Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The Ranch
“I love fucking you,” Cas growled as he thrust between my legs.
I clawed his back, scoring his skin with my nails.
“Cas,” I moaned.
“Come for me again,” he commanded.
“I can’t.”
“You can. You will.”
He shifted the angle of his pelvis, grinding against the perfect spot that was already primed and sensitive.
Cas knew my body better than I did and I clenched around him, gripping his tight ass in my hands.
With a few more thrusts, Cas came, holding me close and whispering words of approval in my ear.
The scent of us was in the air, along with hay and horses. We were on a pallet in the loft of the barn—where we’d spent every spare moment together that we could find. The last week, we’d been insatiable, desperate for one another.
Insane for each other.
We hadn’t slept in the house since our first night together, deciding we could be freer and louder in the loft of the barn. We always crept inside an hour before my grandmother woke up to tend to the chickens. So far, we hadn’t been caught.
Cas slid out of me and I gushed.
“God, I’m never going to get tired of seeing that.” He grabbed his shirt and cleaned me up as best he could.
He laid down next to me and propped himself up on an elbow to stare down at me. There was a battery-operated camping lantern that cast a soft amber glow, giving us just enough light to see shadows and smiles.
“I like this,” he said, grazing my nipple and pinching it between his fingers.
“My breast? Yes, I’m aware.”
He laughed. “Not just your breast. Or breasts. But this. Just you and me. Up here. Not a care in the world.”
Up here, without a care in the world, each brick of my fortress was slowly being dismantled.
“So,” he began.
“So.” I stretched out my legs and sighed.
He traced the ink on my rib cage. “Okay. Time to explain this.”
“It’s been driving you crazy, huh?”
“Just as crazy as seeing another man’s name on you,” he grumbled.
“It happened because of a drunken girls’ night,” I explained. “I wanted the four of us—Hadley, Wyn, Poet and me—to solidify our friendship. They all thought it was a great idea, too. So the next day, after a greasy diner breakfast, we all went to a tattoo parlor in the East Village.”
“Hmm. Do all the tattoos match?”
“No.” I grasped his finger to stop him from tracing my rib cage because it made my skin buzz, and not in a good way.
“Do it scared. I don’t need much of an explanation. It’s pretty self-explanatory.”
I looked at the barn ceiling when I replied, “About a week before the tattoos, I found a card my mother had written me. She always signed her notes with do it scared. It was her mantra. And so I got it inked on me in her handwriting.”
“It’s your mantra too, yeah?”
I nodded, my eyes filling with tears. “When she—when she died, I didn’t feel much of anything. I did some things that I really shouldn’t have done just so I could hope to feel something. But then . . .”
Cas reached for my hand. I let him take it even though it felt uncomfortable, even though it felt cumbersome at that moment.
“Then something really terrifying happened. One day, I wasn’t numb anymore. I felt everything. It’s why I ran off to New York. It’s why I refused to come home often. The numbness I could understand. The numbness got me through life. But feeling? There were times I couldn’t breathe it hurt so bad.”
“The shower,” he murmured. “You couldn’t hold it in any longer.”
“Nope.”
We were silent for a moment, and then I said, “You don’t talk about your childhood.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Was it bad?”
He inclined his head. “Not terrible, I guess. But it’s wild, you know?
From the first moment I can remember, I knew I wasn’t wanted.
Abandoned six days after I was born? No mother.
No father. No one coming back years later trying to claim me.
I bounced from foster home to foster home until I was old enough to leave. ”
“You chose a nomadic life, too,” I said softly. “Mine was because of nature. Yours was from nurture.”
“Or lack thereof, but yeah.” He frowned. “We have a lot in common. Maybe not when you first take a look, but deeper shit.”
“Is this . . . are we trauma bonding?” I quipped.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what.”
“Don’t make a joke and turn the focus away from the reality of how heavy this is.” He skimmed his thumb across my knuckles. “What is it you want, Salem? What do you want from life?”
“Adventure,” I said automatically.
“Adventure,” he repeated. “Like travel?”
“Adventure comes in many forms. But yeah, travel is good. I want new experiences. I want memories that are so poignant I can taste them, smell them . . . remember them when I’m old. I don’t want to roll into the grave thinking about a life unlived.”
“You’re not living just for yourself, are you?” he asked quietly. “You’re living for her, too.”
I both hated and loved that he seemed to understand me so easily.
But the thing was, I understood him too.
I understood everything he did in his life stemmed from that one pivotal moment of being left at six days old.
Babies that young needed skin to skin contact, to hear their mother’s heartbeat.
They needed love and security. And he’d never had that.
“There will be a time in my life that I’ll be the age she was when she died. But I’ll still be alive. I’ll still be breathing. So yeah, I’m living for both of us.” I turned my head to stare at him. “You think I’m crazy.”
“Yes.”
I frowned.
“Not in the way you think,” he explained. His face screwed up into a pensive expression as if he was searching for the words. “I’ve never known anyone like you, Salem. So determined, so fearless to live. But so . . .”
“So what?”
“Scared to love.”
“I’m not scared to love.”
“No?”
“No, of course not. I have people in my life who I love deeply.”
“Sure. Your family. Your friends, who you consider your family. But have you ever been in love?”
“That’s a different question.” I tugged my hand free.
“You’ve never had your heart broken, have you? The death of a parent . . . that’s a different type of grief. I’m talking about a lover. A partner.”
“Don’t need to jump off a building to know you’ll splat on the pavement,” I remarked.
“Entirely my point,” he said. “Why have you never been in love, Salem?”
“Why haven’t you?” I fired back.
“Who says I haven’t?”
“You’ve loved?” I asked quietly.
“Yes. I’ve been loved. And I’ve loved. It never lasted. That’s not the point. The point is, I’ve experienced it. I know the agony of true heartbreak.”
I shoved out of his arms. “Where’s my shirt?” I muttered.
He gently clasped my arm, forcing me to stop. “Oh, I get it.”
“Get what?” I forced myself to look at him.
“You think the next heartbreak will destroy you. For good. Your explosive emotions are just a way to keep people at bay. Am I right?”
I’d felt fear before. Fear when my mother’s diagnosis was announced. Fear when it became obvious that her prognosis was undeniable. Fear of those first few nights in a home that was no longer a home because she was in the ground.
But this . . . this was something else entirely.
This was all-consuming terror that flew through my body. I reached for the numbness that was never far out of reach. Only, this time, it wasn’t there. My one true coping mechanism had somehow disappeared. And I knew where it was. Down the shower drain, along with my tears.
So I did the only thing left that I knew how to do.
I draped my leg over Cas’s and wiggled my body close to his. I pressed the heat of me against him, tacitly begging him to take my body so I could leave my thoughts behind.
He plowed his fingers through my snarled hair and brought my face closer to his.
“Kiss me, Salem. And I’ll make you forget.”