He bent over the foot of the bed, his mouth moving up my leg to the curve of my inner thigh, his tongue tickling the smooth groove where my tender skin met the line of soft down. God he was teasing me. He was driving me crazy.
“Jesse, fuck me,” I demanded, as his hand caressed my thigh, his thumb slicking down my folds, merely fluttering over my clitoris. The ache becoming too much to bear, my hips began to rock to make him touch where I needed touching, to fuck where I needed fucking. But he merely let a lazy finger grace the opening, finding me so wet I gasped, and I arched fiercely now towards him, never hungrier.
I writhed beneath him as he gathered one of my breasts, my nipple tightening in his cool mouth. He did the same to my other one as I moaned in response, now desperate. And oh, the ache. My knees began to nudge the side of his torso, to maneuver him between my thighs.
“More?”
“Yesss.”
He sat up between my legs to roll on the condom, his taut forearms flinching, his eyes savoring me. I realized why I wanted this man, why I had ached for him, because it was an ache that could be soothed. With Will it was all hunger, one we could never satisfy. I needed Jesse because I wanted Will, and Jesse was the only man to quell that want. In fact, I was going to let him fuck it right out of me.
And he did, entering me sharply, fiercely, sinking into me inch by agonizing inch, his thrusts insistent and growing fiercer as my hips bucked against his. He took my wrists again and pinned them down next to my head.
“You like this?” he said, filling me up, his voice a low growl.
I nodded, feeling like he was actually fucking pleasure into the very end of me. The more he thrust, the more his stomach muscles clenched and contracted, turning his whole body into an oiled piston. My knees bent high to clutch his torso, now coated in a sheen of sweat. Then it happened: my whole core squeezed around him and he could feel it too, his face registering a shock, taking it as a cue to ride me higher still, pump me harder, my clit now pinned between his pelvis and mine, his keening hips kneading it perfectly, beautifully, rolling into a hot build. I wanted to scream as the whole of me surrendered. I was calling “Oh god” as I came, setting him off, his beautiful lips curling as he came hard into me too, saying, “Oh, Cassie … yeah,” neither of us caring about the neighbors or the noise as we finally collapsed, gasping into a heaving pile of limbs.
“I think my heart … stopped. Shh … I need to listen for it,” he mumbled into my hair. “Am I … dead? Can you hear anything?”
“I think you’re gonna be okay,” I said, as he eased out and off me. I shifted to face him, coated in his sweat, and sleepily traced the outlines of the tattoos on his shoulders. I spotted a scar there. He grabbed my fingers.
“How’d you get that?”
“Dirt bike stunt. Fourteen years old,” he said, between kissing my fingertips.
He sat up so I could see his full body paint and turned around to give me a better look at his back.
“Is that an oak tree?”
Almost like adolescents at show and tell, we slid from hot sex to sweet stories as he began to tell me what was behind the more prominent tattoos—the tree whose branches twisted into a skull cradling his shoulder, the other shoulder covered by a cluster of birds.
“Yeah. It’s the oak from my grandma’s property in Kenner. I grew up there after my parents died. This one hurt,” he said, pointing out a beautifully rendered face of a handsome young man on the left side of his rib cage. “My older brother. He taught me how to read when I was ten. Late bloomer. He died in the first Gulf War.” So much tragedy on his body— dead family, old memories. “And that’s my ‘tramp stamp,’” he said, bending to show me his lower back, where indeed the word Tramp was stamped on his sacrum.
“Ha!”
“Were you expecting a butterfly?” he asked.
“I think with you expectations might be a bad idea,” I said. Was I fishing? Was this me seeking assurances that I could have expectations of this man? I wasn’t sure. He stretched out next to me to cuddle.
“That’s probably wise, Cassie,” he said, sounding sincere and serious, throwing his thigh over me. “I was thinking the same thing about you.”
Me? I almost did that female thing, that thing where I reassure him and tell him, Oh no, no, no, I’m here; you can expect things from me. I’m all in. But I knew better. Just because a man has his entire life story drawn out on his skin for all to see, that doesn’t make him an open book. And just because I had sex with him, that didn’t make me his. We were both still carrying shadows from our past into whatever our future held. But for the first time in my life, I was okay with that. I was beautifully, perfectly okay with it.
16
DAUPHINE
I HAD NEVER been a traveler, so I wasn’t expecting to feel such a rush of pure joy upon returning from Buenos Aires and seeing my porch, my potted marigolds and heavy mums wilting in the late summer heat. Upstairs, I dropped the last of my luggage, sighing in gratitude at my dusty, sunlit apartment. My trip, which had begun as transformative and restorative, had turned dark and frightening after my interlude with Pierre Castille. Being home felt grounding, safe. And I now discovered it was true what they said about homesick Southerners: there’s no sorrier lot.
After I hosed down my plants, I drew a bath and soaked off the stress of the return flight (the turbulence was a little meaner and no Captain Nathan to offer “comfort”), and the Customs officers were a little nosier, poking through my purchases with the help of a beagle I wasn’t allowed to pet. The officers were looking for sausage and ivory, probably the only two things I didn’t bring back with me from Argentina. I had bought two extra suitcases for the costume jewelry, linens, housedresses and four vintage tango dresses I bought to sell at the Funky Monkey. Such is the life of an “international buyer.” But while the beagle was nosing through my belongings, I was heartened to realize that I had intended to sell all this stuff. I didn’t want to insulate anymore, which was really the purpose of keeping that treasure trove to myself. All those imaginary futures where I’d have just the right thing to round it out, that future was happening now.
When the doorbell rang, I jumped, my nerves still a bit rattled. As expected, it was Matilda, her apology written all over her kind face.
“Dauphine, honey. Can I come in?”
Seeing her face, I realized that my anger about the security breach with Pierre had faded. Still, I didn’t greet Matilda with a hug.
“Of course. Please come in. I’ll make tea.”
Typical Southerners, we exchanged pleasantries and travel highlights. I included discreet mention of my visit to the cockpit and my night on the tango stage, both of which left me blushing and grateful.
“I’m so glad you enjoyed those Steps. But I don’t blame you, Dauphine, for wanting to quit us. I just came to tell you how relieved I was to hear how you thwarted the worst part of Pierre’s plans.”
“Cassie always stressed to me that I could opt out of any situation that didn’t feel a hundred percent right … He didn’t.”
“You have sharp instincts. You know yourself. That’s enviable. For that, I want to give you something,” she said, reaching into her purse, removing a small purple box and carefully placing it in front of me.
“Is it my Step Six charm? Really?”
“Open it,” she said.
Truthfully, one of the things I’d thought about was that if I quit S.E.C.R.E.T., I’d miss out on all the rest of the charms. What can I say? I love my bling. Which was why it was hard to contain my glee after I opened the box. It contained not just my Step Six charm for Confidence, but all the others as well.