CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cameron
I woke the following morning to the smell of bacon and coffee.
Looking over the fortress of rumpled sheets, I saw the indentation of her head on the pillow beside me and smiled. It was still damp from her hair, and it smelled like her, not of any perfume, but of the unique, Cassandra-like smell I’d grown to yearn.
Getting up, I pulled on my boxer briefs and went downstairs. The Fluffmaster bounded over to me, barking, announcing my arrival. I scratched his ears and found Cassandra standing in my kitchen with oven mitts on, hair coiled in a bun, wearing my white sweater. It was huge on her, falling off her shoulder, and there were two little mountains rising where her nipples peaked. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her looking so effortlessly sexy.
“Breakfast?” she asked, taking off the oven mitts and starting to slice oranges at the center island. Meanwhile, her eyes were focused intently on the television, which was tuned to the local Sunday morning news.
I came up behind her and tossed my phone on the counter before lifting the sweater, happy to find she was completely bare underneath. I squeezed her ass, and my fingers found their way between her thighs. “I think my breakfast is right here.”
She wriggled in ticklish jerks, still watching the television. I groaned as I saw what it was. A bunch of protesters that had been at the groundbreaking ceremony at the site of the Hunter’s Hill Development on Saturday.
“Ah, the tree huggers,” I sighed, reaching over to turn it off. “You’d think they’d have something more important to do.”
Her head swiveled slowly in my direction. “You don’t think what they’re doing is important?”
I shrugged, not really paying attention, and tried to get in her business again. I felt her in my pores now, but I’d just come from brushing my teeth and was dying to taste her on my tongue again. Right now, that was important.
She swatted me away. “Answer?”
I sighed. “Having convictions is important, yes. Like you said last night. I just happen to have different ones.” Then I pretend-coughed my next words into the back of my hand. “Better ones.”
“What did you say?” She smacked my hand as I feigned innocence and reached for her ass again.
“All right, all right,” I said to her, sighing. I slipped my arms around her and pressed her against my growing erection. “Turns out, you win. I didn’t receive all the information about the toads from the study I’d ordered from the EPA. Anyway, I’m going to recommend to the developer to conduct additional studies and recommendations to ensure the survival of the toads.”
Her mouth opened slightly, and she looked at me. “Really?”
The truth was, I’d made the decision after the meeting with Larsen and presented my thoughts to the developer on Friday. “Well, since it means that much to you. But I don’t know what the developer will do. It’s out of my hands now.”
“But that… that’s amazing!” she said, pulling me closer against her. I could feel the shiver of excitement under her skin, and it only made me want her more.
She wriggled around, smiling at me, her blue eyes sexily bleary. I lost count of the number of times we’d come last night, but we’d definitely gotten our exercise, first on the bed, then in the lake, in the bathtub, and back on the bed again. Unbelievably, I wanted her again. My cock rose up for the challenge. I felt giddy, like a teenager. “Eat the breakfast I made you first,” she said, swatting my hand away for the umpteenth time.
I wrapped my arms around her, not letting her go so easily. Eventually, she turned fully around and let me kiss her. The kiss deepened, and my hands roved underneath my sweater, baring those thighs. I sank down to the floor, then hoisted her onto the edge of the counter with no protest.
She spread her legs wide as I lowered my mouth to her core. She moaned, her thighs closing on my head, her fingers sinking into my hair as I found her clit with my tongue, but then she settled into it, gasping, pressing herself into my waiting mouth. I sucked on her, flicking my tongue as she moaned. God, this woman was everything to me, simply everything, and the crazy part about it all was that after today, I’d have to give her up. Our time had run out.
Or was there another way?
I didn’t know. But Cassandra, or whatever the hell her name was, didn’t give me much hope that things could be different.
Even now, it was like she was saying goodbye, because when she arched her back, tangling her hands in my hair, saying my name over and over again, it was as if this was something she didn’t want to forget. When she came, I found myself clinging to her, holding on for dear life.
This really could be the end.
On Thursday, I was supposed to propose to the woman who’d been matched with me, the woman who would march beside me to the White House.
If that happened, this would be over, and this perfect woman, who made me feel, for once in my life, something… would be gone.
If Cassandra would at least tell me her name, if she would give me some indication that she would want to walk that path with me… then maybe.
I held her, wanting to beg her, force her, shake her until she told me she’d stay.
It wouldn’t be easy, I knew. Her life would be ripped apart by the media, every detail exposed. There would be lies told, stress beyond what this sweet, pure woman should ever have to endure.
And that was what stopped me.
I couldn’t put Cassandra through that.
Bernadette, yes. She knew exactly what she was getting herself in to. She’d been polished for it her entire life. She had wealth as a shield, breeding as an anchor to hold her down against any political storm.
But Cassandra…?
The thought destroyed me. Bitterness overtook me, and I started to spiral down, desperate and out of control.
“Tell me your name.” I knew I shouldn’t do it, but I whispered the four words into the skin of her neck.
She let out a single exhalation that sounded more like a sob. “No, I—”
“Tell me!” I growled at her, pushing aside my boxers as I held her in place. She wanted it, I could tell, from the way she wrapped her legs around me. I thrust into her, and we both let out a breath. I fucked her hard, angrily. All these other times, when it’d been sweet and gentle were a warm-up to this. I’d lost my patience. I fucked her like I should’ve fucked a stranger whose name I didn’t know.
We stared into each other’s eyes as I moved against her, as she lifted her back off the counter, meeting my every thrust, hard. There was defiance in her eyes. She grasped my ass, pulling me harder, as if it wasn’t enough, as if she was punishing herself.
She came for a second time that morning, breathing hard, and then whispered into my shoulder, “It doesn’t matter.”
I grabbed her hair by the roots, yanking it enough to rip a few strands free, lifting her face to mine, fervently searching her eyes for something that could make me understand. “Don’t say that. It matters. It fucking matters.”
I came then, unleashing my white-hot fury into her, as if I wanted to punish her too. But I didn’t. I wanted… something I couldn’t give. Something she couldn’t give me.
We stayed there for minutes, locked in an embrace. As our breathing quieted, she uncoiled her legs from around my waist. Beside her, my phone pinged, and I groaned. I didn’t want anything to interrupt what we had together.
Cassandra smiled gently and picked it up, handing it to me. Then froze, staring at the screen.
My balls tightened, and the hair rose up on my arms. I didn’t know what she was seeing, but from the look on her face, it was bad. Really bad.
“So… Bernadette?”
I frowned, confused, and held out my hand for my phone. “What?”
Her fist tightened around it. Very slowly, I pulled out of her, my flaccid cock dropping between us. She shoved me away, her jaw tightening in anger. “I saw pictures of her. Online,” she said, and all at once, I knew what the tension underneath her skin was all about, even if I didn’t know the context. “You’re together, right? Tight?”
I could have lied, which wouldn’t have been a lie at all. Because I wasn’t with Bernadette. Not at all.
“It’s… complicated.”
“Are you going to marry her?” she asked, her nostrils flaring.
I pulled my boxer briefs over my withering cock. “My family expects me to propose to her.”
She nodded, very calmly, then looked down at herself. She pulled the sweater’s hem down over her thighs and then looked at the lovely breakfast of eggs, toast, and bacon she’d plated for us, now no longer steaming. She let out a shaky breath and slid off the counter. “So then, what was this?”
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t adequately phrase what this was. It was everything. My hopes, my dreams, everything normal I didn’t know was possible for me to have.
Before I could find a way to explain how things were with Bernadette, she said, “So this is a bon voyage to your life as a free man? Fuck the girl from the sex club as much as you can before you assume your real life?”
“No. That isn’t what this is.” I held my hand out for my phone, needing to know what had set this off.
Cassandra began to pace, ignoring me, my phone still tight in her grip, pacing. “Morals and convictions,” she muttered under her breath. “Is this what you call honesty?”
“Wait, just listen to me,” I said, reaching for her, grabbing her in desperation, forcing her to face me. “I’ll tell you what this is. This is my sanity. Okay? My entire life, out there—” I thrust my chin toward the front door. “It’s crazy. With you, I feel sane.”
She scoffed and jerked away. “Well, I’m glad you’ve found your Zen with me. So what if you have to hurt people in the process, huh?”
“I never meant to hurt you. What’s this about? Is that why you wouldn’t give me your name? Was it just the sex?”
She shook her head. I tried to grab her, to pull her to me. I wanted her to say it. To tell me that not only did it matter, but it was everything to her too.
But she pushed me away like I was a virus. Her eyes were fire. “Get the fuck away from me. You’re fucking proposing to her? Really?”
I shook my head. “Why do you think that?”
She finally slapped my phone in my hand. I looked down. It was a message from my father. Bernadette’s engagement ring arrived today. It’s a beaut. All arrangements confirmed for Thursday night. Make me proud.
I stared at it. “My parents…” I shook my head. “They expect… the country expects… the polls… I have to…” I couldn’t make my thoughts make sense in my head.
“You have to?” she sneered. “We only really have to do two things in life, Cameron. Pay taxes and die.”
I got it. What guy didn’t have the balls to make his own decision who he married? Answer: this one. She only thought of me as a fucking puppet, a stupid idiot. And she’d be right. I didn’t deserve her.
“Cassandra… whatever your name is… I—”
She laughed, bitterness dripping off the wound. “You want to know why I never gave you my real name, Apollo?”
I met her eyes. “Why?”
She lifted her chin. “Because it really was all about the sex. I just tolerated your blathering conservative bullshit because you’re hung like a bull.”
The air left my body.
She ran down the hallway, and not a minute later, returned, holding her overnight bag. It wasn’t so hard to pack, I realized dimly. She hadn’t used anything in it at all, except for her toothbrush. She was wearing a phenomenal pink sundress that bared her newly sun-pinked shoulders, and her hair was in loose waves. God, she was gorgeous.
I knew the second she left that my life was over. Not my life as a free man, but all of it. I’d go on living, but the thing inside me that gave me purpose? It would be gone.
And I had to let her go.
“I called for an Uber,” she said in a dull monotone. Mr. Fluffers whimpered for her attention at her feet, sensing my desperation, but she just ran a hand over his head once and tossed her hair over her shoulder.
“Uber?” I started. “I can—”
She didn’t wait for me to finish. She opened the door, slipped through, and slammed it behind her, without a look in my direction.
I pushed aside the curtain and saw her standing out there, waiting. Fuck. I tried to compose myself. All the speeches I’d given to rooms full of dignitaries and the fucking president of the United States, and I couldn’t think of one intelligent thing to say to her. I wanted to convey what she meant to me. I wanted to convey that no other woman would ever make me feel half as alive as she did. But all of those things wouldn’t ring true because she didn’t want me, and my path lay in a direction she couldn’t tolerate.
And unless that changed, there was nothing I could do.
I stepped outside, just as the Uber was pulling up. “Cassandra,” I said as she wrapped a hand around her bag and stepped off the porch.
She turned, her face already distant and detached.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She lifted a shoulder as if she didn’t care. “It’s Brooke,” she said. “My name is Brooke.”
And then she got into the car, and it drove away on the road cutting through the dunes, kicking up sand as it went.