35. Cade
CADE
She closes the door behind us, then leans back against it, looking at me. “You came back different,” she says.
I huff out a laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “I came back dirty.”
The way she looks at me cuts through the dirt, the scrapes, the cold, and the fatigue, and I have to look away, because holding her gaze is too much after days of only seeing rocks, trees, armed men, and a future narrowing toward violence.
“I’m fine,” I say, though I know she’s not buying it.
I’ve been fine for years, because fine is easy. Fine is waking up and doing what I need to do.
Wren pushes away from the door and reaches for the hem of my shirt. “Let me.”
I lift my arms, and she pulls the shirt over my head. Her gaze roams over my bare chest, my shoulders, my arms.
Her fingers touch a bruise along my ribs. “Cade.”
“From the rock shelf. Not a wound.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s accurate.”
My stubborn biologist meets my eyes again with a look that’s afraid, annoyed, and relieved all at the same time. “I missed your terrible reassurances.”
I catch her wrist before she can pull away. “I missed you.”
My words are too rough and too blunt. I can lie under cover for fourteen hours and slow my breathing until I practically disappear, and I can put a round exactly where it needs to go while everything inside me is quiet and cold, but I don’t know how to tell Wren that missing her was like hunger.
It was a constant gnawing ache that had me picturing this cabin every night and counting how many men were guarding her, and still I couldn’t get my mind to settle.
I don’t know how to explain that I’ve survived a lot of things, but wanting something as badly as I want her might be the thing that finishes me.
Instead, I say, “I kept thinking about coming back.”
Her lips part, and her eyes brighten, then she steps closer and presses her mouth to mine.
I breathe her in, and any part of me still trying to be careful gives up the fight. I cup the back of her head and kiss her like I’ve been thinking about this for three days, because I have.
Her mouth opens for me, and the sound she makes goes straight through me.
I back her against the sink without meaning to, and she digs her fingers into my shoulders, then up into my hair, her nails scraping lightly over my scalp. I groan into her mouth.
“Shower,” she whispers between kissing me back.
“Trying.”
She laughs, and I feel it everywhere. Then she pushes at my chest, and because it’s Wren, the only person outside my brothers I would let move me, I step back.
She turns on the shower, then faces me again, her fingers going to the hem of my thermal shirt that hangs loose on her body.
My shirt. “I like you in that.”
As steam starts to curl against the mirror, she pulls the shirt off, and my focus narrows.
She stands in front of me in nothing but her bra and leggings, her hair coming loose from her braid, her cheeks flushed, and I reach for her again.
I set a hand at her waist and stroke her soft skin with my thumb. “I thought about this, too.”
“On reconnaissance?”
“Before, during, after.”
She stretches to kiss me again. “That seems distracting.”
I kiss her back, deeper now, letting her feel the need that’s been building. It’s the kind of need I’ve always avoided, because wanting can become weakness, and weakness can be exploited, but Wren doesn’t make me weak. She makes me more focused and present than I’ve ever been.
I unhook her bra, and she reaches for my belt. We undress each other slowly, and by the time we step into the shower, I’m shaking from more than fatigue.
Hot water hits my back, and I groan. Wren slides her hands around my back from behind and presses her cheek against me, and I have to brace myself against the tile, because being held like that is almost too much.
“I was scared,” she says, and my jaw locks. “I know you’re good, and you’re careful, and I know Novak needed the intel.” Her arms tighten. “I was still scared.”
I turn carefully in the cramped space and push the wet hair back from her face. “I won’t tell you not to be.”
“I wouldn’t listen, anyway.”
A laugh breaks out of me, rusty but real this time, and Wren smiles back at me, droplets of water clinging to her lashes.
I reach for the soap, but she takes it from my hand and washes the mountains off me with slow, careful movements.
Her touch is practical at first, as she scrubs dirt from my shoulder and pine pitch from my forearm, but when her palms slide over my chest, her breathing changes.
She traces over my ribs, then down, where my response to her is evident.
She slides a slick hand over the length of my cock, and I groan as I tip her head toward me to kiss her. Her breasts, all warm and slippery, press into my chest as she strokes me, slowly at first, then with more purpose.
“Wren.” I take her hand away, kissing the palm before setting it on my chest. I kiss her throat, her shoulder, and the hollow beneath her ear, and she arches into me, making me forget every cold hour I spent away.
There’s only her now, and the impossible fact that she wants me even now that she’s seen enough to know what kind of man I am. I’m not easy or warm like Boone. I’m not the leader. I’m quiet and damaged and more comfortable behind a rifle than in a room full of people, but she wants me anyway.
I slide a hand down her thigh and lift her leg, fitting it around my hip. I kiss her again as the heat builds between us and the rest of the world waits outside the door.
Her pussy’s as slick as I am hard, and when I push inside her, careful despite the urgency clawing at me, her head falls back, and her mouth opens in a silent gasp.
My muscles lock. “You okay?”
She leans her forehead against my chest and squeezes my shoulder. “I’m good. Don’t stop.” She’s nearly breathless.
I move again, slow and controlled, but Wren doesn’t let me stay careful for long. She drags her nails down my back, lifts her hips, and says my name like she needs something only I can give her. I go faster and harder until she’s making desperate sounds and her eyes roll back in her head.
“Cade.”
I brace my arm on the wall and bury my face against her neck, feeling her pulse beat beneath my mouth.
I’ve been alive for thirty-four years, but this feels like the first time I’ve been not just alive, but living.
Pressure builds low in my spine, but I fight it, because I don’t want this to end.
I fit a hand between us and stroke her clit until her body trembles. She says my name again, tortured now, and I drag my teeth over one of her nipples and thrust into her until she falls apart, her pussy tightening around my cock, then throbbing, pulling me deeper.
I follow her over with teeth clenched, holding her through it all, keeping her pinned safely between my body and the wall as pleasure tears through me hot and white, like lightning in a summer storm.
When the world returns to me, the water is still running hot over my shoulders, and Wren is soft against me, her arms looped around my neck and her face tucked beneath my jaw. I don’t move. I can’t.
“You’re shaking,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“Fatigue?”
“Some.”
Her hand slides to the back of my neck as she looks up at me. “What else?”
It would be easy to deflect. I’ve spent years using silence as a locked door, but Wren’s naked in my arms, and she kissed my palm like my coming back mattered to her, and I want to give her the truth.
“You make me want to stay awake for my life.”
Her fingers stop moving, and the words hang there between us, heavy in the steam. When I look down at her, her eyes are wet, but it’s not from the shower.
“Cade,” she whispers, but I shake my head once and look away.
She’s quiet for several seconds, then she takes hold of my face with both hands. “I’m glad,” she says. “That you want more and that you want me. I’m glad you came back.”