Then I wondered what would happen now that we were up here. Alone.
Cade leaned in and pressed his lips to my neck. Just one light, openmouthed kiss against my now-speeding pulse. I tilted my head to accept more of those kisses, but he pulled away.
“T-talk.”
“Sure, like I can think with you kissing my neck.” I slid him a gaze and found his eyes filled with male pride, which was a look I’d seen on him before. I thought I didn’t like that look, but…I did.
It was a testament to his self-control that he hadn’t ravished me. It was a testament to mine that I hadn’t asked him to.
“My family, when my parents were still married, used to vacation in the Bahamas,” I said, steering the topic back to the necklace he’d asked me about in the basement. That seemed safer than any of the other ideas rampaging through my head.
“The last vacation we went on as a family, my mom and dad took me swimming with the sea turtles. It was my favorite thing ever.”
He shrugged his mouth, his eyes going to half-mast like he was saying oh la la. Not that Cade would ever say oh la la, though if he did, we’d have the beginnings of a productive therapy session.
Anyway.
“They have these big eyes, massive shells,” I continued. “They’re gentle giants. Ridiculously graceful. On land they are painfully slow, but get them in their element and they glide.”
I wondered if he thought what I was saying was stupid, but he didn’t look bored. His lips were curved into an almost smile.
“My mom bought me this necklace after the divorce. It was my Christmas present. She said she always wanted me to remember the happy times we had together. And she promised times would be happy again—maybe not for the three of us together, but for me.”
Cade’s eyebrows closed in and his smile vanished. Sympathy flitted across his face so briefly that if I’d blinked I’d have missed it. He knew intimately what it was like for a family to be ripped apart. He understood wanting things to be good again.
Better than I did, I imagined.
“Things will get better. It just takes time.” I stroked his temple and brushed the hair away from his forehead. He looked at me for a long time, and I didn’t stop touching him. I ran my fingers down his cheek, across his chin, and then over his full bottom lip. I leaned in and pressed a kiss onto his waiting mouth…and decided I didn’t want to come up for air.
He must have agreed, because next he slipped his fingers into my hair, his tongue into my mouth, and we were at it again. Touching, moaning, moving to an invisible beat we had set.
Over my shirt and bra, he cupped my breast, lips leaving mine to suction, warm and wet, on my neck and drive me out of my mind. When his hand lifted my shirt, I stopped him and our eyes met.
I don’t know why I stopped him. I was afraid, kind of. Not of him but of myself. Of what I wanted to do. Part of me thought I was suffering some sort of posttraumatic stress from the storm, but then that sounded stupid in my head.
Cade pulled in a steadying breath before sitting up on the couch. Then he took my hand and helped me sit upright as well. For the next twenty minutes we kissed instead of talking or doing speech therapy.
His hands didn’t wander again.
I lied and told myself I respected him for having self-control.