Hum, ya I think there is a way to do that.
Try this: Anyone else gets annoyed with Cider? - #5 by dpsutton
I’m not 100% sure it’s what you want, but it sounds similar.
Also seems like you don’t know about cider-eval-last-sexp ( C-x C-e ) ? That’s really the one you should be using by default, it’ll evaluate the form inline with the code, no REPL buffer needed.