Every Night Without You: Caine & Addison, Book Two of Two (Unfinished Love series, 2)

by Violet Duke

  No tell. Damn.

  Never did he think he’d be jealous of an electronic device.

  “Check the instructions on the nightstand,” she murmured, giving him another one of her secret smiles.

  He really didn’t want to. But she was insistent.

  Flipping the offensive little booklet to the front page, he started reading. Under extreme protest.

  Addison pulled the booklet from his hands and closed it so he could read the cover.

  Handheld shoulder massager.

  She simpered at him, mirth twinkling her gaze. “I was going to use it on this wicked knot in my shoulder that the shower massager just wasn’t helping with.”

  “Why you little—”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Addison opened her eyes the next morning and found herself encased in a cocoon of heat. And a large parking brake at the small of her back that she remembered well.

  “Caine.”

  Her sleepy murmur triggered his arms to tighten around her.

  He laid soft kisses over her shoulder blade. “Go back to sleep. You still have an hour before you have to wake up.”

  That sobered her immediately and she turned to face him, frowning disappointedly, “You didn’t sleep?”

  “I did for a little while.” He smiled. “Not nearly as deeply as you did though.”

  She became fully awake then. “Is that code for saying I was snoring?” Kylie had mentioned once that she snored sometimes when she was super exhausted.

  “Just a little bit a few hours ago. It’s actually why I woke up. I thought there was a kitten in our bed.”

  She bolted upright and studied his expression to see if he was kidding.

  He didn’t look like he was kidding. “It’s cute,” he insisted.

  “Snoring isn’t cute.”

  “It is when kittens do it.”

  “When have you even seen a kitten snore?”

  “Sometimes the department has us do these cop outreach programs at the zoo. And the last time I was there, a momma lion had just given birth to a cute little lion cub that was snoring away. Seriously adorable.”

  She reached for her pillow under her head and whacked him.

  Then gasped and grabbed the pillow back to cover herself.

  “Why am I laying here buck naked?”

  “You fell asleep like that,” he replied innocently.

  Had she?

  The crinkle at the corners of his eyes told her she hadn’t.

  Scanning the area in search of her missing PJs and panties, she discovered that not only had Caine slingshot her clothes clear across the room, but he’d neatly balled up and launched her comforter over there as well.

  “How did you get my clothes off without me noticing?”

  “We went over the sleeping so deep you were snoring thing already right? And the part about me being awake in bed for the past few hours?”

  She looked around for something soft but substantial to sock him in the gut with.

  And that’s when she noticed he still had on his boxer briefs.

  At her pointed look, he glanced down. “It got a little chilly this morning.”

  He shot a placating hand up when she began sputtering in disbelief. “I promise, I made sure you were warm the entire time, sweetheart. Admittedly, I may have warmed up some parts of you a little more than others…”

  Her jaw dropped. “That’s it, I’m cutting you off for the rest of the week.”

  “Coffee or sex?” he asked, sounding appropriately alarmed either way.

  Honestly, she wasn’t sure which one would be a bigger punishment for the man.

  “Okay, okay. No need to make any rash punishments.” He reached over to grab something off the nightstand. “What if I give you a peace offering?” He handed her a thick folder of documents.

  She peered at it curiously. “What is it?”

  “That’s a full background check of my life since you left.”

  Gazing down at the folder, she said softly, “You didn’t have to do this.”

  “It’s only fair,” he reasoned.

  Her head snapped back up so hard, she got a kink in her neck. Digging her fingers into the muscle to stop the pain, she demanded, “Meaning you did a background check on me?”

  “About two minutes after I pulled you over,” he confirmed, looking wholly unapologetic.

  Before she could rip into him for invading her privacy, he added quietly, “The reason I did a background check wasn’t to be nosy…okay, not entirely. But it was more because I’d missed so much of your life. A lifetime, felt like. I just…wanted to know what your life had been like. Make sure you were happy.”

  Suddenly, she couldn’t feel the crick in her neck. The blooming ball of emotion in her chest was eclipsing it all. She hugged the folder to her chest. “Were you happy? All these years?”

  “Tried my best. But I missed the hell out of you. Every day. Every night.”

  Her chest tightened with pain. “Caine, I want you to know, leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

  He pulled her into his arms. “Truthfully? I don’t know that I would’ve been able to do what you did. Fighting for you to the death? Easy. Walking away from you? Try impossible.”

  A sharp knock on the door interrupted their talk.

  Caine checked the time. “That’s probably Gabe. He said he was stopping by to install some sort of new gadget.”

  She got up and grabbed her robe off the hook on her door. “I’ll go let him in.”

  “Hold it.” He confiscated her robe and went over to her closet. “Do you still have that big winter coat I saw you wear once back in Creek Hills? The one that covers you from neck to knees?”

  Oy, him and his jealousy. It was so darned cute.

  “How can you still be jealous of Gabe, after all this.” She pointed at the tornado-like damage to her bed after their marathon sex.

  “I can and I will. Until he gets it through his thick skull that you’re mine.”

  Addison knew full well that Gabe thought of her as ‘Caine’s.’ He’d told her more than enough times.

  Just as he told her he wasn’t going to quit messing with his big brother anytime soon.

  While he was digging around her closet, earnestly looking for that winter coat, she quickly threw on the t-shirt he’d been wearing last night. It was thin and worn, but it fell well past her thighs. Gabe would never know she wasn’t wearing any underwear.

  She headed out to the living room to let Gabe in.

  Only to get all but tackled halfway there.

  “You are not answering the door without something on under that shirt.”

  “Fine,” she relented and proceeded to put on his boxer briefs.

  After taking it off of him first.

  She was sure Gabe wouldn’t mind waiting another ten minutes.

  Bright and early Friday morning, Addison just shook her head at the sound of Caine knocking on the front door—just an hour after he’d slipped out of her apartment to go for a run, and then back to Alec’s place to shower, before returning as if he hadn’t spent the night here.

  “You’ve slept in my bed every night for almost a week now.” And making sure I was exhausted enough after sex to sleep soundly through to morning. “Don’t you think Kylie has figured out that you’re sneak in every night and sneak out every morning?”

  He looked appalled at the possibility. “Do you really think she knows?”

  Honestly, the man was just too adorable for words. “I’m pretty sure she does. Just as I’m pretty sure she’s pretending with all her might and imagination that we’re playing board games in here all night before bed.”

  Sounding a tad traumatized, he asked solemnly, “You think it’s time we had the talk with her?”

  “Oh god! No. And that’s a no for all eternity. If you start talking about the birds and the bees with her, you’ll see a Kylie-shaped hole in that door and cartoon whoosh marks lingering in the air behind her.”r />
  Caine almost staggered back a step, looking like she’d just swung a baseball bat at his gut. “I meant the talk about you and I being back in a relationship. Not any sort of talk like the one you’re suggesting—that I assure you, would result in a matching Caine-shaped hole in the door next to Kylie’s.”

  She couldn’t help it, she had to let out a tiny chuckle. The man looked positively green around the gills over the idea of having that ‘talk’ with Kylie. “Oh don’t worry, I told her about us a while ago. And as far as the other talk goes, that safe sex presentation with the pamphlets and condoms I told you about actually had a section where parents and kids could dialog a bit. It was a pretty big hit.”

  “Move over, I think I need to lie down,” he rumbled. “I feel like a scuba diver with the bends. Instead of having seven years to slowly—albeit super reluctantly—come up to the water’s surface, you just torpedoed me from pink two-wheel bicycles with streamers to teen sex talks.”

  With a smiling headshake, Addison tossed her work clothes onto her dresser and made room for Caine on the bed. He collapsed onto it, arm flung over his head as if bracing for the roof to collapse.

  “While we’re on the topic, Kylie actually wanted to know—”

  He shot his hand in the air and shook his head rigorously, eyes shut tight.

  “While we’re on the topic of your early run every morning,” Addison clarified, lips twitching, “she wanted to know if you’d mind if she tagged along some days.”

  He peeked one eye open at her. “Really? That’s it?”

  “She wakes up as early as you and I do. Sometimes, she just takes it easy, but most of the times, she comes to survey the gardens in the mornings before everyone starts getting up for breakfast. But in the winters, we usually finish the garden pretty quick, so she’s got tons of time left over.”

  Exhaling in relief, he replied, “Of course she can run with me. It’ll be fun.”

  “Good. I’ll let her know.”

  He studied her. “So you really told her about us being an us, huh?”

  “Yup. Well, it was more I confirmed her suspicions when she wouldn’t stop badgering me about it.”

  “And did she sound happy about it?”

  Addison smiled softly. “Yes.”

  “What about you? Are you happy about this? About us?”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Absolutely.”

  “No more reservations?”

  “Oh I have a ton of those.”

  “Yeah? Me too.”

  Her brows shot up in surprise. “Mr. Believe-In-The-System actually has reservations?”

  “It’s true. Before you, I believed simply in right and wrong, good and evil. Then you waltzed into my life. With all your hardships and heartaches and sheer determination to help your siblings get past all that, and in turn overcoming it all yourself.”

  He smiled and rubbed his thumb against her lower lip. “You didn’t ‘teach’ that to me or anything cliché like that. You were just you, and before I realized or even fully understood it, you became the thing in my life that I had hope, belief, and trust would remain in my life…even without a single piece of evidence supporting the belief, even with stuff like a whacked-out stalker trying to extinguish that hope, and absolutely no precedence to garner any trust. Hope amidst worries, reservations, fears, and everything in between.”

  He leaned forward to nibble on the lip he’d successfully made tingle like crazy. “That’s how I got through the last seven years of nights without you, and how you and I will get through every year from now no matter what gets thrown at us. It’s going to be hard as hell…but without a doubt, worth it.”

  Practically floating on a mindless bubble now, she shivered, both over the maddening patterns he was tracing along her neck with his tongue, and the rigid proof he was nudging against her core as to how hard and worthwhile the foreseeable future was indeed going to be.

  “Is that your way of saying you want a quickie before I have to head downstairs to work?”

  “A quickie?” he repeated in an affronted tone. “Now that’s lacking both faith and vision.” He pinned both of her hands above her head and slipped first one nipple and then the other into his evil, evil mouth.

  “Vision and faith, I have,” she managed to gasp out. “It’s time that I don’t.”

  He scored his teeth gently over every sensitive part of her he discovered last night. The ones above her waist at least. His smoldering hot eyes promised all the ones below her waist was on deck very shortly. “I bet I could change your mind…convince you to head in late for the first time ever.”

  He’d totally win that bet. And her eleven poker tells were probably all admitting that unabashedly. Didn’t mean she couldn’t keep on raising the stakes though. “You’re good, but I don’t know if you’re good enough to make me want to try being bad.”

  That was a bald-faced lie and they both knew it.

  He grinned, and held her gaze for a long, distracting beat, until—

  Click.

  Every nerve ending in her body flared to life, in response to the cool metal now circling one of her wrists.

  “Did you think I forgot all your mind-messing curiosity about my handcuffs.”

  She looked up at her flat headboard. “There’s nothing for you to cuff me too.” Why was she helping him find ways to restrain her?

  His brows dropped and his gaze darkened dangerously. “I could handcuff you to me.”

  Click.

  He secured the other end of his handcuffs to his own wrist.

  Then dragged his hand down past his abdomen, taking her hand down with his when he started to—

  Wow.

  He groaned when she showed what a quick study she was and began mirroring his actions. Fingers gripped around him, just above his own, she matched him stroke for stroke.

  Double wow.

  “Christ, I’m going to come if we keep doing this.”

  So she stopped.

  And then dragged her manacled hand down her abdomen instead.

  This time his curse was harsher, his groan deeper.

  She was definitely starting to like this being a little bad thing.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The next night, Caine knocked on Addison’s door promptly at midnight, more eager than usual to see her since she’d been busy with errands all day.

  When she answered, he felt his jaw go slack, and his boots turn to cement blocks.

  “What do you think?” she asked softly.

  She’d changed back. All of it. Make-up, hair, clothes. Instead of her black leather and lace, she had on a pale yellow cotton tank top, with matching sleep shorts. Her skin was smooth, silky and completely bare of cosmetics, and her hair was back to its shiny brown tresses.

  She was so damn adorable, he couldn’t help but smile, and so damn sexy, he couldn’t help but growl. “You’re gorgeous,” he belatedly answered. “It’s literally all I can do to not take you right here in the hallway.”

  Her cheeks stained bright with pleasure. “Figured no point in hiding now since David already knows I’m here. So I may as well be myself.”

  “Best idea ever.”

  Studying him as intently as he was studying her, she frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You look…I don’t know, concerned?”

  She knew him well. “Truth is, I’ve been having a hard enough time controlling myself without all this.” He rubbed a lock of her hair between his thumb and forefinger, and ran his eyes over the rest of her. “But now…” He exhaled roughly gave her a grave, dubious headshake. “I’ll never be able to keep my hands off of you.”

  She bit her lip. Likely to hold back the smile he could see twinkling in her eyes. “Well...you’re keeping your hands off of me pretty easily right now.” She took a step back. Then another.

  The woman and her dares. The sight of her retreating from him was all he needed to regain the use of his legs again.


  Catching her before she took a single step more, he gripped her hips and crashed his lips down on hers before steadily walking her backward right to her bedroom. He didn’t stop until she fell back against the bed.

  Then he took his time. Undressed her slowly. Unwrapping her like the ultimate birthday and Christmas present rolled into one.

  But the moment her panties slid off the tip of her toe, he broke.

  “You’re so wet.” Eyes locked on the liquid heat between her thighs, he brushed a thumb over her slick, sensitive flesh. “Is this all for me, baby?” He wanted to hear her say it.

  “Always.”

  Damn.

  Lust hit him like a wrecking ball.

  Leave it to Addison to turn a simple yes or no question into so much more. Didn’t help one bit that she answered him in that tone she reserved just for him—equal parts innocence, mischief, and sass. Never failed to drive him out of his mind.

  The need to touch her, taste her, possess her in every way he could, began coursing through his veins like a drug until he had no other recourse but to fall to his knees and latch his mouth onto her honeyed center.

  With just one swipe of his tongue, tasting her became a compulsion, those soft, sexy noises she was making, a new addiction.

  He slid his palms up her torso, skimmed his fingers over her hardened nipples, nearly coming in his pants when more of her sugary heat coated his tongue.

  She was close, but for some reason, she was holding back, edging back away from him, smothering back her soft, sexy cries.

  He gripped her thighs in his hands and spread her legs wide open, baring her fully to his gaze. “No hiding your pleasure from me,” he growled against her skin. “I want to watch you come apart just like this. Your pleasure is mine baby, let me see it. Taste it.”

  Addison sank her teeth into her lip to keep from tumbling over the edge.

  At least when he was inside her, he was every bit as far gone as she was. But this…with his mouth destroying her with every molten hot lick, his dark, dominant gaze scorching over every inch of her like he owned her…

  It was too intense, too intimate.

  Too out of her control.