Chapter 10
Bliss
By the time I made it to my Jeep, I felt like I had escaped with my dignity by the skin of my teeth. Barely.
My legs still didn’t feel completely reliable after whatever the hell had just happened in that gym.
I had almost begged Cade Mercer to kiss me.
Not thought about it. Not wondered what it would feel like in some soft, abstract, deeply delusional way.
I had stood there in front of him with my pulse beating between my ribs like a trapped bird and wanted to say the words out loud.
Kiss me. Please, just once.
Which was obviously insane because I had rules.
Entire lists of rules. Some written in logic, some written in scars, some carved so deeply into my nervous system that I barely remembered who I had been before needing them.
And yet Cade kept walking right up to those rules with his steady eyes and careful hands and devastating restraint, making every single one of them feel less like protection and more like a locked door I suddenly wanted to open.
I climbed into the driver’s seat and shut the door hard enough to make the whole Jeep rock. “Get it together,” I whispered.
The interior smelled like old coffee, vanilla body spray, and the faint plasticky heat that always clung to cars after warm afternoons. I tossed my gym bag onto the passenger seat, reached for my water bottle, and froze.
I stared at it for a full three seconds like it had personally betrayed me.
“No,” I said quietly. “Absolutely not.”
But there it was, sitting in my cup holder with his stupid initials marked in white near the lid. C.M. Of course, because apparently the universe had decided I needed one more chance to make a bad decision before dinner.
I glanced toward Hockey House.
The windows glowed warm against the early-evening dark, music vibrating low somewhere inside.
Most of the guys were still downstairs or out back from the sound of it, laughter carrying through the open side windows and spilling across the driveway in messy bursts.
I could leave the bottle on the porch. Text him.
Pretend I didn’t know it was his. Pretend I hadn’t noticed that I’d grabbed it because my brain had been too busy replaying the feeling of him pressed behind me, his hands on my hips, his breath against my neck.
Instead, I got back out.
Because apparently I hated peace.
The house was loud when I stepped inside, but not as packed as a party night.
A few guys were in the living room with controllers in their hands, swearing at the TV while someone in the kitchen yelled about protein powder being a food group.
Nobody paid much attention to me beyond a couple of quick greetings, which I returned with a smile that probably looked normal enough if nobody examined it too closely.
I checked the gym first.
Empty.
The weights were still scattered from earlier, one towel folded over the bench, the treadmill screen dark. For a second, the whole room seemed to hold the ghost of what had happened there. Cade behind me. His voice at my ear. His hands leaving my body the second I told him we should stop.
My stomach dipped all over again.
He was probably in the shower. That was fine.
Perfect, actually. I would run the bottle up to his room, leave it on his nightstand, and leave before I had to survive looking at him again.
Easy. Normal. A completely reasonable errand performed by a woman who absolutely had not almost melted into a puddle because a hockey player told her that was him holding back.
I took the stairs before I could talk myself out of it.
Cade’s room was at the highest point of Hockey House, tucked into the converted attic space reserved for captains and future captains, quieter than the rest of the chaos below.
His door sat cracked open just enough to show a thin slice of darkness inside.
I paused with my hand around the bottle, listening.
No shower running. No music. Nothing except the muffled noise downstairs and my own pulse suddenly beating too hard.
I should have knocked. I knew that.
I really, really knew that.
But the door was already open, and I could see the edge of his bed, the nightstand, the soft glow from the lamp near his desk. I pushed the door a little wider with my fingertips, intending to step in, set the bottle down, and disappear.
At first, I didn’t see him. Then, as I turned to leave, his closet door cracked open, moved just enough.
And my entire body went still.
Cade stood inside the open closet with one hand braced high on a shelf, head bowed, shoulders tense, his body half-shadowed by the warm spill of lamplight from the room.
For one suspended second, my brain refused to understand what I was seeing.
The hard line of his back. The way his breathing sounded too rough in the quiet.
The hand low on his body, moving in a rhythm that made heat flash so fast through me I almost dropped the bottle.
Oh, fuck.
I gasped before I could stop myself.
Cade froze.
So, did I.
The silence cracked wide open between us.
He turned his head first, slowly, his profile cutting through the dim light. Then he turned fully, and whatever apology had started climbing up my throat died there because he did not look embarrassed.
He looked wrecked. His eyes found mine, and every inch of me went hot and cold at once.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted, voice thin and horrified. “I’m so sorry. I grabbed your water bottle, and I thought you were in the shower, and I was just going to leave it. I wasn’t—”
I reached blindly for the door, already backing up.
“Don’t move.”
The command hit me hard enough to stop my body before my brain understood it.
I stood frozen in the doorway, one hand still around the bottle, the other hovering near the doorframe. My breath came in too shallow. Cade’s gaze locked on mine with terrifying focus as he stayed where he was, braced against the shelf, every line of him pulled tight with restraint.
“Cade,” I whispered.
His throat moved once. His voice came lower. Rougher. “Look at me, Pip.”
My eyes snapped up from his cock in his hand as he languidly continued to stroke it.
Something dark and knowing moved through his expression, but he didn’t smile. “Should I stop?”
The question was so quiet it should have felt gentle.
It didn’t.
It felt like a match dragged over a fuse, and my answer came before shame, fear, or common sense could reach it.
“No.” The word left me breathless.
Cade’s whole body reacted to it. A subtle flex moved through his shoulders as he stroked that massive erection again with a sharp inhale and the smallest tilt of his head, like he had just heard something he wanted so badly it hurt.
“No?” he repeated.
I swallowed. “No.”
His mouth parted slightly, and for one second, he looked like he was fighting something inside himself bigger than both of us.
Then he said, “Then stand there and watch what you do to me.”
My pulse slammed so hard I felt it everywhere.
I should have run. I should have laughed it off, apologized again, closed the door, and spent the rest of my life pretending this had never happened.
But I didn’t move.
Cade held my stare as his fist settled back into motion, slow at first, controlled enough to feel deliberate.
The room seemed to shrink around the sound of his breathing, the low music downstairs, and the blood rushing in my ears.
He kept his eyes on me like looking away would be worse than anything else happening between us.
And holy fuck, I watched.
I watched the tension pull through his jaw when he began stroking again. Watched his free hand slide over his chest like he needed somewhere else to put the need as he fisted his cock. Watched his head tip back for half a second before his gaze came back to mine, darker than before.
“Do you have any idea,” he said, voice wrecked, “how hard that got me?”
I stood there holding his water bottle like an idiot, lips parted, body humming so violently I felt detached from it. “I…”
The corner of his mouth lifted just slightly.
“You look drunk,” he said, his voice dropping another inch. “Fuck-drunk, and I haven’t even touched you.”
A shocked little laugh escaped me before I could stop it, and the sound did something to him.
His expression cracked for one second, heat breaking through the control, and a rough sound tore from his chest as his hand tightened impossibly against the smooth, veined line beneath the head of his cock.
I took one step into the room.
Cade’s eyes sharpened instantly. “Careful.”
I stopped.
“If you touch me,” he said, each word low and deliberate, “I’m touching you back.”
My whole body went molten. I folded my arms over my chest because I did not trust my hands.
His mouth curved then, strained and beautiful and devastating. “Fuck, you look good sweaty.”
My breath broke.
He heard it. I knew he heard it because his eyes flared, and whatever restraint he had left became visible in the hard line of his throat, the tension in his shoulders, the way his body seemed to hold itself back from crossing the room.
He stayed where he was. Let me stand there. Let me choose to keep watching.
And I did.
I watched Cade Mercer fuck his fist with ruthless strokes and knew beyond any doubt he was thinking of me, my mouth or body, wishing it was me working him.
Watched control fail him piece by piece while his eyes stayed locked on mine. Watched the cool, untouchable captain of the Fury become something rawer as he stroked faster. Something needful. Something that looked too much like confession to be only physical.
When his release finally hit him, he bowed forward slightly, one hand still braced hard on the shelf, my name leaving him in a rough, broken sound I knew I would hear in my sleep for the rest of my life.
“Bliss, fuck—”
I watched as jets of his cum fell to the hardwood floor in hot spurts as he groaned my name over and over.
Not Pip—but Bliss.
The room went impossibly quiet afterward and neither of us moved.
My heart pounded so hard I could barely hear the music downstairs anymore. Cade’s breathing was harsh in the dim closet light, his head lowered, shoulders rising and falling while whatever had just happened settled around us like smoke.
I should have said something. Instead, I set his water bottle carefully on the edge of his dresser with trembling fingers.
His eyes lifted to mine.
Dark. Hungry. Cade.
And somehow that made it worse.
“I should go,” I whispered.
He didn’t tell me to stay or try to stop me or step forward. He only watched me with a restraint so intense it felt like another hand on my skin.
“Text me when you get home,” he said, voice hoarse.
My chest tightened.
Because after that, after what I had seen, after what he had let me see, he still gave me space. Still gave me the door. Still made sure I left safe instead of shaken apart in a hallway full of boys and secrets.
I nodded once, barely breathing. “Okay.”
Then I walked out of his room on unsteady legs, down the stairs, through the noise of Hockey House, and back into the night with my entire body on fire and Cade Mercer’s voice still wrapped around my name.
By the time I reached my Jeep, I knew one thing with absolute certainty.
The line between us hadn’t just moved this time.
It had shattered.