Page 88 of Shattered Veil

“No, the fuck I’m not,” I argued. “I’ve stuck my cock inside of his litter sister, and he has no idea. I am not a good friend.”

“To be fair,” she returned lightly, “I wanted your cock.”

I pressed my hands to my eyes, whining, “Cassie.”

She giggled. “What?”

Sharply pointing at the entrance, I demanded, “Go lock the door before your brother comes back and hears you talking about my cock.”

“Yes, sir,” she mocked as she spun on her heel. I watched her nearly skip around the couch, past the kitchen table, and to the door. She flicked the deadbolt, and I felt a relieved breath leave me. She asked, “Can we stop talking about my brother now?”

In what came across as a quiet plea, I returned, “Can we tell him about us once we feel like we’re not in crisis mode?”

Cassie flashed me a megawatt smile—one that blinded me and caused her nose to scrunch in the way I had long begun to adore—and she cooed:

“Yes, baby.”

She said it casually. Offhandedly, as she traipsed her way to the pantry that resided to my left, beside the refrigerator. And though it had left her mouth in the most natural of ways, she had still said it as if she knew that the word would string me up by the ventricles. As if she knew that the endearment she had bestowed upon me would hang over me in a pink-tinged mist, run through my nostrils, flood my olfactory system with her trademark vanilla, and render me lovesick.

It did, of course, because the woman made me fucking weak.

And instead of mentally damning the way that she was so easily able to wipe the slate of my mind clean, I fell into it. Despite the horror of the reasoning for her being here and the entirety of my feelings surrounding her brother, which could simply be deemed as guilt-ridden and uncomfortable, I just found myself wanting her—cherishing the feeling to the point that I moved to meet her where she stood.

Eyeing the shelves, she inquired, “Did you want an onion? I like onion in a stir—”

It was clear that she had sensed my presence behind her, but it was when I reached for her face that she cut her sentence off mid-word. In one swift movement, she turned into my clasp of her jaw. I pulled to usher her lips to mine, and when Cassie began to close the distance between us, she caught my eye and froze. The altogether playful attitude that she had from the moment she walked through the door dissipated, and her brow furrowed as she placed a hand on the left side of my chest.

“You okay?”

Through all of her thought-clearing haze, I still knew that I wasn’t. It was a fact that none of us were—we were simply putting on brave faces to muster through it all because there was no other viable option—and I didn’t care to delve into that. Though I appreciated her ability to see through me, and her questioning of my well-being made warmth flood beneath where her palm laid, I knew that I would be a song set on repeat, replaying my anxious melody time and again.

There was no use for that.

I finished her previous motion for her, leaning forward to give her a soft kiss. She hummed into it, but when we separated, her eyes were still tinged with a gentle worry. I answered her question with another:

“Are you?”

“Touché.”

“I’m as fine as I can be,” I told her.

Cassie nodded. “Me too.”

My thumb traced along her jawline. “I like you here.”

Her lips quirked up. “Me too.” She tightened her hand on my chest into a fist, grasped my shirt, and gave it a tug. Eyes darting to my lips, she whispered, “Come back.”

I sealed my lips on hers with the quiet insistence that I had intended before. Our touches on each other were smooth and quiet, hers moving to my waist to beckon me closer and mine cradling her face, and our mouths remained closed—sweet and slow, yet burning with a forward motion.

Sweet and slow quickly turned hot and feverish. Tongues clashing, her nails beneath my shirt and digging into my lower back, and my hands gripping a shelf behind her, our bodies were flush—only separated by the thin layers of clothing between us. A rough flex of my hips pinned her to the shelving, and Cassie’s breath hitched as the canned goods clunked and clattered.

And it wasn’t that I was a caveman who simply wanted her here and now.

I mean…I was. But that wasn’t the entirety of it.

There was just something about the way that we melded together. Something about the way that she grabbed me just as tightly as I did her. Something about the way that our respective movements carried the fluidity of water—no matter whether I was gentle and patient or progressing to rough and ragged, Cassie was there to meet me halfway. She mirrored me with enthusiasm. With a well-read return of my emotions in her eyes.

It drove me manic.

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