Chapter 17
Cade
I swirled my tongue between Tasha’s legs one final time as she shuddered against me. Water from the shower was blinding me, damn near drowning me, and my knees were sore from kneeling on the hard surface of the tub, but I’d gladly lose feeling in my limbs if it meant hearing her lust-filled voice hug the vowels in my name.
Caden. Oh, god, Caden.
I liked when she used my full name.
Swiping the water from my eyes, I stood and slid my tongue over her breasts on my way up. When I reached her mouth I kissed her, and she kissed me back, pushing my soaking-wet hair off my forehead. She was leaning against the back of her shower, ass pressed to the wall, eyes halfway shut. Her blond hair was a shade darker when it was wet. Mascara was smudged beneath her eyes. I swiped the black away with my thumbs and smiled. She smiled back.
“I bet I’m a mess,” she said over the spray.
“You look good enough to eat. But I already did that.”
She kissed the smile off my face.
I shut off the water and we climbed out and dried off, me scrubbing a towel over my head and body in record time. She wrapped a towel around her hair in that fancy way girls do, and I watched as she put her foot on the toilet seat to dry her leg. She put that foot on the floor, then dried her other leg and straightened to dry her stomach and then both arms.
It was a show I could watch all day.
“I can’t get enough of you,” I said. And damn, I hadn’t even meant to say it aloud.
“Really?” She sounded surprised.
I cleared my throat and owned up to my verbal blurt. “Yeah.”
“You don’t think there will be another girl in a few months? That you’ll have had enough of me by then?”
I knew where this was coming from, and I didn’t like it. “No.”
Her towel was wrapped around her body, and I rested my palms on her hips.
“There were a lot of other girls before me, Cade,” she said, pointing out a time in my life I wasn’t proud of. I was angry with Brooke at the time and, yes, there were other girls. They hadn’t meant much to me, but in all fairness, I hadn’t meant much to them either.
“That’s true,” I admitted. “But before I turned sex into a sport, there was Brooke.” I swallowed thickly, not wanting to tell her this. “Before Brooke, there was no one.”
Tasha’s eyebrows rose. “Not…anyone?”
I shook my head. “We started dating when we were fifteen. After high school came college. We were going to get married. She was it.”
Tasha’s expression morphed into sympathy for me, and maybe a little hurt for her. I pulled her closer.
“Then she was gone and my only goal was to forget her. I figured if I slept around enough, they would all blend together until I’d forget her completely.”
Tasha frowned. She didn’t like hearing any of this.
“And did they?” she asked, her voice small. “Blend?”
“After a while. Until…they didn’t.”
I wasn’t looking at her, but I could feel her stare boring a hole through my head. I met her eyes, needing to root myself so that I could admit what I needed to admit.
“Until you, Tasha. You made me forget everyone else. Brooke. The other girls. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say her name without feeling like I’ve been stabbed in the heart.”
She put a palm on my cheek. “Cade.”
I took a deep breath and told her what I told my dad earlier today.