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“Probably not.” She sulked into her chocolate sauce.
“What do you want from me, Summer?” he asked once five minutes of tense silence had passed. “Why don’t you just tell me instead of leaving me to guess? Am I supposed to prove to you that I think I’m a decent guy by bending you over this sofa and ramming inside you? You really think that’ll redeem my sense of self?”
She ran her spoon over her lip, obviously weighing something in her mind. Yet again he couldn’t be certain she’d heard him. Her inattention rankled. “A kiss,” she decided finally. “That’s all.”
“A kiss?” Narrowing his eyes, he cocked his head. “Where?”
Smiling, she took another lick of her spoon and set the jar aside. Then she crawled closer and hovered beside him, her gaze already fixated on his lips. “Mouth to mouth, baby.”
That tightness in his chest returned. He didn’t like her calling him baby. It didn’t seem right.
He liked it too much.
“Fine.” He set aside his ice cream and motioned her toward him impatiently. Better to let her think he wanted to get it over with. “Let’s make this fa—”
Her lips met his and his thoughts died a fiery death.
Her gentle, seeking kiss incited a whole new throb beneath his waist. He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. His only defense against her careful assault was to wait it out. Then she slipped her tongue, flavored with sweet raspberry and chocolate, along his and he forgot that he couldn’t participate. He grabbed her arms and tugged her onto his lap, pulling her legs on either side of his so that she straddled him. Reaching up, he shoved his hands through the miles of dark hair that fell down around them and met her stroke for stroke.
Instead of trying to drive the intensity higher, she softened around him. Yielding to his touch. He’d figured her to be the type to expect a guy to follow her lead, but she seemed to want to let him set the pace. He found himself easing back on his speed, his fingers slipping from her hair to cup her cheeks as he slanted his mouth over hers. Finding a whole new angle, a new way to make her breath stutter and catch. Going deeper and hotter and wetter. Not as a prelude to getting her naked, but because he’d never tasted anyone or anything as succulent. Never experienced a kiss that meant so much more.
Lifetimes passed in that kiss. Kisses, plural. He operated on auto-pilot. After a while, his jaw started to ache and his lips grew numb. Her breasts pressed to his chest, her exhalations blew hot over his lips, her knees dug into his thighs. When the weakness in his arm rendered his grip shaky, he let his hands fall. She simply framed his face between her palms and continued her onslaught.
Drawing from a well of tenderness he hadn’t even realized he had, he banded his arms around her and held on with all the strength he had left. And somehow, he found more.
Breaking apart hurt. Air rushed from his lungs and fanned the tendrils of dark hair that clung to her flushed cheeks. She kept her eyes closed and struggled to breathe, her thick, tangled lashes fluttering from the effort.
He needed to kiss her again. To take her to bed. For the first time, he wanted to know what making love was like. He’d done everything else. She’d show him things he hadn’t even believed existed.
In that moment, he might’ve been weak enough to risk it. But she stumbled off his lap and backed toward the door. “I have to get dressed. My show.” Her dazed expression opened up holes inside him. The panic that followed poured acid into them. “I’ll be late. The shower—” She gave up and left.
Chase groaned and dropped his head on the back of the sofa. The next time she said the words “just a kiss” he’d know better.
No such thing existed, at least with Summer Maitland.
Chapter Six
Another Saturday night, and yet again he was on Summer-patrol. It had been the longest week of his life, one where he’d dreaded and anticipated seeing her again with equal fervor.
Chase widened his stance where he stood near the front right corner of the stage, pushing his elbows outward so no one got too close. He needed to keep room available so he could move at a moment’s notice. It didn’t look like he’d need to anytime soon though, because the brunette chanteuse on stage had captured the crowd’s interest and now held it on the tip of one glossy red fingernail.
The fact that she’d become a brunette chanteuse in his mind said volumes about where his head was. All his self-talk about how off-limits she was worked until she climbed the stage and became someone else. More than the Summer he’d always known. Mysterious and sexy, a fully confident woman who needed no games to seduce. He loved hearing her laugh, savored every moment of pleasure in her eyes.
The moment she opened those slick lips, the same hue as her nail polish, and let those honey-toned words fly, he was a goner. If she’d been anyone else, he wouldn’t have held back. She made him hard as a fucking rock, mentally dull as a broken pencil. She enthralled him, effortlessly.
Him and every other guy in the crowd, and most of the women too.
She kept stroking her braid. Not pulling it as he’d instructed her if she felt threatened, but working it through her fingers, freeing the occasional curl to fall across her breast. From this angle, they looked like they were on hydraulic lifts, for fuck’s sake. So high and firm he wanted to thank God for women. And simultaneously begrudge their very existence.
That wasn’t the worst of it. She sang like she was revealing her soul, just laying every part of herself on the line. Her hopes, her fears. Kyle played at her side, sometimes joining her as she played the guitar, sometimes playing on his own, but their accomplished harmonies barely reached his ears. Summer was the music, the lyrics and the instrument to him. All-encompassing.
Unforgettable.
And he stood like a hulking sentinel in the shadows, guarding her from those who wanted to own a piece of that joy for themselves. He wouldn’t let anyone risk her safety. Not even Summer herself.
Empire wasn’t quite as big as The Platinum Club, but what it lacked in fancy clientele, it made up for with volume. Bodies packed the place. Eager, writhing bodies. It didn’t take long for him to register the barometer of the crowd changing. This bunch wanted to mosh, not hum easy country-pop ballads. Summer soon realized that, as a few of her more traditional folksy songs received boos. Chase’s chest compressed with every one of them.
At this distance, he couldn’t see her face clearly. The glare from the lights blinded him to most of the details, but he could read her body language. The way she tucked her guitar closer to her
