20. Cassie
CASSIE
I took off the gear Hawk had given me and we spread the blanket out in the field under the open sky. It was mid-morning and the last of the dew that had clung to the long grass was beginning to evaporate under the autumn sun.
All around Blackwell Falls tourists were arriving from the city, excited for a day of apple picking and hay rides, eager to choose their pumpkins from a pasture instead of a grocery store.
They would fill the town and the coffee shop, take pictures on Main Street in sweaters and boots, listen to live music at area orchards and eat local food after filling their bags with apples.
But as I settled onto the blanket with Hawk, nothing but the sound of birds in the distant trees, there was no place I would rather have been.
I didn’t even feel guilty for leaving Kaylee and Drew to handle the shop. They’d proven they were more than up to the task, and I’d started to wonder if Bram was right: maybe it was time to think about adding a second store in Carlton.
It wasn’t something I could handle right now, but I could almost see a future where it was possible.
A future where we’d found the shadowy figures behind Imperium Fratrum, where we were free of the people trying to kill us and the Hawks and I could be together for real, without the constant threat of death hanging over our heads.
Hawk opened the cooler and I watched with delighted surprise as he unloaded breakfast burritos wrapped in wax paper, containers of sliced peaches and blueberries, and a thermos of coffee.
He’d even brought plates, not paper but real dishes from the cupboard at home.
“You did all of this yourself?”
He laughed and the sound of it traveled to all the places in my body that were hungry for him. “Don’t sound so surprised.”
“I guess I didn’t see you as the picnic type.”
He poured coffee into the little cup that came with the thermos and handed it to me. “What type did you see me as?”
I looked up, like I was thinking hard about the answer. “The type to barrel through a McDonalds drive-through with the music blaring? The type to shovel food into your mouth while you drive?”
He clutched his chest dramatically. “Ouch.”
I grinned. “Sorry.”
He handed me a plate with two burritos and set the container of fruit between us.
“Three months ago you wouldn’t have been far off the mark.” I sensed he had more to say, so I took a bite of my burrito and waited. “I think I’m just starting to realize I’m capable of more than I thought.”
“In what way?”
Now it was his turn to chew and think. “I thought I was selfish.”
I tipped my head. “What do you mean?”
“Before you came to live with us,” he said.
“I thought I was selfish. I thought I’d washed out of the bureau because I was more intent on having fun than getting the job done, thought I wasn’t cut out for regular life because regular life meant thinking about someone else, and the truth was, I didn’t want to think about anyone else, didn’t even know if I was capable of thinking about someone else. ”
“I’ve never thought of you as selfish,” I said, plucking a peach slice from the container. “I just thought…”
He lifted his eyebrows.
“I thought you were wild. Reckless. Out of control.”
I popped the peach into my mouth and its juicy sweetness hit my tongue in a burst of flavor.
“I was. I am. Except now I’m all of those things for a different reason.”
“What do you mean?”
He held my gaze. “I’m wild for you, Cass. Reckless for you. Out of control for you.”
I fell into his eyes, as dark as Ares’ and Freya’s and every bit as knowing.
Every bit as ageless.
Then he was crossing over the food between us, an unstoppable force pressing me back against the blanket.
“Your burn…” I hated how weak my protest sounded, but the truth was, I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.
“Fuck my burn.” He nuzzled my neck, inhaling deeply like he was breathing in the air after a spring rain.
“Your incision…”
“Fuck my incision.”
I pushed my hands into his long black hair, relishing the silky strands in my fingers. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
I feel like I’d said it a million times since the explosion at the paper mill but it was always true, and he’d just gotten the stitches in his stomach removed the day before.
“It hurts me not to touch you.” He pulled back. “And I want to look at you up close, want to really look at you.”
His gaze combed my face, like he was memorizing every detail.
He stroked my cheek with his thumb. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Stop.” No one had ever looked at me so intently.
No one but these men — these men who’d won me in the Hunt — had ever seen me so clearly.
So completely.
“I won’t stop,” he said, staring into my eyes. “You need to hear it every day. You need to hear it until you believe it.”
“If I’m beautiful, it’s because you made me beautiful.” I didn’t think I’d realized it was true until that moment. “You made me beautiful by letting me become the person I was always meant to be. The person I was all along without knowing it. That’s why I love you so much.”
He groaned and lowered his mouth to mine.
His tongue was hot and demanding, stroking through my mouth with an urgency my body understood.
I opened my thighs and moaned when he sank against my needy cunt. His dick was already huge and hard, the fabric of our jeans the only barrier between our bodies, a flimsy partition that only stoked the fire sweeping through me with every sweep of his tongue.
He rocked his hips against my pelvis and an orgasm sparked to life with the friction on my clit. We were like two teenagers dry humping in the back seat of a car, our hunger for each other obliterating everything outside of this moment.
He tilted his head over mine, pushing his tongue deeper into my mouth, occupying me like an invading army, leaving no corner unexplored as his hands slid down my neck, over my tits, down to my stomach.
I broke the kiss, gasping for breath, when he reached for the hem of my shirt, his intention clear.
“Freya…”
“She’ll come back when she’s ready.” He lifted my shirt and pulled down the front of my bra, exposing my nipple to the warm autumn air. “She won’t stay away just because I’m fucking you.”
He took my nipple in his mouth and sucked.
I cried out, arching my back, urging him to take more of me.
All of me.
He kneaded my other tit with his hand while he sucked and lapped, still pressing his dick into my pussy with urgent thrusts.
He was getting bigger and harder while I got wetter and hotter. Our need for each other, already at a fever pitch after the close call at the paper mill, grew with every thrust of his hips, every stroke of his denim-clad cock against my desperate cunt.
“I need you naked,” he said, pulling at my shirt.
He gasped, a flash of pain crossing his face, when he yanked it off my head.
“We should stop,” I gasped. “It’s too soon.”
“No such thing,” he grunted, reaching around to unclip my bra. “I’ve wanted to be inside you since the minute they took that fucking tube out of my throat.”
“Will it hurt you if I take off your shirt?” My chest rose and fell with my shallow breath.
“Fuck no. And if it does, it’ll be worth it.”
“Not reassuring.”
“Pull it off,” he said.
I lifted the T-shirt carefully over his head, revealing his inked chest a little at a time.
But now there was more than ink and muscles: there were cuts and abrasions, still healing, from the grenade, plus the silver antimicrobial bandage that still covered his burn.
Like the scar on my forehead, a remnant of my accident on the mountain, Hawk’s wounds were a reminder: that we’d come this far together, that Imperium Fratrum might hurt us, but they would never keep us apart.
That we weren’t alone. Not anymore.
I touched my fingers to the tattoos on his chest, then lifted my head to kiss each of the injuries etched into his skin, every bit as meaningful as his ink.
“I love you.” I touched my lips to a cut on his left pec, then kissed an abrasion on the skin stretched over his heart. “I love you.”
He held my face in his hands. “I love you, Cass. So fucking much I can’t breathe through it sometimes.”
I slid my hand down his flat abs and unfastened his jeans, then slipped my hand inside to wrap my fingers around his throbbing dick.
He gasped, dropping his head to my shoulder as I stroked.
I hadn’t been going for more than a minute when he reached between our bodies to remove my hand. “That’s definitely not going to work if you want me to fuck you. I want you too much.”
“That’s okay,” I said, lifting my head to kiss him. “You can come in my hand. Or I can take you in my mouth.”
He groaned. “Hearing your sweet mouth talk about sucking my cock is definitely not going to work. Not if I want to eat that delicious little pussy.” He sat up and kneeled between my legs. “And I absolutely want to eat that delicious little pussy.”
He pulled my jeans off my thighs, taking my underwear with them.
Then I was naked under the clear blue sky, the October breeze caressing my body as Hawk bent his head between my thighs.