Page 46 of Confusing Cade
For the next few moments, I only felt the heat of her skin, the way her body arched to meet mine, and the way her fingers clutched at my back as though anchoring herself to this moment. Each kiss, each caress, and each thrust was a vow, and all promised this was more than fleeting passion. This was a claiming of hearts, and a merging of souls.
The intensity built, a crescendo that left us both breathless. Her hands gripped the sheets, then found me again, pulling me closer as the world narrowed to the space between us. The rhythm of our bodies became urgent, a shared pulse that drowned out everything else. When the wave finally broke, it was with a shared cry. For a moment, we were suspended, weightless, bound only to each other in space.
“Again,” she said after a moment. “I want to have you again.”
Hours later, we lay together, the room now bathed in the soft, golden glow of morning light. The sheets were a tangled mess around us. Her hair, loose and wild, spilled across the pillow like a halo spun from midnight, framing her face in a way that made my chest ache. My heart still pounded, struggling to settle after the storm of our union. Every breath felt heavy with the weight of what we’d shared, yet light with the joy of finally crossing that threshold.
I shifted beneath the covers, pulling her close until her back pressed against my chest, her warmth seeping into me like a balm. My arms wrapped around her, protective and possessive, fingers tracing lazy patterns across her stomach.
The skin-to-skin contact grounded me, something I’d never known before Bella. For so many years, I’d doubted other women’s sincerity when they’d attached themselves to me afterone date. Money attracted the wrong type of interest often, but Bella was different. She didn’t seem to have any other agenda but to be with me. It could be too early, but the stirring of confidence in us was established.
She was mine, and I was hers.
Her breathing slowed, steady and soft, a rhythm that synced with my own. I pressed a gentle kiss to the nape of her neck, tasting the faint salt of her skin, and felt her shiver in response.
“That was incredible,” I whispered into the quiet of the room, my voice raw with overwhelming emotion. She turned her head slightly, her eyes finding mine in the dim light, a small, contented smile playing on her lips as she nodded. The silence that followed was filled with the promise of more moments like this, of a connection that would continue to grow, deepen, and perhaps last.
“I’ve never felt this way about anyone.” Her voice was thick and sleepy. She closed her eyes and tucked her head into my neck. “Never expected I would with you.”
“It was unexpected for me too, but now that we’re together, I can’t deny it.”
“Some PR opportunity, huh?”
“The very best kind.” I kept my gaze focused on her so she’d know I was listening and that it was okay to talk more and share more with me.
Her expression fell a little. “Doing FanZone was a mistake. I regret it.”
“You don’t have to regret it,” I replied. “That’s a choice you make.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that we have the power to perceive things that happen to us in certain ways. Not that bad things don’t happen to us. They do, they happen to all of us. But the trick is how we allowthings to affect us. We have the power to decide what we want to take from life and the decisions that we make.”
“Like what?” She leaned out of my arms and rolled toward me, and I appreciated that about Bella. We were sharing some hard truths, and I valued that she wanted me to know she was fully listening.That’s rare too.
“Like the time I lost five hundred thousand bucks in a crypto scam.” Her eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open. “What?”
“It was a couple years ago when everyone was into that shit. I made a couple trades on an exchange, but my digital wallet got compromised. Hackers drained it all.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah, it sucked.”Fucking sucked, actually. “That’s not a small amount of money.”
“That’s like... a fortune. What did you do about it?”
I shrugged against the pillow. “There wasn’t much. The thieves were overseas. It wasn’t like I could tell the FBI, and they’d go after them. I had to eat the loss.”
“That’s awful,” she murmured, and I could almost see the thoughts turning in her head.
“So, I could have been pissed. Stressed out. Angry. And I was all of those things for a little bit, but I quickly realized that if I stayed that way, if I only saw that incident from a place of pain, then that was a choice I was making. That was a thing I was doing.”
She nodded, and I knew she understood where I was going.
“So, you can view FanZone as a regret or as something that you learned from. And that’s up to you.” I sat up in bed and looked at my phone. Seven thirty. Not late by any means, but later than my usual wake up at five. “God, I need some coffee. Do you want any?”
“Sure.”
“Wait here.”
