Chapter 4 #2
It's a clear night, warm, the stars out to the tree line.
Hard to appreciate when my head won't shut up.
My cabin is dark when I step inside. I head down the hall, turn on the lamp by the bed, and sit on the edge of the mattress.
I turn lunch over again. The smile she didn't mean to give me.
The way she pulled it back the second she knew I'd seen it and went right back to Rhea as if nothing had happened.
I get ready for bed and turn off the lamp. I lie back and stare at the ceiling and tell myself to go to sleep. The ceiling blurs at the edges. My eyes finally close.
***
I don't dream right away.
For a while, it's just the dark and the property settling, crickets in the grass, and wind through the gap in the window. I'm most of the way gone when it changes.
It's not a real place. I'm aware of that the way you're aware of things in dreams, distant and without caring much. My cabin, or some version of it, the light low and the window open and the sounds from outside going soft.
Cassie's there.
She's sitting on the edge of the bed, and she's looking at me the way she's never looked at me while we're awake. Open. Like she made a decision, and she's done revising it.
"Hey," she says.
"Hey," I say, and my voice comes out rough.
She smiles. Small and private, and like she's glad she did that to me.
I reach for her, and she comes into my hands easily. My hands go to her face, tilting it up, and I kiss her. She opens right into it, mouth parting, hands coming to my chest and fisting in my shirt, and she makes a sound low in her throat that goes straight through me.
I pull back enough to look at her.
She's still smiling.
"Still waiting?" she says.
"Not anymore."
I get her shirt over her head. I take a second right there with my hands on her ribs, looking at her, because I can.
She looks back at me, and her breathing is already different.
I unclasp her bra, and she lets me do that, too.
I take her breasts in my hands and suck her nipple into my mouth.
She tips her head back and pulls in a breath that catches in her throat.
I get her jeans off. She gets my shirt off and I get rid of the rest. She pulls me back in by the back of my neck and bites my bottom lip. I groan against her mouth and she grins. I pull back far enough to see it.
"There it is," I say.
"It took you long enough."
I kiss her throat, the notch below her jaw, and she tips her head back.
Her fingers curl into my hair and tighten.
I work my way down. I kiss her collarbone, her chest, her breasts, and she arches into it with a sharp intake of breath.
Every time I find somewhere new. She's warm everywhere. She makes sounds low in her throat.
By the time I get between her thighs, she's already moving, hips lifting.
I lick her pussy, and she gasps. Her hands fist in my hair.
I stay there, taking my time, sucking on her clit until she's shaking.
Her thighs press in on either side of my head.
She's saying my name on every exhale, broken and low and not remotely in control of it.
I stay until she comes completely apart.
Her whole body seizes up and releases. Her thighs lock around me as she rides it out with my name still on her mouth.
By the time I come back up to her, she reaches for me with both hands and pulls me in. That, more than anything, is what undoes me. Her reaching.
I push into her slowly.
She pulls in a long breath. Her hands press against my chest, and her nails dig in. I hold still right there and watch her face.
She looks up at me.
"Don't stop. God don't stop," she says.
I move.
She moves with me, her hips rising to meet mine, finding the rhythm fast, and I can feel everything.
The heat of her wrapped around my cock, the way she tightens when I go deeper, the catch in her breath on every thrust. I brace above her and watch her face because this is what I've wanted, her face open and real with every wall down, nothing left of the flat expression, nothing she gives me all day.
She tips her chin up, her lips part, and she takes everything I give her and pushes back for more, her hands dragging down my back to my ass, pulling me in harder, and I go because she wants it.
"Levi."
I press deeper. She arches under me, one long shaking pull, her legs wrapping around me and locking, and then she breaks. I feel it everywhere, the tight clench of her pussy, the shudder moving through her body, her breath coming out ragged and wrecked against my neck.
I follow her over within seconds, my forehead dropping to her shoulder, her name on my mouth as the release moves through me hard from the base of my spine outward, my hips pressing in and holding there while it takes everything I have.
I stay pressed into her after, my whole body heavy and wrecked, her fingers moving slowly through my hair.
"Hey," she says, softly.
"Hey."
***
I wake up in the dark.
My ceiling. My open window. The property at three in the morning, the crickets in the grass, nothing else.
I lie still and take stock of myself.
The situation isn't good.
I stare at the ceiling, and the dream is already going soft at the edges, but not fast enough. It's still right there. The heat of her. The sound of my name in her mouth. The way she'd looked at me with every wall down, no checking herself, no deciding how much to give.
I know the difference between wanting something and being in actual trouble. I've been around long enough to know what one feels like versus the other.
This is the second one.
I get up, go to the bathroom, turn the shower on cold and take care of my erection because there's no other reasonable option at three in the morning.
Afterwards, I stand at the bathroom sink with both hands on the counter and look at myself in the mirror for a second.
She'll be at breakfast in four hours, sitting across a table with a cup of coffee and that flat expression, and I'm going to have to look directly at her and ask somebody to pass the salt and be a reasonable human being about it.
I have no idea how to do that.
Especially after that dream.