I never told her the full truth. And because of that, her trust in me is broken. Because of that, I lost my first real chance at happiness in I can’t remember how long. Maybe ever.
Behind my eyelids, the Cassidy in my head shifts. Her smile turns sly, inviting. It reminds me of the first time I brought her here, to this apartment. The first time I pinned her against the door before it had even fully shut behind us, and kissed her full lips, her long, lean neck. The way her muscles shifted against my lips when she swallowed, barely able to contain herself. And the expression in her eyes, when I’d drawn back just far enough to take her in…
Fuck. A look like that could drive a man to insanity.
Which is exactly what she’s done over the course of the intervening weeks. Driven me mad. It’s the only explanation for why I can’t get her out of my head, my veins, my cock.
Jesus. I’m already hard again and I haven’t even pictured her naked yet. I grit out a tight groan, and then I roll over to check the clock at my bedside table. Three in the morning. But it’s useless. I’m not going to get any more sleep until I relieve at least some of the pressure building inside me.
I shove the covers off. My cock is already hardening, getting stiffer with each breath I take, each memory that swims to the surface.
Cassidy in this very bedroom, naked and spread eagled. The taste of her navel when I dipped my tongue into it, running my hands along her soft, luscious curves. Digging my fingertips in just tightly enough to feel her wriggle beneath me, those glorious hips of hers rising off the bed to meet me, so soft it made me want to bite her.
The feeling of my teeth nipping at the ridge of her hipbone, when I gave into that urge and did bite her.
I wrap a fist around the hard length of my shaft, my eyes shut tight, so that I can remain more fully in that memory. Fantasy. Whatever you want to call it. I picture the way Cassidy’s chest heaves when she catches her breath. The way her nipple hardens when I roll my tongue across it, then suck it between my lips, teasing at her breast, toying with her.
I remember the deep, animal instinct that rose up in her when I kissed her, hard, her body pinned beneath mine on this bed. She kissed back every bit as hard as I gave her. And she rose up off the bed to meet me, hands fisted in my hair, when I pressed her down against the satin.
And, God, the sensation when she spread those soft, smooth thighs to let me slide between them…
If I concentrate, I can taste the soft folds of her pussy as she moaned and twisted against my sheets. I can feel the wet smoothness of her on my fingertips, when I slid them inside her, one at a time, until I had three knuckle deep in her tight, hot pussy. I curled them, stroked along her walls to draw those sounds I love out of her. The throaty, breathy sounds she makes when she’s utterly lost to the world.
And the feeling when I finally positioned my cock at her entrance, pushed into her an inch at a time, savoring the way she folded around me, her pussy tight and clenching with want, but so wet I glided in easily anyway. Being inside her had felt like coming back to a home I hadn’t even known existed.
Like finding peace again, after going through the hellish war my life has become these days.
I grit my teeth, move my fist harder, tighten my fingers in a cheap imitation of her pussy clenching around my cock. It’s not the same, of course. Nowhere near it. But for a brief instant, spread out on my bed, slicked with sweat despite the cool air and my naked body… It’s enough to drive the rest of it out of my head. The stress and the worry. The uncertainty of what comes next, where we go from here. How the fuck I’m going to fix this.
Because I have to. I have to fix this somehow, have to get her back. Win back her trust, if it’s the last thing I do. Even if she wants nothing to do with me again romantically—and she might not, I warn myself, you fucking idiot, you might have ruined it for good—I need to show her the truth. She deserves that much, at the very least.
She deserved it from the start, but I was too broken and blind to notice it. I was so focused on what I wanted, I didn’t stop to consider what she needed from me.