Chapter 14: Midnight dreams
His hands were tangled in the thin cotton of her sweatshirt, pushing it up toward her chin. The cooler air of the room whispered across her stomach, her ribs, and she broke the kiss with a gasp that was part pleasure, part shock at the cold. He took the opportunity to yank the garment the rest of the way off, tossing it blindly behind him. It landed with a soft sigh over the open pages of a differential equations textbook.
For a moment, he just looked. In the flat grey dawn, she was a study in contrasts: the powerful definition of her abdomen, the soft swell of her breasts, the elegant sweep of her collarbone. He’d seen her in a sports bra a hundred times at the games in tiny uniforms on the sidelines. This was different. This was for him. The knowledge was a fire in his gut.
The fire tightened into a hard, twisting knot behind his sternum. He braced himself on his forearms, caging her in, his breathing ragged.
"You're so..." he started, but the words dissolved. He drank in the sight of her, the athletic perfection he'd only ever watched from the cheap seats, now naked and willing beneath him. His own shyness warred with a possessiveness that shook him.
Words finally surfaced, raw and unnervingly simple. "Cass."
"Yeah."
His gaze was intense, searching. The playful confidence from moments before had burned away, leaving a vulnerable uncertainty. "Why me?" he asked, the question escaping like a held breath.
It hung there, stark in the quiet room. He watched her face, bracing for an answer that might break the spell.
Cass didn't look away. She reached up, tracing the hard line of his jaw. A small, self-deprecating smile touched her lips. "Maya thinks I have terrible taste in men," she said, her voice a soft confession in the space between them. "Dumb jocks, basically. Egos bigger than their... well, everything. She suggested I try someone not in the athletic sphere. For once."
She pulled his face closer, until their lips almost touched. "That’s why she’s so invested. She’s been rooting for this. For you, for me."
His heart hammered against his ribs. "And you?"
The smile widened, reaching her eyes. "I’m glad I listened," she whispered. Then she sealed it with a kiss that was all the answer he needed.
It melted the last of his hesitation. His hands, which had been still, began to move again with purpose. They swept down her sides, over the flare of her hips, gripping the loose waistband of her sweatpants. He broke the kiss, a question in his eyes.
She just arched her back, lifting her hips off the mattress in silent answer. Together, they shoved the soft grey fabric down her legs, kicking it into the tangle of blankets at the foot of the bed.
The cool air hit her skin, but the chill lasted only a second. His large, warm hand flattened on her thigh, pushing her leg to the side, opening her to him. The scent of her own arousal, sharp and intimate, bloomed between them. He watched his own hand as it traveled up the inside of her thigh, his touch reverent.
His fingers found her warm, slick heat. She gasped, her back bowing off the bed. A low, approving sound rumbled from his chest. "Jesus, Cass."
"Don't talk," she pleaded, her hips chasing his touch.
He complied, focusing on the tactile reality of her. The way she yielded, the fine tremor in her muscles, the hitch in her breath when he pressed just so. He learned her with a focused intensity that was entirely Liam—methodical, observant, utterly consuming.
When he finally slid one thick finger inside her, her eyes flew open, locking with his. A shaky exhale escaped her parted lips. He watched her face as he began to move, his own need a painful, radiating throb. His free hand fumbled with the drawstring of his own sweatpants, pushing them down just enough to free himself.
The sight of him, fully revealed and straining against his stomach, made her mouth go dry. The rumors, the dare, the outline under the blanket—none of it compared. It was a lot. A beautiful, intimidating lot.
He saw the flicker in her eyes. "Okay?" he asked, his voice strained.
"More than," she managed, reaching for him. Her fingers brushed the hot, silken skin, and he jerked as if shocked.
That simple touch undid him. He shifted over her, his weight settling into the cradle of her hips. The broad head of him pressed against her, not entering, just resting there, a promise and a question. Every muscle in his arms and back was corded with restraint.
He searched her face, his own a mask of fragile control. "Cassidy."
It wasn't a question this time. It was a plea.
She wrapped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles at the small of his back. She pulled him down into a searing, open-mouthed kiss.
The world narrowed to a single, sliding point of friction and heat. He buried his lips in to hers with a guttural cry, his whole body shuddering as he held just on the edge of her impossible depth. For a long, eternal moment, he stayed there.
"Feel that?" she whispered, her own voice tight with the overwhelming stretch.
A broken laugh escaped him. "Yeah," he rasped. "I feel it."
He stayed perfectly still, shaking with the effort. Every cell in his body screamed to push forward, to bury himself in the profound, liquid heat that touched just the tip of him.
It was a different heat than her mouth, deeper and more demanding, and it scrambled every thought in his head.
It was a different heat than her mouth, deeper and more demanding, and it scrambled every thought in his head. He pressed forward, a glacial shift of his hips, and just the broad, flared crown of him breached her.
He stopped there, embedded only that first shocking inch.
A ragged breath tore from his lungs, fogging in the cold air between them.
His eyes were screwed shut, every tendon in his neck standing in stark relief. He began to move, a shallow, tentative rocking that chased friction only at the very entrance, never delving deeper. “Okay?” he gritted out, the word strained.
Cass let out a shaky laugh, her fingers digging into the dense muscle of his shoulders. “You’re being… really polite.” The sensation was incredible, a bright, sharp fullness, but it teased at an ache deeper inside her. It was all promise, no delivery. “I’m not made of glass, Liam.”
He opened his eyes, his gaze dark and unfocused. “I know. I just…”
“I know.” She cut him off, her voice softening. She knew he was afraid of hurting her. But the cautious, half-inch strokes were beginning to feel like a beautifully frustrating dream. She wanted the textbook solidity of him.
So she acted.
While he was pulled back to that starting point, just the head kissing her entrance, she hooked her heels harder into his back and pulled.
It wasn’t a violent yank, just a firm, decisive draw of her strong legs. He slid forward, another impossible fraction, maybe a quarter of his full length.
The world didn’t just shift.
It dissolved.
Every prior experience, every dumb jock in a darkened locker room, every fumbled hookup, evaporated from her memory. It was not pain. It was a sudden, shocking totality of fit, a consuming pressure that rewired her nervous system on the spot. Her vision starred at the edges.
If her body was a parched landscape, this was the sudden, perfect flood that submerged every crack, filled every hollow, not with violence but with profound, shocking relief.
A silent, open-mouthed gasp locked in her throat.
Her internal muscles, involuntarily, contracted in a wave of pure shock around the new, stunning fullness.
The vicious, velvet clamp of her around him ripped a raw, animal sound from his chest. His arms, braced beside her head, trembled violently. The urge to piston forward, to surrender to the sheer gravitational pull of her, was a physical scream in his blood. His hips gave a tiny, abortive jerk.
Then he froze, swallowing a groan that was almost a sob.
He held, suspended at the exact depth she had taken him.
“Don’t…” he managed, his voice a wreck. “Don’t move. Just… God, just let me…” He was fighting for control, trying to outlast the stunning, tight heat threatening to unravel him immediately.
Cass finally remembered to breathe.
The air hit her lungs like ice water, shocking her back into her body. The overwhelming sensation settled from a blinding flash into a deep, radiant burn. She was impossibly, perfectly full. “Liam.”
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t… break me.”
A fractured laugh escaped him. “Good. That’s… that’s really good.” He lowered his forehead to hers, his breathing frantic and hot against her skin. “Just. Give me a second. This is… a lot.”
She could feel the fine, continuous tremor in his thighs where they pressed against hers. She could feel the painful throb of him inside her, a steady, heated pulse. The cautious, academic tutor was gone, replaced by a man holding onto the cliff’s edge of his control by his fingernails.
“Take all the seconds you need,” she whispered, lifting her head to brush her lips against his. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He kissed her back, a slow, deep communion that was a stark contrast to the frantic energy coiling in the rest of his body. When he finally began to move again, it was with that same deliberately measured quarter-length stroke. But the texture of it was different. There was no hesitancy now, only a fierce, focused containment.
Each drag forward was a low, sweet torture, a promise of more he wouldn’t yet allow. Each retreat was a minor agony. She met him, grind for grind, learning the exact new borders of this profound and particular space they occupied.
His mouth traveled to her ear. “Tell me,” he murmured, his voice thick. “Tell me what this feels like.”
Her mind, usually so quick with a comeback, stumbled. It was beyond adjectives. “It feels,” she started, then stopped, her hips lifting to take him again. “It feels like you’re exactly the right answer to a question I’ve been asking wrong my whole life.”
He stilled inside her again, his body going utterly rigid at her words. When he spoke, his voice was rough with an emotion that had nothing to do with the physical act. “Cass.”
“Just move,” she said gently, because the sentiment was too huge to examine now. “Please.”
He obeyed, finding a slow, devastating rhythm that made her forget about anything past the next half-inch of sensation. The room faded. The silent, snow-locked world outside ceased to exist. There was only the creak of the bed, the slick sound of their joining, and the symphony of their ragged breathing.
She ran her hands down the sweat-slicked canyon of his spine, learning the topography of him. He was solid, real, and here. The shy tutor was currently fucking her with a ruthless, contained precision that was unraveling her nerve by nerve.
“You’re… infuriatingly good at this,” she managed, her words punctuated by a sharp intake of breath as he angled deeper on a stroke, just a fraction.
He huffed a laugh against her throat. “It’s a focus thing,” he gasped. “A very, very intense focus thing.”
His words were gritted out between clenched teeth, each measured thrust a testament to that focus. He held himself back, a statue of strained muscle and shuddering control, moving within the shallow, safe parameters he’d set. The sensation was incredible, a tight, bright coil of pleasure winding tighter with every fraction of an inch.
But for Cass, it was starting to feel like watching a masterpiece being painted only in shades of grey.
She understood it. She appreciated the devastating care of it. But the cheerleader in her, the athlete who knew her own limits and how to push past them, felt a rising, sweet frustration. The cautious, academic part of him was trying to solve her like an equation, one careful variable at a time.
Pfft, if he’s this good with one quarter of his cock… The thought bubbled up, irreverent and certain. I bet the whole thing is better.
His lips were on her throat, his breath hot and ragged. He was pulling back again, that same controlled retreat after the same measured advance. This time, she was ready.
As he reached the apex of his backward stroke, just the broad crown of him teasing her entrance, she moved. It wasn't just her legs pulling him. Her whole body conspired. Her hips cantered up, her hands slid from his back to grip the fierce swell of his ass, and she guided him.
She guided him to the hilt.
There was no slow slide. It was a single, fluid, consuming motion. He buried himself inside her, a complete and shocking fit that punched the air from both their lungs in a synchronized, silent gasp.
The feeling that washed over her wasn’t an orgasm.
It was better somehow.
It was a profound, cellular settling. A silent, roaring Yes that echoed in the marrow of her bones. The relentless internal ache she’d mistaken for mere need was suddenly, perfectly answered. It was the click of a final puzzle piece, one she hadn't known was missing. Her eyes flew open, wide and unseeing, staring past his shoulder at the cracked ceiling.
A choked, shattered sound escaped Liam. His entire body locked, vibrated, then went limp for a terrifying second before he caught his weight on trembling arms. He was buried so deep she could feel the frantic pound of his heartbeat within her own flesh.
“Cass,” he rasped, a broken plea. “I can’t—I’m gonna—”
“Don’t you dare stop,” she breathed, the words fierce. Her voice sounded foreign to her, thick and resonant. Her inner muscles fluttered around him in involuntary, overwhelmed pulses.
He moved.
The careful rhythm was obliterated. His first full stroke was a stuttering, ragged thing, but the second found a new, devastating geography. The third carved a path that made her cry out, a short, sharp sound that was pure sensation. He wasn’t tutoring anymore. He was learning, and the lesson was ravishing them both.
The bedframe, an old, wooden thing, began a rhythmic protest against the wall. Thud. Thud. Thud. It kept time with their gasps. The world outside the frosted window ceased to have any meaning.
“Look at me,” he demanded, his voice raw.
She dragged her gaze to his. His face was a mask of strained ecstasy, his pupils black and boundless. Sweat beaded his temples, tracing a path down the corded tension of his neck. He was watching her, studying every flicker on her face as he drove into her.
“Tell me,” he grunted, his hips answering a deeper, more primal calculus.
“It’s all of you,” she gasped, her nails scoring his skin. “Finally.”
A grim, triumphant smile touched his lips. He slid a hand between them, his thumb finding the swollen, slick nerve at her apex. The dual assault of sensation—the deep, filling pressure and the sharp, bright friction—short-circuited her thoughts. Her back arched, her mouth forming a silent ‘O’ as a tremor racked her from the core outward.
“That’s it,” he murmured, his focus absolute. He watched the climax gather in her, feeling it tighten around him in pulsing waves. “Let me see it.”
The command, so unlike his earlier hesitance, undid her. The coil snapped. Pleasure detonated, a white-hot shockwave that ripped through her without sound, leaving her rigid and shuddering beneath him. Her thighs gripped his hips like a vise.
Her orgasm wasn't a wave. It was a silent, tectonic event.
It locked her body in a rigid, breathless arch, her nails biting crescent moons into his shoulders. A choked sound, raw and unrecognizable, finally broke free from her chest as the sensation ripped through her in relentless, shuddering pulses. She saw bursts of static light behind her eyelids, her hearing dulled to a low roar as every muscle clamped down around him in frantic, claiming rhythm.
He weathered it, his own body strung tighter than a bowstring. He held himself utterly still, buried to the hilt inside her convulsing heat, his face buried in the sweat-damp hollow of her neck. Each internal spasm around him was a fresh, exquisite torture. He could feel the release gathering at the base of his spine, a dam about to burst.
It didn't.
The pressure built to a screaming, white-hot peak… and then just… held. His body shook with the effort of containment, every muscle fiber screaming in protest. He was right there, balanced on the burning edge, but the final, sweet fall refused to happen. It was a brutal, physical betrayal.
“Fuck,” he grated out, the word mangled against her skin.
“Fuck,” he grated out, the word mangled against her skin.
He collapsed onto his forearms, his whole body trembling with a fine, ceaseless vibration. The intensity of her climax had dragged him to the very brink, a precipice he’d hovered over with dizzying certainty. But the final, shaking release had simply… refused. It left him stranded, a live wire buzzing with unshed energy, still achingly hard inside her. A low, frustrated growl vibrated through his chest into hers.
Cass felt it, the rigid, unfinished tension coiled in every muscle. Her own breathing was slowly returning, the aftershocks gentle tingles. She ran a hand down his damp back. “Liam?”
“I’m okay,” he muttered, the words hot against her collarbone. “Just. Give me a second.” But he didn’t move. He was locked in place, caught between euphoria and a strange, hollow frustration.
She understood, intuitively. The physics of it were obvious. Her body had let go, and his, stubbornly, had not. It wasn’t fair. She kissed his temple, her lips salty with his sweat. “My turn,” she whispered.
He lifted his head, confusion and raw need clouding his eyes. “What?”
“My turn.” She nudged at his shoulder. “Let me up. And roll over.”
A flicker of understanding crossed his face, followed by pure, unguarded relief. He withdrew from her slowly, the loss of contact a small, shared ache. He rolled onto his back, one arm flung over his eyes. In the grey light, he looked wrecked and beautiful—all that controlled intelligence momentarily blotted out by sheer physical overwhelm.
Cass pushed herself up, her muscles singing. She straddled his thighs, looking down at him. He was still fully, impressively erect, a testament to the unfinished business between them. She placed her hands on his chest, feeling the frantic rhythm of his heart under her palms. “Payback,” she said softly. “Orgasm for orgasm.”
A weak, breathless laugh escaped him. “You drive a hard bargain.”
“You have no idea,” she murmured, shifting forward.
This was her domain. The controlled chaos, the practiced rhythm. There were precious few things Cassidy Blackwood knew she was genuinely, unquestionably good at. Sticking a landing was one. Hitting a mark in a routine was another. And riding cock in cowgirl was at the very top of that private, unspoken list.
She guided him inside her, lowering herself with a slow, excruciating control he hadn’t possessed. The angle was different. Deeper, somehow, a profound, full-body possession that made her eyelids flutter. She took him to the hilt in one smooth, unbroken descent and stayed there, letting them both adjust to the shocking, complete fullness.
Liam’s hands flew to her hips, his fingers digging in. “Christ, Cass.”
“Uh-huh.” She began to move.
It wasn’t the frantic, driving pace he might have expected. It was a roll, a deliberate, grinding undulation of her hips that kept him buried deep, stimulating places his earlier thrusts had only brushed against. She set a slow, deep, absolutely relentless tempo. She leaned forward, placing her hands on his chest for leverage, her blonde hair forming a curtain around their faces.
Her nails traced light paths over his pecs, down his sternum—not marks of passion, but points of focused contact, a map she was drawing. “You just,” she said, her voice a husky murmur synced with her movements, “lie there.”
His head thrashed against the pillow. His knuckles were white where he gripped her hips, not guiding, just holding on. Every nerve ending was on fire. The visual alone was devastating: her above him, all power and grace, taking exactly what she wanted from him. The sensation was exponentially more intense, a deep, grinding friction that left no room for thought.
“Cassidy, I can’t—” he choked out.
“You can,” she countered, not breaking rhythm. “You will. For me.”
She shifted her weight, altering the angle just so, and saw his eyes roll back. A broken sound, half-groan, half-sob, tore from his throat. She rode him with the same focused athleticism she brought to the mat, a flawless, punishing execution. The bed’s protest was a different, slower creak now, a heavy, rhythmic punctuation to her movements.
His release gathered again, a tight, burning coil in his gut, more intense than before. It wound tighter with every circular grind of her hips. He was right there, teetering on that same sharp edge. He could feel the tension building in his balls, the heat flooding his spine. He arched beneath her, a strangled cry caught in his teeth.
It plateaued.
And held.
The peak approached, crested… and then just stayed, a searing, motionless summit. The physical need to climax was a scream in every cell, but his body, traitorously, wouldn’t obey the final command. A ragged groan of pure frustration erupted from him. His hips bucked up off the mattress, seeking a different friction, but she pinned him down with her weight and continued her slow, maddening ride.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, leaning down to kiss him, swallowing his groan. She could feel the rigid, desperate tension in him, the almost painful throb of him inside her. “It’s okay. We have all night.”. The words were a promise and a threat. She straightened up, picking up the pace slightly, her own breath starting to quicken again. The coiled spring inside her was winding tight once more, fueled by his desperate energy, by the beautiful, frustrating sight of him coming utterly apart beneath her without the final release. He was her junkyard dog on a chain, straining against an invisible leash, the sweet relief he craved hovering just inches from his muzzle.