Chapter Seven
Blaine carried Cassie upstairs. He loved having her in his arms again.
“Mmm,” she said. “I needed that. You’d deprived me for far too long.”
“But not anymore. Don’t you worry. I’ll take such good care of you that you won’t be able to walk afterward.”
“Sounds lovely.”
She looked peacefully blissed out now, not squirming and on edge as she’d been before. But he enjoyed her like that, too. When he could so easily tease and provoke her.
He’d been sated—briefly. But after watching her walk around his house in the nude, and licking her pussy until she came, he needed to be inside her.
He laid her down on his bed, in the large bedroom where he’d never brought a woman before but where he’d thought of her countless times.
“Roll onto your stomach,” he said. “Stick your ass in the air.”
She obeyed him.
He left her like that, not touching her but enjoying the view as he shed his clothes. Once those were on the floor, he walked around the bed, inspecting her from all angles. When he’d been with her before, she’d had a tan, but now her skin was pale against the brown hair that flowed down her back. Her ass was ample, enticing. He squeezed it before kneeling behind her and touching her pussy again.
“You’re still very wet,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Ready for me to use.”
“Or ready to listen to a lecture on cephalopods.”
“Very funny.” He kneaded her ass. “Do you remember when I tied you to the bed and made you stay there for three hours, taking you whenever I wanted? However I wanted?”
“Yes.” She groaned as she spoke. “I remember all of that week.”
He licked a finger and slid it into her ass. “I took your ass that night. While you had a toy in your pussy. Do you remember that?”
“Of course.”
He leaned forward, his bare chest against her back, and whispered in her ear. “You were so, so full. So wonderfully tight. Trembling, because it was almost too much for you. But you could still take it. I was proud of you.” He ran his other hand through her hair as he listened to her quickening breath. “The man you fucked after me—did you let him in your ass?”
“No.”
He reached for a condom and rolled it over his cock. When he rubbed himself up and down her slit, she gasped. “I don’t want you to let another man inside you ever again. You’re mine.”
He shoved inside before she could protest, and she was so warm and wet and perfect around him. She jerked forward on the bed.
“Yes,” he said, running a hand up her back. “Just like that.”
He began to thrust brutally, digging his fingers into her skin. He knew she liked it this way. Rough, just to the edge of pain. He pinched her clit and she yelped, then he circled it gently, spreading her juices.
“Can you come for me again?” he asked.
Soon she was shaking, clutching the sheets in her hands, and she cried out as he brought her over the edge again.
God, he’d missed that sound.
“Good girl,” he said, sliding his hand through her hair. He slowed his thrusts, gave her a bit of a reprieve. “Tomorrow I’m going to tie you up again. I’m going to do whatever I want to you. For an hour. Or maybe four, if that’s what I feel like. What do you think, Cassidy?”
“Yes. I’ll take your cock. However you want.”
Oh, the things he would do to her this weekend. He would make her realize that no one else could ever satisfy her.
She bucked against him, and he sped up, fucking her so hard that everything was a blur around them. Except for where they were connected, joined—finally—after so much time apart.
He came with a growl, finding release inside a woman for the first time in sixteen months.
The only woman he wanted.
…
Afterward, Blaine curled his body around Cassie, his skin pressed against hers. How had he gone without her for so long? He wouldn’t let that happen again.
“What do you want?” he murmured.
She rolled onto her back. “You know what I’m craving? Poutine.”
That wasn’t the answer he’d hoped for, but it made him laugh. It was midnight, they’d just had sex, and she wanted gravy-covered fries with cheese curds.
“Whenever I go to Ottawa, I get poutine,” she said. “You can’t get it in Georgeville. The diner’s the only proper restaurant in town, and they don’t have it. You can’t get it at the bakery or Tim Hortons, either. And I love poutine.”
“I’ll get you some.” Of course he would get her whatever she wanted. “Would you like to stay here while I pick it up? Or shall we go out together?”
“Let’s go out.” She sat up, then covered her mouth with her hand, suppressing a laugh. A cute blush crept up her cheeks. “Crap. The only thing I have to wear is the beaver costume. You really should have taken me home first to pack a bag for the weekend.”
“No, I shouldn’t have. Because now you’ll be naked for most of the weekend.”
“So this was all part of your devious plan.”
“I’m the villain, remember?”
In truth, he’d just been so eager to take her home with him that he hadn’t been able to think of anything else.
“If you don’t put on your headband and don’t take off your jacket,” he said, “nobody will know you’re a beaver. Plus it’s the weekend before Halloween. I’m sure other people are walking the streets dressed as pirates and demons and cephalopods.”
He pulled her on top of his body so she was straddling him, and he kissed her again and again, just because he could. Because she was actually here. In his house.
She playfully pushed him away. “You know somewhere to go for poutine at this time of night?”
“I do.”
Ten minutes later, they were on their way to a late-night poutine and shawarma place on Rideau Street. There were a few other people inside, all of whom appeared somewhat intoxicated.
They sat by the window with their poutine, and he discovered that watching Cassie eat was mesmerizing. He recalled that being true the summer before last, as well. Although he remembered so much of their week together, there were still things he’d forgotten.
She picked up a fry with lots of gravy and popped it into her mouth. “God, this is so good. Candy, punch, blueberry wine, and poutine—that’s what I’ve had tonight. Interesting combination, don’t you think?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Those aren’t the only things you’ve had in your mouth.”
“Right. I’m a beaver. I was gnawing on wood earlier.”
“I hope you didn’t do any gnawing. Can’t say I like the image.”
She laughed, and that made him smile.
It hurt to think of how many of Cassie’s smiles he might have taken away when he left her. He pushed that thought to the back of his mind.
“So what’s new with you?” she asked. “What’s happened in the past year?”
“I bought the house,” he said, “and I realized I couldn’t live without you.”
She looked down, shaking her head. “It’s too late, Blaine.”
“It’s never too late.”
She smiled sadly. “Did you go on any trips?”
“New York City. And Utah.”
“Utah?”
“There are lots of rocks there.” He took out his phone to show her a picture of the orange hoodoos in Bryce Canyon and another of a rock arch.
“Those are so cool,” she said.
“You wouldn’t want to travel with me. I think you would find it annoying.”
“Because you’d keep yapping about the geology?”
When he was a child, his father would take him camping on Cape Breton Island, out in Nova Scotia, every couple of years. They’d gone again two years ago. After his dad’s death last year, Blaine wondered if his father had been planning his escape from this world for a long time before he put that bullet in his head, and had wanted one last trip with his son. They hadn’t traveled anywhere together for years before that.
His father had let him talk on and on about the rocks while they were out there, plus the vegetation and the animals. He hadn’t asked him to shut up once.
Okay. Maybe once. But that was all.
Blaine was different from his father. His dad had been the kind of guy who always smiled, whose idea of a good afternoon was a couple of cold beers and a game on TV.
The kind of guy you couldn’t ever imagine taking his own life.
“Blaine?” Cassie said.
He would tell her this weekend. But not tonight.
“Yes,” he said. “You might find it annoying.”
“Not gonna lie. At some point, I probably would. But I like listening to you talk about what you find interesting. You seem to find so many things fascinating, whereas I don’t.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
She shrugged. “Still. I’m not like you. But when we went to Bon Echo and you were talking about the rocks and the pictographs, I thought it was cool.” She paused. “Were most of the things you told me about yourself true, aside from the lie about where you lived?”
He nodded. “I’m a geotechnical engineer. I have a master’s degree. My parents divorced when I was six. I’m an only child. Those things—and nearly everything else—are entirely true.”
“I was worried that I’d gotten to know someone who wasn’t you.”
“No. You knew me.” He might not have told her why he’d taken a week off to drive around the province with a tent in his trunk and no plans, but still, she knew him. Mostly.
“I remember you telling me you wanted to be a paleontologist when you were a kid.”
“Lots of children like dinosaurs, but not as obsessively as I did. I knew everything there was to know about each dinosaur, even if I struggled to pronounce their names.”
“When did you decide to be a geotechnical engineer?” she asked.
“Grade eleven, I think. After a brief phase of wanting to be a surgeon.”
“A surgeon?”
“When I was sixteen, I sliced my finger pretty good with the hedge trimmer and had to go to the ER. I watched as the doctor stitched me up and thought it was cool.”
“I’m not sure that’s a normal reaction to getting stitches.”
“I’ve never pretended to be normal.” He paused. “What about you? What’s happened to you in the past year or more?”
“Not much. I’ve been working at the same job, living in the same place. My friend Rachel—the flapper girl—moved to Ottawa with a guy and started college. Jenna—the witch—got married. But me…not too much has changed.”
He knew from the way she was avoiding his gaze that she wasn’t telling him everything, but he wouldn’t press her, not now.
He would be a hypocrite if he did.
…
When they got home, he told her to take off her clothes in the front hall.
She hesitated. “I don’t think I’m ready for another round. It’s one in the morning, and it’s been a long day.”
It had been a long day for him, too. “No sex. But I will enjoy watching you walk up the stairs without any clothes on.”
She stuck out her tongue, but she obeyed him, her hips swinging as she climbed the stairs to his bedroom in the unnecessarily large house that he lived in alone. He admired her ass as he followed her up.
She climbed into his bed, and as he looked at her long hair spilling down her shoulders, curling around her naked breasts, his heart clenched.
He needed this weekend to work, needed to make her his.
But truthfully, he wasn’t as confident as he acted. He was just pretending to be confident he’d win her back…because the thought of losing another person he loved was too much to bear. It terrified him.
He’d lost his father. He couldn’t lose Cassie, too.
He didn’t know how he’d survive without her.