by Laura Morgan
They soon started their whistle-stop tour of the city, and even roped Siobhan in with a bit of babysitting every now and again so Cassie could take Hanna and Jamie on late nights out to the theater or to Leo’s nightclub. They’d return home drunk and full of laughter, while their pregnant comrade would simply roll her eyes and thank Siobhan for helping out before seeing her on her way again.
One evening after Sandi had gone to bed, Hanna offered to give Cassie a backrub. She’d noticed her wince when she took her seat, and Cassie didn’t have the guts to tell her it wasn’t her back aching, but far lower after having spent another evening with Leo’s huge hands delivering her with another so-called punishment. Hanna would never let her live it down if she told her why her ass was sore.
Despite her hesitation, Cassie accepted, and pulled off her shirt before lying face-down on the thick rug on the floor of her lounge. It’d been a long time since she’d had one of Hanna’s world famous backrubs, and she simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity.
The guys were in the kitchen fixing them their promised cocktails and snacks, so when Hanna undid the clasp of her bra and slid the straps aside, Cassie didn’t shy away at being half-naked before her best friend. She relaxed into her flattened pose and pressed her breasts into the soft rug beneath her while scooting around until she felt comfortable, all the while grinning with her secret.
After grabbing some lotion from her travel bag and pouring some into her palms, Hanna warmed it. She then began swirling her hands over Cassie’s shoulder blades and spine, kneading and pressing into muscles Cassie had no idea were even stiff until Hanna began working her magic. She was soon lost in the euphoria of her massage, groaning in appreciation of the relaxing treat. Time and all thought was gone, and only the sweeping hands of her best friend kept her grounded.
She giggled uncontrollably when Hanna’s fingertips glided over her ribs, and it only served to make her do it again. Before long, Cassie was squirming beneath her, laughing loudly until Hanna finally let go of her ticklish spot.
“Still beautiful as ever,” Hanna’s sultry voice whispered so close to her ear that Cassie jumped in surprise. She turned to look up at her and caught the sexy smile on Hanna’s face that told her she was enjoying having her hands on Cassie’s body again. She had to smile back, knowing exactly what Hanna was thinking of.
Way back at the mansion when they’d had their threesome of sorts with Jamie under the watchful eyes of Leo’s cameras, Hanna had come clean about her bisexual tendencies—especially where Cassie was concerned. They’d been more intimate that night than she’d been with anyone in a long time, and even after her and Leo’s recent exploits it ranked as one of Cassie’s hottest nights ever. She’d never been with a woman before or since, but she’d enjoyed delving into what at the time was a world of frivolous fun and newly released inhibitions. Cassie didn’t know if it was thanks to Leo and her new life full of passion and an “anything goes” attitude when it came to sex, but she wasn’t be against touching and tasting that forbidden treasure again.
Shaking off their joint flare of indulgent heat, Hanna went back to work. She sat back on her heels and continued the backrub, while Cassie began shuffling around in a bid to get more comfortable. She then let out a sharp hiss when Hanna’s elbow pressed down on her ass cheek, and Hanna quickly started questioning her on why she was in pain.
Cassie knew she must’ve gone an incriminating shade of red when Hanna immediately burst into laughter and demanded to see. She pinned Cassie down with her powerful arms and pushed her into the floor. Cassie didn’t fight her hold, mostly because Hanna had the advantage of being in a delicate way so she couldn’t risk hurting her, but also because she didn’t really want to put an end to their play fight. It was wonderful being able to laugh so easily again, and Cassie knew Hanna loved seeing her so happy at long last.
She and Hanna had been through so much together that all inhibitions had been thrown out the window years before, and Cassie still treasured how she’d always felt so free in her company. The day-to-day, mundane, and monotonous all drifted away, and it felt good to let go.
The deep rumbles of laughter that filled their ears quickly alerted Hanna and Cassie to the return of their lovers, and they looked up in time to watch as the guys headed into the lounge with clearly amused grins on their faces. Drinks in hand, Leo and Jamie immediately stopped their previous conversation.
They stepped closer and Cassie turned her head in time to catch as both sets of eyes widened in shock. They clearly hadn’t expected to find the girls rolling around on the floor with Cassie half-naked, but simply shrugged, took their seats and watched as their playful wrestle played out.
“Don’t stop on our account…” Jamie told his wife with a wide smile.
“Show me! What have you two been up to?” Hanna demanded, grinning down at Cassie while still pressing into her.
“Get off me, you dirty pervert,” she teased, squirming against her hold. “You had a one-time-only deal with this piece of ass, and you had your fun. Now I belong to him, and I’ll only show if he tells me to,” she slurred with a giggle. Cassie knew she was potentially sharing a little too much, but Hanna didn’t seem embarrassed by her admission of Leo’s dominance, and neither did their partners.
They both turned to look at where the guys sat side by side on the sofa, sipping on their gin and tonics in silence. They’d stayed there while Hanna had wrestled Cassie into full submission on the floor before them, neither stepping in to stop their playful teasing.
With their eyes on their lovers, Leo and Jamie leaned in close to talk to one another in private. Cassie wasn’t sure what Leo’s response would be, and she gave up her fight in time to see him grinning and laughing quietly while nodding in agreement over something Jamie had just said.
“Take off your clothes, Jellybean. I want to see the handprint I left on your butt this morning,” Leo’s voice chimed.
“You too, Hanna. It’s only fair you show off that beautiful body you’ve got under that dress.” Jamie’s deep tones echoed from beside him, and Hanna grinned as she released Cassie from her grasp. Both girls climbed up onto their knees and Cassie draped her long hair over her breasts, effectively covering them for the time being.
“As if he tells me what to do,” Hanna told Cassie, but she still slid out of her dress and started peeling off her underwear. Cassie loved how she was effortlessly following her husband’s order while still maintaining her independence, and enjoyed seeing their balanced relationship style. After leaving her life as a prostitute behind to be with Jamie, there hadn’t been anyone for Hanna but him—and vice versa. Cassie felt privileged to have Hanna’s attention on her again, and knew they wouldn’t do anything more than simply giving their lovers a good show, just like they’d done before. This time, though, there would be no sharing when it came to their men, and both women seemed to know without asking that their tryst wasn’t about to turn into a foursome.
Cassie halted her striptease when down to just her panties, and she took a moment to run a finger over her best friend’s small bump in awe. Hanna looked so beautiful, and truly glowed in pregnancy. Cassie was all of a sudden envious of her. She had everything she could’ve dreamed of without the pain or the heartache, and her own life suddenly felt very small in comparison to Hanna, Jamie, and their blossoming brood.
She wanted it too. In a sudden moment of realization, Cassie was suddenly broody. She wanted a baby with Leo, and was no longer scared to admit it. Cassie forced her attention away from Hanna’s rounded belly before her broodiness got the better of her. She focused instead on the full lips before her, and found herself staring at them with a need she hadn’t fulfilled in so very long.
Cassie hesitated before kissing them. Waiting was such sweet agony, but she didn’t move. She waited as long as she could bear, and was overjoyed when she then heard Leo’s voice waft over from the sofa.
“Go for it, love.” Even Hanna gasped at his command, and her eyes lit up as she realized
just which route their relationship had taken. Cassie closed the small gap and took Hanna’s mouth with hers. Their tongues delved and their lips collided in a passionate display Cassie knew would already be arousing their observers. They kissed for so long she was panting and her lips were swollen when she finally pulled away, and she was glad to see that Hanna was in a similar state.
“Oh shit, sweetie. Don’t tell me you want this again, ’cause I’ll go there for sure.” Hanna’s voice was ragged and full of need, and the sound went right to Cassie’s core. “I’m horny like, all the time, and now you’ve got me remembering that night in Leo’s mansion. I want it again, but so much more. Can we?” Hanna’s soft tones drew Cassie in, and she let out a soft laugh. She looked over her shoulder at their two lovers with a smile, focusing on Leo in particular.
“How far?” The sound was quiet and timid, but she had to know Leo was on board with what was about to happen. She guessed she really had given her full submission to him, as the only thing holding her back from going for it with Hanna was Leo’s say-so. She craved his approval, and could tell by the salacious smile curling at his lips he was enjoying her need to obey him.
“I watched you two fool around on that recording hundreds of times. Now I get to see it for real.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “Show me what you showed Jamie that night,” Leo said, and his command gave Cassie all the approval she needed to carry on. She delved back into her kissing session with Hanna without even hesitating.
After a few minutes of heavy petting, she felt Hanna’s hands on the hem of her panties, but before she could pull them down, her hand was yanked away. In her surprise, Cassie looked to Hanna, but it was Leo who answered her unspoken question. “I changed my mind.” He pulled Cassie to her feet.
She went to apologize to her friend, but saw the impressed look on Hanna’s face and thought better of it.
Despite his forceful way of putting a stop to their heavy petting, Hanna was clearly fascinated by his prowess, and Cassie watched as fire burned in her eyes when she regarded him. Jealousy speared in her gut, and she understood now why Leo had put a stop to their fun. Regardless of their history, she knew she wouldn’t share him with anyone either.
Cassie followed him out and down the hall to their bedroom without another word to Hanna or Jamie, but saw for herself how Jamie had already taken her place on the rug, ready to carry on in private just as she and Leo were.
Once they were alone, he pinned Cassie to the wall by her throat and kissed her roughly. “No one touches you but me, got it?” he demanded, and sunk his teeth into her bottom lip. She hissed at the pain, but didn’t pull away.
“Got it,” Cassie replied, and she pushed her hips against his. He was rock-hard beneath his clothes, and she was almost naked, drenched and ready for him to take what was his.
“Tell me you’re mine. Tell me I own you,” he groaned as he unbuttoned his pants and ripped off what remained of her clothing.
“All yours, baby. Always,” Cassie cried when he buried himself deep inside. She told him again and again while he showed her how crazy she’d made him with her little show with Hanna. Cassie liked knowing she could drive him so wild with desire for her, and she locked the feeling away so it could be called upon again and again. It felt amazing to have that affect over her powerful lover, and thanks to his lasciviousness, she soared once again in his arms.
Chapter Eleven
After saying farewell to their American visitors, life returned to normal, or at least the version of normal Cassie and Leo were beginning to create for themselves. He moved in permanently, and together they were working hard on their careers while enjoying all the downtime they could have together.
One afternoon while between productions, Cassie suddenly felt compelled to draw. The urge had come and gone over the past year or so, and it was always tinged with the memories of old that crept up on her while she offloaded her emotion onto the page. Through her art, she was somehow able to express herself in a way she’d never been able to with words. The good and the bad oozed out of her, and there had been numerous times when Cassie could barely control the subject or the way the drawings ended up.
Faces haunted her, portraits of those who demanded her attention even after they were long since out of her life. They never left her, only waited their turn to be drawn back to being or else torment her day and night. She fought it, but their ghosts frequently won, and she’d often find herself in floods of tears as she sketched the faces of those she’d much rather forget. There were more pictures in her portfolio than she could count, and along the way she’d even asked Siobhan to help her sort through them. The good, happier sketches were allowed to stay in a neatly arranged cabinet in her apartment, but the ones that came with a hundred sorrows and an agonizing heartache were boxed and stored at the far back of her office in the theater. Victor lived there now, as did Jonah. There were also the people she’d failed and the beautiful places she’d laid waste to in her mission to get home.
Cassie sometimes felt like she was keeping the memories of them alive by drawing them, and often feared what she’d created. It was almost as if her tormentors themselves could rise from the pages like a creature from the other side. Her Blue Period, it seemed, was far blacker than even Cassie was able to comprehend.
Leo came home to find her covered in charcoal from her dwindling pencil, with her head buried in the pad. Cassie was sketching Sandi. The little angel was happy, prancing around in a ballerina’s outfit, and this time Cassie was more than happy to show him that day’s work.
“Do you ever draw me?” he asked, flicking through her current sketchbook thoughtfully. There weren’t any of him in there, and there was a good reason. With a smile, she stood and walked over to a large wooden chest nestled in its spot beneath one of her huge windows.
“There are too many for one book,” she told him, and lifted the lid. Inside were hundreds more of her sketches, all of Leo. They were dated, and some went as far back as their first days together in New York. In a gesture she could never thank Hanna enough for, they’d been kept safe, awaiting her escape from that ivory tower in the desert. Her drawings were some of the few items she’d brought back to the UK with her, and despite all the baggage weighing on her shoulders back then, Cassie had known she had to keep them.
Leo lifted the top few out. He’d undoubtedly like some more than others, and wasn’t surprised to see his expression go from relaxed to scowling, and back again. If her drawings were anything, they were honest. In some he was smiling, in others his flirtatious grin was ever present, but in a few his frown remained, or a glower had hardened his stare. He didn’t deny that any of them were accurate, and she was glad that he took them for what they truly were—a way for Cassie to offload some of the demons from one shoulder, as well as the cherubs from the other.
“What about Victor? Do you draw him? And Jonah?” he asked, and Cassie shuddered. She’d barely been able to look at old photographs of Jonah, let alone his portraits, and she couldn’t even begin to talk about her art based on Victor. Those works were beyond dark, and if she could help it, the images she’d conceived while in the worst of her grief would never see the light of day again. She knew she should burn them, or throw them away. She’d tried, but had never been able to see it through. They were a part of her, whether she liked it or not.
“They’ve got a box each as well, but not here. I can’t see them, Leo. I can’t have them around to take me back to those scary places. I have to focus on the good, and those who give me happy memories.” Cassie smiled up at him.
“Like me?” he asked incredulously, as though he couldn’t believe her.
“Yes, exactly like you,” she replied, and then closed the lid on the faces of Leo’s past. They weren’t important; only the future could do her harm now, and she was sure each of them would do their best to make sure they had far happier than sad days ahead of them.
***
“I think it’s time
we went to visit my family,” Cassie informed Leo over dinner at their new favorite restaurant, Giuseppe’s. Her love of Italian food had never ceased, and Leo knew the reason she so often chose this place for dinner was because it reminded her of Mrs. Brown’s restaurant in New York. That old dive had meant far more to her than just a place of work. Working there had provided Cassie with a new home, a fresh start, and a surrogate family she could rely on during her separation from Jonah.
Leo pulled his mind away from their Stateside past. He thought instead about her request for a trip to visit her family, and wasn’t at all surprised by it. He could understand her need to introduce him to her parents and brother at long last, but part of him was dubious. Leo wasn’t interested in winning over the parents who hadn’t been all that supportive or caring—at least as far as he’d seen. Her folks had seemed disinterested in her life and career every time he’d heard her on the phone with them. It was only her younger brother, Will, who cared at all. He was always the one to call her, and he’d even arranged a visit to London a couple months previous, but had to cancel when he’d been offered a job in a prestigious law firm after finishing university. Cassie had been pleased to hear his news, but she’d also been devastated that their trip had to be put on hold.
That conversation had been another hard one for Leo, and not because of his own disappointment, but because he hadn’t known how to comfort her. Having never had a close relationship with his own family, he’d always had a hard time associating those bonds with a loving connection, so wasn’t sure what was the right or wrong way. It wasn’t something Leo was used to. When he was ten years old, he’d lost his father in a car accident. He’d been devastated, but his mother had reacted to the news ten times worse. She’d sent Leo to boarding school rather than deal with being both a widow and a single mother, or so it’d seemed to him, and then taken her own life a year later. He never spoke of her, not even to Cassie, but knew her death had been the start of his retreat from emotional connections and meaningful relationships.