Kamille
“So . . . welcome to my place,” Chase said as he ushered Kamille through the front door. “Let me take your coat.”
Kamille paused in the terra-cotta-tiled foyer and shrugged off her faux-mink jacket for Chase. She glanced around, excited to finally see his house, which was nestled on a secluded lot in exclusive Holmby Hills.
He had suggested that they stop by for a nightcap after the Sunday Night Dinner, and even though she was tired, she’d said yes. She hadn’t wanted the evening to end just yet. The dinner had gone so well; everyone seemed to love Chase . . .
. . . except for her mom, who could be Ms. Judgmental when it came to Kamille’s boyfriends. Of course, Chase wasn’t just any boyfriend, and Kat would come around. Eventually. In the meantime, Kamille wasn’t going to let that stressful little mother-daughter talk ruin her good mood.
At least I have a boyfriend, Kamille thought smugly. Although Kass had said something about meeting up with some guy named Eduardo later tonight? So maybe there was hope for her, after all.
“What do you think? It’s not too much of a grungy bachelor pad, is it?” Chase joked as they headed into the living room.
“Ohmigosh, no! It’s incredible!” Kamille gushed. She glanced around the room, at the blue and yellow walls and the mix of wicker and hand-painted Mexican furniture. “Did you decorate it yourself? It’s so pretty! Well, not ‘pretty,’ but whatever the guy version of ‘pretty’ is. You know what I mean, right?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. And no, I hired a decorator to do it. I told her I wanted it to look kind of like my parents’ house, the house I grew up in. That explains why it’s kind of beachy looking. I wanted a lot of family photos on the walls, too. See, that’s me when I was five.” Chase pointed to a framed picture on top of a white baby-grand piano.
Kamille walked over to take a closer look. Chase at five was an adorable boy with a headful of floppy blond curls. In the picture, he was holding up a toy sailboat and grinning proudly.
“You’re so cute!” Kamille told him.
“Yeah, actually, I was kind of a handful. My mom’ll tell you. And over there on the wall . . . that’s her and my dad. The two guys with surfboards, those’re my brothers, Zach and Justin. Zach’s at UCLA—he’s a business major—and Justin’s a senior in high school. And the girl on the mountain bike, that’s my sister, Amanda. She and Justin are twins.”
“You have a big family!”
“Yeah, just like you.” He smiled and added, “That’s what I want, too, someday. A lot of kids.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
For a moment Kamille imagined her and Chase getting married and starting their own family. The thought made her blush furiously, and she turned away, hoping Chase didn’t notice. She busied herself scrutinizing the rest of his family photos.
Chase came up behind her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed the top of her head. The kiss felt so tender that Kamille knew, in that instant, that Chase had the same fantasy, too, of marriage and kids. With her. The thought made her weak in the knees.
“Kamille.” Chase turned her around and stared into her eyes. “I know this is all moving kinda fast, but . . . do you believe in love at first sight?”
“Do I . . .”
Kamille hesitated. How could she explain this to him? Of course she believed in love at first sight. She was the queen (or rather, princess) of love at first sight. But with all her other boyfriends, she only thought she was in love. She knew now that those were just dumb crushes (at best) or dysfunctional dramas (at worst), like the times she would fall for guys who treated her like dirt, and then continue falling deeper the worse they treated her. How messed up was that?
But Chase was different. He was the one. This was what love, and love at first sight, were supposed to feel like. Not pain and rejection and emptiness, but warmth and safety and passion all wrapped up in one amazing package.
Kamille met his gaze, feeling as if her heart were about to burst out of her chest. She opened her mouth to speak, to tell him all this, to tell him she loved him. But before she could say a word, he put his finger on her lips and whispered, “I want you to come with me.”
“Where?”
Without speaking, Chase took her hand and led her to his bedroom. He paused by the terrace door—the view of the city twinkling in the distance was stunning, especially with the pale moon—and wrapped her in his arms. He kissed her, at first gently, and then more urgently. She returned the kiss with the same urgency, knowing at this moment that she was ready to give herself to him completely.
She stepped back and slipped out of her dress, relishing the way his eyes seemed to devour her body. But standing there in her white lace bra and panties and nothing else, she suddenly felt shy. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Don’t do that. I have to look at you. Oh my God, you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” Chase murmured huskily.
“I am?”
“I don’t think you realize the power you have over men. Over me.”
“I don’t want to have power over other men. Just you.”
“Come here.”
They fell to the bed, kissing, caressing each other, peeling away each other’s clothes.
Afterward, Kamille lay in bed as Chase took a shower in the adjoining bathroom. Moonlight fell across the room, casting a dreamy silvery glow. She drew the luxurious Egyptian sheets up to her neck and sighed happily. Every cell in her body seemed to hum and vibrate with relaxation, pleasure, bliss.
Now she understood why sex was such a big deal. Her lovers before Chase had obviously been total amateurs. With Chase, she had reached heights she had never dreamed possible. She’d never had an orgasm with a guy, but with Chase . . . well, she had pretty much lost count after the fourth or fifth one.
She closed her eyes and sank down on the impossibly soft pillow. She was exhausted after their lovemaking marathon, and yet, incredibly, she wanted him again. Had she turned into a complete sex maniac? She giggled and buried herself more deeply under the sheets, breathing in the smell of his skin and cologne and their mingled sweat. She felt dizzy with lust and love and a million emotions she had never truly experienced before.
A phone began ringing, interrupting her postcoital coma. She poked her head out. It was Chase’s cell on the nightstand. It stopped after six rings, then started up again.
Kamille frowned, annoyed. Who was so eager to reach him, and at this late hour? The alarm clock said 12:24. Curious, she propped herself up on her elbows and glanced at the caller-ID screen.
It flashed: TIFFANI CALLING.
It was like a sucker punch to the stomach. Who in the hell was Tiffani, and why was she calling Chase after midnight? Was she an ex-girlfriend?
For an irrational split second, Kamille contemplated answering the phone. But that would be insane. If Chase walked in on her doing something like that, he might think twice about their relationship. The truth was, she didn’t handle jealousy too well. Last year, she had actually found a way to hack into a boyfriend’s voice mail because he kept getting calls from a particular number. The person turned out to be his mother. It was not a side of her she wanted to share with Chase—not yet, anyway. Maybe when they’d been together, and she felt more secure with him.
Still, who was this bitch Tiffani?
“Is that your phone? Or mine?”
Kamille jerked her head up and saw Chase standing in the doorway of his bathroom, wearing nothing but a white towel. His hair was damp, and his tanned, rock-hard muscles glistened with moisture. She would have been totally turned on at the sight of him, except that she was distracted by the still-ringing phone. And by the realization that Chase may have seen her checking out the screen, trying to figure out the caller’s identity.
“I think it’s yours?” Kamille replied casually. “Mine’s in my purse.”
Chase sauntered over and peered at the screen. His face darkened with annoyance.
“Chase? What is it?”
“It’s this girl Tiffani, she’s a friend of mine. She’s married to one of the guys on the team. I think they’re having problems, and . . . uh . . . she calls me a lot to check up on him, ask me if he’s with me and stuff. I don’t want to get involved, if you know what I mean?”
Relief coursed through Kamille. Why had she been so paranoid? “I totally know what you mean,” she said, smiling sympathetically.
“Yeah, that relationship’s a time bomb. She’s the most jealous person I’ve ever met. He’s totally not cheating on her, as far as I know, but if he did, I almost wouldn’t blame him. She’s constantly nagging him about where he’s going and where he’s been. She even stalks him through his Twitter page. It’s like she wants to keep him in a cage.”
“Wow, that sounds awful!” Of course, Kamille didn’t mention that Twitter-stalking was one of her own tried-and-true strategies.
“It is. But I don’t want to talk about them anymore.”
Chase turned off his cell and tossed it on the floor. He slid into bed, letting his towel fall away, his eyes blazing with desire as he took in the sight of Kamille’s naked body. She gasped when she saw that he was ready to make love to her, again. But why was she so surprised? She wanted him, too. So much.
They didn’t go to sleep until the sun came up.