Chapter 10 #2
She looks at me for one more second. Then she says, "I'll find you later," gives Cricket a little tug on the lead rope, and starts walking.
Cricket takes another bite of grass, then follows.
I stand at the fence and watch her go. I don’t even pull out my phone to see who’s calling. Whatever it was, it can wait. I already know it's going to take me the rest of the afternoon to shake this off.
I try to remember how to breathe normally.
It takes a while.
***
I'm doing my last check through the barn when the door opens.
I know it's her before I see her. I've known her footsteps for weeks.
She comes down the aisle to Cricket's stall. Checks the water, runs her hand along the mare's neck, all of it routine. When she turns around, I'm in the tack room doorway, and we look at each other across the aisle.
Neither of us pretends that the fence line didn't happen.
She crosses to me.
She doesn't stop until she's close enough that I have to make a choice.
I don't step back.
My hand finds her jaw, the way it almost did at the fence line, and this time there's nothing to interrupt it.
She tips her face up, and she looks at me.
I kiss her slowly, my hand still at her jaw, my other hand finding her waist. She makes a sound low in her throat. Her hands come up to my chest and grip my shirt. Then she pulls me toward her, and the slow part is over.
I turn her and walk her back against the wall of saddles.
The tack room is small and dark at this hour, warmth from the day still sitting in the wood walls.
It smells like leather, saddle soap, and the cedar oil Kade works into the bridles every month.
Her hands find my hair, mine go to her waist. I work my mouth down her throat.
She tilts her head back against the leather, and I feel her pulse hammering under my lips.
She pushes her hands under the hem of my shirt, and I reach back and pull it over my head.
She puts her palms flat on my chest and looks at me for one second like she's deciding something she already decided.
Then she starts kissing down my sternum, my stomach, her mouth moving slow all the way to my waistband.
I look down at her.
She looks up at me while her hands go to my belt buckle, and she's smiling.
"Cass."
Her name comes out low and a little wrecked. She holds my gaze while she gets the buckle, the button, and the zipper. I brace one hand on the saddle rack above her head and try to remember how to breathe.
She doesn't rush.
She wraps her hand around me first, deliberate and certain, and I pull in a breath through my teeth.
Then her mouth closes over the head of my cock, and I stop breathing entirely.
I have one hand in her hair and the other flat against the leather. She takes me deeper, her tongue moving in a way that makes my whole body brace against it. She finds a rhythm and holds it. I feel every second of it in my spine.
Somewhere in the middle of it, her name comes out of me broken, and she makes a sound low in her throat that vibrates through me and pulls my hips forward before I can stop it. She takes that too.
"Cass." My voice is gone. "I'm going to…"
She looks up at me and doesn't stop.
Her hand moves, and she takes me deeper.
I've got both hands in her hair, and I'm not pretending to be in control of any of this.
When I come, it moves through me hard and long, my whole body bracing against the saddle rack above her.
She holds on through all of it. She swallows and doesn't pull back until I'm done.
I pull her up.
She comes up against me, and I kiss her, my hands moving to her face, her hands gripping my arms. When I pull back, I look at her for one second, my hands dropping to her waistband.
She lifts her chin. "Yes."
I get the button and the zipper and push her jeans down her hips. I drop to my knees, pull her boots off, and she steps free of her jeans. I look up at her. Her eyes are dark, her lips are parted, and she's looking down at me like she made this decision and she's not taking it back.
I have one hand under her thigh, holding her open, and the other gripping where her thigh meets her ass, keeping her right where I need her.
I bury my mouth in her pussy. She pulls in a sharp breath.
I find the right place with my tongue and stay there, working slow circles against her clit until her whole body tells me I've got it right.
Her fingers curl into my hair and hold on.
"God." Her breath is already coming apart. "Don't stop."
I don't stop.
I suck her clit and let my tongue do exactly what she needs, hard and fast, listening to every sound she makes and every shift of her hips. Her hips roll toward me, and I move with her. Her free hand finds the saddle rack and holds on.
Her breath breaks into pieces she can't hold together, and her losing that fight is the best thing I've ever heard.
Her thighs tighten, her whole body pulls taut, and then she shakes, hard, a wave of it moving through her from her hips up. She presses the back of her hand to her mouth, but my name still gets out, ragged and unraveling.
I feel every wave against my lips. I stay with her until the shaking slows and her grip on my hair loosens and she sags back against the saddles, breathing hard.
I get to my feet and kiss her, slow, before I tuck myself in and do up my jeans. She reaches down, pulls her jeans back on, and steps back into her boots. I find my shirt on the floor and pull it over my head.
"You've been driving me crazy," I tell her. "Since the day you got here."
She fights a smile. "I know."
"You knew?"
"Levi." The smile breaks through, small, private, and aimed only at me. "Everyone knew."
"Everyone," I say, and even as it comes out of my mouth I'm running back through it, Reed at the lot, Kade at the fence, Rhea at every fire pit for a weeks. Of course they knew. I was the only one still pretending.
She laughs. Short and real.
That's the one I've been waiting for since the day she got here.
We stand with our foreheads together, and neither of us moves. Her hand is flat on my chest. My heart is going hard enough that she can feel it. I know because she spreads her fingers wider, like she wants more of it.
We stay like that for a while.
The barn is quiet around us. Crickets outside, loud in the dark. A night bird calls from somewhere outside and goes quiet.
Eventually, she straightens up and fixes her shirt. She looks at me, and for one full second, she lets me see all of it. No blank expression, just her, looking back at me the way she looks at things when she thinks nobody's watching.
"I'll see you tomorrow," she says.
Then she's gone. Her boots on the aisle, and then nothing but the dark outside, the smell of leather, and the sound of crickets.
I lean back against the saddle rack and stay there.
She's been careful with me since the day she got here. Careful about what she gives, what she shows, how close she lets anything land. Three weeks of blank expressions and nothing to work with, and walking past me in doorways like I was furniture she'd already accounted for.
I've made people laugh in every room I've ever walked into. Nobody has ever looked at me like I was speaking a language they didn't find interesting.
She did. Every single day.
And I kept trying anyway, which tells me something about where I already was before tonight.
I told her she's been driving me crazy since the day she got here.
She said everyone knew.
I think about that. I think about how she said it, easy and certain, like it was something she'd already made peace with. Like she'd known it and sat with it and decided what she was going to do about it, and then she did it.
She came to me. She crossed that aisle.
I didn't manufacture that. I didn't charm my way into it or talk her into it or wear her down. She made a decision, and she showed up.
And then she said, “I'll see you tomorrow.”
Not goodnight. Not nothing. Tomorrow. Like, there's already a next thing, and she knows it. She's not pretending otherwise.
I've been at Whispering Creek nine years. I've been careful about what I let mean something, because I know what it costs when you build something and then lose it. I know that better than most.
This already means something.
It has for a while, and I've been telling myself it didn't, the same way she's been telling herself she wasn't noticing.
Turns out we were both lying.