Casey's Secrets (Full Trilogy) (8 page)

Casey’s Surrender:
Chapter 2

R
ick’s shoulders relaxed, but his look of concern didn’t leave his face. “It’s all right, just a misunderstanding.”

“No! I mean I
really
fucked up. I left the memory card from the camera there … I left it playing on the TV when I left the house.”

Rick went white, then stood and left the room. He came back with his phone to his ear. “Maybe they didn’t find it,” he said, but he didn’t sound very convincing and I gave him a dubious look. He shrugged at me. “It’s still early.”

After a second he looked at the screen of his phone and tapped swiftly. “He’s not answering. Let’s hope he gets the text.”

He sat down again, even more tense than he’d been while interrogating me. He hunched over his knees staring at the phone.

“Shit.”

“I’m sorry. I was just so … hurt. I wanted to hurt them back.”

“I know, honey. It’s just that Tanya never knew a thing about what we did
before
. We both made a promise to leave it behind after Aurora. That was such a goddamn clusterfuck, and not in the good way.”

“But you guys are both so good at it. Why?”

He sighed. “After Aurora left, that whole world just didn’t fit with the lives we envisioned for ourselves. We were really happy with the decision for a long time, too. I’m not sure what happened between Max and Tanya. I thought he’d found something like I had with Corinne, but the last few years have been so much different for them. You’d have to ask him about it, if you want the details.”

I snorted. “If he ever talks to me again.” A despair even worse than the hurt of betrayal filled me. I stared at Rick’s phone where it rested on the coffee table now, willing it to buzz or ring or something to let us know Max had gotten the message. At the same time I dreaded hearing from him and having to endure his disappointment.

“Is it charged?” I asked.

“Yeah, it is,” he said. He raked his fingers through his hair.

“What happens if I really screwed up?”

He looked at me, his face softening in response to my defeated tone. “Don’t think about that yet. Let’s wait and see what he says. We’ll figure it out. Do you want to call someone to stay with in the meantime? Your friend Sarah maybe?” he asked.

“I tried calling her already. Do you mind if I stay with you? Her place is a nuthouse with all her little brothers and sisters. I’d kinda rather have some peace and quiet, if that’s all right.”

“Sure, stay as long as you want,” he said. “Guest room might be a little dusty, but it’s made up.”

I gave him a grateful smile when he led me upstairs. He opened the door to the guest room and held it for me to enter. When I brushed past, my shoulder grazed his chest and he inhaled sharply. The awareness of him and the events of the previous day crashed back suddenly, drowning out my anxiety. I looked up at him, halfway through the door, my senses awash in his warmth and the musky scent of him.

I felt dizzy, lost for a moment in his intense blue-eyed gaze. He looked tired, the creases at the corners of his eyes deeper than I remembered them being, but he was still as gorgeous as always. More so, now that I had this new perspective on him and Max. Now that I’d been so intimate with them both. My chest felt tight, my breath caught halfway out of my lungs, my entire body tingling with the closeness of him.

“Case,” he said, his voice rough. He seemed poised to retreat, his back pressed hard against the door jamb. His lips parted as though he were about to say something else, but all that came out was the pink tip of his tongue, sliding over his lower lip as his gaze drifted down to my mouth. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, then he shook his head as though to clear it. “No, honey. I’m fine with you staying here but until this thing with Max gets worked out there’s no way in hell I’m touching you.”

“Rick, I didn’t …” I stared at him, not sure what to say. I was just
looking
at him—and really, really wishing he would kiss me. “I’m sorry,” I said, my face heating with shame. My throat constricted and tears welled up. I stared down at my feet, but out of the corner of my eye I could see the bulge at the front of his jeans. My brows clenched in confusion. Did he want me or didn’t he?

“Fuck, Casey, look at me.” His rough, calloused fingers touched my chin. “You’re an amazing young woman, but this is very new to you and one thing you have to understand is that there are
rules.
I don’t mean just in the BDSM scene, either, but in life. You’re Max’s stepdaughter and you’ve been through one hell of a day. Even if you were clear of him, you’re off limits to me until I know you’re both okay. Besides, I know how much he loves you. This isn’t over yet, I’m sure of it.”

“So you do want me?” I asked.

“Not that it’s relevant, but yeah. More than anything.” With that, he turned his head and nodded toward the staircase. “Anyway, I can’t be stressed on an empty stomach. You hungry?”

“Starving,” I said. It was the truth—I’d eaten very little the day before, but mostly I was simply grateful for the distraction from—well,
everything
. Food was probably the best distraction. Rick gave me a comforting smile, patted me on the arm and headed back downstairs.

I spent a little while trying to decompress. I was curled on the bed staring out the window when my phone buzzed with a text from Sarah.

“Sorry, hun, crazy morning with the family. What’s up?”

“Crazy morning with the family here, too … call me?”

“So was Max pissed the other night?” she asked without preamble when I answered the phone.

“You could say that …” I said, then proceeded to give her a blow-by-blow of my evening after I’d seen her last, and the morning that followed. Sarah and I had been close enough for long enough that we had few secrets from each other. However, I grew a little worried when she didn’t say anything for a moment after I stopped talking. “Are you there, Sarah?”

“Holy shit, Case. Holy
fucking
shit. I don’t know whether to be jealous of you or happy for you or what.
Both
of them? At once?”

“Did you even hear the last thing I said? About Max and my mom?”

“Okay, that’s pretty messed up, but put yourself in his shoes. He’s hurting. I bet Rick’s right—if your mom’s been screwing around he wouldn’t have done that. I mean he’s
Max
. Sir Galahad couldn’t be more
honorable.
And what you said about Rick? The guy sounds like he’s as rocked by you as your stepdad but he won’t touch you. Two peas in a pod those two. No surprise they’ve done that before. Holy shit is that
hot
.”

“You’re not helping,” I said. “What should I do now?”

“Wait it out. I’d offer to let you come here but you seriously don’t want to be here. Josie’s been having a tween tantrum for the last two days and Mom took away her Bieber as punishment. The boys keep taunting her with off-key serenades outside her room. I’m honestly surprised they even know the words. Not that ‘baby baby’ is hard to remember.” She let out a snort of amusement. “No, stay there. Try to relax. I’ll come by tomorrow and we can talk about the trip next week.”

“Sounds good.” I hung up feeling marginally better. The prospect of the summer trip we’d been planning lifted my mood even more. Being able to get out of town entirely would hopefully allow me to figure things out, regardless of what happened with Max and my mom.

Casey’s Surrender: Chapter 3

A
soft knock sounded at my door a little later.

“Come in,” I said, my heart suddenly pounding at the very thought of seeing Rick again after the moment we’d had earlier.

He opened it up a crack and ducked his head through. “Food’s ready.”

I followed him downstairs, forcing myself to put my worries on the back burner at least until I ate something. Without hesitation he handed me a chilled beer and sat down with his own. It was such a normal thing for him to do, but I still stared at him for a second before sat down at the table. Within a few bites of delicious waffles with fruit and whipped cream, the sense of normalcy returned.

“Thanks,” I said, giving him a smile.

“To a grown-up Casey,” he said, clinking his bottle with mine, a twinkle in his eye.

I rolled my eyes at him. “I feel like a dumb little girl right now. Thanks for having patience with me today.”

“My pleasure,” he said. “And you’re not dumb. Just complicated. What we do is not an easy thing to come to terms with—once you figure out what you like.”

I let his words sink in while we chowed. After we finished eating, he opened fresh beers and we relocated to the living room. I got the sense that he was trying to distract me from the fact that Max still hadn’t called, but he was doing a poor job of it. Every few minutes he’d pull out his phone again and check the screen for some sign.

“He’s not even answering you, is he?” I asked. “Do you think it’s bad?”

He gave me a sidelong glance, hesitated, then seemed to come to some kind of conclusion. “It must be pretty serious for him not to call. Tell you what, if we don’t hear from him after a couple more hours, we’ll head over and find out what’s up. Chances are he’s just working things out with Tanya, though.”

He flipped on his widescreen and tuned to a home improvement show. It was perfectly banal and mindless. After having my fill of food and beer, I sank back into the cushions, buzzed and sated.

“This guy’s good,” he said, turning up the volume to listen to the contractor talking about dovetail joints or something.

“He’s cool,” I said. “Not as hot as you, though. You should have your own show.”

“I think you have to be gay to have a show on this channel.”

“You and Dad … er … Max never, ah …” I paused, embarrassed at the question I was asking but unable to stop myself.

Rick barked out a laugh. “Well, I admit the man has his charms, but no, we’ve never been that intimate. We’re both pretty low on the Kinsey scale.”

“Oh, right,” I said, frowning and pretending I knew what he meant. “I just figured since you guys get naked in the same room that you liked all of it.”

He gave me an odd look. “Why do you look disappointed?”

“I’m not! It’s just …” My neck and cheeks grew red hot as I struggled to find an excuse for my expression. “I think it would be really, really sexy is all.”

Rick’s eyebrows shot up practically to his hairline. “How much do you know about
that
?”

I scowled defensively. “I know what I like! And I’m figuring out I like a lot more than I thought, too.”

He took a slow swig of his beer, his eyes narrowing while he regarded me thoughtfully. Finally, he said, “We’re definitely open minded guys. You have to be to do the things we do, but we know what we like, too.”

“Tying girls up, but not … touching each other?”

Rick tensed. “Tying
women
up,” he corrected. “You may be a tad young, but you’re an adult. Old enough to make the decision to do what you want, at least. Age isn’t usually an issue, as long as a woman is over the age of consent. We’ve never had a sub as young as you, but we’ve had older women. What Max did with you the other night was probably poor judgment on his part, I won’t deny it. And if I’d been there it wouldn’t have happened that way. We don’t go into a scenario with heightened emotions. The way he started with you was backwards, but I believe we did the right thing by not letting you try to figure it out on your own.”

“I’m glad you stood up for me then. Thank you,” I said, very conscious that he’d evaded the other half of my question with his little lecture. “But what if I want more than to be tied up and spanked? What if I want to watch you two do things?”

Rick shifted forward to prop his elbows on his knees and turned his head to look at me. “Everyone’s desires and limits factor in, in one way or another. We always outline our limits when we start. Max and I have a few hard limits, and you should, too.”

“So, touching each other is a hard limit?”

Rick’s face turned bright red and he chugged the rest of his beer. “Not exactly,” he said, his voice cracking comically. “Jesus, Casey, is that something you really want?” He stared at me, his eyes wide with a strange mix of excitement and anxiety.

“I’m not sure. I just know I like looking at you both naked, and I saw a video when I was at Sarah’s house and her parents were out …” I shifted in my seat, embarrassed again to share more details of my curiosity with him, but to hell with it. After the last day why shouldn’t I go for broke? I stared him down. “It was a video of two men, fucking a girl. And they were both, I mean their—ah—
hard-ons
were both inside her at the same time, and they touched each other in other ways, kissed.”

Rick’s lips parted, his tongue darting out. He tilted his bottle to his lips again before realizing it was empty. “Porn tends to be unrealistic,” he said off-handedly, then eyed me with interest. “But you liked that? You think you want to try it?”

I nodded. My pulse hammered in my temples and between my thighs at the very idea of having them both fill me up that way. I already knew Rick had plans for my ass, and I wanted that, too, but this was something I’d fantasized about repeatedly since I’d seen it.

He cleared his throat. “So, now that I have a good idea of what you’re interested in, I can try to make it happen. No promises.” He gave me a stern look. “Now we need to make sure we know exactly what you
don’t
want to do. Anything and everything that comes to mind is worth mentioning.”

He proceeded to run down a list of some of his own hard limits, many of which made me grimace and shake my head vigorously, agreeing that those were
obviously
hard limits for me, too.

“People
like
to be
peed on
? And
strangled
?”

Rick nodded sagely. “We are nothing if not a fickle race of creatures. But you can feel free to try anything and rule it out as we go,
except
for those things Max and I won’t do. If you really need something like that, then we’ll have to talk about it first.”