Chapter 37
C assie
The countdown of minutes until my therapist called was a ticking clock of nausea in my belly. Exiting the apartment, I summoned the lift. Couldn’t hang out anywhere up here. If Riordan woke, he might overhear what I had to say. I needed to be completely unfiltered to get through the shite in my head.
On the cam girls’ floor, I paused outside the room I’d previously used as a bedroom, but noises came from inside. Sexy ones which told me it was back in use.
I travelled down to the ground floor.
In the main hallway between Divine and Divide, an air of desolation clung to the warehouse. The faint scent of dry ice hung in the air along with alcohol and whatever else had been trodden underfoot and not yet mopped up by the cleaning crew.
Lara carried a box into the propped-open door of the nightclub. It seemed a little early for restocking the bars, but I gave a wave and turned in the other direction.
Arran’s office door was locked, but I’d kept a key and fished it from my pocket.
The lift pinged. I peeked back to see Dixie emerge.
She yawned daintily, the back of her hand to her mouth. “What are you doing still up?”
I leaned on the doorframe. “I could say the same for ye.”
She flapped a hand in the general direction of upstairs. “We had a party of international visitors, all on a different time zone, so none were ready to finish at any reasonable time. Manny just saw the last into a taxi. I am dead on my feet.”
She gestured to the feet in question, encased in a pair of cute silver high-top trainers. They went with her torn leggings and slouchy off-one-shoulder jumper. Civvies again. I envied how any clothes turned stylish the minute she put them on.
Her gaze came back to me. “I’m glad I ran into you. After the lesson I gave you, something was bothering me.”
She took a breath, and her gaze searched the middle ground as if she was trying to work through her thoughts. “I don’t think sex always needs to be a performance. Not when the guy isn’t paying. Not when he’s a boyfriend. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make him feel good, but there’s the loving element of it that I don’t know anything about.”
“The element where you just enjoy each other?”
Some of the puzzlement in her eyes lifted. “Exactly. If he cares about you, he’ll be the one doing the work sometimes. And if you’re happy together, then just rolling around and exploring each other would be fun, right?” She twisted her fingers. “I was thinking about something you said the other day. About a boyfriend.”
“Ohemgee. Do ye want one? Can I set ye up?”
“I don’t know? It’s been on my mind.”
“What are ye looking for?” I gave her my full focus, happy to ignore the ticking clock of the call.
“Once, I made a play for the boss. Kinda stupid of me, but I thought about why I’d done it, and it wasn’t because of attraction.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Arran? Gross.”
“Like I said, it wasn’t based on wanting him as a person. More as a bodyguard. I wouldn’t mind the protection a man can offer, though maybe I want more. I like the way your boy behaves around you.”
I stilled, the tone of her words worrying me. Unlocking the office, I tugged Dixie inside with me and closed the door.
“You’re scared of something.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“If ye need a bodyguard, we’ll get ye one.”
“It isn’t only for protection, and please don’t worry—Manny is driving me home. I want more than that. Someone to care about me. To notice me, I guess. For more than just these.” She pointed to her boobs. “How did you do it? You claimed Riordan before there was anything between you, right?”
My breath came in a short exhale. “I don’t know if I’m the example to follow. You’re right, though. I saw him and recognised what I wanted was right there in his big body. Whether I can keep him is another matter.”
Her eyes rounded in outrage. “Girl, he is smitten. If he hurts you, I’ll dick punch him.”
My heart squeezed. “The problem is me, not him.”
In a rush, the thoughts I’d prepared for my therapist spilled out. All the obsessions I’d had. The fanatical love. The certainty that it would never end. I told Dixie it all. After a minute, I stopped myself. “I’m really sorry. I want to talk about your problems. Not mine. I’ve got a call with my therapist lined up to try to tackle this shite.”
Dixie gave me a soft smile. “I never had any therapy, but Alisha offered it many times. She said it’s the thing you need when you can’t get around yourself in order to live happy.”
“Aren’t ye happy?”
Her smile faltered. “I try to be? Hun, I never asked for this life, but I ain’t going to be good at any other so I make the most of it.”
“That part about asking for it, is that something to do with your secret mission? The thing you’re scared of?”
My phone rang loudly in my pocket.
I held Dixie’s gaze. She moved to the door.
“Fix your head and keep your boy. We can talk another time.”
She walked away before I had a chance to stop her. There was nothing left for me to do but face the music.
Dr Hillier commenced the call with the bright chirpiness of someone who’d had a good night’s sleep and a tall cup of coffee. “It’s been a while since we last spoke. Tell me, how have you been?”
“I’m in love,” I mumbled.
She didn’t hesitate. “Does the object of your affection know?”
“Yes.”
“Does he or she feel the same?”
“I hope not.” I winced at my own words. They used to be true. They weren’t now. “I kidnapped him.”
“Cassiopeia, is he still a captive?”
I coughed an unfunny laugh. “He’s fine. He’s not the problem. I am. The whole time we’ve been together, I’ve been waiting for it to end.”
“What do you anticipate your trigger will be in this instance?”
As always, the good doctor reached the point fast.
In all cases in the past, my obsessions would soar until an often minor event killed them dead. With the band I’d adored, it was coming face to face with them at a meet and greet Jamieson took me to when I was fourteen. ‘Thanks for being a fan. We love you. Stream our new album,’ the singer had drawled, his expression bored, and his eyes red from whatever he’d snorted.
Dead to me. Instantly.
I’d quit university—a business studies degree I’d battled obsessively to get onto as my grades hadn’t been that great—not because of bullying, like my family believed, but because a professor had talked to me seriously about my career options.
‘You’re a natural leader. You should concentrate on business management. I’ll find you a mentor.’
It sank my interest like a stone.
The same thing had happened with school friends. The minute they got too close or made plans for me, I’d drop them. The interest had shifted from being mine to theirs.
I knew what my trigger would be with Riordan.
“When he tells me he loves me back.” I forced the words out.
She gave an audible sigh. I was right back to being a teenager, waiting on her judgement.
“You’re searching for a way to let him down as a method of controlling this,” she stated.
I shook my head, not that she could see. “All I’d need to do is tell him I don’t love him anymore and he’ll walk away. He’s expecting it.”
It would hurt him. It would kill me to cause him pain.
Doctor Hillier praised my honesty then launched into a series of solutions, most of which involved calming my overexcited mind and backing off with the intensity of which I’d approached the relationship. I told her about Riordan and his father, the mayor, and how hurting him would kill me. I was an all-or-nothing kind of girl. I didn’t do anything by half measures.
Finally, we got to her advice. “Ask him not to say the words that scare you. Avoid the trigger until you feel confident in handling it.”
Except I so badly wanted his love. What a horrible Catch-22.
“I recently found out some things about my mother,” I said in a rush. She knew how the woman was long dead. “It’s stuck in my head because talking about her has made me feel like she might pop up unexpectedly.”
I hadn’t realised the point until I voiced it. Doctor Hillier asked for more information, and I went through meeting DeeDee and what she’d told me. It was just another item in the lists of things that could fuck me up and send me running.
Too quickly, our time was up.
The doctor gave me her parting words. “You’re quick to call yourself faddy, and while it’s true that you’ve had a history of changing interests quickly, you were young and still growing. It’s normal for teenagers to change identities as often as they change clothes until they find one that fits. Consider that you hadn’t yet found the right version of yourself to be.”
I clutched the phone long after she’d made her goodbyes.
I’d barely begun to process my thoughts when a scraping sound came from the back corner of the office. I’d locked the door after Dixie and knew I was alone, so leapt up and searched the space.
Nothing. No hidden person behind the filing cabinet or sofa.
Then a cough sounded. It came from the other side of the wall.
Flying to the door, I fell out into the corridor, scanning the floor to work out what backed onto the office. The long wall led the way down to the lift and then the entrance to Divide. In the other direction, it rounded the central staircase then descended steps to the basement.
I sprinted into the nightclub. To the left, in a back corner, was a storeroom. I rattled the door handle. Closed and locked.
Nor was there anyone in the vast, empty space of the club.
Had I been overheard? Lara was the only person I’d seen going in here. I searched my mind for if it mattered. I’d given a ton of personal information on myself, but why would anyone else care about that?
Riordan was the only person affected by what I’d said on the phone. If he’d heard me, it could so easily have sounded bad.
Then another thought resolved. The cough had been distinctly feminine.
Relief swallowed me whole.
I made my way back upstairs and to our seventh-floor apartment. In our bed, Riordan slept on. Quietly, I undressed and climbed in beside him, my movements stirring him to haul me into his arms.
“You’re cold,” he muttered sleepily into my hair.
He hugged me, giving me back life where the chill of trying to fix myself had settled in.
I kissed his rough cheek. He woke enough to fit his mouth to mine and return the affection. The kisses didn’t end, becoming drugging and wet. His sleepiness and my wakefulness traded off until we were both in a state of somewhere in between where everything was just us.
Riordan’s hands wandered. He made a sound of approval at finding me naked, and his hand cupped me between the legs, a possessive squeeze shifting into a tease, his fingers stroking me until I moaned in need.
He flipped me over to my front and reared up behind me, kneeling between my legs. Through a sleep-soaked voice, he said, “I’m going to fuck you hard. Don’t come. I’m going to first, then I’ll lick you clean and make you cry out and orgasm until you beg me to stop.”
He propped up my hips with a hand to my upper back to keep my head and shoulders down, then lined up his dick with my entrance. I was wet from the kissing and his touch, so he thrust inside without teasing. My lips parted over a rushed intake of breath, no feeling better in this world than when we were together like this. He filled me so good. The stretch was familiar now, and pleasure rolled through me. Every sense brightening.
With my cheek to the mattress and my arse in the air, I closed my eyes and felt every blow. Every slam into me that lit up my body. Automatically, my fingers crept up to my clit, but Riordan noticed and slapped my hand away.
“Don’t come.”
“No fair,” I whined.
“I’ll make it fair. Let me fill you up, beautiful girl. Fuck, you’re so tight. You’re going to make me come already.”
A thrill danced over me, and I squeezed him, loving how his words faltered and turned into a groan. He never let himself go first, but I was here for it, loving the switch around and how fervently he fucked me.
When he gave a guttural shout and thrust hard into me then stilled, pulsing, I nearly came, too. Had to force myself to pant through it.
Riordan palmed my arse, stroking the globes of my cheeks while he breathed. “Keep your head down and your ass high. Tell me if you’re close. I want my tongue inside you each time.”
Pulling out, he kissed my spine then moved down further. His fingers slid over my soaked and sensitive flesh.
“I’m leaking out of you. Bad Cassie, making a mess.”
“Clean me up, then.”
I held my breath. He spread his cum up and down my pussy, dipping inside to gather more and massage it into me. I throbbed, desperation rising in a wave. He always made me feel so much. Too much. I’d never been this turned on, and every time made me only want him more.
His cum-soaked finger pressed on my rear entrance. At the same time, Riordan’s tongue glided over my pussy, hot and wet and licking up the combination of us both. I moaned, and he pushed his finger into my arse.
“I intend to come inside here one day, when you’re ready to try it,” he warned against my flesh.
A second finger added to the first, and he stretched me, not going deep but enough to have me sweating and gripping the sheet with my fists.
All the while, he kept up his work of licking me. Until he came down to my clit and sucked hard.
My back bowed. I cried out wordlessly, heat sinking me under.
He grabbed my hip tight and glided his tongue into me, catching my fast-delivered orgasm as it took me down. Something about him playing with my arse made it another new experience, and I drowned in the pleasure of it.
When I’d finished squirming, he released me and gave a pleased chuckle.
“That was one. Now you’re all dirty again with cum all down your thighs. Guess I need to start over.”
He did. Multiple times until I did as he’d warned and begged him to stop.
He relented. Came back up the bed and slotted his dick into me again. My body gave a final pulse of satisfaction.
Riordan kissed my cheek, his voice low. “Tell me what I need to hear.”
“I love ye. I’ve adored ye from first sight.”
He exhaled, that familiar relief doing something happy to my heart.
“It’s your birthday tomorrow night. If you’re a good girl, I’ll give you a present. If you’re very good, I’ll probably do something sappy like tell you I’m in love with you and that I’m keeping you, no matter what.”
I went still. Didn’t even breathe.
Then slowly I forced movement back in my limbs. I hugged him. Hard. Giving a message I couldn’t say and earning a rough kiss which told me exactly how badly he’d needed my reaction.
For him, I’d change. I had to or I’d break us both.