Page 244 of Cross Checked
His words were a broken plea. A continuous stream in my ear, punctuated by his ragged breaths and the wet, slapping sound of our bodies joining. He braced himself on one hand, the other sliding under my ass, tilting my hips to take him even deeper.
“I can’t stop wanting you,” he grunted, his eyes dropping to where we were joined. “I don’t even know if want is the right word. I see you beneath me, taking me, and everything inside of me is at peace.”
I looked down, the sight nearly making me come again on the spot. The thick, veined length of him thrusting in and out of my stretched flesh, glistening under the low light. It was lewd. It was beautiful. It was us.
“Cade, I’m—I can’t—it’s too much,” I babbled, another orgasm building, coiling from my toes, from the very roots of my hair.
“You can,” he promised, his pace becoming harder and faster. “You’re feeling how I feel every minute of every day.”
His thumb found my clit, rubbing rough, tight circles, and that was it. The second climax detonated, even more intense than the first, a full-body seizure of pleasure so acute it felt like pain. I screamed, my back arching in a painful tightness in my ribs, my internal muscles clamping down on him in rhythmic, vicious pulses.
My coming again tore his control to shreds. With a raw, guttural roar that was pure possession, he slammed into me one final, devastating time and came. I felt the hot, pulsing rush of his release flooding me, wave after wave, marking me, filling me. His hips jerked through the aftershocks, his whole body shuddering as he collapsed on top of me, careful even in his abandon to keep his weight off my injured side.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of our shattered breathing, the frantic hammering of our hearts slowly syncing, slowing. The room smelled of sex, of sweat, of us.
Eventually, he softened and slipped out of me, a slow, wet slide that made me whimper softly. He didn’t go far. He rolled to his side, pulling me with him, tucking me back into the shelter of his body. His hand slid between my thighs, his fingers gently, possessively, tracing the swollen, well-used flesh he’d just claimed.
“Tell me you know, Pip,” he whispered, his lips against my shoulder blade. “Tell me you know you mean more to me than anything? I have the world at my fingertips and all I want is you.”
It wasn’t about proving he hadn’t given up on me or stopped wanting me anymore. Something settled inside my soulthen. A peace. A final, quiet surrender. Not to him, and not to the ugly little fears I’d been feeding all week.
To the truth.
I really was it for him.
Exhaustion, deep and bone-melting, pulled at me. Nestled in the heat of him, surrounded by the physical proof of his hunger, the ghost of his filthy words still echoing in my ears, the noise finally stopped for the first time in days.
The fear.
The doubt.
The endless what-ifs I’d been carrying around like extra bruises.
They just… stopped.
He’d warned me he wouldn’t stop.
And he hadn’t.
He’d taken everything, given everything, and somewhere in the wreckage of every fear I’d built up before he walked through that kitchen door, I finally believed him.
There wasn’t room left for doubt anymore.
36
Cade
The gray light of dawn was just starting to bleed around the edges of the blinds in my room, turning the disaster we’d made of my bed soft around the edges.
I hadn’t slept. Not really. I’d dozed in broken, useless pieces, my body exhausted but my mind still trapped somewhere between the sounds she’d made, the way she’d looked at me, and the terrifying knowledge that something in me had shifted so permanently I didn’t know how to put it back. Bliss was curled against my chest, warm and trusting, her breathing deep and even, one of my arms locked around her waist like some stubborn part of me thought the world might try to take her if I loosened my grip.
My body wanted her again.
It had taken her all night, even after she’d fallen apart beneath me in ways that should have satisfied every starved, selfish corner of me. But the need sitting low in my balls now felt different than it had hours ago. Slower. Deeper. Less like hunger and more like ache.
I stared down at the curve of her bruised cheek where it rested against my arm, at the soft mess of her hair spilling over my pillow, at the faded marks on her skin that made my chest tighten for reasons that had nothing to do with sex. She was in my bed. In my shirt. Wrapped around me like she belonged there, like she trusted me enough to sleep with her back to my body in a house full of hockey players and noise and chaos.
Something about that nearly undid me.
