She shakes her head again.
I nod and rock back and forth on my heels a few times. “You want me to help you lock up?” I ask, checking the time on the big clock. “I made sure not to damage the latch on the rear door. If I don’t break anything on my way in, they can only charge me with entering, right?” I give her a cheeky grin.
She glances toward the back room and when she returns her gaze to me, she tugs her eyebrows downward. “You shouldn’t be here,” she says again.
I nod slowly. “I am, though.”
She stares at me a moment before her eyelids flutter, and she seems to be grounded back into her body. The set of her eyes switches up like she’s focusing her thoughts, and she starts moving. She strides over to the big entrance door and locks it. She peeks out the side window, squinting as she peers between the leafy branches of the overgrown shrubs out front. “Where’s your truck?”
“I parked it behind the gym and ran back under cover of the hedge lines.” I hold up my forearms to show her the scratches. “I didn’t want to leave things where we did, but your dad clearly has spies everywhere.”
She walks closer, her eyes assessing the damage from the brambles and briars. My arms are quickly dismissed when she lifts her gaze to my face. She winces, and I reach up to feel what she’s looking at. “Am I bleeding?” I ask as I discover a sore area near my hairline. I check my fingers and see only a smudge of blood. “It’s just a little scratch.”
She looks me in the eyes and then glances at the side of my head. “Your little scratch has a twig sticking out of it,” she says in a flat tone. “Should I pull it out? Or do you want to leave it in and see if it grows?”
I can’t help my smile. “I love your fucking mouth, Cadence Malone. Screw the way your dad tries to silence it, you can sass me any time you want.”
She snorts and pulls her chair over. “You want it out or not?” She points at it, commanding me to sit.
I do as I’m told without delay. “Do I want you to touch me?Yes.”
“Even if it hurts?” she says with a smirk. She leans in close to inspect my damage, and I breathe in the heady scent of her shampoo and the faintest hint of soap on her skin. The nearness and warmth of her is making my own temperature rise.
“Worth it,” I say with a grin.
She tugs her mouth to one side, her expression serious. “We’ll see.” She pokes at my head.
“Ow.”
She meets my eyes. “There’s a build-up behind the stick. It’s acting like a plug, and when I pull it out, it’s going to bleed. I need paper towels.” She starts to walk away but then turns to face me. “We should do it in the bathroom. This carpet has enough stains.”
I get to my feet and follow her to the library’s very tired looking but extremely clean, fresh smelling bathroom. It’s a tiny little country library, so it’s not full of stalls and sinks. It’s morelike a powder room in somebody’s house. Small, yet spacious feeling, there’s a toilet, a sink, a paper towel dispenser, and a lot of ugly tiles.
Cady points at the closed toilet, and I sit while she’s extracting towels. She wets a few and sets them aside, and I wait excitedly for whatever surgery she wants to perform. Will she sit on my lap while she does it? If she straddled me, I could pull her closer. She’d feel my cock, swollen beneath her, and I’d feel the heat of her pussy calling me homeward.
She clears her throat, and I blink her back into focus. “Hmm?”
My auburn-haired princess glances pointedly at my crotch and then raises her eyebrows.
Heat fills my cheeks. I’m not usually one to be ashamed of my body and its natural desires, but she makes me so fucking shy sometimes. It’s probably because I’m unworthy of being in her presence. I know it, but I just can’t seem to keep myself away. “Do you want me to apologize?” I ask.
She considers that a moment. “Are you sorry for it?”
“Only if it offends you.”
She looks at the bulge in my jeans again and sighs — and not in a good way. “I don’t know how it makes me feel.”
I frown. “You did earlier.” I search her face. Something has definitely changed. “I think this is where we talk about what happened after I left. What made you flip your desk?” I ask. “What did he do?”
Cady looks to the ceiling and releases another long sigh. “What does he always only ever do?” she mutters, before meeting my gaze and firming her jaw. “Why were you in prison?”
Oh. He’s been filling her mind with horror stories, has he?
I snort softly and look up at her from under my lashes. “He went with scare tactics, huh?”
“He did. Right after the threats of shame, the reminder of his authority, and the usual guilt trip about what my mother would want. Answer the question.”
I study her assertive posture and moody, expectant eyebrows. If she feels threatened by me in anyway, she’s not showing it, so her father can’t have been too successful at branding me as dangerous.
