Mucking stalls while Kendall went to get fresh hay, the reminder of how closed off I really was, how little of myself I had really given Jake had me crashing back to earth. Yeah, it had only been two weeks, but with being together almost twenty-four seven it felt like much longer. I know Jake cares about me, if he didn’t I wouldn’t be here with him at his family home, and he certainly wouldn’t be pissed at me about not knowing I’m from Montana. What I still didn’t know though was if Jake was interested in more. His life was in DC, mine in LA. He lived his life in the public eye, and I lived mine behind it.
“What’s banging around in that pretty head of yours? I can hear the cogs turning from over here,” Kendall says in her way and I realize that at some point I must have stopped shoveling and she’d returned to lay the fresh hay, finding the stall floor unfinished.
“Shit, I mean shoot. Sorry!” I say shoveling double time to catch up.
Finished, I move out of Kendall’s way, watching as she beds down the floor, her pointed look over at me a reminder I had yet to answer her question.
“Your son is a wonderful man, you’ve raised him right, but he scares me. He has me thinking about things that I’ve never thought about before. That I’ve never thought about wanting for myself. Not once.”
I didn’t elaborate on what those things were, I could barely admit some of them to myself, let alone say them out loud.
“We did, we raised them both right. Cassie, relationships can be scary, particularly when you know you’ve got something to lose. But, the very fact that you do, that you’d take the risk anyway because being with them was more important, doesn’t that tell you something?”
She’s looking at me like I should know exactly what she’s talking about, and I do. Deep down. If I was honest with myself, I’d started knowing it the moment I’d crashed into Jake.
“My past has mad––”
Kendall shakes her head at me, so again I stop and listen.
“No Cassie. If you’re going to drop truth bombs, I’m not the one you owe them to, now am I?”
“No, you’re not. I owe them to Jake.”
“Mmhm. You do, but only if you see a future with him. If not, please do us all a favor and not yank on my son’s chain. He’s been through that once.”
“Brooke,” I mumble to myself, and I see Kendall’s eyes flare, with what I’m not sure, but I know she’s heard me.
She’s watching me so intently, I want to look away, but I don’t. “He’s told you about Brooke?”
“A little, the highlights I guess.”
I know I don’t have the whole picture of their relationship, but I have enough to know it was Brooke that Kendall was referring to.
“Hmm,” she says and doesn’t say anything more for a few pauses, but I know enough about her now not to relax. Something will be coming out of her mouth, and I’m going to want to hear it.
“I know my boy Cassie. I saw instantly that when he looks at you, he sees who you are, even if he doesn’t have all the pieces yet. You say he scares you, I get that, but do you want to know what scares me?”
I nod, though I’m not really sure that I do.
“I watched him looking at you, and whether or not he’s aware of it, he thinks he’s looking at his future. Now, what scares me…is I don’t know you well enough to know what you see when you look at him. So here’s my final piece of advice for you, you ready?”
Like the bobble-head I seem to be around this astute woman, I nod.
“If you can’t let Jake in to your mind,” at this she touches her finger to her temple, “don’t you dare take up space in his heart,” and moving her finger over and down, she taps her chest over her heart.
Staring at one another, two women who are in Jake’s life, wordlessly we seem to come to an understanding. If I can’t give Jake as much as he gives me, I need to let him go.
“Are we clear?” she asks.
“Yes. We’re clear,” I say and we are. Crystal clear.
If I’m going to take the risk, to try and make this work, I need to start letting Jake in to my head. Of course, as far as my heart goes…I’m fairly certain Jake already has it.
“Good girl. Let’s finish up here and head in for supper. The men won’t be far behind us.”
Chapter 17
Cassie
“I see the hot guy you were waiting for didn’t show up. Seems it’s my lucky night,” Jake says as he walks over and plops himself next to me on the sofa, bringing me out of the reflection of my day with his mom.
Dressed in pajama bottoms sitting low on his hips and no shirt, he looks as good as he smells, like clean man and Jake. I know we used the same shower gel because without my bag inside at the time, I’d used what was in Jake’s shower too.
It smells way better on him.
“Who say’s he didn’t show up?” I ask as I lift up onto my knees and straddle myself across Jake’s thighs, sitting near his knees, his hands going to my ass. “From what I can tell, he’s right on time.”
Placing one of his giant hands in the center of my back for balance, Jake leans forward and picks up his scotch from the table behind me, bringing me back with him when he straightens.
“Cheers, beautiful,” he says smirking, holding up his drink and I clink my glass to his.
Once we’ve both taken a sip, I lean back, putting my glass on the table behind me, before taking Jake’s and doing the same. He watches me intently while I do this, saying nothing. I know I’m being selfish, but I want Jake’s touch. I need his hands on me, anchoring me as I take the first step towards letting him in. Bringing my palms to his cheeks, I lean in and kiss him, inhaling in his whiskey-scented breath, letting it intoxicate me. Before he can deepen the kiss, I pull back, but slide my hands from his cheeks to around his neck.
“You’re right to think I’ve always got one foot out the door, I proved to you I do. You’ve known me two weeks Jake, but you’ve seen it more than once. I…I just want you to know that I heard you in the bathroom at your parents, I heard your all your words an––”
Jake interrupts me. “Cassie, I told you I was ang––”
“No, please,” I interrupt him right back, putting a finger over his lips. “Don’t let me off the hook for what happened today. I get you were angry, and I understand why you were, but the other things you said…you weren’t making shit up Jake. You told me what you were thinking, what you were feeling, and well…I just need you to know that I heard you.”
With my finger still resting against his lips, he puckers them, wordlessly asking for a kiss. Pressing my mouth softly to his, I then reluctantly pull away. Jake’s hands move from my hips to my back, and I’m moments away from scooting forward and letting my upper body press into his chest, tucking my head under his chin, and staying there for the rest of my life. But I’m not quite finished.
“I also need you to know that I heard your mom’s advice too, including what you saw when we left tonight. What all of that was exactly, I’m not going to tell you, but not because I’m being evasive, more because I think it’s covered under both mom-business and chick-code,” I say smiling at him, and I get one in return.
“Just know that I respect her Jake, and she made a lot of sense. Were it not for her today…I either would’ve left while you worked with your dad, or gone straight after you, we would’ve fought and I then I would have left. Even after you telling me to leave in the bathroom…if not for talking with her today, I would’ve done what you’d said Jake. I would’ve taken the S.U.V. and left. Without your mom being her badass self today, the most likely outcome would’ve meant that I wouldn’t be here now. We wouldn’t be here now.” I take a deep breath, “And Jake, I really like that I’m here with you.”
With our different shade but both blue eyes locked together, my fingers are curling in and out of the hair at the nape of Jake’s neck in a similar pattern to his hands along my back and I feel like something is shifting between us. While I know it makes me more vulnerable
to open up like I just did, I also feel lighter, trusting that Jake is also here, in this moment, with me.
Without speaking, we start kissing, really kissing. Not urgent and ravenous but not sweet and slow either. Kissing like it’s the melding of our feelings and as if we have all the time in the world to let it happen. Before long, my hips wiggle forward, flexing into Jake’s groin, seeking his hardness. As always with Jake, my lust for him has climbed rapidly and I need friction. I nip his bottom lip playfully, and feeling the change in atmosphere between us, I suck it into my mouth before releasing it with a soft popping sound. Jake’s hands, having long since found my skin, make their way around the front of my shirt. Leading the way with just the tips of his fingers, my body undulates against his touch; desperate to have his fingers reach my nipples. Their hardened points are so tight that the shifting of the soft cotton against them teases me further, my chest arching to seek more contact. I run my hands down Jake’s chest, stopping at his nipples. Knowing that they’re sensitive - which I fucking love - I give each one a tiny flick before leaning forward and biting down gently on the one closest to my mouth.
Lifting the front only, Jake semi-removes my t-shirt. With the front up over my head and behind my neck, he leaves my arms in the fabric so it’s bunched behind my shoulders, across my back. With my chest pushed naturally forward in as a result, Jake takes further advantage, sucking as much of one breast into his mouth as he can. Pulling back slowly until just my nipple remains in his wet warmth, he flicks his tongue against the peak then sucks hard and I see stars. Before he moves to my lonely breast and repeats the process, I thrust my hand inside the waistband of his pajamas. Finding his hot length, I love feeling the way it swells further against my hand. Between all the places our bodies are touching and teasing, my need to be fucked overwhelms me.
“Bedroom, Jake,” I whimper at the same time Jake secures me in his arms and stands, my legs going around him, as he’s walking us down the short hallway to his bedroom.
Practically throwing me on the bed, he reaches behind me and finishes tearing the t-shirt from my body. Pushing me so I’m flat on the bed, Jake grabs the rolled-up legs of my sweats and pulls them off me so fast I nearly come off the bed with them. Thank God they’re his so they’re plenty loose or I’m sure I’d be on the floor as well.
“Open your legs Cassie,” Jake demands and there is a feral edge to his voice, an edge I like very much if the spasm of my core is any indication.
I open my legs wide before raising my knees towards my body and hooking an arm under each one, stretching me further. I could not be more exposed, from clit to asshole I’m open to his gaze and Jake is wild with obvious lust. At some point he’s shed his pajama bottoms and is now jacking his cock so furiously I’m starting to feel sorry for it. Completely in a trance, eyes fixed on my sex; the muscles in his stomach and arms are rippling in waves from the action. The image takes me from wet and needy to soaked and insatiable. He’s just so fucking sexy and if he wants to look, I’ll give him something to watch.
I take an arm out from under one knee but keep my legs open, before bringing it to the front of my body and sliding my palm across both breasts, then slowly down the center of my torso. My body knows the destination of my fingers, and my hips lift from the bed in anticipation. Moaning when my fingers hit my clit, I swirl and tease myself before moving them down to slide through my drenched folds.
“Taste yourself Cassie,” Jake directs, but I do him one better. Curling my first two fingers into my pussy, I bring them out wet and raise my hand up towards my mouth. I open my lips and extend my tongue, seeing Jake watch my every move through his lowered lids. Just before I make contact, I shift my fingers and wipe my juices right across one nipple.
“Jeeesssuss…” Jake huffs.
Eyes locked to his, I grab the underside of my breast and push it up closer to my mouth while leaning down to capture the coated bud between my teeth. Sucking and licking, I plant my feet into the mattress, as my hips thrust and wiggle into empty air.
“Christ!” Jake yells, and I look down his body to find he’s pinching the head of his cock with the fingers of one hand and firmly gripping the base in the other.
I’ve just gotten my fingers back into my dripping core, when I’m flipped over, my hips lifted so high in the air most of my torso leaves the bed. My thighs together and held firmly by Jake, I’m nearly in a handstand as he devours my pussy from behind. No grace, no apologies, simply a man possessed and it makes me burn.
“God, Cassie. I love your taste.”
Speaking mostly into my pussy he’s breathing through his nose, and I hear his tongue licking at his lips like he’s collecting any trace left of me there.
“Jake, please. I need more.”
Putting my legs down, and pressing my chest to the comforter, Jake leaves my ass in the air. My pussy is clenching around nothing and I’m desperate for him to fill me on the first thrust.
“I’m not gonna last Cassie, I want you with me. Flick your clit beautiful, I like feeling your little fingers on my balls as I fuck your perfect pussy.”
I’m fairly certain I’m going to come the moment Jake stretches my walls, but I slide my hand under my body and give my fully exposed clit barely there rubs as I wait for Jake to––
“Oh, fuuuuck!” I shout, Jake pushing into me so hard and so fast, my face slides against the bed, but I don’t give a shit.
My world has gone black, then shiny white with thousands of little stars and I am lost to the intensity of a pleasure level I’ve only known since him. My pussy is clenching and releasing, prolonging my orgasm in the best way and by the satisfied noises he’s making, adding to Jake’s. Feeling wet from my mound to my thighs, he works his hips sedately, drawing out the last of his release before slowly dragging his cock from my body. Not wanting to miss it, I reach behind me, my fingers in a V over my pussy lips, and I feel his shaft as he slips between them.
As he settles half of his weight on top me, becoming part of the sated human shape I’ve formed on his bed, I feel his fingers swipe through my sex before trailing to explore my puckered flesh, smearing us there. Fingers playing but not breaching, his intent is clear.
My ass is his.
* * *
Having slowly fucked again through our shower, I’m lying in Jake’s arms, my back to his, and the light of the full moon outside the large window is the only illumination in the room. I love that out here there’s no need to close your blinds or curtains at night, and it’s something that I had forgotten. Jake’s breathing is deep and even and I’m sure he’s nearly asleep. Body well and truly sated, it’s my mind that’s restless, and I’m gathering courage to let a little of it out.
“My mom was the love of my dad’s life. Soul mates, everyone said. From the moment they met, it was done. He lived and breathed for her, and she him. They were the center of each other’s universe. Happy, young, carefree, their whole lives ahead of them. It broke him when she died. Broke him in a way he was never the same again. He became a shell of his former self, going through the motions that mimicked the life he’d lead before her death, but it wasn’t real, because while he breathed, he wasn’t really alive.”
I’m whispering lightly, even though the words themselves have a weight to them that means they hanging heavy in the room. I want to take them back. I want to try and say them better, and I feel sick with the thought that maybe I’ve said them wrong. This always happens when I speak about them, tell their story, which is why at some point, I’d stopped. I’d stopped saying anything. If I didn’t say the words, I couldn’t feel bad about how they sounded and I couldn’t feel guilty about being the one who was saying them. Regardless, I owed them to Jake, and so clearing my throat, I continued.
“The thing is, I only know most of this because the people who knew them told me. They’d told me nearly every day of my life. Well, from the time I understood what their words meant. She’d died giving birth to me, my mom. Not an hour after I was born,
she’d died. Unforeseen complication. Postpartum hemorrhage. Whichever one people chose to use when they spoke about what’d happened, the result was still the same. She was dead.”
I take a deep breath, waiting a few beats to see if Jake is with me or if he had actually been asleep back when I’d started talking. Thinking I might as well keep talking even if I’m the only one who hears it, I close my eyes when Jake’s quiet and gravelly words come from behind me.
“Don’t stop Cassie, keep going. I’m right here,” he says and the arm he’s holding me with gets just a fraction tighter.
“We lived with my gran, and for as long as I can remember, that was the home I knew. My parents had a house, but as far as I know, my father never went back there. I don’t even know where it is. Gran was the one who started to tell me stories about them and how in love they were. I used to think it was so magical, like a prince and a princess. At least until I was old enough to understand what the princess being asleep really meant, and old enough to see how broken the prince actually was. I know Gran meant well, that she was trying to keep the memory of my mother alive for me, so that’s all I have of her. Memories of my mother that aren’t my own, but memories of the stories I’ve been told.”
I take a breath. And another. Jake kisses the back of my shoulder, leaving his lips against my skin like he always does, and so I keep talking.
“I know my dad loved me Jake. Despite everything, I never questioned it, but because of what people said - to me, around me, about me - I also knew why his smile never reached his eyes. Why he’d physically be in the room with me, but not there at the same time. Why sometimes when he’d watch me as I played or danced or something kids do, his face would look so sad, that I’d have to look away. Or better yet, run away. It was too much. Too much emotion and I didn’t know what to do with it, so I ran. Outside, up to the attic, over to the kid’s house across the street, anywhere but stay in the room. It was as if I’d known that to survive it, to not let all that sadness change me, I had to protect myself from it. I decided there was no way I’d ever fall in love like that, because falling in love was a stupid idea.”
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