“Your turn,” I whispered. “Tell me something about you. Something I don’t already know.”
“Like what?”
“Something real.”
He was quiet for a long moment, his thumb tracing circles on the back of my hand. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough.
“You already know my mom died when I was five, but I don’t know if you ever heard how.”
I combed through my memories, trying to pull up anything from when I was eight years old. Cade and Colin hadn’t been friends yet—that came later, when I was in middle school. And my parents wouldn’t have talked about something like that in front of me back then.
I shook my head slowly. “I don’t think anyone ever told me.”
“Car accident.” He glanced toward the window, his expression going distant. “She was coming home from a double shift at that old diner out by the highway that closed down a couple of years ago. She fell asleep at the wheel and flipped. She was dead by the time the car stopped rolling.”
My hand flew to my mouth. “Cade.”
“I barely remember her,” he admitted. “Just flashes of stuff like the way she always smelled like vanilla and cigarettes. How she’d sing off-key in the kitchen. The way she’d ruffle my hair and call me her ‘little captain.’”
His mouth twisted, and he looked down at our joined hands, his thumb rubbing absently across my knuckles. He sniffled once, quick and quiet. “After she died, my old man just … checked out. Started drinking more. Stopped giving a shit about anything, including me.”
I squeezed his hand, my heart breaking for the little boy who’d lost his mother and then, in a way, his father, too.
“You guys saved me,” Cade continued. “Your family gave me a place to go when home was unbearable. Your mom always made sure I ate. Your dad taught me how to fix things. And Colin …” He smiled faintly. “Colin just treated me like I was anyone else at school. Like I wasn’t this fucked-up kid with a dead mom and a drunk dad.”
“You’re not fucked up.”
“For a long time, I was.” He looked at me then, his eyes searching mine. “But you guys—your family—you made me believe I could be something other than my old man’s disappointment.”
“You are,” I said fiercely. “You’re good and kind and funny and?—”
He crushed his mouth to mine, silencing my words.
“No more talking.” His voice was raw and laced with sadness.
I hadn’t meant to take us there, to make him feel those things. I just wanted to know more about the man I was falling for. See a part of him that no one else got to see.
Which, in a way, I guess I’d accomplished because I’d never seen him like this. I wasn’t sure anyone ever had.
“No more words,” I agreed, and his mouth found mine again, hungry and insistent.
His tongue slid against mine, and I clawed at his shoulders.
“Slow,” he rasped against my lips, his hands sliding under my t-shirt, his fingers tracing the curve of my breasts. “I want tosavor every inch of you.” He trailed hot, wet kisses down my jaw, my neck, lingering on the pulse point that betrayed my racing heart. “Let me worship you. Show you what you mean to me.”
He tore the t-shirt off me, leaving me completely naked. His eyes roamed over my body, taking in every curve and hollow like a starving man presented with a feast. His hands followed the same path, touching, teasing, igniting my skin.
“You’re fucking perfect,” he breathed, his palm cupping my breast, thumb circling my hardened nipple.
I arched into his touch, a gasp escaping my lips. “Cade, please.”
“Let me make you feel good, Stella.” He lowered his head, sucking my nipple into his mouth and biting gently down before releasing it with a pop that sent waves of pleasure straight to my pussy.
My hips bucked upward, seeking friction, seeking anything to ease the throbbing ache between my thighs. “More,” I demanded, my fingers tightening in his hair. “I need more.” I felt too raw, too exposed after baring our souls to each other. I needed him to take me somewhere I didn’t have to think. Somewhere I could justfeel.
He chuckled against my heated skin. “Relax, Stella. We’ve got all day.”
Relax? Impossible, when his tongue was doing that.
