He took no time to think about it.
“No. No way. That’s your retirement fund, Cassie. That’s all you have.”
“No. This is my retirement fund. This place. And you need the money and you know it. Investing will make me feel, I don’t know, more worthy of its name. Don’t say no. I need you to say yes. I want to do this. Or else.”
“Or else what?”
If you say it, you have to mean it. No more empty threats. But in that moment, it didn’t feel like a threat. It felt entirely necessary.
“Then I really can’t stay.”
“Don’t do that, Cassie. Don’t drop ultimatums.”
“It’s not an ultimatum. It’s a fact. I need to do this because I feel lousy. What’ll make me feel better is if I get a piece of this restaurant. A piece of the risk. And, hopefully, if I have anything to do with it, a piece of its success too.”
He scratched his head. I couldn’t decide from his expression if he was a little angry or kind of pleased.
“Well, we could use some money for the unforeseen expenses, like fixing the fucking dishwasher that we just installed! And I’d love to run some print and radio ads …”
“Then it’s all set,” I said, not waiting for a full yes or a firm no. Will imagining an easier opening night was enough for me, plus I was running late now. “I’ll cut a certified check. We’ll deal with paperwork later. And by the way, we have the wine testing tomorrow. We have to pick the house red and white. I know you like those Texas Hill Country vintages, but they’re not cheap.”
“Right,” he said, looking dizzied.
“And I left the insurance forms upstairs for you to sign.”
“Great. Yeah. You off?”
“I am.”
I grabbed my coat off the hook in the kitchen. Leave. Leave now before he changes his mind.
“Okay, then. Have a nice night,” I said, bounding out of the kitchen.
I waved bye to Claire, who barely looked up at me over her phone, no doubt her latest drama already morphing into something new. I headed to a certain truck idling a half block from Café Rose. Will and I weren’t going to be partners in life, but we’d be business partners, a relationship that I hoped I would one day find almost as satisfying. Sex I would have to get elsewhere.
I opened the truck door, startling Jesse.
“Hey babe,” he said, shoving his newspaper aside. “You’re late.”
“I’m sorry. I was in … a meeting.”
He was wearing mirrored sunglasses and working a toothpick. He looked like an ad for his truck. I slid into the seat next to him, took his sunglasses off his face and put them on mine. I was flooded with adrenaline.
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
I’m not sure what my grin said, but we were both instantly aware that we weren’t going out for a coffee or dinner or a movie. We weren’t going for a chat. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot left to discuss.
“Your place or mine?” he asked.
“Yours.”
He peeled away from the curb, and when he steadied the truck on Frenchmen, he reached his right hand behind my head and gave me a warm caress.
“I’m thinking it’s time I get you naked, Cassie Robichaud.”
Despite my lingering feelings for Will, it was goddamn instant wetness with this man.
“I’m thinking the same thing.”
I had waited more than two months. Long enough for Will to change his mind. Long enough for a thaw or a shift, something that would tell me it wasn’t over between us. But that moment wasn’t coming. And frankly, Matilda was right: having sex made you want to have sex. It was a muscle; exercising it created an appetite. And I was hungry. Sitting next to Jesse, something deep in me released, the way your bra can sometimes come undone and you don’t feel it at first. You just start to breathe a little easier.
We were quiet on the short drive. He parked in front of his place in Tremé, and I let him walk around to the passenger side of the truck to open my door. I got out and followed him closely, wordlessly, on the walkway leading to his front door. I needed sex; I needed this man inside me.
In the foyer, I let him take my purse from my shoulder and drop it in the pile of kids’ unwrapped toys stuffed under a Christmas tree that would probably be up for another month. He turned my body to face him and kissed me hard, pressing me backwards into his darkened bedroom, a teak-filled room with heavy brown drapes. There, he stood me in front of his wall-mounted, full-length mirror, undressing me slowly, stopping me anytime I did anything to help.
“Don’t move. Just stand there,” he said, bending to pull off my boots and socks.
I rested a hand on his shoulder. He undid my jeans, wrestling them down, unsheathing my legs. As he slid my panties down I was conscious of how wet I was. My T-shirt and bra were next, tossed on the pile of my clothes on the nearby chair. The strangest sensation came over me, one that went beyond arousal. I realized that for the first time in my life I was just a body. My heart wasn’t in the room with me. It was all sensation, movement, touch, feel.
From behind he placed his hands on my breasts. He knew my body well. I pressed back into him, feeling his erection through his clothes against my back, my whole body leaning into it, softly rubbing it, surrendering all over again. I was doing another Step One. I need hands on me. What is wrong with that?
I closed my eyes and my head tipped back against his chest.
“You want this?” he whispered, his tongue in my ear.
Eyes closed, I nodded.
“You want me to fuck you?”
I nodded again.
He slid his hand down between my legs, over my pelvis, pulling my hips back. I wrapped my arms up and back around his neck. He slipped a finger, then another one in me. Oh god was I wet.
“There have to be rules.”
I looked at myself in the mirror, my body stretching back against his. My pulse quickened. Uh-oh. Heart, stay out of this!
“We’re both in S.E.C.R.E.T. That could get tricky. Emotionally.”
“How?”
“My Step’s coming up.”
I was looking at his face buried now in my neck.
“I know that,” I said.
He moved me closer to the mirror and placed my hands on it. Our eyes locked in the reflection.
“So it doesn’t bother you at all that I’m going to have sex with the new woman, the new candidate?” he asked, kissing my shoulder but never taking his eyes off mine in the mirror.
Steel yourself, Cassie. You know what it is to be with this man. This isn’t about love.
“I don’t have any expectations.”
“And I don’t either,” he said, moving my hair to one side and kissing my neck. “I really like you. No. I adore you, Cassie, but we’re different. You crave love. I just … I crave.”
“But you said … you said you might have been waiting for a girl like me.”
Why did I have to bring that up? And now?
My hands were still pressed on the mirror. His fingers reached around my face and under my chin. He glided them across my lips and slid one into my mouth; I closed my lips firmly around it, tasting soap. I watched myself sucking his finger. I could feel him stiffen even more behind me. His breathing sped up. Matilda once told me that what a man tells you about himself is true. If he says he’s a shallow jerk, that’s usually true. If he says he’s not good at relationships or has trouble committing, ignore this information to your peril.
“I meant it when I said it. At the time.”
His finger was still in my mouth, his tongue traveling to my ear. My knees went weak.
“Then you went back to Will first chance you got,” he whispered. “I learned my lesson.”
He removed his finger from my mouth with a tiny pop. “I told you I was sorry about that, the way I treated you, I—” I thought I detected a hint of anger in his voice.
“I’m not looking for an apology. But it made me realize that I am suited to this. A
nd to fantasies. Not necessarily to real love. Or real commitment. I worry that the opposite might be true of you.”
He stepped back and whipped off his T-shirt. This man was elbow-deep in icing and butter all day. How was it possible that his body was so sculpted?
“How so?”
“You want love.”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
He turned me around to face him.
“No, everybody does not. Some of us just want to fuck.”
He gave me a little push that sent me backwards onto his bed. He was no longer smiling. The face of the sweet, supportive friend who had driven me home from Latrobe’s was replaced by that of an intense young man, his tattoos lending him a menacing patina, one that I found a little scary and incredibly sexy. I inched backwards on the duvet, centering my body on the bed, as he stripped the rest of his clothes off. He was magnificent naked, his cock erect and insistent. He stood there, casually stroking himself as his eyes took me in.
“Open your legs, Cassie,” he instructed, leaning over to his nightstand to remove a condom.
I hesitated. I wasn’t sure I liked the tone in his voice.
“Do it,” he added, sounding hoarse.
“Ask nicely,” I replied, my knees clenched.
He slid the condom on, ignoring me, then climbed onto the bed and kneeled before me, placing his hands on my knees.
“Do you want me to make you? We can play like that too, Cassie. Just say the word.”
This was making me wet and freaking me out. Did I want that? Did I want him to make me?
“Does this turn you on?” I whispered. “Ordering me around like this?”
“Sometimes.”
“I thought men in S.E.C.R.E.T. needed clear signals.”
“I’m not your fantasy man anymore, Cassie. I’m just a man, who wants to fuck you.”
He tugged my knees apart and collapsed over me, his hands on either side. His cock graced the nook between my thigh and pelvis, lying heavy against my skin. The dark bedroom cast shadows across his cheeks and chin. He was breathing heavily, his eyes traveling over my body. I reached up and moved the tips of my fingers across the light hair on his chest, his sternum, the back of my finger tracing up his neck, his chin, across his cheekbones. For some reason I wanted gentleness to contrast with his sudden aggression, but he took my wandering hand and placed it over my head the way you’d move a lever back into its place. There was a moment where I asked myself, Should I let him fuck me like this? Should I let him restrain me and use me? Should I use him? I said yes in my head, while using my knee to press him away from me in a complicated no.
“Too rough for you?” he asked, sounding almost … triumphant.
A surge of something (indignation?) rushed through me. “I actually don’t mind rough sometimes, Jesse.” I remembered Will’s spanking, the fun we’d had pushing each other’s buttons and limits. “It’s that you’re angry. That part I don’t like.”
He blinked a couple of times as though coming to consciousness. Then he rolled off me and collapsed on his back, an arm slung over his eyes.
“Sorry, Cass. I’ll take you home,” he muttered. “I gotta be somewhere anyway.”
I hoisted myself off the bed and began to gather my clothes. “Don’t bother. I’ll walk.”
“Cassie.” He reached to grab my arm. “Let me take you home. I’m being a fucking dick. I’m sorry. Really. We don’t have to—”
I jerked free of his grasp and began plucking my clothes from the floor and dressing with my back to him. I felt a strange power surge through me—a new sense of agency.
“You’re right, Jesse, we don’t have to fuck, because I decide whether we fuck or not. And I get to have the kind of sex I want. And what I don’t want is to just lie there and let someone fuck me the way I did with my ex-fucking-husband, waiting for it to be over!”
I was breathless. I turned to face Jesse and saw his expression registering shock but also awe.
“That’s what you feel this was?”
“No!” I screamed. They were different men, Scott and Jesse, but this feeling was familiar. “No, it’s not the same. But you are being a dick.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Jesse looked up at me. “This might be inappropriate,” he whispered, “but you are very sexy when you’re like this, Cassie.”
Jesse reached for me like I was a cornered animal that might bite. He tugged loose the T-shirt I was holding, dropping it to the floor. Then he pulled me by my jeans, securing his hands on the top button, popping each one open, a warm smile spreading across his mouth. His cock was so hard it was like it had heard nothing of what was just said.
“I think you need to make amends to me,” I whispered.
“How about I start by kissing your pussy. Would that make it better?”
“Maybe,” I said, my hands going to my breasts. This man! One minute I wanted to slap him hard, the next I wanted to fuck him harder.
“Tell me what you want me to do. Use your words, Cassie, the ones I taught you,” he said, placing my foot on the bed next to his thigh, splaying me before him. He wet his lips.
“I want you to lick me, Jesse,” I said, my fingers in his hair.
“You want me to suck your clit?”
His eyes were dancing with mischief. He liked me like this, bratty and transgressive.
“Tell me what else you want me to do, Cassie.”
“I want you to fuck me,” I said, climbing towards him. “I want your cock in my cunt.”
“Yesss, that’s it,” he said, collapsing back, taking me with him.
I remembered the way Angela had wielded her power over Mark that time in the Mansion, when I was behind mirrored glass watching them. I channeled her now, mimicking her movements, the fierce way she tore into him. I shoved Jesse down on the bed, ignoring his erection, to take my own pleasure from his mouth, his darting tongue finding my grooves, his smooth fingers exploring my body, every curve and crevice, his tongue lashing back and forth over my clit, my whole body now over him, writhing with desire. He knew me so well, knew how fast to go, how slow. He knew how close to bring me to orgasm before spinning me around and throwing me down on the bed so he could enter me quickly, his hips grinding me.
“You’re so fucking sexy, Cassie,” he murmured, his arms ropy and ridged, his stomach muscles tensing with every feverish thrust.
As he fucked me, arousal flooded my core, until I had no choice but to come, on command, on his command.
“That’s right, Cassie, I got you … come for me, baby, come now …”
He was scorching, his eyes burning into me. I flung my arms up in surrender. Eyes open, I came so hard, so searingly, I felt something akin to disbelief—disbelief that he could do this to me, to my body, that he could make me come like this, my spasms gripping his cock so hard he nearly emptied into me. At the last second he tugged out with a moan and spilled onto my heaving stomach, in hot, helpless spurts.
“Holy shit,” he said, collapsing atop me.
I held his sweaty head between my breasts. After a few seconds of gasping, still in a state of astonishment, Jesse fell off me, sliding comically to the floor in a weak pile, both of us laughing at the mess we had made of each other.
“Holy shit,” he said.
I was about to reply, I know, that was amazing, but he was already up and sprinting to the bathroom to shower.
“Sorry, Cass. I almost fucking forgot! I have a thing at nine.”
“Oh,” I said, getting up to gather my belongings. “What do you have to do at nine? Another girl? Haha.”
“I’m helping out tonight. With S.E.C.R.E.T.”
“Oh,” I said. “I was kidding.”
My entire center dropped out as I took in what this meant. Solange. He was “helping out” with the new candidate. He was going to have sex with Solange. Oh, this did not feel good at all. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Relax,” Jesse yelled from the washroom, reading my mind. He shut off
the taps. “I’m not the main attraction.”
What did that mean? A few seconds later, he brought his naked, dripping body back to the bedroom. He hurriedly plucked his jeans off the floor and threw them on commando-style.
“Can you drive me to the French Quarter, Cass? That’s where it’s happening. You can take my truck home. I’ll cab it after.”
“I’m not going to drive you to your fantasy! We just fucked!”
And there it was, my Jealous Girlfriend Voice.
“Whoa! Calm down, Cassie. I would not have sex with you and a S.E.C.R.E.T. candidate on the same day. I’m not that much of a tacky fucking asshole. Tonight’s just a quick walk-on role. I’m just facilitating. Like I said, I’m not the main attraction.”
I was afraid to open my mouth.
“I knew this was too complicated,” he said. “Maybe we need to stick to being buddies.”
“No. It’s okay. I’m cool,” I said, shrugging on my T-shirt. My stomach grumbled so loudly we both noticed.
“You need food. That’s why you’re cranky,” he said. “If I dress in the truck we’ll have time for a quick bite. Come. Please?”
He was offering a truce and I wanted to prove I could handle this, both of us being in S.E.C.R.E.T., both of us enjoying each other sexually without having to get all possessive about it. I shook off my own doubts and negativity and took the keys he dangled in front of me.
I drove into the French Quarter while he slapped on what looked like some kind of security guard costume.
“Well, I guess I know what your role is going to be,” I said.
“Ha,” he said, adjusting the belt. “Even if I were the main fantasy man, I doubt she’d accept the Step. I look like a fucking dork.”
After I parked near Jackson Square, we walked over to a loud line of food trucks and each ordered a couple of creole-style rotis. We found seats in front of Stanley’s. I told myself we would be okay. We had just had an off night.
“The fantasy’s going to happen here? It’s pretty crowded,” I said, prompting him.
“That’s part of it. Being in public. Crowds,” he said, thoughtfully looking around and chomping his food.
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