Chapter 9 #4
His hand slid back to my hip, slow enough to give me every chance to stop him, and when I didn’t, his palm settled there with more intent than before. His thumb brushed the exposed skin above my waistband, one careful stroke that made my knees go weak.
“This is a bad idea,” he said against my neck.
I let out a breath that was almost a laugh and almost a plea. “Then why are your hands still on me?”
His mouth hovered near my ear, so close I could feel the fucking shape of his words when he answered. “Because you haven’t told me to move them.”
Holy fuck.
My lips parted, and the mirror gave me no mercy.
I saw every bit of myself there. The flushed cheeks.
The parted mouth. The eyes too wide and too hungry.
I saw Cade behind me, huge and controlled and barely holding himself still, his body wrapped around mine without actually taking a single thing I had not given.
“You’re very good at pretending this is still training,” I said, breathy enough to humiliate me.
His low laugh brushed across my throat. “You’re very bad at pretending you want it to be.”
My pulse kicked hard beneath my skin. “Cade.”
“I know.” His thumb stroked my hip again. “I’m doing it again.”
My breath caught.
His smile touched the side of my neck without quite becoming a kiss. “You keep looking back, Pip.”
The words should have made me pull away.
They didn’t.
They made me remember my kitchen. Sugar glaze. His mouth on my thumb. That slow, deliberate smile when I told him he was doing it again and he answered like he had never once been sorry for wanting me.
The room tilted.
I forced my hands to the front of my thighs, trying to steady myself on something that wasn’t him. “We should stop.”
Cade stilled immediately, no hesitation and no argument. His hands left my body, and the sudden absence felt almost as intense as the touch had been.
“Okay,” he said.
Just that.
Okay.
No pushing. No teasing me for the breathless shake in my voice. No making me feel weak for needing the line. He stepped back, putting two full feet between us while dragging a hand through his damp hair and staring toward the weight rack like the dumbbells had personally offended him.
My skin still burned everywhere he had touched me.
I turned slowly, my breath uneven, and found him looking anywhere but at me. His shoulders were tense as he adjusted himself, chest rising and falling too hard, jaw locked like restraint had become something physical he had to grip with both hands.
Something about that undid me more than if he had kissed me. He wanted me, that much was painfully, brutally clear. He stopped when I said stop, and the realization hit so deep I almost didn’t know what to do with it.
I grabbed my water bottle just to have somewhere to put my hands. “That was…”
“Training,” he said, too fast.
I stared at him.
He looked at me then, and the corner of his mouth lifted in a way that was almost pained. “Extremely intense training.”
A laugh broke out of me, shaky and embarrassed and relieved all at once. “You are impossible.”
“Probably.”
“We are never doing squats again.”
His eyes dropped over me once before coming back to my face, and the heat there made my stomach twist all over again. “That’s unfortunate.”
“Cade.”
His smile deepened slightly, but he stayed where he was. “What? I’m respecting the program.”
“There is no program.”
“There was until you got distracted.”
His brows lifted. “I got distracted?”
I pointed at him with my water bottle. “Do not make me say it.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“No, you just stand there looking like that and wait for women to incriminate themselves.”
His expression changed then, going hotter, quieter. “I’m not waiting for women.”
My breath caught.
He stepped back toward the bench, grabbing his discarded shirt and pulling it over his head in one rough motion like he needed the barrier as badly as I did. The fabric fell over his chest, covering all that tan skin and muscle, and somehow it did absolutely nothing to make the room safer.
I swallowed and tried very hard not to look at the front of his shorts.
Failed immediately.
His gaze sharpened, and I snapped my eyes back up.
He smiled slowly. “Pip.”
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You want to. I see it.”
His laugh came low and rough, still threaded with the tension neither of us knew where to put.
I turned toward the treadmill like it might save me from myself, but my legs still felt unreliable and my pulse still lived somewhere near my throat, and I knew I had to leave before I did something catastrophically stupid.
Behind me, Cade’s voice dropped one last time, soft enough that only I could hear it beneath the music.
“For the record, Pip?”
I looked back despite every survival instinct I possessed.
His eyes held mine, dark and serious and still hungry. “That was me holding back.”
My entire body went hot.
I walked toward the gym door with shaking hands and a heart trying to claw its way out of my chest, and I knew with absolute certainty that whatever line Cade Mercer and I had been pretending existed between project and desire had not disappeared.
It had moved.
And neither of us knew how to move it back.