Page 17 of Hounds Ascend
“I was just thinking that it’s only been two months since we met, and I’m astonished at how quickly I fell in love with the bigscarybiker.”
He buries his face in the crook of my neck. “You gotta watch out for them big—” he pauses, wiggling his chin into my shoulder. “Scary—” he wiggles it again. “Bikers!” He goes in for the kill, teeth bared and sinking directly into my neck.
I toss my head back laughing and shiver from the chills that he caused running from my neck to my ankles.
“Ahhh! Oh no! You got me. You got me good.” I scream in mock horror.
Cass swiftly rolls on top of me and lays his head on my chest this time. My fingers find their way into his hair, massaging his head.
“Who do I owe a kick in the ass for waking me up?” I ask, fingers digging into his scalp.
“Scott.”
I groan. “I guess we’re lucky he didn’t call at daybreak, then.”
“He fuckin’ knows better. I’d kill him my damn self.”
I let his words linger as I lay here, soaking up the moment. I haven’t had him to myself in two weeks and although that isn’t very long, itwasa lifetime in some ways. Our relationship is too new for us to be apart for so long. Granted, he’s been there every day, at some point, but he wasn’treallythere.
The room must have been silent for too long because Cass’s breathing evens out and his body goes slack, his weightsinking into me as he dozes off. I internally giggle at how quickly he has fallen back asleep.
“Don’t you have thoughts?” I ask, my voice a smidge louder than I intended.
Cass startles awake, lifting his head to look at me, confusion etched onto his face.
“What?”
“Thoughts. Don’t you have thoughts? How do you fall asleep so fast?” I am genuinely interested. It doesn’t make sense to me because I couldn’t lay my head down and fall asleep immediately if I tried. It takes minutes, even hours sometimes before I finally am able to fall asleep after laying down.
“I have thoughts, but I don’t think about them when I lay down to go to sleep and if you want to know how I fall asleep so fast, be quiet for the next thirty seconds and you’ll see.”
“What if I don’t want to be quiet?”
“Then don’t.”
Lilly sighed. “Good. ‘Cause I have questions.”
“Oh boy.”
“Don’t say it like that. They aren’t bad.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“How long has your dad been a Hound?”
“Since before I was born.”
“Okay. What about your mom? Where’s she?”
Cass takes a deep breath and releases it on a sigh. He’s quiet for a few moments and just when I don’t think he’s going to answer me, he finally speaks.
“She passed away when I was seventeen. That’s how I ended up down here. My dad’s family is from here, but Mom and her family were from Oklahoma. I was raised there, grew up around the Oklahoma City charter, and when Mom passed, I couldn’t handle being there anymore. We had a charter that had just started out in Louisiana, so I packed my shit and came down to wreak havoc in the south. I was wild at first. I had so much anger to get out, so much resentment and hate in my heart and I think that’s how I became the President.”
“I came in and I wouldn’t take shit from anyone. I’ve always had to have control, and this new place wasn’t any exception. I took over as President only a year after I moved down here.”
“I’m sorry, baby. I—”
“It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”
