“It's a beautiful war, baby." He dipped so close, the tips of our noses brushed but his eyes never left mine. "And I...just… won.”
“Woman, if you don’t already know that you’ve been on my mind every day for the last six years, I got no clue how to communicate that to you. Now that I’ve had you, that shit has not changed. It’s just got worse.” My back straightened and I started glaring. “Worse?” “Worse,” he confirmed on a downward jerk of his chin. “Now it’s not every day. It’s every hour. I don’t fight it, every minute. Fuck, every second, I don’t keep it in check. Every second, I’m thinkin’ of you, thinkin’ of gettin’ shit done, but only so I can get back to you.” That was very, very sweet. I was still pissed. And this was because I got nothing from him, not one thing for a month! “You didn’t tell me that, Deacon.” “I fuckin’ did, Cassidy.” “When?” I snapped. He leaned toward me and shot back, “Every moment I was with you.”
“A truck that’s not dirty is not a truck. It’s a pussy wagon.”
“If we have daughters I’m starting How to Deal with Badasses when they’re five.”
His eyes were lit but his expression was full-on tender when he returned, “We have boys , they get How to Deal with Stubborn Bitches Who Argue About Meaningless Shit starting at three.”
“Heart and soul, gut and balls, I love you. There’s no one I’d rather hold. Not until I’m eighty. Not until the day I die.”
“It was my turn to let my eyes travel over his features. Take in his male beauty. Memorize it. Do it knowing that as crazy as it sounded, I’d never forget him. For reasons I didn’t know and would never have the opportunity to understand, there would always be a part of me that would long for him. There would always be thoughts in the back of my mind plaguing me, haunting me, making me wonder, if he let me in, even just a little, how it could have been. I stopped thinking these thoughts when the pad of his thumb whispered across my lips. That was when the tears pricked my eyes. Because I knew that was when he was going to let me go. For always.”
“You’re a vulnerability,” he ground out. “My vulnerability. I have no vulnerabilities. I spent years shavin’ every last one away from me so there was nothin’ left. Now I got one, a big one, and I do not give one fuck.”
“Badasses know what they want, definitely know what they need, and don’t settle for anything less.”
“Anything. You want it, I got it in me to give it to you, you got anything from me.”
“Don’t be playful when I’m feeling emotional,” I ordered.
To this, he strangely replied, “You get I’m a badass.”
“Hard to miss, Deacon,” I returned.
“Then don’t tell me when to be playful. Badasses don’t like that shit.”
“Woman, if you don’t already know that you’ve been on my mind every day for the last six years, I got no clue how to communicate that to you. Now that I’ve had you, that shit has not changed. It’s just got worse.”
“In this bed, out of it. Naked or not. No boundaries. All in. Nothin’ held back.” He pressed his hips between my legs and I drew in a sharp breath. “You’re all mine, Cassidy, every fuckin’ inch. And I’m all yours, just the same.”
“Tried to be dead again when I let you go, Cassie. Dead doesn’t hurt. Tried fuckin’ hard to find it. But I couldn’t find it. You lived in me”
“Here,” he growled and I blinked.
“Deacon, I’m not a big fan of—”
“Future,” he cut me off. “Assert your feminism when I’m not three seconds away from fuckin’ you on your porch. I come to you, that’s gonna happen. You come to me, maybe it won’t.”
Maybe?
I didn’t ask that.
I asked , “So if you get your way and I come to you, you can miraculously control your base instincts?”
His reply?
“One.”
My body jerked and my brows shot together as the meaning of that word hit me.
“Are you counting down—?”
“Two.”
I planted my hands on my hips.
“You are!” I cried angrily. “You’re counting—”
“Fuck it,” he muttered, took two long strides, and I was in his arms.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how important is this?” I queried.
“Me doin’ my bit so I don’t feel like you’re keepin’ me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Eighty-five.”
“Showed me a strong woman doesn’t need keeping, but feels good to take care of her all the same. Better, you gotta fight for that privilege.”
“Meaningless fucks are just that and I don’t do a lot that’s meaningless, definitely not something important like connecting with a woman’s body. Also found it’s not hard to go without when going with doesn’t work for me.”
“But… you’re a badass,” I pointed out.
“And?” he prompted, brows drawing together, apparently well aware he was a badass.
“Badasses need to get them some,” I explained.
“Badasses know what they want, definitely know what they need, and don’t settle for anything less.”
“The one. The world. The man made for me. The man I was going to fall in love with. The only man I’d ever really love.”
“Badasses need to get them some,”
“I was a cold motherfucker, off the grid, no life, no home, no ties, no emotions, everyone knew it. Until I came back to some rundown cabins I’d been to before that were off the beaten path. Perfect place for the minimal downtime I let myself have. Quiet place. A place no one could find m”
“Heart and soul, belly and womb, I love you too, Deacon.”
“Finally I was naked on the table, my legs spread with big hands gripping tight at the sides of my knees, and he was down. As in down. On his knees on the floor, his mouth between my legs. Feeding. God. Oh God. Not feeding. Feeding.”
“It really doesn’t work for you if it has no meaning?” “Biologically, anything would work. Pussy is pussy,” he stated baldly. “You drive your dick into it, close your eyes, you’ll get off. But sex isn’t about that. It shouldn’t be about that for anybody. It doesn’t have to be about emotion, but it has to be about something. If I don’t respect the woman attached to the pussy I’m fucking, can’t look in her eyes and be all about that with her, not just all about the moment I get off, it’s pointless. And there’s no point to doing something pointless.”
“You wanna clean up?” he asked quietly. “Yeah,” I answered quietly too. “Then shuteye or you wanna sit on my face?”
“Fuck,” he growled again, the sound coming from his gut, rumbling into my sex, and a moan slid up my throat. “Harder, Deacon.” His lips came to mine. “You got it, Cassie.”
“You can’t heal anything with sex, Deacon,”
“Should this continue to be as awesome as it is, we trundle toward together and make those babies, if we have daughters I’m starting How to Deal with Badasses when they’re five.” His eyes were lit but his expression was full-on tender when he returned, “We have boys, they get How to Deal with Stubborn Bitches Who Argue About Meaningless Shit starting at three.”
“Did you think of maybe telling me you were going to clean my gutters and needed a ladder to do it before taking off to look at ladders, leaving me talking to myself?” I asked. “When I took off, you weren’t talkin’.” I found this hard to believe, though I did have to take a breath so perhaps he’d escaped when I did that.”
“Since I decided to buy an island and move there with my favorite volleyball,” Deacon shot back, watched his friend’s lips twitch, ignored it, and moved into the room, shrugging off his coat and throwing it on the bed.”
“When life offered you everything you ever wanted, you savored it.”
“Now what? Was I to be reborn over and over, forever? Could a dog have more than one purpose? How was that possible?”
“I couldn’t stop loving you even if I tried. And I’ve tried.” He shook his head and laughed without humor, his hands balling into fists. “God, how I’ve tried. But I am completely lost to you. I am lost and empty and broken -”
“My heart is broken too -”
“My heart is not broken, Scar. My heart is dead!”
“The next day, the villages came closer together until the beginnings and endings could no longer be discerned.”
“Sometimes you forget how much you love someone, until you realize their smile is like a spotlight shined on your heart.”
“My love, cease thy weeping, now listen to me, For waking and sleeping, my heart is with thee; Love, let nothing grieve thee, and do not complain, For I never will leave thee, while life doth remain.”
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