Chapter 7: Barn Quickie
The confession about Eli hung in the air of the guest house for days, a ghost neither of them addressed. Sera didn’t ask for details. The hollow look in Cas’s eyes when he’d said it warned her off. Instead, they moved in a new, fragile orbit around each other. The avoidance was gone, replaced by a charged, silent understanding. They worked. He on the fences, the irrigation lines, the endless maintenance of a dying dream. She on her business plan, her menus, the logistics of a dream not yet born.
Their conversations were brief, practical. The north field’s done. I need a quote on commercial refrigeration. But the space between words crackled. A brush of hands as he passed her a tool. The lingering weight of his gaze on her back as she bent over her laptop on the porch. The memory of his body driving into hers in the dark was a live wire, humming just beneath the surface of everything.
A week after the storm, the contractor finally showed up to assess the barn. Sera met him there mid-morning, her heart beating with a foolish, hopeful rhythm. This was the centerpiece. The vaulted space for her restaurant, the exposed beams, the potential. Cas’s truck was already parked nearby, but he was nowhere in sight.
She walked through the large, sliding door left ajar. Sunlight streamed through the high, dirty skylights, cutting the dusty air into solid, golden bars. The smell was as she remembered—old wood, damp soil, the faint, sweet rot of hay. New lumber was stacked neatly against one wall, next to crates of unopened supplies and her own box of kitchen tools, brought over in a fit of optimistic planning.
“It’s got good bones,” a low voice said from the shadows near the back.
Cas stepped into a stripe of light, wiping his hands on a rag. He wore a faded grey t-shirt that stretched across his chest and old jeans smudged with dirt and grease. His eyes scanned the beams above. “Dry rot in the southeast corner. Needs replacing before we go any further.”
“We?” she asked, the word slipping out before she could stop it.
He looked at her then, his green eyes unreadable. “You’re standing in it. Might as well know what you’re buying.”
The chill in his tone was a deliberate rebuke, a reminder of the transaction that loomed over them. It stung. She turned away, pretending to examine a post. “Your brother,” she started, then hesitated. “Is he…?”
“Alive?” Cas finished, his voice flat. “For now. That’s about all I can guarantee.” He threw the rag down on a crate. “Don’t, Sera. Don’t start thinking you can fix it.”
“I wasn’t—” she began, but her denial was weak. She was a fixer by nature. It’s what chefs did. They took broken elements and made them cohesive, beautiful.
“You were.” He took a step toward her. The sunlight caught the faint, intricate lines of black ink peeking from beneath the sleeve of his t-shirt—a hint of the secret tapestry she’d only felt under her palms in the dark. “This isn’t a missing sauce or an understaffed shift. This is bad people and a lot of zeroes. The kind that get people disappeared.”
The raw fear in his voice, so carefully buried under anger, stopped her heart. She saw it then—the weight on him was crushing. It wasn’t just about losing the farm. It was about losing a brother.
Without thinking, she closed the distance between them. She placed a hand on his chest, over his heart. It hammered against her palm. “Cas…”
He stared down at her, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle jumped. The air between them thickened, pulling taut. The dust motes danced in the sunbeams like static.
His control, already frayed, snapped.
In one swift movement, his hands were on her hips, spinning her around and walking her backwards until her shoulder blades met the rough, splintery surface of the stacked lumber. The impact knocked a soft gasp from her lungs. He crowded into her, his body a solid wall of heat and tension, pinning her there.
“This is all there is,” he growled, his mouth inches from hers. His breath was warm, smelling of coffee and earth. “This, right here. You and me in this fucking barn. Nothing else exists. You understand?”
She understood. He needed an escape, a temporary oblivion. And God help her, so did she. She needed to feel something other than the chilling calculus of his debt, the precarious ledge her own dreams stood upon.
“Show me,” she challenged, her voice husky.
A savage light flared in his eyes. His hand slid down her side, over the thin cotton of her sundress, gathering the fabric at her thigh. He didn’t bother with gentleness. He hiked the skirt up, his calloused fingers digging into her bare flesh, pushing it past her hips until it bunched around her waist. The cool, dusty air hit her skin.
His fingers slid inward, through the damp heat at the juncture of her thighs. She hadn’t worn anything underneath. A reckless choice she’d made this morning, a secret thrill.
“Fuck,” he breathed, his voice ragged with want. His fingers parted her, sliding easily through her slickness. “You’re always ready. Dripping for it.” He pushed two fingers inside her, curling them, and a broken moan tore from her throat. Her head fell back against the wood with a thump.
“You want it?” he demanded, working his fingers in and out, a crude, thrilling promise. “You want my cock in this dirty barn, Sera? Tell me.”
“Yes,” she panted, her hips rocking against his hand. “God, yes, Cas. Now.”
He withdrew his fingers, bringing them to his mouth and sucking them clean, his eyes locked on hers. The obscenity of the gesture sent a fresh flood of heat between her legs.
He undid his belt buckle, the rasp of leather and metal loud in the quiet barn. He shoved his jeans and boxers down just enough to free himself. His cock jutted out, thick and vengefully hard, the veins standing in stark relief.
He turned her around roughly, bending her forward over the stack of lumber. The rough-hewn wood scraped against her belly and the tender skin of her breasts, held captive by her bunched dress. He kicked her feet wider apart with his boot.
He positioned himself behind her, one hand gripping her hip, the other guiding himself to her entrance. The broad, hot head of his cock nudged against her, a tantalizing pressure.
“Look at you,” he muttered, his tone dark with awe. “Bent over in my barn. Taking what you came here for.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He pushed forward, burying himself in one long, relentless stroke.
She cried out, the stretch profound, the fullness absolute. He was deeper this way, hitting a place that made stars burst behind her eyelids. He held there for a heartbeat, letting her feel every inch, letting the burn of the intrusion fade into a devastating pleasure.
Then he fucked her.
There was no rhythm, no finesse. It was raw, piston-like drives of his hips, slamming her body against the unyielding wood with every thrust. The slap of his skin against hers, the creak of the lumber under their combined weight, her own ragged cries—they echoed off the high, empty walls, a filthy secret sung to the rafters.
One of his hands fisted in her curls, pulling her head back, arching her spine. The other hand slid around her front, his fingers finding her clit, already swollen and desperate. He rubbed rough, quick circles there, the dual assault of sensation pushing her rapidly toward the edge.
“You feel that?” he grunted, his breath coming in harsh gusts against her neck. “You feel how deep I am? This is what you wanted. This is what you’re buying.”
His words were cruel, but his touch was transcendent. The coiling tension in her core wound tighter, a spring ready to break.
“Cas… I’m gonna…”
“Come,” he ordered, his voice a guttural command. “Come all over my fucking cock. Let me feel it.”
It was the permission, the crude ownership in his words, that undid her. Her climax ripped through her, a violent, shuddering wave that clenched around him, pulling a savage groan from his chest. Her vision whited out, her cries muffled by the wood.
Feeling her convulse around him was his end. With three more brutal, jarring thrusts, he drove in to the hilt and stilled. A raw, ragged shout tore from his throat as he came, the hot, pulsing release of him flooding her depths. He shuddered against her, his grip on her hair loosening to a caress.
They stayed like that, joined, gasping for air in the sun-dusted silence. The smell of sex and dust and their own sweat filled the space.
Slowly, he softened and slipped out of her. He gently turned her around, pulling her dress back down her trembling legs. His own pants were still around his thighs. He looked wrecked, his expression a complex map of satiation, shame, and lingering fear.
He tucked himself away and fastened his jeans, not meeting her eyes. “The south forty,” he said, his voice hoarse. “The parcel with the old oak grove. It’s the most valuable. Best soil, easiest road access. If you need to secure more investors… that’s the land to pitch.”
It was a peace offering. A piece of brutal, practical honesty. It was also a surrender.
Before she could respond, her phone buzzed in her dress pocket. The sound was jarring. She pulled it out, her hands still unsteady. It was her contractor.
She answered. “Jerry. Yeah, I’m at the barn now.”
Cas turned away, picking up his rag, pretending to be busy.
“Slow down,” Sera said, her professional facade slamming back into place. “What do you mean, a problem?” She listened, her brow furrowing. Her eyes lifted, scanning the barn floor, then the walls. “A sinkhole? Where?”
Cas went still, his back to her.
“Under the west foundation?” Sera’s voice tightened. “How big? …Jesus. And the engineering report says what?” She closed her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose. “No. No, don’t do anything. Don’t bring any equipment out. I need to… I need to assess.”
She hung up. The barn felt suddenly colder, the sunlight feeling thin and insubstantial.
Cas turned around slowly. His face was a careful blank. “Sinkhole.”
“Under the west wall. The corner with the dry rot,” she said, her voice hollow. “The engineer’s report flags it as a potential major subsurface instability. Fixing it… if it can be fixed…”
“Could cost more than the whole damn restoration,” he finished for her, his voice flat.
He knew this land. He knew what that meant.
The dream of the barn—her beautiful, sprawling restaurant—cracked like cheap glass. The financial viability of her entire plan, already precarious, now teetered on the edge of a literal pit.
He looked at her, and for the first time, she saw something in his eyes besides desire or anger. It was a grim, shared recognition. They were both standing on the same crumbling ground.