Chapter 29
twenty-nine
I blink. “Am I done?”
Both his hands are on my legs now, and I have no idea when the other one mirrored the first. “You were cutting my hair.”
“Right.” I nod. “Yeah, I’m done.”
He’s watching me carefully. “Look, if I overstepped with something I said, I didn’t mean?—”
“No!” I say, and it comes out louder than I meant it to. “No. Don’t . . .” My words come out breathless. “Don’t stop talking.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “Don’t stop talking?”
My cheeks flare. “I just mean—” I wet my lips. “I like when you say things.”
Both hands move up a little higher, his thumbs grazing the inside of my upper thighs. “Like when I say you turn me on? Because, Candace, I . . .”
His thumbs creep dangerously close to where I’m aching to be touched, but I panic. I sit in his lap, straddling him before he can get that far. As soon as I sit, I can feel how true his last statement was. He’s hard and thick between my legs, and it takes all my self-control not to rock against him. Even without the added movement, Chase sucks in a breath, his hands wasting no time sliding up to cup my ass.
“I like the things you say.” I’m rethinking this position now that I can feel how perfectly he fits between my legs, but I try to stay focused. “I like spending time with you, but I can’t sleep with you.”
He lets out a breath as he adjusts to me on top of him. “I wasn’t asking you?—”
“I know, but you don’t want me to say Jack Frost, so I’m letting you know what would make me say it.”
He nods, looking more serious. It isn’t until he says, “Can’t or don’t want to?” that he looks more like his usual self, up to no good.
My heart pounds in my chest. “What do you mean?”
His mouth pulls into a half smile. “They’re two very different things. You said you can’t sleep with me. Is that because you don’t want to? Or is something else preventing us from both getting what we want?” His fingers trace along my lower back as he waits for me to give him an answer.
“Despicable,” I say with a light laugh and a shake of my head. His entire body radiates heat, and my hands explore the lines and grooves of his muscled stomach.
There’s a wicked glint behind his eyes. “So I’ve been told.” He holds my gaze for another beat before relenting. “Okay, fine. We won’t sleep together.” He gives me a playful lift of his brow, and I brace myself for whatever he’s about to say. “But you still want me to say whatever thought pops into my head? No thought is off limits?”
My lips twist. “No thought is off limits.”
He sits up straight, pulling me flush against him. Feeling the bulge of him pressed against me pulls a gasp from my lips, the added pressure creating a delicious ache between my legs .
His voice is low and husky when he says, “Good. Because I’m going to need you to move those hips for me, beautiful. Give me something to think about when I fuck my hand later.”
He presses his lips to my throat, and I suck in a breath. My hands weave through his still damp hair, pulling it at the roots and forcing his mouth up to meet mine. He tastes like mint, and when his tongue sweeps over my bottom lip, I gladly open for him to kiss me deeper. His tongue drags over mine, and my hips roll. I’m desperate to create friction between us for my own selfish reasons, but when he groans and says, “Fuck. Good girl,” I almost self-combust.
My mouth moves to his neck where I leave an open-mouthed kiss, and then another, and another—all while slowly grinding against him. I nip at his jawline, and the sound of his breath catching will forever haunt me in the best way. This kiss was a terrible idea. I can already feel my resolve slipping. The back of my mind desperately tries to come up with excuses to go back on my words, even though I only said them minutes ago. Thank God we’re confined to this kitchen chair. There’s only so much damage we can do here.
We’re all tongue, teeth, and lips, and every tiny new thing I discover sends a wave of excitement through me. Like the way he grips me tighter when I take his bottom lip between my teeth. Or the way he weaves his hand in my hair when he wants to kiss me deeper. Even the way he grips my hips to still them, as if the movement he asked for is too much to bear. They’re all fragments of a bigger picture clicking into place, and I’m dying to see the finished result even though that’s the one thing I said I wouldn’t do with him.
Eventually, Chase’s kisses slow before he leans his head back and stares at the ceiling, breathing hard. “Is the dress you got for the event ugly?”
Through panting breaths, I let out a bewildered laugh. “What? ”
Rolling his head to look at me, he says, “Please tell me the dress you’re wearing Friday is hideous. Because if it’s not, I think it might put me over the edge. You could kill me, Candace.”
“What are you talking about?” I say with another laugh. “You saw me in a dress when we went on our ‘not date.’”
His eyebrows furrow. “That was definitely a date.”
“A fake date.”
He holds my stare like he’s considering whether to argue with me. “Fine. Yes, I saw you in a dress for our ‘fake date.’” He releases his grip on the back of my neck to put air quotes around the words. “But I had no idea how you tasted or moved . . .” His hands slide up my thighs on either side until his thumbs hook at my hips. “I had no idea how you felt. ” He shakes his head. “I was so na?ve. So blissfully ignorant of what I was missing.”
Resting my arms on his shoulders, I brush some of the hair off him before running my fingers through the short hair at the nape of his neck. “To be fair, you’ll still be able to do all those things at the party. That’s kind of the whole point of this.”
His gaze locks on mine, and those warm brown eyes look like they have so much to say. He opens his mouth, but his lips shut too soon. He nods. “You’re right.”
The silence that falls between us feels weighted, so I move to get off him. “Why don’t you check your hair before I leave?”
Chase wipes his hands on his pants and lets out a breath before pushing himself up. “Don’t trust your work?” Looking over his shoulder, he smirks and gestures for me to follow.
I’m relieved when he leads us to a bathroom in the hall and not his bedroom. If I saw Chase’s bed right now, there’s a good chance I’d pull him onto it and make him forget I ever said I couldn’t sleep with him.
“I don’t trust the picky guy who hired me,” I tease .
We both stand in front of the mirror, and all it takes is one look at my mussed hair for me to break into laughter.
Chase raises an eyebrow at my reflection. “Are you laughing at my hair?”
“No.” But when I look at his hair, I start laughing again. “Wait. Yes. Wet it a little. It dried crazy from me tugging at it.”
That easy smile crosses his face as he runs his hand through his dry hair. “I like that you messed me up.”
I work on taming my crazed hair into a messy bun. “Yeah. I wish I could say the same.”
He grins and rests the palms of his hands on the counter next to me, still watching my reflection in the large mirror. “Well, I like that I messed you up.”
My breath catches. I like it too. Maybe a little too much. Once I’m done tying up my hair, I turn to face him, leaning my hip against the side of the counter. “Should I ask why?”
His smile broadens. “Because you put up a good front. Too good, actually.” He stands up straight and steps in front of me, easily pinning me in place and turning me to face him with his arms on either side of the countertop. “The only time I see you crack is when you’re flustered,” he says in a low voice.
Before I can say anything back, he covers my mouth with his, and I could crumble to the floor. Chase lifts me up onto the bathroom counter, my legs on either side of him. He kisses me without reservation, and it steals the breath from my lungs. All my senses are consumed by him, and when his tongue claims my mouth like it’s his for the taking, I blush at the sound it draws from the back of my throat.
Pulling back, he wipes his bottom lip with his thumb, and the corner of his mouth lifts. “And the fact that you let me kiss you like that is your biggest tell of all.” He brushes his thumb across my bottom lip, and I have to fight the urge to take it into my mouth and suck. Chase leans in close. “The fact that you let me make that pretty mouth of yours so swollen and red thrills me like you wouldn’t believe.” My teeth sink into my bottom lip, but he pulls it free. “So, I have to ask. Why is it you can’t sleep with me?”
My heart hammers in my chest. I can’t tell him I won’t sleep with him because I like him too much. That regardless of how much my body is begging to be whisked away so Chase can have his way with me, I’m cemented in the fear that it would mean more to me than it would to him.
“I don’t think of you that way, remember?” My voice comes out like a whisper, but conviction carries every word.
His head falls forward with a shake, and I have to fight the urge to run my hand through his hair again. When he looks up at me, amusement shines behind those eyes. “That’s the story you’re sticking with?”
My hands grip the counter on either side. “What do you want me to say, Chase? That sleeping with you would make this too real for me? That I don’t want to deal with the aftermath of that decision when this ends? You asked me to stand in as your date, and that’s what I’m going to do. Yes, I find you attractive. I think any woman would. But we don’t need to sleep together. That would make this whole thing . . . messy.”
His eyes never leave mine. “Messy?”
I nod, but I don’t dare breathe. That’s the closest I’ve gotten to a confession. I’ve kept my feelings for him tucked away inside a jar, and now the seal has been cracked. Now, it’s going to be a lot more difficult putting the lid back on.
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Sometimes messes are fun.”
Hiding my disappointment with a laugh, I playfully push him out of my way so I can hop down. “Unbelievable.” Without looking back, I head toward the kitchen.
Chase’s footsteps follow close behind. “You don’t have to leave,” he complains with a laugh .
I put my spray bottle back into my bag. “I’m leaving because it’s late, and we both have to work tomorrow.”
He carefully picks up my shears from the table, putting them neatly back into their case.
“Thanks,” I say, tucking them back in my bag.
A dangerous smirk flirts at the corner of his mouth. “What are friends for?”