Seven (11 page)

I’m so far from it. If she found out about Patrick, she would be in complete shock. If she found out about what I’m up to, I’m not sure what she would do. Though, right now, I am not sure that I can continue if I’m going to be a fucking baby about it all. I need to steady my resolve. Casen is breaking down all of my barriers. One minute I feel like I am in complete control and the next, I am losing my mind.

She finishes up her run while I walk a little bit. Afterward, we do a few weight machines together and stretch. “He wants to go out with me,” she mentions while bending down to touch her toes.

“Who?” I asked confused.

“Reece.”

She must not have given it up last night. I’ve watched Reece a little bit at the bar on the nights before Casen and I “officially met” and he never gives any girl a second glance after he fucks her. I grab my ankle and pull it up to my ass. “What did you say?”

“Well,” She stands straight up. “I told him I would think about it. He wanted me to go home with him last night, but I wouldn’t.”

I stay silent, so she continues. “I mean, I would’ve but between my sister needing me to bring milk home for the baby, and your sorry ass, I decided to play hard to get.”

I release one leg to bring up the other. “I’m really am sorry.” But, I’m not. I can’t tell her what kind of man Reece is, though, because she doesn’t think I know him.

“It’s fine. Better this way. I can make him sweat it out a little bit more.” She giggles. I laugh and we walk over to the café and grab a smoothie before heading our separate ways.

*****

My quads are on fire. Every step back to my apartment brings a soreness I haven’t felt since I started running. The elevator gives me a small reprieve until the doors open. I groan as each step brings shooting pain and halt just outside when I hear someone across the hall.

“That sound you’re making sounds sexy, Embyr,” Casen comments from just outside of my door.

I finish the last few steps and come face to chest with him. “Hey.”

His pointer finger tilts my chin up and his eyes show concern. “Hey.”

We stare for a brief moment before he leans in and places his soft lips on mine. My body goes lax and I almost drop my bag before realizing that this is the problem. I’m letting him get to me. I pull away and put my key in the door. “No work today?”

He follows me in. “No. Came off of a twenty-four hour shift yesterday, so I don’t have to go back in until tomorrow morning.”

I drop my gym bag onto the table and turn to face him as he closes the door. He looks magnificent: dark jeans, royal blue shirt, same boots, and eyes that are scorching me from five feet away. “I need to take a shower. Make yourself comfortable and, when I get out, I’ll make us some lunch.”

He nods but doesn’t move, so I turn to walk down the hall towards my room, hopefully leaving my libido behind.

Twenty minutes later, I find myself back in the kitchen with an astonished look on my face. Casen has done way more than make himself at home. He’s managed to find everything he needs for a Cobb salad, and even made lemonade.

“I figured this was okay.” He smiles, pulling a chair out for me.

I take a seat, placing a napkin over my jersey shorts. “It’s more than okay. Thank you.”

He sits next to me, takes a bite, and then places the fork down. “Why did you leave last night?”

That seems to be the question of the day. I can’t tell him that Ian’s hands on my body reminded me of a night, just ten years ago, where he and his friends started a chain reaction of ruining my life.

“I didn’t want that other guy touching me,” I tell him, taking a bite of salad. Jesus, it’s good.

“I’m sorry.” He sighs. “I didn’t even think about it, but I promise—Ian is a good guy.”

I nearly spit the lemonade out.

“I’ll show you how to do it.”

“Whether you think he is a good guy or not, I didn’t agree to dance with him. I agreed to dance with you.”

His head tilts to the side. He probably sees this as a fight and just might give up on me. Only couples fight and we are not a couple. Another bite. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

I wipe my mouth with my napkin and replace it to my lap. “I am, too. Maybe leaving and not answering you was childish. I’m sorry for that.”

“Ok, then.” He smirks, leaning over and kissing me. “Moving on.”

When we finish, both of us take our dishes to the sink, and I wash while he dries them.

“This feels so domestic,” he jokes.

I just smile, not wanting to even think about us being domesticated together. The thought would disgust me. But, even scarier, the thought could fill me with ideas I don’t want in my head.

Get in. Make him love you. Destroy his heart. Get out.

“Do you have plans the rest of the day?” I ask as we take ourselves onto my balcony. I sit on the wicker sofa.

He shakes his head no as he closes the glass door closed behind him. “I don’t. I was hoping we could spend some time together, if you don’t already have plans.”

“Not that I am aware of.” I eye him. “Do you have anything in mind?”

Casen stares at me before lowering himself to his knees between my thighs. They tingle with his touch. His hands slide up from my knees to just inside the bottom of my shorts. “I was thinking,” he says grabbing the edge of them and teasingly tugging on them. “That you could take these off and I could return the favor from yesterday.”

I look around, noticing the busy street just a short distance away and all of the other balconies looking down onto mine. “Casen, someone could see us,” I whisper, but I don’t stop as his fingers reach higher. My panties dampen and his thumb brushes the wet spot.

“That’s the best part,” he growls before his lips collide to mine. He moves my panties aside, and I don’t fight. I’ll let him do this, but I refuse to allow myself to reach an orgasm with him. He’ll get a fake one, just like the rest.

But my tits are sharp as blades, and my body slinks lower into the chair, looking for more friction. I can hear a bus in the distance and someone’s balcony door sliding, but the solid railing around mine keeps most others from seeing what is going on. He’s aggressive, sinking his fingers deep inside of me and earns a muffled moan from me. He speaks into my lips. “You are drenched, Embyr.”

With his words, the faint start of an orgasm starts to build and I try all I can to resist. Casen reaches up, pinching my breast through my shirt and bra, and I can’t help but see fucking stars. He’s going to make me come, and I’m going to hate myself for it. I try to fight it but it feels so good. My walls start to tighten, but I restrain myself. “Come on my fingers, Embyr,” he commands. “I want to feel you squeeze the shit out of them.”

A car door slams shut, and the thrill of what he is doing to me, out in the open, zings through my body. I’m still fighting, but not for long because just as I’m about to gain my composure he pulls his fingers out of me, shoves my shorts over, and latches his sweet fucking mouth to my pussy. “Holy shit!” I scream, fighting the inevitable. I’m so fucking close; it hurts.

“Come, Embyr. Let me feel your clit pulse under my tongue.”

With those words—those fucking glorious words—I’m done for. My wall comes crashing down. My steel cage lifted. My first non-self-induced orgasm, in years, comes crashing down over me, and I can’t help the screams that echo off the apartment complex walls. I grind into his face, riding out the last wave, as he laps up the remnants of my orgasm. I shudder when it all becomes too sensitive and he leans back, keeping my shorts to the side and staring at my pussy in wonder.

I’m too sated to move and the old high school girl, the one who crushed on him for so long, cannot believe that Casen Parker just got me off, outside, in the middle of the day.

I adjust my shorts, to his dismay, and sit up in my spot. He sits next to me and pulls me in for a deep kiss. I can taste my juices on his tongue, and can’t help but want to suck them clean off of him. I’m fucking high on orgasm, and am not worried about the consequences I’m going to face with myself later.

“Does that make up for the blow job you gave me yesterday, and the mistake of leaving you with someone else last night?”

“Definitely.” I smile. The first genuine smile I’ve had in a long time.

He reaches down, sliding his fingers up my thighs once again. “Why were you fighting me, Embyr?”

“I-I . . . I wasn’t,” I stutter because his fingers have found my clit once again. It’s swollen and sensitive, and if he continues to gently caress it the way he is, then I’m going to come again.

“Let’s try one more time,” he tells me, bringing his forehead to mine, and dipping his pointer and middle finger inside of me; his thumb, still working my clit. “But this time, let the fuck go.”

My head falls back as I do what he asks and allow him to thrust his fingers in and out of me slowly, his thumb running lazy circles. I whimper and he takes that as his cue to go faster. My hips move involuntarily and I can hear his breathing deepen. “That’s it. Let go, Embyr. You are so fucking sexy with my fingers deep inside of you.”

I moan, his thumb harshly pressing down. The bundle of nerves, still sensitive, creating chaos, building up to another orgasm. He thrusts, I ride, he kisses my neck, I moan. It’s all too much and I take a deep breath in before letting go and coming all over his fingers. “Fuck,” I whisper, my chest rising and falling rapidly.

He slowly pulls his fingers from me. I open my eyes to find him staring again while biting the side of his lip. “What?” I ask, pushing his shoulder jokingly.

He frees his lip before wetting it. “That is my new favorite.”

I rub my finger along his chiseled jaw. “What is?”

“Watching you come, Embyr. It’s my favorite thing to watch now. And, when I find a new favorite, I have been known to break it in and wear it out.”

My skin prickles with the thought of Casen breaking me in. Images of his body over mine, pushing himself inside me. From behind, pumping into me. In the shower. In the car. In the fire truck. On top of the ferris wheel at Navy Pier.

He brings his hands up, cupping my neck and thrusting my lips to his. His tongue commands entrance and fuses with mine. I grab his shirt, bringing myself closer, before I straddle him. His reaches into the back of my shorts and squeezes my ass, grinding my pelvis into his. My body has a mind of its own. I want to come again. I want to unbutton his jeans and slide my shorts over and ride this mother fucker like it’s my last day on earth. And, for the first time since I started this journey of revenge, I feel like maybe—just maybe—I’m going to be the one to get hurt.

My body is sore. The kind of sore you get from an amazing morning workout. Where your muscles ache so good, and you’re still sweating it out thirty minutes later. The firehouse is quiet when I walk in but the truck is still there. I’m right on time; just before seven o’clock in the morning, for my shift and hoping I can get something to eat and a shower before any calls come in.

I swing my arms back and forth and pull them in for a stretch as I walk into the kitchen where a few of the other guys are eating. One of the local schools brought us over some coffee, donuts, and bagels. I snatch up a bagel and a bottle of water from the fridge and turn around, spotting Reece sitting at one of the tables. I pull out a chair on the opposite side of him, and the loud screech make his head pops up and his eyebrows to scrunch. “You almost scared me, man,” he says before taking sip of his coffee, then folding the paper back up.

He has dark circles under his eyes and his shoulders are slumped. Yesterday he picked up an extra shift, and I heard there was a big high-rise fire overnight. Three stations battled it until just after four o’clock in the morning.

“You look like shit,” I comment before taking a bite of bagel.

He lets his head fall to the table and his eyes shut. “I’m spent. I just want to take a shower and get this smoke smell off of me, so I can fall asleep for three days.”

I laugh, knowing that won’t happen. We can be one of the busiest stations. “Here’s to hoping it’s a calm day for you.”

Lifting his head up, he looks at me suspiciously. “You get laid last night?”

I inwardly smile. “No. I didn’t get laid, asshole. I’m just happy.”

“Well, you look like a love sick puppy.” He scowls like it’s a disease. Maybe to him it is. He was never the one to have a girlfriend. Since Reece and I have known each other, I can count on one finger the amount of girlfriends he has had, and it was in second grade. He’s not a player but he gets a lot of no-strings ass.