Page 15 of Shattered Veil

I nodded, drained half of my glass in one gulp, and returned, “May as well.”

“Good,” she replied, “it’s my night off.”

“Night off from what?” I asked her in a tease.

“Work.”

Delightfully unfiltered, I crooned, “And what do you do for work, Cassie?”

She set her glass down, dragged her eyes from my feet to my head, and said, “I think you know that already.”

“I do.”

“Are you capable of keeping a secret, James?” she questioned me in a tone that felt seductive, and I couldn’t help but allow a smile to pull at my lips.

I looked at her, felt our eyes lock as she silently demanded my attention and kept it, and I replied, “Yes.”

“Good,” she said. “You smile as if you’re picturing it.”

“Picturing what?” I asked.

“Me,” Cassie quipped, reaching for the glass that was once mine and tossing it back. “Working.”

Images of her in a scantily clad, glowing getup that barely covered her flashed in my mind. I could nearly feel her breath hot on my face as I imagined her moving over me. My cheeks heated at the notion, and my eyelids were suddenly hooded with lust.

“Maybe I am,” I admitted.

Her head tipped to the side. “What aspect of me working are you envisioning, exactly?”

“The one with you on top of me.”

I said it with grit in my voice, and her eyes were alight with either entertainment or anticipation—I couldn’t decide which.

She hummed a happy noise and voiced, “That’s what I thought,” and I seriously considered the latter.

Our back-and-forth banter continued on like none other. With the absence of my usual limitations toward her, our conversation and the wit that we threw toward each other was effortless. It was charming. Flirtatious. Brash. It went on for what felt like hours until Cassie sighed with a breathy laugh and quipped:

“Damn…I’m buzzed.”

And, of course, she shouldn’t drive. Couldn’t drive. My apartment had plenty of space…and it was awaiting us both.

A gasp that stretched the capacity of my lungs and rattled in my throat ripped through me before I even had the chance to open my eyes.

It was a dream.

A fucking bad one.

Not bad in the sense that it gave me anxiety or sent my mind to a memory that I wished to erase—bad in the sense that I could see it all burned into my retinas. Bad in the sense that the star of said dream was Cassie. Bad in the sense that much, much more had occurred in that dream before I had woken in a sweaty puddle with a shuddering inhale.

Of course, I had thought of Cassie in a sexual manner in the past. Whenever she’d tease me, I’d want to kiss her in response. She’d use profanities in the middle of a conversation, and I’d consider how it would sound if she were moaning it. She’d wear short jean shorts, and I’d note that her legs were long—so long that if she were to bend over at the waist, I could fuck her from behind with ease.

They were similar to intrusive thoughts of, I don’t know, steering off the highway with a rapid jerk of my hand…jumping from a bridge…biting glass…punching a window. I wouldn’t do any of those, obviously, and I’d usher the sexual thoughts away just as quickly as I would the others. But this? This dream? It was different.

I couldn’t stop picturing her legs wrapped around my head.

My face between her thighs.

Her shivering around me, screaming to the gods as she came on my mouth.

---