Chase hadn’t stopped me babbling, but she hadn’t really engaged in it either. Her responses had been distant, almost disconnected, like she was lost in thought.
You have no idea how hard that was. As a guy, I want to fix things, it’s what guys do. As a guy madly in love with her, I knew if I pushed her I’d lose any chance of being with her completely.
So I continued to babble. Like an idiot. The one consolation I took was that Chase didn’t pull up to the curb at any stage and tell me to get out. That was something.
The sun was well and truly below the horizon when we arrived back at the motel. We climbed out of the Speeding Dragon in silence. It had been a long trip back. We’d planned to change motels so we could be closer to Doofus but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
A cool night breeze blew at us as we approached our room, a chilly reminder it was late fall in Southern California. I was trying to suppress my shiver when Chase paused opening the door. Still gripping the handle, she gave me a look over her shoulder. “Kiss me? Please?”
“Okay,” I said, before closing the distance between us and brushing my lips over hers. As much as I wanted to take her into my arms and show her how much I desired her, loved her, I kept the kiss as tender and sweet and gentle as I could.
I stepped back. The lights from the motel danced in the depths of her eyes, hiding whatever she was thinking from me.
Her lips curled in a slow smile I had no hope of deciphering, and then she let out a ragged sigh. “Let’s go in.”
She headed straight for the bathroom. I sank into the room’s only armchair, a turbulent, unsettled mess.
It had definitely been a day I wouldn’t forget. A day that had started with a bang and looked to be ending with a strained whimper. There were moments in it that would rank up there with my favorites, and I wasn’t just thinking of the incredible sex we’d shared that morning. Moments when we were at the hospital, where our eyes would connect through the bars of an animal’s cage, and we would both smile.
Moments of connections more than just sexual. Moments that seemed tainted by the unavoidable, invisible presence of Donald the Dude.
What should I do about that? Clearly my little chat with him hadn’t warned him off. Every fiber in my body wanted to take Chase’s phone, call him up and tell him to fuck off. But then every fiber in my body clearly wanted me to get a black eye from Chase for doing so.
Still, that didn’t stop my fantasizing about coming face-to-face with the guy again. About introducing my fist to his jaw. Hey, I’m a guy. A nice guy, to be sure, but I’ve still got testosterone to spare and the girl I loved to protect, and everything about Donald the Dude screamed jerk. But there was more to their relationship than Chase had let on. I don’t think there was a malicious reason behind her lack of sharing about their past, but he definitely had a tapped line to her emotions, if not her heart.
Fuck.
I was mid ponder – eyes closed, hands hanging loosely over the arms of the chair, legs splayed – when Chase straddled my lap. Warm and naked Chase.
I gazed up at her, my hands automatically moving to her hips, up her back.
Her skin had that velvety softness that comes with having a warm shower. She smelled like soap, and Chase, and heaven. Her hair was damp, her eyelashes spikey with water. Her lips were parted. She watched me. Neither of us spoke.
Neither of us made a sound as I drew upright and took her nipple in my mouth. I worshipped her breasts, her throat, her chin, her lips, with my mouth and hands and lips.
She held me, hands in my hair, thighs hugging my hips, sex pressed to my groin. At some point, I removed my jeans. Or maybe Chase did. Or we both did. My jeans ended up off, a condom ended up on my dick, and we were making love.
I used to cringe when I’d hear that term: making love. But that’s what this was. There was no other way to describe it.
It was beautiful. Powerful.
We didn’t speak, just held each other’s gaze as she rode my body, and I thrust up inside her. We both came, her a microsecond before me, and even that was quiet. Profound and potent, unlike any sex I’d had before. More than sex. More than a physical act. So much more.
Finally, as the contractions of her sex around my dick grew as erratic as my upward thrusts, she arched on my lap and let out a hitching moan.
I flattened my palms to her back, drove harder, faster up into her, my release a fierce river flooding from me, and pressed my lips to her ear. “I love you, Chase,” I whispered, lost to the raw pleasure, the pure sensation, the words barely more than ragged pants. “I love you, I love you so fucking much.”
She didn’t reply. Instead, she clung to me, her heat constricting around my length, and then slumped against me, burying her face into the side of my neck.
It wasn’t until I awoke hours later, when the morning sun was streaming through the window, that I realized what I’d done: whispered in her deaf ear. Poured out my heart, confessed how I really felt for her on a breath she would have felt but not heard.
Fuck, way to mess up the moment, dickhead.
I looked around the motel room, eyes scratchy, and realized Chase wasn’t there.
I was alone.
Six
“Dogs never bite me. Just humans.”
~ Marilyn Monroe
Chase
Waiting in the reception area of the animal hospital for Dr. Adams, I stared at the message I’d just typed on my cell. The words blurred. It’s surprising how difficult it is to read small black letters on a white screen when your eyes are full of hot, stinging tears.
I read the words I’d written again. My chest felt like it was being crushed by an invisible weight.
It’s over. I can’t do this anymore.
The sentence danced into black smudges as I blinked, and then cleared into sharp focus again. I stared at the words, branded them into my brain, my heart, and then hit Send. My cell vibrated in the way it does to let me know my message was on its way to its recipient. What would he do when he got it?
I shoved my cell into my pocket and rubbed the back of my hand over my eyes. Behind the counter, the same temp watched me with open curiosity, her gaze constantly flicking to my ears. What did she think I was going to do? Grow new ones?
Turning my back on her, I stared out the window at the parking lot and attempted to regain some control of my emotions. Would Caden be awake yet? Had he got my message? How was he going to react when he did? What was he going to do?
I swallowed, feeling like I was about to explode. I hadn’t really thought through what I was doing this morning when my cell had pinged with an incoming message. Caden had been so deeply asleep he hadn’t moved, hadn’t stirred when it pinged again.
I’d been lying beside him, trying to work out what the hell I was doing. Not just with Caden, but with me. With everything . . .
Two nights in a row spent with him in a motel room. Two nights of not going home. Two nights of ignoring Dad’s texts, and replying to Mom’s with I’m okay. Mom. Don’t worry about me.
Two nights in Caden’s arms, singularly the most wonderful place I’ve ever fallen asleep.
And then, yesterday, I’d foolishly let myself read one of Donald’s texts. It was an eloquent one. Long for him.
I miss you, babe. I’ve been thinking a lot of how badly I treated you. I know you were too good for me, and I’m not surprised there are other men wanting you. But do those other men give you what you really want? I can. If you give me another chance. Please, give me another chance. I miss you. D.
Other men. I didn’t need to be a genius to know he was referring to Caden.
My stomach had knotted, a moment of guilt so potent it physically sickened me. Standing in the animal hospital beside Doofus’s cage, with Caden right next to me, I’d wanted nothing more than to throw my cell across the small room and have it smash against the wall. How dare he do this to me again? How dare he.
Heart wild, I’d tapped back a simple response.
> Donald, I can’t keep playing this game. It’s destroying me. Please stop.
I ignored everything he’d sent after that. In fact, I’d shut my cell off. I didn’t need it. I was confused enough without his contributions. I’d been hell bent on keeping Caden at arm’s length and yet, here I was, doing the exact opposite.
Yeah, me and confusion were on really close terms.
Those close terms got even closer when I’d asked Caden to kiss me. When I climbed onto his lap . . .
Goddamn it, I was falling in love with him. What the hell was I doing?
I didn’t sleep much after that. My head was a turbulent mess of confusion and uncertainty when my cell pinged in the morning.
Trying not to disturb him, I’d grabbed it up and read the message from Dr. Adams. And then scrambled to my feet as quickly as I could, chest tight.
Doofus was deteriorating.
I’d located my discarded clothes and pulled them on. Caden had continued to sleep. Chewing on my bottom lip, I’d touched his knee. He didn’t wake. I’d squeezed his thumb and given his hand a bit of a shake. He still didn’t wake. Clearly he was exhausted.
I knew the feeling. I was emotionally drained from the last forty-eight hours. Caden was probably physically drained as well. Jetlagged. Exhausted. And dealing with my shit without a word.
He knew Donald was messing with my head. He knew I was confused. He knew all that, and yet he continued to be Caden – the guy I’d tried to convince myself I didn’t want anything to do with.
Huh. We’d so moved beyond that. We’d so moved beyond “Caden O’Dae could bite me.” He had. More than once, exquisite nips of my lips, my nipples, my shoulder, my hip . . . He’d made me feel incredible. Special. Beautiful.
And he’d whispered something in my completely deaf ear. Twice.
It hadn’t worried me at all the first time. Not at all. In fact, it had filled my tummy with a lovely warmth. He would have only slipped up like that if my hearing issues meant nothing to him. With a lifetime of being defined by my poor hearing by those around me, someone forgetting it was pretty close to wonderful.
But that wonderful feeling only confused me more when it came to what my end goal with Caden had originally been: to not fall for him.
When he’d whispered in my deaf ear while we were making love however . . . that messed me up. Not because he forgot, but because I couldn’t hear him.
I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear the words he was sharing with me.
Words I’m sure, in my heart and soul, were words more important and profound than any ever uttered to me before. And I couldn’t hear them.
I couldn’t hear them because I was defective. Faulty.
How could I expect Caden to deal with that, when I couldn’t deal with it?
I know it’s wrong to let something like that fuck me up, but it did. It made me even more confused about who I was.
He’d whispered to me last night, as we came together. Whispered words I didn’t hear. Words I wanted to hear so badly, even as I argued with myself that I didn’t.
He’d moved from the chair to the bed, while I’d cleaned my teeth, staring at my reflection in the mirror, trying to fathom what was going on in my head. I’d come out of the bathroom and found him asleep on “his” side, snoring softly. The fact we already had sides filled me with a happiness I didn’t want to think about.
My lips had curled into a smile before I realized it. So much for not succumbing to Caden’s charms. I’d smiled more since he arrived, laughed more, felt more than I had in months. Since the moment Donald told me it was over, in fact.
Did this mean I was acknowledging Caden was more to me than just an acquaintance? Could I maintain that simple concept any longer, when I’d been the one who practically dragged him into a motel room? When I’d lost myself to the pleasure of his touch? When I’d bolted from the room in search of condoms to take our relationship to a level I had previously sworn had no hope of occurring?
Without any answers presenting themselves, only more questions I wasn’t ready to deal with (like, did I really want to be in a relationship with a guy who lived on the other side of the world?), I’d curled up on my side of the bed, facing him, and fallen asleep.
My dreams had been . . . disconcerting. In them, Caden and Donald played what I think was chess, although every move resulted in them inflicted with wounds from invisible blows, until they were both bloody, bruised and whining. And during the whole game the sound of blaring car horns wailed constantly.
I don’t remember who won the game, only that I wished the car horns would stop and the whining would cease.
The need to pee had woken me before the victor claimed his prize – which I think was me. My heart a thumping hammer in my ears, I’d climbed from the bed, padded to the bathroom and peed, and then returned to the bed.
I didn’t go back to sleep. Instead, I watched Caden, tracing his face with my eyes. I knew it so well by now, and yet, lying there watching him sleep, I noticed things I hadn’t noticed before. Like the occasional strands of ginger-gold in his trim beard, like the dark-honey straightness of his eyebrows. Like the way the lashes at the very edges of his eyes curled so much more than the rest.
I think I could have lain there forever just looking at him, my mind disconnected from reality, drifting instead on an intangible mist of what could be a wonderful thing . . .
And then the message from Dr. Adams had arrived:
Need you here ASAP. Your dog’s vitals are critical.
I’d spun into some kind of panic mode. I can’t really explain it. I’d attached a ridiculous amount of emotion to that dog in a short space of time. The fact he wasn’t doing well . . .
Before truly considering the consequences of my actions, and not wanting to disturb Caden from the sleep he so obviously needed, I’d scribbled the word vet on the motel-supplied note pad and then left, driving straight to the animal hospital. Doofus needed to see someone who loved him, and I know it makes fuck-all sense, but I was in love with that dog already.
Along the way I’d received three messages from Donald – all wondering where I was and asking when he could see me again – and ignored four incoming calls from him. I wish I could tell you the sight of his name on my cell’s screen didn’t bother me but unfortunately, I’d be lying if I did. Despite everything that had happened between me and Caden, the second Donald’s name appeared on my screen my tummy twisted into a granny knot that would give a knot expert a migraine.
Something had to be done about it. Standing in the reception area, waiting for Dr. Adams to arrive, I’d typed out the last text I ever intended to send to Professor Douchebag – It’s over. I can’t do this anymore.
So there I was, expecting Donald’s response, my stare fixed outside, my pulse crazy, when a hand touched the back of my right shoulder with gentle pressure.
I spun around in a wild semi-pirouette, chest tight.
Dr. Adams smiled, and then gave me a confused frown. “Where’s Caden?”
“Asleep.”
His eyebrows rose.
“He’s jetlagged,” I said quickly. “He only landed in LA two mornings ago.”
Dr. Adams held up a hand, as if sensing the agitation in my voice. “It’s okay, Chase. Unfortunately, there’s nothing he can do here anyway.”
The knot in my stomach turned into a seismic ache. “Is Doofus . . . is he still alive?”
Dr. Adams nodded, but I saw no hope in his eyes.
“Can I see him?”
“He’s not good, Chase,” he cautioned.
“I watched my baby nephew almost die from leukemia,” I shot back, frustration slicing at me like hot razor blades. “I can handle seeing a dying dog.”
Dr. Adams frowned, and then nodded. He held out his arm toward the door behind the counter. My feet didn’t want to move. My eyes burned, the tears I’d only just reigned in once more threatening to undo me.
In my pocket, my cell pinged and vibrated into life.
Dr. Adams looked at me. “When you’re ready, Chase,” he murmured.
Giving him a jerky nod, I pulled out my phone and looked at the screen. Donald had sent me a text.
Seeing you at the airport made me realize how much I miss you, babe. Please believe me when I say I will make amends for hurting you. I want you back. I will fight for you if I have to. I will chase you. I need you. I will look after you. Protect you. D.
I read those eight sentences three times, my head roaring. The biting taint of disinfectant filled my every breath. I was about to shove my cell back into my pocket when it vibrated in my hand.
I know you were with the Australian. I understand. And forgive you. D.
Angry flooded through me. Both at Donald and myself.
Forgive me? He was going to forgive me? For being with Caden? Professor Douchebag was going to forgive me? Where the freaking fuck did he get off telling me he forgave me?
I was very much with the Australian. There was no denying it. Not after the last two nights. Very much with him and very much contemplating being with him even more, so why the hell was my heart thumping so hard at the words I miss you? From Donald? Why the hell was my tummy clenching at I will make amends? And what the fuck was my body doing reacting to I will look after you. Protect you?
What the fuck was wrong with me? Why did he make me feel this . . . this stupid, messed-up, pathetic, ridiculous desire for him?
No, desire was wrong. Desire is too strong a word, too positive. It wasn’t desire, it was a craving. The kind a junkie experienced when desperate for a hit of the very thing they know is going to kill them. I hated that sensation. It tainted everything else.
Undeniable (Always Book 3) Page 13
