Chapter 21
Ash
I sleep through most of the next day like a man who's been hit by a truck, except the truck was four men and the road was every flat surface in this house.
The first nap happens on the porch around nine in the morning.
I make it as far as the steps with a glass of water before my body decides that sitting down means lying down, which means closing my eyes, which means I wake up forty minutes later with my cheek pressed against the warm wood and a pillow under my head that wasn't there when I fell asleep.
Someone covered me with a blanket too, the soft wool one from the back of the couch that smells like the living room.
The second nap happens on the grass behind the barn.
I'd walked out to see Mabel, made it halfway, before sitting down in the sun to rest my legs for just a second.
The next thing I know, Boone is lifting me off the ground with one arm under my knees and the other behind my back.
I mumble something about being fine and his chest rumbles with a laugh that I feel more than hear.
"You fell asleep in a field, Dove."
"I was resting my eyes."
"For twenty minutes. In direct sun. Without water."
He carries me to the bedroom and sets me on the mattress. I grab his wrist before he can leave, tugging weakly, my body already sinking into the sheets. "Stay. Please. I want you to—"
"No."
"Boone, please, I need—"
"You need rest, water, and salve." He presses his mouth to my forehead. "Not necessarily in that order. Your body took more in the last two days than most people experience in months. I'm not touching you until you've slept a full cycle and eaten a real meal."
"I hate you."
"You don't."
I really, really don't. I fall asleep before he reaches the door.
The third time I surface, the light has changed.
Late afternoon sunlight is cutting through the curtains at an angle that means I've been out for hours.
My body is warm and heavy beneath the blankets, sore in places that pulse when I shift.
When I shift a little, I find a solid wall of heat pressed against my back that isn't Boone.
I roll over and my face finds a chest that's broader than it should be, the skin stretched over muscle that doesn't give when I press into it. Cass. He's lying on top of the covers beside me, one arm bent behind his head, staring at the ceiling. When I move, his eyes drop to mine.
He looks different without the grin, younger even. The hazel in his eyes runs greener in this light, set in a face that's holding something careful for once, something that looks like it costs him effort to carry.
"Hey," I say, my voice scratchy with sleep.
"Hey." His free hand comes up, his thumb tracing the bruise on my collarbone. The touch is feather-light, barely there, so unlike everything I've come to expect from this man that my chest tightens. "Did we hurt you?"
The question sits between us, honest in a way Cass rarely allows himself to be.
I can see the worry he's trying to bury under casual delivery, the slight furrow between his brows.
He's thinking about yesterday. About the desk, the living room floor, the sink.
About Teague's game and every surface in this house that now holds a memory of my voice breaking apart.
I press closer instead of answering, tucking my head under his chin, my hand flattening against his chest where his heartbeat thuds slowly. He's warm through his t-shirt, radiating the kind of heat that makes my sore muscles unclench without permission.
"It was fun," I say against his chest. "I want to do it again."
"Ash."
"I mean it. My body hasn't been used like that before.
Not by anyone. Everything is sore in ways I didn't know were possible, muscles I didn't know existed hurt when I breathe too deep.
" I curl my fingers into the cotton of his shirt and pull myself tighter against him.
"But don't stop. Please don't stop. Every time you guys… I… it all makes me feel wanted."
His arm comes down around me, pulling me flush against his body with a gentleness that doesn't match his size.
His mouth finds my hair, pressing there, his breathing shifting.
I tilt my face up and his lips catch mine, soft at first, more exploratory than frantic, like he's asking permission through contact instead of words.
I give it by opening my mouth and his tongue slides against mine, the kiss deepening, his hand moving to the back of my neck.
I climb half onto his chest, my thigh sliding between his legs, the heat building between us in slow waves.
His hand slides down my spine, fingers dipping beneath the waistband of the sweats someone dressed me in while I slept.
His palm spreads against the bare skin of my lower back, pulling my hips against his, his cock thickening against my thigh through the denim.
"Cass," I breathe against his mouth, my hips already moving.
Someone clears their throat from the doorway.
I twist around to find Boone leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, his expression caught somewhere between amusement and authority. He looks at Cass's hand down my pants, then at my flushed face, then back at his son.
"Lay off. He needs time."
Cass groans, his head falling back against the pillow. "We were just—"
"I know exactly what you were just." Boone pushes off the frame. "And Ash wouldn't have told you to stop, which is why I'm stepping in. Dinner. Both of you. Five minutes."
Cass's hand withdraws from my waistband with the reluctance of a man being asked to release something he wasn't finished holding. I sit up on the edge of the bed, my body protesting every inch of the movement, a smile pulling at my mouth that I can't seem to kill.
Dinner is quick and quiet. Boone made soup, something thick with potatoes and herbs that I eat two bowls of because my body has decided that hunger exists again after a full day of ignoring it.
The conversation is minimal, the easy kind of silence that happens when everyone at a table is too tired for performance.
I carry my dishes to the sink and stand there for a moment, warm and full.
The soreness in my body is settling into something that feels less like damage and more like evidence.
Boone appears beside me, his hand finding the back of my neck the way it always does, his thumb pressing against the knob of my spine.
"Go to bed, Dove."
"I've been sleeping all day."
"Then go lie down with someone who hasn't been sleeping all day.
" The corner of his mouth turns up, his eyes moving to the hallway where Cass disappeared a minute ago.
He knows. He sees the way I keep glancing toward that end of the house, the way my body has been gravitating toward Cass since I woke up pressed against his chest. "Don't let him break you. "
"You say that like I'm fragile."
"You're not fragile. You're recovering. There's a difference, and Cass doesn't always know where the line sits." He kisses my temple. "Go on."
I walk down the dark hallway, past the bathroom, and past the guest room I haven't slept in for days. Cass' door is cracked open and I push through it without knocking because knocking feels wrong, like asking permission to enter a space that's already been given to me.
The room is darker than Boone's. Cass doesn't leave lamps on. I can make out the shape of his bed, the bulk of him on it, the pale strip of his stomach where his shirt has ridden up. I cross the floor by feel, the mattress dipping under my knee.
His hands find me before I've fully climbed on. One grips my hip, the other slides around my waist, pulling me forward until I'm straddling him. The position settles my weight against his hips, his cock already hard through the thin fabric between us, my hands bracing on his chest to steady myself.
His fingers reach behind me, sliding beneath the waistband, finding the base of the plug that Teague replaced this morning. He presses it deeper and I drop my forehead against his collarbone, a sound falling out of me that I don't try to contain.
"You're so fucking good to me," Cass murmurs in the dark. His voice is rough, stripped of the bravado he wears in daylight. "Walking in here in the dark wearing my father's clothes with a plug in your ass. Do you know what you do to me, Ash?"
"Show me."
He pulls the plug out slowly, the drag of it making my thighs shake.
I hear the cap of a bottle, the slick sound of his hand on himself, then he's positioning me, lifting my hips with one arm and lining up.
I sink down onto him, the stretch different from this angle, deeper, the gravity pulling me down until he's fully inside me.
My hands fist in his shirt, my forehead pressing hard against his chest, breathing through the fullness.
"Move when you're ready," he purrs, his restraint is so foreign that I almost laugh. This is the man who threw me over a couch arm and fucked me a few days ago. Tonight his hands are resting on my thighs, patient, giving me the pace.
I roll my hips and we both groan. His hands tighten, fingers digging into muscle, but he doesn't take over.
I find a rhythm that makes my spine light up, slow at first, building, his cock hitting the spot that turns my thoughts to static.
His mouth finds mine in the dark, messy, real, the kind of kissing that's more breathing than technique.
I taste toothpaste and something warm underneath that's just Cass.
His hands slide to my hips, guiding me faster. The pace builds and I start bouncing on him, the bed creaking, my fingers twisted in his shirt, sounds pouring out of both of us. He grips my hips harder, thrusting up to meet me, his forehead pressed against my shoulder.
I wince. It's small, a sharp intake of breath, a tensing across my lower back where yesterday's bruises are deepest. Cass catches it immediately. His hips stop. His grip loosens. His hands slide from my hips to my waist, gentler, holding instead of gripping.
"Sorry." He presses his mouth to my jaw, soft, trailing down to my neck. "Sorry, I'm sorry. Tell me where."
"Lower back. It's okay, it's just—"
"It's not just anything." He kisses along my throat, slow, his hands moving in careful circles on my sides. "I feel every sound you make. Every time you tense up, every time something hurts. I'm not going to ignore that."
He starts moving again, slower now, deeper, his mouth working against the curve of my neck.
Each thrust is with care, angled away from whatever's sore, finding the spots that make me melt instead of flinch.
His lips trace my collarbone, my shoulder, and the bruise he left two days ago that's turned the color of a plum.
"Fuck, I love this," he says against my skin, his voice fracturing around the edges.
"How you feel around me. How tight you get when I'm deep.
The sounds you make when I find the right angle.
" He rolls his hips and proves his point, the angle shifting just enough that I cry out and grip his shoulders.
"That one. Right there. I love that sound, Ash. I love everything about this."
My breathing is coming apart. His words are pulling me toward the edge faster than his body is, every sentence landing somewhere beneath my ribs. I'm rocking against him, my fingers in his hair, tears building behind my eyes for reasons that have nothing to do with pain.
"Cass, I'm close."
"I know you are. I can feel it." He thrusts deeper and I arch against him, my mouth open on a silent sound. "Let go for me. I've got you."
I come with his name caught between my teeth, my body clenching around him so hard that he groans into my neck.
He follows me three strokes later, burying himself deep, his arms locked around my waist. The warmth of him filling me sends a second wave through my body that makes me shudder against his chest.
The drop circles but doesn't pull me under.
It hovers at the edge of my mind, close enough to feel, but not close enough to take me.
Cass holds me against his chest, still inside me, his hands moving up my back in slow passes.
My face is pressed into the crook of his neck, my breathing ragged, tears tracking silently into his skin.
"Ash." His voice is different. The roughness is gone, replaced by something raw, unprotected. "I think I'm falling for you."
My fingers curl tighter against his shoulders.
The words settle over me, filling spaces I didn't know were empty.
I want to say it back. I want to hand him the thing that's been living in my chest since he looked at me in the kitchen doorway my first night here, since he made me eggs, since he carried me to the bathroom and washed me with hands that contradicted everything his size promised.
"I don't want to say it and break this," I whisper against his throat. "Because we only have two weeks."
"It could be longer."
My breathing stops. Cass's hand stills on my back, his words hanging between us in the dark room. My eyes burn and the tears come faster, slipping down his neck, pooling in the hollow of his collarbone. "Don't say that unless you mean it."
"When have I ever said something I didn't mean?"
A wet laugh shakes through me. He's right.
Cass has never once in his life said a thing he didn't intend.
He doesn't have the patience for deception or the interest in performing something he doesn't feel.
If he says he's falling, he's falling. If he says it could be longer, he means the deal his father made isn't the ceiling he's willing to accept.
"Cass."
"Yeah."
"I'm falling too."
His arms tighten around me and his mouth finds my hair, pressing there, his breathing uneven against the top of my head. I fall asleep on his chest with him still inside me, his arms around my back, the drop never coming, the warmth staying exactly where it is.
I'm starting to believe that nothing in this house changes unless I want it to, and right now I don't want a single thing to move.