I broke away from her mouth. Her moans turned to gasps. Every stroke, I went as deep as I could and held for half a beat.
I kissed her neck. Her head lolled back. She dug her fingers into my upper back, pulling me ever tighter.
The familiar ache began to build. Two strokes later, the ache became ecstasy and washed over me. I let out a guttural cry and thrust into her. She matched my movement. For a long moment, we froze, bodies tense and rigid and pressed together. Ribbons of warmth flooded out of me and into her.
We held that position for a lifetime.
Afterward, we moved to the bed. She nestled her head onto my chest and draped her leg over mine. The sweet, pungent aroma of our sex hung in the air. Sound returned to my world. The ticking of a clock. A distant car horn. Muffled voices in an upstairs apartment.
Neither of us said a word. I was afraid to break the spell. I knew the first words after this were important ones, but I didn’t know what they should be.
“I didn’t believe them,” she finally whispered.
She meant the newspaper. I’m sure they’d had a field day with me. Arrested with a fourteen year old runaway in my car, outside the house of an admitted pornographer. No doubt the implications were lurid, but the truth was that I’d found the girl as a favor to her father. I was getting her out of there. And even though Detective Jack Stone hated my guts, he couldn’t twist the truth into anything but what it was. The newspaper could, though.
I stroked the long braid of her hair. “They wanted to sell papers.”
We fell silent again and eventually, to sleep.
When I woke, she was gone.
I haunted the Rocket Bakery, even after I learned she didn’t work there anymore. I kept hoping somehow that she’d change her mind and come back to her old job. To me.
The summer passed, hot and slow.
Fall came. Hockey season started. I took a job helping a player named Phillipe Richard. Huge mistake. After that, I quit going to games at the arena.
Instead, I thought about her all the time.
Thanksgiving came. Christmas approached. A subpoena arrived for me to testify in the Richard case in January. I taped it to the fridge.
Three days before Christmas, I heard it again. That same tentative knock. This time I knew it at the first tap. I pulled the door open. She stood there with puffy, red eyes. She’d cut her hair short.
We stood silently, staring at each other. I tried to think of the right words, but before I could, she burst into tears.
“I didn’t know who else to go to,” she sobbed and fell into me.
I held her close, standing in my doorway while she cried. Once her sobs lessened, I swung the door shut and guided her to my kitchen table.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her as we sat down. A jumble of different emotions screamed at me. I wanted to help her with whatever made her so upset. To know why she came to me eight months ago like she did and why she left just as suddenly. And what was it I really felt for her? Lust, or something more? Had it ever been anything more?
She wiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
She shook her head. “I am. I’m sorry I came here like this. And for leaving before, without saying anything.”
I didn’t know how to answer that. Instead, I asked, “What’s wrong?”
“I’m in some trouble.”
“I gathered.”
She met my eye. I thought I saw a flicker of the passion that had flowed out of them eight months ago. “I’m sorry I left. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You could have stayed, that’s what else.”
“You’re right.” She bit her lip. “I was just scared.”
“Of what?”
She sighed. “Everything. You and me, just getting started. What the paper wrote about you. A new job.”
I ignored the first item on her list. “The paper lies. What new job?”
“A nursing job. I graduated from school while you were…”
“In jail,” I finished for her.
She nodded. “Yeah. I got a job offer in Seattle, but I didn’t want to leave without seeing you. Then I came over and we…well, it was all just too much.”
“That’s where you’ve been? Seattle?”
“Uh-huh.” Her eyes brightened slightly. “It’s a good job.”
“Better than schlepping coffee, I imagine.”
She smiled. “That wasn’t so bad. Some of the time, it was even pretty good.”
I swallowed. I wanted to tell her how much I’d missed her, even though I couldn’t say why. I couldn’t even explain it to myself. I wanted to ask her to leave her job in Seattle or let me leave River City and go with her. I wanted everything.
This time it was me that leaned into her. Instead of raging with passion, our kiss was slow and sweet. Careful. I touched her tongue with mine with a gentle hesitation. Her hand brushed my cheek, then cupped behind my neck and pulled me deeper into the kiss.
Neither of us moved with any great speed. Steadily, though, I pulled her to me. She straddled me in the chair, pulled my face into her chest. My hardness strained against the denim of my Levi’s as she rocked slowly atop me. Her small breasts pressed into my face. I reached up and caressed them with both hands. A low moan escaped her throat.
In that chair, we rocked together, we rubbed together, like we were dancing to some ancient tribal song. Clothing peeled off and fell away. The warmth of her skin radiated against mine. I flicked my tongue over her hardened nipples and was rewarded with a sharp intake of breath. Then she lowered herself onto me and it was my turn to make noise.
The first time had been frantic and then it was gone. That’s why I think we took it so slow this time. She barely rocked on top of me. I hardly returned her thrust. I traced my fingers up from the small of her back to her shoulders, delighting in the softness of her skin. She took my face in both hands and rested her lips next to mine. We tried to have the longest kiss on record. I don’t know if we succeeded. I know that after a minute or an hour or a year, I felt her stiffen and clamp her thighs tight to my hips. I recognized the urgent sound the spilled from her lips when they broke away from mine. I felt the beads of sweat form on her brow. They rolled off hers and coursed down mine.
We rocked for another slow forever until I made urgent sounds, too. She never stopped moving until my sounds ended and my face fell forward into her breasts.
She held me there and silence found us again.
Much later, we moved to the bed. She toyed with the hair on my chest. I stared at the ceiling until she was ready to talk again.
“I’ve made mistakes in my life,” she finally said without prelude. “Stupid things, when I was younger.”
I smiled bitterly but said nothing. My mistakes were legion.
“I dated a guy named Erik Yeager about eleven years ago. I’d just turned twenty. He was a few years older.” She ran her fingers through my chest hair. “I let him talk me into things. Maybe I wanted to do them. I don’t know.”
She was quiet for a moment, then went on.
“A few pictures was all at first. Then he convinced me to let him videotape us having sex. He said we’d erase it afterward.”
Lies, I thought. The check is in the mail. I love you. And I promise not to come in your mouth.
I said nothing.
“I thought he did erase it. Even after we broke up, I figured the tape was gone and all he had were a few pictures of me in sexy poses. One topless, that was the worst of it.” She sighed. “Until about a month ago.”
“He contacted you?”
“He sent me a DVD.”
“Of the sex.”
“Yeah. From the videotape.”
“Why’d he send it to you?”
She burrowed her head into my chest. “Blackmail.”
“How’s that?”
“He wants five thousand dollars or he’ll post it on the Internet.”
The Internet. My mind flashed to the case that landed me in jail and the shady fucks I’d rescued Kris from. If that experience was any indication, the Internet was full of videos like Cassie’s. Or worse.