31. Zak
Heart full, head spinning, Zak sat unable to move, unable to breathe, at the foot of her bed. Surrendered entirely to the thoughts she had forbidden herself to indulge before now.
It was always the wrong time, the wrong place. What if it changed things forever? What if it ruined their show the next day? But now the only what-if crossing her mind was, What if Chase is worth taking every risk?
His bright eyes were half-lidded as he took her in.
Darkness descended outside, letting soft, silvery light filter through the sheer drapes covering the glass doors to her patio. It was the only reminder of how long they’d been awake and working because, right now, she felt more awake than ever.
She wasn’t sure who kissed who. If it was her who stood and pulled his lips to hers, or if he lifted her, because they were gripping one another hard enough to bruise.
She clawed at his shirt, ripping buttons out of their holes and fumbling with the buckle of his belt. She couldn’t get it off fast enough. Couldn’t have his skin flush and warm against hers fast enough. Couldn’t wait to have him, take him. Every inch of him.
He was still mostly clothed, she was still fully clothed, but she was moaning into his mouth like he was fucking her already. Hard and fast and—shit she wanted more. More, more, more—
“Hey,” Chase said. She was vaguely aware of his grip relaxing, the pace of his kiss slowing. “Zak… wait…”
“What?” She gave him a coy smile. “You’re not planning on bolting out of here again, are you?”
It was meant to be a joke, but something unpleasant crossed his expression, and that thick air between them evaporated.
“No,” he said. “I just meant I want to take it slow with you. I don’t want to rush.”
I want to take it slow with you. Her heart pounded, an inward plea that she hadn’t ruined the moment. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I know you didn’t.”
As much as she wanted to sweep it all under the rug, she couldn’t. Not now that she had confirmation there was more to his getaway than the hangover from hell. She took his hands and guided him to sit in the depression her body had left on the comforter. “Why did you? Leave that day.”
She no longer cared about further shoving her foot in her mouth. He mattered more. And maybe that was a poor start to a friends-with-benefits relationship, but he had put her first all along.
“It sounds ridiculous saying it out loud.” His eyes flickered to the corner of the room, his mouth tugging into a grimace. Like he was mocking himself. “I just haven’t been with anyone since the injury. I don’t think I’ve ever even worn shortsaround anyone besides family.”
And she had been the first to see him for who he is now.
Zak never would have assumed that the most attractive person she’d ever laid eyes on had spent nearly two years feeling self-conscious about something he couldn’t control.
“Wow.” Chase shook his head. “I just made this awkward, didn’t I? I’m sorry.”
She knelt by the bedside in front of him, but he could barely look at her.
“I was in and out of the hospital for five months. And then it took another five months after that for me to be able to walk normally again. Seeing anyone was the last thing on my mind, and when I finally felt okay again, I was paranoid women would—”
“Chase.” She placed her hands on his knees. His explanation had crossed the border into self-flagellation. And frankly, she couldn’t believe he felt the need to explain himself in the first place when there wasn’t anything to explain. “It’s not awkward. It’s actually nice to know I’m not the only one of us with trust issues.”
The smile he gave her this time was genuine. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s just—”
His eyes ran down her body, raking heat across her skin, before they met hers again. The way he looked at her felt erotic all on its own when she was on her knees in front of him.
“You’re you. And I made a complete ass of myself in front of you that night. That morning.”
“Good thing you did. I’m usually the one making an ass of myself in front of you. I’ll never live down that night at the reunion.”
Chase curved a palm between the corner of her jaw and the nape of her neck. “And I’ll never forget it.”
His hand still in place, he coaxed her to her feet. About to close that distance between them when she decided she needed him to know exactly how attracted to him she was.
“You know”—her thumbs drifted along the inside seams of his pants—“I wasn’t done down there.”
A ragged breath escaped his mouth right before he kissed her, heavy and open-mouthed. His grip tightened in her hair. “Yeah, you are. Don’t think I forgot. It’s been a while for me, but it’s been an even longer while for you.”
“Hmm, a long twenty-four hours. You’re right,” she hummed against his lips.
His imagination played out like a reel in his eyes. He grabbed her by her hips and brought her onto his lap where his body fit hers like a fucking perfect fifth. Hard against where a never-ending ache for him had settled in. His groan was equal parts pained and turned on.
“Do you ever think of me?”
“Do I ever not?” she said, knowing how he felt about her answering questions with questions. But she also wanted him to have the explicit truth. “You’re all I ever think of. Late at night, between the sheets. In the shower, the bathtub…”
“Can’t wait to see you in there, too. Bet you look incredible, soaking wet.” His fingers traced light patterns over her thigh as they pushed the skirt of her dress higher.
“Won’t have to wait that long, to see me wet.” Her voice was so low that she didn’t know if his silence was from shock or because he didn’t hear her, but then those delicate fingers at her thigh slipped beneath the thin lace fabric separating them. Calling her bluff.
He should have known since poker night—she was shit at bluffing.
“Fuck.” That word from his lips was enough to make her clench the soft down comforter. “You’re going to be the death of me, Zak Parker.”
She registered the feeling of his mouth on hers, but not the sensation of moving until her back hit the mattress and their positions reversed. Cool air hit the places his body had warmed when it was pressed against her. The tips of her breasts, between her legs.
She pulled his undershirt off to feel his skin on hers as he kissed down the line of her neck. Memorizing every ripple and movement his muscles made as he hooked his thumbs under the waistband of her panties and dragged them down her legs.
His touch lingered along the way. Pausing at her ankle bones, as he unclasped the buckles on her heels, one by one, and pressed his lips to the red marks left by the straps. She felt the barest graze of teeth on her calf as he came back up. Hiking her dress over her ass and filling both hands with it.
“You have the sexiest legs. I can’t keep myself from staring at them when we’re up on stage. Watching you move,” he said against her inner thigh. “Wondering how you’d move with me.”
His hot breath shot a chill up her spine. Her hips sank deeper into the mattress as he toyed with the hem of her dress again. She wanted to tear it off and have him now, but he made slow sound so much better than instant gratification. He made her want to revel in every detail.
She kissed him softly when he hovered over her, face to face. Explored every scar and contour of muscle across his forearms and biceps with her fingertips, as he reached under her to unzip the bodice. His touch faltered against her bare back, as he realized there was no bra clasp. Nothing left to remove now that he was finally pulling the dress over her head.
Chase’s eyes were darkened and dazed as he drank her in, whispering that word to her again—beautiful—like a song, before his lips returned to mapping every inch of her skin with unhurried kisses and nips. He treated sex like every second could be borrowed. Like it might be the first and last time she ever dropped her inhibitions.
She felt every innocent touch on her wrist, her collarbone, her shoulder, like those nerves connected lower. The idea of him kissing her, lower, the way he kissed her everywhere else was invasive. Spreading, until she couldn’t hold back anymore.
She grabbed one of his hands and placed it over her breast. Demanding whatever the hell he’d done to her the other day that made her forget about life outside this hotel room.
His lips curled into a smile against her shoulder as he complied and drew a sharp inhale from her. The next time she felt his mouth, it closed over the center of her other breast. His fingers still pinching, playing, while his tongue swirled until a different sound bubbled up from her throat. He rewarded it with a tender bite, testing, and must have liked whatever he saw on her face because she felt that sharp pleasure and pain again.
“Show me how you touch yourself when you think of me, angel,” he uttered the endearment purposefully this time.
Permanent Vacationwas an album she used to listen to in her car when she was sad and lonely, but now she would only remember Track B3 as their song. Even if it began as a slip of the tongue, that one word made her heart flutter. It made her think of their first kiss and dread the day they shared their last.
Unconsciously, she squeezed her eyes shut as she obeyed. It had only ever been her and a ghost of him in this bed. Snippets of his smile, his bare chest, his sweet words. The not-so-sweet ones.
“Uh-uh.” He chastised her with his teeth, then a cool breath of air. If that was supposed to be a punishment, she planned to be on her worst behavior. “Look at me. I wanna see those gorgeous eyes. I want you to see what you do to me.”
And she did. Because a shallow, egotistical part of her wanted to see what she did to him, too. Though the sensations were familiar, the press and slide of her smooth calluses against her clit, her own slender fingers sliding in and out shallowly, the pleasure felt hollow with him hovering there.
Watching, as his own hands continued to roam her body. Tracing her tattoos, the high points of her collarbones and ribcage, the slope of her breasts and hips. Pausing on the thin, light scar that was normally covered by the waistband of her underwear.
He came up once again for a kiss and they tangled in her hair, fanned out in a dark mess against the white bedding. She didn’t notice that the kiss was a distraction until his fingers brushed her abdomen, intertwined with hers, briefly, then replaced them entirely. That first stroke had her breaking the kiss with his name on her lips.
A hum vibrated at the base of his throat as he tested with those first few touches, savoring the way she responded to him. The evidence of how badly she needed him.
“Because of me?” he said, looking at the way the shine on her left ring and middle finger caught the yellow light from the lamp at the bedside table. He punctuated the question by testing further, slipping one finger inside as his tongue traced her bottom lip.
“For you.”
Until now, she didn’t realize she could be turned on like this. And yet, that was before he took those two fingers of hers in his mouth and said, “God, I need to taste you.”
A smartass remark about the hypocrisy of him not letting her do just that earlier was on the tip of her tongue, but then he sank between her legs and the tip of histongue came down on the most sensitive part of her. Retorts and protests? All forgotten.
He gripped beneath her knees in what initially seemed like a losing battle for restraint, but then he was pulling them over his shoulders. Grabbing her ass and bracketing his head with her thighs.
Something took over inside of him. That gentle, languid start was consumed by visceral desire.
Light suction made every muscle in her legs contract and conform to his shoulders and back. Keeping him close not purposely, but reflexively.
Pleasure like a pull from a cigarette filled her chest and swirled until it formed a knot in the back of her throat. Chase looked up at her, eyes like propane flame as he watched her squirm against the sheets. Overwhelmed by him, but angling her hips to his mouth all the same.
“What the fuck are you doing to me?” she breathed.
He slowed, only long enough to answer, “A very, very small fraction of all the things I want to do to you.”
He fucked her with his tongue, that was the only way to describe it.
Like he couldn’t get enough, like he wanted to wrench every last moan from her mouth. Like he was getting off on getting her off.
“You’re the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, trading in all those beautifuls for something harsher.
“I was thinking the same thing about you.”
His touch ventured closer to where she needed it, where she needed everything.
One finger drew a jagged exhale from her, a sharp inhale and a slur of sweet words from him that her head was spinning too fast to register. He moved carefully, steady presses and rolls from his tongue still working her into an ice-cold heat. Then shifted and pinned her legs to the mattress with his elbow and other hand. Holding her in place.
She sifted through the soft waves of his hair. It had gotten longer since the night they reunited, longer than it had ever been. Months of no haircuts and there were now golden tresses reaching his earlobes. Enough for her to weave into her fists as he continued that sweet torment.
Lightheaded.
It was like breathing in night air after stepping out of a heated room. Fuck that, it was like breathing in the stars themselves. Pressure simmered beneath where he kissed and sucked—in the pit of her stomach, in her pounding heart.
“Do you need to come, angel?”
His question was a whisper so saccharine and tender, though the smile on his face was anything but, as he stilled. Index finger still curled inside her.
“Yes,” she said. Too needy to pretend she wasn’t.
“I wanna hear you say it. Tell me what you want.”
Words, words, words. He credited her for all of them, every line to every song he sang. But his words had the power to make her want him like she’d never wanted for anything. Even her wildest dreams.
“Please, Chase. More. I want—you.”
A second finger joined the first, the slow stretch making her mind drift back to the way his hard length had felt pushing against her earlier.
“Feels good?” his head lowered again, his next words coming out in breaths that crested oversensitive flesh. “‘Cause mm-you feel as good as you taste. Can’t wait for you to squeeze my cock like that…”
She recognized the way he went down on her from the way he kissed. His pace increasing until she was panting under his movements. Taking everything he was willing to give.
Pinpricks of pleasure spread everywhere. Her heart raced. She lost awareness of every sound she made, every way she forced that contact harder, faster.
Everything slipped away except the glittery euphoria that was the way he touched her just right, and it took over her body until she was a flushed, trembling, wide-eyed wreck on that bed. Staring back at the blissed-out haze in Chase’s eyes and trying to understand how he had done that to her. How it was possible anything could feel that good.
“Is it selfish?” He laid beside her, gently massaging her side as she rode out the aftershocks of the orgasm he had wrested from her. “I want that all to myself. I want to be the only one to know the way you look when you come. To hear those sounds you make.”
It didn’t matter if it was selfish or not. No one else had ever made her look or sound like that before, and she doubted anyone would again. Chase was in her head, in her heart. Mentally and physically stripping her down to her very core.
His kiss was luxurious and sated, even though he had yet to find release of his own. She deepened it, tasting herself on his tongue. Comparing how his lips moved over her own to the way she now knew they moved everywhere else.
“You can have it to yourself, if I can have it again,” she whispered, hand snaking down the waistband of his pants to palm him over his boxer briefs.
She wanted everything this time. She wanted him breathing heavily on top of her, under her, behind her. Wanted to see his face when he came undone.
He groaned something that sounded vaguely like her name, and though she could feel that he wanted this just as badly as she did, maybe some of that softness and slowness came from hesitancy.
“Unless… you don’t want to? It’s okay if you don’t.”
“Believe me, there is nothing I want more.” He let out a breathy chuckle and turned her to face him. “I’m just trying to keep it together.”
“Right. It’s been a while,” she teased.
She tugged down the elastic band to take him in her hand with an anxious swallow. After learning what he was capable of with only two digits, she couldn’t imagine what the thick weight in her palm would do to her.
“Have you ever thought of me when you…?” she turned the question on him this time.
“More than I can admit.”
He sucked in a breath as she stroked him.
Seeing the tension form on his face, feeling his cock throb in her grasp and his muscles move against her body was somehow even better than having his mouth on her. Or, at least equal.
She recalled his earlier confession, gooiness filling her chest at the thought of that night seven years ago being a prelude to the best sex she’d ever had. She asked herself if she would have let Chase kiss her when she was sixteen and convinced that his entire existence was to provoke her. But with how good they were together, there was no question. He could have had her then on that fold-down bleacher seat.
“Since that time I went to your game?”
“Asking questions you don’t want the answers to now, Parker.” She was so focused on him that she hadn’t noticed what he was doing until she felt a finger swirl around her sensitive, over-kissed nipple. “I was a teenage boy.”
So yes, then.
She shifted to her knees to work his pants off, but as soon as he realized her intent, he sat up and pulled off the rest of his clothes himself. Maybe he just didn’t want her to touch that leg again.
Her hand fell to his knee. “Are you in pain?”
The crease between his brows softened. “Not too much right now. I’m good.”
“But sometimes you are.”
“Sometimes,” he told her. “Mostly it’s random burning or shooting pains, or soreness from being on my feet all day. The beginning was worse, when I was getting used to the leg.”
“Do you want me to—?” Her hand ventured lower from his knee. She didn’t know much about prosthetics, but she knew how good it felt to take off a sweaty pair of socks and shoes after a long day.
“I can leave it on if you think it’s weird or—”
“Chase.” She grabbed him by his shoulders. “Nothing about the way you look is weird to me. I am crazy about you. Crazy about your body.”
Nice save there, commitmentphobe.
Though he still seemed unsure, he reached for the silicone sleeve of his prosthesis and rolled it down, followed by the fabric beneath it. Not wanting him to think it bothered her, when it was something that clearly bothered him, she threw herself all over him the second it was off. Forcing him back into the mountain of pillows that lined the headboard and crawling into his lap.
The truth was, she found his legs as insanely sexy as the rest of him. She was in utter disbelief that he thought he had anything to worry about when all she could think of was how lucky she was.
Even if this is all they ever were to each other, friends and co-workers and lovers. Even if that last part was for one night only, Chase was the luckiest thing that had ever happened to her.
When she thought of his muscles, she thought of the way his biceps contracted when he had lowered himself between her legs. How his quads cushioned her now, as she wrapped her legs around him. How his traps pulsed under her fingertips as she placed a kiss above his collarbone and moaned into the hollow there.
“Crazy about your body,” she said again, as he kissed his way up her neck and held on to her hips, rocking her back and forth against him as he grew impossibly harder. His length coated in slickness as it rubbed against her slit.
“You have no idea.” His lips met hers again, in rhythm with the calm ebb and flow.
Her nerves responded with electric shock every time his fingertips traveled up her spine and back down again, every sensation heightened by the release he’d given her.
He reached for one of the square packets that had fallen out of the pocket of his pants. “Before I lose my mind, let me get—”
“I have birth control covered. And I’m clean, if you are. If you want…”
Going without that extra protection would be a first for her, but he was a first. He was a one-in-a-million. Not a nameless stranger, like the others. He was the guy who snuck around fixing up inconveniences in her apartment. Who stayed awake while she fell asleep in his car, waiting on a tow, then carried her to bed. Who only thought more of her for her past and her problems, not less.
“I am. Had lots of blood panels done since the last time… but are you sure?”
His eye contact was unwavering, and she held it, relishing the way his pupils swallowed the blue of his irises as she angled her hips back.
“So sure, Chase.”
Her next motion forward, to kiss him, pushed them together. Barely any contact at all, but it was still so much more than she was ready for. His groan and her gasp reverberated off the walls in tandem as she made incremental movements, trying to work him deeper against pangs of dull pain while she concentrated on the freckles across his chest and shoulders.
“Hey, hey.” He halted her with a kiss on the forehead. “Take it easy, I’ve got you.”
His hand came up between them, making circles on her clit. Erasing the soreness and coloring over it with a pleasure so intense that it almost hurt more. His name sounded weak coming from her mouth—an encouragement, protest, and wish, all at once.
Inch by inch, he pushed as she bore down until they were as close together as they could ever be. Wrapped tightly in each other’s arms.
“Fuck,” he gritted out. Making profanity sound like praise. “You okay?”
Okay didn’t seem like the right word, but there wasn’t a word in the world that could describe the way he felt inside her.
The closest she could think of was, “Perfect.”
“You’re perfect,” he said, turning it on her as he started to move, gradually bringing her down harder. Increasing the pressure of his thumb. “You feel so perfect, Zak.”
She wished time would stop.
She had pictured how it would be with him dozens of times. She had imagined how it would feel to be held by him, how he would look at her, but she had no frame of reference for what it was like to be touched like she was his fantasy. Or what it was like to see the obsession in his eyes with such crystalline clarity.
She’d smoked and drank, gotten high on drugs and on music, and none of it compared to the heaven that was being with Chase. Him guiding her slow and deep onto his cock. Kissing her as desperately and passionately as he fucked. Playing every part of her body that he’d taken the time to learn.
Zak lost herself entirely to the moment. Friction and fullness so intense that it wrenched breathless, delirious sounds from her. Shivers that took over her entire body from the base of her spine.
She clung to him, feeling his own tremors beneath her fingertips as she tried to keep up with the pace he’d started. Drained by how good he felt, instead, she swiveled her hips to take every inch of him harder.
He broke their kiss, wrapping her hair around his knuckles to keep her from pulling any farther away. “Careful.”
She ignored him and rolled her hips again. Her body joining his. Her moan joining his.
“Seriously, give me a second. You’re so fucking tight…”
She was pretty sure that problem had more to do with his anatomy, but she was in no condition to come up with a counterpoint. So, she did it again.
Chase cursed, and the next thing she knew, she was on her back and he was on top of her. Filling that momentary emptiness inside of her at a new angle, then fucking her harder. In his control this time.
Every sense was flooded by him. Those affectionate blue eyes, the smell of his cologne and sweat, the hard lines of his body pinning her to the mattress as he reached between them again and amplified every thrust with light strokes at her clit. His mouth traveled from her breasts, to her neck, to her ear, to her lips again. Wet and uncontrolled.
One moment, his words and groans were echoing in her head. The next, everything succumbed to ecstasy.
Every cell clenched and vibrated. So good it hurt, so good it made her mourn the loss of sensation as she came back down.
She wrapped her legs around his hips and drove his body to hers until he came seconds after her with the sexiest sound she’d ever heard. Right before the ones he made into the microphone.
Zak lay there for a long time. Not wanting to go back to the real world. Not wanting the pleasant crush of his body weight to disappear. But eventually, he regained the strength to roll to his foot and bring her a warm washcloth from the bathroom.
He ran the cloth up her legs, still out of breath as he kissed her lower stomach.
“Chase?” came the shockingly timid sound of her own voice. “That was…”
“Yeah. It was.”
Thankful for not having to come up with a just-friends way to tell him it was the best night of her life, she waited for him to get back in bed and rested her head on his chest. Heart humming as he draped an arm over her waist and pulled her closer.
She smiled, the bliss of being with him inoculating against the panic of being with her bandmate. Later, she would learn how to keep her distance. For just a few minutes, she would pretend he could be hers.