Chapter 41

forty-one

Wrenlee

Dad insisted on picking us up from the airport even as Cash insisted on renting a car. It was a battle, but in the end, Cash won. Of course, Cash won. I sincerely doubt anyone goes head-to-head with Cash Jagger and doesn’t taste defeat. The man is nothing if not determined, but I love him for him.

If he hadn’t been so bulldoz-ery with me in the beginning, I wouldn’t be sitting here in the passenger seat as he signals off the highway to my little hometown surrounded by a rocky stretch of mountains and skyscraper pines, the warmth of his big hand seeping through the thin material of my thigh high stockings.

The last month has been anything but easy. A lot has gone down, and we’ve been insanely busy. Cash has a hard time letting me out of his sight, even though I keep my location settings on at all times. To help settle his worries, I’ve even promised to keep the watch he bought me on, because along with my phone, it also tracks my location. Some might think he’s being overbearing and possessive and maybe even a little obsessive. But I know the truth is that he’s woken every night by nightmares. Nightmares of me in a shallow grave, his fingertips cut by the shards of rocky earth as he spears the ground to pull me from the claws of the reaper himself. Not only have I heard him talking to Kane about his nightmares, but I’m woken by his dreams too. He doesn’t know it, but his whole body jolts when he wakes. His body is often sticky with cool sweat, and I can feel the vicious pounding of his heart as he fights every night to steady his racing breaths and not wake me.

He doesn’t know I’m awake, I pretend to be asleep even as I snuggle deeper into the cage of his arms, knowing he needs to hold me tighter. Sometimes, when it’s particularly bad, I pretend to wake after the beat of his heart has settled against my back. I always twist in his arms before I push him onto his back, climbing on top of him to press kisses across his chest, his throat, his mouth. He never fails to harden beneath me, desperate to find peace inside me even as I’m desperate to give it.

I always enter him from the top, and he always flips us midway through, finishing above me, inside me, filling me and consuming me.

So, if wearing a watch and keeping my locations on gives him peace, I’ll do it. I’ll do it for the rest of my life if it helps defeat the nightmares.

“Knew you were small town, but this is something else,” Cash muses as he peers through the windshield down the main street of Blue Bend, Colorado—my hometown. It has all of three traffic lights, and every one is on this stretch. After that, you’re graced with a whole lot of four-way stops.

“I love it here.”

He glances sideways at me. “Tell me how New York didn’t eat you alive?”

“Ah ha!” I choke-laugh. “Between multiple jobs, school, a coffee cream stealing roommate, a rockstar fake boyfriend turned real boyfriend whom I made a deal one might make with the devil—and a psychopath nearly offing me twice—I’d say New York did a bang-up job of devouring me whole.”

His eyes get serious. “You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. You came out on top of everything, Kitten, more powerful than you were before. More courageous and brilliant and fucking beautiful.” He looks back through the windshield, adding with a flirtatious wink, “Okay, maybe not everything.”

“What didn’t I make it out on top of?” I demand, affronted.

He flashes that dark grin at me. “The rockstar devil you made a deal with. One hundred percent, Kitten, you’re on the bottom there.”

Heat settles in my core, and I shift in my seat. His eyes flare when I squeeze my thighs together, making it obvious just how much I like being on the bottom. When he makes a thick noise in the back of his throat, I boldly take the hand on my thigh and lift it higher and higher until his fingers are under my short sweater dress between my legs, rubbing against the red lace of my panties.

“Fuck, Kitten,” he lets out a hoarse sound.

“Turn left,” I instruct, parting my legs wider. I’m beginning to pant when I tell him to take two more lefts and a right, drive down to the end of the road and turn left again.

Cash follows my instruction to the letter even as he strokes me with those expert fingers. I’m a panting mess of borderline painful desire when the car rolls to a stop and Cash frowns out the windshield.

“Think you led me wrong, baby.”

“No.” I unbuckle, already shimmying over the console into his lap. “You’re exactly where I want you.”

He leans back in the seat, fire in his eyes as his hands land on my hips. “That right?”

I nod, leaning in to kiss him with all the passion of a woman starved for her man. I think I could live a million lifetimes with this man, and it still wouldn’t be enough. I could have him inside me a thousand times, and I’d always hunger for him. Yearn for him. Ache for him. Because the reality is that I’m only half without Cash. He’s my soul mate, the one I burn for.

My hands work the buckle of his jeans, and I quickly free him. My fingers curl around the hard pipe of his silky-smooth erection, and I stroke, letting my thumb slide over the tip—up and down again and again just the way I’ve learned to know he likes.

His big hands push under my dress, and he makes a strangled noise as he murmurs, “Fucking love these things.” As he snaps the band of my thigh-high stockings. “Sexy as sin.”

I smile against his lips, because I know just how much he likes them. That’s why I wore them. “Touch me.”

“Say please.”

I moan. “Please.”

I don’t have to beg twice. Rough fingertips pull goosebumps and shivers to the surface of my flesh as he traces the seam of my thigh to the lace between my legs. He strokes my seam over the material, a rumble of pleasure bubbling in his chest as he praises, “Good girl. So wet for me.”

“Yes.” I breathe, panting. “Always.”

“You want me to fill you up, baby?”

Soooo bad. I don’t use words, but moan into his mouth as I press down on his hand, my own hand continuing to stroke him.

“Say it, Wrenlee.”

“I want you to fill me Cash. I want you to come so deep inside me I can’t feel where you end and I begin. I want you to own me. Show me I’m yours now and then show me again tonight. Remind me in the morning and every day for the rest of my life.”

My words clearly snap his control, because he shifts me on his lap as he tugs my panties to the side—and then he thrusts up in one powerful push to seat himself to the hilt. My head snaps back as I cry out in delicious pleasure, Cash leaning forward to nip one of my breasts through my bra before his hands find my ass and he grinds me down on him hard. We rock together, chasing pleasure and release and connection under the late December afternoon surrounded by snow and pine and mountain.

I come undone, shattering and spent as he spills his release deep inside me—so deep, I know he’s filled my womb—my soul. When his arms come around the small of my waist to band me there against his chest, still rooted inside me as he inhales the scent of my skin as he drags his nose along the line of my collarbone, I can’t resist the opening to give him just one more poke.

“Looks like I came out on top after all.”

He’s quiet for a beat, and then he laughs. It’s loud and merry and perfectly Cash—perfect for this moment as a hand dives into my hair and he tugs my head down to his, kissing me hard and long.

When he pulls back, in perfect Cash fashion, he says, “I fucking love you, Kitten.”

“I love you too, Cash.”