Chapter Twenty
Nash woke to Cassie half sprawled over him, one leg slung across his, her breath warm against his chest. The storm had passed sometime during the night, but the sky outside still hung gray and heavy.
Cassie stirred, her thigh shifting against his. Yawning, she pushed up on her elbows, hair a curly mess, eyes heavy-lidded, her mouth soft with sleep. Still goddamn stunning.
“Mornin’?” she asked.
“Almost,” he replied.
She studied him a moment, green eyes sharpening. Then she was slipping a hand down the front of his shorts and stroking him.
“Good mornin’?” A crooked smile tugged at her mouth.
His lips twitched. “Not yet.”
She shoved upright, peeled off his hoodie, kicked free of the sweatpants, and straddled him.
Nash raked his gaze over her—breasts rising with each breath, skin flushed and warm—as she sank onto him slowly, grinning the whole way down.
His head fell back with a rough curse. Jesus, he’d fucking missed her. Infuriating. Insatiable. All of it.
“Remember when I’d do scales while we fucked?” She rocked her hips, unhurried.
“Not a goddamn clue how you did that crazy shit,” he rasped.
“Practice,” she said, tightening around him.
He groaned, hands clamping hard on her hips as he thrust up, the rhythm turning rougher, needier.
She tried to say something but it came out fractured and breathless as she folded down against him, nails digging into his chest.
“Nash—”
He growled low, biting the curve of her shoulder, rocking up into her, hard enough to make her gasp.
“Yeah, Cas?” he panted.
Her gasp broke into a cry as her body seized around him.
Her thighs locked, fists clenched in his hair, every pulse of her orgasm dragging him closer to the edge.
He gritted his teeth, fingers digging into her hips, driving up into her once more before pulling out with a rough exhale, and spilling hot across her stomach.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. They stayed tangled, sweat cooling on his skin, Cassie’s breath skidding against his throat.
“Still a little sloppy on the downbeat,” she whispered.
He brought his hand down hard on her ass, the crack echoing in the otherwise silent room. Her gasp turned quickly to a laugh, tipping sideways and rolling off him.
“Don’t know what the fuck a downbeat is, but I know a damn lie when I hear one.”
“Better than coffee,” she murmured against his skin.
He slid his hand up her spine. “Always did want it first thing.”
“Still do—I like being limber for early morning rehearsals.”
Nash’s chest pulled tight and before he could stop it, he’d blurted out: “You got someone waitin’ on you?”
“No,” she replied, not bothering to lift her head. “Unless you count a very angry German woman.”
Nash had stopped listening at ‘no’, his mind already doing the math—years, cities, hands that weren’t his.
“So what,” he said, too fast. “You just been takin’ it wherever you can get it?”
The words were out before he could haul them back and he could feel the shift in her before she even moved—warmth gone, easy gone, the whole damn room drawing tight around one stupid sentence.
“Forget it,” he muttered, quickly.
“No,” she snapped, shoving up on one elbow. “I won’t. Because, yeah, I take it when I want it. From who I want. And you’re trying to what—shame me for that? Like you’re not out here doing the same damn thing?”
He didn’t answer. Just stared at her.
Because the truth was pathetic. No matter how many women he’d had—and there’d been plenty—not one of them ever got under his skin like she did.
“Oh, now you shut up?” she went on, sharp and furious. “I’m sittin’ here covered in your cum, and you’ve got the nerve to call me a slut—and not have nothin’ to say?”
“Yeah, I got somethin’,” he growled, pushing upright. “You wanna spread it around, fine. But don’t look at me like I’m supposed to fuckin’ clap.”
Her eyes went wide. Nostrils flaring, she shoved off the bed.
“Fuck,” Nash muttered, surging after her and catching her arm.
She shrieked, twisting hard, the momentum dragging them both down. She hit the mattress on her stomach and he followed, pinning her there.
“I didn’t mean it,” he ground out. “I just—”
She bucked beneath him, but he caught her wrists and drove them high over her head, holding her taut under his weight.
“Goddammit, Cas,” he rasped, chest heaving against her back. “Just…hold up a sec.”
He’d had her once. Really had her. And she’d loved him hard and loud, and he’d let her go.
Thrown her away with both hands because he hadn’t known how to hold on.
Because he’d been young and stupid and scared.
He’d do it all different now, if the woman would shut up and give him half a goddamn chance.
“Fuck you,” she snarled, twisting her head. “You’re still the same small-town, small-minded—”
Nash dropped his mouth to her neck, teeth catching the spray of freckles there, hard enough to make her hiss. He dragged his tongue over the sting, then sucked deep, marking her.
She writhed beneath him, still fighting. But the harder she twisted, the firmer he held, his weight pinning her flat, his mouth relentless until her curses broke into ragged sounds and her hips arched back against him anyway.
“Maybe I’m small-town,” he growled against her skin, sliding one hand between her thighs, “but you’re the one who can’t stay off my dick.”
“Because it’s a great dick!” she cried, somewhat muffled into the sheets.
His mouth curved. “That’s only half of it. You know the rest.”
“No,” she bit out, even as she arched harder, leg spreading, grinding up into him. “I don’t—”
Her denial broke on a gasp when he shoved forward, sliding inside her in one rough stroke. A choked sound tore from her as her back bowed, taking him deeper.
“Yeah, you do, Strawberry,” he muttered at her ear. “Yeah, you fuckin’ do.”
Cassie’s hands braced hard against the tile, fingers slipping where the water ran.
Nash was all weight and heat behind her—his chest to her back, his mouth at her throat—moving inside her at an lazy pace.
She tipped her head, giving him more, and he answered with teeth—just a graze at first, then harder. She pushed back into it, chasing the sting as it began to sing.
Turning her head, she found his mouth, and the kiss turned hungry fast. His hand came up, closing over her breast, fingers tightening, while the other slid down her stomach and lower. Her hips shifted back; his rhythm built like a phrase—each stroke a little deeper, a little more exact—until—
“Fuck—” The sound tore out of her.
She was already too sore and sensitive for this, already right on the edge, and his hand didn’t let her retreat. He kept her there—kept her in it—until the pleasure caught and ripped through her. Breath stuttering, thighs trembling, she would’ve folded straight to the floor if he hadn’t caught her.
Holding her upright, Nash drove deeper, quicker—his breath rough at her throat—until his body shuddered and he pulled free with a low, strangled sound.
For a moment, there was only the sound of the water and the shared drag of their breathing.
Then Nash shifted away, his hands lingering on her ass.
“I’m gonna make us somethin’ to eat,” he muttered. “All this goddamn work you’ve got me doin’ has me starvin’.”
Cassie pressed her forehead to the tile, breath still uneven, mind a mess with too much heat, too much history, too much…Nash.
God. Wanting each other had never been their problem.
It was everything after. The talking. The ways they hurt each other. The things they always left unfinished until they rotted between them. Even now, she wasn’t sure either of them knew how not to ruin it once the noise died down.
Except…maybe they were trying.
Yesterday had been full of surprises. From both of them. She hadn’t shoved anything down or locked it away. She’d let it tear through her instead, and Nash hadn’t tried to fix her or control what came next. He’d just held her while she felt her way through it.
Of course, this morning he’d said some really stupid shit, but even that paled compared to the garbage he used to spew. And—holy hel—he’d actually apologized.
“So now what,” she muttered, reaching for the faucet and shutting the water off.
Slowly.
Because she still didn’t know what they were doing—only that her feelings for Nash hadn’t really gone anywhere. Not really. If anything, they’d been lying in wait, patiently picking the perfect moment to blindside the living hell out of her.
Cassie pushed out of the shower, pulled a towel off the rack, and wrapped herself in it.
Back in the bedroom, she caught her reflection in the mirror and hesitated, touching the growing map of bruises along her neck—one, then another. When she opened the towel, there were more—on her breasts, the insides of her thighs.
God, she looked…absolutely manhandled. Felt it, too. Or, as Jordan loved to say, folded in half and guts rearranged.
She stood there longer than she meant to, wrapped in Nash’s scent, lips swollen, pussy throbbing—feeling all sorts of crazy.
Crazy because she didn’t just like the way she felt.
She liked how she looked, too.
Shut up, Cassie.
Snapping the towel closed, she turned away from the mirror, wondering if it was actually possible to have the sense fucked clean out of you.
She had a life elsewhere. A whole amazing life that she absolutely adored.
One she wasn’t about to forget just because she’d let herself… catch some fucking feelings.
She tugged on one of Nash’s old motocross shirts—one with a mercifully high neck—and a pair of his boxers before following the sharp smell of garlic into the hall and downstairs.
In the kitchen, Nash stood at the island counter, sleeves shoved up, tattooed forearms flexing as he chopped an onion into neat squares. The stove sat to his left, skillet already heating. His hair was tied back, his lip caught between his teeth while he worked.