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My mouth covers hers, small hands diving into my hair to hold on, like this will be over too soon. My fingers mold to her waist like I was meant to grab it, pulling her to me until our bodies are flush. Tongue on tongue, a kiss that will never be duplicated for as long as I live. Her taste, the way our lips fit perfectly, the feel of her clothed nipples brushing against my shirt like tight little peaks … I’m a goner.
Part of me thought I built it up in my head over the years about how it would feel to kiss Cassandra. When I was a boy, maybe it was more out of lust than anything. But this? This is the kind of chemistry of completion that you can’t fake. And I had, for years. For years, I’d been with women who only made me feel a quarter—even when we were naked in a bed—of what Cassandra is making me feel with just my mouth on hers.
She whimpers into my mouth, and I realize what I’ve done, pulling away with a ragged breath as she extricates her hands from my hair just as quickly. Her fingers touch her lips like she might find I’ve left burns or tattoos there.
Knees shaking, heart racing, all my muscles sore, and my head clear as a cloudless sky. This is how I feel after a good ride. Except I didn’t even get far. Cassandra had been my therapy.
A choked sound comes from her, and I notice her gaze that’s landed on my crotch, which is currently tented like my dick is trying to come out and shake hands.
Sticking my hand in my pocket, I adjust myself, but it doesn’t help when all I want to do is unzip and take her right here in the grass.
“Couldn’t help it,” I murmur.
“Obviously. I did take health class, Patrick.”
I can tell from her tone that she thinks I’m justifying my hard-on because I’m a guy who’s been six months celibate and that’s what happens when I kiss a woman. What I meant was that I couldn’t help but kiss her, but it feels too raw to admit that.
“I didn’t …”
Trailing off feels like the only option because I’m about to say a lot of things I shouldn’t. Instead, I nearly stick my foot in my mouth with my next question.
“You said yesterday that you were cleaning this place out, replacing stuff?” I try to keep my tone light, like I haven’t been sent to make good on getting this land for my family.
A flicker of confusion flashes over Cassandra’s face with the quick subject change, and I see we’re both going to gloss over that kiss.
“Yeah? It can’t be sold in this condition.”
“What if you didn’t have to put any more work into it? What if you didn’t have to worry about ripping out carpets or correcting pest infestation?”
“What do you mean?” She narrows her eyes.
Something in me tells me to stop. Not to move forward with this ask. Her taste is still on my mouth, and I wish so badly that this was another place and time with her. That I could focus on nothing but kissing a woman I’ve daydreamed of kissing for years. That we could explore whatever this forbidden thing is between us because it feels bigger than anything I’ve ever experienced. It lies just under the surface, nameless, and damn, I want to explore it.
But this is our predicament; I am the son of a man who hated her father, and I took that out on her once upon a time. Here I was, doing it again.
“You should sell it to us.”
Everything in me waits, suspended on some plane, hoping I don’t get the reaction I know is coming.
6
CASSANDRA
“You should sell to us.”
“Who, you?” Does he want to build next to his parents?
“No, I mean the farm. So my brother can knock the house down and use these acres. That way you wouldn’t have to renovate the house or do anymore work on it. You wouldn’t have to list it, we could make it a private sale, and it would be a lot less skin off your back.”
At first, I didn’t think I heard him correctly, or maybe I was jumping to conclusions. But his clarification makes it crystal clear, and now I understand why he kissed me.
In the field over, the goat whines, and I try to focus on the swish of the horse’s tail, because I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
He wanted to butter me up. Make me all hormonal and sensitive to his request. He thought he could woo me into giving up the only place my father had ever lived to people he hated, no less.
Unfortunately, a couple more kisses like that and I just might be swindled. That had been unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, and I know if we hadn’t stopped ourselves, we might have splintered the fabric of our reality.
“Did I ever say it was skin off my back?” Patrick and I had less than two conversations about the house, and now he’s gaslighting me to try to get me to give up the land.
