Cade by Mason Sabre Page B

and splashed on more, until the tingle under his skin began to subside and his mind began to clear. He was running a fever, except, he knew that it wasn’t his. It was the boy’s. Cade hoped it worked the other way and that if he cooled himself down, he could cool the boy down, too.
    Cade patted his face dry with the small hand towel that he kept on the back of the door. He stopped and inhaled deeply. It smelt like Gemma—sweet and musky all at the same time. He kept it against his face and drowned in the scent. It calmed his wolf . He had found the piece of him that had been missing, the part that completed him. But it was wrong and forbidden. Reluctantly, he hung the towel back up and tried not to ponder what had happened before in the kitchen. Perhaps Gemma had simply needed contact tonight—perhaps she had needed something to calm her nerves. But cats didn’t need touch like wolves did, so it didn’t really make sense. Had she been flirting with him? Had what had happened after their shift earlier this evening not been in his imagination, and Gemma was actually trying to seduce him? The entire notion seemed absolutely absurd. Yet, he had heard her heart speed up, watched how her lips had parted in silent invitation, and sensed her arousal. He swore silently. Whatever the case, he had to stay away from her. This was Gemma. This was Stephen’s little sister. Practically his, too.
    The small lamp in the hallway barely cast any light at all. Tonight, it seemed a little darker than usual … or maybe it was him who was a little darker than normal. Cade walked quietly, careful not to disturb Stephen and Gemma, who had both already gone to their rooms. As he was about to walk past Gemma’s room, he noticed her door stood slightly ajar. His stomach knotted, anticipation of maybe catching a glimpse of her asleep in his bed—where she belonged. The thought rose unbidden to his mind, and he forced it back down with a silent curse. As he approached her door, he kept reminding himself he was simply going to go close her door so that she’d have her privacy. That was all. He wasn’t doing it for any other reason. He wasn’t hoping to try catch a glimpse of her, he tried to convince himself. But when he reached the door, his mind emptied. Gemma was standing next to his bed in the semi-lit room, dressed only in the shirt he had loaned her.
    Cade’s breath caught in his throat as his gaze travelled up the length of her long, naked legs, to the shirt, and then all the way up to her face. Their eyes met and locked, just like they had in the kitchen before. He watched her with a growing hunger that only spiked when she reached to the top button of the shirt and slowly pushed it open, exposing her throat to him. Keeping her eyes on him, she moved her hand down slowly, opening the next button and then the next. Cade sucked in his breath and took a step forward, almost as if in a trance. His mind suddenly engaging, he realised what he was about to do. He grabbed onto the wooden frame, the wood threatening to splinter under the force of his grip. It was the only thing that kept him from racing into the room and possessing every part of her.
    Breathing hard, he desperately tried to regain his control, feeling it slowly slip from his grasp with every new button Gemma slid from its fastening. Cade almost lost it when he finally glimpsed the smooth streak of silky flesh revealed to him under the shirt that now gaped open. She only had a pair of skimpy white panties on underneath, and the sight made him as hard as steel. His arousal strained against the zipper of his jeans as his gaze travelled hungrily up over the firm smoothness of her stomach to the gentle curve of her breasts barely visible to him. His eyes caressed her perfect, naked flesh, desperately wishing it was his hands, not his eyes. He needed to taste her with an urgency that was all-consuming. His wolf howled and clawed at him, demanding to take what he considered his. It