He kissed me with tongue and he did it deep.
When he lifted his head, he murmured, “Funny, feels like winning.”
And again, he was not wrong.
* * * * *
“Okay, Milagros,” I said into the phone. “See you later.”
“Hasta luego, Cassidy,” she said back then I heard her disconnect.
I put the phone down on the arm of my Adirondack chair and tangled my feet with Deacon’s on the railing.
Deacon didn’t object.
I fought the grin that caused and asked, “You cool with dinner tomorrow at Milagros and Manuel’s?”
“Said I was when you asked me when you were talkin’ to her,” Deacon noted.
“Yes, but I was talking to her when I asked,” I replied. “Now’s your chance to get out while you can.”
“It’ll be good, Cassie.”
I had a feeling it would.
I also had a feeling it wouldn’t.
That was because everything with Deacon was turning out good.
But Milagros and Manuel meant the world to me and there was no way Deacon could sit at their table and be Deacon. I knew this when he introduced himself as Priest.
And you didn’t lie to your friends.
Resolutely turning my mind from that to the bright side, I was right, astoundingly right, gleefully right.
Working alongside your man was fun.
Okay, not fun but it was still awesome.
I knew this because I helped Deacon install my gutters. It wasn’t done but we had three sides of the house completed.
He didn’t talk while he worked, I didn’t either, but working side by side getting something that needed done done felt great.
“Warning,” he stated, taking me from my thoughts. “There’ll come a time, and soon, when you’ll be entering Badass Zone again. This being when I talk to you about the state of your shingles.”
I grabbed my beer, brought it to my mouth, and before taking a sip, murmured, “Noted.”
“You got leaks?” he asked.
“Not that I know of,” I answered.
“Miracle,” he muttered.
I grinned at the trees as I put my beer back to the arm of the chair.
“Want dinner?” I asked.
“I could eat,” he answered.
I untangled my feet from his, put them to the deck, pulled myself out of the chair, and moved to the side of his.
I bent over him and the only movement he made was tipping his head back to catch my eyes.
“Then you’ll eat,” I said softly before I leaned in deeper and touched my mouth to his.
His eyes were warm when I pulled away.
My insides were warm when I went inside to start dinner.
* * * * *
I came hard and loud, crying, “Oh my God,” as it burned through me, doing this digging my heels into Deacon’s back.
Still coming, I felt his mouth leave me but immediately felt him thrust two fingers inside. My sex spontaneously clutched his fingers as he kept thrusting and I kept coming.
Finally, it started moving from me. I came up on my elbows to look down my body to see the third hottest vision I’d seen in my life (the first was Deacon coming, the second was Deacon breathing). This being Deacon up on a forearm between my legs, face hot, eyes hungry, fingers fucking me, my legs still over his broad, muscled shoulders.
“Not done. Want you again, Cassie. You’re up for it, gonna take it. You’re not, say now,” he rumbled.
“I, uh…going down on me?” I asked for clarification through panting breaths.
“Yeah.”
“I…uh…”
“Say now,” he ordered.
“Uh…”
“Time’s up,” he growled then I watched him dip his face back to me (this instantly taking over the spot of third hottest vision I’d ever seen) but I only got a second before his mouth hit me even as he kept thrusting with his fingers. My head dropped back. I dug my heels in and my hips surged into his mouth.
“Yes,” I breathed.
His fingers thrust harder and his mouth clamped over my clit and sucked deep.
The answer to his question was yes, I was up for it.
But I told him that in his language.
Without words.
* * * * *
“Fuck.”
“Deacon.”
“Fuck.”
“Deacon!” I cried out, slamming down on him and grinding in just as he bucked his hips up, his fingers digging in to the flesh at my hips, holding me to him as he dug his head in the pillow and I threw mine back, holding fast to his wrists so I didn’t topple backwards and lose him as my orgasm overwhelmed me.
“Ride my cum,” he grunted through his climax, his fingers still digging in but pulling me up. I didn’t think I had it in me, but I went back to moving on him, taking him fast and deep. “Fuck. Yeah,” he groaned as I reared on his cock.
I was losing it, carried away by the sensations, when his thick voice came back.
“Stop, baby.”
I slid down until he filled me and fell forward, giving him all my weight, pressing my forehead into his neck.
He glided one hand to my ass, wrapping the other arm around my back.
We did nothing but breathe for a while.
“Best lay, bar none,” he stated, his voice still gruff.
With the competition, that was quite a compliment.
“You too,” I breathed into his neck, still not fully recovered.
“I didn’t just ride you until your pussy exploded. You did that to my dick. Fuck, watchin’ all that beauty go wild, takin’ my cock, enough to undo a man. Add that cunt so wet and tight…Jesus.”
I loved his words. They weren’t flowery, but they said a lot from a man like Deacon.
Still, I lifted my head to look down at him, sliding my hand up to curl it where his neck hit his shoulder, and I told him quietly, “You know, you’re beautiful too.”
He moved a hand up my back before it left me so he could sift his fingers into one side of my hair, and he used it to pull me closer.
“I’ve looked in a mirror, Cassie. Know I’m not ugly. But you could be in magazines.”
“Deacon,” I whispered, not knowing what else to say because what he said was so sweet, there was no way to return that sweetness.
Just feel it.
“No shit,” he stated.
“I’m too short to be a model,” I remarked for no reason but to say something.
“Then they’re dumb fucks and I’m a lucky one seein’ as that means you’re sittin’ on my cock, your tits pressed to my chest, your beauty in my face, and you’re not all that with some movie star.”
I pressed closer even as I demanded, “Stop being sweet.”
His hand in my hair gave my scalp a squeeze as his eyes lit and he muttered, “I’ll try.”
“You’re so lying,” I accused.
That was when I got the grin, a grin that told me he was so lying.
I hid my happy smile by dropping my head and kissing the base of his throat.
When I did, he kept my face there by sliding his hand to the back of my head and pressing in.
“You wanna clean you up or you want me to do it?” he asked gently.
“Me,” I answered softly.
“Go and come back to me.”
Come back to me.
That I could do.
I lifted up again, touched my mouth to his, and then went and came back to him, but I snatched the tee from the floor that he’d changed into after showering when we were done with the gutters. I tugged it on before I slid into bed at his side.
Deacon immediately curled an arm around me and positioned me where he always positioned me when we were settling in to go to sleep, tucked to his side. This was how we started the night. We could wake up in any position, him curled into my back, me curled into his, him pressed to my side, arm resting on my belly, breaths stirring the hair at my temple.
<
br /> It was something I was discovering made me look forward to mornings, waking up and seeing how we gravitated to each other unconsciously, always close, tucked together.
I wondered what tomorrow would bring as Deacon got me where he wanted me, reached, and turned out the light.
Apparently, it was time to go to sleep.
After three magnificent orgasms, I was okay with that.
But as I lay beside Deacon, listening to his breathing and knowing from growing experience that he’d quickly fall into sleep, suddenly, I got tense.
And just as suddenly, I blurted, “I’m worried about dinner with Milagros and Manuel.”
I felt his arm tighten around my back and he did this so he could shift me more on his body and pull me up so we were face to face in the dark.
“Talk to me,” he urged.
I settled in to him, his words settling something in me because I was finding that response was pure Deacon.
“You have to lie to them. So do I,” I shared.
“Why?” he asked and my head jerked. “Haven’t lied to them yet, don’t need to do it tomorrow.”
This surprised me.
“You don’t?”
“No.”
“But you told them you’re John Priest.”
“You wanna look at it a certain way, I am.”
I was again confused. “What way is that?”
“He’s made up but he’s still me.”
I thought I got it.
Still.
“That’s pushing it, Deacon,” I said quietly.
“It isn’t, seein’ as, if this works out, there’ll come a time when he’s gonna be me.”
That hadn’t occurred to me.
“Really?”
“Yeah, Cassie. I leave that life behind, I leave Deacon behind.”
“So should I just call you Priest?”
“Absolutely not.”
His tone was so severe I felt my body get stiff in response to it.
Deacon felt it too, rolled into me, and took me to my back with him partly on me.
“I need to give Deacon to you,” he said, his voice gentling.
“Okay,” I said back, again not getting it.
“You’re bein’ sweet, you’re bein’ ornery, you’re ridin’ my dick, you’re doin’ all that with Deacon.”
“Could you explain that further?” I requested.
“No, ’cause I don’t get it either.”
Foiled.
Time for a new tack.
“Are you in acquisitions?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Okay, now are you going to explain that to me?”
“Baby,” he said softly, dipping his face closer so I could see him in the moonlight, his hand coming up to rest against the side of my head. “Like I said, that world I live in doesn’t touch you. That includes you knowin’ fuck all about that world.”
“But I wanna know you.”
“You know me,” he declared.
I shook my head. “I don’t and won’t if you don’t give more to me.”
“Those tears leak out of your eyes in my bed in cabin eleven for a man you don’t know?”
God. He was annoying.
Because he was again right.
I decided not to answer.
He knew my answer anyway and went on, “You know me, Cassie. You believe in me. You wouldn’t be right here wearin’ my tee if you didn’t.”
Again he was right.
Again I said nothing.
Deacon kept speaking.
“I told you I believe in what I do. That’s part of you believin’ in me, believin’ that I’m doin’ what I need to do. But, baby,” he got even closer, his voice dipping lower, “I don’t want you knowin’ what goes down in that world. I want you livin’ in the splendor of Glacier Lily, worrying about gutters and gazebos, and not tainted with that shit.”
This did not sound good at all.
Still, it was part of him and I wanted him.
All of him.
So I informed him, “I can hack it.”
“You can’t,” he informed me.
“I can,” I reiterated.
All of a sudden, his mood turned heavy and his voice got hard. “You can’t, Cassidy.”
That didn’t sound good, either.
Not at all.
And I was sensing it was time again to tread cautiously.
That said, I still had to tread. My future with the man I was falling in love with depended on it.
“You’re still gonna have to give more of you to me,” I said carefully.
“I will.”
“Starting now,” I warned.
“Give it to me,” he invited.
“Okay, when’s your birthday?”
“You’re into that shit and need to celebrate, pick a month, make it in fall, and we’ll be good.”
Was he being serious?
“You’re not gonna tell me?”
“Can trace a man with a name and a birthdate, woman.”
He was being serious and the way he was doing it I didn’t like all that much.
“So, what you’re saying is, I’m never gonna know you.”
“Man you could know is dead,” he returned brusquely. “A man’s dead, no use knowin’ him.”
“Right, are you gonna explain that?”
He didn’t speak.
It was safe to say my mellow post-three-orgasms mood was escaping me.
“But you want me to have Deacon,” I pointed out. “And that’s you.”
“Your Deacon is not the Deacon I used to be. He’s just yours, nobody else’s.”
Something about that freaked me.
“I take it you’re not gonna explain that either,” I noted.
“Nothin’ to explain, what I said said everything you need to know.”
“I’m not liking this,” I shared.
“You like my mouth between your legs?” he asked.
My body tightened and I returned sharply, “That’s not the point.”
“Answer me.”
“You know I do.” My voice was getting snappy.
“You like workin’ beside me on your house?”
I said nothing but I knew he’d read me.
He did and thus he kept going.
“You gotta bake a cake, I’ll eat it. Happily. Do it on September fourteenth. I’ll accept a blowjob as a present but nothin’ else, only need to wake up with you in the morning and bed down with you at night. And I’m not shittin’ you about that, settin’ you up for me gettin’ pissed because you didn’t buy me anything. Special occasions are about the people you spend them with, not about the shit you can get out of them. And while I’m sayin’ this, same goes for Christmas. Far’s I’m concerned, I get another shot at Christmas with you, or luck out and get fifty of ’em, each one can be like the one we already had, except I sleep beside you, fuck you wakin’ up and fuck you again before we go to sleep.”
God, he made it hard to be angry at him.
“You wanna know the man I am, I’ll tell you,” he kept at it. “I’m the man who’s gonna take your shit but best you at it so I can at least replace about five square feet of shingles on your roof. But if I’m on my game, I’ll be the man replacing the whole roof.”
“Deacon—”
“And I’m the man who’s gonna work the next week alongside you cleaning out the gutters on your cabins, because if you didn’t think to do that to your house, you didn’t think to do it to your cabins, and they’re probably fucked up too.”
“Dea—”
“And I’m the man who’s gonna sit beside you at your friends’ house tomorrow night and like bein’ there ’cause I haven’t been around many good people the last ten years. Quick count, there are three.”
More not good.
He kept going.
“And I’m gonna get off on bein’ at a table with people who bring a woman that means somethin’ to them that they’re worried about a hot fudge sunda
e to try and make her happy.”
I lifted a hand to his jaw. “Honey—”
“And food’s gettin’ low so I’m gonna be the man who pays for groceries when we go to the store and I don’t give a fuck if you argue with me at the cash register. I’m payin’. You can pay the next go.”
It occurred to me he was talking and doing a lot of it so I decided to shut up and listen because he wasn’t only talking a lot, he was saying a lot.
“I’m also the man who’s gonna eventually have to take a job but I’m gonna do it thinkin’ of when I can get back to you, and when it’s done, I’m gonna haul ass back to you. And I probably won’t sleep or eat while I’m doin’ that so you’re just gonna have to suck it up, feed me when I get back, fuck me hard like you just did, and let me crash.”
I had something to say to that.
“I don’t want you to get in an accident.”
At that, he dipped his face so close to me, I could feel his breath on my lips.
“Baby, that shit happened, my ghost would come to you.”
Oh my God.
Yes, oh yes.
He was saying a lot.
“Now, do you get what kind of man I am?” he asked.
“Yes,” I breathed.
“And do you get the kind of man I am for you?”
There was a nuance of difference but he didn’t need to explain it.
I got it.
“Yes, honey.”
“Right. Now, can I go to sleep?”
“Yes, Deacon.”
At that, he kissed me, closed-mouthed and hard, then rolled again, moving me with him and tucking me into his side.
I drew in a deep breath.
Deacon didn’t. He just curled me closer when I did and loosened his hold when I let my breath out. A show of support. He was there with me. He knew that was a lot for me to take and he was telling me he was there.
Yes, I knew the kind of man he was for me.
I listened to his breathing even. I did this for a while.
Then I stated, “I still don’t want you to get in an accident. I’m not sure ghosts give good head.”
Deacon burst out laughing.
Although I loved that sound and that it was me who gave it to him, I lifted my head to look down at his moonlit face, stating through his mirth, “I’m only kind of being funny.”
He again pulled me up his chest so we were face to face.
“Here’s the deal,” he began when his laughter diminished. “I’m done with a job, I’ll stop to sleep and eat. It won’t be much sleep and it’ll be shit food that’s fast that I can eat on the road. Happy?”