Chapter 20 #2
His gaze is piercing, searching, and he scoots a little closer. “You feel that here?”
With me isn’t added, but I think it’s implied.
There’s an anxious hopefulness in the way he asks this, and I can’t help the fresh wave of nerves that arises at the question.
Still, I answer honestly, even if all I give is a small nod.
“Good. That’s…good,” he whispers, his hand sinking into my hair.
Footsteps sound on the wooden stairs, and Chase and I both look over as Noah appears.
Chase tenses, his hand falling to his sides as Noah comes closer.
“Hey.” Noah’s smile is friendly. “Anyone need another drink?” He holds up his empty water bottle, giving it a little shake.
“Nah, I’m good. Thanks.” Chase squeezes my hand, pushing up, and my eyes follow as he walks away, heading down toward where Mase and his sister are standing near the fire.
Noah sighs loudly, slowly lowering to take Chase’s empty seat. “I keep trying and he keeps shutting me down.”
“I think he’d prefer it if you punched him in the face, honestly.”
Noah’s brows snap together, and then a loud laugh leaves him. It takes him a minute to settle, but when he does, he turns his smile on me. “You know, I think you might be right.”
“I am right.” I chuckle, pulling the blanket over my legs, and look over to where Chase is standing. “He’s not complicated. Not really. He sees right and wrong, and with right comes recognition and with wrong comes—”
“A left hook from a right-handed receiver?”
“I was going to say punishment and bone-crushing guilt, but I mean, same thing, right?” I smile, but it softens a moment later.
“He just wants to earn everything, including your friendship, and if I had my guess, I would say he doesn’t feel like he has.
You’re giving it to him freely, and he doesn’t want you to. ”
Noah thinks for a moment, nodding slightly as he sits up again. “I can understand that, but at the same time…”
“At the same time, you hold no anger and you already see him as your friend.”
“Yeah.” He sighs again, catching Ari’s eye from between the wooden slats of the deck. “I better go get that mocktail.” He pushes to his feet, but before he goes, he looks down at me with that same smile he’s always had. “You know I’m really happy for you, right? For the both of you?”
My mouth curves up and I nod, watching him disappear into the house.
I sit there a little longer, enjoying the scene around me and then push to my feet, keeping my blanket around me as I make my way down the deck leading to the sand.
Chase sets down a few logs, and rubs his hands together before coming over and kissing my cheek.
“I think they can handle the fire from here.” He playfully tugs at my blanket. “Come on, Angel. I’ve got a better idea for how to get you warm.”
My brows lift, and I turn my head his way, intertwining our fingers as he takes my hand. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yep.” He nods. “One that the others haven’t figured out yet, or we’d definitely have to share.”
“I’m officially curious.”
He kisses my knuckles, and together we walk along the same stretch of beach we’ve walked many times before, only all those times it wasn’t as a couple. It was as friends and always with a few others.
I can’t help but smile at the man beside me. Of course he catches me looking, and a small smirk appears.
“What?” he teases, shaking our clasped hands a little.
“Nothing.” I grin, biting back a laugh when he gives me a playful glare.
As I face forward, a familiar pergola built into the tallest hill of the sand catches my eye, a gorgeous white swing hanging beneath it.
“Don’t tell me Lolli said she’d share her swing with us? We all know how territorial she is over this thing,” I joke, but it’s kind of true.
This is the swing she and Nate fell in love on. His dad made it for his mom once upon a time, and he brought it all the way from their hometown, hundreds of miles away, as some grand gesture that only she knows the true importance of.
“Nope.” That one word is all he gives and then we’re trudging up the sandy hill.
“Are we coming to hang out with her?”
“Oh, no. She’s tucked away in her bed by now, movie on loud and ice cream bowl propped up on that baby belly.”
“That is oddly specific.” I laugh. “But it does sound about right.”
“She may or may not have texted me and said as much,” he admits with a grin, and then the back deck of her and Nate’s beach house comes into view, only there’s been an added addition that wasn’t there the last time I came to my studio and slept over.
My eyes slide to Chase’s, and a sudden thrum builds behind my ribs, a jittering, restless energy that has me squealing.
I pull my hand from his, my feet softly padding up the steps as I run to the already-open, already-steaming, deck-top hot tub.
The blanket falls from my shoulders, and I dip my fingers in, my smile yanking over my shoulder.
A soft curve forms on his lips and he bends down, picking up the blanket and hanging it over the small towel rack.
“We’re getting in, right?”
“I figured we’d roll our pants up and—” He cuts off, my pajama shirt already pulled over head and dropped to the ground. “Dip our feet in it,” he finishes absentmindedly, his eyes roaming over my chest. “Or not.”
I pull my bottoms off next and climb the mini-steps against the side, sliding right in.
I gasp at first, sucking air in and stretching my ribs as the heated water shocks my body a little. I smile his way, lowering until I’m up to my neck, a long-satisfied sigh instantly spilling from my lips.
Chase chuckles, and in one quick movement, his top is gone, giving me the glorious view of his golden chest. He’s all bronzed skin, cut in all the right places, demanding my gaze without mercy.
My eyes lock on the trail that disappears beneath the waistband of his sweats, and my breath trips a little, heat curling under my skin.
I pretend not to notice, or at least I try, but there’s no ignoring the way my pulse flutters wildly in my throat.
His hands go to the waistband next, and my stomach tightens. He sheds his pajama pants, leaving him in just black boxer briefs that cling to his hips in a way that feels wildly unfair.
He catches me staring, and I couldn’t look away if I tried. Slowly, deliberately, he steps up onto the small ledge of the side of the hot tub. He doesn’t rush in, doesn’t look away. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
Heat rushes to my cheeks, and I sink a little deeper into the water, as if it might cool me down.
When he climbs in, the water ripples outward and smooth waves break against my shoulders.
He settles across from me, those long, strong arms of his stretched along the rim behind him like he owns the place.
And maybe he does.
His gaze skates over me, lazy but heavy, and I feel it like a caress. It’s dark enough to feel private but just bright enough for me to see every hungry flicker in his eyes.
“You always gonna surprise me like that, Angel?” His voice is rough, a low scrape that tickles along my spine.
“I hope so,” I manage.
I’m not sure if it’s my answer or the breathy tone in which it left me, but the corners of his mouth pick up into the smallest cocky grin that does terrible, wonderful things to my insides.
His gaze drops briefly, and when it rises again, there’s something hotter behind it, something consuming and heady, like he’s already tasting what’s about to happen between us and he can’t get enough.
The water between us ripples as he moves, slow and sure, closing the space just a little more.
My pulse stutters, then races ahead like it’s sprinting to the finish line and we haven’t even gotten started. He shifts again, and this time his foot slides up the inside of my calf under the water, slow and deliberate, until his toes hook behind my knee and draw my legs open just slightly.
“If you’re gonna keep looking at me like that,” he murmurs, voice low and thick, “I might have to do something about it.”
“Maybe that’s what I want.”
His eyes burn into mine. “Careful, Angel,” he rasps, rough and edged with something deeper. “You’re gonna start something I’m not letting you finish.”
He’s not bluffing—the man has shown me his impeccable restraint several times—but then again neither am I. He knows it; we both do.
The proof is in his next movement, when his hand moves from the rim and slides beneath the surface, finding my ankle.
His palm is hot and wide, somehow burning more than the bubbling water around us as it drags up my skin, drawing him closer as his fingers dig slightly into the sensitive flesh just above my knee.
My heart pounds against my ribs, and heat flashes through me so fast as it makes my breath shudder.
“Say it,” he demands, hushed and tender. “Tell me what you want.”
“Everything you’re willing to give,” I breathe, my voice shaky but sure, the truth behind them has my ribs rattling. I do want anything and everything he’s capable of giving me.
Pure satisfaction stares back at me, like he’s been waiting for me to give him permission to unleash whatever’s caged up inside him, the thing he’s locked away from everyone else.
I want those things. I want a part of him that no one else has ever had. Something that’s only for me. For us. I don’t know what that might be, but I have no doubt we can find it. Maybe not out here, maybe not even tonight.
But we will find it; of that I have no doubt.
And then he’s moving, settling back in the farthest corner from me. His eyes are molten, and they’re like lava against my skin. I’m burning but I don’t want to put out the fire. I want him to feed my flame.
This space between us disappears in a blink as I give him what he’s silently demanding, going to him without a moment’s hesitation. His chest brushes mine, slick and hot from the water, his hand skimming up my sides to curve around the back of my neck.
“Come here.”