Cass. “The Throcker Thrash is
in a couple of days. You’ve picked a good week to come to Mundabucka.” She
looked Cass up and down and smiled. “Now, can we trust you to help us make some
beds or will you feel the need to rumple them with the lovely Evan?”
Cass blushed. “My libido is in check.” My heart? That’s a different matter.
Chapter Six
It was midday. The sun was high and bright as Evan stood and watched Cass
talking to her chooks as if they were short, feathered people. He wondered who Cass
had back home. On one hand, he felt like he was bursting with knowledge about her
and on the other, she was a sexy, mysterious stranger who had shaken up his life
faster than he thought imaginable. He loved women. They came and went in his life.
This one? Evan didn’t want her leaving any time soon. She had captured his imagination like no other.
“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Cass told the chooks as she broke up pieces of
bread for them to eat.” This was met by much clucking. “Oh sure, easy for you to
say.” The chooks gobbled down the bread she fed them. “How did I get mixed up
with two crazy lesbians, a cut throat Sicilian and a hot jack of all trades who makes
my knees wobble when he smiles at me. I’d probably faint if he kisses me again and
that’s so embarrassing because I’m a grown up woman and not some silly girl with a
crush.”
Evan smiled at her words. Oh, there will be more kissing but no fainting. Cass
was built to last and to be loved hard and sweetly. He had never before come inside a
woman’s body unprotected. That was a rush that Evan had never expected. It was raw
and primal and he wanted to be all caveman-like and carry Cass off over his shoulder
and make love to her again and again.
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