Bad Boy Secrets (14 page)

             
It didn’t seem to matter that they’d spent the better part of the night arousing one another to the brink of madness before driving one another over the edge.  Every time she touched him it was incendiary.  Knowing he couldn’t last much longer, every fluttering contraction of her sheath around his cock pushed him closer to that precipice.  He shifted slightly, guiding a hand between them to where their bodies joined.  With deft, deliberate movements, he stroked the hardened bud of her clit as he pounded his cock into her. 

             
“Yes!” she cried out, her nails digging into his back as she clutched at him.  “Fuck me harder!”

             
Reed rose onto his knees, keeping his cock buried tight inside her.  With her ankles pressed against his shoulders he began to pump into her harder and faster.  Taking note of the delicately painted toes, he pressed his lips the sensitive pad on the underside and she screamed.  He pressed his tongue between her toes and felt her pussy grow even wetter around him.  With that spurring him on, he sucked two of her dainty, perfectly manicured toes into his mouth, thrusting his tongue between them, even as his cock speared deeper inside her.  She screamed as she came, her body clenching him so tightly he couldn’t even withdraw.  Instead he pressed deeper, letting the hot clutch of her sex send him spiraling with her, jets of hot cum spilling inside her. 

             
In the aftermath, they were both boneless and sweating, collapsed together on the bed in a tangle of limbs.  With his arm draped heavily over her rib cage, and on hair roughened thigh trapping her to him, Reed felt that familiar swirl of emotion again.  No woman in his life had ever made him feel like Cass.  There had been women who had been submissive to him, that he had wanted to dominate and possess, women who had needed him and whom he had been protective of, and women with whom he’d never been able to indulge his darker tendencies.  Recalling the night before, when he’d pressed her into the mattress, fucking her as hard and fast while spanking her ass, he knew that Cass was unique.    Never had he been with a woman who stirred both his need to control and his need to protect. 

             
“I think every day should start this way,” she said with a languid smile and a stretch. 

             
“It could.  I kind of like the idea.”

             
She glanced over her shoulder at him, her eyes wide with surprise, but no panic.  “What do you have in mind?”

             
“Well, I like my condo.  But I don’t love it.  You, on the other hand, love your house,” he said, stroking slow, lazy circles on the soft skin of her belly.  “So, I could sublet the condo and move in with you... If you want.”

             
Cass felt the panic clawing then, trying to take over, but she fought it back.  If there was one thing she’d learned from Rowena’s death, it was not to leave things undone or unsaid.  She recognized that she only feared it because she wanted it so much.  “Okay.  But you’ll need an armoire or something because I’m not giving up my shoe closet.”

             
He glanced at the sexy red heels laying discarded by the door.  “I think I love your shoes more than you do. I wouldn’t dream of evicting them.”

             
The wedding had gone off without a hitch.  There had been a few nervous giggles and titters as the very, very pregnant bride had walked down the aisle on her father’s arm.  Cass personally thought that Evie had never looked more beautiful, and she was itching to get her hands on her honorary niece and spoil that baby rotten.  Cass knew that there had been more than a few curious and even disapproving glances thrown towards herself and Reed, but she was finding it very hard to care. 

             
“Champagne?”

             
Cass looked up to see the object of her musings standing only inches away, looking good enough to eat.  Rather than tuxedos, Evie had chosen to put the men in gray trousers with white button down shirts and black vests with a gray suit jacket.  They each wore red ties in honor of her lack of honor, as Evie had put it.  Once the photos were over, the jackets had been discarded.  Reed’s sleeves were rolled back, revealing tanned, muscular forearms.  It was a little strange to realize that even his forearms turned her on, she thought.  Keeping that thought wisely to herself, Cass accepted the flute of bubbling wine and sipped. 

             
“I never got the whole thing about pregnant women being hot,” he said, “But Evie may be the exception.”

             
Cass snorted.  “If Jackson hears you say that, there won’t be enough left of you to sweep up.”

             
He stepped closer behind her, closing his arms around her.  “Just because she looks amazing, doesn’t mean I want her.  There’s only one woman I want.”

             
Cass had a snippy retort on her lips but it died away quickly when she saw Evie’s face pale and her friend double over to grasp the edge of the table.  “Oh, holy crap!  Not now.”

             
They crossed the room quickly, and found Jackson in full on panic mode.  “What’s going on, Evie?  Talk to me.”

             
“Cass, I think I am about to have this baby... at my wedding reception.   That is not acceptable.”

             
“Of course it isn’t.  Jackson, go get the car...  Now, please.”

             
Within minutes they had Evie tucked into the car with a petrified Jackson heading toward the hospital.  Evie’s mother had taken over handling the guests.  Margaret Harper was in her element, handling what could have been a social disaster.  Cass had Reed drive her to Evie and Jackson’s house, where she picked up Evie’s bag before heading to the hospital.  After that flurry of activity, time slowed to a crawl.  They waited for what seemed like eons.  It was full dark and close to midnight before Jackson emerged from delivery room, pale as a ghost and wearing a beaming grin. 

             
“We have a beautiful, healthy, seven pound baby girl... Even more beautiful than her mother, though I’ll never admit I said that.”

             
Cass breathed a sigh of relief that perfectly matched Reed’s.  On the couch adjacent to them, Margaret Harper cried perfectly appropriate and socially acceptable tears while Phillip Harper simply sat there stunned.   Jackson disappeared again and another hour passed before they were allowed into Evie’s room.  She was sitting up in bed, holding the tightly swaddled bundle and looking like something from a renaissance painting.  It was a beautiful moment and sparked a longing in Cass that she hadn’t even known she was capable of. 

             
Peering over her friend’s shoulder at the perfect little face, with chubby cheeks and sweetly bowed lips, Cass fell immediately, head over heels in love.  “Oh, I cannot wait to dress you!  Ruffles and ruffles on top of ruffles,” she said, pitching her voice soft and sweet. 

             
Evie giggled.  “You might be a little late.  Reed’s already been stocking her closet.”

             
“My mother sent you those, Evie.  I was not picking out baby dresses... but I will happily teach her how to bat later on when she plays little league.  Jackson was a shit baseball player,” he said, stroking one finger over a tiny, pink fist. 

             
It didn’t take long for the nurses to come in and shoo them out.  Cass was a little disappointed that she hadn’t got to hold the baby, but she consoled herself with the idea that she would come back the next day.  Teasing Reed, she elbowed him, “You are such a sucker.  I don’t believe for a minute that your mother picked out those dresses.”

             
He laughed, “I might have bought one or two... I like babies.”

             
“I didn’t know that.  I just assume most men don’t... that they freak out at the sight of anything that helpless.”

             
“Hardly helpless.  One tiny little squeak and everyone for miles is rushing to do their bidding whatever it may be.”

             
She paused as they reached the car, “I hadn’t thought about it quite that way, but you’re right.”

             
Reed didn’t immediately open the door for her.  Instead, he leaned against the car, pulling her close and kissing her softly.  It was a gentle brush of his lips on hers.  It was more about romance than heat, and it created a totally different kind of fluttering inside her.  “What was that for?” she managed to ask. 

             
“Because I can... It isn’t all about the sex, Cass, though God knows it’s amazing.  There’s so much more between us than that.  You know how much I love you.”

             
He’d told her.  Months earlier while they’d been lying in bed together in the aftermath.  It had taken her a full minute to be able to say it back, not because she didn’t want to, or because she wasn’t sure, but because it had simply taken her breath away.  “I love you, too.  More every day.”  It was the truth, and it was getting easier and easier to let it slip past the remnants of her defenses. 

             
Reed reached into his pocket and pulled out the little velvet box.  Flipping the top, he showed her the ring.  It wasn’t big and flashy.  It was a simple gold band with a single, square cut diamond and a smaller stone on each side.  “Marry me, Cass.  Let’s make it official, and then have pretty, red headed babies.”

             
“Tomorrow,” she said.  “I’ll marry you tomorrow.  I’d marry you tonight if I could make it happen.”

             
He chuckled, “I do know a couple of judges pretty well.”

             
“Let’s go home and work on that baby part first,” she said. 

             
He kissed her again, hotter this time, with an intensity that stole right through her.  “Anything you want.”

             
She tugged at the neck tie that hung loosely from his collar, sliding the silk free and wrapping it around her hand,  “I think that’s my line.”