Chapter 51 Cassie
CASSIE
I stretched in Hawk’s bed the next morning, savoring the crisp sheets on my naked body. I was sore in the best of ways, my pussy raw, my nipples sensitive from the hours I’d spent fucking the Hawks the night before.
We’d moved from the work room (or whatever it was) into Hawk’s bed and they’d taken control over my body until the early hours of the morning, taking turns using their mouths and fingers and dicks in every imaginable combination, using the wand until I started to crave the violet light, the sparks it sent to every nerve in my body.
I had only the vaguest of memories of them leaving that morning: Hawk kissing me in the dark, Jagger smoothing my hair, Vigo handing me my phone and telling me to take the day off.
I’d called out at the shop — Kaylee had been more than happy to take over for the day — and slept like a baby, drifting through a deep and dreamless sleep, my body more relaxed than it had ever been.
I reached for my phone and checked the time, then saw a text from Daisy.
See you at 1pm! Got Chasen’s for lunch.
Right. My catch up date with Daisy and Sarai.
Can’t wait!
I lay in Hawk’s bed for a few more minutes, contemplating how much to tell my two best friends about my newly hot sex life, then decided to play it by ear.
It wasn’t like either of them were prudes.
Daisy had been fucking three guys for the last two years and Sarai practically had a hookup frequent flyer card.
I finally got out of bed and grabbed a coffee.
I was surprised to find that I missed Vigo handing it to me.
It was one of those little things the Hawks did for me without making a big deal out of it, and it had been really nice to have someone else make me coffee when I spent all day making it for other people.
I took my coffee upstairs and ran a hot shower, then dressed in shorts and a tank top. I didn’t bother with makeup. I wore a little of it most days in the shop and it felt good to have a clean face for once.
It was only 12:30 when I was ready to go, so I decided to leave early, spend a little one-on-one time with Daisy before Sarai got there, maybe catch the baby before nap time.
I don’t know if it was all the amazing sex I’d been having or something in the air, but I felt a little euphoric as I got in my car and headed toward Daisy’s house.
And what wasn’t to love? The sun was shining, the trees were a leafy canopy on every side of the road, and I was being railed on the regular by three hot and unruly men.
It was a lot more complicated than that — I knew that better than anyone — but right now, it felt like enough.
I drove with the windows down and the music blasting, singing along, happy I’d taken Vigo’s advice and taken the day off. What was the point of building a business, of hiring people you trusted, if you couldn’t take a day off now and then?
I had a sudden longing for my mom. Some days it was hard to remember her. Then I’d pull up one of the pictures Bram had sent me to keep on my phone and look hard at her, trying to remember the til of her head, the shy quality of her smile, the way her eyes always seemed lit from within.
I didn’t know what she would have said about my relationship — if that’s what we were calling it — with the Hawks. Maybe she would have been worried or even disappointed. Maybe she would have thought it was anti-feminist or something.
But I didn’t think so. I thought she would listen, that she would want me to be happy, that she would be glad I was.
I hesitated at the four-way stop on the way into town. If I went straight, I’d come to the private road that led to Daisy’s big house at the top of the waterfall. If I took a left I’d make my way up the mountain, to the spot where my parents had died.
Maybe it was morbid to want to go there. Or maybe it was just the closest I could get to them since Bram had been forced to sell our family home right after they’d died.
I don’t know. I just knew that big things were happening in my life and even though I was an adult, I just wanted my parents.
I looked in the rearview mirror at the car idling behind me.
“Good job, Cassie,” I murmured. “Way to hold up traffic.”
I turned left and started up the mountain. I had all afternoon to catch up with Daisy.
The Blackwell Preserve was pretty all year long, but summer and winter were my favorite. Winter was beautifully desolate, everything frozen under a thick blanket of snow, the trees sleeping, no tourists on the trails or in the water.
But summer was something extra special. The trees were deep green and streams and rivers glinted on either side of the road as I climbed the mountain in my Subaru. A warm breeze blew into the car as I passed walls of sheer granite and steep cliffs that made me tighten my grip on the steering wheel.
I’d forgotten that driving up here was a mixed bag: nice because it made me feel close to my parents, scary and sad because this was where they’d died.
I was halfway to the spot where they’d gone off the road when I realized the SUV from the stop sign was still behind me.
And it was following a little too closely.
I furrowed my brow and accelerated a little, trying to put more distance between us, but they accelerated too, riding my bumper as I wound my way around the narrow mountain road.
My heartbeat accelerated, blood rushing to my head as adrenaline surged in my veins.
I tried to make out the driver, but the windows in the SUV were too dark.
I glanced at my phone resting in the console and thought about calling one of the Hawks, but I didn’t dare take my hands off the wheel, not with the black SUV right on my ass.
“Shit…” I tried pressing the gas again, but this time the car swerved out from behind me and accelerated next to me.
Fear crushed my chest in a vise.
This was intentional. Who was driving the SUV was trying to run me off the road.
I tried to get ahead of them but the Subaru was no match for the SUVs engine, and it roared loudly next to me, then swerved to hit my car.
I held tight to the steering wheel but the car jumped closer to the cliff’s edge anyway.
I was sweating, my heart beating like an erratic drum. There were no side roads on this part of the mountain, just a winding road with the mountain on one side and a series of overlooks and cliffs on the other.
I was trapped, nowhere to go but up the mountain.
I tried slowing down but the SUV slowed down too so I hit the gas again, still trying to outrun them.
Then the SUV’s engine roared and it swerved into me again.
And this time the Subaru leapt, light as a toy car, toward the guardrails.
I only had a second to realize what was happening: the car hitting the guardrail with a shriek of metal, the snap of my neck hitting the headrest as the airbag deployed.
And then a strange kind of lightness as I soared over the edge of the cliff, the car tipping downward as gravity took hold.
This is what it was like for them, I thought.
This was how it felt.
Thank you so much for reading Dare to Play!