25. Cash
CHAPTER 25
Cash
BEAUTIFUL MESS
We’re in the bathtub a week later when I fall in love with Mollie.
It happens all of a sudden. Or maybe it’s been happening all along, and it only takes some bubbles and a good, hard laugh for the realization to finally crystallize.
She’s on my lap, facing me. The water is hot. Small mountains of bubbles float on its surface, slicking her skin with bits of foam. Mollie insisted on the bubbles, and my girl gets what she wants.
But being an adult male, I don’t have bubble bath. I ended up squeezing some of my body wash underneath the running faucet while the tub filled up. It worked a little too well, and now we’re surrounded by bubbles.
So many fucking bubbles.
I swat them away. “I feel like I’m five again.”
“That’s a problem because?”
“Because they’re messy.” I glance at the floor, which is also covered in bubbles. “And ridiculous.”
Grinning, Mollie loops her arms around my neck and presses her tits against my chest. “Shame you don’t like messy and ridiculous things, because I am one. ”
We’ve fucked five thousand times this week, our last round being twenty minutes ago in bed (we skipped Frisky Whiskey’s Friday night set at The Rattler). But my dick still twitches.
Touching this girl, fucking her, only seems to deepen my hunger for her. Because that’s what this feels like—physical hunger I can only satiate by being inside her, near her. With her.
What if she doesn’t want to stay the night again? Granted, she’s slept here every night since I brought her home from The Rattler last Friday. We’ve worked out a great little system: I’ll sneak her over an hour after supper wraps up. Lucky for us, it’s getting dark earlier now, and far as I can tell, no one has seen us.
The second we’re through the door, we’re ripping each other’s clothes off. Then we’ll either take a bath or hang in bed, where Mollie often pulls out her laptop and works while I try not to hump her leg like the horny dog she’s turned me into.
I love watching her work. She’s thoughtful, thorough, and insanely talented. I love watching her work on the design of her boots the most. I also love when she asks for my input on things—from a possible collection of more functional boots for riding and working on a ranch, to the design of Bellamy Brooks’s website. Makes me feel like she appreciates me for something other than my Stetsons.
Although she appreciates that part of me plenty.
I grab her hips, which bracket my legs, and give them a squeeze. I’m smiling hard enough for it to hurt, and I don’t care. “I stand corrected. Maybe the mess ain’t so bad.”
“I like the mess. It’s real.” She leans in to nip at my mouth. “And the bubbles make it fun.” Leaning back, she scoops some bubbles into her hand. Gently starts putting them on my face, like she’s applying shaving cream. “You know, if you’d’ve told me that first day you brought me to your place that I’d end up in this tub again, only this time with you, I would’ve laughed in your face.”
I love watching her concentrate. There’s a tiny crease between her brows. Her lips are all pouty, eyes alive with interest. Laughter.
Despite how hot the water is, the tenderness of her touch makes my arms break out in goose bumps.
“Why? You like the bath. I like the bath. I like you.”
She pulls her lips to the side in a sly grin. “You have a funny way of showing it.”
“I’ve shown you plenty.” I rock my hips, my cock meeting with her center.
Her breath catches, eyes going dark. “How are you not dead yet?”
“I work on a ranch. I got stamina.”
Although this level of stamina is new, even for me. Since last Friday night, I haven’t slept more than three hours at a time. My hunger for Mollie is so fierce, it wakes me in the middle of the night. I can’t go back to sleep until I get my fill.
Thankfully, I’m able to nap on the weekends for the first time in…forever. Last Saturday, I fell asleep fast and hard after our breakfast and sex in bed. I woke up in the middle of the afternoon with Mollie asleep on my chest.
When I checked my phone, I didn’t have a single missed call or text message. I had called Wyatt while I had my coffee that morning and told him he was in charge that day.
He was silent for a full minute before asking, “Who is this, and what have you done with my brother?”
I’d laughed and hung up on him.
Shit must’ve gone sideways at some point. Always does on the ranch. But whatever went down, our crew apparently was able to handle it without me.
Feels…nice. And weird.
And really fucking nice. Despite my lack of sleep, the mental weight of carrying the world on my shoulders is gone. I feel like I can think clearly—breathe deeply—for the first time in fucking forever.
The one thing that rings clear as a bell? I want this girl to stay. I want more lazy evenings like this. I want to do what I want to do. Not what I should do.
Not what everybody else needs me to do.
This time is my own. Feels like I’m finally taking it back. Taking what should’ve been mine all along.
Mollie dabs bubbles onto my mustache. She pulls back to examine her work. My heart turns upside down when she smiles, the kind that touches her brown eyes. “You make a cute Santa Claus.”
“Santa Claus?” Laughing, I run my hands up her sides, my thumbs finding her nipples. “I was hoping it was more of a handsome Dos Equis guy look.”
She wags her eyebrows. “Say it. Ho, ho, ho.”
We’re both laughing now. The silliness of this moment, the lightness of it, is completely foreign to me.
It’s fucking lovely.
I swipe the bubbles off my face and smear them across hers. She tries to dodge my hand, but I grab her, tickling her side while I scoop more bubbles onto her face. She silently heaves with laughter, and the fact that I can make someone this happy—laugh this hard—has a steady kind of certainty taking root in my gut.
I need to lighten the fuck up.
Nothing bad has happened while I’ve been away from the cowboys. And nothing bad is happening now that I’m letting myself have a little fun.
I don’t feel dread right now or guilt. I feel…fine.
So much fucking better than fine .
Mollie is attempting to shove bubbles up my nose. When I try to duck, she pushes my head underneath the water. Coming up for air, I’m the one laughing too hard to make a sound .
“On Dasher,” Mollie gasps. “On Dancer and Vixen. Say it!”
Can I say I’m in love with you instead?
The words materialize inside my head, fully formed. The desire to say them aloud is urgent. This is too much to feel alone.
I am too happy not to tell my favorite person about it.
But I can’t, and that kills me.
Hooking an arm around her waist, I yank her roughly against me and kiss her. It’s way too soon to say shit like that. And I don’t want to ruin the lightness of the moment. Definitely don’t want to scare her off.
She tastes like my toothpaste and smells like my soap, and our laughter morphs into hungry gasps as our bodies melt together underneath the water.
I’m screwed. But I couldn’t stop kissing this girl if you paid me.
Her hands find my hair, and she smooths it back from my face. Her fingertips trail ribbons of sensation across my scalp. She kisses me deeply, fiercely, our lips finding an easy rhythm like we’ve been at this for months, years.
We make out until I’m fully hard again. She sighs when I slip inside her. Holds on to the edges of the tub as she rides my dick, water sloshing onto the floor when she comes with a happy yell.
What a mess.
What a beautiful fucking mess we’re making.
Later, I watch Mollie work in bed. She’s using a graphic design program on her laptop to test new colors on the Nana boot—a shorter style with a pointed toe and metallic details along the heel and shaft .
I absently trail my fingers along her bare thigh underneath the covers. “I like that. The yellow.”
“Really? I think I like the red.”
I chuckle. “Red it is, then. I like how opinionated you are. Y’all are gonna crush this launch.”
“The more you say that”—she smiles, then leans down to kiss me—“the more likely it is that it’ll happen. At least that’s what the internet tells me about manifesting shit.”
I kiss her back, warmth settling inside my skin. “Honey, you work harder than anyone I know. Of course you’re gonna manifest that shit.”
She looks at me then. “Thank you for saying that. I do work hard. Probably a little too hard.”
“Join the club.”
Mollie offers me a fist bump.
I give her one, then twine our fingers. “I’m trying to learn how to work less. Ain’t easy.”
“I know what you mean. I’ve always been a hard worker. As I get older, though, I’ve realized that, yeah, my drive can be a good thing. But it also might come from a fucked-up place. Like it comes from a wound or something.”
“What do you think your wound is?”
She thinks on this a minute. I love that about her—how thoughtful she can be. No filling the silence with empty bullshit.
“I think I always believed that, by being super successful, I could fix something that was broken.”
“What’s broken?”
“Me, I guess? Like if I’m perfect, then I’ll be loved.”
My heart twists at the naked hurt in her eyes.
It’s a big deal that Mollie Luck is sharing this with me. She is successful. She is a hard worker. Those can be good things.
They’re also things that keep people—feelings—at arm’s length.
They’re things I can certainly relate to .
Mollie trusts me. She sees me, too, same as I see her.
I need to show her Garrett’s pictures. Just gotta figure out the right time and place. I can’t help but feel sharing them with her will be a declaration on Garrett’s part and mine too.
Lord, we are in it.
“Close the laptop.”
Her eyebrows pop up. “Cash?—”
“Don’t make me ask again. Close it and come here, honey.”
Her lips twitch as she does as I tell her. Then I wrap her in my arms and pull her against me, guiding her head into the crook of my neck. My body jumps at the feel of her tits pressed to my chest, her nipples getting hard at the contact.
I do my best to ignore it. I just hold Mollie as I murmur in her ear, “Just because you’re not perfect doesn’t mean you’re broken.”
Her fingers trail through my chest hair. She’s quiet.
“I don’t need perfect. Your parents didn’t need it. World doesn’t need you to be perfect either. We just need you . You and your messes. You light up a room just by being in it, honey.”
She swallows audibly. “You’re just saying that because you have a hard-on.”
I laugh. “I’m always hard when you’re around. But even if that wasn’t the case, I’d be saying the same thing.” I tip up her chin so she meets my eyes. “There’s nothing about you that needs fixing. Anyone that makes you feel otherwise, they ain’t meant for you.”
She searches my gaze, her eyes wide and wet. “You make it sound so simple.”
“Nothing’s simple unless you make it simple.”
She gives me a watery grin. “So I make it simple.”
“I’m here to help you try, honey.”