Proof (Targes Executive Protection Book 1)

There was no mistaking the look in Cass’s eyes the second I’d turned the tables on him. I had him—my Cass—where I needed him. I hated the game we were about to engage in, but I needed him back in the state of mind he’d been experiencing in the bathroom when he’d made his heartbreaking admission. The last thing I wanted to do was put him through more pain, but if I didn’t take this one chance, there’d be no future for us.

I hadn’t planned on asking him to take me to his place, but seeing the defeat in Cass’s frame as he’d hung over that sink had torn me to shreds. I’d just wanted a chance to undo some of the hurt I’d inflicted both at the cabin and the park’s bathroom. Once again, the first thing I’d done when I’d jumped to the conclusion that he’d been mocking me for my extreme reaction to him not kissing me had been to escape. While I’d watched Cass’s behavior after his startling admission that he didn’t want to lose me for a third time, an ember of hope had begun to burn inside of me. What if there was a chance that he could feel something for the man I was rather than the one I’d been before a bullet had changed everything? The things I’d wanted to say—and there were a lot of them—were things he’d deserved to hear in any place other than a foul, dirty bathroom with the threat of my brother or his men showing up at any moment.

I knew Cass hadn’t intended to admit his inability to lose me for a third time, but ironically, they’d been the words I’d needed to hear to be sure of everything. There was still a landfill’s worth of shit between us that needed to be dealt with, but between his words and the vulnerability he’d tried to hide from me after I’d once again gone batshit crazy on him, I’d finally been able to solidify many of the emotions that had held me hostage for two long years.

Cass could have easily let me flee that bathroom thinking he’d rejected me because he’d finally accepted that I wasn’t his JJ or that my past behavior with strange men and reckless sex had disgusted him more than he’d been willing to admit.

Instead, he’d kept me there and taken all the internal rage and despair I’d thrown at him, both physically and verbally, until he’d had me in a place where I’d had no choice but to hear him.

To really hear him.

If I’d been a better man, I would have let him go at that point. I would have quietly stood and walked out of the bathroom as he’d gotten the paper towels wet, presumably so he could wash my face. But that single look he’d given me in the mirror’s reflection had told me everything I’d needed to know.

Cass still wanted me.

He’d seen me at my worst in every possible way and yet he still wanted me. Did he love me? The me that I was now? The me who still couldn’t remember the first time Cass had touched me when he’d returned home from his final deployment? The touch he’d wished had never happened?

I couldn’t answer those questions. As afraid as I was of the answers, they weren’t what I wanted now.

What I wanted was to put Cass first for a change.

The man had spent weeks putting my needs above his own. My physical well-being, safety, and emotional needs had been his only priority, but I hadn’t been strong enough to do the same for him.

I wasn’t sure I was strong enough now, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. I did have things I needed to say to him, but I also needed him to hear them and in the current state he was in, his ears and his mouth may as well have been stuffed full of cotton.

“A tour,” Cass said, his voice holding not even an ounce of the emotion he’d shown in the bathroom. If anything, he sounded like a hunter waiting to spring his trap on some unsuspecting creature who hadn’t seen it coming.

Except I knew what was coming.

Cass hadn’t been the only one watching and listening and learning during our encounters.

“Yeah, a tour. That’s not a problem, is it?” I asked innocently as I took another sip of my water. It was all I could do not to smile when Cass’s hard eyes flickered to my lips before following my Adam’s apple as I swallowed.

“No problem,” Cass said easily. He kept his back to me as we moved around the lower living space of the boat. Like the log cabin, the decor was outdated, and each room had a musty smell to it. Since he wasn’t turning on any lights as we moved about the boat, I could only see glimpses of each space from one of the many lampposts that lined the pier as well as the slip the houseboat was docked in.

“How long have you been staying here?” I asked. I wasn’t really listening to his explanation of each room because it was all a facade. Maybe one day he’d tell me more about the place in detail, but it wouldn’t be tonight.

“A while,” was all Cass said in response. He was several feet in front of me and seemed intent on keeping that amount of distance between us, no matter how tight the quarters became. It wasn’t until we headed back to the kitchen that I pretended to trip. I grabbed the back of his shirt in the process but instead of letting me fall, Cass spun and wrapped his big arm around my waist.

“You okay?” he asked worriedly.

This was my Cass.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said as I leaned into him and pretended to test my ankle. “I’m good.”

Cass’s eyes went from compassionate and worried to cold and angry within a matter of seconds.

God, I really didn’t want to have to play this game with him. It wasn’t who we were. Even if I couldn’t remember who we’d been, I knew deep in my heart that we hadn’t been this. We hadn’t used mind games on one another to get what we wanted.

I remained silent for the rest of the tour and used every opportunity that the external lights offered to study the way Cass carried himself. I remembered the walk we’d taken right before I’d had an episode with the pain in my head. He had been so sweet and gentle as he’d maneuvered me to the log and let me rest my head on his shoulder as he’d distracted me by admitting that I, even in my naive state of childhood innocence, had given him a different perspective on the world when we’d been younger.

“There you go,” Cass said as we reached the far end of the boat. “I’ll get my keys.”

I carefully grabbed his arm. I knew I was putting myself at risk of an involuntary physical response to the sudden contact, but Cass merely stopped. He was breathing heavily. I wanted to end the whole thing then and there, but the sweat on his brow and his struggles to control his breathing were proof that he wasn’t as immune to me as he wanted to be.

Just like I wasn’t immune to him.

“Isn’t there an upstairs?” I asked. “I didn’t see any bedrooms down here.”

I could feel Cass’s muscles bulge beneath my fingers.

He was pissed, alright. But he was a lot of other things too. Several long seconds passed and I was sure I had him. Then he turned to face me and immediately moved closer so our bodies were nearly touching. “How could I forget that?” he asked.

His husky voice made my cock, which had so far been behaving, immediately demand I concede. Thankfully, the head on my shoulders and not the one further south was still in control.

“Lead the way,” I sputtered. The glint of satisfaction in Cass’s eyes was what I needed to get back on track. I followed him to a spiral staircase that led up to one huge master bedroom. There wasn’t enough light to make out more than a few furnishings, but the massive bed was hard to miss. I jumped when Cass took my hand in his and began leading me toward the bed.

“There are a few bumpy spots,” he explained as he tightened his grip on me. I loved the feel of his callouses against my palm. Sparks of sensation spiraled up my arm and began to spread throughout my body. Their ultimate destination was all the same.

My balls.

My hard, tight balls that wanted to come out and play.

I willed myself to think of any disgusting image I could come up with to tamp down my lust, but it became irrelevant when we passed the bed and stepped into the bathroom. It was pitch dark and there was no way to know how big the room was or if it had any other entry points. God, had Cass’s cell been like this? Had he suffered in total darkness, or had he been tortured with nothing but artificial light?

“Cass, it’s okay,” I whispered as I tugged him backwards. My fear for him grew with every second that we stood there, me trying to pull him out of the room and him standing as still and unmovable as a statue.

My gut was telling me the room didn’t have any other way to get in or out of it, and since there was absolutely no light coming in from the dock lights like downstairs, I couldn’t be sure there was even a window. We’d been in the room for less than ten seconds and I was already feeling uncomfortable because I couldn’t make sense of which direction was which. I could feel the walls closing in on us.

No.

No fucking way was I putting Cass through the trauma of being confined all over again, mind games be damned.

I once again tried to pull Cass back the way I thought we’d come. He didn’t budge. God, was he already trapped in his own mind?

“I’m good, Cass. I don’t need to see it. It’s fine,” I said as evenly as I could. Why the hell had I started all of this? I was such a selfish prick.

A sudden burst of light blinded me and for a second, I thought I was having one of my episodes. Cass’s face was the first thing I saw when my eyes adjusted. He had a strange expression, but he turned his head away before I could figure out what it had been. “No one can see the lights on this level. All the curtains are blackout ones. I checked it myself from the dock when I first got here,” he responded curtly.

So that was why he’d been leaving all the lights off except one on the lower level. He hadn’t wanted anyone on neighboring houseboats to question why the long-empty houseboat had suddenly come alive again.

I tried to cover my heavy breathing and pounding heart by looking around the room. The bathroom was extremely outdated but larger than I would have guessed possible for a houseboat. There was a small curtain along the wall. I could only assume there was a porthole behind it.

Before I could anticipate the move, he was tugging me into the walk-in shower. My back ended up against the cold tile and Cass’s big body was holding me prisoner.

A very willing prisoner.

“Do you remember?” Cass murmured, his lips skimming my neck with the lightest of caresses. It was all I could do not to moan. He hadn’t turned the water on, but he may as well have because I could feel its heat. We were back in the cramped shower of the hidden cabin protected from the world by an endless wall of trees. I would have given anything to be back in the cabin with him for real. Back in that shower where it had been just us. Just Cass’s mouth moving over mine, our bodies tangled together, our eyes locked as we’d taken and given each other a kind of pleasure I’d never thought possible. Our bodies hadn’t truly been joined but it hadn’t mattered. For the first time in a very long time, I hadn’t felt empty and alone.

The problem with the current situation was that there was no emotion behind Cass’s voice or his touch. There was no denying that his lips teasing the skin on my neck felt amazing, but there was something missing in even that too.

The game.

Cass was still playing the game.

A heavy weight settled in my stomach.

“I’ll never forget that day,” I managed to get out, though I knew my voice made the words crack. Cass stopped toying with my neck, but he didn’t move. He still had my wrists pinned to the wall. “We made love,” I whispered. “We didn’t fuck, we didn’t just get each other off, we didn’t pretend…”

It seemed to take forever for Cass to pull his head back so he could look me in the eye. So many emotions were weighing me down like a boulder—a boulder that I’d been carrying around my entire life—that I had to turn my head to the side so I wouldn’t be forced to see the blankness of his gaze.

“We made love,” he responded softly.

I swallowed hard as I turned my head back to face him. Cass’s return—my Cass—lifted the boulder and just like that, it was gone. Tossed away as if it hadn’t weighed more than a pebble.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” I croaked because everything that boulder had been holding down started to hit me all at once.

Cass’s expression hardened and then he was releasing me. Agony tore through me at the rejection until I played my words back in my head. He thought I’d been talking about not wanting to be with him in the intimate embrace.

As he began to step back, I grabbed him by the hips and dragged him forward until there was no room for daylight between us. “I don’t want the games, Cass. Never again,” I breathed against his achingly close lips. “I don’t want to pretend that this—this thing between us isn’t real anymore. I don’t want to look at you and feel ashamed of everything I’ve done while you’ve been gone from my life. I…”

My heart stalled as I realized what I was about to admit to. It wouldn’t be something I just blurted out by accident. It wouldn’t be a strategic move to win some stupid game. It would be real. The words would be real, and I wouldn’t be able to take them back. No amount of humiliation and degradation would allow me to slip into that peaceful, painless place in my mind if the words were thrown back in my face.

My life would no longer be the lie that had protected me for so long.

I forced myself to pull in a deep breath that did nothing to slow my racing heart or ease the cramps in my gut. I raised my eyes to meet Cass’s because at some point during my little speech, I’d dropped them.

Cass’s silence made the words get stuck in my throat. He didn’t encourage me to continue but he didn’t try to stop me, either. I could already feel that boulder sinking down on my shoulders again.

“I… I can’t live my life as a ghost, Cass. The wish you made tonight, the one where you said you never should have touched me—even if I could remember it and somehow undo it, the truth is that I’m so fucking selfish that a tiny part of me wouldn’t undo it because that would mean you wouldn’t be here with me right now.”

I closed my eyes as I said the last part because we both knew what it meant. That selfish piece of me, no matter how small it was, didn’t want to acknowledge that Cass had been forced to live in a cold, dark, ugly world where there was only suffering because he had touched me. That self-serving part only recognized that all those things that had happened to Cass—those unforgivable, terrible things—had brought him into my life now and not two years earlier.

A harsh sob escaped my throat before I could stop it. I angrily wiped the tears away because I didn’t have the right to shed them.

“I can’t be the man you may have started to fall in love with two years ago, but I can be the one who loves you now. Today. I can try to be⁠—”

That was all I got out before my breath was stolen as soft, demanding lips brushed over mine.