A Ride or Die Kind of Love

by Chelsea Camaron

  He took another swallow of whiskey. “Since you were oblivious to my attempts at bedding you all throughout high school, during, and after college, I thought maybe you were one of those women who responded to being put down. I was wrong. Nothing works with you. Unless you’re with Frankie, you’ve got a chastity belt on.”

  “You’ve been engaged to Kami since you guys were in diapers!”

  His upper lip curled in disgust. “I know,” he sneered. “And I would have told my father to go fuck himself when he ordered me to marry that vile woman if I didn’t have my eye on her closest, most beloved friend.”

  “Are you serious?” I whispered.

  “Quite,” he said. “You see, when it came to who I was to marry, I knew it would never be about anything other than politics and family ties; meaning I would be free to fuck whomever I wished. I realized my mistake too late. You aren’t the sort of woman to have an affair with a married man, nor will you cheat on your husband.”

  I knew true rage then. Chase backed me into a corner; he made sure to cover every angle, leaving me no choice to make but the choice he wanted.

  For the first time in my life, I wanted to kill someone.

  “You’re wrong, Chase,” I hissed. “On both counts. I have cheated on Frankie; in fact, I’ve been fucking a married man for twelve years now.”

  His eyebrows popped up.

  “So you see,” I continued, “your perception of me is seriously misconstrued. It’s only you I do not want to fuck.”

  His jaw clenched. “What’s it going to be, Eva?” he bit out. “Will you be lowering yourself to fuck me, or will Frankie be left to his own devices?”

  I raised my ridiculously overpriced glass of whiskey. “Fuck you, Chase.”

  While I drank, Chase pulled his cell phone from his suit pocket.

  “It’s Henderson,” he said. “Get Deluva out of solitary now…yes, I am aware of how violent he is…I’m also aware of how much I’m paying you…then make sure he’s out cold and restrained before removing him…I’m not interested in how many men it will take to sedate him. I’m only interested in it getting done and it getting done now…good. Make sure he is taken directly to the med center, and you are to call me when he’s awake and somewhat in control of himself. I will send both a physician and a team of psychologists to complete a full psychological profile. You and your staff are to concur with their findings, sign and date where it is required, and await my next instructions.”

  I finished my whiskey and set the glass down hard.

  “Very good,” Chase continued, eyeing me. “Am I to assume said guard has been taken care of?”

  I took a deep breath that did nothing to calm me. Although my belly had warmed from the whiskey and my body had loosened, my heart was firmly lodged in my throat. I might need the entire bottle. All $75,000 of it.

  As if he read my mind, Chase pushed his half-empty glass across the desk.

  “Wonderful,” he said into the phone. “I will be in touch.”

  He hung up, and then pressed a button on his desk phone.

  “Yes, Mr. Henderson?” came through the speaker.

  “Cancel the rest of my day.”

  “Pardon? You have two meetings, one with Judge—”

  “Cancel the rest of my day.”

  “But—”

  “If you want to keep your job, cancel the rest of my day.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The intercom clicked off, and Chase looked up at me. Shuddering, I turned away and chugged the rest of his whiskey.

  “Eva,” Chase said. “I don’t need to tell you that this will not be a one-time occurrence, correct?”

  “Isn’t that what you just did?” I asked sarcastically.

  He glared at me. “It’s not going to work if you’re going to view this as a chore.”

  “Oh,” I sneered. “What should I view it as? A workout? A date?”

  “We could go somewhere,” he said quietly. “Have lunch first. I have standing reservations at everywhere worth anything in the city.”

  I snorted. “We’re not dating, Chase. I just agreed to spread my legs for you. You don’t need to woo me.”

  Chase’s already dead eyes went cold. Chase was a beautiful man, but someone—probably his parents—had repeatedly broken him until there was nothing left to fix.

  “Fine,” he said callously. “Strip.”

  We glared at each other.

  “Strip,” he bit out. “Now, Eva.”

  Gritting my teeth, I yanked my T-shirt over my head and tossed it aside. I kicked off my green Chucks, and then stood to unbutton my oversized jeans. They fell to my feet, and I kicked them away. Hooking my thumbs in my underwear, I shoved them down and stepped out of them.

  Chase looked his fill, his face tightening and his eyes darkening with hunger.

  “Where do you want me?” I said sarcastically.

  “Where do you want it?” he asked just as sarcastically.

  I leaned over his desk, causing my breasts to swing forward. Chase’s eyes followed their movements. I was so angry, furious, and crazy with hate for this man—a man I had considered somewhat of a friend.

  And, to my astonishment, I was furious with Frankie.

  Something happened to me while I glared at Chase—something both terrifying and profound. I wasn’t just furious with Frankie; I hated Frankie. He had fucked me up so badly that I didn’t know who the fuck I was.

  All I’d ever known was Frankie. What Frankie wanted.

  My entire life had been about him…and a few secret longings that I had so rarely given in to.

  Realizing all of this shit only made me even angrier.

  Fuck Frankie.

  Fuck everything.

  With a hard sweep of my hand, I sent everything within my reach on Chase’s giant desk flying across the room. His laptop smashed into his bookshelf. Framed photos of his wedding, others of just Kami, and a few of Kami and Devin—their four-year-old son—flew across the room and shattered. Papers went flying into the air. I wasn’t sure where his phone ended up.

  I jumped up on his desk and slid myself to the edge directly in front of him. I placed my feet on his thighs and spread my legs wide open.

  Chase sucked in air through his teeth.

  “This is what you want, isn’t it?” I growled. “You want wild pussy, don’t you, Chase?”

  He gripped my calves and looked up at my face. “Yes,” he hissed.

  And I wanted to give it to him. I had only ever been wild with Deuce. I wanted wild. I wanted free. I wanted my secret longings to become my reality.

  “Then kiss me,” I whispered, leaning forward. Just before his mouth met mine, I reared back and slapped him as hard as I could. His head whipped to the right.

  When he turned back to me, his cold eyes were blazing with fury.

  And it turned me on.

  I moved my foot from his thigh onto his bulging erection and gave him a nasty grin. Stroking him, I crooked a finger. “I thought you wanted wild pussy, Chase. You want it; you gotta work for it.”

  His eyes widened with understanding.

  “Fuck…me,” he whispered. “I knew it.”

  I leaned forward and hooked several fingers in between the buttons on his dress shirt. “You know nothing,” I hissed and yanked. Buttons flew every which way, and I jumped into his lap.

  Chase and I didn’t have sex, and we certainly didn’t make love. Chase and I fought. I made him work for every kiss and for every touch. This turned out to be perversely exciting for me, but what really threw me over the edge was how much I loved that final moment when he managed to pin me on my back long enough to pry my legs open and force himself inside of me.

  I felt like screaming at the top of my lungs, “FUCK YOU, FRANKIE!”

  I stopped fighting then.

  That’s when we fucked—sick, depraved fucking.

  Chase got off on things that would turn the stomachs of most people. He had me doing things I’d never done
before, things I hadn’t thought myself capable of doing, let alone capable of enjoying.

  And I begged for more.

  Exhausted and sore, I left Chase’s office on shaking legs with a key to his suite at the Waldorf and an invitation to use his personal driver whenever I wanted.

  I had just hit rock bottom, and I didn’t care. In fact, I didn’t give a shit about anything at all.

  • • •

  Lying on his bed, Deuce stared down his naked body at the bobbing head between his legs, shuddered, and took another long swallow of Jack. He wasn’t going to come; he desperately wanted to come, but it wasn’t going to happen. He was drunk, he was pissed, and he wanted the release too fucking badly.

  Fucking Eva. He should have left her at that party. Bitch wasn’t his, never was. She’d always been Frankie’s, and he’d been…what? A once-in-a-while distraction? A fucking joke?

  Cursing, he pushed Miranda off him, positioned her on her knees, and sank inside of her. He fucked her until he had fucked himself into oblivion and passed out unsatisfied.

  And he dreamt of Eva. He always dreamt of Eva.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It wasn’t long before my meetings with Chase had become more and more frequent. He was calling me four times a week, making me stay overnight with him at the Waldorf, and buying me shit I didn’t want but kept asking him for, raising the price of the items each time. He started taking me out to dinner at exclusive restaurants and raunchy nightclubs—the existence of which the general population in Manhattan knew nothing about. He began making me dress up for him in the sort of clothing I never would have looked twice at—clothing even more ridiculous than what Kami wore. That was for our dinners. What he had me wearing to go clubbing was far, far worse. As were the clubs—sex clubs, weekend-long partying from Friday night to Monday morning. Booze, drugs, free sex, kinky sex, violent sex, every kind of sex imaginable, and all of it public.

  Any inhibition I’d ever had quickly diminished after being fucked in front of a club full of people—some watching, some touching, and others involved in their own public fucking.

  I stopped talking to Kami. I stopped going to the MC. I was constantly canceling my lunch or dinner dates with my father unless Chase was with me to discuss Frankie’s case.

  And Frankie…Frankie was gone. I didn’t visit him, I didn’t write him, and I refused to accept his calls. Gone. I didn’t care. And I did care. Half the time I didn’t know what I cared about or what I was feeling—maybe because Frankie wasn’t here to tell me how I felt and what I should care about, and Chase couldn’t care less about anything other than what he was feeling.

  My already precariously tilting world had gone and spiraled out of control, and shit was dropping from the surface and being sucked into outer space. I didn’t try to stop it; I didn’t do much of anything really, except what Chase wanted me to do, which usually involved his cock and an orifice on my body. Or several of them.

  Then one day my world stopped spinning, and I fell flat on my face.

  It was a Thursday in late August. I was sitting on my bed at the club, and I was glaring at my cell phone. It kept ringing and ringing and ringing. I was supposed to have met Chase over an hour ago for lunch at his office, but I couldn’t stop staring at the pregnancy test in my hand. The freshly peed-on, undeniably positive pregnancy test.

  My phone started ringing again. Knowing he wasn’t going to stop, I answered it.

  “Where are you?” Chase demanded.

  “The club.”

  He didn’t say anything. He knew I didn’t go to the club anymore. I could practically hear the wheels in his head working overtime at this new development.

  “Listen, Chase. I, uh, can’t—”

  “You can’t what?” he ground out.

  “I can’t meet you today,” I whispered. “I don’t, um, feel good.”

  “What’s going on, Eva? You felt fine yesterday.”

  No. I felt nauseated yesterday; I just didn’t tell him.

  “I think I have the flu,” I continued in a whisper. “I just want to stay in bed, OK?”

  “Eva, what the fuck is really going on?”

  I took a deep breath. “Nothing, Chase. I just don’t feel good. I’m not up to cage fighting with you today.”

  He hung up.

  I stared at the phone. I should tell him. If he was the father, he had a right to know. Only, I wasn’t sure if he was the father. Early June, I slept with Deuce. I closed my eyes, remembering rocking back and forth overtop his large, powerful body, watching every change in his hard face as my body worked his, and that beautiful moment at the end when he tensed, our eyes locked, and I felt him spill himself inside of me. It was greedy; I knew that even in my haze of need, but we both had been greedy. For that one moment, we were done pretending. I wanted it, he wanted to give it, and then I ran back to Frankie when it was over.

  I choked back a sob. I was such an idiot. And I desperately needed Kami.

  Grabbing my purse—my $400 Poppy Coach purse that Chase’s personal shopper had picked out for me last week because it was designer but edgy and not overly expensive, and Chase had decided it worked for me—I headed for Kami’s. I was going to tell her what was going on, and I would deal with whatever she threw at me.

  The cab ride was uncomfortable, but the elevator ride up to her penthouse was downright awful. My nerves were jumping out of my skin, add that to my constant nausea, and I was headed for a full-blown panic attack. By the time the elevator doors opened, I broke out in a cold sweat and was gripping my stomach.

  It didn’t help that it was Chase who was standing in front of the elevator and not Kami.

  “Shit,” I muttered and backed farther into the elevator.

  He slammed his palm against the sliding door, keeping it open. “What the fuck?” he growled.

  I stared at him. Seeing him here—in his home, Kami’s home—the realization of what I’d been doing and who I’d been doing it with was even more awful than I’d imagined it would be.

  “I…um…”

  “I knew you lied to me,” he bit out. “And you’ve got two fucking seconds to explain why before I pick you up, take you straight to my room, and let Kami hear me fucking the shit out of you.”

  “Chase—”

  “I mean it, Eva. Unless you want Kami to hear you screaming my name, you better start talking.”

  I blew out a shaky breath. “I’m pregnant,” I blurted out. “I needed Kami.”

  His eyes went wide. “What?”

  “Pregnant, Chase!” I cried out softly. “Baby inside of me!”

  He stared at me. No longer angry, no longer anything. Just a blank-faced stare.

  Then the strangest thing happened. Chase’s eyes went soft. Chase didn’t have soft eyes; he had cold eyes, blank eyes, calculating eyes, I’m-going-to-fuck-you-blind eyes, but never soft.

  It changed his entire face. And so did the smile that followed. Not his shark smile, but an honest-to-God smile.

  He looked…human.

  I stared at him, not knowing what to say or do, wondering what the hell he was so happy about. Then I froze because I realized Chase was happy. Chase. Happy. And he was happy because I was pregnant. This revelation brought me up short, and my world resumed spinning.

  “Eva,” he whispered, reaching for me. “I—”

  “Evie!” Kami screamed, running up behind Chase. He immediately moved away from the elevator door, and I stepped into their foyer and caught a velour-sweatsuit-covered Kami as she barreled into me.

  “Where have you been?” she squealed, squeezing me tight.

  “Busy with Frankie,” I whispered, staring at Chase over her shoulder. Arms folded in front of his chest, he was leaning against an intricately carved pillar smack dab in the center of the foyer staring back at me. Smiling.

  I closed my eyes and squeezed Kami back. “Missed you,” I choked out.

  “God, Evie, me, too. Devin, too.”

  She pulled away. �
�Devin!” she bellowed. “Aunt Evie is here!”

  She turned back to me, grinning, and her mouth fell open. “Evie, what are you wearing?” she whispered.

  I looked down. Crap. I had been dressed to meet Chase for lunch. I wasn’t wearing any of the elaborate crap he bought me, but I wasn’t wearing anything I would normally wear. Designer skinny jeans, artfully distressed, covered my legs; my tank top was a shimmery black silk that both clung and flowed. All of this was paired with Jimmy Choo strappy black sandals and my black rhinestone-covered Coach bag. I had blown my hair straight, and then feathered it. I had a shit ton of makeup on and more jewelry than I had ever worn in my life, all of it expensive and chic. It wasn’t me, whoever me was, and she knew it. We both had to wear uniforms to school, but I always found a way to make mine my own. And even though I wore a designer evening gown to prom, I paired it with my Chucks and didn’t do a damn thing to my hair. It was still wet from my shower when the limo picked up Frankie and me.

  I turned bright red as she continued to gape at me.

  “I think she looks stunning,” Chase said, his voice low, his eyes blazing. A surge of desire shot through me. I wanted his hands on me. I wanted the pain, pleasure, and humiliation he brought me, and I wanted it now; I was starting to breathe heavier just thinking about it. He saw this, and he smiled his shark smile.

  “No one cares what you think!” Kami snapped. She narrowed her eyes at me. “What’s going on?” she demanded.

  I swallowed thickly. “I had a meeting with the D.A. this morning. Frankie’s bullshit, you know? I didn’t want to look like biker trash.”

  Sheesh. Lying to Kami made me feel filthy. Disgusting. I had never lied to her before, not once in twenty-five years of friendship.

  This seemed to placate her, but she still looked suspicious. “You’ve never cared before, and you’ve never looked like trash because you aren’t trash.”

  I opened my mouth, another lie on the tip of my tongue, but was saved from having to dig my hole deeper when Devin barreled into the room much the same way his mother had.

  “Aunt Evie!” he screamed as I bent down to engulf him in a squeezing hug. I buried my face in his sweet-smelling neck and fought the urge to cry. I had been avoiding both Kami and Devin—two people I loved more than anything—for this bullshit with Chase.