“Yes, that.” She closed her fingers over his head and guided his mouth all over her. “Definitely fantasized about that.”
His tongue found curves and angles, sweet skin, and one incredibly cute innie. He eased her onto the bed, patted his own body dry, and dropped the towel, staring at her while his heart clobbered his chest.
“Do you ever have any fantasies?” she asked, scooting up to put her head on the pillow, but never taking her gaze from him. “About me?”
“Do I ever not have any is a better question.” He bracketed her legs with his, straddling her as he laid his body over hers. “At the most inopportune times, too.”
She laughed softly. “Sunday dinner?”
“Always at Sunday dinner.” Leaning down, he kissed her lightly, knowing it was just a prelude to a thousand more that would only get deeper and more desperate. “I was jealous of every bite of bread pudding that went into this…delicious…mouth.”
She moaned into each kiss. “You wanted to sleep with me?”
Every single night.
He bit back the declaration and forced a few drops of blood to stay in his brain and protect him from blurting out something stupid.
“I wanted to…” No, he couldn’t tell her that he knew from the moment he laid eyes on her that she was so much more than any woman he’d ever met. More fun. More exciting. More attractive, inside and out. He knew, deep down, that she would rock his soul and make him question his decisions and threaten his stability and change him. Maybe he’d never put it into words, but now, tonight, like this, with her…now he knew. And he knew better than to tell her.
So this night would be fun and sexy and perfect, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
After a moment, she pressed on his chest, pushing him up so she could see his eyes, so he closed them, knowing he was so damn transparent where she was concerned. “You wanted to what?” she urged.
Wanted to think about words like forever and always and permanent and…love.
“That dirty, huh?” she teased.
“Not dirty at all.” Stupid, useless, and a little bit terrifying. But not dirty. “Unless you think this is dirty.” He inched down her body, pausing at her breasts, tasting one, caressing the other, adoring her body, kind of the way he adored her heart and head.
“Mmm.” She arched and sighed noisily, fingers digging into his hair. “I think it’s…oh. Not dirty at all. Sweet, actually. Sexy. Nice.”
With each kiss and suckle, a new wave of delight rolled over her, making her mew like a kitten and moan with unapologetic delight.
“I want you.” She squeezed his shoulders and dragged him back to kiss her mouth. “I want you, Einstein.”
He gave her that kiss, long and deep. “Einstein can’t think straight right now.”
That brought a victorious gleam to her eyes. “You don’t have to think.” She touched his lips with her fingertips. “When your mouth is this clever.”
Holding her gaze, he moved against her, wincing as pleasure and need collided and made him a little desperate. “And to think I’m not even Greek,” he teased.
“I know.” She branded his neck and chest with kisses, digging her nails into him, then lightly scraping them all the way down his back, sending sparks and blood and a gnawing hunger all to one place. “And you can tell that’s such an…issue.” She slid her hand around to the front, closing her fingers over him with a little groan of delight. “A huge, huge…issue.”
He wanted to laugh, but all he could do was give in to the unbelievable tsunami of pleasure rolling over him with each stroke of her hands.
He tried to slow down, tried to make every second stretch to infinity, but the more they found the staccato rhythm of their bodies, the more need muscled past any shot at leisurely getting there.
Reluctantly pausing to seek a condom from the nightstand drawer, he sat up enough to get a full view of her body, everything pink from the rush of blood and maybe the brush of his whiskers.
Her hips rose and fell as if beckoning him back, her eyes shuttered, strands of wet inky-black hair splayed on his pillow. She looked like the prophetess she’d been named for, elusive and beautiful and…his.
Except she wasn’t his.
“Any day now,” she teased without opening her eyes.
“Sorry. Took a detour.”
Her eyes flashed open in surprise. “To where?”
To…feelings. Futures. Forever places he had no right to go. “Safety drawer,” he said, holding up the packet as proof. “Stay with me now, Cass,” he murmured around the packet he tore open with his teeth.
Reaching up, she put both hands on his shoulders and curled her legs around him. “Don’t worry. I’m not leaving these beauties anytime soon.” She squeezed hard, pulling him down, placing a kiss on one shoulder, then the other.
It was stupid to cling to that promise, but he did anyway. Held on to the words and the hope and the possibility that she really wasn’t leaving with the same strength he held on to her as he finally found his way home, as close to Cassie as he could be, but even that wasn’t close enough. He’d always want more.
Not leaving…anytime soon.
He held her, soaking up her ragged breaths, riding every rise and fall, letting the build to ecstasy take over every single thought but Cassie. He said her name over and over, and she whispered his, and for one long, exquisite, insane moment, they were joined in body and heart and soul, both of them lost and out of control and completely connected.
After the last tremor shook them, he dropped onto the pillow, buried his face in her wet hair, and managed to keep his mouth shut and not pour out his feelings.
He couldn’t keep her. But he’d had this moment, this release, this memory. And that would have to be enough.
Except he already knew it wouldn’t be.
Chapter Twenty-one
Cassie woke to a predawn silver sky, shaking off a dream of someone holding her down.
Not someone. That was the weight of Braden’s arm wrapped around her, pinning her to one spot. Against her bare body, he still slept deeply, breathing steady and slow into her hair.
She frowned into the darkness, pulling at wisps and threads of the dream, working to get something more than a vague feeling of…longing. Whatever she’d dreamed, it left her…no, not longing. Frustrated. Stymied. Humming with that old familiar need to get a job done.
But what? Squeezing her eyes shut, she dug deep into her filmy dream memory and came up with…her father?
She sucked in a soft breath, which made Braden stir against her. “You okay, Cass?” he muttered.
“I’m not sure.” Who dreamed about her father when in bed with her lover?
Instantly, he tightened his grip on her. “What’s wrong?”
She turned slowly to face him, shocked for one second at how close and warm and real he was. “Nothing.” She curled her leg over his, settling into the shape of the two of them that had become achingly familiar overnight.
“Liar.” He searched her face. “Something’s wrong.”
“I think I dreamed of my dad.”
“Bad dream?”
“Just…what’s he doing here?” she asked on a laugh, then flicked her hand in the air. “Go away and let me be an adult, Daddy.”
“Did you call him Daddy?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “Like I call my mother Mommy at times. Just for a call back to childhood.”
“Maybe he appeared in your dream to tell you what he thinks of…” He glanced down to their entwined bodies.
She studied his face for a minute, letting herself fall back a few years, remembering her father before he was sick, when he was strong, healthy, vibrant. Cooking hard in the back of Santorini’s, dispensing life lessons like dollops of tzatziki.
“He’d have liked you,” she said quietly.
He lifted a dubious brow. “An Irish dude?”
“He didn’t care about being Greek or not. That’s all Yiayia. Remember, he married my mother.” Sh
e touched his cheek, scraping her nail against his scruffy whiskers. “He liked a man who was passionate about things. He respected people who are all in and maybe go a little overboard. You’re like that.”
“Overboard?” His eyes flashed with something that hovered between guilt and worry. “Like…how?”
“Like refusing to give up on Jelly Bean.”
With a soft grunt, he shut his eyes. “Yeah, I forgot about that.”
“Give it this week, Braden,” she urged him. “Let Daniel and Liam work with him.”
“I will, but…” He swallowed. “I want to work with Jazz. I’m going to see how she and I do together.”
She drew back, her eyes wide. “Really?”
“Yeah. I’m going to start ADC handler training with her this week.”
For some reason, that disappointed her. “You’re giving up on Jelly Bean?”
He blew out a long, sad sigh. “Look, he’s everything I ever wanted in a dog and he’s mine forever, but after last night? I know that this town, this whole area, needs an ADC more than I need to have my dream dog doing the job.” He lifted his head. “Where is Jazz, by the way?”
“Probably waiting by the kitchen door to go out, like the angel she is.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yep, she’s flawless. I should take her outside.” He started to push away immediately, but she grabbed his arm. “She’s fine. It’s not even six o’clock in the morning, and I walked her before you got home. I can’t believe you’ve changed your mind about Jelly Bean.”
“I have to do what’s right,” he said. “Not just what feels right, or what I want to be right, or what should be right. It’s small and stupid of me to cling to the dog who doesn’t have the most important attribute for the job. Jasmine will probably make a top-level scent-detection dog, just like my uncle said.” He gave a dry laugh. “Which, if I know Daniel Kilcannon, is probably the reason he had me take Jazz ‘temporarily.’”
“So what do you want to do about Jelly Bean?”
“I’ll let him finish the tests at Waterford this week. And while he does, we can work with Jazz and complete the stops for the scavenger hunt.”
Cassie narrowed her eyes. “Which you don’t need to even have anymore, if you’re not sending Jelly Bean to ten grand worth of higher education.”
“We can still have a scavenger hunt, but give any proceeds to a worthy cause.”
“Oh.” She shifted a little. “Okay.”
“You sound disappointed, Cass.” He tipped her chin up to look into her eyes.
“I am disappointed,” she admitted. “But only because I had such high hopes for Jelly Bean.”
“He’s a great dog and can do a lot of other jobs. Anything that doesn’t require scent discernment. I’m not giving him up or letting someone else have him. If I can’t get permission to take them both to the station when I’m on duty, I’ll leave one at Waterford or at my mom’s house. It’ll work out.”
“Okay,” she said. “What kind of hours do you work this week?”
“Three ten-hour days. I’m off the whole weekend, then a bunch of twenty-fours.” He gave her a quick kiss and rolled away. “Let me check on Jazz. Don’t move. Don’t even think about moving.”
“Brush my teeth?”
“You brought a toothbrush?” He looked pleasantly surprised.
“Clean clothes, too.”
“Ooh. A premeditated sleepover. What changed your mind?”
“I’m not sure,” she whispered. “But I knew I had to be here last night.” She gave him a light poke in the arm. “Go take Jazz out. We can talk when you get back.”
It pained her to lose his warmth and strength, but she still needed time to know exactly what to say. Because she honestly didn’t know what changed her mind, only that it had. Was that temporary insanity or a change of heart?
Ten minutes later, Braden was back, with Jazz, who settled on the floor and laid her head on the dirty T-shirt he’d dropped last night. Since he’d even taken time to brush his teeth, too, he smelled too minty fresh not to kiss.
She started there without talking, lingering over his lips, delaying the conversation she didn’t want to have. The kiss led to more, but Braden showed remarkable restraint, finally easing her away to look into her eyes.
“You still didn’t answer my question, Cass. What changed your mind?”
“What changed your mind about Jelly Bean?” she replied. “Sometimes you realize it’s—what did you call it? Small and stupid? I was just clinging to a preconceived notion that was wrong.” She rocked into him with an unabashed invitation. “Turns out I was right.”
But he didn’t rock back. “Does that mean you changed your mind about leaving?”
She heard the hope in his voice, just like she’d seen the struggle to keep things light when they made love last night.
“You can’t change a mind that’s not made up yet,” she said. “And you’re putting the cart before the horse or, in this case, the job before the offer. No one has officially asked me to move anywhere yet.”
“Yet.”
“Yes, yet.” She snaked closer. “But we have now.”
But he was having none of it. “Then we’re back to where we were. Temporary.”
“Jasmine was going to be temporary,” she said. “And look how fast you were able to slide into permanent with her.”
He shook his head. “Dogs are not people, so don’t conflate the two.”
“I don’t know what conflate means, Einstein, but the idea is this: You think you don’t want someone to come home to, but I know that you do. That’s not the case with moving. I’ve wanted to live and work in a big city my whole life.” She squinted as something occurred to her. “Maybe that’s why I dreamed about my dad. He’s the only person who knew that and took me seriously.”
He relaxed a little, coming closer, the way he always did when he wanted to know more about her. “How?”
“He knew what we were all meant to be before we did. He always knew the twins would take over Santorini’s and that Theo would go off to find his way in the military, and Nick was born to be a doctor. He called me his ‘little lady executive’ because I used to sit behind his desk in the back of the restaurant and pretend to be on the phone bossing people around.”
That made him laugh. “You are bossy, but in the sexiest possible way.”
“He’d come into his office, and I’d have his phone to my ear, pretending to take notes, telling people they had to have the spinach delivered by tomorrow at ten or I’d take my business elsewhere!” She pretended to slam a phone almost as hard as the memory slammed her. “Dad would say, ‘That’s my little lady executive. You’ll be running Wall Street someday.’”
“Ahhh.”
She inched back. “What ‘ahhh’? What does that mean?”
“It means now I understand what’s motivating this desperation to move to a big city.”
“It’s not desperation, Braden. It’s a goal, a dream. Same as handling an arson-investigation dog. Nothing has to motivate it.”
“My dad died in a fire that was deliberately set. My motivation is pretty straightforward. And if you want to run a business, which I get and applaud, you can do that here. We have businesses in Bitter Bark. And not a single dedicated event-planning company, to my knowledge.”
She just sighed, because the argument made sense, but so did that big-city dream—to her, at least.
“True. It’s not Wall Street,” he added. “It’s Ambrose Avenue, and that might be a disappointment to your father.”
She started to argue, then stopped because the dream came back to her. At least, a piece of it. She had been in the den of their old house in Chestnut Creek. Dad was around the corner in the kitchen, talking to Mom. About her.
She couldn’t remember what he was saying, but she wildly disagreed and kept trying to get up and tell him that. She kept calling out, “Daddy, Daddy!” but someone was holding her back from getting off the sofa and marching into the kit
chen to defend herself.
Alex? Nick?
No, it wasn’t one of her brothers. “It was you.”
“Excuse me?”
“In my dream. I was trying to tell my father something, but you had my arm and wouldn’t let me go.”
His brow lifted with interest. “Symbolism. One of my favorite things in literature.”
“Well, I was trapped under your arm before I woke up, so it wasn’t that symbolic.”
“Yes it was,” he said softly. “I’m holding you back.”
She searched his face. “But you don’t want a permanent relationship, remember?”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t have to. She could read it on his face.
“You change your mind?”
“You changed my mind,” he said gruffly. “And who knows, Cass? You could change my mind about a lot of things. Like…where I live.”
She blinked, stunned by that. “Braden.”
“In the meantime…” He eased her into him and dragged his hand down her arm and over her hip. “I’m going to do everything I can…” He kissed her and slowly began to move against her. “To help us…” Sliding her onto her back and under him, he started feathering kisses on her lips and jaw and throat. “Enjoy every minute we have.”
Her response melted into a sigh as his hands moved over her with that slow, confident touch that turned her into a pool of liquid from the waist down.
“I need a new name for you, Einstein. Tell me a great lover in literature. You know, like Romeo or Tristan. Rick in Casablanca. I know. I’ll call you Heathcliff.”
He stopped the kiss he’d been planting on the rise of her breasts. “Another of my favorite things in literature. Irony. And you just delivered some.”
“How?”
He lifted his head to look into her eyes, his gaze a little sad. “You just picked nicknames of heroes who each and every one ended up dead or alone.”
“Oh.” She pressed a hand to his cheek. “I don’t want you to be dead or alone, Braden.”
“I’m not…now.” He lowered his head and continued a trail of kisses down her body and did everything he possibly could to make it impossible to give him up.
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