Cadence of My Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

very much depends upon your definition of ‘a lot’. To her, several times a week isn’t really a lot, it’s just enough to take the edge off. Anyway, this doesn’t seem like a topic they should be discussing in any great detail.
    As if reading her thoughts, Cadence asks her to clarify. “How often?”
    “Only when I need—” Marlee stops herself. This is more than a sixteen-year-old girl in her care ought to hear. “Only sometimes,” she says instead.
    Feeling a little confined, overheating slightly with Marlee draped over her, Cadence wriggles herself up a few inches, her bare shoulders and a glimpse of the black lacy bra she slept in rising above the top of the duvet.
    Marlee hopes the inquisition is over, but then …
    “Do you love her?”
    This is getting more complicated by the minute, and Marlee doesn’t know whether or not she should lie. Matters of love and sex have rarely been discussed between them, except to say that the latter should always be accompanied by the former.
    Trying to think of the best way to phrase her answer, she strokes Cadence’s cheek, her fingers making their way gradually lower. She stops first at Cadence’s chin, then her neck, then her shoulder. One of the bra straps has slipped down over her arm, and Marlee trails her hand down to meet it.
    “Love can be a very complicated thing, Cady.” She hooks the wayward bra strap on the end of her forefinger. “It comes in lots of different forms.”
    “Like what?” Cadence angles her shoulder up, indicating that it would be perfectly acceptable for the strap to come off altogether, should Marlee wish it.
    “Well, there’s the kind of love I have for Rachel, which is that I love having sex with her.” Marlee slips the strap back onto Cadence’s shoulder, despite the unspoken offer. “And then there’s the kind of love I have for you, which is that I love everything about you.”
    Cadence breaks into a smile. “Really?”
    “Really.” Marlee gives her an Eskimo kiss.
    “So you still want to go out with me?”
    Marlee falters. Every functioning brain cell she still has left recognizes that now would be the perfect opportunity to put a stop to this. Tell her no. Tell her it was a mistake; a misunderstanding; a momentary slip of reason. The trouble is, looking down at her hopeful face, her trusting eyes, and her beautiful smile, Marlee can’t bring herself to disillusion or disappoint. Not only that, but—god help her—she doesn’t want to. She capitulates.
    “Yes,” she says quietly, then adds a caveat. “Next time your parents are away.”
    Somehow, that makes it sound a whole lot worse. It implies there’s something to hide, but where’s the mischief in dinner? They’ve gone out for dinner together before. What’s so different this time? Nothing, Marlee chooses to believe.
    “Now get up and out of bed, else we’ll both be late for breakfast.” She slithers off the bed, pulling the duvet with her, quite proud of herself for handling Cadence’s questions in a way that required no untruths, misdirection, or sudden information dumps which might’ve caused her sixteen-year-old brain to overload.
    She’s in such a good mood, she slaps Cadence’s ass playfully as the groggy teen stumbles across the bedroom, rubbing crusties out of her eyes. The action elicits a squeal, which, in turn, brings Marlee’s smile to a full-on grin. Damn, that was inappropriately flirtatious. She sucks her lower lip into her mouth, biting on it gently as she watches Cadence disappear into the bathroom.
    Insanity, she reminds herself.
    This is absolute insanity.
    Humming a tune for no-one’s pleasure but her own, she selects and lays out Cadence’s clothes, from matching cotton underwear to what color scrunchie she’s going to use to tie her hair in a French braid. Today feels like a French braid day.
    Upon arriving in the breakfast room twenty minutes later, with matching braids—as requested by Cadence—they’re greeted by two