Chapter 13 #2
He studied me for another second, then nodded once. “Good.”
No tender little follow-up designed to make both of us drown in feelings before breakfast. Just good. Just us joking and laughing. And seriously, that was what I needed. Well, that and the nerve to be one hundred with him.
I grabbed my coffee because I needed something to do with my hands. “We need to talk.”
His mouth twitched. “Usually not my favorite sentence, but oh the suspense.”
He was enjoying this.
“It’s not bad.”
“That’s rarely true.”
“It’s not,” I insisted, then took a sip of coffee too fast and burned my tongue. “Shit.”
Cade’s expression warmed with amusement. “Smooth.”
“Shut up.”
“You seem uptight today, Pip.”
I set the cup down harder than necessary. “This is serious.”
His amusement faded, not completely, but enough. “Fine. What’s got you worked up already?”
I hated how easy he made that sound. Like words were just things you put in the air. Like they didn’t come attached to fear, consequences, and the horrifying possibility of being known too deeply by someone who could destroy you.
I turned toward the counter and picked at the folded edge of a napkin. “Last night was…” I stopped because every word available sounded either too small or too honest. Hot. Terrifying. Intimate. A mistake. Not a mistake. Something I wanted again and hated wanting again. “Last night changed things.”
“Yes.”
The answer came immediately with no hesitation.
I looked at him. “That’s all you’re going to say?”
“You said it changed things. I agree.”
“Wow. Big emotional contribution from the human-interest subject.”
His mouth curved. “Keep going. You clearly have something you need to work out.”
I inhaled slowly. “I can’t date you.”
Cade did not move.
Not even a flinch.
Which was annoying because I had emotionally braced for some kind of reaction, and instead he just looked at me with that intense, unreadable focus like he had already expected this and was waiting to see how far I’d take it.
“I’m serious,” I said.
“I’m listening.”
“No, you’re doing that thing where you look calm, but I know there’s an entire war council happening behind your eyes.”
“That’s also called listening.”
“Cade.”
His gaze sharpened slightly at his name. “Say it, Pip.”
The nickname hit too gently for the conversation and too possessively for my nervous system.
I crossed my arms, more armor than attitude.
“I can’t be some hockey player’s girlfriend.
I can’t do the schedule and the attention and the girls and the rumors and the whole campus treating my relationship like spectator sport.
I can’t sit around waiting for a man whose entire life is built around being wanted by everyone and chosen by his sport first. I know that sounds unfair, but I know myself, and I know this world.
I know what it does to women who think they’re different enough to survive it.
And I know what it does to men when they realize they are nothing without it. ”
His jaw flexed once, but his voice stayed even. “And you think that’s what I’d do to you?”
“I think you’re twenty-two, hot, rich, worshipped, headed somewhere bigger than this town, and used to getting what you want.”
His mouth twitched, but it wasn’t amusement this time. “I am used to getting what I want.”
The honesty of that slid through me, hot and inconvenient.
I lifted my chin. “Exactly.”
“And what do you think I want?”
The kitchen went quiet.
My pulse jumped because that was the dangerous question, and he knew it. I could see it in the way he leaned there, calm and cocky and too controlled, letting the silence stretch until I had to either answer or admit I was afraid to.
I looked away first. “Me.”
His voice dropped. “Look at me when you say that.”
My breath caught. I looked back. “Me.”
His eyes darkened. “Good. Now keep going.”
I swallowed hard and forced my hands to stay folded against my ribs. “I’m not saying I don’t want you. That would be ridiculous after last night.”
“Very ridiculous.”
“Do not look pleased.”
“I’m extremely pleased.”
“Cade.”
“What? You finally said something honest.”
My mouth snapped shut because, unfortunately, he was right.
He pushed off the counter then, slow and deliberate, but he did not come all the way to me. He stopped close enough that I could feel his presence, not close enough to trap me. That was Cade. He gave enough space to make the choice mine, but not enough for me to pretend he wasn’t there.
“So, what are you saying?” he asked, a little too calm.
Like he was letting me build the cage and already planning how to own every inch inside it.
“I’m saying this can be physical.” My cheeks burned, but I kept going because if I stopped now, I would never get it out.
“Attraction. Chemistry. Benefits. Whatever. We’re adults.
We clearly want each other, and pretending we don’t is starting to feel stupid.
But I can’t do feelings. I can’t do expectations.
I can’t do you looking at me like I’m something you’re going to keep. ”
His expression changed then. Barely. Something possessive moved under his calm, sharp enough that my stomach twisted. “You think I look at you like that?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you should pay attention.”
“I am paying attention. That’s the problem.”
He stared at me for one long second, and the air between us thickened until even my coffee seemed to stop steaming.
Then he nodded once.
“Okay.”
I blinked.
That was not what I expected. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
“That’s it?”
“You want physical. No relationship. No expectations.” His eyes held mine. “Fine.”
Fine.
The word should have relieved me.
It did not.
It made something restless and stupid move inside my chest because he said it too easily, like he was agreeing to the label while refusing to surrender the truth underneath it.
“You’re not mad?”
“No.”
“Offended?”
“No.”
“Planning a long emotional rebuttal?”
His mouth curved. “Do I look like a man who gives long emotional rebuttals?”
“No, you look like a man who causes problems and then acts calm about it.”
“Accurate.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’re agreeing too easily.”
“I’m agreeing because you’re giving me access.”
Heat snapped through me. His gaze dropped to my mouth, then returned to my eyes with enough intent to make my knees feel ornamental.
“You can call it benefits if that makes you feel in control,” he said.
My heart slammed.
“I am in control.”
“Then this should be easy.”
“What should?”
He stepped closer. Until my back touched the edge of the counter. The movement was so smooth I barely registered it until he was right there, bigger and warmer and far too calm considering my entire body had just gone into emergency response mode.
“Kissing me,” he said.
My breath caught so hard it almost hurt.
“We haven’t agreed to kissing.”
His eyes flared with amusement and heat. “Pip, I beat off to you—with you—twice last night and then talked you through fingering yourself. We’re past pretending your mouth is a sacred academic boundary.”
“Oh my gosh.”
“Look at me.”
I did.
His face was too close now. Close enough for me to see the faint shadow along his jaw, the dark ring around the blue of his eyes, the way his mouth had gone soft in a way that made my brain short out.
But nothing else about him was soft. His body had gone still and coiled, all that control narrowed down to one point.
Me.
“You want this strictly physical—the rest just friendship?” he asked.
I nodded, because words had become difficult.
His hand came up, fingers closing around the back of my neck, angling my face up.
“Words, remember. I need words to know where your head is at.”
The command hit low.
“No, you don’t,” I all but whispered because he one hundred percent read me like a fucking book in silence.
He shrugged with a cocky smile. “Still need words, Pip.”
“Yes.”
His thumb moved once along my jaw. “Then stop talking.”
Cade kissed me. Not carefully. Not like a question.
Not like some fragile, aching first kiss out of a romance movie where everyone had the patience to be poetic about it.
He kissed me like he had been waiting, like every moment of restraint had stacked inside him until the second he finally decided to take what I had already told him I wanted.
My back hit the counter with a soft thud, and I gasped into his mouth.
That was all it took.
He stepped into me fully, his other hand gripping my hip as his mouth opened over mine, hot and commanding and so much better than anything my brain had tortured me with.
He tasted like coffee and mint and something darker that was just him, and the first stroke of his tongue against mine went straight through me so violently my hands fisted in the front of his T-shirt before I could pretend I had dignity.
Holy fuck.
Cade groaned against my mouth when I pulled him closer, and the sound broke something loose inside me. I kissed him back harder, letting every stupid rule, every warning, every careful little lie I had told myself fall apart beneath the pressure of his mouth.
He was not gentle, but he was precise.
His hand at my neck tilted my head exactly where he wanted it.
His grip on my hip dragged me tighter against him.
His body pressed me into the counter, and I felt the restraint still in him, the way he was taking but not losing himself completely.
Controlled until he wasn’t. Commanding enough that I didn’t have to think.
Cocky enough that when I made a sound into his mouth, he smiled against me like he had been waiting for that too.
“There,” he muttered against my lips. “That’s what you wanted.”
The arrogance should have annoyed me but it made me kiss him harder.
His laugh was low and rough, swallowed by my mouth as he bent slightly, grabbed the backs of my thighs, and lifted me onto the counter like I weighed nothing.
I yelped, legs parting around him automatically.