“Manuel or I will have them home by eight,” she promised.
It was nearing six.
Two hours for whatever Cassie had planned.
He nodded.
She smiled, got in the car, and with all three females in the vehicle waving at him, she drove down the lane.
Deacon watched her turn out on the street before he jogged back into the house, straight to the kitchen, and ripped open the envelope. Even though his Cassie could get creative, he was relatively certain what he’d find.
In it was a folded, lined piece of paper that had nothing on it but a huge 11 written in black Sharpie.
Yup.
His wife was a boss.
And yup.
That was what he thought he’d find, or a shorter version of it.
He grinned, and refolding the paper, he shoved it in the back pocket of his jeans as walked back to the front door.
He did not run to cabin eleven.
But he didn’t fuck around getting there.
This meant he didn’t waste time looking around the setting of cabins at the end of the lane that made up Glacier Lily Cottages, which he and Cassidy rented to skiers, hikers, photographers, nature enthusiasts and whatever folk wanted to spend time in a kickass cottage by a river in the Rockies.
He didn’t need to look around.
After six years living there, and years before that spending the little downtime he let himself have in cabin eleven, doing it wondering why in the fuck Cassidy did not have a man, not to mention wishing he was the kind of man who deserved to have her, he knew every inch of the place.
In those years, he’d constructed the laundry nooks that had stackable washer/dryers in each cabin. He’d put in the new double-glazed windows so renters had more peace, more privacy, and he and Cassie could cut down on heating bills. He’d built the convenience shed with the industrial washer and dryer so Cassie and Milagros didn’t have to lug bedding up to the shed by the house. This also allowed them to offer towels to their guests (something they didn’t used to do). All that shit now housed in a clean, cool area that was handy. There was also the gazebo he’d built before they were married, which was where they were married, not to mention where he’d asked her to marry him.
So yeah.
He knew that place.
It was not hers the first time he’d found it.
It became hers and she made it all hers.
Then it became theirs, and she made it that way too.
He had a job outside Glacier Lily, Cassie looked after the girls and worked the cabins.
But it was still theirs.
His wife wanted her husband in her life in all ways she could have him. She made no bones about it. There was no yours and mine. There was ours. Our home. Our business. Our money.
Our daughters.
He dug belonging somewhere, to someone, after knocking loose for so long.
But that last part was by far the best.
Only part better was belonging to Cassie.
He jogged up the path that led up the hill to eleven, which was the most secluded of the cabins, removed, surrounded by trees, why he’d chosen it back in the day but why it was useful for the purposes he and Cassidy used it now. That and a heavy dose of the good kind of nostalgia.
He went to and through the open door.
He locked it behind him.
He walked right to the bedroom they always used, the one he’d always used when he was alone, and stopped in the door.
And there she sat on the side of the bed facing him. She was wearing faded jeans, worn blue Chucks, a brown shirt that said Maxwell Construction on it in yellow over a tight pale-yellow thermal. Her dark hair was down. She had no hint of makeup. Her tits and hips were bigger after giving birth to two babies.
And she was what she’d been the first time he’d laid eyes on her.
The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
“You’re not naked,” he noted.
She smiled.
Fuck yeah.
The most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
“Get naked,” he ordered, moving into the room.
His Cassie Boss could seriously boss.
But she was also really good at doing what she was told.
Deacon watched and thrusted as she found it.
Cassie’s head was turned, cheek to the sheet on her knees, legs spread, ass in the air, arms cinched at her wrists behind her back with black, silk rope.
His Cassie liked to be tied up and other manner of all things kinky.
It wasn’t the best thing about her, but it sure as fuck made the list.
She was gorgeous normally. Movie-star gorgeous. Double-take gorgeous. Knock-a-man-back gorgeous. Bring-him-to-his-knees gorgeous.
Coming, she was fucking magnificent.
Even so, he had trouble not staring at her ass, especially while he was fucking her.
His wife had a stellar ass.
“Baby,” she gasped, “come.”
“Who’s tied up?” he asked.
Her eyes were closed, her cheeks flushed, her lips wet, her shining hair all over the bed, but still she smiled.
“Do you get to boss when you’re tied up?” he continued, thrust hard, stayed inside and rolled his hips.
She bit her lip and her eyes opened only for him to watch them roll back in her head.
Good.
Orgasm two.
Time to let himself blow.
He did that. Giving it to her like she liked it, which was how he liked it, and eyes locked to her hands bound behind her back just above her ass, Deacon groaned as he shot inside the sweet, wet heat that was his Cassie.
Nirvana.
Every damned time.
He fucked her gentle after he came down and untied her wrists as he did it.
She stretched her arms in front of her then curled her hands under her cheek, all while she swayed into his slow thrusts.
They didn’t talk much when they connected like this. Years together, it wasn’t about it being practiced, rote. It was all good. Brilliant. It was just they were so in sync, their communication was nonverbal.
Eventually, he pulled out, rolled her to her back, lowered himself on her, then tossed the comforter over them.
She pressed up and he took the cue, rolling them to their sides where she immediately tangled herself up in him, doing it snuggling deep.
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in deeper.
“What’s the occasion?” he asked the top of her hair.
Cassie tipped her head back and looked at him. “Occasion?”
“Cabin eleven.”
She smiled. “I miss it.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “It’s been a whole three weeks since you forked our girls on Milagros and arranged for me to come bang your brains out in eleven. I was worried it’d ceased to exist.”
She burst out laughing, and he loved it when she did that. Particularly when he made her do it, and even more particularly when she did it tangled up in him so he could feel her tightening all around.
When she quit laughing, she admitted, “Okay, I have an ulterior motive.”
“Mm-hmm,” he muttered.
She scooched closer. “I want to ask a favor.”
Deacon sighed.
The cabins needed something.
He’d failed to note earlier the new insulation they’d blown in last autumn.
And the new fridges they’d put in that summer after Cassie found some website that had really fucking good ones for really fucking low prices, but they were dinged or scratched in places you couldn’t see. Apparently, no one wanted a new fridge that was dinged and scratched.
Those fridges “completed the look” (her words) of her years-long redesign of the cabins’ kitchens.
They also used less energy, which did not suck.
“No, you can’t put hot tubs on the back porches of all the cabins,” he told her.