Page 18 of Hideaway

“Do I have a choice?” Kara asked with a quivering voice.

“Do you want one?” Cade responded sharply, a challenge in his expression.

Kara paused to ponder the audacity of his question. Did she want a choice? The most obvious answer, the most logical answer wasyes, but she couldn’t deny the inciting appeal of not being held accountable for enjoying whatever pleasure Cade might force upon her. It was a sick notion, which she dismissed immediately. Well,almost immediately. “Yes,” Kara answered softly, not sounding entirely convinced of her own response.

“Then,yesyou have a choice.” Cade pulled Kara against his body, feeling the warmth of her skin and frantic beat of her heart as she trembled against him. She felt so small against his broad form, sofragile, like he had to contain his own strength to keep from shattering her into a thousand pieces. He didn’t want her broken. Not yet, anyway.

“I’d like to go alone. Please,” Kara answered, feeling a twinge of regret even as she said the words. In the darkest recesses of her heart, she knew that she wanted Cade, but she couldn’t trust herself not to fall for him completely if she gave him such an intimate piece of herself. She needed the distance to protect her heart.

Cade glared at her, disappointment and anger marring his features. “As you wish,” he acquiesced darkly, throwing away her hand as though it burned to touch her. “Run along,” Cade said with a dismissive wave of his hand. His eyes glittered with the threat:before I try to catch you.

Heading his warning, Kara scurried toward the exit with every intention of locking her bedroom door until morning. Just to be safe. Suddenly, a nettling thought crossed her mind, causing her to turn back to the imperious man still lingering at the end of the table basking in a hazy shroud of animosity. “Cade?” she asked hesitantly. “Spaghetti Sundays—how did you know?”Because she knew he did. Cade was too calculating for coincidences to occur in his vicinity.

“I know everything about you, Kara,”Cade answered simply, shrugging his shoulders as though it were the most obvious fact in the world.

Kara wasn’t quite sure if she should find his confession endearing or unsettling as she ran toward her bedroom with the express intention banishing his last words from memory.

Chapter Six

SHE had successfully avoided Cade the entire day after their dreadfully awkward incident at dinner. The incident in which she’d allowed him to get her off at the table and then subsequently turned him down for any further action in the sex department. He’d been pissed, and, honestly, she couldn’t blame him; she was a bit mad at herself for passing up her first enticing proposition for getting laid in months. Sometimes her damned good sense and rationality was a fucking cock block.

Hence, sexual frustration was entirely to blame for her current choice of reading material as she sat alone in the library with her neglected pussy. In spite of the general stereotype regarding librarians as being purely intellectual, the book wasn’t a great literary work at all. It was, to her great personal embarrassment,smut.

A firm rap on the library doors startled Kara from her complete disappearance into the imaginary constructs of a world forged entirely from words on a page. She frowned as she begrudgingly lowered the book in her hands, finding the uncomfortable experience of being coldly thrust into reality about as disruptive as being woken from a good dream. She could hazard a guess as to the identity of the ill-timed intruder. And the last thing she needed was to give Cade the ammunition for insults after catching her reading book porn.

Frantically, Kara scrambled to hide her guilty pleasure, a habit she’d developed while being an avid indulger in sexually illicit literature as a teenager. When was she worried of her parents discovering her embarrassing reading tastes, Kara would use a large, hardback bible to cover any raunchy books beneath. She supposed she was lucky to have not been struck down by some higher power for the sheer audacity. Having matured considerably since her teenage years, Kara tucked her smut beneath her chosen decoy ofMoby Dick, composed a reasonably believable expression of innocence, and answered the intruder.

“Come in.”

The doors burst open, and Cade strode purposefully into the room, his expression determined and a bit colder than usual. He looked stunning in a deep burgundy suit that she’d never seen him wear before, his usual uniform of a tie and waistcoat abandoned in favor of just a white collared shirt beneath the jacket. In a true contradiction with Cade’s usual fastidious style, the top two buttons of his dress shirt were undone, allowing the shirt to billow. The man was the definition of masculine perfection in a suit and tie, but he was thefucking epitomeof sex appeal when he was intentionally disheveled.

“Are you alright, Miss Caine? You appear to be on the verge of an aneurism.”

Kara jolted from mentally undressing and devouring Cade to find him staring at her with an amused smirk. She shook her head as though that would clear the illicit images of Cade naked from her thoughts. Self-consciously, Kara wiped at her mouth, hoping she hadn’t managed to actually salivate at the fantasy of Cade filling her mouth with his cock. The damn smut must be driving her mad. As she pressed her thighs together for relief, Kara found herself keenly aware that she had gone without sex for far too long. Sneaking another glance at Cade, she also realized that she might have found a solution for that particular issue.

“Cade,” Kara greeted finally, hoping she was merely imaging how breathy and desperate the word sounded on her lips. “Did you need something?”

Please say yes.

“Actually, no. I’m sorry to disturb your reading of,” Cade glanced at the downturned book in her lap, “Moby Dick.” His smile widened as though he had impossibly guessed her secret. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m going out tonight.”

Kara’s brow furrowed as she pondered what aspect of his fucking illicit occupation would be requiring his attention two hours before midnight.“What could you possibly be working on this late?”

“I didn’t say I was working,”Cade responded with intentional ambiguity, a suggestive smirk playing across his lips. To be honesty, he felt a mixture of guilt and satisfaction regarding the implication of his words. Guilt because he had every intention of spending the night drowning out all thoughts of Kara in the body of another woman—or two. Satisfaction because of the marked jealousy filling Kara’s face at that exact moment. Whether it was sexually or in some other capacity, she cared for him. He had grown to suspect as much, and there was the proof written plainly on her troubled little face. He had to admit, seeing her worry that full bottom lip with her teeth had his cock straining in his pants.

Fuck.

He needed to get out of the bloody house.

“Oh,”Kara responded finally with a slight frown, a multitudinous mixture of emotions wrapped into that one little word.

“Is there a problem, Kara?”Cade challenged with an arched brow. Daring her to claim him. Daring her to admit she cared.

“Of course not,”Kara responded in a tone of false nonchalance. Because yes,there fucking was a problem. Cade was going out for the night, most likely to fuck around with some floozy. And she couldn’t explain why the thought of Cade with someone else felt like a knife twisting in her heart, but it fucking did.“You’re free to do as you like,”Kara continued, her voice sounding unflatteringly bitchy to her own ears.“Unlike me.”

“Don’t be a brat,”Cade chided, his expression darkening with annoyance that verged on anger.“You know the rules, and you know why they are in place. You have as much freedom as your safety allows.”

“Oh yes, whatever would I do without your generous imprisonment. Oops, I meanprotection,”Kara responded with an eye roll before picking upMoby Dickand pretending to be greatly interested in an abnormally large whale.

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