Chapter 29
twenty-nine
ASHER
No one had done anything too weird. It had been a typical loud, chaotic Landry family birthday party.
My heart warmed at Liv’s happiness at my presence. It meant as much, if not more, to me to be free of the demands of a regular NHL season. Even my mostly serious, brilliant sister-in-law looked slightly misty-eyed when we’d arrived.
Yeah, my mom had gotten all mushy there at the end, but Cade hadn’t seemed too weirded out by her no-nonsense kindergarten teacher personality.
It had been more than clear that everyone had been charmed by his shy sweetness.
But maybe it had all been too much for him, and the overwhelm was hitting him as he sat in my Jeep’s passenger seat.
God. I hope he liked them. I needed him to know that as a couple, I wanted him in every part of my life.
The knuckles of my left hand tightened on the wheel while I forced the fingers on my right to stay relaxed where they lay entangled with Cade’s on his muscled thigh.
I made sure to keep up the soothing sweep of the pad of my thumb over his skin. I rhythmically stroked from the fleshy part at the base of his thumb, up and over the first and second joints of the digit, brushing against the rougher skin of his cuticle and back down again.
So far, my reassuring motion hadn’t had any visible effect on my boyfriend.
“You okay, sweetheart?” My nerves had me rushing on without waiting for his answer. “They loved you, you know?”
I hoped my tone sounded more encouraging than desperate, though desperation had edged out any rational feelings about five minutes into our drive.
You’re in love with him, my subconscious chose this moment to pipe up helpfully. Why else would you be turning yourself inside out with worry over one afternoon?
“Hmm, sorry?”
In my peripheral vision, Cade turned his head and brought his right hand to rest over our joined ones on his leg, squeezing gently.
The small reassurance had my tight chest muscles relaxing slightly.
Struggling to keep myself composed, I tried again. “Just want to make sure you’re okay after today, sweetheart? You’ve just been quiet the whole way home. My family can be a lot, but you know they liked you, right?”
My tone went slightly higher on the last word, betraying some of my worry.
Why did this moment feel like game seven of the playoffs?
“Oh, yeah. For sure,” he replied lightly, giving his head a quick shake as if my words had drawn him out of whatever he’d been thinking about. “Everyone was super nice to me.”
His voice came out more confident with his second sentence.
“And you liked them too?”
“Absolutely,” he answered, bringing me more relief. “But, babe, do you know how crazy it is to be in a family where everyone likes each other?”
“What do you mean?”
Surprised, I risked a quick glance in his direction. Traffic had gotten a bit more congested the closer we traveled to Toronto, so as much as I just wanted to drink in his expression, I had to keep my eyes on the cars and massive eighteen-wheelers around us.
“It’s like Santa or the Easter Bunny showing up in the flesh at your door. Something I’ve heard random people say but never seen live. It’s amazing.” He hesitated.
“But what, sweetheart?”
“It’s not like feeling jealous or anything, but it’s almost. . . painful.” The end of his sentence was barely more than a whisper.
Shit-god-fucking-damn. This man could shred my heart with a single sentence.
The wish that I could change that feeling for him was an anvil on my sternum.
And fuck, I didn’t want to make it worse by saying something meaningless or placating or some shit like that.
A piece of Mom’s advice, which she’d repeated to my brother and me in our teenage years, pushed its way to the front of my mind.
“Asher, when in doubt, just shut your mouth and listen. In every situation, the other person just wants to be heard. That’s the important part.”
“Thank you, sweetheart,” I attempted to infuse my intense gratitude into my tone.
A quick squeeze of his hand in mine was his response.
I drove in silence for a few minutes before Cade shifted again in the passenger seat, his leg tensing under our joined hands.
Was he going to say more about his family? Or mine?
“Ugh. Yeah. That’s not what I wanted to say before.”
“Okay?”
“I wanted to ask if you planned to fuck me when we get home?”
My hand jerked so hard on the wheel at his words that I had to pull my right hand from his to correct the wheel before we ended up a third of the way into the next lane.
Thank god I wasn’t playing the Canadian game of “am I in a lane?” during a snowstorm, or we’d be in the fucking ditch.
Adrenaline and arousal competed for the top spot in my body. Why was my cock getting hard when the rest of me felt like I’d just had a falling dream and hit the ground?
Cade seriously had no idea how sexy he was. And I was apparently still discovering the ways he could turn me on.
“Jesus, Cade! Are you trying to make us crash?”
The little shit proceeded to release a bark of laughter.
“Sorry! Sorry! I’ve been trying to figure out how to say the words aloud since we left your apartment this morning. It just kind of spilled out.”
Thanks to the darkness inside the Jeep, and cortisol not allowing me to take my eyes off the road ahead, I couldn’t chance a proper look at his expression.
But goddamn if I wasn’t going to spend the last twenty minutes of this drive rock hard.
“Okay, sweetheart. Let me get us home.”
If I’d let go of the wheel to touch him, I’d have been pulling us over to the side of the highway for the second time that day.
But for a very different reason.
We’d said little for the rest of the ride and kept quiet as I parked my Jeep.
I could only stare at him as the elevator chugged up from the apartment’s underground garage to the top floor of the building.
But as soon as I’d closed and locked my apartment door behind us, I took hold of the front of his winter coat, roughly pressing him up against the wall inches from the door.
Not one cell in my body cared that his back was pressed against the light switches, likely digging slightly into his skin through the fabric of his coat and clothes, while the entire apartment remained pitch-black, with the exception of the bedside lamp I’d left on for Poe.
Struggling to rein in a type of feral need to possess him in a way I’d never imagined wanting to do to a partner, I pushed my full body weight to keep Cade in place as I shoved my face into his neck.
“You really want me to fuck you tonight, Cade baby?”
My words rumbled against the sensitive skin just under his chin. The stubble I couldn’t bother to keep up with now that I wasn’t facing the media every other day, scratched against his. It was the only other sound besides our heaving breaths in my dark hallway.
“Yes, fuck me, Ash. It’s been weeks. You told me to think about it. I practically needed a damn tranquilizer to calm my brain down enough to play freaking hockey. I know you’re worried about me being ready or regretting it or freaking out during or something, but I promise I’m ready,” Cade panted.
“’Cause I’m happy with us doing it the other way around?”
He quickly shook his head, pushing his cheek and jaw into the side of my face.
“Another time, maybe. Tonight I want you to do it.”
I knew I was being too goddamn overprotective and probably overstepping my role as his boyfriend by insisting we wait so long for anal sex.
But everything was different when it came to Cade.
It’d been a decade since I’d bottomed for anyone. Since Cade and I had gotten together, I’d taken to bringing a toy or two along in my bag on team road trips, losing myself in the fantasy of taking the next step together. And I’d wanted to be ready.
“Ash, I’ve been playing with my ass for weeks now. I’m ready,” he whispered, pressing his pelvis against mine like he was searching for friction.
I barely heard his whispered confession over the roar of blood in my ears.
A plaintive meow echoed somewhere in the back of the apartment, proving that I hadn’t rescued a cat, but instead a psychic entity with a penchant for cock-blocking.
I reached around him to flick on the light for the living room before stepping back and working to unzip his jacket.
Pushing it from his shoulders, I quickly shucked my own coat onto the floor.
“Goddamn, sweetheart. We have too many fucking clothes on. Here’s what we’re going to do: I’m going to feed the menace, so he’ll settle for the night, and you are going to go into my room, get rid of these clothes, and wait for me.”