Were those my moans?
I think they were his. His strong fingers dug into my ass, pulling me tighter against him. He drank from me like I was the fucking fountain of youth.
He tugged on my sex with his teeth, branding the tender flesh. And then my entire pussy was in his greedy mouth as he licked, nibbled, and ate every inch. And somewhere in the midst of all of that, he drank down every drop of cum that gushed from my body.
But that was only the foreplay. Then his tongue was inside me, cramming through my entrance and curling against the muscles inside. The pleasure was so intense it stung. But in a very, very good way. Between the demanding thrusts of his tongue and the lashing it gave my clit, I began to black out from the pleasure and my climax pushed my heartrate past what was humanly possible.
“Chance!” I gasped as I came hard into his mouth. His name was a chant that I felt in every cell of my body as it fractured into one million tiny pieces. He held me there, greedily lapping up the juices that rushed from my body as my body continued to shudder against his tongue.
On shaking legs, I held onto the edge of the couch like a freaking crutch and slid off of his face. If I could feel any muscle, I might have winced seeing the widening smirk on his face, his mouth—and freaking beard—shimmering and sticky with his success.
“Best fucking high, J-bird—“ He grimaced as I brushed over his dick by accident.
Oops.
“You going to leave me like this?” His raised eyebrow matched the erection in his pants.
Even if this had been a movie, the timing couldn’t have been better as the oven let off an obnoxiously loud beep, screaming that our lunch was done—and obnoxiously implying that the answer to his question was ‘yes.’
“You said you needed something in your mouth. You didn’t say anything about mine,” I retorted with a smile, picking the blunt up off the table.
If he thought I was going to be flustered into forgetting that he hadn’t actually thrown it away, he had another thing coming.
With a smirk of my own, I held it out for a second and then crushed it in my fist, enjoying the twitch of his jaw.
“You know I have more where that came from, right?”
I glared at him. “You know if I see you with one of these again in here while you are trying to recover, you won’t be touching… or tasting me again.”
“Like you could stop yourself from letting me.” Pride.
“I could—and I would.” Yeah, wasn’t even convincing myself there.
Walking over to the trash in the kitchen, I tossed the remains of the joint before opening up the oven to pull out our late lunch. Turning to set the dish on the counter, I found myself looking at Chance, one elbow resting on the countertop, his other hand down his pants, as he quirked an eyebrow up at me.
“You better wash your hands before you reach into this taco dip,” I said saucily.
Behind the counter though, I squeezed my legs together, prepared for another response that should gross me out and make me roll my eyes, but instead only served to roll my insides over another wave of desire.
He must have been too hungry, instead walking obligingly over to the sink to wash.
“I’m still waiting for you to tell me about your other options besides helping your sister and Wyatt—and yourself.” I scooped several spoonfuls of the dip onto his plate, dumping some chips on the side
“And I’m still waiting for you to leave it alone, Jessa.” He jabbed a chip into the gooey mixture of meat, cheese, tomatoes… and more cheese before shoving the whole thing in his mouth. “Holy shit, this is delicious,” he exclaimed a few seconds later with a shock that should have been insulting—instead the warm sizzle of pride rushed through me.
Don’t get me wrong—I loved when he went crazy over my body; it made me go crazy. But things like this, or when he’d opened up in the car a little this morning, these things made me feel just as good yet somehow in a completely different way.
When I noticed his grin was when I realized that my mouth had dropped at some point from his compliment.
I was getting better at downplaying how much he affected my body. I wasn’t practiced enough yet at hiding how much compliments and sincerity from the man hell-bent on destroying me affected my heart.
Recovering quickly, I replied, “I told you it was the best.” Taking a bite myself, I pressed him further. “But flattery can’t get you everywhere—and it can’t get you away from my question. I’m not going to leave it, Chance; this is an awesome opportunity.” He glared, gulping down some of my La Croix. “You can ride, you can teach. You can make such an impact.”
“I don’t know if I can ride.” The words were hard and soft. Angry and despondent at the same time. I ached for the man too proud to pick himself up from his fall.
“Bullshit. Seriously, everyone falls, Chance. Everyone takes a hit to their pride. I’m sorry you aren’t going to be the best snowboarder in the world anymore, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be the best something else.”
“Like I said, I don’t even know that I can ride anymore so this whole conversation could be moot.”
“What if we went?”
His head whipped up. “Excuse me?”
“W-what if I took you to the mountain at the end of next week?” Where it all began. “It will be your last week of PT so we can just take it slow and see how it goes.”
He scraped up the last bits of the food onto half of a chip, not saying a word.
“Then, you’ll see that you can still ride—that this isn’t the end of the world. It’s just one door closing and there are a thousand other ones that you can open.”
He chuckled. “Did one of your cards tell you that?”
“No.” She crossed her arms and I watched those perfect breasts rise and tighten. “I don’t need cards to read you, Chance.”
“No? What am I thinking?”
“First off, my cards don’t tell me what you are thinking. And second, who needs cards when your body is pretty good at pointing out just what’s on your mind?”
He burst out laughing, reaching for my empty plate and taking them both over to the sink.
“Touché, J-bird, but my dick isn’t the only thing pointing right now…” His gaze dropped markedly to my tits where my nipples, I knew, were staring him down.
“Ugh!” I huffed and spun away from him. “Do you want to go to the mountain or not? Last chance.”
“What are we going to do there? I can’t go on the park.” He sounded like I was asking him to jump off a bridge—only it was one he would willingly step off from.
Unfortunately, the mountain was like an incurable disease—once it was in your blood, it was impossible to get rid of.
“The park is like three trails. How many other trails are on Snowmass?” Honestly, I didn’t remember, but it was a lot. “We are going to go and snowboard. We are going to go and just enjoy the ride.”
“Will you give me head on the lift again?”
I rolled my eyes. There were so many other memories and possibilities that he could have said… ‘Will you let me eat snow out of your pussy?’ Or ‘Will you let me fuck you on your board and underneath the stars?’
“Forget it.”
“Fine.” He replied tightly, pulling out his phone; it must have been ringing in his pocket because he answered, “Yeah?”
I waited, trying to see if I could discern from his facial expression who he was talking to.
“Fucking hell.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth and then as if just remembering that I was in the room said, “Let me call you back in five.”
“Who was that?” I hated the split second that I thought it might be Monroe.
“Frost.”
My text with the girls immediately came to mind and the question came out of my mouth before I could stop it.
“What happened with him? Is he ok?”
He froze, looking at me darkly over the can of water he held. “Nothing. And he’s Frost.” I
guess that meant Nick was as ok as he gets. Chance’s expression on the other hand was pure ice. If I knew what was good for me, I would have left it at that.
I didn’t know. With Chance this instantly angry, the only thing I needed to know was more.
“How can it be nothing if you missed your appointment? How can it be nothing when he kicked you out of his house?”
“Why would you assume that he kicked me out?” He crushed the empty water can in his fist and I forcibly stopped myself from wincing.
“Because why else would you be here?” His lip twitched because I knew him too well. Neither of us had wanted to be in this house if we had another option.
“Drop it, Jessa. It’s none of your business.”
“I’m not going to tell anyone, Chance, but if something is going on maybe I can help. Maybe he needs help.” My first thought was that something happened with drugs—that he’d been caught with them and didn’t want Chance to be involved.
Ok, there were a wide range of scenarios that were fueled by the far too many Law & Order marathons that I’d watched at Tammy’s.
“I’m helping him.”
“Chance.” Suddenly, the fear that he was going to do something for his friend that could jeopardize his new career flared inside of me. “I don’t know what’s going on, but you need to be careful about getting involved with Frost—“
“Oh, yeah? Like how careful you were?”
I choked on my own saliva that’s how much the vehemence in his words sliced through me.
“I…” My voice was only a whisper—caught off-guard and weak.
“I am handling this and I’ll be damned if I let you within ten fucking feet of him again.”
I finally blinked when the basement door slammed shut, Chance’s heavy footsteps marching down to his domain. Back then, I’d known what I’d had to do to help him. Now, I didn’t know if knowing the truth would make things better… or worse.
The Hanged Man: The card of ultimate sacrifice and surrender to the greater good.
Eight years ago—Chance and Nick’s Graduation Party
THERE COMES A POINT IN life where you have to make a sacrifice. I’m not talking about a small kind of sacrifice, like giving up cookies for a diet, but the kind of sacrifice that feels akin to the martyrdom of your happiness for the sake of someone else’s. There comes a point where you have to make a real sacrifice—the kind that costs, the kind that hurts, and the kind that empties everything inside of you—because the love you have for someone else outweighs the love you have for yourself.
This was that point for me. I never thought it would come at only eighteen.
I never thought a lot of things would come at eighteen, but they did.
Someone in the room dropped a glass, the sound of the cup hitting the floor and the stifled screams of those splattered with its piss-colored contents breaking my daze.
There was a good chance that I was going to throw up; actually, I was pretty sure of it.
You know how you know? Weightlessness—when everything around you seems to be floating. Muffled silence—noises drift off into the distance, locking you in a widening bubble of quiet. Heat—I was burning up all over.
I’d felt like this the day I’d emailed my college applications. I’d felt like this the day I told Chance that I would be his if he gave up his pride on the mountain for me. I’d felt like this the moment after I’d agreed that what we had was the forever kind love which was the moment before he’d taken my virginity—with a painful carefulness and tenderness in his bed that had made me want to cry, and then with a pleasure that made me demand that we do it again—but harder.
This moment though was unlike all of those because those had been the sickening sweetness of anticipation; this moment was the nauseating reality of betrayal.
Two gin and tonics had already been consumed, made by Nick which meant that they were really gin and ton-nixed. Even Nick didn’t see this coming; his usual creepy perceptiveness lacking the past few weeks… months… after losing his dad—and all sense of self-control.
Even had his parents been home, their estate was so enormous, I doubt they would have realized that Nick was throwing a massive party at the pool. Oh no, the party wasn’t in the main house—which was up the path and behind a towering row of trees and a set of tennis courts—and it wasn’t in the guest house either—which sat a few yards away from the building that we were actually in: the pool house. The building had its own mini kitchen and huge glass-paneled windows that looked out to the pool, one of which slid up like a garage door for you to walk straight outside.
I was talking with a few other girls in our class closer to where the kitchen was and farther from where all the party shenanigans were happening. This was a Nick Frost party which meant that kegs and weed were readily available (along with other things that I pretended not to notice), as well as a variety of rooms for those looking to hook-up. In fact, the two blondes in front of me who were now arguing with each other were here looking to get lucky with the frosty bad boy who was running the show.
I looked over at Chance to find him watching me. We were both inside the large pool house in the back of Nick’s mansion home.
His look was like dynamite, ready to make me explode.
I forced my gaze back to my conversation with Megan—just like I’d forced us to come here tonight instead of staying in bed all day like Chance had begged. Correction: he’d begged to have his dick stay inside of me all day. And that meant that we wouldn’t be leaving his bed.
After last night, I didn’t blame him. Waking up with him inside of me was a sensation of complete and utter fullness that I’d never wanted to let go.
But the reminder of the party was also that of the reality that Nick had made me chillingly aware of two weeks ago.
Chance was going to give up his talent and opportunity to have an exceptional career for me. if he moved to Texas so that I could pursue my own dream. Me.
That made me nauseous. But not as nauseous as what I was about to do.
I was waiting, knowing that we would be one of the last few to leave. I was waiting because the longer I waited the more intoxicated Nick became—and not just with alcohol. The caretaker in me looked at that boy with the highest amount of concern the way that he drank alcohol like water and did drugs like he had some unique brand of coke-curing-cancer. He was currently falling over two girls out by the pool—actually, it looked like he was holding onto the shoulder and boob of one to stay upright.
At least there was a good chance that Nick would never remember this.
“Hey, babe,” Chance whispered in my ear, his arm coming around my waist to rest his hand possessively on my stomach. Instantly, the nausea was gone and I relished that moment, knowing that it would be the last of its kind.
“Hey,” I murmured, relaxing back against him.
I loved when he held me like this—like you’d hold your heart if it was outside of your body instead of inside your chest.
I knew I would weep later for breaking it.
“Can I get you anything?”
“I’m good right now. Maybe you want to check on Nick though… he’s been going non-stop all night. I’m worried he’s actually trying to kill himself.”
His chest vibrated against my back. “That’s the thing about Frost, J-bird, he could be trying to kill himself, but it will never happen—he’s not that lucky.”
I glanced up at him, those incredible blue eyes always stopping mine in their tracks.
“Alright.” He kissed my temple. “I’ll go make sure he’s not overdosing on his idiocy.”
“Thank you.”
I was concerned about Nick—any person in their right mind would be—but I knew that tomorrow morning, Chance would see my actions as more than just a friendly concern.
Surprisingly, what followed seemed to go as smoothly as though we were acting out a Greek drama on stage.
It hit one-thirty in the morning and a bunch of the remain
ing crowd left—the two girls Nick had been talking to, one of the girls I was talking to, the only three skiers in our class that the SnowmassHoles would tolerate, and finally, Nick, Chance, and I who remained.
I watched through the window as Chance was waylaid by the skiers, meanwhile, Nick stumbled in through the door to the kitchen, presumably to get another drink.
My heart raced. Was I really going to do this?
You have to do this, Jessa. You. Have. To.
Better that he hates you and has his dream, than to lose his dream and wind up hating you for it.
The second I saw Chance realize that Nick had gone inside, I excused myself from Megan and walked into the small kitchen. Nick, who was a few feet in front of me, had one hand on the counter steadying himself while he bent over, examining all the liquor bottles decorating the small island that was serving as a back-up bar. (The main bar was outside and attached to the pool.)
This was the point where many might quip, ‘moment of truth,’ but in fact, this moment was nothing but a lie.
I flicked off the lights and heard a slurry of swears escaping from Nick as a few glass bottles clicked together.
My eyes adjusted much faster than his since I wasn’t inebriated. Finding his shadow in the room now dimly lit by only the lights from outside, I closed the distance between us and wrapped my arms around his neck.
“What the—“
His lips were cold. I imagined that this was what kissing a corpse would feel like. Some would argue that in many ways Nick was dead. They tasted like a bitterly sweet mix of alcohol, weed, and something else that I was sure was probably just as illegal. The urge to vomit charged up my throat, but I squeezed my eyes shut tighter and pulled him hard against me.
I knew the second he thought that I was one of the other girls that were still left here, cornering him in the kitchen for a quick fuck. His arms came around me and one hand slid down to cup my ass.
The sound of the light-switch flicking on was as sharp as a guillotine.
“Jessa?” My heart shriveled and died at that tone. As though it was easier for Chance to believe that there was someone else at this party who had bright blue hair. I shoved myself away from Nick who was still reeling from the lights coming back on.
Enjoy the Ride (Winter Games Book 3) Page 21
