Page 145 of Cross Checked
“I hate you,” I breathed, the words lacking any conviction.
“No, you don’t.” He kissed the corner of my mouth, then my jaw, his stubble scraping deliciously. “You love that I can’t keep my hands off you. That I want you this bad.” He shifted his weight, settling more fully between my legs, and the pressure became an exquisite, steady throb. “It’s all I could think about today. Getting inside you, making you come for me.”
“Arrogant,” I managed to gasp, my hips lifting involuntarily to meet his slow grind.
“Accurate,” he corrected, his voice dropping to a rough whisper right against my ear. “I’m going to make you come so hard, Pip. But tonight…” He pulled back just enough to look down at me, his eyes dark and serious, burning with asmoldering intensity. “Tonight, I want you to come just like this.”
My brain short-circuited. “What?”
“Right here.” He pressed down firmly, his erection aligning perfectly with my clit. “With my dick right here, through these perfect little shorts. I want to feel you let go and come in your panties for me.”
The crude, specific command, delivered in that calm, utterly certain tone, unraveled me. A whimper caught in my throat. “Cade…”
“Do it,” he urged, his voice a low growl. He began moving again, a slow, relentless rhythm of his hips, the friction maddening and perfect. “Stop thinking. Stop talking. Just feel it. Feel how much I want you.”
His mouth found mine again, swallowing my moans. His hands slid under my tank top, his palms rough and hot against my skin, mapping my sides, my stomach, sliding up to cradle my breasts. Every touch, every grind, every whispered, filthy encouragement was a brand. He was weaving a web of sensation so tight I couldn’t have escaped if I wanted to.
And I didn’t want to.
The pleasure built, a tight, coiling spring low in my belly, fed by the friction, by the weight of him, by the possessive heat in his eyes every time he broke the kiss to look at me. It was intimate and dirty and so incredibly him.
“That’s it,” he murmured, watching the tension build on my face. “I can feel you getting close. Come on, Pip. Come for me. Let me feel it.”
The nickname, the command, the overwhelming sense of being his in that moment—it was the final key. The coil snapped, and pleasure detonated, white-hot and shocking, radiating out from where our bodies were joined through layers of frustrating fabric. I cried out, my back arching off the bed, my fingersclutching at his shoulders as wave after wave of sensation crashed through me. He held me through it, his body still moving in that slow, grinding rhythm, drawing out every last pulse and shudder.
When I finally collapsed, boneless and trembling, he slowed to a stop. He was breathing hard, his forehead resting against mine. He was still rock-hard against me.
“Fuck,” he breathed, the word filled with awe and satisfaction. He pressed a soft, almost tender kiss to my swollen lips. “You are so fucking perfect.”
I could only manage a weak, breathless sound, but I buried those words so deep inside me I knew I would never forget them. He’d made me come without even taking my clothes off, with nothing but the promise of him and the perfect, possessive pressure of his body. And the look in his eyes told me this was just the beginning.
Cade’s weight was a solid, comforting anchor, his breathing a steady rhythm against my cheek. He didn’t move away. He just held me there in the quiet, his fingers tracing idle, possessive patterns on the skin beneath the hem of my pushed-up halter.
After a long moment, he pushed himself up on his forearms, caging my face. His eyes searched mine, the usual cocky glint softened by something deeper, more intense, as he moved against me.
“Bliss,” he said, my name a rough caress that Pip could never carry because my actual name was something he reserved for when he wanted my full attention. “I want inside you.” The bluntness of it, after the slow, teasing build, made my breath catch. “I want to strip you down. I want you naked. I want to keep the promise I made—to kiss every single inch of this skin.” His thumb swept over my lower lip. “But I need to hear you say it. I need to know that you want me all over you.”
The vulnerability in his demand, the way he was giving me the control even as he loomed over me, shattered any last fragment of hesitation. This wasn’t just Cade the hockey captain, the cocky bad boy.
This was Cade, who’d stepped in front of me and dared Luke to try him. Cade who understood my language and how my thoughts fought each other for survival, with half my jokes making him laugh and the other half making him wonder if I should legally be supervised. Cade who looked at me like I was the only person in any room.
“Yes,” I whispered, the word feeling too small for the enormity of what I was feeling. I reached up, my fingers tracing the hard line of his jaw. “I do. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything in my life more than I want you, Cade.”
A slow, devastating moan escaped him as he ground his cock against me and a smile spread across his face, the kind that made his morally corrupt dimples appear.
“Sounds like you and me are on the same page, Pip.”
I felt a giggle bubble up, giddy and relieved. “Same book.”
He leaned back, just enough to sit up on his knees between my legs. His eyes never left mine as his hands went to the button of my jeans. “Same chapter,” he said, popping the button open with a deft flick.
“Same cover,” I said as my zipper hissed down.
He hooked his fingers into the waistband of my jeans and my panties. “Same author.”
My breath hitched as he began to peel them down. “You and me, Cade, we are my favorite book.”
“Damn, Pip…I don’t think you’ve ever been so utterly and completely here with me like you are right now.”
