Page 101 of Just Between Us

Cassie bites her lip to trap a smile. “I think you know.”

I tug her lip free and suck it into my mouth, releasing it with a soft pop. “But I wanna hear you say it.”

“It’s yours, you peacock,” she says, eyes teasing. “I imagine it’s your mouth down there, sucking so hard I see stars.”

Fucking hell. My eyes fall closed and I drag in a breath that does nothing to rebuild my restraint. What I really want is to carry her to my bed and bury myself so deep we can’t tell where I begin and she ends. To hear what other sounds she makes when there’s nothing between us at all. But I vowed that tonight was about her and I’m sticking to it even if it kills me. And I’m starting to think it just might.

“You don’t know how badly I want you to stay the night.” My words come out steady, which shocks the hell out of me, given that my racing heart is anything but. “I want that more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time. But?—”

“But we have time. There’s no reason to rush things,” Cassie finishes for me.

“No reason at all,” I agree, even as every cell in my body stages a protest.

The look on her face about knocks me sideways, because not a trace of disappointment is written there. She just looks at me with those amber eyes, patient as ever, like she’s got all the time in the world.

She reaches up, gently tracing my brow with her fingertips. “I should probably go. I think we both know what would happen if I end up in your bed. And it would be anything but slow.” She raises a brow which makes me chuckle, a low rumble of a sound.

Cassie holds my gaze for one long moment, and then raises to press the sweetest, softest kiss to my lips. And if I wasn’t already a goner, I’d sure as hell be right now. Then she shifts under me, so I clamber up to allow her to straighten. Cassie quietly dresses while the two of us exist in a moment that can never be taken back. And that’s fine by me. I don’t want to take it back.

Once she’s given Mutt an acceptable amount of goodbye snuggles, I walk her to the door. We pause on the threshold and I can tell neither of us wants this night to end. But this is the right decision for now.

“Good night, William,” she says.

“Night, angel.”

Cassie rises slightly on her toes to press one quick kiss to my lips and she turns heading to her car. When her taillights are out of sight, I close the door, head straight to my bathroom, and switch on the shower to get cleaned up. It’s heated in thirty seconds, steam already fogging the bathroom mirror when I strip and step under the spray. The water is almost too hot but I don’t adjust it. I brace one forearm against the tile, drop my head, and let it hit the back of my neck while I try to get a grip.

It doesn’t work.

I wrap my hand around my cock and exhale hard through my nose. I’m already rock hard again just thinking about the sounds she made, the taste of her still on my tongue.

Cassie is a drug. That’s the only word for it. Every hour I spend with her just makes the want sharper, more impossible to reason with. And knowing she’ll probably go home and give herself another orgasm makes me simultaneously jealous and so damn turned on.

It only takes a few strokes before my release slams throughme, hard and sudden, my fist hitting the tile as I groan her name into the steam. My whole body shudders with the force of it, knees damn near unreliable, and I stand there for a long moment just breathing.

Then I tip my face up into the spray and laugh. For so long, my goal was to forget. But after tonight, I know without a shadow of doubt that each day moving forward, I want to remember every single thing.

I’ve stoodin front of people more times than I can count. On stages. In the bar. In rooms packed with strangers. But I’ve never been as nervous as I am today. When I offered to officiate for Josie and Tyler, I was borderline cocky about it. How hard could it be? Say a few heartfelt lines, tell ’em to kiss andbadaboom, husband and wife. Done.

Now, standing in the driveway while a rental company erects a massive white tent in Josie’s backyard, I’m pacing back and forth beside my truck, dress shoes already cramping my toes. Somewhere inside the house, my friends and family are getting ready. Laughing. Tying ties. Prepping for what feels like the wedding of the century. From what I’ve heard, Josie tried to keep it small and intimate. But in a town like ours? That was never going to happen. You can’t love people the way she does and expect them not to show up.

I bring the cigarette to my lips and take a drag, hold it in my lungs for a beat and push the smoke out through my nose.

All right. Get it together, man.

With the heel of my shoe, I stomp out my cigarette, roll my shoulders and shake out my limbs. Planting my feet in front ofmy driver’s side window I stare at my reflection. “Okay,” I mutter. “From the top.”

“What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life—to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain?—”

And there it is. That catch in my throat that happens every damn time.

I know the poem is about marriage, romantic love. But I can’t hear it without thinking about friendship too. Josie and I may give each other shit 85 percent of the time, and she might not be my sister by blood, but she sure as hell feels like it. I barely remember a time when Josie wasn’t around, running through my house with Penny, buying me alcohol when I was too young with a threat that if I got caught or did something stupid she’d never help me out again. I stuck to that. Some.

Years later, as adults, I picked her off the floor more times than I can count after her divorce from what’s his name. The week after Julie died, Josie found me flat on my back on the floor of my childhood bedroom, staring at nothing. She didn’t ask a single question. Didn’t speak the same platitudes everyone else kept saying. She just stretched out beside me, understanding that sitting silent with a friend is what I needed.

She deserves every single one of these words. Her and Tyler both.

Movement in the window catches my eye.