Deacon (Unfinished Heroes #4)

by Kristen Ashley

  My body tensed. “Yeah?”

  “This stays good, woman, wanna make ’em with you.”

  I closed my eyes tight.

  “I know that’s too soon. I also don’t give a fuck,” he continued.

  “It is not too soon,” I replied firmly.

  There was a moment of silence then, “Fuck, my Cassie.”

  This sounded like a groan and I loved that emotion so much I lifted up and looked down at him.

  “That’s me,” I stated, still firm, totally unyielding. “Your Cassie. And you’re my Deacon.”

  His hand started sliding up my side as his lips ordered, “Quiet.”

  I was never quiet.

  Or, at least, that occasion came rarely.

  “You should know, I’m claiming you.”

  “Woman, quiet,” he growled.

  “Just saying, you can leave, but I want you back. You can stay as long as you stay and I’ll take you. And I hope you start doing that work to leave that life you’re leading when you’re not with me because I want there to come a time when I can eat my cereal while you open the door.”

  His brows shot together. “Eat your cereal while I open the door?”

  “When you’re with me in a way you’re not leaving,” I explained.

  His brows stopped knitting but his face turned into a scowl. “Fuck, woman, shut up.”

  “Too much too soon?” I asked, like it was a dare.

  “Fuck no.”

  “Okay, then quit your bitching.”

  He glowered at me.

  Then he grinned.

  “Total boss.”

  “A girl has to be when her man’s a badass.”

  “Like you weren’t one before.”

  My eyes slid away. “Whatever.”

  “She was one before,” he muttered.

  I ignored him.

  “Cassie.”

  My eyes slid back.

  Deacon’s arm left me so he could frame the side of my face. I waited for words but he said nothing. Just looked at me, his eyes moving to my hair, my lips, but they never left me.

  Then they came to mine as his thumb swept my cheek and I knew he was done with his moment.

  So I asked, “You want that vanilla blowjob now?”

  He burst out laughing.

  I settled into the sound.

  But while he was still doing it, I swept the covers off our bodies.

  He quit laughing and groaned when I commenced my vanilla blowjob.

  Deacon came in my mouth.

  I came around his fingers.

  As always, it was glorious.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I’m Glad

  A week later, I walked in the house from the shed, where I’d been laundering sheets, folding them, and putting them in the linen cabinet there (though I’d stopped to deadhead some of the flowers in my pots on the steps of my porch).

  I just got the door closed when Bossy trotted out of the downstairs powder room, stopped, looked up at me, and yapped.

  “What’s going on, baby?” I asked.

  She yapped again.

  I didn’t speak Bossy, though I was learning, so I did my best to translate and walked to the door of the powder room, Bossy on my heels.

  I stopped in the door and stared at Deacon on his back on the floor, his head and shoulders wedged between the opened doors of the vanity, a wrench in his hand, a brand new, non-rust-stained, scalloped-edged, totally awesome sink where the old one used to be. A new, expensive-looking, beveled-edged mirror had already been switched out with the old, ugly, tawdry, gilt-edged one.

  Suffice it to say, although I’d got rid of the ugly wallpaper and painted the room a pretty green, I hadn’t found the money to switch out the sink and mirror.

  “What on earth?” I asked the room but it was aimed at Deacon.

  What didn’t seem that long ago, I’d been having coffee with Milagros at my kitchen table.

  Deacon, who was giving us space doing Deacon things in secret Deacon places (this didn’t happen much; when he was with me, he was with me in all the ways that could entail), walked one foot in the kitchen and stopped.

  “Milagros,” he said, dipping his chin to her, and he looked at me. “Later, woman.”

  Before I could ask, he was out the door.

  Milagros had looked my way and raised her brows.

  I’d looked at her and shrugged.

  We’d had our gab while we finished our coffee and she went down to finish the cabins. I went down with her and got the sheets. I’d put sheets in earlier so I got caught up in that, as well as organizing the space and making note I needed to corral Deacon and get to a Costco to buy more detergent, fabric softener, and glass cleaner refill.

  Now I was back.

  And I had a new sink.

  And mirror.

  Bossy was doing her best to wedge herself in the bottom of the vanity to keep Deacon company as he kept working and didn’t answer my question.

  “Deacon,” I called sharply.

  “Sink was crap. Got you a new sink.”

  “And the mirror?” I pushed.

  “Arguably more crap,” he answered.

  He was not wrong.

  Still.

  I drew in a breath and as I did, it hit me.

  “So, in order to avoid an argument about who was paying for said sink…and mirror…you just didn’t bring it up at all and went about your merry way.”

  “Yup,” he replied nonchalantly.

  I clenched my teeth.

  I unclenched them to snap, “Deacon—”

  “Cassidy, do I use this sink?”

  “Not the point,” I hissed.

  “Am I gonna be usin’ this sink repeatedly for the foreseeable future?”

  He was, damn the man.

  “Not the point either.”

  It took effort and I watched him make that effort to unwedge his broad shoulders from the vanity, do an ab curl to sitting on his jeans-clad ass on the powder room floor, and train his eyes to me.

  Bossy climbed out of the vanity and yapped.

  “Give this to me.”

  “Dea—”

  “Baby, I need it. Give it to me.”

  I shut my mouth.

  “Your people are comin’ soon. You want to give them a nice place?” he asked.

  “Rust stains are hardly the end of the world,” I noted.

  “Right. Then you want them to feel good that you’re in a place that’s nice and gettin’ nicer? Not rundown and they leave, worried about when you’ll be able to get around to doin’ good things for you to make yourself a home?”

  I wanted to kick him (though, not really). This was because none of this was the point but he was making it the point in a way that wasn’t wrong.

  This was also because I’d had the conversation with my father four times when he’d come to visit, offered to switch out that sink, and I’d declined, asserting my independence (as always).

  Dad would be ecstatic that old sink was gone.

  Mom would be ecstatic that ugly mirror was history.

  With no other way to save face, I declared, “You’re supremely annoying.”

  He grinned. “Yep. That’s me.”

  “Should this continue to be as awesome as it is, we trundle toward together and make those babies, if we have daughters I’m starting How to Deal with Badasses when they’re five.”

  His eyes were lit but his expression was full-on tender when he returned, “We have boys, they get How to Deal with Stubborn Bitches Who Argue About Meaningless Shit starting at three.”

  “Again, Deacon Deacon, women dislike being called bitches,” I shot back.

  “That’ll be part of my lesson to the boys,” he volleyed.

  I rolled my eyes, unable to carry on just thinking of giving him sons.

  Or daughters.

  Deacon tired of the conversation and re-wedged himself under the sink.

  Bossy looked from Deacon to me and back to Deacon, deciding he
was more fun. I knew this when she pushed herself into the vanity, getting in his way, and yapping orders at him.

  I left the bathroom.

  I mean, what other option was open to me?

  Damn the man.

  * * * * *

  Deep into the night three days later, I woke when Deacon trailed his fingers between my legs.

  Coming sleepily cognizant of where I was, how I was, and what was happening, I felt myself get wet and a sharp tingle assaulted me. This was because, before we went to sleep, Deacon left me tied to the bed, on my stomach, arms not out but tied together above my head to the headboard.

  My legs were spread eagle. This was so he could sleep beside me and do it tangling his heavy legs with my stationary one.

  You would think you couldn’t sleep that way, but after the orgasm he’d given me hours ago, I had no problem falling right into dreamland.

  “Woke hard,” he whispered in my ear.

  He meant hard, as in ready.

  I licked my lips.

  His finger whispered light at my clit and kept doing it.

  I pressed my lips together to hold back my whimper.

  “Gonna take me, Cassie,” he told me.

  “Okay.”

  “Gonna take me hard.”

  “Okay,” I repeated.

  “Hear me, you’re gonna take me, baby.”

  I didn’t know what he meant.

  But I didn’t care.

  I’d take whatever he gave me and I’d proved that repeatedly, sleeping bound one of the ways I did.

  “Whatever you want, honey.”

  “Yeah,” he replied with approval, kissed my neck, my shoulder, then he set about doing whatever he wanted.

  This included fingering my clit until I was tense, fighting my ties, whimpering, and lifting my ass to demand more. Then it included him moving over me and fucking my cunt until I moaned desperately into the pillows.

  And finally it included him oiling me and himself in preparation before he fucked me up the ass, up on one forearm in the bed, hand in and curled around my breast, thumb rubbing my nipple, body mostly on mine, other hand shoved under me working my clit.

  I came hard with him up my ass.

  Deacon came hard up my ass.

  He’d never taken me there.

  I fucking loved it.

  With him still inside me, he stopped teasing my nipple and just held my breast, his breath labored but evening.

  “Better every day?” I whispered, my voice husky and replete.

  He pressed into my ass.

  “Don’t ask questions you know the answer to, baby.”

  I smiled lazily.

  Deacon slid out gently.

  He cleaned me tied, untied me, let me work out the kinks then positioned me tucked to his side.

  “You sleep okay?” he asked quietly, stroking the skin at my hip with his fingertips.

  “Definitely.”

  He said nothing for a moment before he asked, “You like it?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “Okay, Cassie, then it sucks, but I didn’t.”

  I blinked at his chest.

  “It’ll happen again ’cause I liked wakin’, ready to take you bound,” he stated. “But I prefer you free to nestle into me.”

  I so loved this man.

  “Then we won’t do it again,” I said.

  “We’ll do it, but like this. I give that to you for a while, then I fuck you, then you give me this.”

  Another badass compromise.

  I pressed closer. “Works for me.”

  His stopped stroking my skin, slid his hand over the cheek of my ass and in the cleft, where his middle finger rested light against me.

  “This okay?”

  “Yes, baby,” I whispered.

  “Harder and rougher or gentler and slower?”

  I closed my eyes, loving the feel of Deacon giving me anything.

  I opened my eyes. “Whatever you want.”

  “I’m up your ass, Cassie, it has to be what you want.”

  I sighed and replied, “We could try harder and rougher, but I’d also like to try gentler and slower.”

  He slid his hand back to my hip, murmuring, “You got it.”

  “Deacon?” I called.

  “Yeah, Cassie.”

  “Thanks for letting me be me.”

  His body tensed and his arm squeezed.

  “I, some guys would think that I…” I stopped, swallowed, and continued. “In bed and out, bossy, independent, ornery, and what I like done to me, they’d think—”

  He saved me by cutting me off. “Then good you didn’t get some guy, Cassidy. Good you found me.”

  He was so right.

  I turned my head and kissed his chest.

  He slid his hand into my hair. “You know that goes both ways.”

  I turned my head back and rested my cheek to his warm skin. “Any girl would be lucky to have you.”

  That got me his body tense again and his fingers in my hair pressed into my scalp.

  I felt him relax before he said, ‘You know that goes both ways, too.”

  I loved him. God, I loved him. And I wanted to tell him. I was aching to tell him.

  I didn’t tell him.

  I bossed, “Got to sleep, Deacon.”

  “Only if you go there with me, Cassidy.”

  I smiled at his chest.

  He slid his hand out of my hair, taking his time, then wrapped his arm around me.

  And together, we fell asleep.

  * * * * *

  The next afternoon, I shut down my computer after dealing with bills, e-mails, bookings, and trolling websites to see if there were more travel sites where I should register Glacier Lily.

  I got up, went to the kitchen, and looked out the windows to see Deacon on the porch, feet up on the railing.

  I went to the door, opened it, and Bossy, who was allowed on the porch since the slats in the railings weren’t big enough for her to push through, came bounding to me.

  I bent and scratched my dog, calling, “You need a drink, honey?”

  “Got one,” Deacon replied.

  I looked to Bossy and shoved her back a bit, saying, “I’ll be out in a sec.”

  I closed the door, got my cold drink, then went out to join Deacon on the porch.

  I stopped dead behind his chair, seeing he had a spiral notebook he’d purloined from my desk pressed to his thigh, a pencil in his hand, and he was sketching a gazebo.

  He felt my presence. I knew when he asked, “You want one like this?” He flipped the page to another sketch of gazebo. “Or like this?”

  “I…uh…” For once in my life, I was at a loss for words. This was because the proof was right in front of me that Deacon could sketch and he was good at it. This was also because both gazebos were beautiful. Far more spectacular than anything I’d dreamed up in my head. One was round with gorgeous carved slats in the railings and woodwork around the edge of the roof. The other was octagon, with different but still gorgeous carved slats and roof edges.

  Both would be beautiful at Glacier Lily.

  Amazing.

  I went to my chair, rested my booty on the arm, and looked at him.

  He was looking to the notepad.

  “Can you build those?” I asked.

  His eyes came to me. “Yeah.”

  “Really?”

  “Not that tough, woman.”

  He was wrong. I knew nothing of carpentry, but I knew he was wrong.

  I changed the subject.

  “You can sketch?”

  “Anyone can sketch.”

  “I can’t sketch.”

  “It’s not Michelangelo.”

  “It’s still awesome.”

  His expression changed and I felt it. I felt the glory of it right to the heart of me.

  But he said nothing.

  “We get to that time, I want you to build the one you wanna build,” I said.

  “Your cabins, Cassidy.” />
  I leaned in to him, holding his eyes, repeating soft but firm, “When we get to that time, baby, I want you to build the one you wanna build.”

  He got me. I knew it. I knew it when the pad was tossed to the deck, my drink taken out of my hand and set on the deck, and my hand was seized so Deacon could tug me up, around, and over him until I was in the seat, straddling him, ass to his lap.

  His hand was in my hair pulling me down, other hand at my ass.

  That time, he communicated through his kiss, its depth, its gorgeousness, and its length.

  In fact, we made out for ages, me in Deacon’s lap in his Adirondack chair on my porch by a river in the Colorado Mountains.

  And again, I was reminded that I was finally a woman who had everything she’d ever dreamed.

  And I was gleefully happy.

  * * * * *

  Two days later, I stood next to the fancy new grill (that I bought Deacon, payback, ha!) at the end of my porch, eyes trained to the river.

  Deacon was there, Araceli, Esteban, and Gerardo all standing close, eyes rapt with attention, watching Deacon teach them to bait a hook on a fishing pole. Araceli had Bossy’s long lead in her hand and Bossy was nose to the grass, discovering.

  Silvia and Margarita were with their dad ten feet away, all of them had poles in the water, but Silvia’s eyes weren’t to her line. They were on Deacon.

  “Euw!” Gerardo shrieked and I grinned.

  Milagros came up beside me. “My son is not a fan of worms, so I did believe he’d appreciate seeing one tortured. I guess I was wrong.”

  I looked to her and grinned.

  She looked to me and did not grin. “There was something else I was wrong about.” Her gaze slid sideways and I knew she was looking to Deacon.

  I also knew what she was saying.

  I looked back to Deacon and watched as he gently moved the group away so he could show them how to cast a line.

  My man, he had many talents, all of the new ones awaiting me I couldn’t wait to discover.

  “I felt that, with Manuel, what’s in your eyes,” she said softly.

  I again knew what she was saying.

  “I’m glad,” I replied softly, and I was. I loved it that my friend had the splendor I was feeling.

  “Feel it every time he looks at one of our children like he can’t believe they’re real.”

  I loved that she had that, too. She deserved that. So did Manuel. So did the kids.