“I know.” She frames my face, places the softest of kisses on my lips, her eyes still open. “I trust you.” It’s whispered into the space between us, nearly lost among the sounds of our breaths and the water beating around us and my heart pounding relentlessly in my chest.
While I came in here to take her, to pound into her until I fucked out every ounce of anger and frustration I held from the day, I can’t.
I can’t.
Not when she’s looking at me like I’m her whole fucking world.
“Winter…”
She nods in response, our lips touching, shared breaths mingling between our parted mouths. With our eyes locked, I grip her tighter, shift her lower until all I can feel is her. She’s everywhere. Surrounding me. Consuming me.
“I love you.” I capture her lips in a kiss, slow and deep, sweeping my tongue into her sweet mouth, tasting her as I move slowly into her. She’s hot, Christ, so fucking hot. She takes me easily, her body ready for me, and if I don’t pause, go slow, this is going to be over before it’s even begun. Because the feel of her—nothing but her—is unlike anything I’ve felt before.
She’s as close as she can be. Her arms are around my neck, forearms braced against the back of my head. Her legs are clamped around my hips, her breasts and stomach flush against me. And I yet want her closer. I press her into the shower wall, taking her mouth in another kiss as I keep my rhythm slow and deep for as long as I can. But when her fingernails bite into my back, her teeth nipping my lips, her hips restless against me, I know she’s ready for something else.
“What do you need, baby? Tell me.”
“Faster, God, faster, please.”
“Thank Christ.” I speed up, pushing into her and shifting my hips until I hit the spot inside her that makes her legs tighten around me, her mouth go slack, her eyes roll back in her head.
“Cade…”
“I’ve got you. Let go, I’ve got you.”
Her moans are soundless, just whispers of breath as her entire body goes taut, inside and out, until she throbs—and fucking hell, feeling her come with nothing between us is better than I could’ve imagined. I grit my teeth, holding back just so this lasts a few minutes longer.
When she’s caught her breath, she lifts her head, her eyes locking with mine, open in their intensity, and even though she hasn’t said the words, even though she hasn’t told me she loves me, I can see it in her gaze. Feel it in the way she holds me to her, the way she clutches me with everything she has.
And I’m gone.
Twenty
winter
I almost said it. I was so close, the words sitting on the tip of my tongue, ready to jump off, but I couldn’t. When I stared into his eyes, shining with everything he feels for me, I froze.
He’s so open and honest, so forthcoming with his thoughts and his feelings, and I’m not. I’m closed off and jaded and angry at the world. And he deserves someone who’s so much more. Someone like him, who can love him freely and openly, who isn’t afraid to say those three little words.
I’m not that girl. I don’t know if I’ll ever be that girl.
After our shower, he dried me off then brought me to my bed, folded it down, and pulled me into the middle with him. Now he’s playing with strands of my damp hair, picking them up, rubbing them between his fingers before moving on to another piece. His chest is warm under my cheek, his heartbeat my own personal lullaby, and I don’t want him to leave.
I don’t want him to leave me.
He presses a soft kiss to my forehead, his lips brushing against me as he speaks. “Why’d you get so tense?”
And what am I supposed to say? That fears I’ve had my whole life are eating me alive? That all I can think about, all I worry about, is the day he gets tired of putting up with my closed-off bullshit and decides I’m not worth it?
But I can’t say that, so I do what I’m so adept at. I deflect. “Don’t make this about me. You said you’d tell me after. Well, it’s after.”
“Maybe I meant after round two…”
I reach up, pinching his nipple.
“Fucking hell, Winter! Shit…” With a scowl on his face, he rubs the spot I just grabbed. “Christ, that hurt.”
“Don’t be such a baby. You’re six-three, two-twenty. Don’t tell me a titty-twister is gonna make you cry.”
“Six-four, two-thirty, and no.” He huffs, reaching down to slap my ass. “Fine.”
“You’ll tell me what happened before? Earlier today?” I tilt my head back so I can see his face.
He reaches up, traces his finger down the line of my nose, brushes over the outline of my lips. “I will.” As I settle back into the crook at his side, he says, “But you have to answer a question from me.”
I stiffen in his arms, thoughts of all he could ask me flying through my mind. How’d you end up here? Where are your parents? When will you let me in?
Why are you so broken?
The hard lump in my throat refuses to go down, even after swallowing hard. I hope my voice doesn’t sound as shaky as I feel. “Do I get a veto?”
He hums, contemplating my request. “Fine, yes. One. But if you veto the first question, you have to answer the next. No excuses.”
I take a deep breath, my fingers tracing the lines of the tattoos on his forearms. I still don’t know what they mean, and I’ve been too scared to ask again, to listen to that part of him that I know will be a glimpse into his very soul. Afraid he’ll want me to reciprocate. Like now. Even so, not even twenty minutes ago, I told him I trusted him. I need to start living up to that. I want to. “Okay.”
His chest deflates as he blows out a long breath. “Okay. You better not be fucking with me.”
Smiling against his chest, I say, “Promise.”
His fingers start back up on my hair, his voice echoing under my ear as his body rumbles with his words. “In class earlier, my mentor asked me to stay behind. I…last week, I fucked up.”
“How so?”
“When we’re in the kitchen, we need to work like a cohesive machine, everyone doing their stuff on time, in the right order, and not holding anyone back. Well, my mind wasn’t there and it showed. I fell behind and dragged everyone with me. It was a complete clusterfuck, and it was my fault.”
He’s so tense, his muscles tight and bunched even under my fingers as I rub back and forth on his chest and stomach. I know how much pride he takes in his work, in his food, so knowing he screwed up—and affected everyone else on top of it—has to be hard on him.
“Anyway, he called me on it today, said he expected more from me. And he’s right. I know that, and I knew it last week, but to see the disappointment in his eyes? It just fucking killed me, you know? He’s more than just my mentor. I’ve known him for a long time. He was friends with my parents, was there when my mom was going through chemo, and I was trying to do everything on my own.
“I mean, fuck, I was only seventeen when she was diagnosed, eighteen when it got really bad. I didn’t know what the fuck to do, so I just did the best I could. I made sure Tessa went to school every day and did her homework, ran the household. Mark—Chef Foster—was there if we needed it, always told me that, but I hated the idea of someone being dragged into our mess. And I hated the idea that it was something I couldn’t do on my own.” He squeezes me, and I know he’s thinking back to all the conversations we’ve had where I’ve said pretty much the same thing to him. Pride is a bitch.
“So we got by without him,” he says. “I graduated and put off going to college. I always knew I wanted to be a chef, so I applied to Le Cordon Bleu before my mom got sick and got accepted, but after, I just…I couldn’t. None of it mattered, you know? I just wanted her to get better, and there was no way—no fucking way—I could’ve packed up and moved away to school while she was going through that by herself.
“He was the one who pushed me to finally go after my mom died. Since my dad’s accident, Mark’s been pretty much the only male influence in
my life, and to know that I disappointed him…it sucks.” He blows out a deep breath and shrugs. “So that was my shitty day before I came to pick you up, and then to see that asshole boss of yours go off on you…well, it just all sort of piled on top of me. Which was why I came into your apartment like a brooding asshole and dragged you in the shower to have my way with you. Sorry about that.”
I smother a laugh against his skin, and he squeezes me tighter. Settling closer to him, I trace my fingers over the indentations of the muscles in his stomach. “I’m sorry, Cade. About your mom, but also about what you’ve given up. I know it’s not easy to lose the person who’s supposed to watch out for you. It doesn’t matter that it happened after you were an adult or not.”
“I’ve accepted it now. I did the best I could at the time. And the three of us are doing okay now. That’s what’s important to me, being there for them.”
Pushing away, I lean onto my elbow, my face above his. “But what about you? What do you want?”
“I want them to be safe and happy. I want that for you too.”
“I’m not talking about us. I’m talking about you. Be selfish for a minute. What do you want?”
His hand pauses in my hair, his eyes flitting back and forth between mine. After a moment, he admits, “I want to go to Italy. I want to work for a year or two, learn everything I can. And then I want to come back, here maybe, or close, and open a restaurant. My restaurant with my food.”
“Okay, then why don’t you?”
He furrows his brow, like it’s the dumbest question that’s ever tumbled out of my mouth. “Why don’t I just fly over to Europe for a couple years? Forget all my responsibilities here?”
“Cade. Your sister is an adult, and Haley is hers to worry about. You can’t put your dreams on hold for them. I don’t know Tessa very well, but from what you’ve told me about her, I think I know enough to realize she’d hate it if you did that, to know she’s stopping you from what you really want.”
“What I really want is right here. Them. You.”
“But—”
“Nope, I answered. It’s your turn.”
cade
Her eyes go wide with panic, and I almost tell her she doesn’t have to answer my questions. Almost. I brush my thumb over her lower lip, trying to soothe her nerves.
“What secrets are you hiding that make you so nervous about this?”
I don’t expect her to answer, but she does. “Too many.”
“You can tell me, you know. Anything. Nothing you say will change the way I feel about you.”
She nods, but the uncertainty in her eyes is clear. I reach up, smooth the hair away from her face. I want to know more about her—I want to know everything about her. But I don’t want to push her into anything she isn’t prepared for.
“You ready?” I ask.
The corner of her mouth is pulled in, her eyes filled with fear and dread. And I hate that she still feels this way around me. Instead of asking any of the dozens of questions flying through my head that I’ve had weeks to think about—how big her family is, where she goes over the holidays, what her life was like before she came here to school—I ask one I know is safe. “What do you want to do after you graduate?”
It takes her a moment before the lack of complexity of my question registers, and her breath rushes out of her in a whoosh. “That’s what you want to know?”
No. “Yes.”
She settles on top of me, her entire body melting in relief. Her arms are folded across my chest, her chin on her the back of her hand. “That wasn’t what I thought you were going to ask.”
“What’d you think I was going to ask?”
“Well, I’m not giving you ideas.”
“Believe me, baby, they’re there. You’re just not ready for me to ask them.”
Her eyes widen the tiniest bit before she looks down, clears her throat. “I want to do a hundred things, see a hundred different places. I’d love to get in a car and just drive, with no agenda, just go. I can design from anywhere, but I’ve always wanted to go to New York or Chicago. Philly, maybe. Florida. I don’t care. I just want to go. Somewhere other than here or…home.”
The last word is barely a whisper, and it’s on the tip of my tongue to ask where home is, but the expression on her face, the sorrow in her eyes as she flits them back up to mine, stops me.
Instead, I say, “Then you should.”
She smiles then, her real smile. The one that crinkles the corners of her eyes. “With all my extra money, huh?”
“I don’t mean take off right the fuck now. I just meant someday.”
“Tell ya what…I’ll have my someday when you have yours. When you go off to Italy, I’ll hop in a car and just go.”
All her fear evaporates in a minute, the panic that was present in her eyes only a moment before replaced by determination and challenge. A challenge she knows I can’t accept.
Twenty-One
cade
“Okay, now add the flour, but—” It’s too late, a puff of white exploding in Winter’s face before I can get the words out or reach to flip the switch. “You need to turn the mixer to low.”
She spins around, her cheeks covered in random white spots, some of the flour dusting her hair. “You couldn’t say that before, ‘Now add the flour’?” Her voice is low, her eyes narrowed, and I take a step back.
“Well, yeah, I guess I could’ve, but I just sort of figured you’d know enough not to add loose flour to a wildly spinning mixer.”
“Oh, you figured I’d know enough for that, huh? Even after I told you I’ve never made cookies before? Even then?”
She’s advancing on me now, and I shouldn’t be retreating like a scared animal. I have more than a foot on her, a hundred-plus pounds, but she looks pissed. And that glint in her eye tells me she’s up to something. I glance down at her hand, seeing a measuring cup half filled with flour, and I realize what she’s going to do a split-second before she does, but not soon enough to dodge it.
A cloud of white powder hits me straight in the face, and I cough as I inhale some. Wiping away the dust from my eyes, I say, “I can’t believe you did that.”
“Oh, well, I just figured you’d know enough to duck.” She shrugs and offers me a saccharine smile.
“I don’t think you want to start this with me, baby.”
“In case you missed the flour in your face a second ago, I already started it, baby.”
I stare her down, then reach over, grabbing the bowl of melted chocolate—my mom’s secret ingredient in her cookies—and dip my fingers into it.
Winter narrows her eyes at me and takes a step back. “Don’t you dare.”
“Where you goin’? I thought you wanted to get messy.”
“No, I wanted you to get messy. I didn’t have a choice with this,” she says as she gestures to where the flour hit her. She darts her eyes down to the bowl of chocolate, then back up to my face. “Don’t, Cade. You’re going to get me dirty, and I have to be at work soon.”
“You maybe should’ve thought about that before you threw a scoop of flour in my face.” I don’t wait for her response before I smear the chocolate down her cheek to her jaw, then all the way down her neck and into the deep V of her shirt, stopping when I feel the swell of her breasts. “Whoops.”
She gasps. “You did not just do that.”
“Looks like I did.” I shrug, putting the bowl back on the counter before I lick the chocolate from my fingers. She focuses on the act, her lips parted. I lean closer to her, drop my voice, and gesture to the spots of her skin that are covered. “You want me to clean you up too?”
Glaring, she gives a jerky shake of her head, but a flush works its way up her chest to her neck—one of the tells she’s getting turned on.
I step closer, backing her into the corner until she’s pressed against the cabinets behind her. “Sure about that? It wouldn’t take much. Just a lick or two. Maybe a couple sucks. We’d probably have to take your sh
irt off, though, and your bra too. I really got down in there.”
Her head’s tilted back as she stares up at me, her chest rising and falling in quick succession from her labored breathing.
I lean into her space, lick up a path from her neck to her ear. “I think you do. I think you want my tongue all over you, don’t you, baby? I got you all dirty. Seems only fair I clean you up.” Before she can respond, my mouth closes over her shoulder, my tongue tracing along the chocolate I smeared there. By the time I’ve dipped into the neckline of her shirt, my tongue in the valley of her breasts, her nipples are pressed tight against the material, and she’s got a white-knuckled grip on the countertop behind her.
“Want me to stop?”
I wait a second. Two. And when she gives the slightest shake of her head, I take. Gripping her face in my hands, my mouth covers hers, my tongue slipping inside. She groans into the kiss, her hands finally coming up to clutch my forearms.
“Wait.” She wrenches her mouth from mine, turning her head to the side. “Cade, wait. Your sister.”
I focus on licking every stray ounce of chocolate I can find, her hands a counterpoint to her words as she holds me close. “Not home. Gone till four.”
“Shit! Four. I have to be at work at four!”
“We’ve got time. Now stop talking.”
I peel off her jeans and panties, then lift her onto the counter, desperate to feel her around me. With one hand, I fumble with the button of my jeans, the other busy between Winter’s thighs, rubbing soft circles around her clit, getting her ready for me. She’s moaning, her head resting back on the cabinets, and the sight of her there, half naked in my kitchen, is too much. Too fucking much, and I can’t get my goddamn jeans off.
When she notices, her hands are there, opening my jeans and yanking my boxers down just far enough to pull me out. Her hands grip my cock, pumping slowly, and I need inside her now.
[Reluctant Hearts 01.0] Caged in Winter Page 15
