by Bella Andre
She had no idea how she managed to ask the question in such a steady voice.
He choked out a strangled laugh at his nickname. “Everything is perfect.” His voice wasn’t quite as steady as hers. He nodded at her naked body in the tub. “You’re going to be really clean.”
Yes, she would. Because she wasn’t done yet. Not by a long shot.
Cupping her hands in the water, she lifted them and poured water down her chest. Suds washed down over her breasts and rib cage and stomach.
When she’d washed the soap off of her chest, she picked up the bar of soap and looked straight at Chase. A muscle was jumping in his jaw and his hands were tightly fisted on the sides of the towel.
She couldn’t see his hard-on behind the towel, but she didn’t need to.
“Just one more place I need to get nice and clean.” She didn’t take her eyes from her hot voyeur as she lifted up so that her bottom and the upper half of her thighs were out of the water. She moved her knees apart several inches in the bottom of the tub, then took the soap and placed it just below her belly button.
Chloe felt like she was all nerve endings. The soap slipped away from her again, but this time she wasn’t about to retrieve it from the bottom of the tub. She desperately needed to touch herself and her breath left her lungs in a rush as her fingertips brushed over her clitoris.
“Don’t stop.” Chase’s breath was coming out just as fast as hers. “Please don’t stop.”
And as she let her fingers continued stroking, sliding through her wetness until she could feel the tremors building from way down deep, suddenly he was there with her, his large body wrapped around her, his warmth taking away any chill that remained. In one hard stroke he pushed inside her to the hilt and she pushed back into him just as hard, wanting him even deeper, even closer.
The water splashed all around the room as he held her steady with one arm around her waist while driving into her again and then again as she begged him for more, more, more until the orgasm she’d been teasing him with joined with Chase’s impending release, swelling big enough to break through her entire soul like a tidal wave.
* * *
Chloe smiled at him as he dried her off and Chase loved the way she leaned into his touch, rather than away from it as she once had. Picking her up, he moved to the chair in the corner and pulled her onto his lap. She curled into him like a contented kitten.
“Thank you for trusting me.”
Her head shot up from where she’d had it against his chest. Wariness crept back into her expression as she said, “I like you. A lot. But—”
He should just keep his damned mouth shut. He should enjoy what they were doing and give her more time. But damn it, he was ready now. And he wanted Chloe to be ready, too.
“I know you won’t trust me completely yet. Even if I don’t like it, I understand. At least, I think I do.” He waited for her to say something about what had happened to her. He worked to push down the disappointment, but he knew he’d blown it when the words, “I don’t want no-strings-attached,” shot out of his mouth.
She immediately stiffened on his lap and tried to pull away. Just as he’d known she would. “But that’s our agreement.”
“No. I never agreed.”
“You did!”
“You wanted no-strings-attached and I was hoping I could convince you otherwise. Just like I’m hoping you’ll allow yourself to trust me completely one day.”
“I’m not looking for a relationship. You know that.”
“Yes, but I don’t know why. Tell me what happened.”
“I didn’t run from one guy to end up diving straight into a relationship with another one,” she began, and he could hear the reticence in the tone of her voice, could see how much she wanted to end their conversation in the lines that appeared at the sides of her mouth.
Her hand lifted to cover her cheek again and it nearly killed him not to put his hand over hers and pull it back down.
Which was why he’d never admired her more than he did when she dropped her hand and said,
“But you’re right. It’s not fair for me to be so vague. Not to tell you why.” She sighed and her eyes grew even darker. “In a nutshell, I was married and it wasn’t great.”
“Even from the beginning?”
She shook her head. “No. At first it seemed great. Well, okay, at least.” She scrunched up her nose. “Honestly, I’ve asked myself that question a hundred times. Why did I fall in love with Dean in the first place?” She took a deep breath, one that shook through her all the way to his lap. “You know what I think I’ve figured out?” she asked in a very soft voice.
More glad than he could ever express that she was finally talking to him like this, he gently replied, “What’s that?”
“When we were looking at your family picture, every time you talk about them...” Her words fell away momentarily before she continued, “I wanted that. So badly. I wanted to be part of a family that was warm and fun and loved me.”
“You were an only child?”
She nodded. “But it wasn’t just that. My parents have never really been that open with their feelings. I know they love me, but I can’t remember ever hearing it. I don’t remember many hugs.”
Chase’s heart broke for the little girl inside of Chloe that longed for those hugs. He wanted to make up for each and every one of those hugs she hadn’t gotten, starting now.
“When I met Dean I was young and stupid and desperately looking for that warmth.” Her eyes lifted to meet his. “Turns out I had awful instincts, at least I did when I wanted something so badly to be true that wasn’t.” She shrugged as if she was trying to make it all less of a big deal. “He was nice at first. And I was so happy to finally feel like I had somebody. That I was part of a team. But, we weren’t really a team. After a few years, Dean started to control me, what I did, who I saw. He liked keeping me as a pretty possession. Like his fancy house and his shiny car. I was just one more pretty thing to bring out from the locked cabinet to show off to people.”
Chase wanted to say a thousand different things to Chloe about how stupid her ex had been. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t her fault for believing he was a better, kinder man than he actually was. He wanted to rage at the unfairness that her ex had turned on her.
But he didn’t want to do or say anything that would make her stop talking to him. So he forced himself to swallow it all and simply ask. “When did you decide to leave?”
“One day I was sitting at the country club with a bunch of his friends’ wives that I really didn’t have anything in common with, and I realized I’d been entirely swallowed up by him. I tried to talk to him about it, but he wasn’t interested in listening.” She swallowed hard. “That was the first time he scared me.”
Chase worked to keep his muscles from tensing with rage beneath her. “What did he do?”
“Nothing physical. But he’d started drinking more and more and it was like he wasn’t listening to anything I’d said. When I woke up the next morning, all of my quilting stuff was gone. My fabric.
My machines. Everything.”
This time Chase couldn’t stop himself from saying, “What an asshole.”
Her mouth was tight as she said, “A few weeks later, after I finally accepted what the rest of my empty life was going to look like with a man who didn’t actually love me, I filed for divorce and I moved to Lake County.”
“Somehow you must have known it wasn’t safe for you to stay in the city.”
She shook her head, saying, “No,” then paused, frowning. “Maybe. Maybe that’s why I felt like I had to leave.” Her frown deepened. “I love San Francisco,” she told him, “but I felt like I needed to start fresh. I didn’t want his money, I just wanted my freedom back. Freedom to work on my quilts.
Freedom to choose my own friends. Even the freedom to wear ratty jeans or shoes that don’t have a designer name on them. My apartment never really felt like home, though, even though I wanted it
to.
Even though I needed it to.” She blew out a breath. “But that was okay. I told myself I could eventually make it home, because I thought filing for divorce, leaving him, and moving away had worked. I didn’t hear from him for months, so I thought he’d accepted the divorce.” She moved her hand up to her cheek and touched the fading bruise. “Evidently, he hadn’t.”
“What happened the night I found you?” Chase could hardly get the words out between clenched teeth.
Her eyes darkened. “I was getting ready to paint my living room when I heard someone at the door.” He could feel the shock of that memory radiating from her tight muscles. “Dean was standing there and I was so surprised to see him I let him in without thinking, without even once second guessing that I wasn’t safe with him. But then I realized he was drunk. I don’t know how I could have forgotten how much he was drinking toward the end, but I had. I don’t know, maybe I made myself forget things I didn’t like remembering.”
“That’s natural, sweetheart.”
But it was like she couldn’t hear him, couldn’t do anything but relive what had happened with her ex-husband.
“He said, ‘You’re not getting away from me. You’re mine.’ I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to come to my new town, to stand in the middle of my apartment and tell me that. I didn’t think not to be angry, not to say that I wasn’t his. I told him to go away, that we’d talk later when he wasn’t drunk.”
Chase knew what came next. “Nothing worse for a drunk than hearing that he’s a drunk.”
She nodded. “He told me to shut up and said that he’d made the mistake of letting me get away with too much when we were married and that this time he wouldn’t.”
Chase echoed the words, “This time?”
She closed her eyes. “His exact words were, ‘You’re coming home with me right now. And this time you’ll do what I tell you to do.’”
Chase barely bit back a string of curses as she continued, saying, “He’d never been like that before, never just outright scared me. But I didn’t want to back down, didn’t want him to think he could control me anymore. So I told him I was already home. I told him I wasn’t going anywhere with him and that I wanted him to leave. Now.” Her words hollowed out even more than they already were. “He lost it and grabbed my hair and when I pulled away, he punched me.”
She lifted her hand to her cheek, but he was already there with his, cradling her soft skin, wishing like hell that she’d never had to be hurt. Knowing he never wanted her to be hurt again.
“I was stunned for a minute. I honestly couldn’t believe what he’d just done. I kept waiting for him to start apologizing, to admit that he was completely out of control. But the look on his face, it wasn’t sorry. It was like he was finally victorious, looking at me there with his mark on my face. I was so freaked out that he was going to do it again or something worse, that I didn’t think, I just grabbed the nearest paint can and swung it at him. And then while he was down, I grabbed my bag and ran.”
She was shaking from recounting the story to him and he hated that he’d asked her to go there, that he’d made her relive it all.
“Chloe, sweetheart, you’re all right now.”
She closed her eyes tight. “Do you know what I was doing the whole time I was driving away in the rain? I kept wondering, why was I so stupid? That’s probably why I crashed into the ditch. Because I couldn’t pay attention to anything but that voice in my head that said I should have seen it coming.”
“Looking for the good in people is never stupid.”
She opened her eyes. “But being blind and naïve is.” She gave him a small smile that never reached her eyes, before moving her hand from her face to his. “I know you must have guessed some of this as soon as you saw the bruise on my cheek. But thank you for not pressuring me to call the police. I will. I know I have to. For once in my life, I’ve got to fight for myself. For my own life. And know deep inside myself that I can win that fight.”
From the moment Chase had met Chloe, every last one of his protective urges had come to the fore. Again and again, he’d wanted to jump in and take care of everything for her.
Never more than right this second. He wanted to get in his car and track down the bastard and make sure he never came near her again, make absolutely sure he never had another chance to lay a hand on her.
Only, damn it, he knew that if he did that, if he wrapped Chloe up tight and made sure everything was soft and easy for her from here on out, wasn’t that nearly as bad as the way her ex-husband had stolen her freedom from her?
How the fuck was he going to find a way to love her without smothering her need to be free?
“You’ll win.” He knew it with every fiber of his being.
Her fingertips moved across his lips. “So much faith in me,” she said softly. “I’m so glad you were the one who found me in the storm.”
But they both knew that didn’t really change anything. Because he couldn’t just tell her, “Hey, you know what? I think you’re ready for a new relationship.” Not when she’d just made it abundantly clear to him that she wasn’t.
As if she were reading his mind, she said, “So if I can’t be your girlfriend, is that it?” Her words were soft, but clear. And steady, even as she added, “Does that mean this is over?”
Chase had never been so torn between what he wanted...and what he knew he should do. But she’d just been completely honest with him, despite all the reasons she could have come up with not to trust him.
He owed her the same.
“I should say yes,” he finally gritted out against her fingertips. “If I had one single ounce of decency, I would say, yes, it’s over.” He took her hand in his. “But obviously I’m just as much of a scumbag as any other guy, because the thought of not touching you again, of not kissing you again, of not making love with you again...” His gut clenched tight, as if an invisible fist had gripped it. “I can’t even imagine it.”
He held her gaze, knowing his was as dark, as heated, as hers. Chase knew he shouldn’t keep pressuring her to give him things she wasn’t anywhere near ready to give, even as he said, “If the choice is to take what you’re offering or to walk away, I choose this. I choose you. I choose whatever you’re willing to share with me. Even though I’m never going to stop wanting more from you than just awesome sex. Even though I’m always going to want to change your mind.”
“Chase, I—”
He put a finger over her lips. “I know you’re not ready and I know I shouldn’t push you, but damn it, I can’t help the way I feel. I can’t stop myself from loving you.”
Chloe's eyes eyes got big at the word love and a moment later when she scrambled off his lap with sudden, fierce strength, it took everything Chase had to let her go.
Chapter Twelve
Chloe knew she had been honest. Painfully so.
So had Chase.
She’d even offered to walk away from him. She’d tried to be honorable, just as he’d been with her.
But Chase was clearly a realist. Just as she was. And they both knew that their physical connection was undeniable. Unstoppable.
“I know you don’t want to hear that I'm falling in love with you,” he said softly. “But that doesn’t make it any less true.”
Oh god, she shouldn't want to hear that he was falling for her, not when it scared her to death to know how deep his feelings ran. And yet, she couldn't deny the warmth that spread through her at knowing what she'd come to mean to him.
He was standing now, facing her. Waiting.
There were a million excuses she could have made, a dozen lies she could have tried to tell.
But she couldn't.
“I’m sick of lying to myself. I can’t do it. Not with you.” The admission came out before she could pull it back and she willed herself to be brave.
Fortunately, it was easier to be brave with Chase than with anyone else. Because she knew that he loved her.
“The
truth is that I won’t be able to control myself around you, either. The truth is that even though I can’t give you what you want, even though I should be the one to let you go find someone who’s capable of loving you the way you deserve to be loved, I don’t want to walk away from you.
From this. I can’t give you what you want. All I’m capable of giving right now is sex. Just sex.”
Oh God, what was wrong with her? Why was she letting herself get in any deeper than she could handle?
“Then that’s what we’ll do.” He held out a hand to her. “Have lots and lots of great sex.” He paused, his expression serious. “But not until you feel better. Not until you’re not shaking anymore from having to relive that night.” He lifted her hand to his lips. “I’m sorry I made you go back there, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”
“You needed to know,” she told him. And, surprisingly, she felt a little lighter for having shared her story with someone who cared for her. Deeply, truly cared.
She walked all the way into his arms. “I feel much better,” she told him.
“There’s no rush,” he said, even though both of them knew that there was, as their days together ticked down. And she didn’t want to waste another second thinking about what Dean had done. Damn it, hadn’t she vowed that he wouldn’t steal this from her, too?
“I really do think I’m ninety-nine percent of the way there,” she said. “Think you’re up to helping me get that last percent back?”
Chase stared at her for a long moment before his mouth moved into a sinfully sexy smile. And then his lips were sliding across hers so softly she almost couldn’t feel his kiss.
But her body reacted instantly.
A few seconds later, he kissed her again. Just as softly. She tried to kiss him back, but he pulled away before she could. Another kiss, too gentle and quick for her to do more than just wait for it.
No, damn it! If they were going to do this just sex thing, she couldn’t let him give her these soft, senselessly enticing kisses. From here on out she needed to make sure things stayed physical, not emotional.
