Cade’s thumb brushed once more across my skin before his voice finally broke the silence, rougher this time.
“I know who put hands on you and fear in you, Pip.”
I tense up and he shushes me. “I won’t say it, not yet—but I will tell you he doesn’t have the right to touch you.”
The quiet fury in his tone sent another wave of heat crashing through me because somehow protectiveness felt infinitely more dangerous than flirting ever had.
Neither of us moved, but neither of us looked away.
The tension stretched tighter and tighter between us until breathing through it started feeling impossible. Cade finally stepped back abruptly like he had reached the edge of his own self-control. He dragged a hand through his hair once before turning toward the weight bench again, shoulders tense beneath golden skin while he exhaled sharply under his breath.
Judging by the way he physically needed distance from me right now, Cade was not nearly as unaffected as he wanted me to believe.
He grabbed his towel off the bench and dragged it roughly over the back of his neck, shoulders flexing with the movement while his chest rose and fell beneath the harsh gym lighting.He looked irritated now, but not with me. With himself. With the silence. With the fact that for one long second, whatever careful thing existed between us had stopped pretending it was harmless.
I should have let it go. I should have grabbed my water, made a joke, climbed back onto the treadmill, and forced us into safe territory where everything had labels. Project. Friendship. Workout. Nothing dangerous. Nothing real enough to split open.
Instead, because apparently I had never met a bad decision I couldn’t accessorize with emotional damage, I said, “You’re running away.”
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?”
