“That people would want to go to the place that underground fighting built.”
“Yeah. But then I opened another one and another one, and then Altitude, and the new place soon,” he says. “And I’m not fighting anymore and they’re still successful, so maybe it’s because I’ve actually created sustainable businesses. Maybe I’m not just some dumb fighter.”
“Is that what you used to think?”
He reaches out his arm, plays with my hair. “I know that’s what other people thought. And I guess I did, too, sometimes.” He closes his eyes. “Sometimes it’s like that was a whole other life. The training was nonstop. My body was always sore, knuckles were always raw, taped up. I was exhausted all the time from the schedule, too tired even to notice the chaos and betrayal going on in my own house,” he says, and after the girls’ download yesterday I don’t even need to ask what he means by betrayal. “I got too busy to see what was right in front of me,” he says. He opens his eyes. “I like looking at what’s in front of me now, though.”
We doze in the sun, my head on his chest, his hand on my waist. I wake up first—maybe because it’s so hot. I’m actually sweating in my swimsuit. Sliding out from under Ryder’s arm, I slink down the rock and sit in its shadow in the shallow part of the shore, my bottom half submerged but visible under the water.
I run my hands through the grit of the silty lake bottom, thinking about the irony that if Ryder hadn’t tried to stop that fight in middle school, he probably wouldn’t have made a career fighting. He wouldn’t be running a ring, he wouldn’t have been loaning Jamie money, and we might never have met at all. “Thank you, Marvin Lutwak, wherever you are,” I whisper.
I guess you could also argue if I hadn’t left England—if I hadn’t had to leave England—I wouldn’t have met Ryder either. But somehow, I don’t feel quite as appreciative toward Sebastian as I do little Marvin Lutwak.
Ryder’s being so open made me want to open up, too, about England, why I was there, what happened, what’s still happening, right up until this morning. But I couldn’t do it. Or wouldn’t, I guess.
The truth is, I just want to put it all behind me—move ahead, no looking back. And I don’t want to burden anyone else with looking back at it either. Because in some ways, it might be harder for another person to understand what they’d find out than it is for me to remember it. We don’t often comprehend the choices other people make in life, especially when they turn out to be bad ones that turn worse.
The lake is still, serene, calming, and I lean my head against the rock, closing my eyes for a few minutes, maybe even falling into a light sleep, until I feel a familiar wet warmth on my naked nipple. Ryder. I’d know that tongue anywhere.
I wrap one hand around his head as he locks those blue eyes onto mine, and as he kisses my breasts, pushing my bikini top to the side, I reach the other hand into the water for his throbbing cock. Taking me around my ribcage, he lifts me out of the water and walks us to the shore, settling me on a blanket in the shade.
Ryder’s hands are all over me now and he tugs down my bottoms at the same time I push down his trunks, hungry for him, needing him inside me.
“Ryder.”
He only groans in response, his cock straining against my hand.
Then he rolls onto his back and pulls me on top of him, and I straddle his lap, that perfect hardness gliding into me, filling my opening, my body, my whole world. I bend my head toward his as I move back and forth, my clit rubbing against his skin as his cock presses against my inner wall, setting my nerve endings on fire, and when I kiss him, my mouth is so eager for his that our teeth bump as our tongues find each other. He puts his hand on my shoulder and gently pushes me back. “I want to watch you ride me,” he says.
I arch my back and roll my hips, letting myself get lost in the sensation of him inside me and the thrill of his eyes on me.
“Like this?” I say.
“It’s fucking perfect,” he says. “You’re fucking perfect.” He sits forward, nuzzling his head into my breasts, and the movement tilts his cock into just the right spot, the friction building and cresting as he thrusts into me over and over again.
“Yes,” I breathe.
He holds me still above him as he continues his delicious assault, pulling me down onto his cock, hitting that spot again, so deep, as I grind harder into him.
“Cassie,” he calls my name. I lean over him. Our eyes lock.
I’m gasping for breath in between kisses, moaning into his mouth as softly as I can as he makes me come, so hard, an explosion of wetness and heat and sound that seems like it will never, ever end.