by May Bridges
“Hello?”
“Are you going to leave?” Cade said.
“What?”
“You’re parked outside my house. Are you going to leave, or were you planning on sleeping out there? I need to leave and go to work.”
“Leave? You’re home? Why didn’t you answer the door? Oh god, do you have another girl in there?”
“What? No. I don’t have anyone here. I didn’t answer because I didn’t want to. Now I can’t leave until you do, so are you going?”
“No. Actually I was planning on camping out here until you talk to me. Will you please let me in so we can talk?” I asked, and then there was a long silence.
“It’s too hard to keep pulling away from you, Doll.” The sadness in his voice made a knot in my throat. “I don’t think I can do it again, so I can’t open the door.”
I got out of the car. The night air was cold on my arms, and I was wishing for a jacket. “Okay fine. Stay inside, but I wanted to tell you that you were right. You can’t save me, Cade. I can. I am. I went and talked to my parents. I told them about Becker. It was really hard, but I know I needed to do it. We have some healing to do together, but I think we’re going to be okay.”
“I’m glad to hear that, Doll.” Cade’s voice sounded soft but distant. “I think your parents love you very much. I’m sure they can help you.”
“I talked to Rachel too. I told her a little, not everything, but that I was having problems and some of the BDSM stuff, some of the Robert stuff. She still loves me, even if I’m screwed in the head.”
I could hear him laugh, sort of. “It sounds like you’re figuring it out.”
“That’s not all I did, Cade. I sold the loft.” I thought I saw something moving on the other side of the glass in Cade’s front door. My heart started to pump harder. “I got an offer on the way over, actually.”
“So are you going to take your boss back to your apartment?” Cade asked, his voice dark and full of hurt.
“I quit my job, Cade.”
There was a long silence and then the phone went dead. I looked down at the screen in disbelief. He hung up on me. With a deep breath and a feeling of defeat, I turned to get back in my car. I couldn’t wait out in the cold night air forever. That’s when I saw Cade standing in his doorway. His porch light glowing around him.
“You really quit your job?” His voice was carried to me with the breeze and the deep delicious notes wrapped around me. I’d missed the sound of it so much.
“Yeah. I turned in my notice, effective immediately, two weeks ago. Oliver was pretty upset, Jasmine too, but I didn’t have a choice. It was the only way to kill June.”
“Is she dead, then?” he asked.
I walked over to him and stood on the step below. Even if I couldn’t touch him I wanted to be close enough to feel his heat, his energy, the magnetic pull I felt whenever I was near him. I didn’t know when I’d get to feel it again.
“Not all of her,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because part of her is me. I know that now too. Part of me does like the pain, and not for any reason other than because I do. I see that that’s okay now. I don’t need to run to strangers for it. Not if I’m open with someone about what I need. Cade, I know you said it’s too hard to walk away from me, so I promise I’ll be the one to walk away and not bother you again if that’s what you want.” It was hard to say, but I would do it.
I took a few deep breaths and continued. “But I want you to know that as much as I’ve learned that I can save myself, I still need you. I still want you. No one pushes me the way you do. And I don’t want anyone else to push me that way. I want it to be you, only you.”
Cade reached out and cupped my cheek in his hand. His dark brown eyes looked down at me, studying my face. It felt so much like his last goodbye. Tears rimmed my eyes, threatening to fall.
“Don’t cry, Doll,” Cade whispered.
He slid his hand behind my head and pulled me up to him, bringing his mouth down to me. His full lips pushed into mine. It took me to a high I’d never known. And I felt it all: every emotion, every touch, every caress. Cade crushed me to him with one arm and held my head, his fingers laced through my hair, with the other. His mouth was hot and tender working my lips. The cold of the outside air had disappeared.
I clutched him, not wanting to let go, ever. With his tongue, Cade parted my lips. I opened my mouth for him and he swept his tongue across mine, tasting me, teasing me. I moaned into his mouth when he tightened his fist in my hair, pulling so he had a better angle on my mouth.
I pushed my hips into him and he grabbed my ass, holding me steady so he could grind back into me. I felt him hard already. With both hands holding my face, he pushed his mouth harder against mine, and I wanted it, all of it, everything I could feel in that moment.
Cade pulled back an inch, with his forehead pressed to mine. Our chests were heaving in unison. I wanted the contact again. I wanted his mouth on me.
“Cade. I’m so sorry I ever hurt you. I’ll never be that person again. I won’t lie to you.”
“I know, Doll. You taste so fucking good. I’m so pissed that you kept that from me this long. You’ll promise never to keep your mouth from me again when I put my belt to you, won’t you?” His voice was deep and husky. I felt that now familiar ache between my legs, just listening to him.
“I promise, Cade. Anything you want. I want to feel you right now.”
Cade grabbed me by the waist and hoisted me up. I wrapped my legs around his waist, my arms around him, and wasted no time putting my lips to his neck, kissing, sucking, and nipping. I’d wanted to do that for so long.
“Your mouth on me feels so good,” Cade said, as he kicked the door shut behind him.
Cade carried me into his room and laid me down on his bed. He stood over me and stripped. I’d missed the sight of his muscles flexing and moving under his golden skin and tattooed arms. I’d also missed the sight of him nude with his belt in his hand. My ass cheeks itched with anticipation.
Cade pulled my clothes off and settled beside me on the bed. He started at my ankle and ran his mouth slowly up my leg, kissing and nipping along the way. “Tell me where you’re at, Doll.”
“Yellow,” I said, working on controlling my breathing. “but it feels good, too. I don’t think I want you to stop yet.”
“There’s my brave girl, Alex,” Cade encouraged, and then nipped at the skin on the inside of my thigh.
He kept working his way up my body, from hip to hip, up my stomach. “Tell me whose mouth is on you, Alex.”
“Yours is, Cade.” No one’s mouth felt like Cade’s.
With Cade Brannon’s body draped over mine, his skin to my skin, his lips on my body, I felt like no one in the world could hurt me. I laced my fingers through his hair, encouraging him to keep working his way up. He took time to stop at each breast, licking and kissing, teasing my hard nipples. Then he continued up my neck and found my mouth again. I was very eager by the time he got there, and Cade seemed as eager to receive as I was to offer.
He sealed our mouths together and parted my lips. I crumbled beneath him, every bit of resistance washed away. I wanted him to have it, my mouth, my body, whatever parts of my heart I was keeping. He could take it all. There wasn’t a shard of my broken life that I wasn’t ready for him to see.
Reluctantly pulling away from my mouth, Cade took me over his lap. Confess and atone, confess and atone. It felt good to let Cade spank me and then rub out the burn. He encouraged me between spankings by rubbing at my slick folds of skin.
“Can I spank you when you lose yourself for me?” Cade asked with two fingers inside me.
I moaned something that sounded like, “Yes please,” and Cade started working me harder. It didn’t take long. I’d missed his touch, his hands on me, in me, all over me. I climbed quickly and stumbled off the edge without hesitation. I wanted to feel my body break with the fall, and the pulse that would assault me when I hit the bottom.
> Cade brought the belt down on me with one hand, while helping me ride out my orgasm with the other. I could still feel it coursing through me when Cade flipped me to my back and settled between my legs. He leaned over me and put his lips to mine before he pushed into me.
I moaned into his mouth when I felt him buried inside of me as deep as he could be. He kissed me hard, I thought I could taste blood from one of our lips. I wanted it harder still. I couldn’t get enough. Cade’s mouth stayed on me as he pumped into me, like breaking the contact would be the breaking of a lifeline. I shattered beneath him twice before he found his own orgasmic high. He came with his tongue in my mouth. In me and on me in every way he could be. Taking what we’d denied each other for so long.
After, Cade kept me in the circle of his arms and kissed gently down the side of my face. “I’ve missed you,” he said softly, nuzzling at me.
“Why didn’t you ever let me kiss you like this before?” he asked, his mouth still on my skin.
I pressed my lips slowly into his again for a moment, holding them there to savor the feeling. “Because it was something that was mine. Something he was never able to take from me,” I said. “I wanted to be sure that you weren’t taking it, that it was something I was giving. I know it’s another part of me I want you to have, a part I want to give.”
He laid half draped over me, half on the bed beside me with his forehead to my cheek. His room was dark and only the light from the hall was coming in. High on lust, my body rung out, and feeling as safe as I had in months wrapped in Cade’s arms, I drifted off.
I woke to the feeling of Cade drawing imaginary lines on my face with his finger tip.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I wanted to touch you,” he said.
“It’s okay. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. How long was I out?”
“Not long, forty-five minutes, maybe.”
I rolled to my side and curled into Cade’s chest. Taking a deep breath and holding it, I let the scent of him fill me. I let it out and placed a few small kisses on his pecs.
“Did you really sell the loft?” Cade asked.
“Yeah, aren’t you happy about that?”
“I guess. It was just a good place to play.” A mischievous grin pulled at his face.
“Well, I kept the toys,” I said with a grin of my own.
“I guess we don’t really need a whole loft to play. Just one room. I think I might have one we can use.”
I knew very well that Cade had a pla room.
“So what are you going to do now that you aren’t working?” Cade asked.
“I’ll find another job soon, I’m sure. My résumé is stellar. Until then, I’ll have some money left over from selling the loft, some in savings, and Rachel said I could move in with her for a while if I need to save money. At least until she moves in with Adam after the wedding.”
“What about staying here? I have room.” Cade looked down at me, searching my eyes. I knew this was what he wanted.
I nuzzled into his chest and think about it. “The room down the hall, where you can keep me as an addition to your toy collection?” I asked. I wanted him to see how that felt for me, to understand why I didn’t want that.
“No that room isn’t available,” Cade said.
“No?”
“Nope. That’s my playroom. I have some space in here though. Turns out I only sleep on half the bed and the other half is pretty empty.” Cade stretched his arm out and rubbed it up and down in the empty space beside us.
I pulled away, not out of his arms, but enough to see his face. “Are you serious? You want me to come live with you and stay in your room?”
“If that’s what you want. If you don’t want to be in my bed every night, there is another guest room. I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed or trapped, but I don’t want my girlfriend living at someone else’s house. If she needs a place to stay it should be with me.”
“Girlfriend?” In all the time I had stayed with him, we’d never labeled what we were. I’d been there for three hours this time and now I’m his girlfriend?
“Yeah, that’s usually the first step, right?” he said, smiling at me. “Honestly, you can call it whatever you want, as long as we both agree that we are exclusive, we are committed, and we work through things together.”
My heart felt like it may jump out of my chest, it was beating so hard. I could feel the smile that was stretching across my face. It hurt.
“Is that smile a yes? You’ll be my girlfriend?”
“Yes, it’s a yes,” I squealed. God, what was this man doing to me? I’d DTR’d and squealed. Was I turning into Rachel?
“You know, if I move in, it would mean that Mr. Heart would move in too, right?”
“Yeah, I thought about that. I don’t care. Me and Mr. Heart will have to lay down some ground rules about whose house it is, and if all else fails, I can call Sean to come deal with him. They seem to have a thing going on.”
I laughed. He was right, Mr. Heart and Sean did seem to have an interspecies bromance blooming.
“Alex,” Cade said, running his fingers through my hair and tickling my scalp.
“Hm?” I pushed my forehead tighter to his chest.
“You know I’ll be good to you, right? If you’re scared to commit, move in, whatever, because you think I’d hurt you, I won’t.” He continued to comb his fingers through my hair while we laid in silence.
I didn’t know if he would hurt me someday, but right then, in his arms, I felt redeemed.
Cade tipped my head back and ran his lips up my cheek to my ear. “Tell me you’ll stay. Tell me I can keep you and I’ll promise to try every day to be the man you deserve.” He kissed just behind my ear.
“I’ll stay.”
Cade moved his mouth and pressed his full lips against mine. He parted my mouth with his tongue, tasting me. I drank in every sensation. Fire burned through me, and I felt alive. Alive in a way the pain never made me feel.
Cade broke the kiss slowly, tracing the tip of his tongue over my lip. “I love you, Alex,” he whispered.
“I love you, Cade.”
I knew as I said it that love was what I needed to free me. I used the pain to burn out the world. But I don’t need to burn it out when loving Cade; he gave me wings to fly above it.
Cade once told me that if the parts of who I am were put together, it would make a beautiful picture. I needed all of the pieces, the dark ones and the light ones. Those broken shards of my life made a mosaic. A picture Cade thought was beautiful.
“Hey, Doll. When do we get to go tell your mom that we’re official and that you moved in? She can quit trying to marry you off. You’re mine.”
Oh, hell.
Acknowledgments
I was blessed with so many wonderful and supportive people on this journey. I thank you all for your kind and encouraging words, thoughts, and prayers. Some days it was those words that made the difference between pushing through another long night of writing, or throwing in the towel.
To my family, for not telling me I was crazy when I said I was writing a book, even if you were thinking it, thank you.
A special thank you to Rachel Mixon. Your editorial skills are off the charts. You saw this book before anyone had, and helped me make it something I was proud to show others. I couldn’t have asked for a better person to work with on this project and I owe you many words of thanks.
To Jami Nord, thank you for picking this out of the madness that is the PitchWars submissions. You believed in my work, believed in its ability to thrive in this market, and helped me fine tune it to make it the best it could be. You have an amazing understanding of the market, and this crazy world of publishing. The education I got from you in that was truly priceless and there are not enough words to express my appreciation for your continued support.
To Kim Lionette, I honestly couldn’t have asked for a better agent. I said in an interview not long after signing with you and BookEnds that I looked like a hea
rt-eye emoji after our first call. It’s been over a year and I think I still have heart eyes! Thank you for taking a chance on me. You are always so kind and understanding. You are my steady hand on this crazy ride and I look forward to many more books together.
To my wonderful editor, Eileen Rothschild, thank you for loving my characters and their crazy story, and your continued enthusiasm for this series. You and the entire team at SMP Swerve have been a dream to work with.
To my sister, Amber, thank you for letting me use you as my personal guide to all things Dallas. It has been too long since I have traveled the road back home.
To Lei, Kelly, Jut, and the girls at work, thank you for being excited with me, listening to me worry, and being an amazing brainstorming team.
Keira, you have supported me like no other through a very tough two years. You have been a friend when I needed one the most. Thank you for your time, for taking my wee hours of the night phone calls, for spur of the moment, lifesaving Vegas trips, for every encouraging word. You are an incredible writer and your way with the written word continues to give me something to aspire to. You have an amazing heart and I am blessed to call you friend.
Declan . . . Ribbet.
And to Rayven, you inspire me every day, simply by being you. I love you, my bean.
About the Author
May is a misplaced Southerner. Having spent a decade on the West Coast, she still tries to order grits at every breakfast restaurant and is on a personal mission to spread the popularity of fried okra. Rainy days in Oregon are spent inside writing dark, gritty romance, or drawing and covered in charcoal. Sunny days are almost always spent on the softball field or fishing. And truth be told, you can probably find her on a softball field on rainy days, too. It’s the best excuse to play in the mud. If you want to find out more about May, follow her on twitter @MayBBridges or Facebook and www.maybbooks.com.
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