Page 39 of The Monsters Within

“Go, Kytten.”

Dr. Dunaway seemed to always know what I needed. His order to leave loosened my feet, and I walked to the double doors. My hand felt the hard wood beneath it. But before I pushed it open, I turned.

“Thank you.”

I didn’t wait for a response. I scurried away like a scared rabbit, afraid I would get caught in the trap if I didn’t leave when I had the chance.

I opted to take one full day off from meeting with Dr. Dunaway. Enough time to get my bearings and build up my resolve. The closer I got to telling him everything, the weaker I felt.

“You really want to do this?” Cash asked, coming out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel. Beads of water dripping over his chest had my mouth watering.

I absently licked my lips and heard him growl. “You keep looking at me like that and we aren’t going anywhere.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off him, but slowly they moved their way up to his face. His handsome face, with the scruffy beard. He hadn’t trimmed it in a few days after I told him how much I loved feeling it between my thighs.

I’d thought I lost all feeling from the cutting, but the feel of him between my legs, the redness left behind from thecoarse hair as he ate me out, brought me to levels I had never experienced before.

“I mean, we could maybe be a little late.”

Cash grinned and grabbed me from where I sat at the end of the bed and tossed me up further before climbing over me. A loud knock stopped us before we even got started.

“Let’s go, I’m fucking hungry.”

Cash’s face dropped to my neck. “Whose brilliant idea was this?”

“Ellie’s,” I reminded him as I laughed at his fake anger.

When Ellie asked us to have dinner with them, I was excited. She’d called it a double date. I had never really been on a date before. Sure, I found guys to hook up with, but this was different.

We were going out with another couple. Having dinner, and while there most definitely was a guarantee of sex when we got back, that guarantee would have been there even if we didn’t go out.

Cash leaned up and looked into my eyes. “Are you happy?”

I could feel the panic rise in my chest when I didn’t know how to answer him.

“I want to make you happy, Rose. I want to see that smile on your face every day. The real one. Not the one you show everyone else.”

I smiled at that. How could I not?

He smiled back. “That’s the one. I fucking love that smile. And I love you. I want you to be my old lady.”

My gasp was short-lived when his lips fused to mine.

When he pulled back, he said, “Say yes, baby.”

“Yes,” I breathed.

He left me on the bed and went to the closet. I assumed he was getting dressed. Instead, he came back with a cut. He sat on the bed next to me and held the cut as he stared at it.

“This was Rachel’s.” He ran his finger over the space where her name had been. The space that now held mine. “I wanted to get you a new one. One of your own. But Rachel asked me to give this to you.”

“How?” I had never met Rachel. She passed away before I came to Diamond Creek. She had no way of knowing who I was or that I would be with Cash.

“Remember I told you about the letter she left me?” I nodded, and he continued, “In that letter she asked me to give her cut to my old lady. A gift from her to you, letting you know you have her blessing—not that you need it, she said—to love me the way I was meant to be loved.” He chuckled at that, and I smiled.

I think I would have liked Rachel.

Ellie had shared a few stories with me and she sounded like a wonderful person. A great friend. I didn’t have many friends. Sure, I had the Nyght Nymphs. They were my sisters.