AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A regretful look flickered over his features. “Babe, I didn’t mean—”
“No, Chase. You meant it,” I told him. “I am gonna shower. Alone.”
He gave me a tentative kiss on the tip of my nose, stepped out of the shower, and grabbed a towel from the cabinet. Briskly, he toweled himself off, his back turned to me. I adjusted the dial to a warmer temperature, and when the water beat down my back, he was gone.
***
“Babe,” Chase whispered a couple of hours later. He slid his arms under my head and pulled me against him. I opened my eyes and my hands chilled. My entire body absorbed his warmth, and it hit me how much I’d craved being with him since I’d asked him to sleep in the living room after I’d showered. I felt his thickening erection pressed against my rear, but he didn’t move. He was all too used to denying his body when he was around me.
“I didn’t mean to get so angry with you,” I said, feeling bad about how I’d rejected him earlier this morning. When he’d asked if I wanted to stay over in the car, the first thought that had crossed my mind had been that I’d get to wake up with him. I’d pushed him to talk about how he’d gotten that scar and I’d remembered that Pierce had said that Chase hadn’t pushed him to talk about he and Mona—or anything, I gathered. In fact, Chase hadn’t pushed me to talk about Cindy. I’d just wanted to let him know about her because I’d begun to trust him and because I missed her. It just hurt a little that he didn’t want to confide in me like I had with him.
“My heart is in this,” he said. “You’re important to me, but this is all new.”
“I understand,” I whispered back, which was partially true. I still disagreed with how resistant he was to talking to me about his life, but I didn’t want to burden him with what I wanted from him.
“But this is where I am at.” I rotated around and grasped his large hands. I fixed my gaze on his handsome face, noting that he hadn’t looked like he slept much, and I felt like a bitch. Determination filled his hazel eyes. “You don’t know how hard it was for me to tell you how loose I was.”
“I saw,” I said. “I am just asking you not to stop trying.”
“We’ve got one more hour of sleep before I drive you back to your uncle’s so you can get dressed for work.”
Chapter 12
Chase
“Did Mr. Penverick approve the seventh version of the logo?” Pierce asked. He propped his feet up on the coffee table in Bri and Gavin’s living room. It’d been three days since I’d been employed by Mr. Penverick to do his logo, redo the menu, and edit their online commercial for the bakery company he had out in Miami. He was already established in the competitive restaurant business. I knew that I was cheaper than graphic designers with a degree and more experience, but working for Mr. Penverick had been a real learning curve for me. I didn’t feel like I was being cheated.
I read the short email that I’d just opened up. “He did.” Pierce slapped me on the back. “And I finished editing the video for their online commercial.” I closed my laptop and eyed him. “How’s everything with you?”
“I broke it off with Mona yesterday.”
I spoke flatly to keep the skepticism out of my voice. “Is this temporary or forever?”
“Forever, man.” He grimaced.
I excused myself for a second and went into the kitchen to get us some iced tea, and returned to Pierce on the other side of the couch. He pushed his feet off the coffee table and I placed his glass of iced tea on it. “Wanna tell me what went down?”
A look of surprise flashed across his face and changed to relief. I gulped some of my drink down, feeling like a grade-A dick for not knowing that he wanted to talk about it further. “Mona said that I looked through her.”
I frowned. “Huh?”
“While we were…smashing, she was saying that I wasn’t into it.”
“Oh,” I said, flicking my eyes at my laptop.
“And I admitted to her that I felt nothing from it. Don’t even know how the man downstairs functioned.”
“No argument?” He shook his head. “She didn’t throw any objects at you?”
“Nah. Nothing like before. And she apologized for trying to get my attention by coming to La Floridita with Cassidy. She thought that I would’ve been mad at her, but I wasn’t.”
“Hmm.”
After a long pause, he asked, “Is that why you weren’t messing with any of the girls? ’Cause you felt nothing?”
“One of the reasons,” I admitted. “This has gotta be hard on you, because she was your first.”
“You know what’s really sad, Chase?”
