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A crease forms between her brows. Clearly, she’s worried about the bar, me, well, probably pretty damned much everything. That’s Cass. Always worried about shit. I lower my head and plant my lips right where that crease has sprouted. I flatten it with some pressure from my mouth.
“Stop worrying.” I’m the one who should be worrying. What I’ve got to show her, share with her—she might lose her shit with me.
Then again, she’s had her share of secrets.
For at least just as long.
36
BALCONETTE BRAS AND PRADA
CASSIE
Josh’s lips are soft and yet so very masculine as they alight on my own. His tongue slides out of his mouth and teases my lips, cajoling me to open my mouth. To let him in. His hands grab my hips, keeping me pinned against a hardness that is so very irresistible. He pushes me against the wall in the already crowded bunk area ofTrash. His hands travel to the bottom hem of my tank, adorned with the logo of the coffee shop I sling drinks at. He pulls it over my head and then his gaze drops to my balconette bra. He absently slips his tongue out and traces his lower lip. The sensual nature of that simple act, combined with the fire of lust in his black eyes, lights a flame deep within me. I’m turning to jelly.
He trails a fingertip along the edge of the bra’s top, coming ever so close to my nipple, which is now pebbling with desire and anticipation. I part my lips to moan when he dips his head and licks the flesh he just touched with his fingers. The moan turns into a gasp.
I reach out and cup his head, my hands tangling in that long, luscious hair, knotting in it and holding him tight against my breast. He tugs on the bra cup and releases the nipple, then takes it in his mouth, his teeth grazing the sensitive flesh. Oh, that gasp turns into the longest groan ever as my knees become weak, and I sink against the bunk’s post.
“I need you,” he grunts the words out, his voice guttural and primeval.
My breath catches at the intense rawness of his proclamation. How did we get to this place? Back to the old Josh and Cassie? It’s like the last three years of hell have vanished, and things are so amazing. So perfect—
“I should have known.” That voice.
That voice should not be here. It’s colored with disgust and disdain, disappointment and revulsion.
“Mom!” I’m scrambling to slip my bra back into place and, at the same time, glancing around in the dim bunk room for my top. Jesus. What the hell is she doing here?
Josh is as still as a corpse. As still as a statue.
I swoop down and grab a jacket. Someone’s jacket. I have no idea whose. It smells like old shrimp and fish and tobacco. I don’t care. At least it covers the exposed flesh. I clasp it closed with one hand, using the other to steady myself against the post. My knees are weak for a whole other reason now.
My mother, meanwhile, is stalking out of the bunk room and onto the deck.
“Wait,” I call out to her. Why did I do that? Why am I following her? What good will it do? I don’t have the foggiest idea, and yet, I’m hot on her heels. So hot that when she whirls around abruptly, I nearly run into her face-to-face.
“You did not even tell me or your father that you were in town.” She sniffs. Another sign of her contempt.
“It was spur of the moment.” I sense movement behind me and realize Josh has come close.
“I want nothing to do with you. You’re no longer our daughter. Do not contact us again.”
And just like that, she twirls around on her red Prada pumps and daintily manages to get from the boat to the dock, and then begins to click-clack her way across the wooden boards toward her gleaming realtor car.
“You can’t—” Josh’s voice is resolute.
“Josh, don’t,” I whisper.
He falls silent.
I can feel my face has crumpled. She saidus.Does that mean that… surely she can’t cut me off from my father. He wouldn’t—
And just as abruptly, a scene comes to my mind. When I was fourteen and wanted to wear a one-piece because a bikini would accentuate breasts that came in way too soon, way too big. I’d asked Dad to take my side because Mother insisted that I had to wear a bikini. I have no clue why she’d be adamant about that. You’d think a mother would appreciate her daughter’s modesty. I’d gone to Dad. Asked him to take my side.
“I’m always going to side with your mother,” he’d told me. “I won’t take anyone’s side over hers.”
He’d proven that over the years, and I’d learned not to go to him for support. So if she was cutting me off, I felt pretty damned sure he would follow suit. I cursed him for not being his own man. I cursed him for—
