21. Chase
It had taken years to convince Zak he wasn’t an awful person, so Chase was expecting it to take more than a few early morning songwriting sessions for things to go back to normal between them.
Which meant he was wholly unprepared for the knock at his door on the night before their first show to be coming from her. Ten minutes seemed awfully quick for the room service he had ordered, but then again, how long did it take to make carbonara and a salad?
“These fucking people, I swear,” Zak fumed as soon as he opened the door. “What did they ask you? Because my interview sucked.”
She went on to detail exactly why, but it was really challenging to hang on to the specifics when she was standing within arms’ length wearing a skin-tight, partially-see-through minidress and a pair of studded stilettos. Shit, it was difficult to breathe.
No amount of reminding himself to be careful was going to change the path of his eyes trailing over her body.
Her cleavage strained against black mesh, the already ample difference between her waist and hips defined by two other triangular cutouts. Arrows pointing out her curves, as if he needed any fucking help noticing them. Her toned legs flexed behind sheer tights.
“Am I interrupting anything?” She gave him a quizzical look. Probably because he had been standing there in shock from the moment he saw her.
“Not at all.” Chase felt like an absolute ass for checking her out so blatantly, but then he caught her eyes. Tracing a line across his bare chest. He swallowed. “Do you want to come in?”
She did, and leaned against the door once it shut. “Those are some pajamas.”
At first he thought she was referring to the top, which he was not wearing, but after a split moment of insecurity realized she was referring to his pants, which were candy cane striped and printed with bong-smoking penguins. The one loose leg reminded him that he had left his prosthesis on the luggage rack—a state that made him feel completely exposed despite Zak’s indifference to the crutch propped against his side.
“Christmas gift from Lydia.” He sat on the bed and scooted all the way back against the headboard, placing a pillow over his lap. Just in case.
“Cute. Did you get her the matching meth seals?”
“Sounds to me like you’re jealous because all your pajamas are boring.”
She ran her tongue along the front of her teeth and smirked. “Wouldn’t you like to find out?”
Already, the pillow came in handy. Her joke hit the pit of his stomach so hard that he had to concentrate on the landscape painting across the room to regain his composure.
“Did you need something, or did you just come here to make riveting observations about my clothing?”
“Alex and Edge had evening interview slots. Dallas is asleep,” she explained. “And it’s not like I’m going to be able to sleep anytime soon. Too much adrenaline.”
“It feels good being your last pick, Parker.”
“You’re my first pick,” she fired back. She even tricked him into thinking she was serious until she added, “I mean, your room is so close. Hard to beat that proximity.”
“You shoot to kill, don’t you?”
She glanced at the TV, reminding him that he had turned it on. “You’re a rock fan and a horror movie fan? Teenage-Me’s head would explode.”
Zak slid onto the other side of the bed with her legs outstretched, one crossed over the other, and started pulling bobby pins out of her hair.
Adult-Chase’s head exploded.
“Great. So you’re done stereotyping me, then?” he said, mouth dry as that already short hem rode further up her thick thighs. Close enough he could reach out and grab them. Pry them apart.
“Oh, definitely. Now I’m judging you instead.” She pointed to the TV. “I mean, this is ridiculous. She’s just standing there screaming when there’s a perfectly good poker in the fireplace.”
“Have you ever heard the expression, ‘paralyzed with fear’?”
“Have you ever heard of natural selection?” She kept her eyes peeled to the screen. “And what’s up with the killer? If you really wanted to stab somebody to death, wouldn’t you walk a little faster?”
“Considering I’m not a killer, I don’t know. But if I really cared about accuracy, I would have picked a documentary.”
“I love documentaries.”
“Go figure.”
Zak kicked off her shoes and rubbed her feet. “Do you think they’ll garnish my stipend if I don’t return the heels after our show tomorrow?”
“That’s your stage outfit?” There was no other explanation for how she had ended up with the dress or why she was wearing it, but he hadn’t exactly been focused on the how and why.
She looked over her shoulder at him. “Well, it’s certainly not my casual-wear.”
Could a man survive a full twenty-four hours with a raging erection? Or would Chase run out of oxygen at some point between song one and song two?
“Do you want to borrow something more comfortable?” he asked, gesturing to her… insanely sexy body.
Hopefully something longer, looser. Maybe a few layers.
She cocked her head. “My own clothes are about twenty steps away.”
“Right.”
She stared for a prolonged moment. “Are you okay?”
“Yes.” His voice came out strained.
“Should I go? If you want your alone time that’s cool too.”
“No.” He once again tried to say more, but everything else got choked off after one syllable.
“I thought you said you didn’t lie to me?”
“I’m not—” Oh my god. Chase groaned. “Can you—” He took a deep breath. “Stay. Just stay.”
“Break-ups break up bands,” her voice echoed in his head. He briefly wondered what hook-ups did to bands, but it was best not to go down that road. He wasn’t sure there could ever be such a thing as just a hook-up with Zak for him.
Zak nodded, realization dawning on her face that terrified the hell out of him. And for good measure. Because then she looked down at her breasts and hit him with a smug, “Is it these?”
Lord knew it wasn’t the first time she’d been blunt with him, yet he still couldn’t believe she said that. He stammered as he thought of how to answer, but there was no good way. So he went the honest way.
“You know what? No lies. So yes, Zak. It’s your chest. It’s your hips, it’s your ass, it’s your legs. It’s you.” He said in one breath. “Is that seriously the outfit they picked for you tomorrow? Because I thought stage fright was going to be the worst of my problems.”
“Oh.” Suddenly, it didn’t look like a joke to her anymore.
“Look.” He moved in closer to see what she would do. To see the flare of her pupils and the blush spreading across her cheeks. “If you want this to be just friends, I’m going to need you to let me just be your friend. ‘Cause I have a feeling you know exactly what you’re doing to me. You’re either trying to fuck with my head, or you want me, too. And I don’t think it’s the first one, is it?”
She bit down on her lip. “I thought you were fucking with my head.”
“Well, now you know.” He held her gaze. “I’m not.”
It felt good to be the one rendering her speechless for once. It felt even better, when she finally spoke, to hear her say, “I’m not either.”
Better still, was her hand on his thigh, the way her breaths came faster as he brushed his lips over the redness on her cheek.
“Tell me what you want from me,” he whispered. “Do you want me to stop?”
“You should,” she said. “We should.”
“Do you want me to?” he repeated, as his hand found the curve in her waist and brought her closer. Pleading. Hoping she would say no. Hoping if she said yes, he wouldn’t pass out. His heart was pounding, his entire body was dizzy. There was a tremor in his jaw that he couldn’t subdue.
“I—”
This time, the knock was room service.
Zak startled, shuffling to one corner of the bed, and Chase backed away to the other thinking maybe she wouldn’t run off if he gave her space.
Why the fuck did he have to order dinner? He hadn’t been that hungry.
“I can’t, Chase.” She ran a hand through her hair and pressed at her temple, shaking her head. “I can’t.”
Chase would have put money on that not being the same thing she was about to say before they were interrupted.
“Hey, it’s alright.” He pushed off the mattress to answer the door. “We can pretend nothing happened, okay? Nothing did happen,” he corrected himself.
He quickly paid and brought the paper bag full of food back to the bed, setting it between them. “Are you hungry?”
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea for me to—”
“Stay,” he begged her for what felt like the millionth time tonight. His smile was a little awkward, but not unnatural. Never with her. “I like being your friend. If that’s what you want, that’s what we’ll be, okay? I meant that.”
The last thing he wanted was for her to feel like his interest in her began and ended with sex. He wanted her something fierce and painful, but that had more to do with how much he liked being around her than it did how attractive he found her. He wasn’t about to give up the former on account of the latter.
Zak went through some internal deliberation he wished he could be privy to. Weighing her options before she settled onto her palms and said, “Maybe I just wanted to get out of here because this movie sucks.”
He laughed as he spooned half of the food onto a plate for her. “It’ll get better. They always get better after the halfway point.”
“Better is relative, though.” She fished around in the bag. “It could get better and still suck.”
She pulled out the packet of red pepper flakes and dumped the entire thing over both the pasta and the salad while Chase watched in mild astonishment.
“How do you not have heartburn?”
She smiled as she twirled the spaghetti onto her fork. “Who said I didn’t have heartburn?”
They didn’t watch the movie so much as he watched the movie while Zak freely pointed out every flaw and dissed every character, and then the end credits rolled. And they were still talking. Finally catching up on all that time between eighteen and twenty-three. Sporadically confessing the wildest things they’d done and seen, though her stories trounced his because he had lived an impressively boring life by pro-athlete standards.
All the while, Chase talked himself into contentment.
He did like being her friend. He could do this.
He couldn’t sleep.
After Zak left, Chase laid on his back beneath the covers. Spacing out, looking up at the ceiling until specks appeared in his vision.
He squeezed his eyes shut, but that didn’t end in sleep. It ended with him staring at the inside of his own eyelids instead, playing the entire night in reverse. All the way back until he was wondering what she was wearing in the next room.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Not knowing was definitely worse than knowing, and not sleeping was the worst consequence of all. They had a long day ahead of them tomorrow. One he couldn’t afford to botch.
But there was no way to logic with the part of his brain still imagining her sprawled out on the bed, where he was now paralyzed with desire. Her dark hair splashed like ink against white. Her soft curves sinking into the plush down comforter.
He closed his eyes and saw her there again. This time, from the foot of the bed. The way she looked tonight was still such a vivid picture in his mind, he could imagine exactly what it would have been like to grab her ankles and uncross them. To press his lips to the delicate bone there as he ran his hands up her smooth legs.
He would have left the shoes on. Would have felt the sharp points of her stiletto heels digging into his traps as he kissed from her ankles to the inside of her thighs. Those tights were practically transparent. He could have torn them apart with his teeth to taste her skin beneath. Could have ripped the seams to the very center to taste her.
She may have wanted him, but not a fraction of how badly he wanted her. Would she have already been wet for him, if he pushed her panties to the side and touched her there? Would she drip onto the sheets as he licked her entrance and swirled his tongue around her clit?
She never let go, never let her guard down. What would she sound like if he took his time with her? Would she whisper his name? Would she pull his hair and grind her hips against his mouth?
His breath came in pants as he reached beneath the elastic waistband of those stupid Christmas pajamas and fisted his cock. Throbbing for her. Pre-cum already leaking from the tip.
He imagined the fabric of her dress molding to the back of his hands as he slipped them underneath to squeeze her ass. The dress had been so tight, so low cut, he wondered if she had been wearing a bra underneath or if her breasts would fall—free and heavy—as he pulled it over her head. Did she like to be touched there, too? God, he hoped so.
His mouth watered at the thought of kissing those gorgeous tits. Teasing her nipples with his tongue, feeling the weight of them in his palms. He buried his face into one of the pillows to muffle the low noises escaping his throat as he pumped himself. Slow and steady.
In his conscious haze, she grabbed him by the jaw and kissed him with all the hot, fiery energy she devoted to snarky comments and curse words. She tasted spicy and sweet all at once. Smelled like citrus and vanilla, like she always did. She would run her tongue along his bottom lip and sink her teeth in, the way she sank her teeth into her own. And she would cuss then, too, as he worked his way into her tight cunt.
“Fuck,” she would utter, but it would sound different than ever before. Like a word he had never heard her speak.
She’d say it into his ear, teeth grazing the lobe, as she wrapped her legs around him and buried him further inside of her. She would move with him in sync, the way she moved with him on stage. Force him deeper, harder, faster. Bite his neck, moan into his mouth. Say the raunchiest shit into his ear before sweetly pleading for more.
She would try to roll him over, to ride him, but he would pin her down and touch her until she came apart beneath him first, because it would end him to see her moving over him like that. To feel her hips swivel and rock. To watch his dick sink into her, drenched with her pleasure. To see her breasts bob with her body, her head loll back as she took every inch of him.
He would grab a fist full of her hair as he thrust into her. Tell her how beautiful she was. Tell her how incredible she was. How he couldn’t believe that he was lucky enough to see her naked and vulnerable. To make her feel good. To have her in his arms.
He would tell her that he had never been so obsessed with a woman in his life. That no fantasy could compare to the reality of kissing her, touching her. Fucking her.
What would her orgasm sound like? How would it play out on that expressive face of hers? Where else did she blush when she was turned on?
On top of him, her thighs would squeeze his hips. Her muscles would tremble as she collapsed and kissed him, open-mouthed and gasping, until he came too. Until his cock pulsed and spilled inside her.
Pulsed and spilled all over his stomach, because he was alone in bed. The air around him now an ice-cold dose of reality against the light sheen of sweat on his skin.
Zak wasn’t there. She was next door, fast asleep.
And he was a fucking mess.