Let It Burn

by Dee Ellis

  “The answer is,” Mom was at my side, a gentle hand smoothing over my back, “yes, absolutely, Cage. I adore her. Your sisters adore her. Look at your father,” We laughed when we saw him talking and laughing with her, seeming enchanted, “and you...you look at her the same way your father looks at me.” My eyes, so firmly adoring my girl, swung to my mom and I felt choked up to see emotion in hers as she looked at Charli.

  “Do I? I am crazy about her, Mom. Do you think...is it too fast?” It was the first time since I met Charli I’d for a moment questioned how fast I fell for her.

  “Too fast? Who decides too fast or too slow? I knew about forty-eight hours after I met Deacon he would be my husband. I like to tell the story different, of course,” We laughed because he loved that version, where he was the moony one desperately in love with Gwen on sight, “I fought my hardest to be level headed about him. Your father just didn’t allow that. Am I ever glad he didn’t,” Mom looked lovingly over the family and my chest tightened.

  “Look at my beautiful life. My beautiful family. I hurt along the way, so did he. I hated his job sometimes because he loved it so much. Never more than me. Never more than you kids. Your father is a good man, Cage. Just like you are, son. You love because you love. Who cares how long it took? Long as you work to make it last.” I knew she was right, knew I really had no doubts about my feelings for Charli. Didn’t mean it didn’t feel good to have them validated by the second most important woman in my life.

  “Charli likes to run,” I sighed as I watched her giggling with my sister, eyes swinging to mine often, “I might have to chase her a lot. I will though. I will follow her for the rest of my life, if I have to. I love her, Mom.” Emotion thickened my voice, my arm tightening around my Mom as I whispered this to her.

  “Oh, Cage,” Her arm went tight around my waist too, “don’t let her run too far then, son. You chase her if she makes you feel like this. Chase her until you can’t run anymore. The look on your face when you look at her...she knows you love her even if you’re too scared to say it,” I was terrified because it made the words might give my girl reason to run.

  We don’t always need the words, son. When she needs the words though, you be sure you say them. You got it?” My eyes watched Charli with my family, as I nodded; I knew soon enough she would need the words. I knew soon enough she would run. I felt in despite how deep our lives had become entangled.

  Charli said she wouldn’t run because she wanted to or because it made sense. Or even because she wanted to hurt me. Somehow, I knew as I shared her with my family that weekend and watched them fall in love with her, I would be the one hurting her. Because Charli loved my family almost as much as she loved me. Watching her laugh with them and share a little bit of herself with them over those few days, I knew it would be me that fucked it up.

  I wouldn’t mean to; I wouldn’t even know I was doing it. Charli would give me the chance to fuck it up and not even know it, either. Then she would run, as I was afraid she was already preparing to do. That conversation with her sister in law had never been brought up again.

  When I took her out to the lake on our last night at the cabin, I wanted to give her the words. To go back home with us both knowing I loved her and she loved me. As I sat in the darkness of the sandy beach beside her, the moon lighting her up like a fucking angel, I started to say it.

  Then she looked at me with that look in her eyes, asking me to give her the words and I couldn’t. Because she wanted them now, but she didn’t need them. We had a small fire going so I undressed her and watched the shadows dance over her body.

  “You are so fucking beautiful baby,” I murmured softly, eyes drinking in her full breasts, the curve of her hips, the cleft between her legs, “every. Single. Inch.” Lowering over her, my knees nudging hers open on the sand, she gasped as my skin met hers.

  “Baby...so are you,” Her hands traced over the tattoos I had itemized for her over the past weeks, “all of you.” Then her little palm pressed over my heart as it thundered in my chest and I shuddered.

  We didn’t speak after that, no dirty talk or whispers about how good it was. I slipped inside her, stilling for a long moment as her heat went vice tight around me. I loved being connected to her this way. Looking into her eyes as my body settled inside hers, tying me to her in the most intimate way possible.

  I felt tethered to her since that first time I took her. Like a chord that wrapped tighter and tighter every single time we made love. Didn’t matter if it was dirty fucking in her office, or sweet, gentle love making in the sun on a Saturday. Each time wound her around my heart more and I couldn’t breathe without her now.

  Slow and deep I sunk into her until the fire burned away and it was just us and the moonlight. Her soft breathy moans and my name on her lips the only sounds on the still, cool air. I crushed her to me and whispered nonsense at her ears when we began to shudder together. Both from the cold and the rolling, intense orgasm that crashed through us.

  It crawled up my spine and took my breath away and as I looked into her eyes, I knew it would always be like this with her. Raw and intense and almost desperate. Because that’s how I loved her. Charli cried out into the night and I wound my hand around her throat, feeling her pulse pound for me.

  The words were there in how I lost myself inside her. It was not enough yet, but when she needed the words, I would give them to her.

  Because I knew soon enough she would run. The words I felt, we both felt, were what would keep her from running again.

  Charli

  Cage kept watching me, waiting for me to run. It made me antsy but not the way he thought. It made me want to climb his massive, gorgeous body like a tree and prove I was sticking it out. With him. Being scared right here with him beside me. Everything was so perfect; too perfect and fuck yes I wanted to run.

  It had been almost two months since we had started seeing each other. Almost two weeks since the trip back to his family’s house that made me fall not only in love with him more, but with his family too. His mom was bright and warm just like him and I adored her.

  Made me miss my mom more, but made me yearn for a relationship with her that I couldn’t explain. I wanted to learn about the woman who raised this amazing, perfect man.

  Since that visit, unbeknownst to Cage, we talked frequently. Every few days in fact, I was talking to one of the other ladies in his life. I loved his sister Gigi, who was just a year or two younger than me. We were like kindred spirits.

  If I wasn’t with Cage, I was with her or talking to Gwen or one of his older sisters, Regan or Tegan. They had welcomed me so easily into the fold of their family and I knew Cage knew how big that was for me.

  I knew how big it was for them, really. I had lunch with Sara and Gwen the Monday following our weekend and I think she saw how crazy I was about her son. Sara sure as hell saw it and the two gushed about young romance and how it was lovely to see it blooming. Afterwards, on the walk in the windy, icy cold back to the library, I blurted it out.

  “I’m in love with him.” Sara froze but not due to the cold and I plowed into her, my face flushed from my announcement.

  “Oh pet,” Sara peered down at me in the bright sunlight, her cheeks rosy and eyes bright, “of course you are. Were you ever not in love with him?” I shot her a look then smiled widely, giving her a shove.

  “Maybe. For a few hours, at least. I think I maybe even didn’t like him once.” We laughed as she hooked an arm through mine, both of us fighting against the wind.

  “I knew you fancied him. Him you. The day at lunch with the kids, when he talked about my Griffin. It was then I knew it was more. That the seeds of love had been planted and now they’re blooming like wild flowers.” I gave her another shove and laughed into the cold, head tipped back, welcoming the sting and the chapped lips.

  “Are you Sweet Sara, the Poet today?” I wondered when I knew for sure I was in love with him before I thought maybe Sara was right. Maybe I had been the whol
e time.

  “I’m always good with words, lass. I love Cage like my blood. Love you too, pet. Like my own. I want you both to be happy. Cage...he’s more resilient than you right now. Just be careful. Even though I see how he looks at you. Just like Deacon looks at Gwen.” That sent a shudder running through me.

  Over the course of the three days I had spent with his family, I saw that look. Deacon really did look at Gwen like she was an angel, perfection personified in his eyes. Then again, Gwen looked at him with just as much love and adoration in her eyes.

  I had no doubt about the tale of their great love. That they met and knew fast, faster than Cage and I even, that they had found the great love of their life. I knew it could happen once I saw them.

  I believed in it, believed it was just how the Coopers loved. Regan had told me about her similar experience with Parker. Tegan was slower to accept it, much like I was, but she and her fiancé Miles were another casualty of Cooper love. I never stood a chance.

  I thought Cage loved me. Felt it in that heavy look Sara had mentioned. In the sweet, endearing and endless notes he sent me as we exchanged books. He explained about the pub crawls they used to make a ritual out of. Even explained about a rating scale Gigi had set up to score the women he and Finn often spent time with.

  Gigi was forth coming with this rating scale, insisting I was Cage’s Hermione Grainger. Or Lizzie Bennett. I had to admit, the rating scale, as silly as it was, had me curious about his previous liaisons.

  When I asked, he told me. They were all barely ones or two, Anastasia Steele’s and Daisy Buchanan’s. Which made me not only love him more, but wonder if Cage thought I rated as high as Gigi did.

  Then I wondered what I might rate him. A Mr. Darcy or Peeta Mellark for sure. I was laughing about this with Lola when Cage stopped by for lunch. We spent as many lunches as his schedule would allow together. Unless I was with the Mentor program, which was going great.

  Now a full month and a half into it, I was having my first issues with it. Not because the kids, who were great. After Dr. Patel, who the kids had warmed up to finally, we had a judge then a programmer. This week we were working with a cop.

  I learned soon enough Deacon and Gwen, who was a pediatric RN, had pulled all kinds of favors to get the mentor program filled with friends and colleagues. The police officer, Blake Stiles was aggressive and driven, someone who knew what they wanted.

  Unfortunately for us both, he thought he might want me. Apparently, I drew men in uniform. This was a new occurrence. Perhaps at another time in my life, while I pined away for my husband that never was, it might have been exciting.

  Now I was not only oblivious to it, I was mildly offended. Blake knew Cage, was friends with both he and Finn, in fact. Literally everyone in Cage’s life, and mine in fact, knew we were together. It actually made me a little sick.

  Because days before I had been on the other end of what it might feel like. We had gone to O’Malley’s with Finn and Gigi, against his wishes, and moments after we took a seat I knew why. Of course there were a handful of obvious Badge Bunnies; the girls who got off on sleeping with men in uniform. One in particular stuck out though. Because when she saw me, I saw her.

  Cage told me the story later. Ariel was her name; after the rough break up that had blindsided him, she was the first badge bunny he had indulged in. It had been just a couple of times but Cage didn’t realize that’s how those things went. That night, after years of being denied by friends who were loyal to Cage, she seemed interested in a second go round.

  Not even because she wanted him or cared. No, lovely Ariel was about destruction, I could sense that in her angry glare that never left us all night. Others had something she didn’t, maybe never could, and she wanted to see it torn apart.

  That night as Cage swore over and over that life was behind him, that he was a one-woman man, I believed him. Didn’t mean jealousy didn’t rip through me and fill me with questions I didn’t want answers to.

  Now as he glared at Blake, slipping his arm around my neck and lavishing a kiss at my mouth that was borderline obscene, I knew he was still waiting. Waiting for me to run, waiting for the Ariel’s or the Blake’s to give me reason to. Lola had informed him of Blake’s flirtations after his first day with the kids and Cage was livid.

  Instead of fanning the flames like so many might, I wanted just to soothe him. As he had tried to that night after the pub. Over and over he told me how crazy he was about me. Swore he couldn’t lose me as he made love to me for hours.

  Cage never said the words, but I didn’t need them. I saw it in his honey hazel eyes; felt it in the way he buried himself inside me. Cage loved me and I had never felt so complete, so connected to someone else before.

  “Baby,” I pressed into his mouth as he made a show of clutching me close, “don’t. Look at me, Cage.” Cage was rigid with tension and I might have laughed at how clueless he was; I never looked at another man, never noticed if they looked at me.

  “Blake keeps looking at you like that, I’ll break his fucking neck.” I laughed and he shot me a look before relaxing into me, laughing too.

  “Baby. Don’t. Take me to lunch. Feed me,” The next words were whispered at his ear and only for him, “fuck me. Repeat.” Cage growled and slapped my ass, Lola wiggling her brows and fanning herself as we passed by.

  “I enjoy a show from time to time, you know. I won’t even try to join in.” Lola teased and Cage laughed, shooting her a dark smirk that no doubt made her panties wet. Mine were.

  “You are a deviant. Stop talking to my girl.” We all laughed and I snuggled into his side, letting him whisk me out of the library.

  Forty-five minutes later he had followed my directions. We shared sushi, which was now my favorite thing, and now we were in my truck. It was mid-October but it was cold out and I was hardly used to it. I liked it though; especially on the nights I got to have Cage at my place, naked in front of the big fireplace.

  Cage insisted I drive my beast of a truck to work, or he drove it and picked me up. I think he just liked the privacy the big cab and tinted windows provided. Which we were making use of as the wind howled outside, drowning out everything else.

  “Jesus, fuck,” Cage growled as I pushed at his shoulders, hips rolling against his, “swear to god your pussy is magic. I never get enough. You feel so fucking good, baby.” His large hands dug into my hips beneath my skirt, lifting me against his pulsing cock.

  “Mmm, magic cock too,” I mumbled into his mouth, dipping my head back as his mouth closed over my nipple, “magic mouth. I love your mouth on me. Everywhere.”

  “You taste so good. Fuck, baby, ride my cock,” Grunts and whimpers filled the fogged over cab, the sound of our bodies meeting crude and filthy, “fuck me Sugar. God your pussy’s so wet for me. Look at me, Sugar. Look at me when you ride my cock. You’re so beautiful, baby. You’re fucking mine.” His hips thrust harder, faster, sinking him deeper inside me each time he bottomed out.

  “Yes...yes, Cage. God it feels so good. Harder, baby. I need you to make me come.” Cage tipped his head back against the seat, his strong hands holding me still on his thick, pulsing length.

  “Tell me. Tell me you’re mine. You don’t get to come till you tell me who you belong to, Sugar. I need the words.” I had other words I wanted to say, and as I watched him in the hot air of the cab, I almost blurted them out.

  “I’m yours, Cage. I belong to you, baby. Please...make me come then come inside me. I need it, baby.” Cage fucked me almost every single day, sometimes many times a day, and I never got enough.

  “I love that. That you need me to make you feel good. No one else, Sugar. This pussy belongs to me. Let me make you come with my cock deep inside your sweet pussy. Let me watch you come for me. Only me.” Cage still felt tense and he was fucking away his fears by claiming me. I would let him prove I was his however he needed to.

  Just as he promised, he made me come. Cage pounded into me roughly, cursing hot words
against my ear as I collapsed against his firm chest. Stars burst behind my eyes as my teeth sunk into his shoulder and I murmured his name. Over and over his hips still thrust savagely, as if he could burrow deep enough into me that I never had a doubt who I belonged to. When his teeth bit at my neck, I knew what it was about.

  Cage was marking me as his and I didn’t even care. If that’s what it took for him. If he needed to see that bruise, see his touch at my skin when he left me at the library, then he needed it.

  Just like I had basically climbed into his lap and dry fucked him in front of that badge bunny bitch at the pub. I had needed it, to prove to myself, to him and to her and anyone else watching. Cage was mine.

  Smiling as I remembered how quickly his fingers had slipped my panties aside, I knew he had known then. Fucking me with his fingers, he had never taken his eyes off me, except once. When I came moments later, I had moaned his name softly, barely a whisper in the loud, crowded pub. Just loud enough for her to hear as she sat feet away, watching us.

  Cage had pulled his fingers from my soaked pussy, sucking them into his mouth and groaning. One look over his shoulder at her, an evil smirk at his mouth as he sucked his fingers clean. Then, he had kissed me lewdly, my taste still on his tongue, as he whispered just one word. Mine.

  It was dirty and in another life I might have been embarrassed by it. But I wasn’t. If Cage wanted to bury his face between my legs and smile at another man with my juices all over his face, I doubt I would stop him.

  “Jesus, Sugar. Quick fucks in the afternoon are as hot as all night in that beast of a bed. Mmm, I smell you on me the rest of the day. Don’t know how I function you smell so fucking good. Let me get some Sugar before you go.” My hands shoved at his shoulders as I giggled, his hands lifting me from his semi hard cock.