The rock-pelting sound grew louder as hail ticked the windows. That last one sounded like it cracked a pane upstairs. Tasha shrieked when an even louder thwack! shook the house, and buried her face in my T-shirt.
I held her close and rubbed her arm some more. Fuck if I knew what to do if we were Auntie Em’d to Oz, but that she trusted me to protect her gave me my first real sense of purpose in a long, long time. I was unused to the sensation of my chest filling with pride. It’d been a while since I’d done anything heroic.
Scratch that. I didn’t think I’d ever done anything heroic.
I put my lips on her hair and inhaled. She smelled great. She felt great. She felt right. I hadn’t been good to her in our recent or far-reaching past, yet here she was, in my house, relying on me to save her from the big, bad act of God raging outside.
She could be the key to saving me from the one raging within. I had no idea how to tame it, but if this moment held clues, I was less filled with fear and doubt with Tasha in my grasp.
How about that?
“H-how long will it last?” Tasha stuttered into my shirt.
Half my mouth lifted into a gentle smile, then faded. Her stutter was cute, but I didn’t want her to be afraid. I wasn’t. Not really. I had to be strong for her.
Which made me wonder…if my stutter might have something to do with fear. If now, with my instincts focused on protecting her, my mind not thinking about whether or not I could talk in a life-or-death situation, I might be freed of it entirely.
I licked my lips and closed my eyes, focusing on the smell of her hair rather than the words I was about to say.
“Talk to me about something, Tasha.”
Just as clean as you please. My heart mule-kicked my chest. My voice sounded like the old me, the words rolling off the tip of my tongue.
Damn, but that felt good. To be able to express an idea without stammering or stuttering or pausing to say “um” or “uh.” But the girl holding me didn’t point out my mini breakthrough.
“I don’t want to talk. I’m terrified.”
“You’re safe,” I assured her, knowing she was. Tornados rarely hit anywhere around Ridgeway. We were in a valley. Other than high winds and blustering threats that didn’t pan out, we rarely suffered wrath worse than a few downed branches.
“I can’t even think.” She lifted her head and I felt her lips graze my jaw. “I just want to sit here with you.”
My skin erupted like a volcano, heat threading down my limbs.
Her next words were whispered in a shredded breath. “I don’t want to talk.”
Did she mean—?
I turned my head, my lips almost touching hers. Want echoed in her gaze and in the way her fingers clutched onto me.
I kissed her.
In spite of the howling wind and pinging hail and the television announcing we were doomed if we didn’t take cover, I lost myself in the feel of Tasha’s mouth. In the soft pull of her lips and the taste of peppermint her breath had promised.
She tilted her head and came closer, her hand gliding over my chest as she tasted me back. I was suddenly glad I’d worked hard to maintain my muscle mass—to keep my body strong. She enjoyed touching me, and I was enjoying it a hell of a lot myself.
I had no idea how long we sat there making out, but before long, my breaths had shortened to pants, and hers had disintegrated to tiny, tantalizing mewls.
She was practically on my lap anyway so, my hands on her ass, I hauled her the rest of the way and settled her over my now-raging erection. My fingers speared her hair, pushing it away from her face so I could gain access to more of her mouth. That was my favorite part of her.
So far.
My dick throbbed.
“Cade,” she panted.
I deepened our kiss, stopping her words. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want her to talk. I wanted my hands under her shirt, her nipples peaking under the pinch of my fingertips. I wanted to snick down the zipper of her shorts and find her slick and ready and…
“Cade,” she repeated, pulling her lips away from mine.
My hand tightened at the back of her neck as my chest rose and fell in a hectic rhythm.
“What?” I growled, out of breath and blind with lust.
She smiled, which only made my heart rate escalate. “The siren is off.”
Don’t care. I kissed her again.
“This is unethical.” She giggled. “You’re my patient.”
“I’m, um, impatient,” I corrected, my voice low. Welcome back, speech problem. I huffed a frustrated breath through my nose, one that blew her rain-dampened hair against her cheek. She pushed the stray lock behind her ear and her smile vanished.
“I should probably go?”
She said it like a question.
I didn’t have a chance to answer before she was moving away from me.
Tasha
I maneuvered off Cade’s lap, bumping the part of him that had grown atomically larger since he’d pressed his lips to mine. Not only larger, but substantially harder.
Lord have mercy. What was he hiding behind his jeans? I wanted to find out. Which was exactly why I should grab my backpack and hightail it home.
“You have a little problem,” I couldn’t help teasing as I moved to stand. I had a little problem too. My inner bad girl had the controls and she was steering me toward Cade even as I willed my feet to take another backward step away from him.
I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to strip Cade naked and lick every inch of his fantastic body. The house was ours. The storm was over…and those kisses.
Gah. Those kisses had turned me hot and horny on contact.
“Little?” His eyebrows pulled into a frown. “M-more like huge. Huge problem,” he corrected, holding his hands apart as if showing me the size of a bass he’d caught on a fishing trip.
“I’m sure.” I rolled my eyes.
Sexual frustration had crept in, and with it his stutter. I was trying not to point it out. Before, I thought maybe his tongue needed a workout. But now…I started questioning my theory. I was hooked on the control thing again. Did he feel out of control right now? What if I gave in? Let him take charge?
Of me.
My neck heated. I could feel the pink hue climbing my cheeks. The idea of him in control made me very happy. But it shouldn’t. Not after I had given Tony too much room to wander. And boy, had he wandered.
Nevertheless…
Sex therapy! the seductress within chanted.
That was a thing.
I bet Cade would have plenty to say when we were naked and he was thrusting…
I fanned my face. I opened my mouth to tell him I was going to leave, again, but before I could, his hand looped around my wrist.
“W-we have work to d-do.”
But his suggestion made me nervous. When he said the word “work,” I immediately thought of him working me into a frenzy. I thought of his lips, tongue, and teeth on my neck. My nipples. My—
He stood but kept hold of my wrist and then, as if an answer to my silent prayer, lowered his lips to kiss my neck. As he tongued the sensitive flesh behind my ear, his fingers wandered to the gold chain around my neck.
He studied the small turtle hanging there a moment before his eyes went to mine, a question in their depths.
“My mom bought it for me,” I said.
“T-tell me.” He closed his eyes like he was pained he hadn’t spoken smoothly.
“It’s a good story,” I said.
He opened his eyes and studied my lips again.
“Come on. Let’s get our beers and I’ll tell you.”
Upstairs we walked outside for a brief inventory of the damage. A few branches—some large—were in the yard, chairs from the patio set on the back deck were knocked over, but nothing major.
What a relief.
I sent a text message to my dad telling him I was okay. He didn’t respond. I’d like to think he was busy, but a small, insecure part of me
whispered that he didn’t care. I ignored it as best I could as Cade and I walked to the garage and then up to his room.
Cade carried our open beer bottles with him and handed mine over as he sat next to me on his couch. I took a sip and winced. It was warm. Full, other than the introductory sip I’d taken before we ran for cover. I bit my lip and studied the bottle, wondering how long we’d been in that basement.
Then I wondered what would happen now that we were up here. Alone.
Cade leaned in and pressed his lips to my neck. Just one light, openmouthed kiss against my now-speeding pulse. I tilted my head to accept more of those kisses, but he pulled away.
“T-talk.”
“Sure, like I can think with you kissing my neck.” I slid him a gaze and found his eyes filled with male pride, which was a look I’d seen on him before. I thought I didn’t like that look, but…I did.
It was a testament to his self-control that he hadn’t ravished me. It was a testament to mine that I hadn’t asked him to.
“My family, when my parents were still married, used to vacation in the Bahamas,” I said, steering the topic back to the necklace he’d asked me about in the basement. That seemed safer than any of the other ideas rampaging through my head.
“The last vacation we went on as a family, my mom and dad took me swimming with the sea turtles. It was my favorite thing ever.”
He shrugged his mouth, his eyes going to half-mast like he was saying oh la la. Not that Cade would ever say oh la la, though if he did, we’d have the beginnings of a productive therapy session.
Anyway.
“They have these big eyes, massive shells,” I continued. “They’re gentle giants. Ridiculously graceful. On land they are painfully slow, but get them in their element and they glide.”
I wondered if he thought what I was saying was stupid, but he didn’t look bored. His lips were curved into an almost smile.
“My mom bought me this necklace after the divorce. It was my Christmas present. She said she always wanted me to remember the happy times we had together. And she promised times would be happy again—maybe not for the three of us together, but for me.”
Cade’s eyebrows closed in and his smile vanished. Sympathy flitted across his face so briefly that if I’d blinked I’d have missed it. He knew intimately what it was like for a family to be ripped apart. He understood wanting things to be good again.
Better than I did, I imagined.
“Things will get better. It just takes time.” I stroked his temple and brushed the hair away from his forehead. He looked at me for a long time, and I didn’t stop touching him. I ran my fingers down his cheek, across his chin, and then over his full bottom lip. I leaned in and pressed a kiss onto his waiting mouth…and decided I didn’t want to come up for air.
He must have agreed, because next he slipped his fingers into my hair, his tongue into my mouth, and we were at it again. Touching, moaning, moving to an invisible beat we had set.
Over my shirt and bra, he cupped my breast, lips leaving mine to suction, warm and wet, on my neck and drive me out of my mind. When his hand lifted my shirt, I stopped him and our eyes met.
I don’t know why I stopped him. I was afraid, kind of. Not of him but of myself. Of what I wanted to do. Part of me thought I was suffering some sort of posttraumatic stress from the storm, but then that sounded stupid in my head.
Cade pulled in a steadying breath before sitting up on the couch. Then he took my hand and helped me sit upright as well. For the next twenty minutes we kissed instead of talking or doing speech therapy.
His hands didn’t wander again.
I lied and told myself I respected him for having self-control.
Chapter 10
Cade
Blue 2 was running like a dream. Now that I had everything the way I wanted under the hood, I could start fixing her on the outside. Repair those rust spots, give her a new paint job, then…the fun part. The chrome and leather interior. Fuzzy dice and a linked-chain steering wheel if I was so inclined. My mouth damn near watered at the vision.
I gunned the engine, tooling around town with Blue 2’s top down until Tasha was done with school and came over for our session. I wondered if we’d do more kissing today and decided if she’d let me, I’d start there.
She was irresistible when she was having trouble resisting me.
I probably shouldn’t, but I had time to kill, so I turned left at a traffic light and drove into a familiar part of town—the business district. I hung a right at the four-way stop on Poplar and then turned left on Claire, pulling to a stop in front of the building I once believed would be mine.
Not strictly mine. Ours. In our freshman year, Miller, Brian, Carey, and I had sat in the empty bank parking lot across the street drinking whiskey directly from a bottle wrapped in the liquor-store paper bag. We’d discussed living upstairs as soon as we attained our bachelor’s degrees, then setting up shop after completing law school. “Work your life and live your work” had been our motto.
I parked along the curb, resting my wrist on the steering wheel and imagining my name on one of the office doors inside. I wanted that. Or the idea of that, anyway. Now I wasn’t sure what I wanted. Guess it didn’t matter. I was stuck with what I didn’t want.
Except that’s bullshit.
Yeah, I guessed it was. If I had something I didn’t want, changing it was as simple and as difficult as, well…changing it. I never believed I’d speak a clear syllable again, yet I’d uttered several in the last few weeks with Tasha, hadn’t I?
I sank down in my seat, even though the top was up, when the front door swung open from the inside. Hand partially covering my face, I watched Carey step out, Miller behind him. They propped open the door and Brian came out, and then the three of them went to a large moving truck and unloaded a wide, flat cardboard box. Like one big, happy family. Envy, or maybe jealousy, or maybe good old-fashioned bitterness leaked into my bloodstream.
Judging by the shape and size of the box, it was a desk. Some assembly required. Miller couldn’t put together a LEGO set. Which was why he needed me. I could have put that thing together with one hand tied behind my back. Maybe you could get a maintenance job with them, then.
I ground my teeth at the thought. I was beginning to hate that voice. Lately I’d felt like I had both hands tied behind my back. I was no longer going to be a part of what we’d sat and dreamed up that night long ago, and the sooner I accepted it, the better. I eased Blue 2 down the street and raced home with one person on my mind.
Tasha.
The second I saw her, I was going to get a healthy dose of “oral therapy” from her. She was the only person who could take away the constricting feeling in my chest.
And I was going to let her.
Tasha
Cade’s tongue, warm and wet in the best way, stroked mine. Everything in my body heated on contact.
I’d rapped on the door in the garage that led to his bedroom, but instead of calling for me to come up, he met me in the garage. Then he pushed my back against the wall, pressed my arms overhead, and kissed me for all he was worth.
I didn’t argue. Instead, I looped my arms around his neck once he let me go and accepted his assault. After a few minutes of hot and heavy, his pelvis and mine rubbing and gyrating, he’d chased me up the stairs to his room, swatting my butt on the way.
I’d been in Cade’s childhood bedroom a hundred times but in this one only a few times. It was technically an extension of the house, but it felt and acted like an apartment, private and contained.
Being here with him now that we’d crossed so many lines felt significant, but also safe. I knew he wouldn’t go further than I wanted. But that wasn’t the problem, was it? The problem was how far I wanted to go.
Weirdly enough, I felt like we’d been dating since our eyes first met in his hospital room after his accident. Or maybe sooner: the moment I’d left my friends on Alley Road and chased the ambulance with Cade in it. Since t
hat fateful night, Cade and I had become fixtures in each other’s lives. I thought he was an asshole back then but I couldn’t escape the need to help when I worried he had no one who cared.
He kissed me now, but he was less frantic than before. More careful. He sat on the edge of his bed and pulled me onto his lap, his feet firmly on the floor. His hands hadn’t strayed into tingly territory but were getting closer. My heart stuttered when one palm grazed my skin beneath the cotton of my shirt.
I sucked in a breath and pulled my lips from his.
“Let me touch you,” he whispered against my lips.
Inside I cheered, not only because I wanted him to touch me but because he’d spoken so clearly. He was calm. He was in control. Those were the two best factors for his speech. Mentioning it would be a major faux pas, so I didn’t. His fingertips danced over my stomach and my abdominal muscles clenched.
I immediately forgot about speech lessons.
He flattened his hand on the small of my back, his tongue moving along mine. Boundaries had been tested on the couch last week, and now he wanted to know what I was okay with. I answered by sliding my tongue along his and grabbing the side of his neck to pull his mouth closer. His kisses were drugging. When he was kissing me, I forgot who I was, what we were supposed to be doing, and that we’d ever not liked each other.
Fingers tickled along the front of my stomach, and I tensed when he drew circles on my rib cage. He was testing how far I’d let him go, and to be honest, I hadn’t figured that out yet.
At the edge of my bra, he moved his mouth from mine and tracked those firm lips down the column of my neck, then behind my ear. I wiggled in his lap, encountering that same rigid length against my hip. He grunted when I moved against him and brushed his hand over my bra. My breath caught, loving the teasing heat that built between us.
He rolled my shirt over my stomach, but I moved it back down and grasped his hand. He clamped onto the back of my neck and leveled a questioning glare at me, his brow furrowing.
Shut Up and Kiss Me: A Lost Boys Novel Page 10