Page 15 of The Chief (Those (Damn!) Texas Dantes #3)

CADE SAT behind his desk, the morning sun slashing across the floor in long golden stripes, slicing across the matte-black lacquer like some kind of divine interrogation.

His office smelled of espresso, bergamot, and the faint, bitter tang of printer ink and leather. He didn’t look up when Elise appeared in the doorway. Didn’t acknowledge her at all. Which was probably why she didn’t knock.

She wore one of his shirts, half-buttoned, collar slipping down one shoulder, the fabric clinging to damp curves and riding too high on her thighs. She hadn’t bothered to try to make it presentable.

Her hair was a tumble of soft silvery waves, tousled and wild in a way that had nothing to do with a curling iron and everything to do with sleep, sex, and zero shame. Her mouth curved slightly as she leaned against the doorframe, watching him like she was watching the weather.

Cade flipped a page, burying the hint of a smile that tugged at his mouth. She was ridiculous. Bold. Irresistibly disruptive. And already unraveling the part of him that preferred clean lines and silent mornings.

His eyes tracked the intel like her presence wasn’t pulling at the edges of his concentration, fraying logic one thread at a time.

Like her scent—coffee and jasmine and want—didn’t fog up every considered thought, every hardened edge he depended on.

But it did. It had from the second she stepped into his life. Into his house. Into his bed. Into him.

She pushed off the frame and padded in, bare feet silent on the polished hardwood, hips swaying with the kind of careless confidence that did something reckless to his pulse.

And carrying coffee, like she wasn’t a walking sin wrapped in morning light and cotton. Like she hadn’t just hijacked his entire self-discipline with bare legs and bed-warm skin.

She didn’t ask permission to enter. Didn’t hover.

Just crossed the room like it belonged to her.

She held out the second mug to him as she passed, brushing his hand with hers, warm skin over rougher heat.

Then she folded into the leather armchair by the window, knees tucked up, the second mug cupped between her hands.

The sunlight hit her through the glass, warming her skin to gold.

She looked like a temptation carved out of morning light which utterly shredded his last ounce of restraint.

She didn’t look at him. She didn’t have to.

Instead, her gaze remained trained on the window, but he knew she sensed him watching.

Knew she was aware of the burn of his attention as much as he was aware of her, whether it was the length of her legs or the way the shirt clung to curves still etched in his hands from the night before.

It was a performance, sure, but not for him.

This was Elise comfortable. Elise stripped bare.

And somehow, that made it more dangerous than any game she’d played so far.

She was like a shift in gravitational pull.

“You take it black?” she asked eventually, her voice husky from disuse.

“No sugar. No cream. No games.”

She took a long sip of her own, her eyes half-lidded. “So, broody with a hint of bitterness. Got it.”

Cade turned another page, feigning focus he no longer had.

The paper blurred. Her voice, her presence, the soft scrape of her legs shifting in the chair, all threaded through his brain like static.

His fingers gripped the page too tightly, the edges bending.

He could sense the heat of her glance without looking.

And when she took another sip of coffee, lips parting around the rim of the mug like she was tasting something far more decadent, he knew he was fucked.

If he looked at her—really looked—he wouldn’t stop.

She smiled to herself. He caught it in his peripheral vision and barely resisted the urge to look again. “You always read reports this early?” she asked, tilting her head against the back of the chair.

“You always wander into men’s offices uninvited?”

“Only the ones I married.”

His mouth twitched again. Subtle. Sharp.

God, she was dangerous. Not in the way people used the word casually.

But truly. Deeply. In the way she made his walls lean inward with every word.

Every look. Every stolen second of quiet.

He wanted to drag her into his lap and lick the smug off her smile.

Bury his fingers in that wild hair and remind them both what last night was and could be again.

But she just sat there—bare, beautiful, maddening—and waited like she didn’t already know she owned the room.

She let the silence stretch. Not awkward. Not tense. Just... charged. Heat building under pressure, molecules vibrating in the space between them.

She shifted slightly in the chair, a subtle roll of her hips that had no reason to be as erotic as it was.

But Cade’s body registered it anyway. Instinct first. Logic a distant second.

Every breath she took pulled the air tighter.

Every beat of silence strung with friction.

He didn’t know if she was doing it on purpose, but God help him, it was working.

Her index finger circled the lip of her coffee mug. “You were gone when I woke up.”

His pen scratched across the page. “Didn’t want to disturb you.”

“Considerate,” she murmured. Her voice wasn’t sharp. But it wasn’t warm either. Neutral. Observational. The verbal equivalent of checking a temperature and deciding whether or not to adjust the heat.

She set the mug on the windowsill beside her and pulled her legs in tighter.

The fabric of his shirt clung to her curves, the movement hitching it higher on her thighs, baring more skin than it covered.

Her toes flexed, curling into the cushion, an unconscious display of comfort, and probably tension.

Cade’s gaze lingered, caught between the vulnerable spread of her knees and the shadowed hint of lace barely visible beneath.

It wasn’t deliberate. That made it worse.

Because if she wasn’t trying to tempt him, then this was just how she existed, undone and devastating in his space, in his clothes, in his damn life.

His eyes followed that hemline like a man tracking the edge of his own undoing.

The slide of fabric over bare legs, the delicate twitch of muscle beneath.

Every inch revealed tested his restraint.

His body didn’t ask permission to react.

Heat stirred like brewing darkness, possessive and primal.

Traitorous bastard didn’t begin to cover it.

He was already imagining what was under that shirt.

And how fast he could get her out of it.

He finally looked up.

Skin. Long, sun-drenched legs curled into the chair, smooth and bare and distracting as hell. Her mouth unreadable. Her expression not flirtatious, not inviting. Just... honest.

“You needed something?” he asked, though the words barely came out.

His throat felt scraped raw from holding back want and restraint, the thousand things he hadn’t said last night when he’d pulled her into his arms and made love to her. His gaze dropped again, to the soft inner curve above her knee, to the stretch of smooth skin he hadn’t kissed nearly enough.

The question wasn’t a dismissal. It was a deflection. Because what he wanted to say, what burned just behind his teeth, was: Come here. Sit on my desk. Let me taste the rest of the want you’re wearing like perfume.

Elise tilted her head, shattering blue eyes steady. “I think that’s the question I was going to ask you.”

He waited. Because that’s what he did. Let people speak.

Let them stumble. Let them try to spin their truths into something neat and distant.

But Elise didn’t do neat. And she sure as hell didn’t do distant.

She sat there in his shirt, the echo of last night clinging to her skin like a dare, and when she looked at him like that, open, steady, without a single inch of armor, something shifted deep inside his chest. He waited, yes.

But for her, he didn’t know if he was bracing for the truth or bracing to take it on like a war he already knew he’d win.

She reached for her coffee cup. “Last night seemed like something real,” she said, voice quieter now. Her fingers tightened around the porcelain and her knuckles went white. ”This morning,” she continued, “is more like something’s missing.”

Cade exhaled, a breath pulled from somewhere deeper than his lungs, like it had scraped over every nerve on its way out.

Her words hit harder than he expected, mainly because they were true.

And because they were hers. Elise didn’t throw punches to wound.

She laid truths bare, soft and brutal all at once.

That morning felt like something was missing?

Goddamn right it did. And the worst part?

Knowing she wasn’t the only one who experienced it.

He stood, the chair scraping softly against the rug. Moved around the desk with a predator’s patience and stopped in front of her.

He didn’t touch her. Not yet. But the urge rode him hard, fierce, and relentless. She looked up at him like that urge swept over her, too. That pull, that unspoken dare strung taut between them. Just one move. One word. One breath too close. And he’d snap. Instead, he looked.

At her full lips. At the hollow of her throat where her pulse fluttered. Then her breasts, the upper curves exposed where his shirt gaped too wide, each breath she took teasing the fabric further off center, visible and infuriatingly perfect. Her knees. Her dainty feet.

His.

She was his.