*75 - Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread

Cassidy’s stomach knotted in the most enjoyable way.  The prospect of sex with him always had her full endorsement, but the emotional side of things was still new enough that “make love” carried an enticing exhilaration.

“I think that’s a fine idea,” she concurred with a soft smile.  “Too bad we can’t get at that bed in there.  It would make inspirin’ you a whole lot more comfortable.”

“Mm.”  His hands roamed possessively over her bottom.  “Key’s in my pocket.”

Well, well.  Isn’t that just fascinatin’?

Removing his hat and tossing it to the other chair, she tunneled her fingers through the messy gray mop it had been covering.  “And what’s it doin’ there?” 

“Hoping I was going to need it,” he teased with a devilish grin that warmed her panties.  “I stopped by and talked to Tully.  He gave it to me.”

“Remember how much I like your brevity?  I might like your shrewdness even more.”

Jon reached up to extract her hands from his hair, folding them into his while he stood.  Cassidy found herself deliciously intimidated by his dominant stance and the hint of wickedness waltzing through his eyes.

“How long do you think it will be before your sister comes back?”

Cassidy suspected it would be a good, long while in anticipation of this very scenario.  She loved and hated Libby in equal parts for orchestrating this encounter. 

“Long enough, but I’m a little mad that you two have been in cahoots.”

“Get over it,” he ordered gruffly, nesting the fingers of one hand inside hers to draw her along behind him.  “Your sister is my new best friend.”

“She is, huh?”  Cassidy bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling as he unlocked the door.  “Well, as long as that’s all she is.”

Jon looked over his shoulder with a lifted brow and turned the now unlocked knob.  “What?  You don’t wanna share?”

Partly amused and partly worried he might not be kidding – he was a rock star, after all – Cassidy slid past him through the open door he held.  “Honey, there’s a limit to what I share with her.  It’s your poor luck that got you the blonde instead of the beautiful Cassidy sister.” 

Her progress toward the bed was halted by a force from behind and she turned to find that he’d latched onto the tail of her t-shirt, holding her within arm’s reach. 

“Hey.”  He stepped close enough to loom over her again, his eyes smoldering indigo.  “Your sister’s a good lookin’ woman – and I plan on checking out her ass to see if there’s a family resemblance – but I wouldn’t call her the beautiful Cassidy sister.”

Having made the statement with the intention of being silly and not expecting a response, she was nonetheless inordinately pleased that he’d made one that was so flattering. 

“I appreciate that a lot,” she approved with a wink.  “Except for the part about checkin’ out her ass.” 

“Just keeping the air clear of misunderstandings.”

Cassidy’s chin dipped with a softly delighted giggle as she cupped his cheek.  “You’re about the cutest damn thing some times.”

“Only sometimes?”  One arrogant eyebrow inched upward along with the hem of her t-shirt as he skimmed it over her head.  “Clearly you don’t keep up with Bon Jovi social media.  I’m the greatest fuckin’ thing since sliced bread.”

“Mhm.”  Deft fingers snuck beneath the soft gray cotton tee that had elicited the memory of their first meeting and gave it the same treatment hers had received until it gently plopped to the floor in the same heap.  “Sounds like you keep up enough for both of us.”

God, she loved his chest.  Her fingers were immediately drawn to the masculine furred plane and Cassidy reveled in the soft scrape of it over her palms as she reacquainted herself with hard pectorals.  Skating lightly over his ribs, she made her way to the defined stomach that was less densely coated until she bumped into the thick band of leather at his waist.

“Your eyes just dilated and you stopped breathing,” he murmured, tunneling broad fingers into her hair until the ponytail disintegrated under his touch, leaving flyaway tendrils to frame her face. 

“I can’t help it.”  And she couldn’t.  His belt drew her like a siren’s song did the sailors.  It was, naturally, a nice quality leather that felt good to the touch.  The plain wide buckle spoke of a man’s man, not a fancy pants millionaire, telling secrets about the one who wore it. 

“Unbuckle it,” he softly commanded with hands still intimately tangled in the tresses he’d unleashed.

Cassidy’s eyes slipped to make a deeper connection with his than could be achieved with a thousand words.  The infamous blue eyes were unusually soft around the edges, smudged with a desire to fulfill her desire, and she rose on tiptoe to touch his mouth with a soft, clinging kiss of appreciation.

Shifting her focus back to his waist, she gingerly slipped tip of the black leather from beneath his belt loop and took it in her fingertips, reverently fondling it for a moment before coaxing it up through one side of the buckle.  The action forced her to flip the end of the belt to her left, exposing the underside that begged to be stroked.  Cassidy’s thumb succumbed to that begging with a languid pass from the loose tip to the point where it still connected to the buckle, stopping to  circle the unused holes as she went.

The feel of leather under the pads of her fingers brought to mind the last time he’d tried to bring the belt into play.  How the leather had hugged her wrists, erotically digging at the tender flesh while Jon’s eyes had scandalously devoured her naked form. 

“What are you thinking?” asked the man of her thoughts with his cupped hands sliding down her neck and over her shoulders. 

Cassidy bent back the pliable leather, releasing the pin from its hole and trailing the free piece over her wrist.  Drawing a deep breath through her nose, she worked it loose so that the buckle and end both dangled freely.

“About the time you tied my wrists with it.”

“Yeah?”  Her shoulders shrugged up when he stepped close and bent to nuzzle the crook of her neck, creating a titillating tickle.  “That makes you horny, doesn’t it?  Being bound with my belt?”

“Mmmm… Yes.”  The heat of his whisper melted the spot where his lips hovered before partaking of the gentlest nibble on her neck.  “Feelin’ that leather encase my wrists is one of the most decadent things I’ve ever experienced.  I was able to completely let my guard down knowin’ that, while bound by your belt, I was yours and that you’d take care of me.  I was exposed yet fearless.”

Gradually lifting his head so that she could see into his eyes, Cassidy found that a maelstrom of thoughts swirled in their oceanic depths.  It was one more display proving that the man who told so little of his thoughts had so very many things going on in his mind. 

“I wish things were different,” he lamented quietly, settling one hand into the curve of her waist, while the other unhooked her bra from behind. 

This wasn’t her intention behind saying what she had.  Cassidy had simply been revisiting a surprisingly special moment in her life and, by chance, provided the underlying psychology of it.  The deeper meaning for her enjoyment was as much of a revelation to her as it was to him, but it wasn’t meant to evoke regret.  In Cassidy’s mind, it was simply the way things were and she wanted it to be that way for him, too. 

Shrugging out of her bra, she folded him into a tight embrace, fusing their chests together and delivering a kiss to the underside of his jaw.  “Baby doll,” she admonished.  “Wishin’s like worryin’ – it passes the time, but steals the moment and doesn’t accomplish one other damn thing.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, only silently returning the embrace until he leaned back to regard her with a affectionately cockeyed smile.  “Such a wise Confederate fortune cookie.” 

“The Chinese folks ain’t got the market on common sense.”

His chuckle vibrated against her mouth as his hands wedged between them and slipped down to the button on her jeans.  It took only one deft motion to have it unfastened and slay the accompanying zipper before one of those hands disappeared inside that open fly to claim what it had been hiding. 

The initial contact of callus to clit had Cassidy sucking air and clutching at his shoulders to remain upright.  When she accommodated the nudge of his foot and opened her stance wide, she was glad for that grip because the fingers he drove into her core unerringly zeroed in on the spot that made her knees want to buckle.

“You’re always so willing to accommodate.”  The mumbled words scorched her lips only to be extinguished by the wet swipe of his tongue.  “Whatever I want, you give it to me.”

“This sure isn’t a hardship.”  Thick fingers tunneled deep, scraping her delicate insides with the perfect amount of pressure to segue her breathless commentary into a purr of pleasure.

“No?” Butterfly lips fluttered along the line of her jaw as his thumb joined into the sensual fray between her legs, swiping almost brutally over the hard bud that had formed with his first intimate touch.  “You like being mine?”

The kiss that followed was heated and possessive, claiming her as plainly as if he’d bound her wrists and, God help her, she reveled in it.  Strong and independent Cassidy was discovering that, for the first time, she wanted to belong to someone.  She wanted to belong to him, even if he didn’t truly belong to her.

There’ll come a day when you regret bein’ susceptible to this man and his domineering vulnerability.

There might, but it wasn’t this day.  It couldn’t be.  Not at the scorching hands that sought to simultaneously own and please her. 

“I am yours,” Cassidy whispered as much to herself as the man whose touch was everywhere – inside, outside, up, down and around, lighting her up like a Fourth of July firecracker and making her squirm against him.  She couldn’t get close enough, couldn’t absorb enough of him.

“But do you like it?” 

The words were absently uttered as he pushed at her pants, prompting her to kick away her shoes so that the denim could be stripped off to leave her utterly naked except for the wide hands that covered her.  Cassidy reached for his waistband, eager for him to be similarly exposed so that there was nothing between them. 

“No.  I adore it.” 

She inched her footsteps backward toward the bed, bringing him along with her.  When she lay on it, open and waiting yet still alone, Cassidy found that he was standing at the bedside watching her.  His eyes raked her up and down, appreciating and laying claim to every square inch of her exposed flesh.  When he reached her face, she found that wide-open pupils ate at his irises, making them dark pools of desire. 

“I got the blonde and the beautiful Cassidy,” he declared, finally climbing between her legs and claiming what awaited him. 

His weight on her was what she’d unconsciously been craving, and Cassidy wrapped both arms and legs around him, reveling in the way he ideally stretched her insides to accommodate his girth.  Savoring how he touched her deeply enough to steal her breath.  Relishing the slick friction that magnified both.

Their motions weren’t frenzied.  There was no rush to the finish line.  It was just stroke after stroke, touch after touch, as they enjoyed being part of one another.  She kissed, he caressed, she petted, he nibbled, she allowed herself to be vulnerable, and he kept her safe until they both rolled over the edge of the waterfall that pooled in a warm sauna of gratified bliss.

Afterward, they didn’t talk.  His heartbeat was slow and steady under her cheek as she quietly lay against his chest, and his breathing was even while he stroked her tangled hair.  Cassidy was content to bask in the joy of the moment and not think of the future while he contemplated exactly what to do about the future.

That was, until she heard it. 

“You’re hummin’, baby doll,” she observed softly.

“Yeah, I know.”  He curled his arm more tightly around her.  “I think it’s the last song for the album.”

Cassidy rubbed a hand over his chest, searching for the tickle of hair against her palm that would counteract the melancholy in the notes he’d put together. “Sounds kinda sad.”

“It is.  Something about a teardrop in the sea.”

“I’m sorry.”

Jon rolled in her direction, his lips dusting her brow as he folded strong arms around her.  “You haven’t done a damn thing to be sorry for.”

She hadn’t been apologizing so much as expressing her sympathy for his sadness, but there was no point in clarifying that.  Cassidy chose to enjoy his embrace rather than make the distinction.

“You wanna come outside while I dig up that box and see what MeMaw left me?”

“Sure.  On one condition.”

She twisted her neck so that she could look up at him.  “What’s that?”

“Spend the night with me.”

The commanding words had no less impact today than they had that night in the studio.  In fact, his imploring eyes made the words all the more potent,  Cassidy couldn’t have told him no if she’d wanted to. 

And she didn’t want to.

“I didn’t expect this to be an overnight trip, so I didn’t bring any clothes,” she mentioned casually.

“You won’t be wearing any.”

Somehow, Cassidy had known that but, in the vein of there being no misunderstanding…  She liked hearing it, anyway.