Page 9 of Second Chance Christmas

She opened her mouth to make a quip, about the age of the condom, but fell silent when it occurred to her that he might have stashed it there more recently, with some other woman in mind. She refused to feel jealous. She refused to feelanything.This wasn’t about her emotions, it was just sex.

“Please,” she said, desperate, hungry, her hands reaching for him.

Leonardo’s laugh was husky as he came over her once more, bearing his weight on his palms as he separated her thighs with his knee, and then his eyes met hers. His room was not pitch black; the door had been left open a crack, and she saw the question in his eyes. “Please,” she said, again.

It was all Leo needed. He drove into Cassidy with a guttural cry that tore at something in the very depths of her being, his body sinking down on hers as he buried himself in her and stayed there a long time, just feeling, her muscles spasming around him in silent welcome, her body covered in goosebumps as he filled her completely.

Then, he began to move, and a pleasure Cassidy had long ago stopped expecting came at her out of nowhere so she dug her fingernails into his shoulders. His name was an incantation on her lips, and the past, the present, all collided. She was floating, she was flying, she was free. The ghost of Grant was no longer, and an intense orgasm built inside of her, a defiance of his control, a freedom from his awful oppression.

It was all-consuming and over-whelming.

She caught herself on the wave, crested over it, her body tingling all over, and Leonardo slowed, held her, murmured to her in Italian, something she’d always loved that he could do, and then he was kissing her again, his hands roaming her body.

He didn’t know about her scar.

He couldn’t see it.

But he could feel it.

His hand brushed the side of her stomach and moved on, but then returned, quickly, as though he was cataloguing all the changes that had happened to her, too, and this was something new, difficult to process.

No,she wanted to shout. That pain, that trauma, had no place here. She wouldn’t have it.

She reached for his hand and shoved it lower, off the scar, silently imploring him not to go there.

And he didn’t. He moved his hands elsewhere, and he kissed her and made love to her until her toes were curling and her pulse was thready, and finally, he exploded on his own wave of euphoria, burying his head in the crook of her neck as he throbbed his release inside of her.

Four

IN A MILLION YEARS, Leo hadn’t come back here expecting that to happen. He’d hoped he’d see Cassidy, because she’d been an important part of his life, once upon a time. And he’d been worried about her, since hearing of the divorce, so the chance to reassure himself that she was doing okay mattered too.

Butthishad been nowhere near his radar.

And yet, here they were, naked on his childhood bed, limbs entwined, breath coming in gasps as they slowly came back to normal, and he found he had more questions than answers.

“Thank you,” she surprised him by saying. “I needed that.”

It was a strange comment.

Transactional.

Dismissive.

He frowned. He couldn’t say why, but something about that bothered him.

“Yeah?”

“Yep.” And then, she was moving, reaching around on the floor for her clothes, pulling them on piece by piece. He went to reach for the lamp, but her voice stilled him.

“Leave it.”

“You’re going to put something on back to front.”

“Then I’ll fix it later.”

He removed his hand from the lamp, as a memory of something snagged in his mind. The roughened skin just above her hip. Was it possible that she was embarrassed? What had happened? Surely she didn’t think he was superficial enough to care?

Then again, he’d cheated on her.

---