by Bella Andre
He didn’t hide his disappointment from her. And oh God, she couldn’t believe how much she hated seeing it. She wanted the man back who looked at her like she was lovely. Like he wanted her so bad that he was barely a breath away from taking her.
That was when she realized that even though she’d come to say goodbye to his face, it didn’t change the fact that she was running again.
“I’d love to help.” She looked between Chase and Jeremy. “Just tell me what you need me to do and I’ll do it.”
Jeremy dragged her off almost before the words were out of her mouth. But not before she caught Chase’s smile.
And the fact that whatever disappointment had been there was now erased…desire and appreciation taking its place without even missing a beat.
* * *
The day flew by. Chase didn’t really need much direction with the clothes and Chloe knew he was only asking her opinions to make her feel involved. At first she was reluctant to say much. She didn’t want to screw up his photo shoot, after all. But, just as it had been the day before, it was hard not to get swept up in the magic of it all. They were creating beautiful fairy tales out in the vines and without thinking, she began to cinch in the waists on dresses and sew up hems. Not only that, but when she actually disagreed with the way the accessories he’d put together were clashing, she was amazed to realize that her choices were better.
And through it all, even though they were surrounded by the crew, attraction pulsed between them.
A part of her—the biggest part—wanted to run again. But with every hour that she spent working with Chase and his crew, she realized she simply couldn’t leave them in the lurch. Plus, in those moments when she forgot to worry, she realized she was enjoying herself. A great deal.
At the end of the night, Amanda said, “We heard there’s an awesome Mexican restaurant downtown.”
Chase raised an eyebrow. “No margaritas.”
Chloe could guess how he was with his sisters. Loving. Protective. But not overwhelming them with rules and regulations.
He was obviously a great brother. He’d make a great father.
The thought stopped her in her tracks but she didn’t have time to dissect it because Jeremy was asking, “Should we save you guys seats?”
Chloe felt Chase’s eyes on her, knew he wanted her to make the decision to either go with the group and hide out in the crowd like a coward…or face him alone. Planting a smile on her face that she was sure no one bought, she said, “I think I’m going to hang here again tonight.”
“Have a good time. I’m sure Kalen doesn’t want to work any harder than she already is on makeup, so get some sleep tonight, ladies.”
“I’d like to go check on Alice.”
Chase nodded. “Me, too.”
The silence between them was fraught with all the things Chloe knew couldn’t remain unsaid for too much longer. They drove over to the hotel where the crew was staying. Feeling terrible that they’d obviously woken Alice up from much needed sleep—she looked horribly pale and weak—they didn’t stay long.
Chase waited until they’d pulled up in front of the guest house before turning to her. “We need to talk.”
“I know.”
“You were going to leave.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” she admitted softly, “I was.”
“Why?”
She shook her head, hating how difficult it was to be honest. But knowing she had to be. “I obviously can’t control myself around you.”
Chase’s mouth moved up into one of those beautiful smiles of his. “I’m glad.”
She shook her head. “It isn’t a good thing.”
“Why not? Why do you need to control yourself around me?”
She opened her mouth to tell him all the reasons why, but suddenly, all she could remember was how good it felt when he was kissing her, how good his hands felt as they moved across her skin.
Everything had been good.
“I—” She stopped, tried to straighten out her head before continuing. “We—”
Darn it, instead of her thoughts straightening out, they were spinning off in a crazy direction.
A really crazy direction.
She was changing a lot of things in her life, right? She was going to stop running. She wasn’t going to back down from a threat anymore. And she was going to stand up and take what she wanted when she wanted it.
Lord, did she ever want Chase.
She couldn’t be thinking this, knew better than to even go there, but—
“Oh, hell,” she muttered. Chase lifted an eyebrow at her soft curse and she made herself face him squarely. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this.” She swallowed, grasped her hands in front of her in a nervous gesture she couldn’t contain. “I honestly don’t even know how to say it.”
“You sure know how to keep a guy on the edge,” he said in a slightly husky tone.
Chloe took a deep breath and forced herself to just spit it out. “Maybe we should just have a fling.”
“A fling?”
She could feel a flush moving across her skin. “Sure. Like you said, why not?” Beyond nervous, she started babbling. “Last night was really great and you’re right, I was a little drunk, and I probably would have woken up in the morning and felt weird about it all. But I’m not drunk now.”
“No,” he said, his intense eyes never leaving hers once, “you’re not.”
“I’ve decided I’m going to stay to help. For the rest of the shoot. I’m not going to pack my bag up again and come find you to say goodbye. No matter what happens, you can count on me.”
Oh God, this was awkward. Why wasn’t he just grabbing her and taking what she was trying so pathetically to offer?
“You and I obviously have something between us. We’re both consenting adults. It just seems to make sense while I’m here and you’re here that we could maybe just, well, enjoy that.”
“Are you saying you want to have sex with me?”
Oh God. She’d almost climaxed from the husky sound of his voice...and what he’d said.
“Yes.” The word came out shaky with need. “A lot.”
His mouth quirked up at the two words she’d stolen from his breakfast note.
She could feel, could see, how much he wanted her. And yet he wasn’t pulling her into his arms, wasn’t just taking her right there between the rows of vines under the rising moon.
“Of all the things I thought you were going to say to me today, Chloe, this wasn’t on the list.”
Oh crap. She’d just killed herself laying it all out on the line and he was going to be honorable again, wasn’t he?
No, no, no!
“Kiss me again.”
“I promised myself I wouldn’t take anything from you that you didn’t want to give.”
“I want to kiss you. I want you to kiss me. All day long I’ve wanted you to kiss me.”
“Fuck.”
She bit her lip before forcing herself to voice her thoughts aloud: “That’s the idea.”
* * *
Chase took her hand, hurried up the front steps, and kicked open the front door, not stopping in the living room even though it meant waiting another few seconds for the pleasure he’d been craving.
He wanted her in a bed, the way he’d been picturing her for forty-eight straight hours, naked and flushed with desire—and pleasure—for him.
In the end it felt like hiking halfway across the county just to get to the bedroom, but then—finally!—they were inside the room. Chase closed the door and locked it, before forcing himself to drop her hand and to step back a few inches.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yes.”
She hadn’t hesitated, but still he had to say, “Absolutely certain?”
“Yes.”
Again, there was no hesitation, only a growing irritation in her eyes that he was stalling. But he cared about her too much to do anything to hurt her.
“Once we start, I’m not going to be able to stop. I want you too badly.”
At that, the faint irritation in her eyes was pushed aside by need, her eyes dilating at the force of her arousal.
He didn’t want to scare her—didn’t ever want her to be scared again—but she needed to know.
“This is your last chance to change your mind.”
Before he could take his next breath, her fingers threaded into his hair and her mouth was on his, her tongue pushing against his. He lifted her into his arms and moved to the bed, his mouth never leaving hers for a second. There was no finesse, no gentleness in their kisses.
How could there be when they were both pure need?
Just that quickly, all thoughts of honor were forgotten. All that mattered was Chloe. Worshiping her body.
And loving her.
Chapter Nine
Chloe could hardly believe she was lying on the bed looking up at a sinfully gorgeous man as he pulled his T-shirt off and threw it on the floor. Seeing all those muscles, his incredible washboard abs, all but paralyzed her.
She’d never seen anyone like Chase, live and in person, before.
“You’re so beautiful.” The words were out of her mouth before she even realized they were coming.
He responded by moving over her on the bed, placing his hands on either side of her face, and kissing the rest of the breath from her lungs. One of his legs came between hers and she couldn’t stop herself from closing her legs around him and thrusting her hips up against his taut thigh muscles.
She was already so close, knew she could probably come with nothing more than another one of his mind-blowing kisses and the friction of his thigh against her.
“Chloe.” Her name was a whisper of need from his lips to hers and before she knew it, he had her T-shirt and jeans off. When she was wearing nothing but her bra and panties—thank God she’d at least kept her nice lingerie from her earlier life—he shifted away to stare at her.
She knew she wasn’t nearly as thin as the models he worked with, knew that her body wasn’t perfect, not by any means…but, amazingly, she could tell that Chase didn’t care.
He liked her just the way she was.
“Jesus, Chloe. You’re killing me here.” He reached out and ran one slow finger from her chin down her neck, making her arch into his hands as he trailed his gentle, heated touch down to the valley between her breasts. “You’re so damned lovely.”
“You’ve already seen my body,” she reminded him.
“Not like this. I couldn’t touch you, then.” His eyes lifted from her curves to her face. “I couldn’t kiss you the way I wanted to kiss you.”
How did he manage to keep stealing her breath when she was beyond certain that he’d already stolen it away just moments before?
“Show me. Show me how you wanted to kiss me.”
She could have sworn a growl rumbled in his chest as he slid one hand into her hair, the other beneath her hips to press her more firmly against him.
His mouth was hot, yet gentle, over hers—that first, desperate rush to have each other turning into such sweetness, such joy as he tasted every inch of her lips with his, pressing soft kisses into the corners, the flesh at the center, the cupid’s bow of her upper lip. And then his tongue licked along the curve of her lips, a slow, sensuous journey that awakened every last cell in Chloe’s body. Until, finally, he dipped his tongue in between her teeth and she met him halfway, taking everything he was giving her and returning it multiplied.
Her entire body had turned soft, pliant against him, and she could feel herself throbbing between her legs.
“Please,” she whispered when he lifted his head so that they could draw some oxygen into both their lungs, “I need—”
She hadn’t put words to her desire for so long that she found the words drying up on her tongue.
“Will you trust me, Chloe?”
She wished she didn’t have to think about it. But she did. Trust wasn’t just something she could give out easily anymore. “I want to.”
His smile warmed her from head to toe before he pressed a kiss just below her earlobe.
“Wanting to is a perfect place to start.”
Loving the fact that he wasn’t pressuring her to try and give him something she wasn’t capable of giving, as he shifted again on the bed and began to run his tongue across the swell of one breast, she let loose a low moan of pleasure.
From one to the other, he didn’t rush, didn’t hurry despite the desperate little sounds she was making. The look he gave her was more than a little wicked when he lifted his head from her chest.
She opened her mouth to tell him what she needed, opened her mouth to speak, but again, the words wouldn’t come.
“Never be scared to tell me what you need. What you want.”
“More.” The one word was all she could get out.
His response to her request was to brush the pad of his thumb over one of her nipples and she actually gasped at the sensation.
She’d never known a smile could be so full of desire until she looked into his eyes. He touched her breasts again and this time she instinctively arched into his hand, saying, “Yes. Please. More of that.”
His hands moved behind her back, and then he was pulling her bra off and the air felt cool on the aroused skin of her breasts.
“I’ll never, ever get tired of looking at you.” Even though his hands were large, her breasts overflowed them. “I’ll never stop wanting to touch you.”
Somewhere in the back of her brain, an alarm sounded, telling her “never” wasn’t the kind of word someone used when they were simply having a fling. But she was too busy holding her breath, waiting for what was coming next, to pay attention to that faint warning.
“I’ll never stop wanting to taste you.” He lowered his head until his soft hair was brushing against her skin, and then his tongue was flicking out to tease her nipple.
They’d been here last night, with his mouth on her while she melted into a puddle of need, but he hadn’t been telling her how much he desired her as he kissed and touched her.
Out on his brother’s porch, they’d been stealing a moment.
Tonight, there were no limits. He wouldn’t stop after making her come.
The only question that remained was, would she get scared and decide to run again?
The gentle pull of his lips on her breast, the perfect scratch of his teeth against her sensitive, taut flesh, had the question scattering away as her entire focus narrowed down to those few square inches that he was torturing so beautifully.
And then he was kissing his way down her stomach, making her squirm as his tongue dipped into the hollow of her belly button. She was lost in sensation when she felt the bed dip again and realized he was kneeling between her legs. A gentle press of his large hands on the inside of her thighs had her opening up for him.
She should have been shy, should have wondered how she could lie there and let him just look at her like that, almost naked except for a pair of fairly indecent panties, when the two of them barely knew each other.
But as he pressed his palm against her core and she felt just how wet she was, something in her brain clicked over to memories, bad ones, where she’d been vulnerable like this with another man. A man who had hurt her.
Chase had been wonderful so far, but what if he turned on her? She didn’t really know him.
How could she in only forty-eight hours?
Oh God, what was she doing, lying here spread-eagled for a man who was, for all intents and purposes, a stranger?
“Chase, I—” She tried to close her thighs, covered her breasts with her hands.
He immediately said, “One word and I stop.”
She knew what she should do. She should get up off this bed, put her clothes on, and try to pretend none of this had ever happened.
But, oh, how she wanted this. How she wanted Chase.
He’d told her just before they’d ripped off each
other’s clothes that if they started down this road, he wouldn’t be able to stop. But here he was, offering to do just that if she needed him to.
Feeling trust begin to root a little deeper within her heart, she whispered, “What word?”
She was surprised to see his mouth move up into a little grin. “How about bananas?”
Amazed to find herself almost smiling back at him, she asked, “So if I need to say that word, we’ll stop.”
He nodded. “Instantly.”
She couldn’t believe how quickly talking that out—and knowing he’d be true to his word—made the fear recede.
And the heat resurface.
Suddenly, instead of embarrassment, there was only need. She had to press herself even harder against the heel of his hand, had to say his name again as a plea for even more.
“It’s even better than I thought it would be.”
Somehow, she managed to get her brain to click into gear, to take in what he’d said enough to ask, “What’s better?”
“You. This.” His eyes roved over her body, to the place where his hands were covering her panties, then up over her breasts, to her face. “I’ve been picturing you like this for so long.”
She had to smile then, despite the throbbing ache between her legs. “We’ve only known each other two days.”
“It’s been a rough forty-eight hours.” He moved his palm away from her damp core and slipped his fingers into the side of her lace panties. “Every single second of them, I’ve wanted to be here with you. Like this.”
The way he slid her panties from her hips was pure sensual torture.
And then, she was completely bare before him.
“So damn lovely.” His murmured words made it easy for her not to shut her legs as he stared at her. “So wet. For me.” His hand was back a moment later, sliding over her slick heat. “All for me.”
His touch, his fingers on her, was more than she thought she could bear and her begging shifted gears. “I can’t.” She panted, feeling wild and out of control when his thumb slid over her clitoris and rested there. “It’s too much.” But even as she said it, she knew wild horses couldn’t drag the word bananas from her.
