The sound of the door opening and someone walking across the tile floor shook me free of my macabre thoughts. The last thing I expected to see appear in the mirror behind me were a pair of sapphire eyes, narrowed from the intensity with which they looked at me.
“I decided.” I didn’t turn to face him as I spoke. I continued staring in the mirror into my own eyes and not his. If I looked into his, the words I forced out might not come. “This morning and last night did not happen. I can’t go there, wherever there is, with you.”
My focus remained on myself but I still saw his unchanged, narrowed, and intense gaze out of the corner of my vision. I closed my eyes fooling myself into thinking that when I re-opened them he would be gone, my words having effectively turned him away. I felt the heat of his body standing directly behind me, crowding my space and when I opened my eyes, my vision confirmed what I’d already known. He was still there.
He placed both hands on my waist and turned me around to face him. He crowded my space even more, pushing between my legs, forcing them apart to accommodate him as he did. My heartbeat spread up as it became a little bit harder to breathe. His presence was strong and nearly overwhelming. It threatened to pull me into it, take me prisoner, and never release me. The thought should have frightened the shit out of me but my body burned in every spot that made contact with him.
“I figured as much when you didn’t acknowledge me either time out there. I told you the truth when I said I was trying to be decent. But it was also the truth when I said that doing so has never been one of my finer qualities. I lied to you Alex. And yes, I’m a bastard for it but I don’t give a shit. There is only one decision that I will go along with and the one you claim to have made isn’t it.”
I didn’t like the way his words and his body pressed into mine were making me feel. They made my body react in complete contradiction to the words I’d just declared. I pushed at him placing my hands on his chest, but he corralled my wrists with one hand and held them tightly. He rocked his hips forward, pressing them into me and making sure I felt every hard inch that made up the length of him along my core. He brought his free hand to my neck and circled it around my throat. For a fleeting moment, my heart raced even quicker than it already was doing and I thought his hand would crushingly close around it next. Like… like before. All of my weapons lay back in the ring and there was no way in hell I could outmuscle him.
I heard the words “Nunc ergo curate” being muttered and I felt a warming sensation beneath where his hand closed over the skin on my neck.
He took his hand away then replaced it with his lips against the hollow of my throat. I felt a different type of warming feeling in the spot that his lips touched. It traveled down my neck and the back of my spine at the same time. It settled in my core and made the tips of my toes curl.
“You healed me?” I asked both dazed and confused. Why would he do that? Bennett had made it clear he would skin anybody alive who did.
“I did,” he held my gaze still staring intently into my eyes.
“But Bennett—“
My words were cut off by the lethal expression that flashed through his stare. The light in his sapphire eyes didn’t just dim, it darkened and the shadows that moved behind them was akin to how it looked when a fierce storm is brewing.When he spoke, it was more of the growl of a ruthless predator than a man sane with his humanity in tact.
“Bennett can go fuck himself. He’s fortunate that you are close to him. Otherwise, after that little display of what a colossal ass he is I’d—“ He swallowed hard. Then closed his eyes on a deep breath that was meant to calm the temper that had flared. When he opened his eyes, they glittered with the usual light that inhabited them.
“Can you release my wrists?” I looked down at them still bound in his hands pointedly.
His response was a wolfish grin. “Only if you promise not to try to push me away again.”
“Fine,” I sighed. “I won’t push you away.”
“Promise,” he prodded.
“I promise,” I said even though I had every intention of breaking it.
He let my wrists go and I shoved at his chest. I shoved a second time throwing the weight of my body into it to get him to budge. I figured out what a terrible idea that was when all throwing my weight into him did was close the little bit of space that lingered between us. The move crushed my breasts against his chest and my nipples hardened in response to the heat I felt through the fabric of my top from him being shirtless.
His eyes flashed dark again, but with a different kind of emotion. “You lied Alex.”
“So did you Chase.” I meant to drawl the words but in the midst of saying them his hands cupped my butt and he hoisted me onto the sink. He wrapped my legs around his waist and pressed the hardness of himself in between them. It sparked something that made the words come out on a breathy moan instead.
“Fuck, Alex,” he groaned into my ear. “Say my name like that again.” It was sixty percent a demand and forty percent a plea.
He said it while his hips jerked into me, grinding into my center. The action short circuited my brain and made me lose all good sense.
“Chase,” I moaned his name again.
His lips punishingly crushed down on mine and in response I wrapped my arms around his neck and tangled my hands in his curls. My thighs squeezed together of their own volition trapping him and increasing the friction from him grinding against the feverish spot between them. His hands slid up my lower back and circled around to the flat plane of my lower belly. He fingers caressed the waist line of my pants and I thought about what it would feel like if he dipped them down past the band and slid them inside my panties. My back arched at the thought of what the fingers I’d pictured replacing my own in the shower would feel like splayed and moving inside of me. The action made his length brush against the most intimate, sensitive part of me and left the bud pulsing. My body shook and I felt myself on the precipice of something that someone else hadn’t induced in me in a long time. In that moment I craved a release and had he peeled away the barrier of my clothes and his, I would have opened my legs wider, arched against him and begged him to enter me. The vision of him doing so was already playing itself out in my head. My core throbbed harder at what I imagined it would feel like. My hands moved from his hair to grip his back and I arched violently against him.
“Chase…” I moaned again. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. What demand or request or plea would escape out of my mouth.
He ground against me just as violently. “Yes, Alex. Fuck. Say it. Whatever it is tell me and I swear I will do whatever you want. I’ll give you whatever you need. What do you need Alex? Say it. So I can give it to you.”
Oh God the feel of him against me felt so good. I needed more. I needed the absence of clothing. I needed him to take me over the edge that I was already teetering on the brink of. I opened my mouth to tell him that. The locker room door opened then slammed shut and approaching footsteps echoed against the tiles. Chase growled in frustration low and deep into my ear. Then he picked me up and placed my feet on the ground and stepped back from me abruptly.
“Alex are you okay?!” Charissa high heels clicked across the floor as she walked brusquely toward me. She took my chin between her thumb and forefinger and tilted my head back. Her thinly arched eyebrows knitted together when she did not see a scratch across my throat. “Did you heal her?” She said turning to Chase.
“I did.” His eyes dared her to reproach him for it.
She eyed him for a moment, wordlessly taking his measure then nodded curtly. “Good.”
She turned back to me. “Bennett acted like a bastard and I want you to know he got an earful and more from me for what he did. It was over the top and uncalled for. I told him the next time he pulls some shit like that I will crush his goddamn balls in my bare hands.”
Guilt pricked at me for causing a fight between them. I tried to diffuse the situation and her indignation on my behal
f. “You didn’t have to take up for me. I deserved the smack down. He’s right. I crossed a line when I pulled a knife on Tara and made her bleed. And it was just me acting stupidly and out of control because I let shit get to me on a level that I know is dangerous. I needed the reminder that Bennett gave me.”
“Bullshit,” Charissa spat. “He went too far. He provoked you on purpose. He knows it, I know it and you know it. He could have gone about proving his point in a different manner. And that bitch deserved what she got. She crossed a line first. She went for your face.”
Charissa looked about ready to murder all parties involved except me. I needed to calm her down. “Still, it’s okay. Chase healed me and I’m no worse for the wear. Bennett reminded me of an important lesson. I can’t allow my emotions to get the better of me. I don’t think clearly when I do and it’s a guaranteed way to end up dead in a fight. If it’d been a daemon and not Bennett and I’d been on the streets instead of in a ring, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Yeah, he was a jerk, but in his painful as shit way he was just trying to knock some sense into me and save me from getting myself killed. Don’t be too pissed off at him. He might have saved my life.”
She let out a loud, still pissed off huff. “You’re an adult Alex. You don’t have to take his shit.”
“Trust me, I know. But on this one let it go. Please? For me? I hate it when y’all fight and I especially hate it when I’m the cause of it.”
Some of the anger receded from her hazel eyes. “Fine. For you. But just this time. If he pulls some shit to that extent again, I will thoroughly fuck him up on your behalf. My husband or not. You’re my kid as much as Ari and Cole are. I will go all mother bear on his ass over you just like I would over them. He loves y’all but his methods and parenting can be extreme sometimes. I know it’s because the thought of losing any of you to some shit drives him bugfuck, but still, it is not an excuse.”
“I know and you’re right.”
She looked at me hard. “Don’t patronize me Alex.”
“I’m not,” I promised her. “I do know and you are right.”
She narrowed her eyes at me then they softened. “Are you sure you are alright?”
“Yes.” I forced a smile out.
She eyed me a minute longer then conceded. “Fine. It’s dropped.”
She turned to Chase. “You her new partner?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said flashing her his dimples embedded in a charming grin.
She grunted at him, unmoved by its high wattage. “Then you better be good for more than trying to get into her pants in a damn locker room. If she gets hurt while y’all are out there together it’s your ass. You got it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said again with a salute.
She scowled at him then left us alone.
I didn’t give him the opportunity to restart what we’d been doing or myself the opportunity to want him to. I brushed passed him and headed for the locker room door. “Come on,” I called over my shoulder. “Or we won’t make it to Centennial Park by sundown.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Hideout
We completed our patrol without further incident of the sexually charged kind. We didn’t come across any Brethren, which Chase was on the lookout for, but we did dispatch three daemons back to where they belonged.
I was thankful for the fact that we’d both rode our bikes to the area, because it provided me a valid excuse not to need to hop on the back of his and to make my way home by myself.
At least I thought it did. I avoided riding pressed up against Chase on his bike, but I didn’t get out of him accompanying me to my apartment.
I used the remote control to open the garage a few feet before I approached it and abruptly zoomed into it and parked my bike in my assigned spot. By the time Chase followed behind me and found an open parking spot for his, I was already swiping my remote against the keyless entry pad to open the glass door that led to the lobby of my building.
“Thanks for seeing me home. I’m good from here,” I called out behind me as I walked into the lobby and closed the door. My head turned to the right a fraction to catch him in my peripheral. I pretended like I didn’t see that he’d dismounted his bike and had started in the direction of my building. I quickly pressed the button to call the elevator then pressed the button to manually close the doors sooner than they would have shut on their own. I got off at the top floor and damn near sprinted to my apartment door. I unlocked it and slammed it shut maybe a little too forcefully behind me. I crossed my living room to the closed door that led into my bedroom. I turned the knob, walked inside, and collapsed face first onto the bed. I forced my mind to remain a neutral slate. I recalled functional groups of organic compounds until I fell asleep.
My mind was neutral when I went to sleep but I had no control over what topic it wandered to when I first woke up. Blue eyes, and deep dimples, and strong arms braced around me were the first things it conjured when my alarm clock drug me out of unconsciousness. Then long, expert fingers were the next thing it thought about and I caught my own hand mid creep on its path up my thigh. No. I was not doing that again. Especially not while thinking about him.
I dressed, went for a run, then came back and showered and left for class. Instead of going home afterwards I stayed on campus. I went to the library and made myself get some real studying done. My test was three days away. I spent the remainder of the day locked away in the book stacks.
I only emerged when my stomach started to grumble too loudly for me to ignore. I grabbed an espresso and a sandwich from the coffee house on campus and went back to memorizing functional groups and all of the many ways they could react with one another. When my stomach grumbled again it was ten minutes until six. I stared down at my phone wandering if Bennett would let me get away with playing hooky for a couple of days if I pretended to be sick. I couldn’t hide from Chase forever, but I figured if I didn’t come in contact with him for a few days it would sober me up.
I dialed Bennett’s number and coughed into the phone when I heard the line pick up. “I don’t feel well. I think I’m coming down with something.”
“It has to be a pretty nasty something to put a Nephilim under the weather,” Charissa’s amused voice traveled through the phone.
I coughed again. “I know right. I don’t think I’m in any shape to patrol tonight. Can you call my partner and let him know he’ll be going at it alone?”
“Um hmm. And you can’t because…?”
“Because my throat is on fire and it hurts to talk.” I was aware of how lame my excuses sounded. I sucked at lying on the spot.
“Ah got it. I’ll phone your partner and let Bennett know too. How many days do you think you’ll be out of commission?”
I hacked into the phone again. “Three maybe four.” I groaned weakly for good measure. “I’ll come by headquarters on Sunday to check in. I should be better by then.”
“Gotcha. Anything else?”
“No, that’s it. Thanks.”
“No problem. See you Sunday.”
I could have sworn I heard Charissa’s faint laughter in the background as she hung up the phone.
I dialed a second number as I left the library and walked back to my apartment nearby. The phone picked up on the third ring. I gave my grandfather the same story I’d given Charissa and as I knew he would, he insisted that I come home and rest for the remainder of the week. The cook could make me soup and I could recuperate in my old room. As a bonus, he added that my grandmother was in New York. She served on one of the committees that helped organize the Met Gala. I planned to agree to his offer all along but knowing that she was out of town was the icing on the cake.
When I walked in my apartment I packed a small duffel bag with a few days worth of clothes and texted Whitney so she wouldn’t worry when she came home and I never showed up. I hadn’t seen her since the charity ball but that wasn’t odd. I’d expected her to stay over at her date’s place and I was shut away
in my room unconscious Sunday when I was at the apartment. She’d probably left by the time I woke up and headed out or was taking a late afternoon nap herself. Our schedules never intersected on Mondays until early in the evening, after she’d finished with a full day of classes and work-study in between them. She loaded her Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays up, preferring a heavier load at the beginning of the week than at the end of it. Thursday through Sunday were for partying and chillin’ in her words.
I grabbed my book bag I’d sat down along with my keys and left for my grandparents’ house in East Paces Ferry. If Chase showed up at my apartment to check on me after Charissa told him he’d be going at it alone for a few days I wouldn’t be there.
My grandfather was still at his office when I arrived, but as promised their housekeeper, Ingrid, had my old room ready and a hot bowl of soup waiting for me. She made the most delicious homestyle chicken noodle soup ever. I hated nearly never getting sick when I was younger because it meant that I didn’t get the soup much. Every now and again I would feign illness just so she’d make me a pot. I think she eventually caught on because she started working chicken noodle soup into her weekly meal rotation. I scarfed the soup down and went back for seconds and then admittedly thirds.
“And that is why I never fret about making a whole pot just for you,” Ingrid told me as she cleared the empty bowl from in front of me at the dining room table. “I know it’s not going to go to waste.”
I smiled at her. “It was delicious as always. Thanks Ingrid. You don’t have to wash my dishes. I can do that myself and wash whatever you used to make the soup too.”
“Pfft.” She waived her hand dismissively at me. “Nonsense child. I can do my job. It’s what I get paid for.”
I knew from experience not to argue with her.
Craved: A Chosen Ones Novel Page 11
