“I’m here.”
“I know.”
Something about the way she said it nearly broke me.
I started moving with slow, shallow rolls of my hips, keeping it gentle, keeping it controlled even when my muscles shook from the effort. It wasn’t like last night. It wasn’t frantic. It wasn’t me trying to steal the words that made her think I didn’twant her out of her vocabulary with my hands and mouth and body.
This was quieter.
Worse, somehow.
Every slow drag of my body against hers felt like a confession. Every breath she took became mine. Every tiny sound she made went straight beneath my ribs and stayed there. I could feel how sensitive she was, how carefully she took me, how she still chased the feeling anyway because it was us, because the ache belonged to both of us now.
I pressed my mouth to her shoulder. “You feel so fucking good, Pip.”
She went still beneath my hand.
The words had come out before I could stop them, before I could shove them behind sarcasm or heat or some cocky line that would make them less terrifying. My hips stilled too, my body locked deep inside hers, my pulse punching hard against my throat.
I waited for her to panic, or a joke. For her to go quiet in that way she did when something hit too close and she needed somewhere to put it.
Instead, her hand found mine where it rested over her stomach, and she squeezed.
“You can’t just say things like that before breakfast,” she whispered.
I closed my eyes, my face dropping into her hair as a rough, helpless sound scraped out of me. “So fucking good, Pip. So hot and swollen and tight.”
“Don’t tease me. It’s rude.”
I chuckled against her neck. “So rude.”
“Emotionally aggressive.”
“Violent, honestly.”
Her laugh broke a little at the edges, and I moved again, slow and deep, because if I stopped completely, I was going to say too much. I was going to tell her I didn’t know what my bed was supposed to feel like without her in it anymore. I was going to tell her she’d ruined silence for me because now quiet only felt right when I could hear her breathing in it. I was going to tell her that somewhere between her stealing my coffee the minute she asked me to be her subject, insulting my emotional capacity, and looking at me like I wasn’t just some hockey player everyone wanted a piece of, I’d become so completely gone for her I didn’t recognize myself.
So I kissed her instead, because even without words, she fucking knew.
I kissed the back of her shoulder and the side of her neck and the soft place beneath her ear while I moved inside her like we had all the time in the world. Like reality didn’t exist outside my bedroom door. Like my teammates weren’t somewhere beneath us, eventually going to wake up loud and obnoxious and hungry. Like a monster hadn’t already put his hands on her in ways that made violence live under my skin.
In here, she was safe.
In here, she was warm and sleepy and mine in a way that had nothing to do with possession and everything to do with the fact that she kept choosing to stay.
Her breathing changed first. It always did. Little catches at the end of each inhale. A soft tremor through her body. Her hand tightened around mine, and her hips began to meet mine with more need, still careful, still slow, but no longer passive. She wanted more. I felt it in every inch of her.
“Cade,” she breathed.
“I know.” My voice was wrecked. “I feel it.”
“You’re doing it again.”
A laugh punched out of me, low and strained. “What am I doing, Pip?”
“Making me feel stuff while you’re inside me.” Her voice shook, but the attitude still tried to survive. “That feels like cheating.”
My chest burned.
