Chapter 39
Bliss
I woke up warm.
Not the kind of warm that came from blankets or heat vents rattling through old walls during brutal Upper Peninsula mornings. This was heavier than that. Bigger. A living kind of warmth wrapped around me so completely it took my still-sleepy brain a few seconds to understand why I couldn’t move.
Then Cade’s arm tightened around my waist in his sleep.
My entire body melted instantly.
Oh.
A smile pulled at my mouth before I even opened my eyes.
Morning light spilled softly through the cracked blinds in Cade’s room at Hockey House, pale gold cutting across the walls in thin stripes and catching on the disaster we’d made of his top-floor bedroom.
His comforter was half on the floor. My Fury shirt had somehow landed near his dresser.
One of Cade’s black hoodies hung over the back of his desk chair, and his pants were abandoned in a heap beside the bed like we’d been attacked by horny raccoons in the middle of the night.
Honestly?
Fair.
Because the second my brain fully caught up to the fact that I was in Cade Mercer’s bed at Hockey House after everything we’d done to each other last night, heat flooded into my cheeks so fast I buried my face deeper into the pillow to hide from absolutely nobody.
A low laugh rumbled behind me immediately. “You’re smiling.”
I groaned dramatically without turning around. “Go back to sleep.”
“Nope.” His voice came rough with sleep and smugness, and somehow that combination alone almost made my thighs clench together beneath the blankets. “I wanna hear why you’re smiling like that.”
“I’m not.”
“Pip.”
I finally rolled over in his arms, and the sight of him almost knocked the air out of me all over again.
Cade looked devastating in the morning.
His dark hair was messy from sleep and my fingers, curls flattened on one side while the other stuck up slightly in a way that should have looked ridiculous on someone that pretty but somehow only made him hotter.
Stubble shadowed his jaw darker than usual after the long night, and there were faint red marks down his neck and collarbone where I’d apparently lost my mind enough to bite the captain of the Fury hockey team like I was trying to leave forensic evidence.
My gaze dropped lower to his chest.
Oh my goodness.
My face immediately heated harder.
Cade caught the exact second my eyes snagged on the scratches running over his shoulder and chest and grinned lazily. “You admiring your work?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mm.” He glanced down at himself. “Interesting. Looks like a tiny blonde raccoon attacked me.”
I shoved his shoulder weakly, already laughing. “Stop.”
“Not happening.” His hand slid beneath the oversized shirt I’d stolen from him sometime around three in the morning, fingers spreading over my bare waist under the fabric. “You are never escaping the fact that you climbed me like a jungle gym last night.”
A horrified sound left me. “Cade.”
“What?” His mouth twitched. “You did.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” He pulled me closer against him beneath the blankets, his big body warm and solid and still completely unfairly shirtless. “You’re obsessed with me.”
I stared at him flatly. “You literally wanted nothing to do with me for the last four days.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“I looked hot stressing out over you.”
I burst out laughing.
Just true laughter where I wasn’t trying to survive the edges of a panic attack while pretending to be normal. Real laughter bubbled out of me while Cade watched me with that same look he always got now whenever he made me genuinely happy, like he was quietly collecting the sound for later.
His expression softened just slightly. That look, the one that made my chest ache because I knew exactly what it meant now.
I was his.
And somehow, after last night, after my freakout had given me more truth than any other tantrum I had ever thrown, I was happy.
Cade brushed his knuckles gently over my cheek. “You okay?”
The question settled over us softer than the morning light.
I nodded immediately. Not because everything was magically fixed.
It wasn’t. Luke still existed. The investigation process was in full swing.
My family was still reeling. My dad wanted to commit homicide every few hours.
My brothers were one group chat away from becoming a true crime documentary.
But me and Cade?
We were more than okay.
“I’m good,” I admitted quietly.
His eyes searched mine like he still couldn’t quite trust hearing those words from me after weeks of watching me flinch away from happiness like it might bite me.
Then his mouth curved slowly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
A smug look immediately replaced the softness. “That’s because I’m incredible in bed.”
I gasped dramatically. “You are so cocky.”
“You weren’t complaining at”—he reached for his phone on the nightstand, squinting at the screen—“2:14 a.m., give or take my estimate.”
“Oh my goodness.”
“Or 3:26.”
“Cade.”
“Or when you almost murdered me in the shower because I laughed when you slipped.”
“I did not slip.”
“You absolutely slipped.”
“You distracted me!”
His grin turned outright lethal. “Pip, all I did was lick your—”
“That’s distracting!”
“That sounds like a skill issue.”
I shoved my face into his chest while laughing again, and Cade’s arms came around me immediately, holding me close while his chest shook beneath my tender cheek.
This.
This right here felt more intimate than the sex.
A loud bang echoed faintly from somewhere downstairs, followed immediately by Aura yelling, “If you two are awake, some of us might enjoy breakfast before round twenty.”
Cade closed his eyes. “We should probably face the music.”
I groaned into his chest. “No. I’d rather die.”
“That dramatic, huh?”
“You didn’t hear Charm and me after Easton slept over. I’m so screwed.”
Cade blinked once. “Wait, Easton slept over? Like in Aura’s bed?”
“Yes to both.”
“Interesting.”
Charm’s voice floated up through the floor next. “B, if you make me hear one more headboard sound this early in the morning, I’m calling housing services.”
A second later, Briggs yelled, “Please include me as a witness in the complaint.”
Cade’s entire body shook with laughter.
I covered my face with both hands. “I can never leave this room again.”
“Oh no, Pip.” He slid out of bed, then stood beside it wearing nothing but black boxer briefs and confidence, stretching in a way that made every coherent thought immediately evaporate from my brain again. “Now I definitely wanna go out there.”
I stared openly.
His grin sharpened. “You checking me out?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
“You’re literally standing there looking like a Calvin Klein ad.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
He leaned down and kissed me quick before tugging his jeans on, grabbing the hoodie off the floor, and tossing his T-shirt to me.
I stayed wrapped in blankets for another minute, just watching him move around his room like he belonged inside every quiet, messy, impossible part of my life, and something deep inside me settled quietly into place.
Because he did belong there.
Eventually, I forced myself out of bed wearing his shirt and tiny sleep shorts, following him out of his room and down the stairs while mentally preparing for public execution.
Hockey House in the morning was its own specific brand of male chaos.
The hallway smelled like laundry detergent, body wash, cold air from someone opening the front door too early, and whatever protein-powder war crime had already happened in the kitchen.
A pair of hockey gloves sat abandoned on the bottom step.
Someone’s running shoes were kicked sideways near the entryway, which probably meant Easton and Rider had already left for one of their miserable early morning runs like sociopaths with functioning lungs.
From the kitchen came Aura’s voice, Charm’s laugh, Ryan muttering something about burnt toast, and Briggs making a dramatic noise that sounded like a dying Victorian woman.
The second we walked in, Aura slowly lowered her coffee cup while Charm looked between us like she’d just spotted a rare animal species in the wild.
Ryan was leaned against the counter in gray sweats and a Fury shirt, one hand wrapped around a mug, his expression sharpening with immediate interest the second he saw Cade’s arm low around my waist. Briggs sat on top of the counter beside the toaster like the kitchen was his personal theater, already grinning so hard I wanted to walk directly back upstairs and hide beneath Cade’s bed.
Then Charm pointed at Cade dramatically. “Oh my goodness. He’s alive.”
Cade walked straight to the counter completely unbothered. “Barely. She’s insatiable.”
Briggs slapped a hand to his chest. “From the look of him, Cap barely survived combat.”
Aura narrowed her eyes at me. “You look emotionally stable this morning.”
Ryan leaned sideways to get a better look at my face. “She does. It’s unsettling.”
“Don’t ruin it,” I warned.
Charm gasped loudly. “Wait. Was the shower before or after the kitchen counter?”
I physically choked.
Aura slammed both hands onto the counter. “There was kitchen counter sex?”
Ryan’s brows shot up. “There was loud kitchen sex. We need confirmation on the counter.”
“Oh my gosh,” I groaned, dropping my face straight into Cade’s chest while he laughed hard enough I could feel it shaking through him.
Briggs looked delighted and horrified at the same time. “Wait. In this kitchen?”
My head snapped up. “No.”
Cade’s mouth twitched. “Oh, it was definitely this kitchen.”
Briggs looked around the kitchen like he was mental-mathing every possible scenario.
“I can literally see you thinking, Briggs,” I snapped.
“Yeah, I think you were safe in the shower for the kitchen sex,” Charm said to Aura, laughing as she sipped her coffee.