Chapter 23

Do you want to sit home and mope?” Cade demanded when I opened the door to my house. He stood on my doorstep with coffee in hand. “Or do you want to be the hot bitch on the dance floor who makes him regret ever being dumb enough to walk away from your sexy ass?”

I just stared at him. He was so… perky.

We’d gotten into Cedar Harbor late in the afternoon two days ago after a non-stop drive from Colorado. We’d made brief pauses for food, coffee, or bathroom breaks, but that was it. I’d been so tired that I’d gone straight to bed while Cade had decided to head out, considering he was expected to be at the Ironwood packhouse for the next round of the Fall Games.

In the aftermath of overwhelming feelings, I hadn’t quite gotten out of bed unless absolutely necessary. I didn’t have work, my parents didn’t know I was in town, and all my friends were gone. There wasn’t a good reason to get out of bed. Crying and napping in between snacks seemed like a reasonable response.

“What?” I whispered, not knowing how to handle him. It was early, I still had my silk scarf tied in my hair, and I didn’t have an ounce of coffee in my system.

“Did you just wake up?” He breezed into my house, putting a coffee in my hand as he passed. His gaze swept up and down my body. “That looks fucking comfortable.”

I glanced down at my cream pajama set. It was old with piling around the ribbed design, but I loved the thing. So much so that I was attempting to find another one to replace this one.

“It is,” I replied. He kicked off his shoes and sprawled out on my couch while I shut the door. “Come in, Cade. Make yourself at home.”

“I always do.” He grinned. “So, about my question.”

I shushed him and made my way to the kitchen. So early. It was so, so early. I needed a minute—a ridiculously long minute. He fell silent while I took out my favorite coffee mug and transferred the frothy drink to help it cool. Glancing at him, I found him on his phone. For as needy as he was, he was very good at self-entertaining. It gave me the chance to go to the bathroom, take off my scarf, and get somewhat situated for the day. Somewhat was the keyword here. I needed a hot bath, candles, coffee, and a good book to find my center. Three of those things weren’t happening. Coffee, a pee break, and moisturizing my face would have to work.

“Okay,” I began as I rejoined him. Grabbing my cup, I joined him in the living room. “Ask me that question again.”

“All right, you gorgeous fucking fiend, do you want to sit home and mope in this quiet little house? Or do you want to make that bounty hunter regret the day he didn’t do his damn job and keep chasing you?”

Hunted down by a bounty hunter… sounded hot.

No. No, no. That bounty hunter was my angry husband. No hunting down. No thoughts like that. God, I needed to have sex. And soon. My lady parts were starting to do all the thinking for me. I wouldn’t ever tell a soul about the kind of dreams I had about Killian after that kiss.

“So?” Cade prompted, his voice ripping me from my thoughts. See? Distracted by my lady parts.

“What’d you have in mind?” I asked, unable to help myself.

“Be my date tonight,” he said. “You’re supposed to be there. You were invited after all. Let’s doll you the fuck up, dance, drink, and have the night of our lives. You know Raven will join us and Isla too. And I bet Nolan would rather hang out with us than drink with a bunch of idiots.”

“Those idiots are the idiots you’re trying to impress,” I reminded him.

“They’re brilliant pack leaders,” he countered, “but they’re drunken idiots. We’re all drunken idiots. Let’s be hot drunken idiots. I’ll take you out for a nice coffee, nails, and new clothes. I’ll pamper you with the whole works.”

There was so much wrong with his plan, but the petty part of me liked it—the petty part of me wanted to see if Killian would squirm.

I lived out of my guest room—not that Cade knew it was my guest room. I just couldn’t bring myself to sleep in our room. Even after three years. A therapist would’ve been unimpressed with my lack of moving on if I actually saw a therapist.

Trust in God, my dad kept telling me. He wouldn’t steer me wrong and all that. At least, that was what my dad insisted. In three years, I could feel my faith fracturing. It broke my heart. I grew up in the church. I still worked at the church. And yet, somehow, I struggled with my relationship with God when I shouldn’t.

Yeah, I was more of a mess than I let on around people.

“Bare essentials, woman.” Cade dropped into my reading chair, kicking his feet up as he made himself comfortable while I packed. Again.

“Says the man who packs enough for a small army,” I scoffed.

“Those are the bare essentials,” he said. “I never said it had to be a small amount. That was your assumption.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re high maintenance?” I asked.

“I’m fully aware,” he replied with a cocky grin. One day he would drive some man crazy in the best of ways.

I peeled my sweater off, letting it drop to the floor—yeah, I could be messy. I had on a bralette so I didn’t mind changing around him. Wolf or not, I was still working on comfort with my body around people.

“Stop,” Cade ordered, and I froze. I glanced at him. His head was cocked to the side as his gaze fell to my neck. Subconsciously, I toyed with the golden necklace I wore. The dual-locked loop design made it easy to play with the hoop resting between my breasts. Even the slightest movement would tighten the delicate chain around my neck. “I’ve spent a lot of time in sex clubs, you know that, right?”

“You may have mentioned it,” I replied casually, pretending to think nothing of it, even as my heart rate kicked up in my chest. My wolf stirred, ready to defend me as that familiar anxiety of someone finding out my secret nagged at me. I’d always been very careful about anyone figuring it out.

“Then you should know that I’d recognize a submissive collar when I see one,” he said. Damn it. “Even a discreet one like that.”

I twisted one hoop between my fingers. I should’ve thought of that. Granted, I hadn’t been expecting him when I put it on.

“Was he just your dom in the bedroom or everywhere else as well?” Of course, he’d get it.

“We have a color coded safety system,” I explained, my voice barely audible to even me. Talking about it out loud was uncomfortable. No one but Killian, myself, and the couple that taught us the lifestyle knew about it. “Outside of our sex life… sometimes I don’t know how to function in the world. There’s a lot of… I just… it’s just… in my past…”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Cade cut in. Leaning forward, he reached for my shaking hands and pulled me closer. The sincerity in his eyes wrecked me—like he knew all the things in my past, even though I couldn’t say them.

“Sometimes, I freeze up.” I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat. “Sometimes just functioning isn’t… easy. He helped with that. It was easier to let him tell me how to take care of myself and let him take care of me.”

“Your whole dynamic with him suddenly makes a lot more sense,” he commented. His gaze drifted back to the necklace.

“Don’t touch it,” I told him.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Cade whispered. “It’s not my place. That’s something intimate between you two.”

“Is it stupid that I still feel safe wearing it?” I blurted out. Maybe I just needed someone to tell me it was okay that I still wore the collars he bought me when no one was around. I wasn’t even his anymore, but that weight around my neck brought me more comfort than anything else had in three years.

“How long?”

“Almost ten years.”

“That’s not stupid, Ginny. And I’m going to guess that, with how things ended abruptly, there was no closure or dissolution on his part. He didn’t properly end his role and authority over you, did he?” he asked, and I shook my head. “It doesn’t surprise me. I don’t know much about that lifestyle, but ten years of it with the same person, I know it’s not something that you pretend never happened. I won’t say shit about your marriage, but I will say, he disrespected his role as your dom and disrespected you as his submissive by just walking without a word. He needed to handle his relationship with his submissive better than that. For your mental and emotional well-being.”

Yeah, well, that applied to how my whole marriage ended.

“How did you handle the abrupt transition? Or have you?”

“I’ve been okay on my own,” I said with absolutely no confidence. “I have to be. It’s sink or swim.”

“And are you sinking or swimming, Ginny?” Cade replied.

“Both,” I admitted. I sank a lot more than I swam, but people didn’t need to know that. I couldn’t be the pathetic woman who needed her husband to help her sort out the complicated trauma bits of her life. Killian had kept me swimming—taking over when I didn’t know how to deal with the world. Without him, it was deep immersive therapy while attempting to heal. I didn’t do that. Instead, I made band-aids and excuses.

“That’s okay.” Closing the distance between us, he hugged me tight. I leaned into him for a brief moment of comfort. “I’m proud of you. You should be proud of yourself too.”

“Well, now you know my dirty secret, so you have to tell me one of yours, Mr. Sex Club,” I said with a shaky laugh as I pulled away. Granted, if he was anything like Raven, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what his thing was—or things. He considered me for a long moment.

“I’ve never kissed anyone,” Cade told me quietly.

“What?” I exclaimed. My eyes widened. There was no way Cade Alexander Locke had never kissed a man. “But you’ve dated people!”

“So?” He shrugged. “I’ve never kissed anyone. It’s too… intimate. I may have issues with intimacy. Sex? Sure. But intimacy? Nope. I’m good without it. Hell, I’ve never had sex looking at someone either.”

“But you’ve dated people…” Unfathomable. How could you date someone without ever kissing them?

“I’ve dated James and only James,” he corrected. “And he understood my issues. Only at the end when he decided he wanted to get married did it start to become a problem between us, so I ended it.”

“So, you’ve really never kissed… anyone?”

“No.”

“But what about open mouth guy?”

“I said he came at me,” Cade reminded me. “I never said he kissed me.”

“But you said you deserve a damn good kisser,” I said.

“And I do because if I do ever kiss anyone, it should be a damn good kiss. I’m thirty-three and never fucking kissed a guy. Put dicks in my mouth? Oh, definitely. But kissed? Nope.”

“Wow,” I let out. That wasn’t even on the list of things I was expecting.

“So, that’s my dirty secret. Feel better?”

“Better? No.” I shook my head. “Feel a need to get you a therapist so you can make out with a guy? Yeah. Now I want to help you find you a damn good kisser.”

“Find me a hot lumberjack of my own, and then we’ll talk,” he joked. I knew enough about Cade to know he was officially uncomfortable, so I let the conversation drop.

Instead, I put my attention on getting ready. When I went to take off my collar, I hesitated. I didn’t want to take it off. It was an absolutely stupid idea to wear it to the bar tonight. The Killian I knew wouldn’t have overreacted. But this Killian? He’d probably flip his shit.

But maybe I wanted him to flip his shit. Maybe I wanted him to feel as crappy about what he did to me as I felt. Maybe I wanted him to hurt like I did—even if it was only for a fraction of a second.