It hadn’t been anything dramatic or extreme. Just Cash making some household decisions like when we’d discussed whether we should replace the furnace in the house or just have the old one repaired. Like with most big decisions, I’d deferred to him and it had felt right, normal even.
I hadn’t been feeling stressed enough that he needed to actually give me any orders, a sure sign that my head was back where it needed to be.
For now.
“I was back in that room and—”
“I know,” Cash said gently as he lowered my arm and began running his finger up and down the scar. “I know you aren’t looking to hurt yourself, Sage. But the fact is that’s almost what happened last night. If I hadn’t looked over at that exact moment…” He shook his head. “I can’t fucking lose you, Sage,” he whispered, his voice breaking.
I closed my eyes because it hurt too much to look at him. I wanted to tell him he wouldn’t, but he was right. I’d been so far gone the night before that I would have cut my arm with no forethought whatsoever. Between the knife, my strength, and the resolve my teenage self had been experiencing, I could have done some real damage.
“You want me to talk to someone,” I finally managed to get out. Was he tiring of how hard it was to deal with me?
I felt his warm palm slide to the back of my neck.
“Open your eyes,” he demanded firmly. The pain in my belly instantly receded at his command and I did what he said.
“I want this thing between us to be because you want it, notbecause you need it. I want to control you in bed because it turns us both on and gets us off, not because it quiets the voices in your head. I want to help you make decisions outside of our bed simply because you aren’t sure what to do and not because you’re afraid to make them. But most of all, I want you to not hurt anymore. I want whatever happened to you in that fucking house to live in the past where it belongs. If I thought what we do together could someday give that to you, I’d happily do it for the rest of my life. But I need to know that if I fail… if I step wrong even one time, I won’t lose you as a result.”
I nodded in understanding because he was absolutely right. He’d become so adept at saving me that I hadn’t had to save myself. I was doing to him what his parents had done. Only, they hadn’t cared about what it had been doing to him.
I did.
“I’ll try,” I said. “Will you… will you help me find someone?”
He leaned in to kiss me. “Yes,” he whispered. “Anything. I love you so much, Sage.”
“I love you,” I murmured, then his mouth covered mine and he was rolling me onto my back. I opened my legs so he could settle between them. “Wait,” I said as I snagged his hair and forced him to look at me. I could feel his hard dick pressing against mine and as badly as I wanted him inside of me, there was something else I needed.
“I don’t want to do it anymore – bringing strangers into our bed. I don’t want anyone else touching you. You’re mine.”
And Daisy’s.
But I didn’t say that, because as much as I wanted that, I had no clue if Daisy or Cash did too. I hoped, but I wasn’t sure.
Ididknow that I never wanted him to touch someone else like he touched me. It’d been something we’d both wanted and enjoyed while we’d explored the dynamics of our relationship, but things were different now.
I was different.
So was he.
Cash kissed me. “I’m yours,” he agreed. “There’s only one otherperson on this planet who gets to touch you like I do, do you understand me?”
The fact that he’d brought Daisy into the conversation was both a thrill and a relief. It wasn’t something we’d actually talked about. We’d danced around the idea of bringing her into our relationship, but we hadn’t actually said the words out loud.
“You’d be okay with that?” I asked. “With bringing Daisy into our bed, our lives?”
He settled more of his weight on me. “She fits, doesn’t she, Sage?” he asked. “It’s with her like it was with you… like I’ve known her my whole life.”
I nodded because that was exactly how it was. Despite how rocky the past week had been with her here, there’d still been this feeling that Daisy belonged here. I was eager to see what it would be like now that Cash and I could be ourselves around her.
And this morning, waking up with her in my arms and having Cash at my back… it was like he’d said.
She fit.
“But she needs to come to us,” Cash said softly.
“Agreed,” I responded. Cash sealed his mouth over mine. My greedy hands stole over his back to explore his muscles and then they were pushing his sweats down to grab his ass. I managed to free his cock from the confines of the material, but when I went to close my hand around him, he grabbed both my hands and gently pinned them to the bed. Then he was grinding against me, his pre-cum dampening the material of my sleep pants.
