Double Down (19 page)

Afterward they curled together on the bed, still on top of the comforter. She’d tossed the scraps of her uniform into the corner with a smug smile before nestling into his arms. He hadn’t even turned off the lights, which meant he was treated to every inch of perfect skin as he petted her with soothing strokes.

“Okay,” he said, smoothing her hair back from her head. “Tell me what happened.”

Her grin reawakened as she told him the story. Lithe hands fluttered as she talked, and she proved to be an entertaining storyteller. As she repeated the owner’s lines, her voice even pitched squeakier. She managed to sound like a pissy older woman. Her eyes narrowed on Tommy Boy’s words, but not with crankiness. With a genuine flare for acting. No wonder she’d been so good at playing a French maid and a high-class hooker.

The beautiful, heartfelt orgasm they’d just shared gave way to needier memories. So many roles she could assume. So many games they could play.

He wanted to growl at himself. More than that, he wanted to grab a cleaver and cut out the part of his brain that couldn’t be one hundred percent satisfied with the present. With that
perfect
moment, where Cassandra lay naked and sated in his bed, her smile as fresh as spring sunshine.

Didn’t matter. He was halfway to hard again, positively high on deviant possibilities—all of which would mean turning Cassandra into someone else. That was an even more nauseating idea than knowing she’d lose patience with his immature desires one day—the day she called it quits.

“I didn’t even give notice,” she finally finished, sounding gleeful. “Just stomped right out of there. The only thing in my locker was my spare skirt and button-down. Maybe a pair of flip-flops. I didn’t even care.”

“Good for you,” he managed to say. Stalling for time, he shifted her in his arms so that she lay sprawled over his front. His back pressed into the bed, with her softness melded against him. “Doesn’t sound like they deserved you for even a second more.”

She kissed him, fast but somehow innocent. Her mouth tasted like a win. “You’re good for me, Ryan Haverty.”

“Me?”

She stacked her hands over his chest, chin on top. “Yep. You.”

Shit, he didn’t deserve the worshipful way she looked at him. That smile would fall away right quick if she knew what he’d been thinking, if she realized how ungrateful he was.

“Bull,” he said. “This was all you.”

“Well, I am kind of awesome, aren’t I?”

Ryan gave her ass a sneaky squeeze, which produced the fortunate response of making her body wiggle. He dug his fingers lightly into her sides, just above her hipbones where she was ticklish. A naked Cassandra wiggling against him was something he’d do his damnedest to have more of at any opportunity. He’d shove whole parts of his busted, disgusting libido into a box and lock it away forever.

“Not just kind of, baby.”

“Okay.” She laughed. “Totally awesome. I rock.”

“You do.”

Her smile turned wistful. “I should have walked out of there ages ago. I mean, I can make the bills if I go mega full-time at the gallery. It’ll just be a bit tight.”

Although Ryan had managed to bite back most of his words, one question niggled past good sense. “Why were you ever with that jackass?”

“He wasn’t always that bad.”

She pushed up. He thought for one blissful second that she was just going to sit straddling him. He’d be willing to listen to her recite details about every single one of her exes if she sat in that position. Unfortunately she burrowed under his blanket. Her hair pooled on the white pillowcase.

Ryan climbed under the comforter too. There was no reason to stay away from her gorgeous body when he had permission to touch it. “I guess I’m going to have to take your word on that. Because all I’ve seen is prime jerk attitude.”

“Will you turn out the lights?”

He tilted his head. There was a lot they still didn’t know about each other, which meant he wasn’t sure how to take that request. “Is that your way of telling me to shut up?”

She laughed. “No. But I think this might be easier to explain if you’re not watching me. You’re intense sometimes.”

“Me?” he teased even as he did as she asked and flicked off the bedroom lights. “Intense?”

“Every now and then.” In the dim light creeping through a crack between the dark drapes, he saw her lift a hand and squeeze her fingers together. “A wee bit. It can be intimidating.”

“Sorry. I don’t mean to be.”

“Don’t apologize. The energizing part of it outweighs the intimidating.”

A truncated hum worked its way up his throat when he had no idea what else to say. He’d learned the hard way to go after what he wanted. The details were just that—details. Things to dodge or leap over on his way to a goal. He couldn’t really help how everyone else took it, but… Well, shit, there was no way to think this without sounding like an idiot, but he wanted Cassandra to
like
him.

“Tell me about Tommy,” he finally said.

She pressed her face into his biceps in the dark. “I’m being honest. He wasn’t that bad at first. Wasn’t at all bad, actually. He came across as sincere. He listened to me rant about my family whenever I wanted, and I only had to listen to him about his mom in return. Plus he seemed…comforting, I guess? Safe. Normal.”

He could definitely understand the appeal of normal. It seemed like Cassandra didn’t understand that she was
his
normal. His comfort. How long had he hungered for just that sort of refuge?

Uncomfortable with the dark turn of his thoughts, he fought to bring them back to the teasing they both enjoyed. Anything but being trapped in his own head.

“His eyes are about the size of the tip of my pinkie.”

Her fingertips dug into his ribs. “They are not.”

“Are too.” He tickled her back until she giggled and writhed. “Itty-bitty piggy eyes.”

Giggling still, she smiled against his chest. “Okay, maybe. Only when he’s pissed. Until I proved to be unreasonable when he misplaced his skinny rod in Cynthia, he didn’t have any reason to be pissed at me. We had a lot in common.”

He couldn’t help the snort. “Like what?”

“Feeling stuck in one place. Afraid to move on.” Her fingers trailed down his chest almost absently. “Like I said, you’re good for me. One small, bold move is making waves.”

Be damned if that wasn’t both a surprising weight and a feel good at the same time. “Are you going to stay the night?”

“I probably shouldn’t. I bet you have to get up ridiculously early.”

He shrugged, then stroked a hand over her hair. “Tomorrow’s not too bad. Only six.”

“Six a.m. isn’t bad? You’re insane.” Yawning, she hitched a leg over his. Her toes dug softly into his calf. “See? I should go.”

He buried his smile against the crown of her head, their bodies surrounded in darkness. “Yet you’re not moving.”

“You’re not kicking me out, either.”

“No. I’m not kicking you out.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Ryan called two nights later.

Cass had just finished painting her toenails following a powerwash of a shower. Her brain ached from hours of scanning catalogs, photographs, estimates, and her endless to-do list, but she never tired of the responsibility. The chirp of her cell phone made her nick the slightly spongy paint on her big toe, but seeing
Major Haverty
on her caller ID silenced her grumbles.

“You’re up late, aren’t you?” she said, leaning back against the pillows.

“Night sortie. I get to sleep in tomorrow.”

“You won’t be able to, you know.”

He chuckled. “I’ll give it a try. I have excellent sprawling skills.”

She poured a second glass of merlot from the half bottle on her bedside table. Between the wine, the shower and Ryan’s low rumble in her ear, Cass sank into a delicious lassitude. “While we working stiffs trudge into work? Doesn’t seem fair.”

“Ha. Don’t try and play that with me. You were probably all bright and chipper this morning, cute as hell.”

“Bounding into the gallery while birds tied ribbons in my hair.”

Except for the
Cinderella
animals, they weren’t far off in painting a picture of her enthusiasm. Maybe because working at Blakely’s or for her parents had always been so frustrating, she was actually surprised. She kept expecting the other shoe to drop. One day she’d find the gallery an odious grind.

It hadn’t happened and she doubted it would. This was, quite literally, what she loved doing—what she had trained for. What she was
really
good at.

Time spent at Hungerford flew by. She never accomplished quite as much as she planned, but knowing she got to do it all over again the next day made her grin like a silly kid. She’d tried to thank Ryan a couple more times, knowing he had been the kick-start to her current happiness. He always waved it off as if what he’d done was no big deal.

He was a great guy. Fantastic, even. On that small point, however, he was wrong.

“What’re you doing?” he asked.

“Painting my toes. Watching
Tremors
.”

“What channel?”

“TBS.”

Cass found herself relaxing as their conversation stayed pleasingly…normal. Silly stuff and ordinary stuff. Neither of them mentioned their early forays into bold, brazen sex—hadn’t at all since those first two weekends. She tried not to let that bother her. Ryan was hot, adorable, polite and built like a star athlete. Nothing he did for her, or to her, fell short of fabulous.

He seemed happy enough. He hadn’t brought home another kinky outfit for her to wear. She wouldn’t have minded if he did, and in fact the roleplaying had been sort of…liberating. He just didn’t seem to desire it like she’d first assumed. Maybe his interest had been a whim—as much a whim as her decision to have sex in a dressing room.

So they floated along in conversation, two people rapidly becoming a full-fledged couple. They played Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon until Ryan admitted that he used his laptop and the Internet to cheat. How else could he get from
A Few Good Men
to Charlie Chaplin in only three steps?

Most of all, Cass loved hearing about his work.
Such
a turn-on. He and the other pilots in the Aggressor Squadron had flown two hops against a contingent of Canadian hotshots—one this afternoon, and one when the sun had finally set. She couldn’t imagine the training, concentration and nerve he must have. He’d always come across as an intense guy, of course, but Ryan was a relatively cool customer compared to what his job required.

“I want to see your plane sometime,” she said, turning off the lamp on the nightstand. The only flickering light came from her old television as a subterranean worm tried to eat Michael Gross and Reba McEntire. Her toes were fully dry, so she shed her robe and slipped her legs under the covers.

“I would’ve shown you last time, but you preferred checking out my apartment.”

“Mmm. I particularly liked the entryway. Great view from where I was.”

“Are you hiding in the dark?”

Cass froze in the middle of taking a sip of wine. “How did you guess that?”

Lordy, his laugh was sexy. She set the glass aside and settled even deeper into the pillows propped along the headboard. A curl of heat nestled in her belly.

“Because of who you are,” he said. “You wouldn’t say something that bold with the lights on.”

A protest immediately came to mind. After all, she’d been a long way past bold when they played their games.
Are you man enough to fuck me right here?
She’d whispered that in his ear just before they got busy in the sex shop. Then French maid, the call girl, blowing him on his lunch break.

Not exactly timid.

Cass sat up in bed. She’d picked the naughty goth costume. She’d initiated the call girl pick-up evening. She’d even gotten off to the idea of him in his flight suit. What if she’d been so completely misguided as to pin all that on Ryan? And why? Because he’d stared a few extra heartbeats at her stockings. That wasn’t conclusive proof. Maybe he’d chosen the French maid’s costume to be safe, going along with what she’d already established as fair game. On the spur of the moment, a naughty outfit must’ve seemed safer than handcuffs or a paddle. Instead of having a laugh, she’d turned it into full-fledged roleplaying by adopting that ridiculous accent. He could’ve been being polite, not wanting to tell his one-night stand to cut it out.

The idea that she’d been projecting her desires on to him the whole time came as an unsettling possibility. He hadn’t brought it up again because he wasn’t into it. He hadn’t gushed about their hooker evening because, frankly, he was probably happy to have escaped it without being arrested.

Kinky, fun sex with a new girlfriend—perhaps that’s all those initial encounters had been for him.

She
was the one huddled in the dark. She’d bet an entire year’s wages that Ryan didn’t need a security blanket to speak his mind. The boldness she’d assumed of herself with regard to their sex life had always been wrapped up inside a persona.

What was she if she didn’t have that? What was her relationship with Ryan?

Safe. Normal. Even chatting on the phone about a B-grade horror flick was special.

She’d spent six months with Tommy, bargaining with herself about the same issue. She’d thought
normal
was good enough. She’d thought working at Blakely’s and putting off her dreams had been good enough too. The last thing she wanted was to start thinking of her time with Ryan as sinking to those levels of…ordinary.

They were capable of so much more.

“Cass?”

Blinking, she rubbed the rush of goose bumps from her arms. “I’m here. Just refreshing my drink.”

She didn’t like lying to him and was horrible at deception in person. Only the cell phone’s lackluster connection made the attempt even worth trying. Her brain was crowded as she sorted and resorted six weeks’ worth of intimacy.

Then she shut it down. She needed time to make sense of what she felt, what she wanted.

As a stalling tactic, she ran headlong into the big question of the evening—the one she’d been putting off. After a deep breath she said, “My parents are having a barbeque in a couple weeks.”