by Bethany-Kris
Andino grinned, a knowing tease already falling from his lips. “Catty, huh? That’s a new one.”
“Shut up, Andino,” Catherine muttered. “It’s my birthday, so don’t even.”
“Where did that name come from?” Andino asked Cross. “I mean, everybody calls Aunt Catrina by Cat, so just curious.”
Cross wasn’t sure how to answer.
Catherine saved him. “Yeah, like mom. Now get, and stop the teasing.”
“Sure, Catty.”
Her cousin left, tugging on her hair as he went and earning himself a glare from Catherine that wasn’t very scary at all.
“Ass,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Be nice,” Cross told her. “You only get one family, after all.”
She scrunched up her nose. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Say things like that. You sound like my father or uncles when they’re in one of their rants. Just … wow, don’t ever, ever do that, Cross.”
He snaked an arm around her waist, and brought her in close enough to his side that he could bury his laughter into her hair. She kissed the underside of his jaw, grinning all the while.
“Noted, sorry,” he said.
“You know they’re all going to call me that now, Cross? All of them. Now that one knows, it will pass around the family like wild fire. You don’t even understand.”
“You might be being over drama—”
“I am not, just you wait.”
“My bad,” he said to calm her.
Catherine frowned, but then quickly smiled. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“I was told to get the hell out of here if I wanted, since it’s my party and I can do what I want.”
Cross raised a brow. “You mean since you’ve basically smiled for five hours and all the adults have started pouring alcohol?”
He had to give them credit, though. They lasted until supper was served before the alcohol came out to play.
“I mean, yeah. Let them party now. I need to call, though, if I plan to stay out past twelve.”
“Did they know you meant to go with me, when you asked?”
“Yep. Dad opened his mouth to say something, and Ma glared, so … what do you think?”
Well, then …
“What did you have in mind?” he asked.
Catherine shrugged. “Anything, Cross. But you had a point. I’ve been smiling and people-ing all day.”
“People-ing is not a word.”
“Best one I had. I really just want to take my heels off and do nothing.”
“Do nothing, but not here.”
“Yep,” she said, popping the ‘p’ with a wink.
“Are you going to have a babysitter follow along?”
An enforcer, he meant.
Catherine shrugged. “Probably, but they never follow me inside places, or bother us, right?”
True.
He found her father only sent enforcers when she was in the city, or out with someone who was not a man of her family. When she went out with her male cousins, enforcers didn’t trail behind.
Cross had an idea. “How about the beach?”
“It’s April, Cross.”
“Yeah, no. I meant, a house on the beach. It’s empty—small little place, but right on the beach down in Odessa. Zeke started renting it a while back, but he’s in Chicago for the next week with his dad, and I have keys. He’s got a big ass television the size of one wall and another wall of just windows that look out to a private section of beach in the back. Is that nothing enough for you?”
“He won’t be mad you crashed his place with me?”
Cross scoffed. “Zeke? I have years’ worth of receipts for how much he owes me, so don’t even worry about it.”
“If you say so.”
“This is awesome,” Catherine said, peering out the wall of windows overlooking the small patch of private beach. “See, this is why I would want to live in Florida or something.”
“Right, Florida. Where the gators can eat you, if the yearly storms don’t kill you.”
She gave him a dirty look over her shoulder. “Don’t ruin my dreams, Cross.”
“You’re not going anywhere but New York state, babe.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because you would never go that far from your family,” he replied with a shrug.
“My brother is going to Detroit.”
“Your brother probably isn’t like you.”
Catherine stilled before saying, “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
“Here, find a movie for us.” Cross tossed Catherine the television remote from the coffee table. “I need to call my step-father, and let him know where I went. I didn’t bother to find them before we left. I don’t need another lecture.”
“I think that’s called them parenting you, if it’s a foreign concept or whatever.”
He held up a hand as he walked into the kitchen. “Don’t need your judgement, either.”
Her sweet laughter echoed behind him.
It took Cross forever to explain enough to suffice Calisto’s questions. Where he was, who he was with, that Dante Marcello was not coming to find him with a gun in hand, and that he would be back home before morning. By the time he was done, Catherine had set herself up in the living room on a big mound of blankets. She wasn’t even watching the action movie on the television, but instead she faced the windows.
“You know,” Cross said as he slid in behind her, and pulled her close to wrap his arms around her middle, “your birthday was a hell of a lot louder than mine this year.”
“Oh?”
“The loudest mine got was when my sister dumped ice water on me in bed.”
Catherine’s shoulders shook with muted giggles. “Really?”
“Yeah, it was not a good way to wake up.”
“You didn’t have a party at all?” she asked.
“They wanted to; I didn’t. I got what I wanted. Call it a present.”
“You ruined their fun, probably.”
“Oh, no. They had lots of fun letting my sister turn me into a human ice cube. Where did you get these blankets?”
“Found them in a closet down the hall.”
Cross shook his head. “I didn’t tell you to snoop, Catty.”
“I wasn’t!”
“Mmhmm.”
“I didn’t, really, I just thought it would be nice to look out the windows and the couch doesn’t face that way. The floor is hard.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Okay, so I snooped a little,” she mumbled. “Shut up.”
Cross rested one hand under the skirt of Catherine’s dress on her outer thigh, while his other drifted through the waves of her hair. “Snooping brings trouble.”
“Well, sometimes. I found something, though.”
“Yeah, blankets.”
“No,” she drawled quietly, “something else.”
Catherine held her hand high giving him access to see the small foil packet she held between two fingers. Cross’s gaze darted to the condom, and then back out the windows to the water.
“So here’s the thing,” Catherine said with a small sigh, “I don’t want a bunch of questions about stuff, okay. You don’t push or pressure or ask. You let me do whatever on my own time, however I want. You’re good like that, which makes me good, Cross. I’m good. I’ve been good. I just … needed the right person, I guess. So don’t overthink, or whatever. Don’t get strange or weird about it, that’s all.”
“You know you could have just asked me if I had a condom, right?”
“Well …”
“Because I do,” he said when she didn’t keep speaking. “Not because I expect shit, but because it’s good to have one, just in case.”
“I know you’re not—”
“A virgin? Not since a week after I turned fourteen. I don’t think anybody’s first time fucking should be drunk and in the backseat of a friend’s car, though, but
that’s how it happened. I was the one drunk, by the way. I wasn’t so nervous, then.”
Catherine turned her head just enough for Cross to see her frown. “That … doesn’t sound good at all.”
“Not really, no. The only bright side was that being drunk meant she didn’t expect me to be any good at what I was doing. But I got it over with, which was what I wanted. I got better at it all, too.”
“You had sex to get it over with?”
“I didn’t say it was smart, Catherine. I said I did it.”
“I don’t know her, do I?” she asked.
Cross hid his laugh in her hair. “No. Neither did I, still really don’t.”
“Ouch.”
“I’m not going to make it weird, like you said,” he told her, squeezing her thigh gently. “It’s like anything else with us, babe. It’s what you want, when you want it, and how you say you want it. It’s on your terms, not mine.”
“You just get to enjoy the background noise, huh?”
Cross grinned against her cheek when she turned her face alongside his. “Yeah, I just get to enjoy your noise. And you make beautiful noise, babe.”
“Because of you.”
“Don’t feed my ego. It’s big enough.”
Catherine’s smile faltered against his cheek. “Still a little nervous. I don’t want it to be like a big deal or anything. It doesn’t have to be like that, is all.”
“Now you’re overthinking. You say okay. Or you say stop, Catherine.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
The moon made a pretty picture, painted high in an inky sky, with stars dotted all around. It was as though the windows were the canvas, and the sky presented its own art for enjoyment. The sight momentarily distracted Catherine as she tipped her head to the side. A slow exhale left her lips, but just as fast as she had released the air, she sucked it back in sharp and fast.
Her distraction only lasted as long as it took for her to take a breath.
A single second.
Then, she felt Cross’s mouth find a sensitive spot on her collarbone, where he sucked hard enough to leave a mark behind, but it was damn good, too. She understood perfectly well why her body always seemed like a fine-tuned instrument that she allowed him to play. He knew all her chords, and hit just the right ones to make a special kind of music. He did that because he listened, and he watched. Her. When he found something—anything—that made her move in just the right way, or had her breathing change even in the slightest, he picked up on that.
Then he did it, again and again.
Over and over.
He added something different to it. His tongue struck out against her skin, or his teeth nipped after a kiss. His fingers pressed lower, while his mouth worked higher.
Anything to make her move or breathe or sound the same way again.
That was exactly what Cross was doing to her, as she laid naked in soft blankets, and waited for the bliss to start rushing through her bloodstream. Again.
It was his mouth first.
Wicked and sweet all at the same time.
Tasting, relentless, and wonderful.
Now, it was his hand. His arm was pressed between their bodies; two fingers stroked and curled deep in the best way while his thumb circled and fucking circled.
He was listening and watching her, she knew. Listening for the stutter in her exhale, watching for when it changed to his favor. When her back curved as she lifted, or her breaths turned into high cries, he won.
That was when he won.
And so did she.
It was far more than just what he was doing, too. Although, he couldn’t possibly know that. It was his weight on hers, naked and warm, even when the room felt cold. It was the deepened grin, pleased and anticipating, when his dark eyes locked on hers. It was his length, already hard and sheathed in latex, digging into her inner thigh and almost there.
His thumb pressed harder, and oh, God.
Fuck.
Fuck.
“Do it for me,” she heard him say while drums beat loud in her ears.
Catherine tightened all over; every muscle in her body balling and ready to release.
“Shake again for me,” he demanded while her blood thickened.
Almost, almost, almost.
His low rumbling approval, hidden under her jaw where he kissed and kissed, let her know those words did not stay hidden inside her head. That was okay, too.
“Come again, for me.”
It still managed to surprise Catherine when she finally fell off that teasing cliff. No matter how long it had been building, she still couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was that pushed her over, or how it felt just before, so she could prepare.
There was no preparing.
She just felt.
She just fell.
Cross clouded her vision, and she was just so damn high. Or, that’s how it seemed. His thumb stroked over her bottom lip, and she could taste herself on the touch, tart and new. He was already between her spread legs. His weight substantial—lovely—against hers.
He opened his mouth to talk—to ask, maybe.
Don’t ask questions.
Don’t make this weird.
He did ask, but it wasn’t weird.
Cross’s thumb swept her lip again, but this time, she peeked her tongue out to taste while she had the chance. “Okay?”
She smiled. “So okay.”
Catherine didn’t want to overthink it; she didn’t want Cross getting lost in that crazy headspace, either. She was still quite sure in what she wanted. Her nerves fluttered like butterfly wings beating in her stomach, but it wasn’t as bad as before. Not nearly as bad.
So, she didn’t give either of them time to overthink at all. Her hand slipped between them, and found his shaft hard in her palm. She liked the way his heartbeat thudded on the underside of his length. When she did something he liked, that beating pulse picked up, and she could feel it reverberating through her bloodstream.
Catherine held him where she wanted him, then leaned up to kiss under Cross’s jaw. “Okay.”
She expected pain.
She found none.
People talked of pain, and that had frightened her a lot. Others said they felt no pain at all, or very little before it was quickly gone. Both were normal, apparently, but Catherine was happy to have fallen into the latter category. She did not want pain to be the thing she remembered about having sex for the first time; she didn’t want it to be the sharpest memory to come forward.
It wouldn’t be, now.
It was a tight, too-full sensation. A stretching pull that wasn’t at all bad when her muscles clenched and unclenched, and she could move. It was every single one of her nerves being lit on fire and woke up as Cross pulled back, and then pushed forward again with a slowness that was going to drive her crazy.
His fingers dug into her waist, and pulled her body into his. She liked the way he looked like this—high above, muscles flexing with every twitch, and his gaze sweeping over her, back and forth, up and down.
Catherine hadn’t realized how hard she was clenching her muscles until she heard Cross mutter, “Jesus Christ, you’ve got to relax, or you’re going to kill me.”
As fast as Cross said the words, his arms wrapped around her back, and he rolled them over. The sudden movement left Catherine dizzy, and her vision blocked by the wildness of her hair. His hands pushed her hair back, and his thumbs swept under her eyes with soft touches.
She found they were both sitting up, but with her in his lap, and God.
Catherine shifted just a bit, her knees digging hard into the blankets, and found that he was hitting something inside her that made it hard to breathe. She must have relaxed enough for Cross because his husky laughter echoed in her ears. His amusement rocked them both, making her shift all over again and hit that spot again. Her fingers on his shoulders tightened hard with the intense sensation, making her nails score red lines on his tan skin.
“Found so
mething, did you?” he asked. “You do what you want, babe. Make it feel really fucking good for us, Catty.”
She could do that …
That was easy.
And he always felt good.
Catherine tiptoed through the main entrance to the Marcello home, and cringed when a floorboard creaked. It was exactly five after two in the morning. Her father had asked for her to be home before one, at least, and to call if she would be out past twelve. She was not looking forward to that talk. She hadn’t mentioned her curfew to Cross because he would have made sure she was home, and she wanted to stay out.
Her parents did not sleep like the dead, either. A simple noise would wake both her mother and father up, not to mention, put them on high alert for some kind of bad shit about to happen in their home. They had always been like that. She wasn’t sure if that was because of their lives, or their respective careers. Probably both.
She just walked past the darkened kitchen entryway when a throat clearing made her freeze on the spot.
“Evening,” she heard her mother say from inside the dark kitchen. “Or would you prefer good morning?”
Catherine turned on her heel at the same time her mother flicked on the pot lights over the cupboards. It still kept the kitchen dimly lit, but allowed her to see Catrina perched on the edge of the counter with a cup of coffee in her hands.
“Sorry, Ma,” Catherine said, “I’m late, I know.”
“You called,” her mother said, shrugging. “I asked for a call.”
“Yeah, but Daddy said to be back—”
Catrina waved her fingers toward the ceiling. “He cannot drink like he used to when he was in his twenties and thirties. Although, he would never admit it, and would be greatly offended if I pointed it out to him. He’s been passed out since twelve-thirty. Too much commotion for me today, though, so I am still awake.”
“Oh.”
“And we’ll try not to mention to him that you were a little late, okay?” Catrina asked.
Catherine blinked.
Seriously?
Catherine wondered if she entered the Twilight Zone.
“How was your night?”
“It was … good,” she settled on saying.
Really good.
Catrina smiled. “And your birthday party?”