My craving for him intensified.
I traced a pattern with my fingertip over each tattoo, the compass design on his chest, the heart that had to mean family, and that sun on his wrist—the first tattoo I’d glimpsed when he’d knelt before me that time while I had hidden in the closet.
Now look at us, all fear gone and understanding left in its place.
“What does this one mean?” I asked of the compass.
He shrugged. “At the time, it was meant to represent not losing my way with myself. But clearly . . .”
“I found you,” I said wistfully.
“Actually, I found you.”
“No, I’m talking about the real Cassius, the one . . .”
His expression softened revealing he knew what I’d been about to confess, a word that terrified me, and surely scared him, too. Maybe showing him how I felt was safer for now.
Tenderly, I kissed along his jawline up to his mouth, softly at first and then nipping. He opened his lips further, and I used his movement to my advantage, dominating with pressure and making it mine. Tongues lashing each other’s, searching, claiming, a frenzied attack that turned tender.
Lavishing him with affection, I pulled my mouth away and made a new path with my lips.
Across his arms.
Down his chest.
“Are you ever going to let me go?” He moaned.
“Never.”
“You don’t have to do this,” he whispered.
“You need this.”
He reached up and stroked my face showing just how much this was true. In the reflection of that look we shared was proof he cared for me. The way his lips curled into a smile at how much he was enjoying this, savoring me, savoring us.
Gripping his wrist, I directed his hand back to his side. “Stay still.”
“So, it’s like that?” He smirked and rested his hands behind his head, leisurely watching.
I trailed downward, pausing at his groin, nervous about what came next, nervous I’d get it wrong.
“It’s okay.” His words gave me permission to stop.
Instead, I planted a passing peck there, teasing.
“Here.” He rested his hand on mine and together we wrapped our fingers around his wide girth, gripping it, with him guiding me, moving it up and down slowly. “Take me in your mouth,” he whispered.
I lapped at the tip, running my fingers around the edge, then took him all the way into my mouth, running my tongue along his hardness until he hit the back of my throat.
“Fuck . . .” His hips tipped a little.
“Is this right?”
“Yes.” He smiled a little and pointed beneath where I held him firmly. “Here, too.”
While pumping his erection, I dipped my head and sucked his balls, my lips sliding off them and then capturing each one with my mouth, encompassing them, my hand steady on his width, gliding from his girth to his tip in steady strokes.
“I want to see you.” He tugged on my sweater.
“When I say.”
He let out a frustrated groan, and it morphed into a primal noise of pleasure when I returned my focus to suck his erection. Stretching my lips wide, I accommodated his iron hardness, silky to the touch, a shiny bead of liquid at the tip.
He studied me studying him.
A sticky slickness formed between my thighs, my arousal at fever pitch, this need so great I couldn’t deny either of us what came next. Me ripping off my own clothes, hurrying to feel his naked skin against mine.
“Come here,” he demanded.
Climbing on top of him, I straddled his thighs, sinking low until my slickness ran along his hardness, rocking back and forth while my thighs trembled.
“I have to touch you,” he said, his hand reaching up to caress my exposed breast, his fingers pinching my nipple, eliciting a bliss that traversed all the way down.
A long moan escaped me.
Rising up, holding his stiffness between my thighs, I sank down until the tip pressed a little inside, slicked but unable to go any further. I knew it would be like this, tight at first, fearful of the discomfort, but my body yearned for him to be in me as strongly as a lost soul thirsts for sustenance in a desert.
Cassius seemed to know my struggle as he reached forward and gently applied a fingertip to that small bud between my thighs, circling, flicking faster, until my insides coiled, my body giving up the fight as he pushed his way in, deeper still, filling me completely.
“Don’t move,” he said.
A flood of pleasure swept away my trepidation. Perhaps it was the way his left hand cupped my breast and his right flickered me down there in delicious circles, but it was easy to surrender to this, to him, easy to sink a little lower and rise up just as guarded, riding him, pleasure shuddering into my body and building and building until my jaw was slack and I was staring into his eyes mesmerized at just how incredible this felt.
It had taken all my will, all these acts of kindness, but I finally had him. Like this, making love beneath the stars, safe and surrounded by nature. Shielded from the breeze of the evening, we were hidden and safe in the shade of the tall walls surrounding us.
Head thrown back, a moan of pleasure tore from me as I came and came, a blinding ecstasy possessing my being. Pure and raw and vital as the sensations owned each breath that I had to steal back. Wracked by nothing but the sensations of him.
I slumped onto his chest, and he wrapped his arms around me, his lips pressing my head with endless kisses. He remained buried deep, and it felt delicious.
Lifting my head slightly, I realized, “You didn’t finish?”
“Well.” He made a gesture.
“Oh . . . ” I said as I pulled off him, and then slid back down and gripped him again. My arousal spiked again, exhilarated that my first time had been with him, here, in the sacred place.
“I want us to start again,” he said. “A do-over.”
“Pretend this is our beginning?” He nodded at my question. “Okay.”
“Listen, I can’t promise it will be easy, but I’ll try.”
“And I promise when you’re an ass that I’ll never forget what you told me about the sun.”
“You are the sun.”
Lost for words, knowing the profoundness of his meaning, too overwhelmed with how far we’d come, I continued on, retracing his length with a gentle touch. Yearning for the peace we both wanted.
Finally, as I continued, he shuddered against me, one hand over his eyes, covering his face as he came, a blissful expression as I seduced his release from him.
“Anya,” he cried out.
I had ravished Cassius.
Showering him with affection endlessly, taming his inner demons, or at least doing everything I could to try, soothing the part of him that had once been hurt beyond repair—but now showed promise of healing.
His head crashed onto the grass, and he stared up at the stars, pointing at them. “Orion’s Belt.”
“It’s shining over your home,” I said wistfully.
Starting again with kisses, tenderly trailing my affection on his neck, I continued to ravish him. This was the way to show how much I loved him—even if saying it would never happen. The only way to have him see all the possibilities of what we could become.
Anya
Waking up snuggled against Cassius’s warm body in his bed felt like I’d slipped into heaven unseen, wanting to stay here like this just watching him sleep.