Chapter 8

eight

Wrenlee

Cash returns dressed in sweats and a pullover sweater, carrying an armload of blankets and pillows. He drops them on the lounger beside me before handing me a pile of clothes. “Use the washroom in the gym and change.”

I frown down at the clothes, and he explains, “They’re mine. Might be a bit big, but you’ll freeze in jeans.”

Warmth floods my chest. “Thanks.”

I get changed fast, returning to find that Cash has made our beds. Our beds. He’s also pushed the chairs a bit closer together, not touching, but closer. The realization heats my skin and I clear my throat, looking down at his clothes on my body. “They’re a bit more than big, but they are warm.”

When I glance back at Cash, he swallows hard, throat bobbing. His voice is coarse as he commands, “Under the blankets, Kitten.”

I do as he commands eagerly, snuggling under the warm fabric as the cool night settles around us. Then I turn to him. “Why do you call me Kitten?”

He doesn’t miss a beat. “Your eyes.”

I blink said eyes, surprised. “Sorry?”

“They remind me of a cat. So green and big.”

Why do such simple words have such a big effect on my heart? It stutters in my chest like hopscotch gone wrong.

I ignore the mishappening in my chest and shift onto my back to look up at the twinkle of lights against a dark sky. New York is so far below us; I can’t even hear it. It’s like we’ve gone through a portal to another planet far, far away.

“When I was little, I used to want so badly for a sibling. I was around five or six when I asked the office lady who worked the front desk at my dad’s shop if she would marry my dad, because she had a son, and I wanted another kid in my life so badly. I didn’t care that he was a boy, I just wanted someone there to share my life with. The quiet moments, you know? A brother or sister, didn’t matter to me.”

When I tip my face to look at him, he looks confused and interested. Like he doesn’t know where this is going.

I tell him, “I didn’t know she was married already. Dad was embarrassed and I never tried to set him up again.” Cash chuckles. It’s the first time I’ve heard it, and I like it. I give him a soft smile before I burrow deeper into my makeshift bed, smelling him all around me as I snuggle into his clothes. “Thank you for this, Cash.”

“For what?”

“For making me feel like I finally have that.”

“Have what?” I can hear his confusion now.

“Like I have a brother—a friend. Someone to share moments like this with.” I smile across the space at him. “It’s nice.”

He props up on an elbow, so much bigger than me that it feels like that small motion has him towering over me. “I’m not your brother, Wrenlee.” I haven’t been with Cash long, but the man never says my name. “I’m your fake boyfriend.”

“Yeah, but you’re not my boyfriend,” I rush to explain my thought process, because I get the impression, I’ve offended him. “It’s not real, so we’re really just going to be good friends. Platonic. Brotherly.”

His eyes narrow darkly on me.

I shiver in his clothes.

“There’s nothing brotherly about the way I’m going to touch you. Nothing brotherly about the way I’m going to kiss you.”

My breath snags. I croak, “What?”

“We might be fake, but we’re going to look real.”

“I get that but—”

He cuts me off. “Don’t think you do, so I’m gonna explain it to you. While we’re playing this game, you’re going to be my girlfriend in every way that matters. Your mouth is mine to claim whenever the fuck I want, in front of whoever I want. Your body is mine to touch. You don’t look at me with the fond affection of a sister. You look at me like…” He shakes his head and curses. “I won’t look at you like you’re anything less than the woman I want to devour.”

“Cash…”

“Matter of fact, think we should start now before we’re forced to make that play in front of other people.” He swings his blanket back and I squeak in surprise as he joins me on my lounger, pinning me in place as he sets his weight on my blanket. “I’m going to kiss you now, Kitten.”

“Wait!” I press my palms into his chest, my heart pounding like a drum. It’s violent, like a clap of thunder. I feel dizzy. I gasp, “Just wait.”

I think I might have pissed him off by comparing him to a brother. How could I have known?

I try to reason, “I’m not your type, Cash.”

His brows rise incredulously as his face hovers above mine. The early October air is chilly, but all I feel is the heat that seeps through the blankets from his body. Still, I shiver. “You really think we’d pull this off without kissing? Without flirting and touching and doing all the shit couples do?”

“I just—” I stutter. “I thought we’d wait a little.”

“Until what?”

“Until it was necessary.” I wince under his glare.

He wets his lips, and my eyes drop to his mouth before shooting back to his. There’s heat in the dark now. A real heat—the kind that burns if you’re not careful.

I don’t know how to be careful.

“You want me to kiss you our first time when we’ve got eyes on us? Watching us? Studying how we come together?”

Well, when he says it like that…

“No,” the word is a whisper.

“Right.” His eyes search mine before I feel him begin to push away.

I grab his arms and he stills. “I don’t want the first time you kiss me to be in front of everyone else. I just—I think maybe I’m still a bit tipsy. I feel—” He waits. “Hot and cold and a little dizzy.” Shyly, I admit, “And I’ve never kissed anyone,” when his brows begin to rise, I add, “like you.”

“Like me?”

“Just so—much.”

“So much of what?”

I squeak, “Man.”

His lips curl, like I gave him a compliment.

I’m not sure it was a compliment, however. He is a lot. And, sure, I’ve been kissed, if quick pecks count.

Still, I sincerely doubt the way this man kisses is anything like a peck. I bet he kisses like the men in my romance books. I bet he kisses like he’s done it a few times and knows exactly what he’s doing.

Will he taste my innocence?

“It’s just a kiss, Kitten.”

Just a kiss.Not to me. But I harden myself, determined to keep that hidden.

A shuddering, “Okay,” falls from my lips. His eyes drop to my mouth, and something squeezes my core.

“I’m going to kiss you now,” he rasps. “I want you to kiss me back.”

I nod once, and then he drops his mouth to mine.

His lips are warm and hard as they cover mine. Cash doesn’t press his lips to mine, closed mouthed and simple like I expect the kiss to begin. He doesn’t kiss me gently, either. It’s fire, burning hot right off the start.

His big hand comes to the side of my neck, fingers diving into my hair as his thumb caresses the line of my jaw. He’s everywhere, over top of me, consuming me, burning me from the outside in or the inside out, I can’t tell. His mouth moves over mine. His lips are softer than I expect while still being impossibly firm. He gives me a little more of his weight at the same time I feel his teeth nip into my bottom lip. I gasp, and he takes advantage of my shock, invading my mouth with his tongue.

My core is an active volcano, my body trembling as I move my lips with his, trying to keep up and surely failing. He tastes like whiskey smells, and cigar smoke with just the faintest hint of cinnamon hearts. He dominates me, kissing me until I’m breathless, pulling away only to press hot, open-mouthed kisses over my jaw and down my neck. He sucks on my collarbone and nips at the skin below my ear before returning to my mouth with a low, devilish growl that sets me aflame. Hot heat wicks up from the core of me, burning away hesitation and singeing rationality. With the loss of inhibition and sense, I stroke my tongue against his for the first time. In response, he makes a noise in the back of his throat that is pure, aggressive male pleasure. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard in my life. I lose the last lingering shreds of my sanity as I push my hands into the mess of his rock-God hair and let myself kiss him harder.

“Fuck, you taste sweet.” He shifts his weight over me, kissing me through the words. I can feel his hand moving, tugging the blanket away from my body, but I can’t seem to find all the pieces of my fractured thoughts. I can’t slide the splintered bits back into place—can’t think of anything but how this man feels against me.

How he tastes.

I’m intoxicated. I’m drunk on him.

His big hand twists a fistful of my clothes—his clothes—and he commands against my lips, “Say yes.”

I don’t even have the capacity to think about what he wants me to say yes to, only that my body wants to comply. Every aching inch of my flesh is tuned into this man, and this man alone. The world outside this rooftop no longer exists. It’s just him and me.

“Yes.”

He releases the fabric and kisses me harder, his tongue stroking mine, adding kindling to the scorching flame that already rages inside my body. The feel of guitar calloused fingertips against the smooth skin of my low belly has butterflies swarming.

I tear my mouth away from his. “Cash.”

It’s supposed to be a protest, but even to my ears it sounds like a plea. I want this, even as I know I’m not ready for it. Not like this. Not when it isn’t real.

What am I doing?

He claims my mouth again, kissing me so deeply, I think he grazes soul. Shifting closer, he slides one knee between my legs as I gasp his hot breath into my singed lungs.

Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God.

I’m not sure what I’m praying for, only that I am praying.

I’m terrified and yet I’ve never felt quite so alive.

What am I doing?

“You wet for me, Kitten?” he rasps darkly, and if I wasn’t before, with those darkly naughty words I most definitely am now.

What is wrong with me? I’m broken. He’s shattered me.

“I—” He moves closer, and I feel the hot, impossibly hard press of his arousal through his sweats.

He wants me.

Cash Jagger, lead singer of Devils Heartbreak, and surely the man responsible for an ocean of tears, wants me.

How is this happening?

“Let me make you feel good, Wren.” My shortened name on his lips is the blade that cuts through the last lingering shred of right and wrong I possess. His rough hand dips lower, fingertips traveling south before they connect with the trimmed curls of my sex. “Ah, fuck,” he groans, pushing his hand lower. Nerves shoot through my body and instinct has me slamming my legs closed, but with his knee between mine, I’m helpless against the pursuit of his calloused fingertips that stroke tremors from the deepest crevices of me.

His index finger finds my slit, and he hisses sharply, “Soaked.”

“Cash,” I whimper his name.

I’m too lost to this—to sensation—to care.

Pressing between the slit of my lips with his index finger, he invades my mouth a second time with his tongue. He’s not slow about his exploration. It’s no secret he’s done this plenty before, and clearly thinks I’ve notched a few holes into my own belt as he strokes me with just enough pressure to set off sparks behind my eyes.

Inside my chest, my heart pounds violently. My body shakes beneath his, so small under the large, heavy mass of the man above me. My mind is fractured, the pieces pulled in every direction as though called by a thousand magnetic forces lightyears apart.

He finds the bundle of nerves at my sex, swirling with the tip of his finger. My body practically climbs up the lounge chair as powerful sensation rips through me and I cry out an incoherent plea for more and less and more and I’m so confused.

Cash claims my mouth again, intoxicating me with whiskey kisses, seducing me with cinnamon heart nips. He’s an expert in all things to drive a girl wild. Who would have thought a kiss could turn into this?

He swirls his fingertip again and something hot and painfully intense builds inside me. I make a noise I’ve never made—didn’t even know I could make—and Cash says something I can’t make out. Then, without any warning at all, he pushes his hand lower, and I feel him press two thick digits deep inside me as his thumb connects with my clit. White hot light erupts behind my eyes as I arch my head back, crying out at the pinch of pain that quickly transitions into wave after wave of pleasure. He grunts, “So tight.”

My hands connect with his chest, and I fist his sweater, shoving him away even as I pull him closer. My mind and body are at war, and my body is winning.

I kiss him harder, crying into his mouth. He swallows every pant, devouring every moan as he continues to pump his fingers deep inside me, pressing his thumb into the button of my clit in a maddening rhythm that very well might be the ruin of me. My body begins to tremble as the man plays me like an instrument, fingers strumming the cords of me to a tune I know I’ll never forget and never replicate no matter how long I live.

He thrusts his fingers deep, pulling a cry from my chest before he curls his fingers upward and strokes back.

That thing he’s been building inside of me erupts in a blaze of blinding light. It’s a bomb that detonates in my core. The explosion so intense, so painfully exquisite, I can’t help but cry out as my body jerks beneath him and I bury my face into his neck. It doesn’t take long to come crashing down from my high as reality settles over me like a deadly weight.

I’m suddenly incredibly sober and painfully aware of the mistake I’ve just made.

My reality settles over me like ice water as I stare up into his lust-filled eyes. He watches me, studying my horrified reaction with confusion that twists into what I’m sure is frustration as he pulls his fingers from between my legs.

I can’t look at him as I push him away, scurrying from the chair and escaping into his house. I don’t stop running until I slam my bedroom door behind me.

Then, I cry.