“Money can buy you a fine dog, but only love can make him wag his tail.”
~ Kinky Friedman
Confession: I’ve never slept with a guy. I’ve never fallen asleep in the same bed with a guy.
My first sexual experience was when I was seventeen. My high school’s quarterback. We did it in the back of his car, or rather, his mom’s car. I thought we were the classic jock-and-geek love story. Turns out, we were the bet-you-can-bang-her cliché. Also turns out he did it for twenty bucks.
How’s that for ego shattering?
My next sexual experience was with Donald. In his office. Donald and I never did it in his bed. Like, ever. We did it in a motel once, near San Diego State University, but we didn’t stay the night. Donald had an early lecture the next day and papers to mark. I snuck back into my room at two in the morning. Thankfully Mom and Dad didn’t hear me.
Interesting enough, we did do it in the back of his car once as well, in the SDSU parking lot one night after I’d stayed back from class to talk to him about an assignment. It was an ostentatious black Porsche convertible. I love convertibles. Well, I used to. Now, not so much; they make me think of Donald. The roof was down and the moon was high and the air smelled of summer jasmine and a late afternoon storm. I’d come staring up at the stars, Donald’s groans in my ear, his hand under my shirt, squeezing my breast. I remember thinking at the time it was the most romantic moment of my life.
God, I was deluded back then.
I wasn’t sure if this moment was the most romantic – waking up in bed with Caden after falling asleep beside him the night before, wearing just my underpants and T-shirt and with the worst case of morning breath ever – but it sure felt … special.
It took me a while to comprehend where I was when I first opened my eyes, to process the strange bed, strange light, and even stranger sensation of a body beside me. But when my brain finally caught up, a goofy smile stretched my lips and my tummy fluttered with a warm yumminess I don’t recall experiencing ever before.
“Morning.”
I lifted my gaze from his bare chest, past his trim beard, his mouth, to his mesmerizing blue eyes.
My tummy fluttered again. So much fluttering. This time, my girly bits joined in.
“Morning,” I answered. Even to my ears, my voice sounded husky and scratchy. “Have you been awake for long?”
“Not to sound like some creepy dude, but I’ve been watching you sleep for a while now.”
I rolled my eyes, snuggling a little more onto my side and tucking my hands under my cheek. “That must have been exciting.”
“It was.” He grinned. “You make this sexy little snoring sound. Like this …”
He made the loudest, buzzing, nasal noise I’ve ever heard (and I’ve heard my dad snore – whoa). The whole bed vibrated with the force of it.
I burst out laughing, whacked him in the chest, flattened him to the bed and straddled his hips, pinning him to the mattress. “I do not snore,” I protested, even as the hard pole of his erection rubbed against me. It felt good. Really good. Really really good. Another whoa. My whole body reacted to it.
“You do,” he insisted, eyes dancing with laughter. “Like this.” The earth-quaking snoring sound tore from his nose again. “It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard.”
I whacked his chest again, pouting, as I wriggled on his lap. The feel of his rigid length grinding against me was delicious and exciting and damn near made me pass out with nervous anticipation. “You’re not nice, O’Dae.”
“I’m bloody awesome,” he countered, wrapping his hands around my back to draw me down. “And apparently I have this weird snoring fetish because listening to you just now turned me on big time.”
I laughed out an ewww, just as he flipped me onto my back and covered my body with his.
His erection nestled with perfection between my thighs, nudging at my entry with hard intention. If it weren’t for my panties he would have been buried deep inside me. Of that I had no doubt.
“Sorry I fell asleep last night,” he said, the laughter fading from his voice as his gaze held mine.
We’d arrived at that stage of flirting. The stage where it’s no longer flirting and had progressed to foreplay.
Oh wow. Why did I feel like I was about to explode already?
I lifted my shoulder in a nonchalant shrug. “It’s okay. It’s not like I went running about buying condoms for us.” I raised my eyebrows. “Oh wait, yes I did.”
He chuckled – which made his cock twitch against me – and then he lowered his face until his lips were wickedly close to mine. “Let me make it up to you?”
I turned my head before he could kiss me. Instead, he kissed my cheek.
“My breath will be yucky,” I said, my cheeks growing hot. Who wants to kiss a girl when she’s just woken, right? We might be flirting, we might have done things with each other that were beyond flirting, and yes, he had already given me the best oral sex orgasm of my life the night before … but morning breath is still morning breath.
He cupped my cheek with a steady hand and returned my gaze to his. “I don’t give a rat’s arse,” he answered, before capturing my lips with his.
His kiss was gentle. Exploratory. Not tentative, there was nothing hesitant or shy about it, but more considered and thorough.
Then his tongue found mine, his strokes modulated and intense. There were no words, no unnecessary noises or groans, just his mouth moving over mine, his tongue touching mine, sliding against it, mating with it.
I did groan then. A low vibration deep in my chest. It tingled through me, fed the desire I’d felt for this guy – this annoying, persistent, tenacious Australian – for so long I could barely remember a time when I hadn’t. I raked my fingers through his beard, up the back of his neck and tangled them into his hair.
He responded by taking our kiss to the next level. His cock pulsed at the junction of my thighs. I gladly and willingly surrendered to the intoxicating mastery of his kiss, wrapping my leg around his hip and drawing him closer to my body with my calf and heel.
I didn’t hear his moan of approval but I felt its tremor in his chest, pressed against my breast, so close to my heart. And then it was his hand on my breast, his fingers gentle but urgent. I arched beneath him, wanting him inside me. I wanted that so much: Caden O’Dae sinking into me, his thrusts long and slow and deep and perfect.
No, I didn’t just want it. I needed it. I ached for it. I ached for him.
I balled my fists tighter in his hair, desperate for more. Hoping he could feel my feverish hunger in the way I rolled my hips and ground the button of my clit to his trapped erection.
He tore his mouth from mine and replaced his hand on my breast with his mouth.
I let out a cry, arching in pleasure as he drew on my nipple through my shirt. “Holy fuck, Caden,” I blurted, eyes squeezed shut, fists tight in his hair.
He lifted his head, long enough for me to whimper in protest, and then he was lifting my shirt up my torso to expose my breast to his gaze. To his mouth. He drew on my nipple, nipped it, sucked it, his tongue and teeth instruments of sensations I couldn’t even begin to define or explain. As insane as it sounds I orgasmed at the concentrated pleasure.
The climax shuddered through me, an intense contraction of muscles around a cock that wasn’t there. I whimpered again, actually rolling my head side to side, moaning his name, clawing at his back.
He returned his attention to my mouth. For long, wonderful minutes he kissed me and worshipped my breasts. Occasionally something would tug at my soul and I’d open my eyes just as he’d lift his head and gaze down into my face, as if we were attuned with each other so much we knew when the other needed eye contact.
Those minutes would pass silently, our stares locked, our breaths mingling, a small half-smile on Caden’s lips, a throbbing beat in my throat and sex, and then he would take possession of my lips or my nipple again, or I would pull him down to me and capture his mouth with my own.
I don’t know how long it took before I was aching for him to penetrate me. Caden might have already given me the most amazing orgasm of my life, but my body was not sated. Not even close. I balled my fist in his hair, tearing his lips from mine. “Fuck me, Caden,” I pleaded. Whoa, when had I ever pleaded for anything in my life? “Now.”
He shook his head. “Nothing as base as that, Chase.”
The declaration sheared through me. My heart, hell, my soul, throbbed with a warmth and joy beyond my comprehension.
I didn’t stop him when he moved off the bed. I knew what he was going to get. I also knew I didn’t want him to. The thought of something as impersonal and clinical as a condom separating our bodies ripped at me. I almost told him to stop, that we didn’t need them, but I didn’t. Sure, I was on the pill, but I was also rational enough to know so was my sister when she got pregnant with Tanner. He walked over to the table and picked up the box of Trojans I’d bought the night before.
He flicked me a quick smile. “Extra large? Is this you being hopeful?”
I laughed. “Hell yeah. Now get that shirt off and get your ass over here, O’Dae,” I ordered.
He’d pulled his shirt up over his head and tossed it aside by the time he made it back to the bed. I ran my gaze over his upper body, enjoying the sight even as a part of me realized how nervous I was about looking at the rest of him. A fine smattering of honey-blond hair dusted his broad chest, trailing a path down the middle of an impressive six pack to the shallow dip of his navel and lower.
Lower.
I finally moved my gaze lower and my heart thumped faster.
I swallowed. Holy fuck, I was glad I bought extra large condoms.
Licking at my dry lips, I shifted on the bed, every part of me impatient for every part of him. He was lean and muscular and had that sexy-as-all-hell V kind of muscle thing happening near his hips that made a girl want to trace its sculpted form with her tongue.
I would do that. Later. After we’d—
Caden opened the box and withdrew a whole row of condoms. “This should get us through the next hour,” he said.
I laughed, the sound becoming a whoop of surprised delight when he threw himself into the air and onto the bed. He kissed me again, but this time our bare bellies slid against each other. This time the soft hairs on his chest tickled my breasts, my nipples. Have you ever experienced that? A hairy chest rubbing against your body? It’s singularly one of the most erotic and wonderful sensations I can imagine. The velvety rasp of Caden’s hair against my nipples sent shock after delicious shock of pleasure and lust and hunger through me. I groaned into his mouth and wrapped my thighs around his hips. I was impatient for him to slam into me, but I was loving the hell out of our playful foreplay as well.
Finally, he broke the kiss, his eyes seeking out mine. “Are you sure?” he repeated, his murmur low enough I had difficulty hearing him.
I traced my fingers up and down his back and pulled his groin harder to mine with my legs. “I’ve never been surer.”
With a shaky breath, he drew away from me, settling himself into a kneeling position between my spread thighs. He tore one of the square condom packets off the end of the row and opened it. As I watched him align the lubricated sheath to the tip of his erection, I noticed his hands were shaking.
He was nervous. Or overwhelmed. Or both.
Whatever it was, it detonated a fresh wave of desire for him I had no defense against.
Without a word, I sat up, plucked the condom from his fingers and smiled up at him. “Let me,” I mouthed.
I had no doubt he could read my lips. His Adam’s apple jerked up and down his throat and he nodded. “Okay.”
Once again, I had difficulty hearing him, but I didn’t need to hear him to be connected to him, to be experiencing this completely with him. I just needed him. Just Caden. Everything else was inconsequential.
Bending forward, I cupped his scrotum in one gentle hand, and then took his entire length in my mouth.
“Chase,” he groaned, body trembling. “Fuck me, that’s good.”
I repeated the motion, reveling in the way his body reacted to my mouth, my hand.
When I sensed the quivering in his body had reached fever pitch, when his hands scored rough lines over my scalp, I knew it was time. After all this time, we were finally going to …
I withdrew my mouth from his length and then slowly covered it with the condom.
His eyes rolled back in his head, his chest heaving, as I reached his balls.
“I apologize in advance,” he said, “for not lasting as long as I want to.”
Tight wet heat bloomed between my thighs. I affected him so much he doubted his staying power. How many guys did I know who would confess to something like that? It was perfect and wonderful and it made me love him even more.
Did I say love? I mean want. Yeah. Want. It made me want him more. So much more than I thought I ever could.
Rising up onto my knees, I brushed my lips against his. “I consider your impending premature ejaculation the ultimate compliment.”
A shaky laugh fell from him as he smoothed his hands over my hips and squeezed my butt. “In that case …”
He hooked his thumbs between the elastic of my panties and my butt and inched them down. Over my hips, over my ass, down my thighs, easing me down until I was flat on my back on the bed, panties off, his condom-covered cock nudging at my entry.
His gaze found mine. His hand did the same. Our fingers threaded together, palm to palm, and then his cock was parting my folds.
“Harder, Caden,” I moaned, the exquisite sensation of his flesh sinking into me too much to contain. “Harder. Faster. I want you inside me now. I want—”
He rolled his hips and slammed into me in a fluid, powerful thrust.
Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow. The ability to process thought failed me. The amazing sensation of Caden’s length stretching me, filling me, blocked any intelligent response I had.
Oh wow. Oh wow. That was it. Oh wow. Over and over.
Oh my fucking God wow.
Staring up at him, as connected with our eyes as we were elsewhere, I gasped and smiled at once. “Wow,” I laughed.
He grinned, his heart thumping fast in his chest against my breast, his length embedded deep inside me. “Wow is good. Wow is an understatement.”
“Wow is all I’ve got right now,” I answered, although I think the words were more a breathy moan. I squeezed my inner muscles around him, loving the way his breath hitched at the contraction, the incredible feel of his body in mine.
“Let’s see if I can help out with that,” he said, before slowly withdrawing and then plunging back in.
“Oh boy,” I groaned, head spinning at the wave of pleasure the new invasion sent crashing through me. “Oh wow …”
Caden chuckled, and then took possession of my mouth as his hands explored my breasts, my waist, my hips, the backs of my thighs. I gave myself totally to the moment, undone by the sensations he awoke in me. I’d fought every feeling, every attraction I had to him since the second he’d entered my life, I’d denied what he made me feel, how he made me feel, and in doing so, I’d denied myself.
And now here I was, overwhelmed by the sheer perfection of being with him.
Clawing at his back, I arched beneath him, wanting to take him deeper. I felt his groan, felt his body react to the slight shift. His breath blasted the side of my throat, hot and wonderful and wild. His beard tickled my shoulder. His fingers teased my nipple.
We moved as one, in exquisite harmony, his thrusts driving me closer and closer to a detonation I had no freaking hope of holding at bay. He’d been the one scared of coming too soon, and yet here I was on the precipice of total eruption.
“Caden …” I panted against his lips, my body trembling and thrumming. “Caden … I’m going to …”
He dragged his lips up to my ear, nipped my lobe and groaned, “Oh God, gorgeous, me too.”
I burst out laughing, the happy sound quickly dissolving into moans and whimpers as my orgasm shattered my world and nothing existed except the concentrated pleasure shearing through me, and Caden’s breath on my neck, his hands on my body and his flesh in mine.
I laughed and came, and Caden did the same. I’ve never felt a more wonderful quaking of a body than I experienced then. We came together, we existed together.
And as he continued to thrust into me, as a second orgasm began to build and then erupt through me, not even the thought oh wow formed in my head. All there was was pleasure. Pleasure and a sense of everything being the way it was meant to be.
*
“Okay,” I murmured, incapable of finding the energy to lift my head or raise my weight from Chase’s body. “Oh wow definitely doesn’t cut it.”
She didn’t respond, and I realized she hadn’t heard me. I lifted my head, needing to see her face, her eyes.
“I think you destroyed any advanced vocabulary in me as well,” I said when her gaze found mine.
Her chest was heaving with shallow, rapid breaths. Her lips were parted and slightly swollen from my kisses. I touched her bottom lip with my thumb, wanting nothing more than to kiss her again. So I did. My cock – still embedded inside her – pulsed against the tight heat of her sex. I’d need to move soon, to withdraw and deal with the condom, but I didn’t have the strength.
Not just because I was physically drained, but because I was exactly where I wanted to be, where I’d longed to be for so many months now.
Studying my face, she smiled, at once shy and playful. “I am that awesome, y’know.”
To prove it, she squeezed her inner muscles, sending a wave of fresh pleasure through my spent cock. I laughed, and then – as much as I didn’t want to – moved off her. My body reacted to the sensation of leaving hers, giving up one last throb that was both pleasurable and torture. When a guy has reached maximum pleasure any sensory experience is insanely hyper intense.
I got up and crossed to the bathroom, where I made quick work of dispensing with the condom, and then flicked on the shower. “Join me?” I called over my shoulder.
It took a second for my post-coitus fuddled brain to realize Chase would not likely have heard me. Christ, I really was discombobulated by pleasure. Drawing a deep breath, I walked back out to the bed. Chase was lying on it, flat on her back, staring at the ceiling, drawing slow circles on her belly with her fingertips.
As I approached her, she rolled her head and smiled at me. “Did I mention I’m quite impressed with your overall package?” she said, waving a hand in the vague direction of my lower body.
“I aim to please,” I said with a smile. “I also aim to shower. Want to join me?”
She shook her head. “I’m going to quickly go out and buy some clothes. I can handle not wearing underwear for the day, but I think I’d like a new shirt and jeans or something.”
I let my smile turn to a dirty grin. “You realize I’m going to be horny all day knowing you won’t have any undies on, right?”
She flashed her teeth at me in a grin as filthy as mine. “Hell yeah.”
Laughing, I headed back for the shower.
I was dry, dressed and combing my damp hair with my fingers the bloke’s way, when Chase returned. She strutted into the bathroom naked, wriggled her butt at me and squealed when I lunged for her. It was only the fact her phone started ringing that prevented me hauling her up onto the bathroom vanity and doing wicked things to her body.
“Someone’s calling you,” I told her, releasing her from my arms.
“Damn,” she pouted, eyes twinkling. “Can you get it for me, please?”
I snatched a quick kiss, slapped her butt just below her Buddha tat and hurried out of the bathroom before she could retaliate. This was Chase after all. She would retaliate.
By the time I got to where her phone sat on the bedside table, the caller had given up. For a second the memory of my conversation with Donald the Dude the previous night haunted me, dampening my elated mood, and then Chase’s phone dinged and vibrated with a message and I put thought of the professor aside. Dropping onto the edge of the bed, I picked up her mobile. It was a text from Dr. Adams, the kind of text I wanted to read. A smile spread over my face and a happy warmth flowed through me.
Doofus was doing well. We could come in and see him whenever we wanted.
I was just pondering over the fact that awesome sex with Chase had made me bloody hungry, when Chase emerged from the bathroom. I took one look at her and burst out laughing.
“What?” she asked, eyebrows high, melodramatic confusion on her beautiful face as she executed a half-pirouette.
I grinned. “Love the duds, gorgeous.”
She looked down at what she was wearing. “Don’t I look incredible?”
A tie-dyed purple and blue tank-style dress covered her from boobs to mid thigh, sinfully snug and sporting a gaudy image of Mickey Mouse and Pluto. Whoever the artist was, they mustn’t have been exactly … lucid when creating the image. Mickey looked stoned and Pluto looked like an orange demon dog with a possible case of rabies.
“Something tells me,” I said, “that’s not official Disney merchandise.”
Chase gave me another one of those naughty smiles I loved so much. “I suspect you’re right. But I couldn’t resist.”
I ran my gaze over her. What with her wild pixie-cut hair, dyed the color of the ocean, pierced eyebrow, incredible body and long legs, she looked like a sexual deviant’s ultimate Disney fantasy.
Christ, she was hot. And mine.
“Ready to go see Doofus?” she asked.
“You really not wearing any undies?” I asked in return.
For an answer, she turned, stuck her butt out at me and hitched up the hem of her new dress.
“Chase,” I said, shaking my head when she turned back to face me, “if I wasn’t so damn hungry I’d do things to that hot arse of yours right now.”
She strutted past me, lips twitching. “C’mon, Aussie boy. We’ve got a dog to see.”
*
We grabbed breakfast at the International House of Pancakes next to the motel. I’d never been into an IHOP before but fuck a bloody duck, was it an experience. Who knew there were so many different ways to serve up a gallon of sugar and salt on a plate of pancakes?
Because I am a five-year-old boy at heart, I ordered a plate of chocolate choc-chip pancakes with ice cream and hot chocolate fudge sauce. With a side order of bacon and a chocolate shake.
Chase sat opposite me, watching me eat the whole thing with disbelief on her face. On the table in front of her sat a bowl of fruit salad and yogurt and a black coffee.
“I can’t believe you’re eating that,” she said, her eyes tracking my fully loaded fork as it moved from my plate to my mouth.
I stuffed my mouth full of the sugar overload, chewed on it a few times and swallowed, grinning the whole time. “Hey, when in Rome,” I said, reaching for my shake.
“What do you normally eat for breakfast?”
“Vegemite on toast,” I answered, before taking a massive slurp of chocolate milk.
“What is it with you Australians and that disgusting stuff?”
I plonked my shake back down on the table. “Them’s fighting words, missy.”
She shook her head and chuckled. “Yeah, yeah. Just don’t ever try to make me eat it. I still can’t believe Tanner, my own flesh and blood, likes it.”
I scooped up another mound of chocolate choc-chip pancakes with my fork and smiled. “He’s half Aussie. Of course he’s going to like it. Maybe even two-thirds Aussie, if you count my brilliant bone marrow.”
“Eat your sugar, weirdo,” Chase ordered, lifting her coffee to her lips. “We’ve got a dog to get to.”
As much as I enjoyed my somewhat indulgent breakfast, I must admit I was regretting it a few hours later. Standing in the Laguna Niguel Animal Hospital, with its distinct smells, my stomach was making it very clear it wasn’t happy with me.
Doofus, however, was.
We stood beside his cage, Chase crooning about how awesome he was as I checked his chart. His readings were good, although his temperature wasn’t behaving the way it was meant to. His core temp was still high, and according to Dr. Adams, he was refusing water and food. Not what I wanted to hear, but not overly worrying. Not yet, at least. If he continued to do so tomorrow, he’d need a drip.
A part of my mind added up the costs incurred so far. Dr. Adams hadn’t mentioned payment, but I doubted he’d be treating Doofus for free. Which meant this trip to the States was costing me a fortune. Ouch.
At the slight brush of Chase’s shoulder against mine, I turned, watching her rub her forehead against Doofus’s through the bars, her eyes closed, her smile wide and genuine and totally beautiful. A fortune, but completely worth it.
I’d just double my paid intern hours with Briny when I got home. While I was completing my doctorate. And prepping for my mid-year exams.
Oh man.
Maybe I could work off some of the bill via unpaid work at the clinic? I was about to tell Chase I was going to go have a chat with Dr. Adams when her mobile phone started vibrating in her bag followed by the familiar loud ring.
It had taken a few incoming calls on Chase’s mobile for it to dawn on me that when Donald the Dude called, her phone played Pink’s “Walk of Shame”, most recently last night while she was out buying condoms.
A thick lump filled my throat. Guilt and anger threaded through me.
Doofus’s ears dropped close to his head, a low whine coming from him.
A strange stillness fell over Chase and she chewed on her lip, scratching his neck. I wanted to ask her if she was going to pick up the phone, but at the same time couldn’t bring myself to utter a word.
I’d yet to tell her about my chat with the professor last night. I should have by now. The fact I hadn’t was slack. Possibly even deceptive.
I should have told her before we had sex this morning, but I’d allowed myself to get caught up in the moment. Or maybe I was just letting myself think it was the moment that had prevented me from telling her. Maybe it was really the fact I knew she wasn’t going to be happy.
Maybe it was the fact I was protecting her from confusion and she hated being protected.
Maybe I was being selfish …
Fuck.
As we stood there, Doofus’s tail thumping gently and his ears flat to his head, the song filled the silence. I waited for Chase to get it. She didn’t.
Finally, silence resumed, as much as an animal hospital can be silent. Dogs whined, barked, cats meowed, birds chirped and squawked. I’m positive I heard the distinct screech of a sulphur-crested cockatoo coming from one of the other areas in Recovery.
Sliding Chase a sideways look, I returned Doofus’s chart to its hook on the front of his cage.
Christ, I had to tell her.
“Chase …” I said, my voice a husky scratch.
Her chest rose and fell with a shaky breath, and then she was talking to Doofus again. “We’ll bring you back something yummy to eat,” she told him, scratching at his ears, which were once again in a happier position. “Grilled cheese, maybe?”
“Reckon we could find some Vegemite around here?” I asked, needing to break the tension trying to replace our earlier ease. I’d tell her later. I would. Along with the fact giving a dog bread wasn’t a good idea, especially a sick dog. I think showing off my vet knowledge now was probably not good timing.
Timing. Huh. It seemed me and timing weren’t on the best of terms at the moment.
She shot me a mock glare. “We’re wanting him to live, not die of poisoning.”
I laughed. She smiled. And then frowned when her phone vibrated and pinged with an incoming message.
“You should get it,” I suggested, even as the words scraped at me like razorblades.
An unreadable expression fell over her face. She studied me, as if looking for something in my eyes, and then withdrew her phone from her bag.
You have no freaking clue how much I wanted to read the message. I mean, if you had to rate it on a scale of one to ten, one being a curious itch, and ten being an imperative so vital the very fabric of existence was at risk, it was a fifty.
I stubbornly fixed my stare on Doofus.
The tones of her typing out a reply drilled into me, each key-strike a blow against my confidence and ego. It was stupid. For all I knew, she might have been telling Donald the Dude she’d just had the best sex of her life and it wasn’t with him so would he mind pissing off and leaving her alone. My fragile male ego, however, was concocting other messages. Messages that created a heavy lump in my throat and a churning knot in my gut.
If anyone tells you love makes you invincible, tell them they’re full of shit. Love makes you paranoid and insecure and nervous you’re going to fuck it all up and lose the best thing that’s ever happened to you.
From the corner of my eye I saw Chase return her phone to her bag. Pink started singing almost straightaway. Doofus whined, his ears drooping again.
Chase didn’t answer it. Instead, she turned and offered me a wry smile. “Let’s see if there’s anything we can do here to work off Doofus’s bill.”
My chest tightened. We were so perfect for each other. We thought the same way, approached problems the same way … The difference between us was I didn’t have another interested party circling me like a shark.
There was little I could do about that, except stay true to who I was and stick to the course I’d mapped out, which was basically being myself. If I couldn’t convince Chase we were meant for each other by being me, then why should she be with me when I wasn’t?
For the next three hours, Chase cleaned out all the animal cages and environs, and I performed basic medical check-ups on recovering animals, and did an inventory of the small animal vaccinations.
Before we left, Chase snuggled into Doofus one last time. She murmured things to him I didn’t hear. Chase doesn’t murmur often. It took me a few months of knowing her to realize it was a hearing thing. I’ve seen her murmur to Tanner, and once she murmured something to Amanda that made her roll her eyes and shake her head, but that was about it.
No under-the-breath mutterings, no secretive whispers. When Chase wants to say something, she does. Whatever she was saying to Doofus, it was accompanied by a gentle stroke of his shoulder, her eyes closed. The sight filled my throat with a thick lump.
Animals and Chase. My emotional downfall? Or my emotional strength?
We spent the rest of the afternoon sightseeing. Chase took me to all the tourist traps. I posed in front of the Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, I planted my hands in Hugh Jackman’s handprints and grinned cheesily. We ate what was either a really late lunch or a really early dinner at the Nickel Diner, which was just as fantastic as Yelp claimed. We found Robert Downey Jnr’s star on the Walk of Fame and I realized just how big a geek Chase was when she actually laid down on the footpath beside it and had me take her photo. Of course, she got to see my geeky side in full force when we found Patrick Stewart’s star and I spent the next hour dropping quotes from both Star Trek and the X-Men movies.
When she responded to one of mine with the appropriate quote, I had no choice but to haul her to my body and kiss her. It was the first real contact we’d shared since her text conversation with Donald the Dude. I want to say she didn’t stiffen a little when I did it, I really do. I want to say that more than anything.
Unfortunately, I can’t. Something had happened; a dark cloud had fallen over her heart, her mind, and I didn’t know what to do about it.
I sure as hell knew, no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t tell her about taking the guy’s call the night before. Not while she was unsettled.
Was I being a coward? Probably. Putting off the inevitable? Definitely.
Making it worse for myself? Yeah. I was making it worse for myself.
But I hated the thought of upsetting her. I can’t stress that enough. Hated it. I didn’t just want to protect Chase from any physical harm or mental harm that came her way, I wanted to shield her from emotional pain as well.
So I stayed mum on the subject, doing my best to ignore the lump of guilt building in my gut.
It didn’t help when I made the mistake of leaning over to her while we were watching a street performer at Santa Monica Pier, and whispering in her ear how talented the guy was. She jerked away from me, eyes wide, confusion on her face. It was then I realized what I’d done. I’d whispered in the ear that was completely deaf. Shit. What was wrong with me? How could I be so stupid?
“Sorry,” I blurted, my chest tight. “Sorry, I—” I bit back the word forgot before it could leave my lips.
She studied me, her expression unreadable, and then turned back to the street performer. “It’s okay,” she said, a small smile curling at the corner of her lips.
I let out a ragged breath. I rarely forgot about Chase’s hearing impairment. It wasn’t necessarily in my thoughts constantly – she was Chase Sinclair, Amazing Girl to me, not Chase Sinclair, Deaf Girl – but it was like a distant notion in the back of my head most of the time. Forgetting now, whispering into the ear that was completely deaf … I couldn’t help but feel like I’d somehow been insensitive.
The slip niggled at me, an itch that wouldn’t go away, for the drive back to the hotel.
I chatted the entire trip, making inane observations about LA, the traffic, and any animal I happened to see. I know an embarrassing amount of trivia about animals and have a habit of sharing with whoever happens to be near me when I see one. We passed a Labrador (Did you know Labradors have webbed toes to help them swim faster?); a Poodle (The Poodle actually originated in Germany, not France. The French love the dog so much, however, they made it their national dog); a Clark’s Grebe (The collective noun of the grebe genus of birds is a “water dance”); and of all things, a giraffe traveling in a trailer marked L.A. Zoo (Did you know that in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s illegal to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp?). I babbled the whole time. There really was no other word for it. Babbled. Like the idiot I was.
Chase hadn’t stopped me babbling, but she hadn’t really engaged in it either. Her responses had been distant, almost disconnected, like she was lost in thought.
You have no idea how hard that was. As a guy, I want to fix things, it’s what guys do. As a guy madly in love with her, I knew if I pushed her I’d lose any chance of being with her completely.
So I continued to babble. Like an idiot. The one consolation I took was that Chase didn’t pull up to the curb at any stage and tell me to get out. That was something.
The sun was well and truly below the horizon when we arrived back at the motel. We climbed out of the Speeding Dragon in silence. It had been a long trip back. We’d planned to change motels so we could be closer to Doofus but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
A cool night breeze blew at us as we approached our room, a chilly reminder it was late fall in Southern California. I was trying to suppress my shiver when Chase paused opening the door. Still gripping the handle, she gave me a look over her shoulder. “Kiss me? Please?”
“Okay,” I said, before closing the distance between us and brushing my lips over hers. As much as I wanted to take her into my arms and show her how much I desired her, loved her, I kept the kiss as tender and sweet and gentle as I could.
I stepped back. The lights from the motel danced in the depths of her eyes, hiding whatever she was thinking from me.
Her lips curled in a slow smile I had no hope of deciphering, and then she let out a ragged sigh. “Let’s go in.”
She headed straight for the bathroom. I sank into the room’s only armchair, a turbulent, unsettled mess.
It had definitely been a day I wouldn’t forget. A day that had started with a bang and looked to be ending with a strained whimper. There were moments in it that would rank up there with my favorites, and I wasn’t just thinking of the incredible sex we’d shared that morning. Moments when we were at the hospital, where our eyes would connect through the bars of an animal’s cage, and we would both smile.
Moments of connections more than just sexual. Moments that seemed tainted by the unavoidable, invisible presence of Donald the Dude.
What should I do about that? Clearly my little chat with him hadn’t warned him off. Every fiber in my body wanted to take Chase’s phone, call him up and tell him to fuck off. But then every fiber in my body clearly wanted me to get a black eye from Chase for doing so.
Still, that didn’t stop my fantasizing about coming face-to-face with the guy again. About introducing my fist to his jaw. Hey, I’m a guy. A nice guy, to be sure, but I’ve still got testosterone to spare and the girl I loved to protect, and everything about Donald the Dude screamed jerk. But there was more to their relationship than Chase had let on. I don’t think there was a malicious reason behind her lack of sharing about their past, but he definitely had a tapped line to her emotions, if not her heart.
Fuck.
I was mid ponder – eyes closed, hands hanging loosely over the arms of the chair, legs splayed – when Chase straddled my lap. Warm and naked Chase.
I gazed up at her, my hands automatically moving to her hips, up her back.
Her skin had that velvety softness that comes with having a warm shower. She smelled like soap, and Chase, and heaven. Her hair was damp, her eyelashes spiky with water. Her lips were parted. She watched me. Neither of us spoke.
Neither of us made a sound as I drew upright and took her nipple in my mouth. I worshipped her breasts, her throat, her chin, her lips, with my mouth and hands and lips.
She held me, hands in my hair, thighs hugging my hips, sex pressed to my groin. At some point, I removed my jeans. Or maybe Chase did. Or we both did. My jeans ended up off, a condom ended up on my dick, and we were making love.
I used to cringe when I’d hear that term: making love. But that’s what this was. There was no other way to describe it.
It was beautiful. Powerful.
We didn’t speak, just held each other’s gaze as she rode my body, and I thrust up inside her. We both came, her a microsecond before me, and even that was quiet. Profound and potent, unlike any sex I’d had before. More than sex. More than a physical act. So much more.
Finally, as the contractions of her sex around my dick grew as erratic as my upward thrusts, she arched on my lap and let out a hitching moan.
I flattened my palms to her back, drove harder, faster up into her, my release a fierce river flooding from me, and pressed my lips to her ear. “I love you, Chase,” I whispered, lost to the raw pleasure, the pure sensation, the words barely more than ragged pants. “I love you, I love you so fucking much.”
She didn’t reply. Instead, she clung to me, her heat constricting around my length, and then slumped against me, burying her face into the side of my neck.
It wasn’t until I awoke hours later, when the morning sun was streaming through the window, that I realized what I’d done: whispered in her deaf ear. Poured out my heart, confessed how I really felt for her on a breath she would have felt but not heard.
Fuck, way to mess up the moment, dickhead.
I looked around the motel room, eyes scratchy, and realized Chase wasn’t there.
I was alone.