Chapter 9 #3
Cade stilled with the towel still hanging loose around his neck. Slowly, he looked over his shoulder at me. “I’m giving you space.”
“You were running away.”
His jaw tightened, and his eyes dropped once to my mouth before coming back to mine. “Bliss.”
There was warning in the way he said my name, like there were ten different things he wanted to do with that mouth and he was holding all of them back by pure force of will.
My pulse jumped hard enough to make me lightheaded. “What?”
“You don’t want to poke at me right now.”
The words slid over my skin, low and rough and filled with enough restrained heat that my stomach tightened instantly.
The gym seemed to shrink around us, the hum of the treadmill, the distant clank of weights, the bass-heavy song vibrating through the speakers overhead.
Everything dulled beneath the pressure of his stare.
I swallowed. “I’m not poking.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “You absolutely are.”
Fine.
Maybe I was. Maybe some reckless, aching part of me wanted to know what happened if Cade Mercer stopped being so careful for half a second.
Not unsafe. Never unsafe. That was the terrifying part.
Cade’s restraint did not feel like disinterest. It felt like hunger with a leash on it, and every time he chose not to pull, something in me wanted to step closer just to see if he would.
I lifted my chin because dignity was apparently all I had left. “You said you were going to show me a few reps before I left.”
His expression shifted. “Is that what you want?”
The question landed carefully despite the roughness in his voice. He was giving me the out. He always did that. Left the door open. Put the choice in my hands. It made him feel more dangerous somehow, not less, because wanting him never felt like being trapped.
It felt like walking willingly toward something I knew could burn me.
“Yes,” I said.
Cade held my gaze for one long beat, then nodded toward the open mat beside the rack. “Come here.”
My breath caught at the simple command, and he saw that too.
A slow, knowing awareness moved across his face before he turned fully, tossing the towel onto the bench. “We’ll start easy.”
“Easy for normal people or easy for emotionally unstable hockey captains?”
His mouth twitched. “You think I’m emotionally unstable?”
“I think you body-check people for recreational development.”
“That’s character building.”
“That’s what violent men call hobbies.”
“Careful, Pip.”
There it was again.
That warning wrapped around my nickname like velvet over steel.
My stomach flipped so hard I nearly forgot I had legs.
I followed him onto the mat anyway, every step feeling too loud in the warm gym air. Cade stood behind me, close enough that I could feel the heat of him before he touched me, his shadow stretching across the mirror in front of us. I caught sight of us there and immediately wished I hadn’t.
Me in tiny workout shorts and a sports bra, cheeks flushed, hair escaping my ponytail in soft, messy pieces around my face.
Cade behind me shirtless, broad and golden and built like every bad idea my body had ever tried to make for me.
His eyes met mine in the mirror, and the look on his face was calm enough to terrify me.
“Squats first,” he said.
I blinked. “That’s it?”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I sound suspicious.”
“You should be. Your form is terrible.”
I gasped, offended enough to forget for half a second that my heart was actively trying to leave my body. “My form is not terrible.”
“You almost died walking backward off a treadmill ten minutes ago because you were staring at my chest.”
“I was not staring.”
His mouth curved in the mirror. “Pip.”
“Fine. I glanced.”
“You studied.”
“I’m doing a human-interest project.”
“On my pecs?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Then don’t stare at me.”
I rolled my eyes, but the smile betrayed me before I could stop it.
Cade stepped closer.
Not touching yet.
Almost worse.
“Feet shoulder-width apart,” he said, voice lower now, all teasing burned away into instruction. “Toes angled out a little. Good. Now sit back like you’re trying to close a car door with your ass.”
I turned my head slightly. “That is the least sexy sentence anyone has ever said to me.”
“Give it a minute.”
The words hit low and deliberate against the back of my neck.
My breath hitched as Cade’s hands settled at my hips.
Not rough. Not sudden. Slow enough that I could have stepped away.
Firm enough that when his palms curved over me, my entire body reacted like he had put his hands somewhere far more dangerous.
“Relax,” he said near my ear.
“I am relaxed.”
“You’re wound tight enough to snap.”
“Maybe your coaching style is stressful.”
“My coaching style is excellent.”
“Your ego is the thing we should be working out.”
His quiet laugh brushed warm against the side of my neck, and holy fuck, that sound should not have been allowed this close to my skin. “Breathe, Bliss.”
The use of my name wrecked me more than the nickname sometimes. Pip was teasing. Pip was a game. Bliss, in Cade’s mouth, sounded like he had stripped the room down to just the two of us and the truth neither of us wanted to admit.
I inhaled shakily.
His thumbs pressed lightly against the front of my hips, guiding me back. “There. Slow. Sit into it.”
I lowered, awkward at first, knees bending while his hands kept me steady.
My body knew movement. I wasn’t helpless.
I had five brothers and a lifetime of being dragged into whatever game they were playing.
But this was different. This was not running or throwing or surviving backyard chaos.
This was Cade behind me, his breath touching my neck, his body tracking every inch of mine while the mirror reflected everything I was trying not to feel.
“Good,” he murmured.
The praise slid straight through me, and I equally hated that and loved that. I almost fell over from that.
His grip tightened slightly. “Careful.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re distracted.”
“You’re breathing on my neck.”
“You noticed?”
I lifted my eyes to the mirror and found him watching me there, mouth near my ear, eyes too dark to blame on the gym lighting.
“You’re doing the vibe again,” I whispered.
His smile was slow. “I know.”
My stomach dropped so hard it felt like falling.
For one second, neither of us moved. His hands stayed on my hips. My body stayed half-lowered in the squat, thighs trembling for reasons that had very little to do with exercise. The music thudded low through the room, a steady pulse beneath the sound of our breathing.
Then Cade’s voice brushed against my neck again. “Stand up.”
My body obeyed before my pride had a chance to object.
He guided me through another rep, slower this time. His hands moved from my hips to my waist, then back, correcting the tiniest shift like he needed an excuse to keep touching me and was too disciplined to take anything he hadn’t made legitimate first.
“Again,” he said.
I lowered, and his chest came closer behind me, not quite touching.
“Back straight,” he murmured. “Knees out. Good girl.”
The words hit me like a match dropped into gasoline, and my breath broke.
Cade went still behind me.
He had felt it.
Of course he had felt it.
The tiny shiver through my body. The way my ribs expanded too fast beneath my next inhale. The way my thighs locked for half a second before I forced myself upright.
His hands flexed against my waist. “Interesting,” he said quietly.
I glared at him in the mirror because if I turned around, I might combust. “Do not.”
“Do not what?”
“Vibe me.”
His eyes stayed on mine. “Too late.”
“This is a workout.”
“Is it?”
“It was supposed to be.”
His smile barely moved, but the heat in it was obscene. “Then focus.”
I tried. I truly did, but Cade shifted even closer on the next rep, one hand sliding to the front of my hip while the other braced lightly against my lower stomach, correcting my posture.
His forearm crossed just beneath my ribs, his knuckles warm against my skin, and when I lowered again, my back brushed his chest.
Barely, but it was enough.
A soft sound slipped out of me before I could kill it.
Cade’s fingers tightened.
For a second, his control cracked so sharply I felt it in his whole body. His breath left him rough against my neck, and then I felt him.
Hard against me. Obvious and unmistakable.
Pressed close enough through the thin barrier of clothes and restraint that every thought in my head dissolved into heat.
My entire body went still.
Cade did too.
The silence that followed felt like impact.
He did not move away immediately. He did not grind into me. Did not use my reaction against me. He stayed frozen behind me, one hand at my hip, one against my waist, breathing carefully like he was counting every second before making the next choice.
“Bliss,” he said, and his voice was wrecked, making my name sound like a warning this time. For me or him, I didn’t know, but I knew this was incendiary.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. “I know.”
His forehead touched the back of my head. “You want me to step back?”
The question was quiet and so heavily loaded.
Because even with his erection hard behind me and his hands on my hips and the whole room vibrating with the kind of tension that made breathing feel impossible, he still asked.
Luke never asked.
The thought shot through me so fast it almost hurt.
Cade would always ask.
I lifted my eyes to the mirror. His were already there, locked on mine, dark and intense and barely restrained.
“No,” I whispered.
That word changed everything.
Cade’s jaw tightened. His fingers flexed once, not pulling me closer, just holding on like the answer had gone through him physically.
“No?” he repeated.
“No.”
The air between us turned molten.