I was so eager to read Kade’s story. After reading about him in the previous books, I wanted to know more about this sexy and mysterious man.
The beginning of the book already made me cry like crazy bc it is the airport scene when he says goodbye to Ava and Mason, and his POV is even sadder than Ava’s.
“I’ll always love you Ava, always. You are my first love, the first woman who ever owned all of me. I need you to be happy, sweetheart. I need you to live your life now, not live in the shadow of two controlling men; two men who want everything of you, Ava. We’d drown you, suffocate you with love and I couldn’t bear it if we broke you in our desire to make you happy.”
“I love you, Kade.”
Oh fuck. The power of those words that I had longed to hear for so, so long engulfed my whole essence and freed something inside me as it coupled with an immense feeling of grief. I closed my eyes, letting the peace and chaos of her declaration flow through me but I cursed when I couldn’t hold back the emotion of them and a tear trickled down my face. I pleaded right then, with God, with someone I had never had any faith in, an entity that had never given me any reason to believe, but right then and there, I begged with my soul, my spirit and my body to give me the strength I needed to let her walk away. “I’ve loved you for eight years, Kade and I will love you for eternity.”
“As I will always love you Ava, forever and absolutely”. “Go.” I breathed frantically, beseeching with approaching hysterics that she go now before she witnessed my final and utter breakdown.
When I read this scene the last time in “Atonement” I had trouble understanding and accepting it, why he did not let go and left with the despite the reasons he gave Ava, but seeing in this book his decision was made at the last moment, with this luggage at his side, and the devastation that was to put the welfare of Ava over his.... Oh God!!😭😭. I fell in love with this man in that moment. I always thought that Ava and Kade would have deserve a chance, more time than they spent together,so Ava could see what pure his love was. Yes, then I saw in the other books the devotion that Mason felt for her, but the moment to which I refer, Mason was being a real bastard towards Ava.
It broke my heart to see how desolate he was during all the following months. There is a very hot threesome scene between him and Connor (the first man in Ava and Mason threesome in “Atonement “) but at the same time very sad.
“I grabbed her hair and pulled her to my groin, pleading silently that she would hurry the fuck up and take my mind to a different place; somewhere where she wasn’t. It wasn’t the same. It was never the same. Never.”
“I want you to forget her, Kade. You need to forget her.”“Don’t ever mention her, Connor. Ever!”“I never mentioned her, Kade, so how do you know who I’m talking about?”“Just fuck me Connor, please.”“You really did love her.” “Stop! Just fucking stop!”
“She looked up at me but I didn’t see her. I never saw any of them. I never had sex with them. It was the only thing that kept me hard. I closed my eyes and pushed inside her as the beautiful face and deep green eyes now peered up at me from below. But . . . it wasn’t there again. The intense power of rapture and nirvana was missing, always missing, and I sighed as my balls thanked Heather’s pussy for the release whilst my head screamed it’s frustration at me.”
Kade witnesses a murder and they are trying to kill him and almost succeed.
“They say as you face death, your entire life erupts in tiny movie like scenes in your head. But that’s not exactly true because all I saw was Ava.”
Mason intervenes and contacts Liam Thornton, friend of Ava’s late parents and boss of the MI5 and provides protection: Grace Beaumont.
She refuses to protect him for what he did to Ava, interfering in Ava and Mason’s relationship (the poor girl did not know the whole story),but she is suspended from her work for her reckless behavior in a mission, and this is a personal favor for her surrogate father, so she finally accepts. The first interactions between her and Kade are very funny. And it seems that she is the key to getting Kade out of that depression he is in. I think the fact that Mason tells him to stay away from her pants also helps.
“Why the hell was my body reacting to her? What was it with this damn woman? She was pure rabid Rottweiler, but there was something, just something . . . in her that I wanted. No, my body felt like it needed. She just made me crave her.”
The sex between them is explosive, there is everything, from bondage (Shibari, OMG,super erotic) to what I considered one of the hottest scenes of this series so far ( except the threesome between Ava, Mason and Kade, always my favorite).
“Oh god, are you bi-sexual?” “Yes, you have a problem with that?””No.”
“I want you to fuck me, Grace. Right now, right here. I want to feel you inside me, taking my ass fast and hard.”
“I know you want that, but just so you know I want it even more.”
“I want you in a strap-on, behind me, fucking me deep and hard, Grace. I want you inside me. I want you to feel how good I feel when I’m taking you. I want you over me and in me.”🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
It the problems and the threats are increasingly for this couple and Mason and Ava come to their aid.
“I told you to stay away from her. I warned you!” “What? What the fuck has it got to do with you anyway? So what if I fucked her? She was a willing participant you know. I didn’t bloody force her!”
His anger was unwarranted and definitely over the top and I didn’t understand the reason for it. “There are things in play that . . . you don’t need to involve yourself with.”
“Why the hell do you think she gave herself over for you? She knows she’s dead before Christmas.”
“NO! No . . . fuck that. If you think I am just gonna sit back and let some mad bastard take away the first thing in my life that actually gives me a reason to be here, then you can go fuck yourself.”
The scene when Grace confronts Ava for all the pain and damage she has done to Kade as well as the declaration of love from Kade to Grace and the final farewell between Ava and Kade, filled my eyes with tears again ( I can’t read a book of this series without end up crying 😭).
“Say the words, Grace.” “No.” “Say them. Let your ears hear them and let your heart feel them.”
“No, Ava. Why Ava? Why do you need to hear them? To make you feel better for leaving him behind? To make your abandonment less guilty? Well I’m sorry; I won’t give you the absolution you want. Oh Ava, how you wish that were true. But I’m sorry to burst your bubble; you hurt him more than you will ever know.”
“And how the hell would you know that, Grace? How would you even have a clue what he’s feeling?” “Because I see it in him, Ava. I can read it in his eyes, in the way he stares at things when he doesn’t know I’m watching him. The pain flows from him; I can feel the rawness of it.” “Oh bullshit, Grace. You haven’t a fucking clue!”
“Really, you really don’t seem to care that much to say you told me you loved him. You have pushed him aside and then left him to rot. You don’t deserve him; he deserves someone who would love him absolutely. Someone who would take all the pain and hurt and absorb it from him. Someone who would give their life for him, not someone who would expect him to save theirs!” “Right, Grace!” She laughed cruelly and God damn, I wanted to kill the heartless bitch. “So giving your life for another’s proves what?” “It proves how fucking much you want them to be happy. How much you want them to live their life. How you want them to carry on even though you aren’t there with them. It proves to them how much you fucking love them!” She smiled slyly and tipped her head, “Yes, it does.”
“You, Grace Beaumont. I want to talk about you. I want to know you. I want to feel you. But most of all, I want you to accept this. Allow its need to be addressed and opened. You know it’s there, you feel it like I do. Let it go, Grace. Free it for once in your damn life. Let me give it, please.”“You mean too much to do this, Kade. I won’t let us do this.”
“And while you are like this, beautiful and serene, I want you to know I’m in love you, Grace.”He smiled faintly as he pulled away from me and stood up but as he turned to leave me I managed to structure my own gift to him, “And I love you.”His feet stuttered to a stop and he spun slowly round. I watched as a single tear leaked from the corner of his eye and rolled down his face as his chest seemed to stop in its rhythm. “ Grace, you were made to be my lover. You were created for the purpose of giving me a reason to live and I was created for this, to love you and to protect you. I know it, I feel it.”
“Fuck, I love you.”“Shit, I love you more.”“Impossible,” he whispered seriously.
I couldn’t seem to get a handle on why this . . . why Grace, felt different to Ava. Yes, they were both beautiful women but with Grace there was something that seemed to . . . God, I couldn’t explain it, nor could I understand it but it was hugely distinct and like nothing I’d felt before. It was like my soul felt her, like the inside of me connected with her; as though she had been created specifically for me, just for me. She was mine.
“There’s history between Ava and I and it needed to be addressed, Grace. I was in love with Ava and she loved me but this . . . us, it’s . . . hell, it’s so different. It’s like this single love that has been divided between us and there is no separating it, it’s inside me, it rules both my heart and my head. That’s what I feel when I look at you. I feel my soul. “And now I know the meaning of pure beauty. Not just to the eyes but to the soul. Now, Ava feels, as harsh at it sounds, a fill in, a substitute until God granted me you.”
I left her and Grant to say their goodbye’s as I said mine to someone who I knew I would never see again. I watched her as a tear trickled down her face but she smiled happily at me. I opened my arms and she walked into them and hugged me back hard. “You promise me that you’ll be happy, Kade.” “I promise, Ava.” “I know Grace can give you that. I know she can give you what I took away.” I smiled and shook my head, “You never took anything from me, Ava. You always gave so much of yourself and for that, I’ll always love you but Grace owns both my heart and my soul.”
I loved Kade HEA anyway, although I hope to read about him again.🥰