by Naomi West
Archer sat back down on the bed. "That's a totally fair comment."
I went and sat beside him. "I bet there were times when you enjoyed being a part of Battle Pride. Times when it was a thrill, like nothing else you've ever felt, and when it was good to be part of something. Hell, I'll bet there were times when it felt good to be bad."
Archer couldn't suppress a smile that spread across his face. "Okay, while I'm not saying it's a good thing, or endorsing criminality as a lifestyle—hell, yeah! There were times when I loved it."
"But you're happy to step away from it?"
He turned to look at me tenderly. "Of course. The good times with Battle Pride were fleeting, a surface thrill. Deep down, there was always an emptiness. Even when you're surrounded by people, you can still be pretty lonely. I could have quit years ago, but I guess I didn't know what I would have left if I did. Now I've found something better."
"If you can accept all that about yourself, why can't you accept it in me?" I asked, fervently. "I know I have ... let's call it a 'thing' for bad boys. I get a thrill when I'm doing something that I know I shouldn't be. But, like you said, it's fleeting. And it's nothing compared to the thrill I get when I'm with you. You, Archer. The real you. Not just some bad boy with a cool bike and an attitude, but a man who I ..." I shied away from finishing the sentence. I wasn't cagey about how I felt for Archer. I knew what I felt, but I wasn't sure yet how he felt, and I knew that if I said the word, then he would feel pressured to say it back, and that wasn't how I wanted it to happen.
He kissed me, which was almost as good.
"I'm glad we talked about this."
I nodded. "Me too."
Why could I speak to him and not to my father? I might have had a very similar conversation with Dad, but, with him, it always degenerated into shouting, accusations, and door-slamming pretty early on, so we never reached the important bit. I found myself really hoping that I would get to say these things to him one day soon. With Dad and me, it was always a war, both of us fighting to win, and, as a result, we both walked away losers. We needed to break that cycle.
"You miss him, don't you?" Archer could damn near read my mind sometimes.
"Yeah," I said simply. "He's the only parent I have. And he's been a great one, I guess. A bit judgy. But if that's the worst you can say, then ... It's always so hard between dad and me. I guess because we're such different people."
"Perhaps because you're such similar people."
I almost choked on my own shock. "Are you insane? We're nothing alike. Dad is all about the law. I'm ..."
"Whose idea was it that I hand myself into the police?" Archer asked mildly.
"Hey!" I wasn't standing for this. "In my bad girl days there were plenty of times I broke the law."
"Were there, though?" asked Archer. "I'm guessing there were plenty of times you skirted around the edges of the law, but never actually broke it."
"Me and my friends used to get drunk, go out, and raise hell!" I said, hotly.
"Drinking, huh?" said Archer. "I'm guessing this was after you turned twenty-one?"
"Shut up." Of course it was after I turned twenty-one.
"What sort of hell were you raising specifically?"
"It was ... It was ..." I racked my brains for a believable lie, but, in the end, just gave up. "I'm the worst bad girl in the world."
"I prefer the good one anyway."
I looked up at Archer. "Am I really like my dad?"
"Well, you don't look like him."
"A relief for both of us."
Archer put an arm around me. "You know what your dad and you really have in common? You're both struggling to come to terms with who Cassidy Dupont is."
"Does Battle Pride also do Psych 101?" I asked sarcastically.
"Every Tuesday," Archer replied. "Your dad hasn't had a handle on you for years. But I'm guessing the time he lost that sense of who you were, was around about the time you started pretending to be someone else. You lost a sense of yourself and reached out for your mother as someone to be. Which, maybe, wasn't the best choice. It confused him and probably scared him, I think it's fair to say that he didn't deal with the changes you were going through in the best way, but he keeps trying."
"You should really take that psych class. You're a natural."
"Well, while I'm on a roll, here's another insight. I think you lost a sense of yourself, because you lost a sense of your dad. Maybe he was busy with work, or maybe he favored Riley a bit. I don't know. But you got that thing in your mind that told you that if you couldn’t be him, then you had to be your mom."
"You're saying Dad and I could both do a better job of trying to understand each other?"
Archer nodded, and I was again struck by how easy it was to talk to him. What had started off as lust and a desire for the forbidden, had turned into something honest, loving, and with surprising depth. That Archer would be a good bedmate, someone exciting to lose my virginity to, had never been in doubt. But to find that he understood me and wanted to help me—that was surprising, wonderful, and special. I supposed, by the law of averages, there must have been other men out there who could make my toes curl in bed the way Archer did, but I had a hunch there were none who would understand me as he did, and none who would care so much. I almost felt like crying at how lucky I was.
"I'm going to give my dad a call. Just to let him know I'm okay. And that I'm happy."
Chapter Eighteen
Archer
For some time now, I had been trying to push Cassidy back in the direction of the father who was, in his own clumsy way, trying to help her. It seemed like maybe I had finally succeeded. That was all good, and just in time, too. There was a reason that I was leaning on the subject so hard tonight, because this might be our last night together.
By my count, this was the fourth time that a night had been our last night together. We seemed to make a habit of it. But this time was not just a question of whether it was the right thing to go our separate ways. There was a decent chance that I would be in jail this time tomorrow, and a decent chance that I wouldn't be coming out again for years. If I could leave her and her dad with a better chance at reconciliation than when I met her, then perhaps my presence in her life was not for nothing. Cassidy was a fragile person, however much she tried to pretend she wasn't. She needed someone to lean on, and if it couldn't be me, then her dad was the best choice by far.
Perhaps my going to jail would be the best thing for her. Then she could make a clean break and start a new life. If that was the case, then I would go with a light heart. And there was a good chance of it happening. Polo had made it all sound pretty straightforward, like there were just some forms to fill out, and I thought Cassidy had believed it. But I knew better, and Polo knew it. I had caught his eye at one moment, when he was explaining things, and an unspoken acknowledgement passed between us that much of this was for Cassidy's benefit. Deputies do not get to decide who gets to do an informant deal, and deputies who are old school friends with the man they are trying to get registered as an official informant are looked on very suspiciously indeed. This was a long way from a done deal. The truth was that a lot would depend on how Ben Dupont reacted, and that did not speak well for my chances. I hoped that Cassidy would not take it too hard if things went contrary to how we hoped. I didn’t want her to blame her father, or for our little conversation tonight to be for nothing.
Well, not quite for nothing. It had given us a genuine intimacy that, perhaps, had not existed before. We had been physically intimate of course and quite a lot, really. But, although I had felt something for her that I had never felt for any other woman I had slept with, there had always lingered the great unasked question: was this just sex? When the sex was that good, that frequent, that intense, there was always that possibility. But to talk as we had talked, and of what we had talked, so easily, so comfortably, and so normally - that had answered the question once and for all. No matter how great the sex was, there was un
doubtedly more between us than the physical.
There had been a few times in that conversation when I had heard Cassidy drifting in the direction of the dreaded 'L' word. She had always pulled back from actually saying it, afraid, I imagined, that I would not have been able to say it back, or worse that I might have felt coerced into saying it back when I did not really mean it. I was very grateful that she had not said it. Not because I didn't feel it, and not even because I didn't want to say it. I did want to say it. I'd known for a long time that I had fallen for Cassidy Dupont, in a way I had never imagined possible.
I had never really believed in 'love.’ It was just something for people who struggled to get laid—a sort of sexual safety net. I certainly didn't need that. If I did believe in it in any way, then I supposed it was a little like what I felt for Fran. She was someone who was always there, a friend who was also a lover and equally adept at both, someone I cared for and would be sorry to see hurt. But falling for Cassidy was like seeing the world differently. It was like everyone else ceased to exist. Much as I liked Fran, if a pretty girl came into the bar, then my eyes went straight to her. But when I was with Cassidy, I saw the pretty girls, I knew they were pretty, but it just didn't matter. I thought that falling in love required you to change, but that was wrong. You didn't change, but the whole world changed around you, like a lens, focusing you on the only person in it, the only person who still existed.
I wanted to say all that to Cassidy, or even just the three little words. But some habits die hard, and over the years, I had gotten very used to being Archer Cyprian, president of Battle Pride, a man who didn't say 'I love you.' Even knowing that, knowing that the reason for not saying it was some stupid macho guy thing, I still couldn't bring myself to actually do it.
Cassidy cuddled up next to me. "Should we go to bed now?"
"Yeah," I said.
I had to tell her. I might never get another chance to do it face-to-face.
"Cassidy?" I began.
"Yeah?"
"Nothing."
I'd been in fights; I’d been in chases; I'd been cornered by men with knives who were intent on skinning me. I'd taken a bullet, and I'd faced it all without backing down. But sometimes I could be a total pussy who should have been ashamed to call himself a man.
If I couldn't tell her, then I had to at least let her know. I hoped that all I had tried to do for her, all my easing her back towards her father and helping her see herself for who she truly was would give that message, but it needed to be more personal than that.
I shed the last of my clothes and came up behind Cassidy, undoing her bra and peeling it away from her body.
She giggled. "Do you know it's been almost twelve hours since we've had sex?"
I said nothing. This would not be like that. She was always looking for sex to be different every time. Well, this time would be very different, and not just for her.
I swept her up off her feet into my arms, and she draped her arms around my neck, kissing me as I carried her to the bed. I kissed her lips, her cheeks, her forehead and her closed eyes before moving on to her neck. I worked my way on down her body, spending long minutes on her breasts while she purred in pleasure. She let out a whine of keening frustration as I kissed her lower belly then pointedly skipped over where she most wanted me so I could kiss her feet and begin working my way up her long slim legs.
"Oh, you're making me crazy," she sighed, writhing like a cat on heat.
"Seems fair." I murmured my reply between kisses. "I don't think I've done a single sane thing since the day I met you."
My kissing tour of Cassidy's lithe, taut body reached her inner thighs, and she whimpered as I drew closer to her core. I could feel the heat coming off of her, radiating her desire. She grabbed a handful of my hair, tugging me closer to her, but I resisted. Let her pull as hard as she wanted, but we were going to do this at my pace, and she would appreciate that in the long run.
Finally, having worked my way around it for so long, I descended on my ultimate goal. Cassidy gasped sharply as my lips brushed against her, and my tongue snaked out to lap gently at her nether lips.
"Oh, my ..." She could not even finish the sentence, but pulled harder at my hair, threatening to tear it out by the roots. Still, I continued at my own slow speed, building her passion up by degrees, converting frustration to satisfaction with each lick. She was incredibly hot, and I felt I might burn myself on her as I kissed, nibbled, and occasionally allowed my tongue to dip inside her.
"Oh, Archer ... Oh, Archer ..."
For the last hour, I had been gently guiding her to the edge of a precipice, and now it was time for her to leap. I buried my face in her. Cassidy cried out, immediately biting her lip to silence herself, for fear of waking Polo. Involuntarily, she folded her legs about my head, as if trying to draw the whole of my head inside her. Her thighs pressed against my ears, blocking out the rest of the world. To me, at that moment, there was no world but Cassidy No sight, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, but that of her. She was the world, and I wanted no other. It was a wonderful world in which to live, and I made the most of my time in it.
I felt Cassidy writhe against me. The grip of her legs on my head tightened. She clawed at me with her hands, and humped her hips eagerly at my face. Then, in an instant, she tensed. Her hands left me and, though I could not see, I knew from past experience that she had them over her mouth, as was her habit when she didn't want to be heard reaching her climax. I tasted her as she seemed to explode into my mouth.
Her grip loosened, her legs fell away from my head, letting the rest of the world back in, and she fell from me, limp and exhausted to the bed.
"Oh my God, Archer," she whispered, when she could speak again. "Oh my ... I never thought it could be like that without ... I mean you didn't even ... It was just your mouth, but I'm ... Holy crap!"
For the record, that's the sort of response a man wants to get from the woman he's pleasuring. Moving more quickly now, I kissed my way back up Cassidy's body to her face.
"I hope you're not too tired."
Cassidy's answer was to reach for me, and guide me into position. We kissed, long and deep as I began to ease myself into her. Over the past few days she had become so accustomed to me that this was no longer the difficult process it first had been, but I took my time by choice, slow and steady, letting her feel each swollen inch as it stretched her.
"Oh, I need you so badly," Cassidy murmured, clutching at me and writhing.
It would have been so easy to just go for it, as we had before, hard and fast. And that would have been great for both of us, as it always was. But it wasn't what I wanted tonight, and, whether she knew it or not, it wasn't what she wanted either. This would be different. It might be agony from time to time, but it would be worth it.
Cassidy stroked her hands the length of my body as I finally butted up against her, filling her completely. She didn't urge me on this time. She had gotten the message that this would be something a bit special, and that I was going to do it my way. And after how that had already paid off for her, she was happy enough to let me continue and see what happened. What happened, initially, was nothing. I was comfortable enough, lying still on top of her, buried in her to the hilt, kissing her tenderly. She answered my kisses with equal affection, her small hands ever on the move, roaming across my body. When I began to move, it was as slowly as I had done everything else. I was not stroking in and out yet, but just starting to caress my hips against hers in small, tight circular motions, teasing her nerves, firing her up, and making her breath come in short, hot gasps. Her legs locked around mine, sliding up to my hips and down to my ankles, rubbing herself against me as if any contact at all was good.
Seamlessly, I changed from stirring her into the sinuous undulations of sex, and Cassidy moaned, then whimpered, then shook as she came for a second time. I just kept moving rhythmically into her, achingly slow, riding her through it.
"Oh, I can't believe how good t
his feels," she moaned. "So good, so good, SO good."
Now I had her where I wanted her. Her whole body was one big nerve, alive with sensation, desperate for release. She was constantly on the very verge of orgasm, even straight after she had climaxed, she was already teetering on the edge of her next spend. Keeping her at this point of permanently thwarted completion was an art, and a skill, and a lot of hard work. I fought to control my own need and to keep myself from speeding up when my whole body screamed at me to fuck this woman. But it was worth it to be able to make Cassidy feel like this. I could make her come practically at will with a touch here, a little extra pressure there, or a slight change in my metronomic rhythm. Over she went again, gasping and clutching at me, not knowing how much ecstasy her body could endure, but determined to find out. She talked as she went, a constant stream of nonsense flowing from her mouth, endearments, obscenities, urging, begging, yes's and no's. Her brain was so overwhelmed with pleasure that it had lost higher speech functions.