Chapter Five
Cade was determined not to spook Angel this time.
With both arms loaded with pumpkins, he remained in the open door of Scotts Sweets, watching Angel nibble on a piece of fudge.
There wasn’t a chance she’d think he was sneaking up on her again if he stayed where he was. Watching her lips graze the sugary treat was both heaven and a special kind of hell. One where everything around him was on fire—where he was on fire—because Angel was devouring him with the same kind of enthusiasm.
He’d been wrong to start with breakfast. A picnic with a dozen different kinds of desserts she could sample would have been a better way to go. And he could have sampled her mouth in between, even though he was certain there wasn’t anything worth craving or half as sweet as she was.
“Let me help you with those.” Adrianne Riley, owner of Scotts Sweets rushed forward to help him, catching the largest of the pumpkins she’d ordered that he was precariously close to dropping.
He might not have sneaked up on Angel this time, but his appearance had taken her by surprise all the same. He glanced to his left just as she turned away from him, pretending to be engrossed in the shelves of candy. He hadn’t really expected her to walk right up to him considering she’d disappeared from the bonfire last night without a word.
He followed Adrianne to the counter, managing not to drop the pumpkins he still carried. The shop was busier than usual, the festival drawing more people to the local businesses.
Normally crowds made him twitchy and he steered clear of the busier spots and all the tourists that came to Sapphire Falls as much as possible. Twitchy or not, though, he wasn’t letting anything, or anyone, stop him from finding out why Angel had bolted last night.
And that particular goal was running a close to second to finding out what flavor of fudge she was sampling, and he wasn’t interested in taking a bite himself, not of the fudge anyway.
Thankfully Ethan was dropping off a few last minute orders elsewhere and wasn’t here to give him a hard time about letting Angel get so deep under his skin. The truth was, she wasn’t nearly deep enough.
A smart guy would take her disappearance as a sign that she wasn’t interested, and he’d always considered himself pretty bright. He wasn’t a genius, but he’d studied and did his own homework, owned all of his grades, even the ones that landed him with more work around the farm and less time for friends until he improved his marks.
But twice she’d blown his freaking mind with a kiss that started out soft and sizzling and steam-rolled right into brutally hot, and no one in hell kissed like that if they weren’t interested.
And even a dumbass could figure out that interested didn’t come close to describing what happened when she’d been in his lap by the river last night. Ethan might have been the one that ended up in the water, but Cade could guarantee no one had needed cooling off more than he had last night.
“Cade?”
“Hmmm?” He dragged his attention back to Adrianne.
She arched a brow, following his gaze to where Angel stood. “She new in town?”
“Not exactly.”
“But she’ll be sticking around for a while if you have any say in it,” Adrianne guessed, grinning. “Thanks for dropping these off. I’m going through my pumpkin truffles like crazy this weekend.”
“I told you so.” Mason Riley stepped up next to his wife, dropping a kiss on top of her head.
“No, you didn’t.”
The town’s agricultural genius frowned. “I definitely remember writing it down somewhere.”
“Now that I believe.” Her brows drew together, and she leaned back. “I thought you were going to pick up our costumes.”
“I did.” He set a pair of jeans and a short plaid shirt on the counter that wouldn’t have fit Mason in a hundred years. “I also made an executive decision and changed the plan.”
Cade inwardly winced, hoping those weren’t fighting words. They sure as hell would’ve been if his father sprung something like that on his own mother last minute.
“I’m listening,” Adrianne said, a little suspicious.
Mason gestured to the outfit. “That right there is the perfect costume for a small-town girl from Nebraska in love with a genius.”
Adrianne glanced down at the clothes, a wide smile breaking across her face. “I’m Penny?”
“Uh-huh.” He undid his button-down shirt.
“Should I leave you two alone?” Cade teased.
Mason snorted, opening his shirt to reveal the T-shirt he wore underneath with the words, I’m not insane, my mother had me tested on it.
“It’s perfect Sheldon,” Adrianne leaned up and planted a smacking kiss on her husband’s lips.
“You guys do know Penny and Sheldon aren’t a couple, right?” Cade put in.
“Nothing a little chocolate and classic conditioning won’t fix.” Mason drew his wife into his arms.
And that was Cade’s cue to leave the pair alone. Although if they kept looking at each other like that, half the store was going to clear out.
“Thanks again, Cade,” Adrianne said without taking her eyes off Mason.
“No problem.” He turned to find Angel, but she’d disappeared.
He didn’t have to go far to find her, spotting her outside by Mrs. C’s car parked down the street. She leaned against the beat up powder-blue Caddy, a hint of sadness in her eyes.
“Hey.”
She jerked her head up. “Hi,” she managed, glancing around.
“Your grandmother is over there talking to Dot,” he said, assuming she was looking for someone to run interference. He gestured with a hand. “They’re probably discussing preserves and what to crochet for the next baby that’s due to arrive.”
Angel arched a brow. “A conversation I wouldn’t be interested in I suppose?”
“If you’d rather chat about strawberries to sugar ratios instead of how incredible you looked in that dress last night, I won’t stop you.”
Pink brightened her cheeks, a ghost of a smile tugging at her lips. “Liar.”
He took a casual step forward but not the last few needed to bring them toe-to-toe. And that’s where he needed to be to lift her onto the hood of the car. It would only take two and a half seconds to complete that pass and land the best kind of touchdown. One that ended with her hands raking his hair and her mouth open under his.
Angel shifted in place as if she knew exactly what was going through his mind and didn’t know whether or not to make a break for it or hop on the hood herself. Maybe that was just wishful thinking.
She took a small step in his direction, her attention sliding down to his lips before she found something more important to watch on the street behind him.
Maybe not wishful thinking at all. “You disappeared on me last night.”
“Scottie was pretty upset.”
They both knew there was more to it than that, but he didn’t press the subject. “If you’d had a broom with you last night, I would have thought you flew away like a real witch.”
Her gaze snapped to his. Okay, witch jokes were clearly a bad idea.
“So tonight,” he began.
“I’m spending the night with Gran.” She played with one of the bags she carried.
“And miss the chance to paint a real life zombie versus slayer mural?” He stuffed his hands in his pockets where they couldn’t reach the wisps of blonde hair she kept brushing out of her face. “Or are you just afraid you’d crack under the pressure?”
Angel laughed. “Pressure is definitely not what’s stopping me.”
He chanced sliding a few inches closer. That tantalizing apples and cinnamon smell reached him, and his stomach gave a hard tug. “Worried you might get bitten?”
Her bright blue eyes creased with the smile that transformed her face from pretty to complete knock-out. “No one would be getting close enough.”
“You sound pretty sure of yourself. Some might say even cocky.”
“I prefer to leave cocky to the professionals,” she quipped.
“Oh, that’s cold.”
“Better dress a little warmer then because the temperature is only dropping from here.”
He grinned. Fuck it, he’d played it safe long enough. He closed the distance between them.
Angel didn’t retreat, but brought her hand up between them. She just couldn’t seem to decide if she wanted to haul him closer or push him away. He was voting for closer.
“Cade,” she began.
He shook his head, flattening his hand over hers. “Let’s skip the part where you remind me you’re only in town temporarily and that getting involved would be a bad idea. I’m not looking for forever, Angel.” Words had never stuck in his throat as much as those last few had.
She chewed on her lip. Yeah, he wouldn’t believe him either, because he wanted a hell of a lot more than one day.
Not wanting to give her the opportunity to shoot him down right off the bat, he didn’t let her respond. “If you change your mind about tonight, keep an eye out for a devilishly handsome zombie with a fondness for edible blondes that smell like apples and cinnamon.”
Letting her go, he backed up until he wasn’t at risk of screwing everything up by kissing her. And somehow he knew that kissing her now would make her run faster than she had last night.
And the only place he wanted her to run was straight toward him.
* * *
“What’s all this?” Angel picked up the chest protector from the stack of clothes sitting on the table in her grandmother’s kitchen. It looked like something a little thinner and lighter than the vests cops wore in the movies.
“Your gear. When I heard you were coming, I made a few calls to see what you’d need. Can’t slay zombies without the proper protection.” Judging by the bewildered look on her face, Delilah Cornerstone had never expected to say those words to anyone.
Angel set the chest protector aside, opting to grab a bottle of water from the fridge. “I thought we’d spend the evening together.”
“So you can avoid that boy?” Her grandmother scoffed.
“The boy whose life I probably ruined, you mean.” It still made her sick to think about it. She’d gone home and back to her life, putting the whole night out of her mind as much as she could, and Cade had lost his dream.
If someone had snatched away her ability to paint when she’d barely discovered how much it meant to her, she wouldn’t have simply gotten over it or not held a grudge.
“You did not ruin his life.”
They’d already been over this when she came home last night and confronted her grandmother about never telling her what really happened. She didn’t want to rehash it all over again.
“If he knew what I did—”
Gran huffed out an impatient breath. “And what do you think you did?”
“He wouldn’t have broken his leg if he hadn’t seen me using magic in the woods. If he hadn’t chased me because I ran.”
“You were a child.”
The water hit Angel’s stomach like cement, and she set the bottle aside. “I was sixteen and old enough to know I shouldn’t have been so careless.” Old enough to know she couldn’t leave him hurt and alone in the woods even if it meant he could expose her to the world.
Gran gave her hand a sympathetic squeeze. “Have you not seen the way he looks at you?”
“And I’m not sure I want to see how he’d look at me if he knew I was the reason he lost his scholarship and chance to play football professionally.” She’d asked enough questions, grilling first Scottie and then Phoebe on the way home, to know he’d had the kind of natural talent that would have taken him right to the NFL.
“Angel, no one can know how things would have turned out for Cade even if he hadn’t been in the woods that night.”
Maybe, maybe not. But that she didn’t change the fact that she hadn’t just rained all over Cade’s dream parade, she’d blown it away like a goddamn hurricane.
Sadness hit her hard in the chest. Her grandmother took one look at her and swept her into a fierce hug. “You could always tell him the truth.”
If continuing to see Cade was a bad idea, then telling him she was the girl he thought he’d imagined and was responsible for ruining his chances of playing pro football would be an epic fail. And aside from not wanting to hurt him, she had no way of knowing if bringing it up would unlock memories of what else he might have seen that night. “I think my father just felt someone walk over his grave.”
“Your father isn’t here and he doesn’t know Cade or how he’d handle the truth. It was a long time ago.”
Angel withdrew from her grandmother’s embrace. “I can’t risk it.”
Even if she could bring herself to tell him that she’d be the one in the woods that night, she couldn’t put her family in the position of being exposed a second time. Her father had barely forgiven her for it the first time. God, she should have listened to him and stayed far away from Sapphire Falls.
Angel sank into the kitchen chair, needing to change the subject and salvage something positive from her visit. “What did you want to do tonight?”
“Scottie is on her way over.”
“I didn’t come here just to spend time with Scottie.”
Her grandmother clucked her tongue. “I already have plans anyway. And since I expect to be late myself, I’m going to stay with Milly tonight. I don’t like driving after dark and once that woman has a couple glasses of wine, she thinks traffic lights should only be taken under advisement.” Her grandmother folded the clothes, looking a little too innocent.
What was she up to? “I can’t see Cade tonight.”
Seeing him this afternoon had been hard enough. One minute she’d been alone, and the next he’d been standing there taking up all the space without even getting close to her. The man overwhelmed her senses, making her recall every moment they’d be up against each other, half drunk on the taste of each other, all without even trying.
The older woman nodded. “Whatever you think is best.”
There was no way her grandmother was letting her off the hook that easily, but Angel needed a few minutes to prepare for the next round when she wasn’t entirely sure who had won the first two.
She rose and went to her bedroom and the breeze from the window stopped her in the doorway. She hadn’t left it open, had she? Angel searched the room, hunting for the source of unease that curled across the back of her neck.
Nothing looked out of place, but the sensation someone had been in her room lingered. Having only brought a small suitcase for the trip, it didn’t take long to look over her belongings.
She walked back to the doorway. “Gran, you didn’t borrow my scarf did you?” She was positive she’d left the one she’d worn last night draped on the back of the wooden chair in the corner. It wasn’t there now.
“No I didn’t, dear.” Her grandmother appeared in the doorway. “Is it missing?”
“I probably just left it in Phoebe’s truck last night.”
Phoebe had been a little late getting to the bonfire—which probably had something to do with the sleepy-satisfied expression on her husband’s face.
The pair had taken one look at Scottie’s drenched state and offered them a ride home before they returned to the celebration. Still reeling from discovering her role in Cade’s college dreams going up in smoke, Angel had welcomed the distraction of making small talk with the Sapphire Falls couple.
Even now she wanted something to take her mind off Cade, but could have done without the missing scarf.
She grabbed her phone off the bedside table and sent a text to Finn. “Did you locate Lewis?”
The response came almost instantly. “No new leads.”
Angel blew out a breath, not wanting to worry but refusing to rule out the possibility that Lewis could have somehow followed her, no matter how unlikely it was.
“Thanks,” she texted back and tossed the phone on her bed. Great. Now what?
She flopped back on the mattress.
“The slaying hasn’t even started and you’re already laying down on the job,” Scottie mused from the doorway.
“Did she tell you to come talk me into going, or was that your idea?”
Scottie offered a tentative smile. “A little of both.” She stretched out next to Angel. “Come on, it will be fun.”
“Cade will be there.”
“And so will half the town,” Scottie reminded her. “Do you really want to sit here when you could blow off a little steam on unsuspecting zombies?”
“Blow off steam?” Angel echoed.
No way was shooting a few paintballs going to improve her mood. And she wasn’t sure she wanted it to. She should feel bad for what happened. Maybe Cade would have broken his leg anyway walking home in the dark after drinking, but he hadn’t before he’d spotted her in the woods.
“Look, what happened sucks. For you and Cade.” Scottie held a hand up when Angel would have interrupted. “I’m not done. The night messed up your life too. Your father stopped trusting you, and you made it your life’s mission to do everything he wanted after that.”
“I didn’t lose out on my future.”
“Didn’t you?” Her friend rolled to face her, propping her head up on her hand. “Since that night you’ve always kept the peace, never stepping outside the lines, never pushing any boundaries, never going against your father’s wishes. Not until you realized you may not want the future your father has envisioned for you, and you let me talk you into coming here. ”
“And look at how well that turned out.” Angel smothered her face with a pillow.
“Except you’re forgetting one very important detail.”
She peeked out from under the frilly edge, knowing she was going to regret it. “Such as?”
“He’s real.”
Angel closed her eyes, but Scottie kept going.
“He’s been the one the whole time, hasn’t he? The guy you measured all the others against and found them wanting? The one-in-a-million.”
“Maybe,” she whispered.
But did it really matter now? So much damage had been done. And if she let herself think the connection she hadn’t been able to shake in almost fifteen years, knowing it couldn’t go anywhere, her heart really might break.
“Okay, pity-party time is over.” Scottie hopped to her feet. “We’ve got zombies to hunt. And if we see Cade, I’ll just take him out. Paintball to the brain stem.”
Angel rose up on her elbows. “You’re slightly disturbing, you know that?”
“Only slightly? I must be having an off day.”
Angel rose, unsure if she was dreading running into him or looking forward to it. And how messed up was that?
“It’ll be okay. We’ll have a good time. And if I can’t keep Cade away from you, skip the broken limb and just turn him into a frog.”
Seriously? Angel stared at her friend.
“Too soon?” Scottie ventured innocently.
Angel fired the pillow at her.
* * *
Pink exploded across the front of Cade’s goggles.
“Where the hell did that come from?” Ethan hissed from somewhere on Cade’s right.
He wiped at the paint, smearing streaks of pink across the front. Damn it.
Tucked down behind a hay bale barricade, he wiped his goggles on his pants instead. Ethan huddled behind an empty drum that had been spray painted in black and orange for the occasion. All around them hoots of laughter were interspersed with screams of surprise and muttered vows of retribution.
“They’re kicking our ass,” Ethan growled.
“Speak for yourself.” Cade popped up, fired off a few rounds in the direction the last attack had come from and dropped back to the ground. Globs of pink splattered the hay above his head.
Ethan nodded to the left where two of the Bennett brothers were pinned down. Another one lay in the grass—possibly Travis—getting destroyed in between barricades and no one had gone out to save his sorry ass yet.
Cade moved to go around Ethan, toward the closest shelter.
“Now that’s just suicide,” his brother called out.
Paintballs clipped the side of the wooden structure he dove into.
“You’re a sitting duck in there,” Ethan hissed, then yelled. A moment later he scrambled in after Cade. “They’re on my ass.”
“You do realize zombies are supposed to run toward the people, not away from them, right?”
“And what people are you running toward?”
Cade slid his back up the wall, getting a peek out the window, his smile widening when he spotted Scottie and Angel headed his way.
“Never mind,” Ethan grunted. “You’ve got that shit-eating grin on your face again.” His brother checked his rounds, then went back the way he’d come, going down shooting judging by the feminine squeals that followed.
A shadow passed by the window that he guessed was Scottie. He turned toward the doorway leading into one of the tarp-mazes they’d attached between some of the barricades and structures.
He thought he could hear footsteps drawing closer. He rose and darted across the space to stand next to the opening.
Three…two…one.
He hooked an arm around Angel and spun so her back hit the wall, with him crowding her front. Her lips parted in surprise but she still managed to get off a round.
The sting didn’t compare to the hit of pure heat that slammed into his gut. “You shot me in the foot,” he growled in mock pain.
“Better than the brain stem.”
“Scottie?” he guessed. She was a little disturbing sometimes.
Angel nodded, a rainbow of dried paint masking the pink-tipped ends of her hair. More tiny drops dotted her skin from her nose to chin, as if she’d been standing too close when someone else had been hit.
“I wasn’t sure I was going to see you tonight.”
“I wasn’t sure I was coming,” she admitted.
“Regretting your decision?” Because he sure as hell wasn’t.
She didn’t answer, but the wheels behind those gorgeous eyes were spinning hard. Her lids lowered as if to keep him from reading her thoughts.
His gaze tracked across the dusting of freckles, down to her mouth, to her jaw and the slender curve of her neck. “What happened to not letting anyone get close enough to bite?” He cursed the gloves he wore that stopped him from grazing the tempting skin begging to be teased.
“Everyone lets their guard down sometimes.”
“So then you’re prepared to pay the price?” His jaw grazed her cheek.
Her body softened, setting off a chain reaction that started with a low buzz that hummed under his ribs and spread until he couldn’t draw a breath without feeling her invade every one of his senses.
She turned her head and nipped his bottom lip. “The only one paying the price is you.” Her eyes met his, mischief twinkling in the pools of blue-green.
“Scottie is behind me, isn’t she?”
“Brain stem, remember?” Angel grinned.
He pivoted around, unwilling to sacrifice his hold on her just yet, but not quite committing to using her as a shield.
No one else was there.
It took a moment to process that, and a moment was all Angel needed to wiggle free and run from him.
He gave her a sporting chance—three seconds seemed fair—and took off after her.
The tarps flapped in the evening breeze as he moved between structures. Feet thumped on the ground around the next corner. Grinning, he barreled forward, spotting Angel immediately.
It was the group of women with her that he took a second too long to notice.
Shit.
Paintballs detonated across his chest, arms and legs. Pink, red, purple and yellow covered every inch of his body by the time the shooting stopped.
He dropped to his knees, wincing at some of the spots and never so thankful he was wearing a cup in his life. Angel lingered at the edge of the group that included Scottie and Adrianne, and possibly Lauren. It was hard to tell through all the paint on his goggles.
“You set me up,” he said to Angel.
“I told you no one would get close enough to take a bite.”
The girls laughed, then shrieked as a group of guys burst around the corner, peppering them with paint. They scattered, but Cade only paid attention to the direction Angel ran.
He ditched his gloves and goggles and was on his feet, almost running right into Scottie. She had another target in mind, he realized when she didn’t take a shot. He didn’t holler a warning at his brother who was half a dozen feet from walking directly into Scottie’s line of sight.
A flash of Angel’s hair snagged his attention, and he headed toward the edge of the paintball course in pursuit. The surrounding voices barely reached him as he circled the last structure. There weren’t any lights close by, and with the sun going down, the structure was in shadows.
“We can do this the easy way, or the hard way,” he called out. “The easy way involves you coming out with your hands in the air, apologizing and listing off ways you’ll make it up to me, but I’m kind of hoping you’ll go with the hard way.”
“Maybe we should see what’s behind door number three instead.” He felt the tip of a paintball gun nudge the back of his neck. “Are you cold enough yet?” Angel whispered, a smile in her voice.
* * *
Angel was pressing her luck, and enjoying every second of it.
She’d suspected he would follow her the moment she let Scottie talk her into luring him out. Egged on by the others, and unable to come up with a reason not to be the bait—not one that she was sharing anyway—she’d played along.
And it had felt good. Good to feel his arms around her, good to surprise him, good to just be near him.
She shouldn’t even be here, courting disaster with a man who might very well hate her if he knew the truth, but neither could she stay away from him.
She’d spent most of the match watching him move around the course, laughing with his brother and friends, and it only made her more curious about him. She wanted to know everything about him, the things he found funny, the food he loved to eat, the pet peeves that drove him crazy.
And now that she knew he was the boy she’d laid with in the woods one night, the two of them talking until their voices were hoarse after distracting him from the pain, she yearned to hear his stories all over again.
Cade rocked back on his heels, a subtle move to remind her that she didn’t have the upper hand as much as she thought she did.
“Walk forward.” She nudged him toward the lean-to structure in front of them.
“I thought you were too smart to go into dark places like that?”
Right now she was anything but smart. She wasn’t thinking with a damn bit of common sense, and the worst part was she knew it. Everything about being alone with Cade set her on a collision course with disaster, but she couldn’t make herself walk away from him. Not yet.
He turned his head ever so slightly. “Is this another ambush?”
“No.” Not the kind he was thinking about anyway.
“Good.” He twisted, grabbing the paintball gun from her easily and tossing it to the ground.
She could have backed up, could have tightened her grip on the gun, maybe even gotten another shot in, but she hadn’t come here tonight looking for a victory.
She’d come to surrender.
The gun he’d been using landed next to hers on the grass, but he didn’t make a move, just watched her, his face lost in the growing shadows. Except his mouth. She could see his smile easily enough, even the predatory edge to it.
He might not be a real zombie, but he knew full well that his chosen prey was within striking distance, and he wanted her to know it too.
Three seconds ticked off in her head, then five, then ten. And then she realized he wasn’t making a move this time. He was waiting for her to come to him.
In a heartbeat all her earlier misgivings flooded her system, and she took a step back before she could stop herself.
For a long time she’d imagined a hundred different scenarios where she and the boy from the woods crossed paths again, and none of them had been like this. She was never dirty and covered in paint, her lungs half-starved for oxygen from running around.
And she was never shaking, every cell in her body trembling from the inside out.
“Angel,” he murmured, his voice low, like he was talking to an animal he didn’t want to spook. “Come here.”
Her lips parted, all the things she wanted to say trapped somewhere between her heart and her throat.
“Please.” His voice was deeper now, but the rough plea was the same as it had been years ago, when he’d begged her not to leave him alone in the woods while she went for help.
“I’m sorry.” They weren’t the words she had been searching for, but they tumbled out anyway. “I’m so sorry… I never wanted…” She shook her head, emotion making it hard to swallow. “I shouldn’t have come back here. You don’t understand, and I know that…”
Her eyes blurred for a second and a hot tear slid down her face. She brushed it away before he could see it, but it was the hand he held out, the past reaching out to snare her, that sealed her fate.
She didn’t even realize she’d moved until she bypassed the hand and stepped right into his arms. She tipped her face up to meet his gaze. “I’m not who you think I am.”
“How about you let me decide that for myself?” He bent his head and pressed his lips to the place her tear had landed on her cheek, his lips soft and warm, and searing a brand across her heart.
She moved first, finding him with her mouth, her pulse firing faster than any weapon used tonight. She would have faced a full firing squad for this, the slow tease of his tongue gliding into her mouth, his grip unbreakable.
It would have been good years ago, she’d known it from the way he held her hand to his lips, but it wouldn’t have been this wild.
It was like every pass of his mouth, every drag of his teeth across her bottom lip, every drugging taste that went a little deeper, set another explosive that would bring her whole world down with the push of a button.
“Inside,” she murmured, caging his face in her palms and wanting his hands on her, even if it was just for a minute.
Cade groaned, his arms locking around her and dragging her all the way against him. They stumbled through the doorway, brushing the wood hard enough to make the whole lean-to shudder.
“It’ll hold,” he said against her lips. “Maybe.” He broke from her mouth to blaze a fiery trail down her throat, pulling at the shirt she’d tucked into her pants.
It made sense at the time to protect herself from tonight’s ammunition, but she was really regretting how thorough she’d been. She moved to help him, her skin tightening in anticipation of his hands slipping under her shirt.
He unclipped the chest protector she wore and let it drop to the ground. It had seemed like overkill before she’d arrived tonight and was hit for the first time, and she suddenly felt exposed without it.
His hand slipped beneath her shirt, and she shivered as it curved across her ribs, his thumb grazing the side of her breast. All the heat in her veins thickened and settled in a needy ache between her thighs.
More. She needed so much more.
Cade’s eyes slid shut while he trailed across her skin as if reading a language he could only make sense of by touch.
She shuddered in his arms, her body on the cusp of a steep drop into unknown territory. Every long look, every lingering caress, every breath that caught in her chest, felt shockingly new, and she couldn’t get enough.
He turned so his body shielded her from view. Even if someone walked in and peered into the shadows, no one would see anything but Cade’s back. That knowledge both unnerved and excited her all at once.
His hand settled at her waist and he drew a lazy circle around her navel. “Do you know what I thought the moment I met you?” He undid the button on her pants. “That you had the most incredible laugh.” His fingers found the zipper. “And I wanted to know what this gorgeous woman trying to hide her sadness was doing in Sapphire Falls.”
He’d thought she looked sad? He hadn’t said anything about that, but his perception didn’t surprise her. He’d been able to read her emotions in the woods that night without even seeing her face. No one had ever been that good at guessing what she was thinking.
Cade hooked his thumbs through the belt loops on her pants and tugged, the material shimmying down her hips.
“I wanted to know her story,” he continued, “her secrets.” He slipped beneath the edge of her panties. “But I also wanted to know what it would be like to kiss her, touch her, have her naked in my bed so I could make her laugh, whisper and scream for me all…night…long.”
He slid through her folds, finding her hot and wet and damn near ready to explode. For him. God, the effect he had on her was absolutely insane, and she wouldn’t change a damn thing about it.
Cade claimed a kiss as savage as his caress was soft and slow. So freaking slow.
“I’ve thought about you in the shower with me,” he added, “and going for a long, hard ride in my truck. I’ve thought about all the ways I want to make you come for me, Angel.”
And she was going to. Every slippery circle he made around her clit, the friction increasingly sweeter, guaranteed it would. The whole damn town could burn to the ground and she wouldn’t notice. Not with Cade pressed against her, breaking from her mouth to catch every other inch of her neck in a lazy pull.
If she thought he’d overwhelmed her senses before, now he completely consumed them. The raw earthy scent of him filled her head, his jaw scuffing her skin until it tingled with every kiss. She bunched his shirt under her fingers where she clutched his shoulders, hungering to touch bare skin, wanting him naked and so damn close no one would know where he began and she ended.
She watched, hypnotized by the fierce eyes that kept returning to hers, his breaths almost as fast as hers as his lips brushed her ear. “If you hadn’t come tonight I would have tracked you down.”
“For this?” She rocked up on her toes, biting her lip when he pushed a finger inside her. She turned her face into his chest, the sound of pleasure rocketing up her throat, threatening to give them away.
“We could have played checkers for all I would’ve cared. Although this is nice, too,” he teased, sliding up her cleft in another maddening caress that drove her out of her mind. “Very, very nice.”
“Cade,” she murmured, pleasure twisting and tightening inside her, coiling faster and hotter.
His fingers circled and rubbed her clit, again and again, his tongue sliding into her mouth, slick and sinful and shooting her right over the edge.
She moaned into his mouth, shuddering to her core long after the bone-melting pleasure began to fade. If the kiss was one-in-a-million, she wasn’t going to try to put a number to the intensity of the orgasm that wrecked her completely.