Page 71 of Beware of Dog

“I…no one’s ever asked me that before.”

“Well.” He filled his hand with her ass and squeezed in a reassuring way. “I’m asking.”

She took a deep breath, and a moment to truly consider. Laid her head back down when the process made it feel heavy. “My mum is…a good mum. But she’s a little uncertain. Sweet, but…”

“Yeah. I get it.”

She nodded. “Raven stepped in early to do the decision-making. She sent me to private school, paid the way. She always said, ‘You’re going to university.’ It wasn’t a question of ‘if,’ only what I might study. I insisted on art. We argued, but she finally looked at my work and was swayed.”

When she fell silent, he slid his hand back up her body and stroked her hair, working out the shower tangles with his fingers.

“I actually do love the school part of it. My classes, and learning, and getting to experiment with styles and mediums I didn’t even know I enjoyed. I used to think I wanted to go intoanime, and then animation, but now I’m not sure. And I never knew I was good at metalwork, so that’s been cool. But.”

He tucked her hair behind her ear, and stroked her cheek with his thumb. “But the people,” he prodded.

She sighed. “Yeah. When I was in primary and secondary school, I had friends. Even good friends. But I knew that they didn’t—that they didn’t love me. It was all well and good on school grounds, but I had this family I couldn’t tell them about, and my family did love me, and I loved them. This whole thing with Jamie, and with Sig…” She bit her lip when her eyes felt hot.

“People are always gonna judge you for who you’re related to, honey. It sucks, but it’s just the truth.”

“I know.”

“You can either walk away from your family—”

“Never.”

“Or say ‘fuck you’ to the idiots giving you a hard time. Hey. Come here.” She loved the way he could haul her around on a whim; the way he scooped her up and pulled her to lie on his chest, straddling him, so they were face-to-face, his features more distinct in the dark up close like this. He looked sad, she thought. Sad for her, maybe.

He swept her hair back with both hands so he could hold her face.

She sniffed. “I don’t want to live in the dorms anymore.”

“So don’t,” he said, like it was that easy. “Live here with me.”

Overwhelmed, she leaned down to kiss him.

~*~

Neither of them suggested the obvious, which was that Cass should move back in with Raven. Cass didn’t want to, and Shep acted as if staying here with him was the only logical solution.

The weeks that unfurled felt both like a honeymoon, and like a slumber party, and like every other day, considering how integral a part of her daily life Shep had become over the past three years.

Without a base of comparison, Cass had no idea if it was normal for forty-six-year-old men to be so amorous, but she certainly wasn’t going to complain about it. She felt hornyall the time, fever stricken and unhinged.

He loved when she wore nothing but one of his shirts, and would press up behind her while she was trying to do homework, slide his hands under the material and up to her breasts, playing with them until she arched into his touch and begged him to lay her out on the floor, which he was all too happy to do.

He told her to chop the onions for their dinner, and then five seconds later was grinding against her ass, and then turning her around and hoisting her up onto the counter so he could tug down her shorts and eat her out. They tipped over a sack of flour that time, which exploded on the floor and sent flour everywhere. He bitched so much while they were attempting to clean it up that she threw a handful into his face. He sputtered, laughing, cursing her out, and it devolved into a full-fledged flour fight, which devolved further into shower sex.

Little details she’d always noticed but never been able to act upon drove her crazy: the way the collar of his white t-shirts lay against the back of his neck. The ripple of muscles in his chest and abs when he stretched each morning. The way he always wiggled his toes when he kicked his feet up onto the coffee table. The little shaving nick under his jaw that she licked and sucked on until he gritted out a curse and shoved her farther down his body with one hand, the other shoving down his sweats.

He taught her how to ride his cock, facing forward and back, his big hands leaving finger-shaped bruises on her hipsand thighs. Took her from behind: braced over the arm of the couch, and on her hands-and-knees on the mattress, on the floor. On one memorable occasional, he hoisted her up and pinned her against the wall, so she had to hold onto his waist with her legs, and bit marks into her throat while he drilled into her, again and again.

All of it was new, and then not-new, and it never got old. But Cass’s favorite was lying on her back, face-to-face, sharing slick kisses and hot breath while he fucked her deep and slow. She scratched red lines into his back and his hipbones bruised her inner thighs.

But they still did the things they’d always done. They cooked together, and ate together smushed on the couch. He made relentless fun of her reality shows, and they both commiserated about how much realer and cooler the practical effects of John Carpenter’sThe Thingwere than the CGI of the remake. They went food shopping together, and made fun of people in the Park, and after three whiskeys, he turned on ridiculous nineties pop and dragged her around, both of them smiling and laughing like idiots, Shep insisting he knew how to dance.

On quiet Saturdays, when she slipped out of bed and went to one of her canvases set up in the living room window nook, he’d wander out, shirtless and sleepy, and drag a chair up so he could sit behind her stool, hook his chin over her shoulder, stubble tickling her neck, and hum appreciatively at her project. He liked broad cityscapes best, the people small and forlorn-looking in the corner, swallowed up by the buildings around them.

Cass kept waiting for him to tell her this had been fun, but it was time for her to get out. Or that he needed some space, some goddamn breathing room because they were attached at the fucking hip.

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