Cassie #3
Adam’s hand shakes as he reaches past my left shoulder and into his bedside table drawer for a condom.
I just hold onto his shoulders, watching the mix of nerves and desire play across his face as he slips it on.
When his weight is back on his forearms, his hips pressed against mine again, and his eyes float to mine, we both inhale a deep breath together.
“I love you,” he whispers, and his entire body trembles with the words.
“I love you, too.”
The laughter is gone. The playfulness? Left behind in the shower. It’s all heat and love and wonder as Adam presses his lips to mine, and slowly, with intent and care and purpose — he pushes inside me for the first time.
He fills me with our mouths fused together, stretching me inch by blissful inch with each withdrawal and flex of his hips.
My nails dig into his shoulders, his back, my toes curling under the sheets.
When it’s too much, I gasp for air from our kiss, eyes closing as he plants gentle kisses down my neck.
It’s nothing like I expected, feeling the weight of him between my legs.
It’s more — so much more. It’s the love behind his eyes as he watches me, the tenderness of his shaking hands as they cradle my face, the careful way he enters me each and every time, pressing deep, but not too hard, letting us each feel every single centimeter.
It’s everything I’ve always wanted sex to be, and everything I thought it never could be.
“Are you okay?” Adam asks, eyes finding mine.
I nod, kissing him again, my heels digging into his behind to press him deeper inside me. When he fills me again, I gasp, a rush of heat warming my entire body. “Yes,” I breathe. “More.”
And he delivers.
More and more, flex after flex, moan after moan, until I’m so ready to come I almost don’t want to. This feeling — this rush of pleasure right before it all ends — this is what I love the most.
Adam shifts his weight to one arm, wrapping the other around my thigh and lifting it until one leg is on his shoulder. In the new position, I’m even tighter than before, and both of us groan at the sensation.
“Adam…” I breathe, nails dragging down his back. He thrusts a little harder, the friction catching my clit in the perfect way, and I pull him closer, down into me, like I can’t come until we’re seamed together. “Yes. Oh, God, yes.”
Moans I’ve never heard before somehow spill from me, my cries loud and unabashed as I come harder than ever before.
My vision goes black, a rush of blood flowing from every vein in my body straight to the pulsing need between my legs.
I shudder, gripping Adam tight as I spiral out into space, and my moans drive him over his edge, taking him down with me.
He buries his head between my neck and my shoulder, his breath hot on my skin as we find our releases together. My name leaves his lips in a sigh, his falls from mine in a prayer, and when we emerge on the other side, in a new time, a new place, a new existence.
It’s the after, the now, the impossible that somehow slipped within our reach.
And we take our first breaths together.
***
The next night, I’m ridiculously happy and deliciously sore, crowded into Erin’s bed with her, Jess, and Ashlei as we FaceTime Skyler in Vegas. She just wrapped up the first day of the tournament, but we’re all more focused on what she just told us about Kip.
None of us knew what happened with Skyler and Kip after the cruise. We all thought everything was smooth sailing once the Erin drama was out in the open. But, they had a big blow out, and now that she’s revealed why, none of us can wrap our heads around it.
Kip’s dad sent him to PSU specifically to meet Skyler, to get to know her — to get to know her game.
He wanted Kip to beat her at the tournament in Vegas, and Skyler found a file on his computer detailing the whole thing.
It makes complete sense to us now that she blew him off and wanted nothing to do with him, but as soon as she dropped that bomb on us, she dropped another.
And this one has more kick.
Kip’s father has cancer.
So, what started as a deal between them, as a way for Kip to get the tuition money he needed for his dream school, turned into his father’s dying wish. And suddenly, nothing is black and white.
I’m beginning to learn that nothing in life is.
“Not to sound like your mother,” I say after a while, the subject changed. “But you look too thin. Are you eating out there in Vegas?”
Skyler laughs a little, bringing color to her ashen face. Her eyes are tired, hair in a messy bun, and I can tell she hasn’t been sleeping as much as she needs to to win a tournament.
“Trust me,” she says. “It’s just the camera. I’ve eaten at like five buffets already.”
“Sounds like heaven to me,” Jess pipes in. She takes a swig of the bottle of wine we snuck in and passes it to Erin. Skyler salutes us with a drink from her own bottle on the other end.
“I just wish we could be there,” Ashlei says, her face falling. “You should have someone there to cheer you on.”
“I know you girls will cheer me on at the watch party tomorrow, and honestly that will probably be more fun than the viewing section here. Send me pictures! I want to see everyone.”
“You know we will,” Ashlei says.
My phone lights up with a text from Adam and I blush, smiling as I tuck it under the covers.
“Bear has been planning this thing for months. I’m pretty sure he bought enough kegs for the entire city instead of just the school. Which, by the way, literally the entire school will be there.” Ashlei smiles, shaking her head. “We are all so fucking proud of you.”
“Thanks.” Skyler says with a small smile, but it falls a bit when her eyes land on Erin. “What are you thinking so hard about, Big?”
Every time Skyler addresses Erin, or the other way around, we can’t help but all get a little stiff.
Things are still tense between them after everything that happened.
I’m glad they apologized to each other and agreed to make amends, but something tells me it won’t be anything they can resolve overnight. Or even over a summer.
Erin sighs. “I just can’t get over what you told us about Kip’s dad.”
Jess and Ashlei exchange glances, their eyes wide. Why is she bringing up Kip again? We just moved past this.
“What do you mean?”
Erin shakes her head. “They were just so close when I knew him back in high school. His dad was everything to him. He was so afraid to be who he was because he wanted to be everything his dad wanted him to be. I was in the process of finding myself that summer, but Kip couldn’t join me in that because he was trying to find how he fit in his father’s picture.
” Erin pauses, her brows pinching together, eyes on her hands.
“I know he’s come a long way from that, but I also know this can’t be easy for him. I just can’t believe he’s even there.”
“Well, isn’t that precisely why he’s there?” I point out. “I don’t think he would be if this wouldn’t have happened.”
“Can we not talk about this?” Skyler pinches the bridge of her nose, her eyes closing on the other end of the video call.
Jess gives Erin a pointed look before jumping up from the bed, pulling the wine bottle with her.
“Whatever,” she says. “Forget all that. To you, Skyler Fucking Thorne.” She lifts the bottle to the screen. “Kick ass tomorrow and then get back here so we can throw a huge rager with all that money.”
We all laugh and Jess takes a pull of her bottle as Skyler lifts hers, too. “I love you girls. Thank you.”
Ashlei shrugs. “That’s what we’re here for.”
“Do you guys mind if I talk to Little alone?”