Chapter 16
A few days later, on Saturday night, my legs are splayed wide and hooked over Cade’s shoulders, and his mouth is doing something miraculous at my pussy.
I’ve already come twice, and he’s still going at it with his lips, teeth, and tongue. Even the texture of his beard right now is about to send me over the edge again.
The lower half of my body is lifted off the mattress, bouncing slightly because he’s working between my legs so enthusiastically.
I’m clutching at the pillow and at the bedding and occasionally at the wall on one side of me because it really feels like I might fly apart completely and never be put back together.
I choke out a cry as I climax again, the sound of it shaking with my body. Then he finally lifts his head to rake his eyes up and down my body. The lower half of his face is wet from my fluids, and his hair is a mess.
Laughter spills out of me, and I wrap my arms around him when he scoots higher on my body to kiss me.
After the first brush of his lips, I murmur, “Wipe your face, Captain.”
He chuckles and does what I say, using the back of his hand, and then he kisses me again. Deeply his time, his tongue sliding into my mouth.
As I respond to the kiss, I squeeze my hand between our bodies until I can wrap it around his cock. I have no particular strategy in this. I just want to feel him right now. But he must be pretty far gone because he makes a stretched sound into my mouth as I squeeze him.
Then, before either one of us expects it, he comes.
He’s still trying to kiss me through it, but it’s admittedly not his most skillful attempt.
We’re both laughing softly when his body relaxes on top of me. He gets up to dampen a hand towel and uses it to clean off his face and beard and then, after wetting it down again, brings it over to wipe all his semen off my abdomen.
After wiping his abs too, he tosses the towel back toward the basin and collapses next to me in bed.
I scoot closer so he can wrap his arms around me. I lay my head on his chest.
“Thank you,” I say, pressing a kiss above his nipple. “For your extra efforts, I mean.”
“My pleasure, as was made obvious as hell.” There’s a smile in his tone that I love. “If I’d gone for another one for you, I probably would’ve come before you even touched me.”
Giggling, I snuggle against him. “That would have been okay. I like it when you come accidentally.”
“Before I knew you, I was a man of iron control, you know.”
“I believe it. You impressed me early on with your dry orgasms and how long you could stay hard. But I like you like this better.”
He lifts my face so he can press a gentle kiss on my lips, but he’s tired and obviously doesn’t have energy for more.
He looks and sounds like he might fall asleep, but I know he won’t. He hasn’t done that since we messed up that one night a couple of months ago.
Even after the tension on Tuesday, things have been fine between us this evening.
Everything is fine.
And yes, I sometimes feel as if we’re holding this relationship together like a house of cards, I can’t let it matter.
Cade wants to simply enjoy the evenings we have together without the outside world intruding on us, so that’s what we’re going to do.
I wish I hadn’t thought about that. I’ve been having a good evening, but now my stomach starts to sink with that weight of doom I simply can’t shake.
“I need to get back soon,” Cade says after a couple of minutes of lying quiet.
“Okay.” I’m really trying to accept how things are, but his light comment hurts my feelings anyway. We’ve had less than five minutes together when we weren’t fucking tonight.
Maybe the fuck has always been what he mostly wants from me.
“I’m sorry,” he says, slightly gruff. I don’t know how he picked up on my disappointment, but he must have. “You know I’d stay all night with you if I could. But Nell won’t have it, and we got a strike planned for dawn anyway.”
“You do?” This is news to me, but there’s a lot he simply won’t tell me. “Another militia target?”
“No. There’s a gang moving in over the county line, and the militia hasn’t bothered to stop them. So we’re gonna try to push ’em back. The militia is bad enough. We don’t need a bunch of violent gangs setting up shop here.”
“Definitely not. Well…” My throat tightens so I swallow hard. “Well, be careful.”
“I always am.” He sits up with a long sigh. Then leans over to give me a slow, gentle kiss. “Thank you for tonight.”
Shit. What the hell is wrong with me? Even that hurts my feelings.
I sit up too, pulling the sheet up to cover my naked breasts. “You don’t have to thank me. You paid for the fuck just like all my other customers.”
Okay, I really didn’t mean to say that. Immediately I want to suck the words back into my throat.
Cade was leaning over to grab his clothes, but at my comment his body jerks. It takes him so long to sit back up he might have been moving in slow motion. “Jill? What— Did you really just say that?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I’m just… You need to get going, so just go.”
“I’m not going to go after that.” His face is bewildered. And indignant. And hurt. Hurt. “You know I’m not paying to fuck you. What the hell are you even saying? Are you still mad about Tuesday? You know how I—You know how special you are to me.”
Well, we’re in it now. And maybe it’s just as well. I couldn’t take it back even if I’d wanted to.
And I’m not sure I do.
My back ramrod straight and the sheet still pulled up to my shoulders, I say stiffly, “I know you say that. But those are words. What you do is fuck me twice a week and then leave. Every single time.”
“But we agreed… I explained it’s only because it’s not safe for you to be with me in any other way. I’m not gonna put you at risk because of what I do. I’m never gonna do that.”
“I know that. But that decision has consequences, whether you want it to or not. And one of the consequences is that we can’t…
we can’t move forward. I don’t get to share a life with you.
I don’t get to know your parents or your friends, beyond that one time I met them because you had no other choice.
I don’t get to be anything to you except your weekend fuck. ”
“Yes, you fucking do!” he bursts out, his eyes fierce in that way I’ve only seen occasionally. “You’re everything to me, but I can’t—”
“Stop saying that! Just stop. I understand your reasons, but you need to understand my feelings. You’re out there being a hero and fitting me in as your woman whenever it’s convenient for you.
And even swaggering in and intimidating my customers when you feel like it.
” When he starts to object, I talk over him.
“While I’m still here where I’ve always been, being Jill in the red dress from the Pub, fucking two other men every week as I go through day after day trying to get to the few hours on the weekend when I get to be with you.
Only for you to fuck me and leave—like all my other customers. ”
“Jill,” he rasps, his face twisting. “No! You can’t really think that. The way we are together isn’t like how you are with those other men. You’ve got to know—”
“I thought that was true, but a real relationship doesn’t get frozen in time.
A real relationship… moves forward. That’s what I thought…
” My voice wobbles, but there are still no tears, even though it feels like my heart is being wrenched out of my chest. “But it’s not. And now I know it never will.”
“It will when it’s safe. I promise it will move forward when it’s safe.”
“When will that be? Tell me exactly when it will be safe enough for us to be together for real.”
“When…” He takes a loud, ragged breath. “When the militia isn’t after me like this. When they’re not trying to use anything or anyone to get to me.”
All the energy has sapped out of me in a matter of seconds, and I now feel like a deflated balloon. “So never?” I say, soft and clipped. “You’re saying we’re never going to be together?”
“No, I’m not saying that in any fucking way! I’m saying that we need to wait a little while until you being someone I love doesn’t put your life in constant danger.”
I hear the verb he uses. Love. I hear it and internally clutch at it, but the rest of what he’s saying freezes that tiny flutter of hope to ice.
“So we’re back to what I said then. You paying to fuck me when it’s convenient, and me sitting around waiting endlessly for some sort of fairy-tale ending to materialize. ”
“No.” He’s so upset he’s shaking with it.
His mouth is twisting and twisting as he tries to control his breathing.
He reaches over to cup my cheek. “Jill, how can you think that when you’re the most important thing in the world to me?
Do you really think I’m not head over fucking heels in love with you?
Do you really think I haven’t been almost from the beginning?
That I don’t dream of you every single night?
That I don’t ache to hold you, to talk to you, to see your face when I open my eyes every morning?
That I don’t want my parents and all my friends to know you for real for how warm and brave and generous you are?
How unbreakable you are. That it’s the thought of you that gets me through every brutal day? ”
Now I’m shaking too. Hugging my arms to my chest. Because this is everything I’ve ever wanted to hear from him, but I’m afraid it’s not going to matter in the end.
I’m right.
Of course I am.
Because Cade goes on, “But I’m sorry. If my choices are having everything with you while you’re in more danger or keeping you safe, then I’m gonna choose your safety. Every single time. We can’t have what we want just because we want it. This miserable world isn’t going to change just for us.”