6. Chapter 6
Cash
Monday changed everything.
Cassie on my kitchen counter with my mouth between her legs and her hand in my hair and the sound she made when she came, bitten off because Lola was sleeping ten feet away. That sound has been living in my head for two days.
Wednesday. Her regular shift. I come back from helping Beckett with a water line repair at two thirty. Lola is napping. Cassie is at the kitchen table working on Barnaby, her headphone in one ear, her stylus moving across the tablet.
She looks up when I come in. I look at her. We’ve been doing this today. Looking at each other a second too long. The air in the cabin has a weight it didn’t have before.
“She went down twenty minutes ago,” Cassie says. Quiet.
“Good.”
I go to the kitchen. Wash my hands and get water. Drink it. Cassie is behind me at the table. I can feel her there the way you feel weather changing. Pressure building.
I set the glass down. I turn around. She’s standing now. Her back to me as she tidies something on the counter. When did she stand up?
“Cash.”
“Yeah.”
“We should probably talk about Monday.”
“Probably.”
Neither of us talks about Monday.
Instead I close the distance and my hands find her waist and I press my chest against her back.
She inhales. My mouth finds her neck. The spot behind her ear where her skin is warm and soft and smells like whatever perfume she uses that I will never be able to smell again without thinking about this.
My hands slide up her sides. Over her ribs. She leans back against me and tips her head to give me more of her neck and I take it. My teeth scrape her earlobe. She makes a sound. Low. Encouraging.
My hands roam higher. Over her breasts through her shirt. She presses back against me and I’m hard and she can feel it and the small noise she makes tells me she knows exactly what she’s doing.
“Cash.” Breathless now. “Lola’s right there.”
“I know.” My hands are still moving. My mouth is still on her neck. I can’t stop.
The baby monitor crackles. A small sound. A rustling. Then: “Daddy?”
We both groan.
Cassie steps away from me. Her cheeks are flushed. Her shirt is crooked.
“I’ll get her,” she says.
“Cassie.”
She stops in the doorway.
“Tomorrow,” I say.
She looks at me over her shoulder. Her eyes are dark. “Tomorrow.”
Thursday. She arrives at 12:55. Same spot. Same wave from Lola at the screen door. Same routine.
But underneath the routine, everything is different. There’s a current of electricity in the air that crackles when she’s close.
I work a short day. Raiford has me checking the south fence, which takes two hours instead of four because I move through it like a man with somewhere to be. I’m back at the cabin by three.
Lola is napping. Cassie is at the table. She looks up when I come in and her eyes track down my body and back up in a way that she probably thinks is subtle. It is not subtle.
“She’s been asleep since two fifteen,” Cassie says.
“Good.”
I lock the front door.
Cassie watches me do it. Her lips part.
“Cash.”
“Come here.”
She stands. She walks toward me. I take her hand and pull her down the hallway, past the bedroom where Lola is sleeping, to the bathroom. I close the door. Lock it.
The bathroom is small. A sink, a mirror, a shower. Not a lot of room. Enough.
Cassie looks at the locked door. Looks at me. Looks at the mirror.
I turn her around. She faces the mirror. I’m behind her. My chest against her back. My hands on her hips. Her eyes find mine in the reflection and the look between us is so charged that the air goes thin.
I push her hair to one side. Press my mouth to the back of her neck. She braces her hands on the sink and watches me in the mirror.
“You wore the blue set again,” I say. Because I can see the strap of her bra through her shirt. Blue lace. Same as the panties I pulled off her Monday.
“I wore what was clean.”
“Liar.” I slide my hands under her shirt. Up her stomach. Over her bra. She arches back against me. “You planned this.”
“I plan everything,” she breathes.
“I know.” I pull her shirt over her head. Unhook her bra. My hands cover her breasts and she gasps and her eyes flutter closed in the mirror. “Open your eyes. Watch.”
She opens them. Watches my hands on her body in the reflection. My rough, scarred hands against her perfect skin.
I lift her skirt. Bunch it around her waist. My fingers hook into her panties and I slide them down her legs. She steps out of them and she’s bare from the waist down, bent slightly over the sink, watching me in the mirror.
“God, Cassie.” My voice is wrecked. I undo my belt. My jeans. Free myself. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” No hesitation.
I grip her hips. She arches her back and turns her head and I lean down and kiss her. Sideways and desperate and the angle is awkward and perfect. Her hand comes up behind her to grip my neck.
I push into her.
She gasps against my mouth. Her fingers tighten on my neck. I watch her face, turned toward me, and the intimacy of the angle is almost too much. I can feel every inch of her. She can feel every inch of me.
“Oh God,” she whispers. “Cash.”
I start to move. Slow at first. Watching her face. Then I look up at the mirror and we’re both there. Her bent over the sink with her skirt around her waist and me behind her and my hands on her hips and the reflection shows me everything.
“Look,” I tell her. “Look at us.”
She turns her head toward the mirror. Our eyes meet in the glass. I thrust deeper and watch her mouth open in the reflection.
“You’re so beautiful like this,” I say. My hands grip her hips tighter. I pull her back against me with every thrust. “Watching you take me. Watching your face.”
She braces harder against the sink. Her knuckles are white. She’s trying to be quiet and failing. Small sounds escaping through her teeth.
“Quiet,” I remind her. My hand slides from her hip to between her legs. I find the spot that made her scream on Monday and work it with my fingers while I move inside her. “But don’t hold back.”
“That’s contradictory.”
“Figure it out.”
She laughs. The laugh turns into a moan and I thrust harder and the moan turns into my name whispered through clenched teeth. I can feel her tightening. Her body building.
Our eyes lock in the mirror. I don’t look away. She doesn’t look away.
I increase the rhythm. The sound of flesh against flesh bounces off the walls of the small bathroom. Her mouth is open, chin up, eyes pleading for more. I give her more.
I glance down at my cock as I thrust into her. It’s slick with her need. Her perfect ass. Her pussy stretching around me. The sight nearly pushes me over the edge.
“Come for me,” I say. “Right here. I want to watch.”
She does. Her hands clamp around the porcelain. Her body tightens around me, and her mouth opens on my name. I barely get one more thrust before I’m right there with her. I grip her hips and thrust one final time and come inside her with a groan I bury against her shoulder.
We stand there. Bent over a bathroom sink. Breathing hard. My forehead pressed to the back of her neck.
“That,” she says, still braced against the sink, “was not in the plan.”
I laugh against her skin. “But the matching panties were.”
“A girl can be prepared without having an agenda,” she breathes out.
“Sure.”
“Shut up.”
We clean up. We straighten clothes. We look at each other in the mirror and she’s flushed and rumpled and smiling in a way that makes her look so beautiful it hurts.
Lola is still sleeping.
We sit on the couch in comfortable silence for a minute. The cabin is quiet.
“I got another email from Lisa,” she says. “About the festival.”
“And?”
“She needs an answer by next week.”
“What are you going to tell her?”
“I don’t know yet.”
I don’t push. Not today. Today is not for that.
She leans into me and I put my arm around her. We sit like that until Lola wakes up and finds us and climbs onto Cassie’s lap and says “snack” like a tiny empress issuing a decree.
Cassie leaves at five thirty. I watch her car disappear down the ranch road.
I stand on the porch. Lola is inside watching something on my phone. The valley is going gold in the late light.
Raiford’s word comes back. Permanent.
I think about the job here. The way Raiford handed me the south fence without checking my work after.
I think about Cassie’s face in the bathroom mirror. The way her eyes found mine. The way she looked at me like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
For the first time in years, I can see what staying might look like. Not visiting. Not drifting through. Building something. Choosing it.
The possibility opens in front of me. It frightens me more than any bull ever did. Because bulls you can walk away from.
But if you build a life and it falls apart, there’s nowhere left to drift.
Lola appears at the screen door. “Daddy. Snack.”
“Coming, baby girl.”