Page 72 of Proof

I carefully grabbed his arm. I knew I was putting myself at risk of an involuntary physical response to the sudden contact, but Cass merely stopped. He was breathing heavily. I wanted to end the whole thing then and there, but the sweat on his brow and his struggles to control his breathing were proof that he wasn’t as immune to me as he wanted to be.

Just like I wasn’t immune to him.

“Isn’t there an upstairs?” I asked. “I didn’t see any bedrooms down here.”

I could feel Cass’s muscles bulge beneath my fingers.

He was pissed, alright. But he was a lot of other things too. Several long seconds passed and I was sure I had him. Then he turned to face me and immediately moved closer so our bodies were nearly touching. “How could I forget that?” he asked.

His husky voice made my cock, which had so far been behaving, immediately demand I concede. Thankfully, the head on my shoulders and not the one further south was still in control.

“Lead the way,” I sputtered. The glint of satisfaction in Cass’s eyes was what I needed to get back on track. I followed him to a spiral staircase that led up to one huge master bedroom. There wasn’t enough light to make out more than a few furnishings, but the massive bed was hard to miss. I jumped when Cass took my hand in his and began leading me toward the bed.

“There are a few bumpy spots,” he explained as he tightened his grip on me. I loved the feel of his callouses against my palm. Sparks of sensation spiraled up my arm and began to spread throughout my body. Their ultimate destination was all the same.

My balls.

My hard, tight balls that wanted to come out and play.

I willed myself to think of any disgusting image I could come up with to tamp down my lust, but it became irrelevant when we passed the bed and stepped into the bathroom. It was pitch dark and there was no way to know how big the room was or if it had any other entry points. God, had Cass’s cell been like this? Had he suffered in total darkness, or had he been tortured with nothing but artificial light?

“Cass, it’s okay,” I whispered as I tugged him backwards. My fear for him grew with every second that we stood there, metrying to pull him out of the room and him standing as still and unmovable as a statue.

My gut was telling me the room didn’t have any other way to get in or out of it, and since there was absolutely no light coming in from the dock lights like downstairs, I couldn’t be sure there was even a window. We’d been in the room for less than ten seconds and I was already feeling uncomfortable because I couldn’t make sense of which direction was which. I could feel the walls closing in on us.

No.

No fucking way was I putting Cass through the trauma of being confined all over again, mind games be damned.

I once again tried to pull Cass back the way I thought we’d come. He didn’t budge. God, was he already trapped in his own mind?

“I’m good, Cass. I don’t need to see it. It’s fine,” I said as evenly as I could. Why the hell had I started all of this? I was such a selfish prick.

A sudden burst of light blinded me and for a second, I thought I was having one of my episodes. Cass’s face was the first thing I saw when my eyes adjusted. He had a strange expression, but he turned his head away before I could figure out what it had been. “No one can see the lights on this level. All the curtains are blackout ones. I checked it myself from the dock when I first got here,” he responded curtly.

So that was why he’d been leaving all the lights off except one on the lower level. He hadn’t wanted anyone on neighboring houseboats to question why the long-empty houseboat had suddenly come alive again.

I tried to cover my heavy breathing and pounding heart by looking around the room. The bathroom was extremely outdated but larger than I would have guessed possible for a houseboat.There was a small curtain along the wall. I could only assume there was a porthole behind it.

Before I could anticipate the move, he was tugging me into the walk-in shower. My back ended up against the cold tile and Cass’s big body was holding me prisoner.

A very willing prisoner.

“Do you remember?” Cass murmured, his lips skimming my neck with the lightest of caresses. It was all I could do not to moan. He hadn’t turned the water on, but he may as well have because I could feel its heat. We were back in the cramped shower of the hidden cabin protected from the world by an endless wall of trees. I would have given anything to be back in the cabin with him for real. Back in that shower where it had been just us. Just Cass’s mouth moving over mine, our bodies tangled together, our eyes locked as we’d taken and given each other a kind of pleasure I’d never thought possible. Our bodies hadn’t truly been joined but it hadn’t mattered. For the first time in a very long time, I hadn’t felt empty and alone.

The problem with the current situation was that there was no emotion behind Cass’s voice or his touch. There was no denying that his lips teasing the skin on my neck felt amazing, but there was something missing in even that too.

The game.

Cass was still playing the game.

A heavy weight settled in my stomach.

“I’ll never forget that day,” I managed to get out, though I knew my voice made the words crack. Cass stopped toying with my neck, but he didn’t move. He still had my wrists pinned to the wall. “We made love,” I whispered. “We didn’t fuck, we didn’t just get each other off, we didn’t pretend…”

It seemed to take forever for Cass to pull his head back so he could look me in the eye. So many emotions were weighing me down like a boulder—a boulder that I’d been carrying around myentire life—that I had to turn my head to the side so I wouldn’t be forced to see the blankness of his gaze.

“We made love,” he responded softly.

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