With each of his slow thrusts, she closed her eyes at the top, an instant of blindness and darkness and his body inside hers.
He slid inside her again and again, stroking her.
Those blissful moments lengthened, deepened, until she was wound so tightly that she was crying out but couldn’t hear herself. She clutched him, hanging on, so close to the edge.
Cash held her closer, his arms around her. Her arms were cinched around him, her body rigid as he drove inside her. His breath scorched her shoulder, and she inhaled the male musk of him with every breath.
Her world went white, a starburst of life and joy, and Rox bowed against Cash, her voice harsh in her throat. He growled beside her ear and pushed deeply into her one last time, his body straining against hers.
Rox held onto him, her arms cramping, as she whispered, “Cash, oh Cash.”
He tightened his arms around her and held her for the longest time before he moved away.
Rox pulled the comforter tightly around herself, hiding. No wonder all the other girls in the office were so heartsick after he ghosted on them.
Pain lanced through her heart at just the thought.
She wasn’t going to be able to bear it.
DARKNESS BEFORE THE DAWN
In Cash’s dark bedroom, all through the night, Rox didn’t sleep much. She didn’t know how many nights she would have with Cash spooned around her, his arms and sometimes his leg heavy on her. His warmth and the faint musk from his body, now erotic, filled the sheets around her. She drifted in and out of wakefulness, savoring the moments, trying to remember everything.
This couldn’t last long.
When he stirred, though, he reached for her. When his fingers found her, he quieted and slept.
She hovered on the precipice of sleep, not quite falling over, when Cash’s deep, slow breathing changed in the dark. He inhaled and held it, his head moving near hers, and he rose up on one elbow to look over her before he blew his breath out.
The blue lines on the nightstand clock formed the numbers 6:45. Wan sunlight trickled in through the dark wooden blinds on the window.
He began to shift, lifting the covers and sliding away from her.
“Cash?” she asked, her voice hoarse with sleep.
“I’ll be right back. Go back to sleep.”
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. I just need to do something.”
“Oh. Pee. Sure.”
Hey, they had been friends for years. On a business trip to Brazil, she had tossed anti-nausea medicine and Gatorade into his hotel bathroom when he had texted her that he was in trouble.
When he came back a few minutes later, the sun had risen farther, and enough sunlight was leaking through the wooden slats that Rox could see him a little better.
He had taped a fresh gauze pad on his cheek.
She asked, “Is it healed up under there? Because if it’s not, you need to see a doctor,” she mumbled.
“It’s healed.”
“Dude,” she said, pushing herself up to her elbows, “you didn’t need to put on a bandage. That’s like the first couple times that we traveled together when I used to get up at five o’clock to shower and put on full make-up and curl my hair before we met at the hotel gym at six-thirty.”
“Yeah, you don’t do that anymore.”
“Heck, no.”
“It was peeling off,” he said. “It itched.”
“It’s just me,” she said, flopping back on the pillow. “I don’t care if there’s a hole in your cheek and I can see your molars through there.”
He chuckled. “It’s certainly not that bad. We can sleep another hour or so before we have to get up.”
Rox smiled as she cuddled closer to him.
The dawn cast ruddy lines through the horizontal blinds. The room gradually brightened, and Rox slept.
THE EARL OF GIVESNOFUCKS
The next morning, after Rox had awakened with Cash’s arms wrapped around her and they had eaten breakfast—she was just getting ready to broach the subject of gathering their papers and laptops to ready themselves for the drive to the office because they had that DiCaprio meeting at one o’clock and they should both be there—when Maxence’s deep voice called through the house, “Casimir! I need some help, here!”
The cats, who had been lounging under the kitchen table, sprinted for Rox’s bedroom.
Cash glanced at her, startled, and Rox pushed back from the table. They both ran to the door that led from the garage.
At the door, Maxence had pushed it half-open and was grappling with Arthur, who was nearly limp and slipping on the steps that led up from the garage. His eyes were closed, and he was hanging onto the small railing, trying to help hold himself up.
Cash slipped through the door and ducked under Arthur’s arm to lay it over his shoulders. He held Arthur’s wrist to trap his arm and grabbed Arthur’s waist.