24. Haven
Chapter Twenty-Four
Haven
I look up at Cash.
He’s staring down at me with a smile that feels so bittersweet my chest hurts. “Dance with me again.”
I nod.
This time, he cues up music on his phone. The tunes drift on the night breeze, probably carrying down into the valley as Cash coaches me through three more songs. I wonder if anyone can hear us, if they think we’re teenagers parking up here.
I don’t care. I’m having too much fun.
By the last song, I’ve learned to stop trying to anticipate his steps, and just wait for his body to cue me.
Being a blank slate, and just letting the dancing happen.
It’s fun to be this aware of his body against mine. To hold on to his biceps and shoulder, and lean back against the hard press of his hand in the small of my back.
The next song that plays from his playlist is a fast party song.
“Hang on, let me find something else.” He tugs me in close, so we’re both looking at his phone.
As he scrolls, I press up on my toes and kiss the warm stretch of his neck, brushing my lips in little butterfly kisses along his throat, up to where his beard starts.
He swallows hard against my lips. “Haven…”
“Sorry, am I distracting you?”
“I’m not complaining. You want to get in the truck?”
The fresh air is making me bold. “Or the back of it again?”
He groans and shoves his phone in his pocket, then hoists me over his shoulder.
I shriek as the satin skirt crawls up my thighs. “Cash!”
“You started this, Lucky.” He sets me down on the tailgate and lifts my legs, pushing my skirt all the way up before he wedges himself between my thighs. “Sorry, I forgot you don’t like the nickname.”
“I don’t mind it when you say it like that. All growly and… And…”
“And what?” He cups my face and kisses me roughly.
Like that. Sometimes he says things that sound like a kiss, intimate and raw and real.
“Real. You say it in a real way.” And when I was a teenager, and people called me their lucky penny because of my hair colour and the fact I was good on a group project at school…but not because I was lucky in any other way to them.
But Cash was never like that.
He’s never called me Lucky because of what I can give him. He calls me Lucky when he’s trying to help me, or make me feel better. Or when he’s turned on.
I lean back on my hands. “I’m not wearing a bra. You should take advantage of that.”
“Fuck.” Cash takes his hat off and sets it on my head. “You’re something else, Haven. Something incredible.”
“I want to be lucky for you.”
“You are.” He exhales, ragged and rough. He tugs on the brim of his hat, until I almost can’t see him. Maybe he can’t see my face, I don’t know. But his expression shifts, gets naked and in the fading light, it looks like a kind of yearning I feel all the way to my soul.
If everything was different, we could have the sweetest courtship. Maybe we would have, in another lifetime, a lot sooner than now.
Almost thirty, and just finding this kind of happiness…
It’s bittersweet.
And Cash has been through hellfire to get to this.
I hate that for him.
But I’m proud of who he became along the way.
“Come up here with me,” I whisper, shimmying backwards. “Come up here and let me be lucky for you tonight.”
He follows, covering me with his body. He touches me reverently, easing my breasts out of the bodice of the dress, then caressing my thighs until they fall open for him.
He runs his fingertips over my panties, tracing the seam of my sex from my entrance to my clit, then back again.
“How are you feeling after yesterday? Not too sore?”
Sore isn’t the word I would use. “No,” I promise. “I want you inside me again.”
He rocks his hips. “Feel what that does to me?”
“Tell me you have condoms.”
“After yesterday, I’m going to have them on me every single fucking day, don’t you worry.” He cups my breasts and licks at my nipples. “Raspberries for the first course of dessert. Delicious.”
Then he shoulders his way between my thighs. “And for the second course…”
“Cash…”
He noses against my panties. “Can I taste you again, Haven? I need your honey on my tongue.”
I drag his hat over my face and give in to the pleasure.
He chuckles, low and vibrating as he tugs my panties to the side. “Good little pussy. Took my cock real well, didn’t you?”
Under his hat, my cheeks blaze. It was incredible how well we fit together. How empty I feel now, craving that fullness again.
He licks me leisurely, making me squirm. When he latches on to my clit, it’s with a happy hum I feel all the way to my core.
It only takes a few sucks before I have to lift the hat and look down at him, before the pleasure builds to the fuck it level inside me and I want to fully be a part of this with him.
He looks up at me, his gaze catching and holding mine as he licks between my legs.
“You’re the best,” I whisper to him. “The best man. The best friend a girl could ever have.”
He growls and spears his tongue into me, reminding me of how electric it feels to be penetrated.
I reach for his head and pet him, running my fingers through his hair the way he likes. He gives me a heavy-lidded look of appreciation that sends a thrill through my belly.
“I want to taste you next.”
“Yeah?” He lifts up long enough to grin at me. “You got it.”
And then he buries his face in my pussy.
One of the most amazing things about sex is that every orgasm is different than the last. There are so many different variables with another person, with each new location. Different outfits, too.
I feel more naked than I’ve ever been, even though I’m still wearing my dress—and, technically, panties, although Cash has stretched them to the side and they’re in desperate risk of tearing.
It’s possible that every orgasm I’ve ever given myself has been inside my PJs, in the dark, in my bed.
What a boring life I’ve lived to this point.
Now Cash Kincaid is going to make me come as I stare at the first stars of the night, in the open air on top of a mountain.
My. Goodness.
His hands curl around my legs, lifting my hips higher, giving him deeper access, and that’s all that he needs. That’s the variable that shifts me from feeling good to speed running toward a release.
“Cash…Cash!”
He growls against my sex and I go off, clamping my thighs around his head.
“Oh fuck,” I pant.
He pulls my legs off his ears.
“Don’t let me miss out on the secret Haven Bingham dirty talk,” he pants, his beard glistening.
“I’m all over your face.”
He licks his lips and grins. “Sure are.”
I flop back against the truck bed and stare at the sky, a goofy smile on my face as he works his way up beside me and stretches out.
When I glance sideways again, he’s unzipped his jeans and he’s slowly stroking his very impressive erection.
“Hey, don’t get ahead of me.”
“Don’t worry, pretty girl, this is all yours.” He drags in a big breath as I crawl between his legs. “You want a warning when I’m going to come?”
“Why?” I’m only half-listening, because I’m fixated on the pearl of precum that forms at his tip with each stroke.
“Might be a surprise if I spurt across your tongue.”
A thrill riots through me. “Might be nice.”
He chokes on a laugh. “You keep saying things that nobody has ever said.”
I lean in and lick up the little drop of arousal. Then I smile at him. “You can come in my mouth, Cowboy.”
“Fuck.”
“Or that, too.” I lick him again. “You want me to climb on top?”
“Pretty virgin says what, now?” He drags a hand over his face. “Yeah, suck me a little, and we’ll see where this goes.”
“Tell me what to do.”
“You don’t need sex lessons, Haven. You’re a glorious natural.”
I smile, pleased at the praise. “Humour me, then.” I lick him a third time. “Teach me how to give a blow job, because I’ve never done this before.”
“Shit, that shouldn’t be so hot.” He hisses through his teeth. “I want you to suck on the tip. Get me in your mouth, feel how big I am for you.”
I wrap my lips around him, and he bucks his hips immediately, driving against my tongue.
“Fuck, sorry.” He pulls out. “Open wider for me, baby.”
I kiss his tip and try again, and this time he trembles but holds still, and I slide my mouth around his crown and onto his shaft, taking him what feels like fully into my mouth, but I know it’s only part of him.
He’s so big, and my mouth stretches so wide, it’s hard to coordinate at first.
Cash gathers my hair, holding it behind my head, and he pulls my hand to the base of his shaft, showing me how to stroke him and suck at the same time.
Between my legs, my sex pulses with awareness.
I want this thick length inside me.
“Your mouth feels amazing.” He swears under his breath. “But I want to be inside you again.”
I pop off him and lick my lips. “You read my mind.”
He digs out a condom and holds it out. “Next lesson.”
My fingers shake, but I figure it out, and then Cash sits up and pulls me into his lap.
It’s different like this. Less energetic, more intensely deep.
He holds my gaze and moves me on top of him.
“This isn’t just lessons,” he rasps.
I nod and kiss him.
I know.
But the lessons make it safe.
And when he slides a hand between us, finding my clit with his thumb, I tell myself it can be lessons and more, at the same time. It can be safe and reckless at the same time. When this is over, I’ll pretend this didn’t mean everything to me.
But until it’s done, it secretly is my entire world.
And I love it.
I love him.
I manage to keep that inside when me makes me go off again, when he loses control and follows me, thundering his own release inside my body.
I love you, Cash Kincaid, I think to myself as I bury my face in his neck, as he strokes my sweat-slicked back.
“You’re incredible,” he says, sounding well and truly satisfied.
The two sentiments aren’t the same. But they are both true, and that’s enough.
It’s late when we descend to the foothills again.
“Can we stop at my place to get a few more things?”
“Sure.” Cash takes my hand and twists his fingers through mine, holding on until we get back to Dragonfly Creek.
When he parks in front of my house, I don’t wait for him to come around to get me. He’s chuckling at me as I speed up the walk ahead of him, making me giggle, too.
But both of us stop laughing when I reach the steps and there’s a folded piece of paper shoved most of the way under the door.
“Don’t touch it,” Cash growls.
“It’s not going to bite.” I sigh before unlocking.
I let him pick it up anyway. I don’t want to touch it.
I turn on the light in the foyer and he closes the door behind us, then opens the folded sheet, torn from what looks like the same notepad as the one that was left for him.
This one isn’t about tonight. This is a day late, but shockingly accurate.
Everyone is talking about how you were late coming back from lunch
You aren’t subtle
You’ve lost your way
What did you do in the garage?
Did you do the mechanic?