by Cate Ashwood
My stomach turned to lead as my gaze fell on Marcus’s name. I stared at the screen as though if I looked hard enough, the text might miraculously transform, leaving Alec’s neighborhood in my hands rather than evil incarnate. Marcus’s eyes were trained unrelentingly on me. For the second time that afternoon I attempted to school my features, not letting on the results bothered me.
It didn’t work.
Marcus rose from the chair, arrogance coming off him in waves. “Told you” was all he said before turning and strutting from my office. I held my breath as he left, unable to exhale until he was no longer in the office. Hot disappointment stabbed my heart and prickled my sinuses. I looked at Jesse and Joy, who wore matching expressions of sympathy and regret.
“Next time, guys,” I said, the words sounding flat.
They both nodded. “I’m sorry, Chase. I know this project was important to you,” Jesse said.
“It was, and yeah, I’m disappointed, but we’ll nail the next one.”
“Definitely,” Joy piped up.
“Go home, guys. Have a good night, and tomorrow we’ll refocus our energies. We have the pitch for the new elementary school due next week.”
Jesse opened his mouth as though he were going to say something, then closed it.
“See you tomorrow,” Joy said.
“Night, Chase,” Jesse added before they both left.
I shut down my computer, my eyes avoiding The E-mail as I did, and closed the lid of the laptop before pulling my coat on. I was so ready for the day to be over. I should never have gotten out of bed that morning. I should have stayed, wrapped in the heat and calm of Alec, and pretended the world outside didn’t exist.
The more I thought about Marcus, the more rapidly my rage boiled to the top. How was it that fuckheads like him ever won? Maybe karma would get him, maybe it wouldn’t, but thinking about all the cruel and unusual ways he might get what was coming to him didn’t make me feel any better.
In fact, it enraged me even more. The chances of his head spontaneously exploding, or a backhoe falling from a cargo plane and flattening him to mush were slim. People like Marcus always seemed to come out on top, and the only places they ever got their comeuppance were in the movies.
Wasn’t going to happen. I needed to breathe and let it go. The next few months, as his new development took shape, he was going to be absolutely unbearable. There was no way to avoid dealing with him. I knew Marcus better than that. He would parade his victory out in front of me every chance he got, and I would do my best not to kick him in the testicles because stomping out someone’s manhood with my heel wasn’t all that professional, was it?
My boss wouldn’t think so.
I closed my office door behind me as I left, leaving the light on my desk on for the cleaners who came in to vacuum and empty the trash overnight, then made my way out to the parking lot. As I walked, I dug around my coat pocket for my keys.
They weren’t there.
Propping my bag against my car door, I rifled through the compartments, but it wasn’t until I spotted them—dangling from the ignition—that I really lost my ever-loving shit. In hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t have anything more destructive than my feet, because I kicked the shit out of my car, knowing full well it wouldn’t make a fucking bit of difference. By the time I was finished, my foot hurt, I was freezing cold, there was a dent in the front side panel, and my keys were still dangling from the ignition.
I fished my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed AAA, biting my tongue to keep from berating the chipper man on the other end when he told me it would only take sixty to ninety minutes for someone to assist me. It wasn’t his fault I was in a terrible fucking mood. It was Marcus’s. At that moment, if Marcus had been in sight, I would have hunted him down and torn his head from his twitching corpse.
Instead, I trudged back inside and perched myself beside the door where I could see the tow truck when it arrived.
“Where have you been?” Alec asked as soon as I was through the door. The question was just a curiosity, nothing more. There was nothing malicious or accusatory behind it, but it grated on me all the same.
I ignored him, shrugging out of my coat and letting it fall in a heap on the floor. I wanted to kick it across the room. The sixty to ninety minutes had turned out to be closer to two hours, and by the time the guy had slimjimmed my door open, my rage had transformed into an all-consuming fury.
The speeding ticket Officer McNally had bestowed upon me on my way home was the perfect little cherry on the shitcake that was my day.
“Chase?” Alec popped his head out of the kitchen, his eyebrows knit together in concern.
“What?” I snapped at him.
“You okay?”
“Fucking peachy.”
He flipped the dish towel he was holding over his shoulder and strode across the room toward me. When he reached for me, I shouldered past him. I saw the hurt flash in his eyes as I did, but in that moment, I couldn’t bring myself to care.
I didn’t want to be touched. I didn’t want him looking at me. I wanted space and quiet and to not think about everything that happened that day. I walked with determination through the bedroom and into the bathroom where I could lock the door behind myself, shutting out Marcus and the guy from AAA and Officer McNally and even Alec.
I turned the tap on in the bathtub, the water temperature much hotter than I usually liked it, then stripped down.
With each item of clothing I removed, I felt a little lighter, like I was shedding the events of the day along with my tie, my shirt, my pants, socks, and finally my underwear. I left them in a pile in the corner and stepped into the scalding water.
I sat, exhaling as I relaxed my body into the tub. The porcelain was cool against my back, and my skin was already starting to pink up. I closed my eyes and slipped farther down until I could feel the weight of the water on my chest. In and out I breathed, concentrating on the feeling of the air in my lungs and trying to clear my mind completely.
It was a relaxation thing one of my professors tried to teach us in college, but it never worked for me. Hard as I’d tried, I’d never been able to completely shut my brain down. As my mind was beginning to wander, I heard the click of the lock, and a second later the bathroom door swung open, bringing with it a blast of cool air, and Alec.
“What are you doing?” I sat up. He closed the door behind him and walked closer. Some of the anger had seeped away, the warmth of the water leeching it from my bones.
“Bringing you Cinnamon Toast Crunch,” he replied.
He handed me the bowl, and I stared at him, trying to figure out exactly what was going on. He laughed. “You’re not as sneaky as you think you are. You’ve been through about three boxes since you moved in, and you’ve left your cinnamon-milk bowls in here more than once.” He paused. “So do you want me to leave you alone to eat your sugar-covered cardboard, or you do want to tell me what happened today to make you pissier than I’ve seen you since that time Reid told your mom you had pot stashed in your underwear drawer?”
“That was a dick move. Who rats their friend out to his mother?”
Alec rolled his eyes.
“You can stay,” I offered.
“Good.” He flipped the toilet seat down and sat, one ankle crossed over his knee. “Go on, then.”
I sighed hard, maybe a little more dramatically than was strictly necessary, before launching into the details, starting with being late for work and ending with the gift from Officer McNally.
“You should have called me,” Alec said once I’d finished.
“What good would that have done?”
“I could have swung by your place and picked up your spare keys, or waited with you until the tow truck guy showed up, or at the very least had the bath already drawn when you got home. I’m your partner. You’re supposed to lean on me when shit like this happens. I didn’t even know about the industrial revitalization project.”
It was well masked,
but as his best friend, to me the hurt in his voice was unmistakable. I felt like a total fuckup.
“I didn’t want you to know. I was so fucking sure I was going to win the bid, and I wanted to surprise you with the plans.” I sighed.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Alec said finally. I could tell he meant it.
“I am too. I wanted this, and usually I want to win against Marcus because he’s a fucking dickwad. I want to believe that the bad guys never win, but this time he did, and it was on a project that meant more to me than anything.”
Alec dipped his hand into the water, tracing ripples in the surface. “I hate that you had such a shit day, and I hate more that the bad guy won.”
I shrugged, even though I could still feel the anger coursing through me. Having Alec understand me soothed away some of the roughness. “It’s not a fairy tale. Sometimes the good guy gets squashed by the greedy fucker in the cheap suit.”
“You’ll win the next one, and then you and I can go out and celebrate,” Alec assured me. “But you should have told me. Keeping shit from me isn’t going to make you feel any better about it.”
“I’m sorry. Next time, I’ll call.”
“For better or for worse,” he reminded me.
“At least for the next week and a half.”
Chapter Twenty
Alec
My cell phone vibrated on the desk. I’d spent so long in the shop helping to orient the new hire, I’d gotten behind on all the goddamn paperwork that was required to keep my business running. I outsourced as much of the office stuff as I could—a payroll company dealt with hours and paychecks—and Blair, my admin assistant, handled a lot of it, but there were still things that required my own eyes and a signature or two.
I ignored the chimes for a moment, forcing myself to concentrate on reading the last section of a purchase order before I signed it, then picked up the phone to read the message.
Chase: You coming home soon?
I checked the time at the top of the screen. It was a quarter after six. I was aware of exactly how long Chase had been at home without me. Nothing killed my concentration like knowing he was there and I was stuck at work. I spent more time than I would like to admit to imagining exactly what we could be getting up to rather than looking over pricing sheets and putting together bids for projects.
Alec: As soon as I can. Gonna try to finish up here within the hour. I’ll text when I’m on my way.
Chase: Kay
I set my phone down and leafed through a purchase order once more, but after reading it twice and forgetting every word my eyes had swept over, I gave up. It wasn’t going to happen.
When had I become so tangled up in him that everything else fell away when I was thinking about him?
Almost certainly around the first time he’d made me come.
I didn’t know what was going to happen at the end of the month, but I pushed all thoughts that were too serious from my mind.
Quickly tidying my desk, I let my mind wander to everything I was going to do to Chase once I got home. It was so bizarre that I’d known him practically my whole life, but I’d never really seen him, not like I was seeing him now. He was so beautiful I could barely stand it, and when we were alone together, he was so uninhibited. It made me want to spend all day on my knees, just to hear him making those sounds for me, because of me. I’d never experienced anything as heady as that.
Once I was seated in my truck, I sent Chase a quick text to see if he needed me to stop for anything on the way home. He never answered me, so I dropped my phone onto the seat next to me and put the car into gear.
As I drove, the lethargy I’d felt sitting at my desk melted away from me, and the closer I got to home, the happier I felt. I parked in the driveway and cut the engine, then climbed out of the car and went inside.
“Chase? You in he—” My voice abandoned me, and my ability to stand threatened desertion. If he heard me call his name, he didn’t show it. Sprawled in my armchair, a leg thrown over each arm, I had an unobstructed view of the vibrant purple plug shoved in his ass. I stopped in my tracks, my gaze raking over his completely naked body and the way his hand wrapped around his dick. The head of his cock was red and swollen, and he pushed it through his fist, sliding up and out as his hips canted up.
He looked debauched and needy, and every ounce of blood in my body rushed to my groin. My erection strained against the inside of my pants, almost instantly aching, needing release.
The desperate grunts and pleasure-filled moans saturated my living room. He looked up at me, his gaze meeting mine across the room. His eyes were unfocused and bleary, but when his mouth stretched into a smile, my stomach flipped.
“You just… gonna stand there… and watch?”
His question was broken, gasps splitting his words, his thumb circling up over the crown of his cock with every upstroke.
I crossed the room slowly with measured paces, every single step controlled and calculated. If I let my willpower slip, I knew I’d forgo any sort of gentleness for making sure my dick was buried in Chase’s ass as fast as humanly possible.
In a few strides I’d reached him, then I dropped down, my knees hitting the floor with a thump as I pushed his hand aside. He whimpered, his eyes trained on me and his bottom lip caught between his teeth. I sat on my haunches for a brief moment, taking in the sight before me.
He was spread out, his body begging me to make him come, and who was I to deny him?
I reached for him. The weight of his thick cock in my hand was substantial, and I stroked a few times, listening to the change in Chase’s breathing as my thumb flicked over the head. Slowly I traced the veins, ghosting my fingertips over the sensitive flesh. I knew I was making him feel good, the way he thrust into my grip.
“Chase.” His name rumbled from deep in my chest, ragged and raw, but it was all I could think to say. He was beautiful, brazen in his desire.
I leaned forward and took him into my mouth, sliding the length of him down easily. His groans spurred me on, and I sucked him as I pulled back, dragging stuttered breaths from him as I did. Kneeling there, watching Chase’s knuckles turn white as he gripped the arm of the chair, I felt powerful. The attraction between us was palpable, and Chase’s muscles trembled. I felt his body quake beneath my hands, my tongue, and the sense of carrying all that power was intoxicating.
I loved it, the physical sensation of his barely contained control, and more than anything, I wanted to break it.
Moving one hand to his balls, I rolled them in my palm as I stroked against his taint, applying pressure as I slid my tongue along the underside of his shaft. Restraining my movements, I slowed things down and only took him halfway. Over and over I teased him until, without warning, I drove forward, burying the tip of his cock as far back in my throat as I could.
Chase swore and pushed me off him so quickly I could barely register what was happening, before he spun around and gripped the back of the chair, pushing his ass out toward me. Throwing a pleading look over his shoulder, he arched his back and fisted his erection, stroking slowly as he waited. He knew the effect he had on me. He was aware of exactly what that pose, those movements, did to me, and he reveled in it. I was sure of it, but then, my expression most likely told him everything he needed to know. I wasn’t hiding a goddamn thing from him.
I was tense, every muscle taut with anticipation, and primed to sink into the tight heat of Chase’s body. The way we fit together was my new favorite thing, like he’d been designed just for me. I darted from the room, hurrying into the bedroom to grab the lube from the nightstand drawer.
As I rushed back, I frantically tore my clothes off, almost tripping over my pants as I tried to step out of them too quickly. When I returned he was still waiting in the same position, naked and bent over, gripping the back of the chair.
Suddenly, I regretted not bringing my phone back in with me. The image of him, spread out in front of me was a photo-worthy scene if ever I’d seen one.
I settled for a mental picture, seared into my brain for all eternity, as I stepped closer. I ran my hand along the base of his spine, delighting in the heat coming off him.
“Wider,” I commanded as I pushed his knees farther apart on the seat, then settled behind him. “Now, don’t move.”
Chase looked over his shoulder at me, making eye contact as I brought two fingers to his mouth. Chase sucked them in, swirling his tongue, and sending a jolt of attraction right to my dick. He was killing me. I wanted to draw this out, to take things slow and get him worked up, but it was backfiring on me. If he kept up his attitude, I didn’t know how long my restraint would last.
I pulled my fingers from his mouth with a wet pop, and half a second later, the plug was gone and my fingers were both buried in his ass.
Chase cried out and his hips lurched forward. I knew it would burn, but I also knew he liked it that way. It hadn’t taken long for me to tune into the way he wanted things and the subtle cues he gave. I loved that I could read him and knew, without asking, what he needed.
I waited, listening for the change in his breathing, watching for his muscles to relax, waiting for the pain to transform into pleasure. It didn’t take long before he was rocking back, my fingers sliding in and out as Chase fucked himself on them.
“Alec.” He breathed my name as I curled my fingertips forward, finding his prostate and pressing against it. “I’m good…”
I withdrew my fingers and couldn’t help the groan that escaped my throat as Chase tightened, his body trying to keep me inside. Hurriedly and without finesse, I covered my length with lube, then lined up the tip of my cock.
The lube, along with my precome, made the glide slick and smooth, until I bottomed out inside him, my hips resting against his ass. Christ, he felt good, and when he tightened his muscles around me, I came precariously close to losing it right there. With a couple of deep breaths, I was able to regain some of my control before I pulled almost all the way out and then thrust deep.
