Chapter 35 #3
“I sleep next to you hard as a rock,” he said, voice low and viciously controlled, his hand gripping his cock through his pants, “trying not to touch you because your ribs are cracked and your body is healing, and I’m trying to respect that.
Meanwhile, you’re down here thinking any part of me doesn’t want you because what?
Because he has the power to take you from my mind? The fuck he will take you from my bed.”
My eyes filled instantly.
“Oh,” I whispered.
His laugh was softer this time but still edged with disbelief. “Yeah, oh.”
Tears slipped free before I could stop them, and I hated that too. Hated crying when I was angry. Hated wanting him so badly I couldn’t even keep the fight clean. Hated that part of me had actually believed, even for a second, that maybe the truth had made me less desirable in his eyes.
Cade saw every bit of it. His expression shifted, but not into softness. Into hunger sharpened by fury.
“Seeing what he’s done to you does make me sick, but it’s him, Pip.
Not you. There is nothing he could ever do to pull me away,” he said.
“It makes me want to erase him from your skin, your head, your memories, every room he ever cornered you in. It took what I already felt for you and turned it into something I don’t even know how to control. ”
My breath shook.
He moved in until his body was right there, heat and muscle and restraint, but he still didn’t touch me.
Not yet.
That somehow made it worse.
“You know what’s been messing me up?” he asked quietly.
I shook my head because words were gone.
“The fact that after everything that man took from you, you still look at me like this. Like you trust me. Like you want me. Like you’re giving me something I have no idea how to deserve but would kill to keep.”
The tears came harder.
His hand finally lifted, and the first touch was nothing like the week had been.
Not soft. Not careful in that distant medical way.
His fingers slid along my waist, firm and possessive, avoiding my ribs but holding me like he remembered exactly how my body fit in his hands.
The contact punched a sound out of me before I could stop it.
His jaw flexed.
“There,” he said roughly. “That what you wanted?”
I swallowed, shaking.
“No.”
His eyes narrowed.
I reached for his shirt, fingers curling into the fabric at his stomach. “I wanted you to stop acting like you forgot how.”
Something broke across his face. A flash of heat. A flash of warning. A flash of Cade.
He bent closer, both hands bracing on the counter on either side of me, trapping me without pressing into me. His mouth hovered too close to mine, breath warm, eyes locked on my face like he was waiting for one tiny sign I wanted him to back off.
I didn’t give him one.
“You’re playing a dangerous game,” he said.
My pulse stuttered.
“I’m bored.”
His mouth twitched, but the amusement was dark. “You picked a fight with me because you’re bored?”
“I picked a fight because you’ve been acting like a monk with a devious imagination.”
His eyes flared. “Pip.”
“And because I miss you.” His face shifted, the heat still there, but something raw cutting through it at my words. I kept my grip on his shirt.
“I missed this,” I whispered. “You. Us. The part where you look at me like I’m the one thing you are starved for.”
For one second, he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the last of the careful Cade was gone.
Not the protective Cade. He would never lose that.
But the soft, distant, worried version?
Gone.
In his place was the man I knew. The one who wanted me so badly it made him angry. The one who had spent four days holding himself back and hated me a little for noticing.
His hand slid lower to my hip, and I sucked in a breath.
“Pain?” he asked, voice rough.
“No.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not.”
His eyes held mine.
Then he bent and kissed me. Not my forehead or the top of my hand. Not some careful, saintly kiss designed to keep me from feeling too much.
This was Cade.
Controlled only because he forced it, mouth hot and demanding against mine, one hand at my hip and the other still braced on the counter like he needed something solid to keep from taking too much too fast. I clutched his shirt and kissed him back with every frustrated, furious, needy part of me, and when his tongue stroked against mine, a sound slipped out of me that made him go completely still for half a second.
Then he tore his mouth away. His breathing was rough and mine was right there with him. “You still think I don’t want you?”
I shook my head.
His eyes dropped to my mouth, then dragged back up. “Use words.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, but can you see why I thought it?”
“I am rectifying that.”
His hands slipped behind my thighs, and he lifted me.
I gasped, automatically wrapping my arms around his shoulders as he used that controlled strength that made my entire body remember exactly why I had started this fight in the first place.
He set me on the counter carefully, maddeningly mindful of my ribs even while his eyes looked anything but gentle.
The cold surface hit the backs of my thighs, but I didn’t care when Cade stepped between my knees.
The entire kitchen disappeared around him.
His hands settled on either side of me, caging me in, his mouth close enough to ruin my common sense all over again. The bruises still hurt. My ribs still ached. Luke was still out there somewhere. The house was still full of people who loved me enough to hover me into insanity.
But right then, Cade looked at me like none of that had taken me from myself. I was still the girl who made him lose control. I was still wanted. I was still his.
His gaze moved over my face, hot and furious and full of everything he had been holding back.
“I’m trying to keep my cool around you,” he said, voice low enough to scrape over every inch of me, “because the second I really start touching you, Pip, there is no way I will fucking stop.”