Penmort Castle

Chapter Ten The Morning After

Cash woke to find Abby curled beside him on the bed in the curve of his outstretched arm. Her knees were touching his calf, one of her hands resting light on his stomach, her head was on her other hand on the mattress, forehead pressed into his side.

Though it was an odd position, it felt both intimate and poignant.

He felt something else and glanced down to see Abby’s cat was curled between their bodies, snug in the crook of her lap.

He rarely slept the night with a woman, preferring his own bed and the statement it made when he left them to theirs.

However every once in awhile, particularly if his partner had satisfied him, he’d break this rule.

But he’d never shared a bed with a cat.

He looked to his left and saw her clock announcing it was four thirty.

Staying at her house added an hour to his commute. He liked to be in the office by seven at the latest.

He needed to get up, get home, showered and to work.

He didn’t move.

He listened to the silence of Abby’s house and allowed himself a moment to process the conflicting emotions of triumph and disquiet that he felt.

Cash Fraser had had many women in his life.

Two of them were long-term relationships.

Neither of these ended well. They didn’t like his work schedule which left little time for them. They didn’t like his travel and he wouldn’t take them along as he didn’t like distractions. And they tried to impose restrictions on his life and activities which Cash would not abide.

Therefore, both times, he ended it.

The other women, often enjoyable, sometimes disappointing, were mostly acquired to satisfy him in bed.

None of them was even close to what he had from Abby, out of bed, and now in it.

Last night, with her abandoned response, Abby had taken him somewhere no woman had shown him. He’d never had a woman who let the barriers down so thoroughly, inviting him inside, not just to experience fucking great sex ending in a staggering orgasm, but something far deeper.

He didn’t know he wanted it. In fact, if he’d been asked before he had it, he would have said he didn’t.

But once it was his, he claimed it with a ferocity that surprised even Cash.

Since the day they met, Cash wondered which of her responses was genuine and which was an act for which she’d been paid.

Last night wasn’t an act.

The arrangement was, he could fuck her only after they’d gone to the castle.

She’d almost begged him to take her last night, giving him herself for free.

Now she was his, even more than when he’d paid for her.

The second time was nearly as good as the first. He’d taken off the rest of their clothes and he’d taken his time.

He searched for her sweet spots, found them and manipulated them ruthlessly until she was writhing underneath him and begging for release.

While he was doing this, she was doing much the same, her hands and mouth on him, her long limbs tangling with his, her touch bold. She was open and giving of herself and her responses while offering pleasure in return for what she took.

Like everything else about her, it was exquisite.

This was why he felt triumph.

The disquiet he felt was twofold.

Firstly, and less importantly, was his overwhelming desire to possess her. He wasn’t certain what he wanted from her and there was nothing in Cash’s life of which he wasn’t certain.

He knew it was cliché, his intent to conquer the professional escort, break through her façade, force her response, make her his.

He thought little of this. There were many things Cash Fraser had desired in life, things others would have thought unobtainable and with single-minded purpose, he got them.

Abby would be no different.

And the minute she told him she wanted him inside her, he decided he wanted all of her.

And that was what he would have.

Secondly, from the beginning something didn’t strike true about Abigail Butler, Paid Escort.

She’d hid it better at first but he felt, especially looking back, there were signs that what she wanted him to see and what was real were two different things.

She had the bearing, the coolness, the clothing, the car, all the trappings.

But her home, her cat, her friends, her nosy neighbour, her heartbreaking history and the way she behaved with him didn’t quite add together.

Not that anyone in her business wouldn’t have a life outside the job it was just that she let him in so quickly.

Cash felt something was not quite right.

And it disturbed him.

On that thought, deciding to concern himself with this later and start his day, he slid away from her carefully, not waking her but her cat gave a tired mew.

He strolled into the hall and saw what he didn’t see last night. There were boxes and tools everywhere which he found surprising. The rooms on the first floor were clean, tidy and uncluttered.

He dodged them as best he could in the dark and headed toward where he guessed (rightly, in a way) he’d find the bathroom.

He pulled on the light and stopped dead.

Except for the toilet, the room was gutted. Bare floorboards, no tile, no tub, no sink. The back wall looked like it had been set with new plasterboard, the floor underneath had new boards.

Clearly Abby was having some work done on her house.

Leaving those unappealing facilities, he turned out the light and walked up the stairs to the top floor. The house was huge, there had to be another bathroom.

He located it but discovered that the only thing that worked was the light.

He walked back down to her room, pulled on his boxers and headed down passed the ground floor, where he knew from his movements last night there was no bathroom, to the garden level.

He found another bathroom, as ancient as the one on the top floor.

It, too, was not functioning.

“What the fuck?” he muttered, annoyed. He retraced his steps, using the only facilities available to him and went back to her room.

He got fully dressed and sat on the edge of her bed. Her cat’s head came up and he gave an enquiring meow but kept his place.

Sometime after Cash’s departure from the bed, she’d moved up and curled into Cash’s pillow, her arms tight around it.

Cash shifted the hair off her neck and bent to her ear.

“Abby, I’m leaving.”

She stirred slightly and her head turned toward his voice but she stayed silent.

“Abby,” he called when she didn’t have a further response.

She sleepily got up on her elbow, her hand pulling her hair out of her face holding it there as her eyes moved to the clock.

Then her head turned to him.

“Do you always get up this early?” she murmured in her soft, sexy, very effective, early morning voice.

“Yes,” he replied, his mind doing a scan of his schedule and finding, to his disappointment, that he didn’t have time to do what he very much wanted to do to Abby before he needed to be at his first meeting.

Dropping her hair, she fell back to the pillows and told him, “That would suck.”

He smiled at her quiet, amusing words and then asked, “Abby, what’s going on with your bathrooms?”

He felt rather than saw her body go still.

And he also thought this was an unusual reaction to a simple question.

Then her head turned on the pillow to look up at him. “I’m having a few problems with the plumbing.”

It would appear, even to someone who knew nothing about such things, with three bathrooms out of commission, she was having more than “a few problems”.

She was back to withholding from him and Cash didn’t like it.

“Do you need me to call someone to come and look at it?” Cash enquired, attempting patience in order to control his irritation that after all they’d shared last night she’d fallen back to earlier habits.

She got up on her elbow again and replied, “No, it’s under control.”

“Under control is having at least one working shower,” Cash returned. “Not under control in a house this size, or any house for that matter, is having only a working toilet.”

“It’s being taken care of,” she told him.

“When?” he pressed.

Abby sat up fully holding the covers to her naked body and replied, “They’re working on it.”

Cash was finished with the conversation. “I’ll make a call,” he declared. “I’ll send someone to have a look at what’s happening and keep them on target. You’ll have a working bathtub by tomorrow night.”

When she spoke again, her voice had lost that early morning sweetness and he knew she was getting angry. “Cash, I’m taking care of it.”

“No, you were taking care of it. Now, I’m taking care of it.”

“Cash!” she snapped.

“I’m not discussing this,” he finished.

“Well I bloody well am,” she retorted.

“Abby,” he stated in a way that made it clear this conversation was over.

“Cash,” she mimicked his tone.

At her words and her tone, Cash wanted to laugh at the same time he wanted to shout.

She was quite often unbelievably adorable, even when she was angry.

And there weren’t many people who would go head-to-head with him. In fact, at that moment he couldn’t think of a single soul who would be that stupid.

Or that brave.

Instead of laughing or shouting, he decided to try a different tack to get her to submit.

His hands went under her arms and he pulled her naked body out of the bed and across his lap. She pressed her palms against his chest and tried to pull away but his arms wrapped around her, crushing her to him, her hands caught between them.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she snapped right before he kissed her.

At first she struggled. It took awhile for him to break through but finally she started melting. Her hand forced its way from between them up to his shoulder, his neck and into his hair, her other arm going down and around his back. She pressed her torso to him and kissed him back.

He reacted instantly to her capitulation, his body started to heat and he felt himself begin to get hard.

His lips slid from hers to the expanse of skin on her neck below and just behind her ear that he knew was highly sensitive. He wasn’t disappointed. She trembled in his arms and he liked the feel of it.

“Cash, please,” she whispered in his ear, her voice back to soft, sweet and effective as her hands moved on him and he felt another strong surge of desire.

“Abby,” he said against her skin.

Both her hands moved into his hair and she held it in gentle fists as her head twisted and her mouth moved to his.

“It’s my house,” she whispered there, “my responsibility, my mess. I have to take care of it on my own this time.”

The words “my mess” and “this time” registered in his brain for a brief moment before she kissed him, her tongue touching his and she moved in his lap to straddle him.

Then nothing was in his head but the scent of her.

She wanted him, he could smell it.

His mouth moved to her jaw, down her neck, to her chest and as he pressed his hands between her shoulder blades to arch her back, he found himself agreeing, “All right, darling.”

Then his lips closed around her nipple and he sucked in hard, hearing her soft moan as he did it.

Shortly after, when he had her on her back, him on top, his clothes were gone and his mouth was moving down her chest, between the valley of her breasts, down her belly, Cash dimly realised three things.

He was, for the first time he could remember, going to be late for a meeting.

And he had, for the first time he could remember, relented on something he fully intended to do.

And he didn’t give a fuck about either.

Then his hands spread her legs and he tasted her.

When his mouth touched her, he heard her gentle, rasping sigh, his mind erased and he thought about nothing except Abby.