by Gemma Bruce
“Wes decorated my room.”
“Ah,” he said. “Hit me with the worst.”
She opened the door.
Cas looked inside and shook his head in dismay as he took in the pink rug, the pink walls, the pink monstrosity of a bed. Thanks for stopping at the bearskin rug, he silently messaged to Wes. “It’s, um, pink,” he said.
“I warned you.”
He followed Julie inside and closed the door in Smitty’s face. Smitty whined, barked, then Cas heard his nails clicking down the stairs. He let out a sigh of contentment. Pink wasn’t so bad. Hell, any color was palatable if Julie was naked in it. He set about making it so.
He snared the end of the tie belt she’d wrapped around the huge robe. When she stepped back, the bow fell free. He pulled off the tie and the robe opened to reveal a rose-colored satin negligee. Her nipples were taut against the creamy fabric. His dick stirred again and fought its way upward. Cas shifted to give it room, then thought, to hell with it, and opened his jeans.
Julie’s hand slipped past his and dipped into his underwear, freeing him. He swelled in her hand.
“My dick thanks you,” he said and slipped the robe from her shoulders. It stopped at her bent elbows as her hands slid around his hips to clasp his butt. Everything in him tightened. The robe spilled over her arms and spread out behind her like exotic plumage.
His fingers pulled the band from the braid of hair that hung down her back, then he slowly unplaited it and wrapped it in his fingers. He leaned forward and kissed her neck, then pulled her hair to his lips and kissed it, too.
He could feel her shudder. This is where she belonged, where he belonged. He felt a stab of remorse that they had lost so many years. But she pulled his ass to her and he forgot about everything but the present.
She rubbed against him and he had to get closer. Feel the silky fabric on his skin. But Julie was already pushing his jeans and boxers down. He released her hair long enough to pull off his sweater and T-shirt.
She opened her arms, a high priestess, invoking the gods of hot sex, and the robe slid to the floor.
Cas groaned and pushed his jeans off his feet without taking his eyes from hers. Then he stood before her and waited for her to come to him. It was the hardest thing he could remember ever doing.
She seemed to hover before him. Like the first night when she appeared like an apparition out of the woods. Then, arms at her side, she stepped forward until the length of her nightgown caressed the front of him. She swayed on her feet. The cool, smooth fabric brushed across him and set his skin tingling.
He reached for her, but she shook her head, continuing her seductive dance, using the negligee like fingers to set him on fire. He wanted to snatch it off her and keep it sliding against his flesh; indecision held him powerless. And he realized he was moving against her movement. Not the grinding, unchained foreplay they’d indulged in before. But slow, sensuous, and ten times as arousing.
“Julie,” he whispered.
She shook her head and continued to drift across him, slowly lowering herself until her breasts hovered near his erection. He reached for her hair, but she shook her head, and he dropped his hands again, reluctantly, because he wanted to take her in his arms and brand her with his embrace.
Her hands slid up her body, lifting the fabric against his erection, sending him perilously close to the edge. Then her hands moved to her breasts. His knees buckled and it was all he could do to stay on his feet as she rubbed them against his dick, making a passage as sweet and hot as any other.
He wondered if a man had ever fainted from the ecstasy of foreplay, because he felt like he might. He was barely hanging onto his sanity. His world was swathed in a pink aura as she continued to work him; the satin gliding along his heated skin; the tiny edging of lace adding an extra titillation each time it passed over the head of his penis.
He was probably leaking all over her negligee and he just hoped he could hold on long enough not to spew come all over her.
She looked up at him with heavy-lidded eyes, a siren’s smile hovering on her lips, and a part of his mind thought, she’s playing me, and another part said, let her play.
Just when he thought he couldn’t stand it another second, she moved away, seeming to float backward until she stopped with her back against the big four-poster bed. Mesmerized by the action, he followed her.
She held his eyes with hers and her fingers began to inch the negligee up her thighs until it stopped right below the dark shadow between her legs. Cas tried to swallow as he waited for it to go higher. But Julie just continued to torment him, lifting the satin just enough to make him think she was going to reveal that hidden, mysterious spot, then just as he got a glimpse of her dark curls, she lowered it again.
He was swaying on his feet, swamped by his own desire and Julie’s magnetism. And he let her seduce him. But he was nearly undone when she pushed herself up on the bed and opened her knees, the pink satin draped over her lap, and her hand went to that place where his tongue belonged and she stroked herself.
He was caught between wanting to take her and longing to watch her. Her fingers found a place that made her sigh. And she slowly closed her eyes only to open them and let her gaze travel from his face to his cock.
He could feel it reaching toward her, and he thought it might drag him like a giant magnet until it drove its way home, but he fought the impulse as he watched her finger slide through her groove of hair, circle, and disappear only to reappear again. When she was breathing hard and rocking against her own movements, she pulled her hand away and held her finger out to him.
He fell into her and he took her hand and sucked her finger into his mouth, tasting the salt of her, the tang of desire that filled his senses and while he sucked, his other hand reached out to her and she took his hand and placed it in the warmth of her sex.
His finger entered her and she squeezed her thighs around his hand and pushed against him as he sucked on her finger and his dick pulsed harder and harder.
God, he was going to explode. He pulled his hand from Julie and spread her knees wider. She pressed them shut and he looked up, puzzled.
She shook her head at him and looked down at his erection, then back up to his face. She wanted it now. He stepped forward and she shook her head again.
“What?” he said. And realized that she hadn’t spoken since they’d begun this dance.
She looked down at his cock again and nodded. Then she ran a finger lightly up the ridge of sensitive skin. Chills ran over his body. He reached for her but she grabbed his hand and pressed it back onto his erection. Against his will, his fingers closed around it and he could feel the throbbing against his palm.
Julie smiled. She opened her knees again, wider this time, and placed her finger in the crease of her folds and slid it inside her. Then she lifted her chin toward him, all the time looking at his hand on his dick. She wanted him to jerk off in front of her.
He shook his head.
She smiled wider and nodded, while her hand began to move against her crotch. His hand moved against his cock in response and he shuddered down to his toes. She brought her fingers out to where he could see them, then slid them out of sight again. His hand pressed down to the base of his erection, then back to the tip. He pushed up against his hand as it pushed down again. Julie’s hand began to move faster.
She breathed out, her lips parted, but she didn’t take her eyes off what he was doing. They moved as one, Cas forgetting his inhibitions of a minute before. He opened his feet wider and his other hand found his scrotum, the balls hard and tight against his body. He held them as he pulled his hand up again, circled around the head of his penis, spreading the fluid there over the tip as he stroked his balls.
He forgot that he’d never done this mutual masturbation thing before because Julie held him in her power. His head fell back and his neck cracked. And he thrust into his hand again. She was rocking on the bed now, her teeth looking incredible as she bit her bott
om lip. He was going to come any second now and he wanted to do it in Julie, not explode into the air. But he couldn’t seem to stop; his hand moved faster, holding himself tighter and tighter.
Then Julie gasped, “Now.”
He lunged forward, grabbed her ass and pulled it to the edge of the mattress. She braced her feet on the side board, and tilted her hips toward him for better entry. Still he had to use his hand to guide his cock inside her.
She was tight and he was afraid he might rocket off before he could get inside. He braced his knees against the side of the bed and took a deep breath, then he pushed into her, so hard that he pushed her away from the edge of the bed. She grabbed the spread and pulled herself back to him. He grabbed her ass and sank into her again. And then he couldn’t stop, only rush headlong to release.
He heard growling, and thought it was Smitty, until he realized it was his own voice. So he let it out and pushed harder until Julie cried out and he followed her to oblivion.
“U-u-u-uh,” said Cas, when he could finally talk again. Talk, but not move. He was collapsed over Julie, halfway on the bed and halfway off. Julie was smashed into the mattress, but she wasn’t complaining.
“Yeah,” she said. “Me, too.”
He heaved himself up on his elbows and she wriggled to a better position beneath him. He smiled at her. “What do you say to spending the rest of the night under the covers like normal people?”
“The rest? You’re staying?”
“You want me to go?”
“No, but—”
“Good, because I’m staying and I have the weekend off.” Except the dreaded Sunday dinner, and maybe he could call in sick.
“The weekend?”
He pushed away from the bed and stood up, then pulled her to her feet, so he could turn back the covers. “Yep. And by Monday, I expect to be seeing the world through rose-colored glasses.” He climbed into bed, fluffed up a pink ruffled pillow and leaned back.
He patted the place beside him. “Might as well get in. You’re stuck with me.”
She frowned at him; he could practically see the wheels turning. She liked the foreplay, but not the pillow talk. Maybe her complete abandonment during sex embarrassed her afterwards. He hoped not. Because he wanted to make it a habit.
She climbed into bed, not looking at him and pulled the covers up to her chin, then nestled down against the pillow and closed her eyes.
He pulled her up again. “Oh, no you don’t. We have some catching up to do.” He made a place for her next to him and put his arm around her, pulling her back until she was lying against him, his arm around her. She was stiff as a board.
He stroked her arm. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to be with you. Get to know you.” He pulled her closer.
Aw, jeez, thought Julie as she lay uncomfortably against Cas’s shoulder. He wanted to talk. This is what you get for playing with fire, stupid. And what fire. She couldn’t remember a time when sex had felt like this. An out-of-body experience—no, an in-body experience. Wow. And now he wanted to talk. Why couldn’t he have grown up to be like other men who started snoring before their dick shriveled and fell out?
But no-o-o. He wanted to talk. She could see it now. “I’m a cop.” And he’d be dressed and out the door before she could say, “Really, it’s no big deal.” So now, instead of basking in total repletion, and slowly drifting into satisfied sleep, she was going to have to come up with stories about her life since Ex Falls—and make them sound believable.
She yawned a jaw-cracking yawn.
Cas shook his head.
Julie sat up and drew up her knees until she could wrap her arms around them. It felt safer that way, though she missed the warmth of Cas’s body. “Okay, what do you want to talk about?”
He pulled her back down. “Haven’t you ever heard of pillow talk?”
She tried her last tactic. She snuggled against him and let her hand creep under the comforter, headed south.
He stopped it at his navel. “Later,” he said, pulled her hand back to the air and kissed the knuckles before letting it go.
The two of them sat against the pillows, legs stretched out, looking ahead like strangers on a train. Finally Julie said, “You first.”
He was silent for a moment, then said, “Reynolds sent me to prep school. When I came back for vacation, you were gone.” Cas raised an eyebrow at her.
“What?” asked Julie, feeling her skin begin to crawl.
“Your turn.”
“Oh. Well, I left and went to live with my aunt in Yonkers. You know that.”
Cas nodded. “Then what?”
“Nope. Your turn.”
“Okay. Then I went to Yale and became a banker and hated it and quit. Now I build boats, wooden ones, fiberglass ones. My last job was on the coast of Rhode Island. I love what I do. I—your turn.”
Suddenly she saw her way out. He had rushed through his life to hear about hers; now she could do the same.
“Well,” she said slowly.” “I went to City College and studied. . . um, hard and then did a bunch of different jobs. And then Wes died and I came here.” She smiled at him and tried to climb under the covers.
Cas pulled her up again. “What kind of jobs?”
“Stupid stuff.” She pulled out a few of her least odious undercover jobs and hit him with them. “And that’s about it.”
Cas was quiet for a minute, which was alright with Julie. Then he sighed. “We just summed up our lives of the last fifteen years in less than three minutes. That can’t be good.”
Julie turned to look at him and wished she hadn’t. His eyes were dark, darker than usual, and his look seemed to burn a hole through her. She swallowed, wanting to tell him everything, like when they were kids. But she couldn’t. It was one thing to lie beneath the sky and dream their dreams, but a different thing to say, I became a cop. I was good. And then shit happened and I was on the outside again.
And to her mortification she felt a tear slide past her eyelid and down her cheek. She froze, not knowing what to do. Try to hide it or to brazen her way through.
Cas’s finger brushed it away. He pulled her across him and held her and said, “I’m sorry, Julie. So sorry.”
And he held her until she fell asleep.
Ulysses crowed through the darkness. Bill’s treble warble quickly followed. Julie stirred. She was warm and comfy. Cas was stretched out alongside her, warm and muscular. He’d stayed the whole night. The thought made her ridiculously cheerful for so early in the morning. She was tempted to wake him and make love to him, but she had chickens to see to.
Something was heavy on her feet. She sat up and squinted into the darkness.
Smitty was stretched out along the end of the bed. Cas must have let him in during the night. “Come on, boy,” she whispered. She dressed quickly and they went downstairs.
The days were getting shorter. It was completely dark outside and she wondered how long it would take for Ulysses and Bill to reset their internal clocks. An extra half hour of sleep would be welcome, especially if she were sleeping with Cas.
She hurried through her chores, planning to be back under the covers before he woke up. A little morning exercise and she’d send him on his way. The thought brought her up short. She didn’t want to send him away.
But she couldn’t spend the day with him. It would give them too much time to rehash the past and she didn’t want to go there, not even the recent past. She should have told him she was a cop the first night they met. He must have wondered why she was carrying a Glock. Maybe he didn’t recognize it as a police special; his was years out of date. She wasn’t even sure it worked.
She should have told him then; now it was too late. It would look like she’d been hiding it from him. And she had. Only now, she couldn’t remember why it had been so important to keep it from him.
“Aw, shit.” Startled by her outburst, the chickens squawked and scattered in a flurry of feathers. “Sorry,” she cooed. “Didn’t
mean to scare you. And I’ve learned my lesson,” she told them. “Next time, don’t procrastinate. Just say it and get it over with and face the consequences.” Because hiding the truth was just too damn hard.
Insistent pecking at her feet reminded her that she was holding a full pan of scratch and they were hungry. She broadcast the grains. The chickens spread out to capture the seeds, except for one who continued to peck at her boot.
She looked down. Her eyes widened, then she leaned over to get a better look. It was dark, but she could swear ... “Ernestine!” She squatted down and the little hen strutted between her knees and lifted her head for a pet.
“Where have you been? How did you get back in the coop? I can’t believe it.” She threw out the rest of the scratch and picked her up. “I can’t believe you’re home.”
Ernestine began to coo, and Julie thought, How can I be so happy over a chicken? An inkling of a suspicion crept into her mind. Maybe Wes hadn’t meant a monetary treasure, after all. More precious than silver, finer than gold. But chicken love didn’t exactly pay the rent.
Then she thought of Cas, asleep in her bed and she thought, Oh no. Not that. Not here. Wes, you wouldn’t. Would you? It won’t work. I may have dreamed about it often enough, but you know it won’t work. And I can’t stay here.
But she held Ernestine closer, standing in the cold, while her cheeks turned numb and her toes lost their feeling.
Smitty trotted up a few minutes later; he was alone.
“Where are Bill and Hil?” she asked. She’d heard Bill this morning, but now that she thought about it, she hadn’t seen him ... or Hilary. “Oh, no,” she cried. She tipped Ernestine onto the ground and hurried over to the feeders. No Bill and Hilary. She climbed up the ramp and went into the coop. Walked to the far end of the nesting boxes.