His head lifted, and his eyes locked with hers, darkened, vivid blue. He stroked his thumbs into her folds, delving into her.
She locked her gaze right back, even though she wanted to toss her head back and close her eyes. Even though she wanted to sink and part and soften. She drew her hand down long, long, and slow, slow back up.
He played with silk-moist insides, with her, with all the softened, inner, fragile parts of her.
And she could only get at his hardness, only make it harder and harder, fighting it like an opponent she couldn’t beat.
While her breath began to shorten, while her eyes began to tear with the battle, while she wanted nothing, nothing so much as to give in to all that building wanting, let everything about herself yield.
One thumb still sliding and exploring among her folds, he found her clit with his other and began to play. He was watching her still. Almost there might have been the curve of a smile, but she tightened her grip again and that smile disappeared. He made a hungry sound of pleasure.
That sound vibrated into her, gave him still more access, made her still more vulnerable.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered. Damn him, he could still speak? “I’ve got you. It’s okay. Come on, baby, come on.” One thumb coaxed. The other slid deep into her, and she clutched on the delight of that invasion.
Losing it. She was losing it entirely. Now she was clutching his penis like a drowning person, and she didn’t even care if the water was closing over her head because it was so damn beautiful with all those silky colors in it.
“Oh, you’re so beautiful,” Chase whispered. “Come on, come on, come on.”
And she did, jerking into it past resistance, hiding her face in her arms, falling back on the couch as her body seized and seized in the overwhelming joy of being her. In his hands.
He milked her down from it slowly. He was steady and patient and thorough, letting her linger in it until finally she pushed his hand away and grabbed his hips. And then he kind of lost his mind. Rolling her under him on the couch. Lifting her and twisting her under him over the arm of the couch. Abandoning the couch all together and carrying her to her bed where he could have this great feast of her body, thrusting and taking and turning and taking another way, like he just couldn’t get enough.
Until she grabbed him and held on with all her one-handed might, digging her fingers into his butt, lifting to him as she pulled him into her. “God, I love you,” he said again hoarsely, that bastard, his face so flushed, his fingers so hard they would have hurt, if she’d been less aroused.
“Shut up,” she said, and brought one of his hands around between her legs, pressing his touch to her, because she was desperate again by then, and she came again while he did, crushing her to him with the force of it.
Chapter 15
Careless, arrogant idiot! Vi gripped her head, trying to focus the insult on Chase but feeling as if she was apostrophizing herself.
Of course he was gone this morning. Of course a man said I love you when he was in the middle of sex and then panicked at what the hell he had gotten himself into after the arousal faded.
She rolled out of bed and picked up the journal she had knocked to the floor when she woke precisely one minute before her alarm and flung out her hand to make sure it didn’t go off.
Aarrgh. What the hell was wrong with her? Why did she keep letting him bring his B.S. into her life? A weakness for cocky guys and a belief that she could handle anything were not good excuses. Just because a woman can handle bullshit doesn’t mean she should.
She slammed the journal onto the nightstand and stood still for a moment with her head bent.
Actually, what the hell was wrong with him? The guy was completely inconsistent. Who showed up to stitch together leather and open his heart and then ran out before dawn?
An emotional coward, maybe. Somebody who scared himself by all the emotions he was pulling out.
Although he had locked his eyes with hers and said, You wish in a way that still vibrated in her bones like a challenge.
And she never really had seen a gauntlet thrown down that she could resist picking up.
She frowned at her leather jacket, stroking the sleeve. A worry woke up in her middle and started to stretch. What if there was some reason he had disappeared before dawn? Some reason to do with whatever his real reason for being here was?
Oh, shit, he wasn’t doing anything else to her restaurant, was he?
She yanked clothes on and hurried over there as fast as blasted public transport would allow, but the place was completely locked up and taped off. Nobody was around, though, so she went ahead and ripped the yellow tape and went in. Darkness and LED lights. Nobody there.
She went through the walkins, in deep mourning for all the food spoiling. Damn it, they needed to let her back in here.