Chapter 29 #2
She snatched it as they went to his bedchamber, and he rested her on the bed, only to roughly half-dry them before he hoisted her back down to the mattress. She bounced on the cushions and laughed. “You’re a troglodyte.”
“I am,” he smirked devilishly as he covered his body with hers.
Gripping her legs, he wrapped them around his waist as he peppered hot kisses across her breastbone, suckling at her skin and licking her aching breasts, moaning when he sucked one candy-pink nipple into his mouth.
He trailed hot, wet kisses down Cecilia’s body and kissed over the soft curve of her ribs before dipping his tongue into her belly button in a very phallic way.
She held tight on his triceps, her fingernails skimming over to the flexing muscles of his shoulder as he pleasured her with his lips and—dipping to stroke her middle—his fingers. No one had ever made her feel desired the way he did.
“You are so maddeningly delectable, Cece,” he said raggedly.
She bucked against his fingers, her needful whimpers urging him to meld them into one once more. She was extremely sensitive, but it only amplified the sensations to a sort of ethereal bliss.
“Yet you torture me…” she moaned. “Please, make love to me already.”
“Pushy chit,” he teased.
Washed away by his smoky eyes, she reached between them and gently took hold of his manhood, which lay like an iron bar against her inner thigh.
She stroked him while studying each line of his face; the desire to please him as much as he did her grew heavy on her heart. She found her grip had gotten so much firmer and confident from the first time she had touched him.
“You feel like velvet over steel,” she rasped as her strokes grew harder and faster.
With a swift kiss, he pulled away, and in the next heartbeat, he had her ankles atop his shoulders.
Even while expecting him, she still gasped when he drove his hard length against her sensitive bud.
He teased her with slow thrusts over her swollen pearl, allowing his stones to drag against her wet petals.
She arched into him, reveling in the sharp spikes of pleasure ratcheting up her spine. He drew away only to notch himself to her opening and slide in slowly.
Molten pleasure wrapped around her again as he eased into her languidly—one of his large hands held her inner thighs apart as he rocked into her like a lazy tide at twilight.
Cecilia hung on, savoring every touch and every kiss as she fought the urge to tip over the edge. It was clear that he wanted to prolong the ecstasy of their joining, letting his body tell her something his mouth could not.
“Harder,” she moaned breathily. “Faster.”
Obliging, he gave in to her plea and increased his speed and force until he was slamming into her harder and harder. Her skin was slickened with a mist of sweat, and as bliss ricocheted through her body, his thumb snuck between them, and he pressed hard on the center of her pleasure.
Burying himself inside her, he positioned her hands above her head and manacling her wrists with one broad fist, he’d stretched over, thrusting his hips like an insatiable beast.
“Come for me, Cecilia,” he ground out. “I want to feel you come over me…”
He’d claimed her with a savage thrust that caused her spine to bow off the bed and kept drilling into her, until she clenched tightly around his arousal. She came with a gasping cry, her orgasmic dew gushing over him. Cassian came with a rough roar, his eyes clenching hard and fast.
Stationary, he breathed hard and fast before peeling his eyes open and gently eased out of her. Cecilia missed his body weight and heat almost instantly.
Pulling her in, he kissed her long and slowly. When he pulled away, he flopped on the mount of pillows, taking her with him. “I think I may have glimpsed a goddess for a moment.”
She laughed softly. “Thank you for the compliment.”
His laugh was soft. “You are welcome, sweetheart.”
Resting on his chest, she smiled wanly. “I am going to miss you.”
“Those are words I never thought I’d ever hear,” Cassian said chuckling. His mirth faded a little as he added, “But I will too. I do hope that in my absence, you can find happiness.”
Her heart sunk as she knew, deep down, that it would never be. She had already found her happiness, but he was bound to slip away from her fingers in mere hours.
“I hope you find yours as well,” she said, trying—and failing—to hide the disappointment in her voice.
Cassian turned to her, his eyes narrowing. “You don’t… you don’t think I am going back to Isabella, do you?”
“I don’t want you to,” she said. “But I cannot stop you—”
“I won’t,” he murmured. “I give you my word, Cecilia, Isabella and I are done.”
“—And I want you to be happy,” she finished sadly.
He pulled her into his side and held her tight, “Me too.”
She snuggled closer, yawning languorously. “Wake me up before you leave, please…”
She felt the bed dip, and when the source of her warmth was gone, Cecilia tiredly opened her eyes to see Cassian return from the washing room, fully bathed.
It's time for him to leave.
The hammer she had felt poised to smash her happiness to smithereens landed on her heart with the force of a battering ram. Yet as despair pushed hotly behind her eyes, another feeling surged alongside it. It took her a moment to name it—hope.
She did not move from the bed. “Is it time already?”
Cassian craned his head over his shoulder as he stepped into his trousers. “It's almost five, yes, the ship leaves at seven.”
Sitting up, Cecilia raked her hand through her tangled hair and asked, “Would you want me to see you off?”
While donning his shirt, Cassian turned and let the lapels hang loose. He crossed to the bed in three large strides and sat on the edge. His hand reached for her but dropped halfway, leaving him only to gaze over her, and the expression in his eyes was one she could not name.
It almost looked like… regret. But for what?
“Stay here,” he murmured instead. “It won’t change anything if you come or not.”
Cecilia swallowed, and her voice was faint, “Is there anything that can get you to stay?”
This time, he did cup her cheek. “…No, sweetheart, there is nothing here for me.”
That cut her deeply. Not even me?
Cassian’s eyelids fell to half-mast while his thumb traced over her cheekbone. Once again, as with the evening before, he appeared conflicted.
“That is not what you were going to say,” she challenged him weakly. “What was your first thought?”
Cassian softly shook his head, as if to say, how can you see through me so easily? The slow stroke of his thumb over her cheek felt both endearing and torturous. “You know, to date, you have not told me all the things you wished to do in bed.”
“That’s because I never had to,” she mumbled, while wrapping her arms about her middle and holding the sheets to her chest. “You seemed to know what I wanted without me telling you.”
“Is there anything you want me to do now?”
“How about two things?”
“What’s the first?” he asked.
“Kiss me goodbye?”
He pulled her in, and the first touch of their mouths was gentle, the touch tender and velvet soft. It did not take long for the kiss to catch fire, and even with the heat overflowing her senses, the connection was emotional and wrapped a part of her heart in a blanket of loving warmth.
Heart overflowing, she kissed him back with all the love she no longer cared to hold back. When he eventually drew away, she saw wonder reflected in his smoky gaze.
A horse neighed in the courtyard, and his head whipped to the window overlooking the gardens. “What is the second one?” he asked.
She breathed. “Come back to me.”
His mouth parted, but he shut it quietly and only offered her a smile. Taking her hand, he kissed her knuckles, “Later on today, go and open the folio on my desk. Be happy for me, Cecilia.”
Five minutes later, with a last kiss, she watched his back vanish out the door.
Cassian hovered at the bottom of the steps outside Fitzroy Manor, looking up at the windows where Cecilia still lay in bed.
Behind him, the carriage waited. His trunks were loaded, the annulment papers signed and tucked in his case. Everything was ready. He needed only to climb in and leave. It should have been simple.
Except his feet wouldn’t move.
She was up there in their bed, warm and perhaps sleeping, curled into his pillow the way she’d been when he’d kissed her temples minutes ago. For ten minutes he had stood outside the door, before he’d forced himself to walk away.
He could go back. The thought whispered through him, seductive and poisonous. Climb those stairs. Slip into bed beside her. Pretend he hadn’t just signed away their marriage. Pretend he was capable of staying.
But he wasn’t. He could never be. Not with the fear instilled within him, screaming at him. Not when he believed she’d abandon him instead. Like everyone always did.
Nine years old, locked in a shed for four days while his father traveled and the staff assumed he’d gone too. Four days of darkness and hunger and the bone-deep realization that no one was coming. He’d been forgotten. When they’d finally found him, something in him had shifted.
Cassian had learned something in that shed. Learned it in his bones, in his blood: people left. They forgot. They moved on. Everything was transient, and the only way to survive was to leave first.
So he had. For twelve years, he’d moved from country to country, woman to woman, never staying long enough for anyone to decide he wasn’t worth keeping. Never letting anyone close enough to abandon him.
Until her.
And now every instinct he had was screaming at him to run.
To leave before she woke up one morning and figure she’d made a mistake.
Before she looked at him with that same cold disappointment his father and brother had worn and decided he was too much trouble.
Before she left him the way everyone eventually did.
Better to be the one who left.
His hand curled into a fist. The logic was sound. It made perfect sense. Then why did his throat feel like it was closing? Why couldn’t he make his feet move toward the carriage?
The window to his study stayed dark. She hadn’t gotten up. Hadn’t found the letter yet. She wasn’t coming. Perhaps it was best.
Rubbing his hands of the entrails of ink, Cassian forced himself to turn. His hand found the door handle, and he stood there, gripping it hard enough that the cold metal bit into his palm.
“Your Grace?”
He didn’t turn. “Andrews.”
“Everything has been set, just as you asked. Will there be anything else?” There was something in his tone that made Cassian’s jaw clench. Disappointment, maybe. Judgment. The kind that said he knew exactly what Cassian was doing all over again, and what he thought of it.
“No—” Cassian strained, his voice coming out rough. “That’s all.”
Andrews hesitated, then murmured, “Safe travels, sir.”
The butler’s footsteps retreated. Cassian stood there for a time longer with one hand on the door and the other clutching the tails of his coat, his vision blurring at the edges.
His gaze dragged back to the window one last time. Dark. Silent.
Nothing.
He climbed into the carriage. Pulled the door shut. When the driver called back, his voice came out steadier than he anticipated.
“Portsmouth. Now.”
Slowly, Cecilia sank to the bed and pulled Cassian’s cold pillow to her chest, every muscle in her body fighting to hold herself together. She pressed her face into the linen, breathing in the fading scent of him—sandalwood and something only his—and willed herself to be strong.
Then she heard it. The crunch of carriage wheels on gravel. The jingle of harnesses. The coachman’s low call.
The sounds of him leaving.
Something inside her shattered.
A sob tore from her throat, raw and wrenching, and suddenly she couldn’t stop.
All the tears she’d been holding back, all the grief she’d tried so desperately to contain over the past weeks, came flooding out in great, gasping waves.
She clutched his pillow tighter, her body curling around it as if she could somehow hold onto him through the fabric.
The carriage wheels grew fainter, the sound receding down the drive, taking him farther and farther away with each passing second.
You taught me to stand up for myself. You gave me the courage to. And when it mattered most, I couldn’t do it…
“Come back,” she cried brokenly into the pillow, her voice small and pitiful. “Please come back to me…”
But there was no answer. Only silence, and the terrible finality of his absence.
She wept and wept, until exhaustion finally claimed her, pulling her under into a fitful sleep where at least, in dreams, he was still with her.