Chapter 6
The next time we pull apart for air, I peek up at the dazed look in Chase’s deep blue eyes. I see lust and want and determination there, and though I know I should put an end to this, I can’t.
I just can’t.
“You want me to fuck you,” I tell him which is good because, hell, I want him to fuck me, too.
But he makes no move to do so.
“I just want to hold you close.” He actually has the nerve to say that with a straight face. “Even if I only get to pretend for one night that you’re mine again, let me have that. I don’t need anything more.”
That’s what he says. The body pressed against me, the cock straining for me… they’re sending out a totally different message.
Looks like it’s mixed signals again, I think, and because I’m so damn confused, I’m the one who opens her trap and asks, “What if I want to fuck you?”
Okay. I have to admit it if only to myself. The moment my tongue touched the head of his cock, I knew I was done for. I already fucked him once today. What’s one more time so that we can go to bed on a high of endorphins before facing the real, terrible, fucking awful world tomorrow?
Chase looks down at me, searching my face. He must find what he’s looking for because he steps back enough to give me some space to move.
“Take off your panties,” he says in a guttural tone.
Well, then. I guess I have my answer.
I know what he’s doing, too. If I want him, I need to be an active participant. I can’t just let him take me. I want him? At the very least, I need to get rid of the final barrier between us.
So I do. I have to peel them away from me, but I take them off, dropping them to the floor before giving Chase a daring look that says, if you want me, here I am.
We move at the same time, damn near colliding. His hands go to my waist, shoving my tank top up enough that he can grab my side. Mine drop to his bare shoulders, allowing me to brace myself against him as I lift one leg, hooking it around him so that I can open myself up to him.
Chase does one better. Releasing his hold on my waist, he grabs my ass, lifting me up until I’m in his arms, my legs wrapped around him.
Our eyes are on the same level. Green meets blue as he stares unblinkingly at me.
“Who are you?” he whispers, cock still inches away from my aching core.
Goddamn it.
Chase has always been able to see right through to the heart of me.
Who am I?
“Holden,” I whisper, burying my fingers into his damp hair. “I have to be Holden, Chase. Tell me you understand that.”
Because I don’t think we should do this if he can’t…
“You know what? Okay. I loved Hallie before the Turning. If Hallie had to be Xandra, then I would fucking love Xandra, too. Holden… I don’t care what name you answer to, baby. I’m still here. And I love you, too.”
And then, as if he needed to say that before he proved it with his dick, he takes the moment of stunned silence that follows to shift my weight until his cock is at my entrance.
His hips jerk, my body falls forward against him, and suddenly that connection that exists between us is back in place as he thrusts inside of me.
Another kiss as his pace becomes as frantic and needy as it was when we were in the cell. Then, he was trying to fuck me before the goons came in and stopped us. Now? He’s worried that he’ll either put an end to this or I will, and before either of us do, he’s going to fuck me until he can’t.
I hold on tight, giving way to the sensation of pleasure slamming into me every time his cock does.
Over the thud of blood rushing past my ears and my back knocking into the wall behind me, the fact that Chase is talking to me again finally comes through.
“—I know it won’t be easy. I know it’s going to take time before you truly know who you are. But I promise you this, Holden. Whatever happens next, I’ll make you remember who you are to me: my wife.”
I wish that I was. I was always meant to be, but just because I gave in to my need for this man, my insistence that I can’t be what he wants hasn’t changed.
Still, if he wants to try… it would be cruel to stop him.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll be thinking about it differently.
Tonight? We’re warm. We’re safe. We’re clean.
We each ate enough of the granola bars in the cabinet to be stuffed for the first time in weeks.
He’s fucking the fear out of me, and when he carries me over to the bed, laying me out on top of it so he can fuck me while looking down at me in love and affection and, damn it, hope again, I’m thinking that maybe I won’t have regrets in the morning.
And that’s when, suddenly, Chase makes a face and I know from years of experience that he’s about to come.
He’s about to come, just like he did earlier today: inside of me without a lick of protection between us.
Shit.
“Pull out. Now, Chase. Pull out now!”
“Babe?”
I slap his chest. “I’m not fucking around. Get off of me. If you’re going to come, pull out. Now, damn it!”
He might’ve been confused before. Not this time. He doesn’t have any idea why I’m suddenly panicking, but if I tell him to get off of me, that’s what he’s going to do.
Chase pulls out. He scrambles up and off of me, rising up on his knees before falling back, resting on his heels. His dick is still hard, but I have to be sure.
I rub my lower belly. “Here. Finish here.”
It only takes three quick strokes before he’s shooting his spunk on my skin. As he does, I finally calm down enough to quiet my racing heart.
Once he’s done, Chase hops to his feet. “What was that?”
I thought it was obvious. “You can’t come inside of me!”
“Why the hell not?”
Huh. Guess it isn’t.
It might not have occurred to me before, but that’s because I was so mixed up, I honestly thought that I would be dead in days. Having unprotected sex with Chase wasn’t a problem when I wouldn’t live to have to deal with the consequences.
But to do it twice in one day? No condoms? No birth control? The pull out method is iffy at best, I know that. Too fucking bad. There is no way I can risk getting pregnant, and I know Chase agrees with me.
“You want to bring a kid into this fucked-up world? You want to knock me up?”
We’ve had this talk before. When condoms were an afterthought to survival and there were no doctors to get a birth control script or any pharmacists to fill them. After hearing Mrs. Baker’s screams as she gave birth at St. Matthew’s with no drugs, we decided that we needed to be careful.
That? That wasn’t careful.
It hits him at the same moment that it does me. When Chase fucked me in the woods, it was anal. No need to worry about babies then. We already boo-booed once today. I can’t risk it again, and I know damn well that Chase won’t risk me.
“Fuck,” he breathes out. “I… I wasn’t thinking.”
Neither of us were at first. Thankfully, I remembered, and Chase listened when I panicked. Still… if there was ever any reason to put the brakes on a physical relationship right now, that’s it.
“Holden…” He curses under his breath. “I knew better. I promise you, I knew better. It won’t happen again.”
That’s something at least. “Okay. Chase… it’s okay.”
The look on his face tells me that it isn’t.
Welp. Isn’t that fucking awkward. I’m lying here, propped up on my elbows, ropes of jizz cooling rapidly on my skin. My body was primed to go off before reality came splashing back in, and while Chase got his, the climax I was building vanished in an instant.
Damn it, I just want to go to sleep.
I sigh, my voice suddenly small. “Can you just hand me my panties, please.”
All of the fight in me is gone. The euphoria, too. I’m fucking exhausted—no pun intended—and I want to pull my nasty panties back on, hide beneath the quilt, and start again tomorrow.
For a moment, Chase just looks at me as though he can’t quite comprehend what I asked of him. Before I have to repeat myself, he nods. Swooping down, he grabs my panties from the floor, but he doesn’t bring them to me.
Without a word, he disappears into the bathroom. I hear water running. By the time he’s returning, holding my panties in one hand and a dampened towel in the other, I’ve pulled myself up into a seated position.
Chase places my panties down on the mattress. Then, with a look of pure concentration, he uses the wet towel to sweetly swipe away at the drying come he left on my skin.
At first, I don’t know how to react. He makes sure to clean me up there, and even dabs between my legs, making it so that when I pull my panties back on, I’m a little fresher than I was.
That done, he bends over, pressing a kiss to the top of my head.
I can’t stand it any longer.
“Why are you doing this?” I whisper throatily, resisting the urge to let the tears flow this time.
Why are you being so nice to me when I don’t fucking deserve it?
Our eyes meet. “Because I love you,” is his simple answer.
My chest aches. I rub right beneath my tits as Chase flashes his crooked smile before turning away and heading back to the bathroom. Once he’s gone, I shimmy my cool, somewhat sticky panties back on, and wait.
As he steps into the main room of the cabin again, I jolt a little to see that Chase has done the same thing I did: he’s put his underwear back on. In his case, it’s the same pair of dark boxer briefs he’s been wearing probably since he left the Grave.
On the plus side, I know they do laundry here like we do in the Grave. Then again, we won’t be able to ask for a spare change of clothes or figure out how to get ours into the rotation until the morning. For now, those briefs, his shirt, and his jeans are all Chase has.
A pang adds to the ache when I see the underwear. Not because I want to ogle his dick. I’ve done enough of that tonight. But Chase insisted that he sleeps naked… so what changed his mind?
I’m just about to ask when he bends low enough to grab a handful of the shag rug. Dragging it across the small cabin, he drops it in front of the far wall. He kicks at it with his foot, flattening it out. That done, he drops down on top of it.
Next thing I know, Chase has his back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, legs crossed at the ankle, and he closes his eyes.
What the…
“Chase?”
“Yeah?”
“What are you doing?”
He peeks open one eye. “Getting comfy.”
Getting comfy… are you fucking kidding me? “You’re not sleeping on the floor.”
Both eyes are open now. “You take the bed. I’ll be alright down here.”
He means it, too. This isn’t Chase trying to guilt trip me into sharing a bed with him. I already accepted that that would happen, but now he’s hunkering down on the floor?
Away from me?
No.
“And the underwear? I thought you sleep naked.”
“I do. But whether you wanted to do that or not, I should’ve known better. Walking around with my dick out… that wasn’t cool of me. If I fuck up what we have because you think I just want sex all the time… I’ll never forgive myself.”
Oh, Chase… “You’re not the one who has initiated any of the times we’ve had sex,” I point out. “It’s always me.”
Well, except for when he chased me down after telling me that, if he caught me, he got to choose what to do to me. But since I started that whole night by sneaking after him, watching him masturbe, and offering to suck his dick… yeah. That was still on me.
“And if you tell me to whip it out, I will in a heartbeat,” Chase agrees. “But, for now, I’m doing my best to give you what you need.”
Right. Time and space. That’s what I need.
That’s what I should need.
No. What I need is Chase.
I pat the empty space in the mattress beside me. “Leave your undies on, but get your cute ass over here.”
His eyebrows rise all the way to his hairline, I swear. “Cute ass?”
A giggle bubbles up in my throat. “Sexy ass?”
He sniffs. “Better.” In one fluid motion, he goes from sitting to standing. “But I’d prefer it if you called it your ass.”
Maybe, Chase. Hey. You never know.
After he replaces the rug in the spot where he found it, he slides onto the mattress. I wait until he’s lying on his side to pass him the edge of the quilt. He tugs it over his body, the two of us side by side beneath the fabric.
The fireplace is the only light flickering in the cabin. I wonder if we should douse the flames before we go to sleep, but I have no desire to leave this bed to fiddle with the fire. Not when Chase is so close, I can swear I hear the nervous thud of his heartbeat inches away from me…
The flames crackle in the grate. Apart from the sounds of our gentle breathing, that’s all I hear now. As Chase’s slows, I wonder if he’s already fallen asleep—
“Holden?”
My heart skips a beat. “Yeah, Chase?”
“Can I still hold you?”
That’s right. Before I turned his earnestness just to be close to me into inviting him inside of me, Chase admitted that all he wanted to do was hold me in his arms and pretend, if only for tonight, that I belonged to him.
I can’t promise him tomorrow, but I think I can handle a little cuddling.
“Yeah. You can hold me.”
He slides his arm under my back, grabbing my shoulder and tugging me into his embrace.
The next sound he makes is one hell of a content sigh. “Good night, baby. I love you.”
I love you, too, Chase.
That much, at least, I’m sure of.