Author: Bella Andre

“No?”

He slid his hand over hers beneath the table. “No.”

But he’d risk everything for her.

Chapter Eleven

The moment they stepped inside the guest house, Chase kissed Chloe the way he’d been dying to kiss her all day. He kissed his way from her sweet mouth to the pulse point in her neck and felt her heart race beneath his lips, his tongue.

“You have such lovely, soft skin.” He slid the straps of her silky top from her shoulders. “Such lovely, responsive breasts.” He pressed kisses over the swells that rose up out the top of her bra. “And you make such lovely little sounds when I’m kissing you.”

When he looked back into her eyes, they were dark with desire. Along with the growing emotion she simply wasn’t able to hide from him.

He’d wanted to take his time with her tonight, wanted to love her slow and easy, take all night if he had to. Instead, he was saying, “I can’t wait another second,” just as she said, “Hurry.” She slipped her panties off as he yanked off his pants and boxers.

“Please tell me you have a condom,” she said and, thank God, he did have one that he’d stashed in his pocket that morning just in case an opportunity arose to sneak away from the shoot and make love to her.

A moment later he was sheathed and lifting her up so that her dress bunched up around her waist. She had her arms wrapped around his neck, her legs around his hips as he drove into her.

She gasped out his name and he found her mouth and kissed her. But it was more than a kiss. And what they were doing together was so much more than a quickie against the front door.

* * *

Her tongue laved the spot on his shoulder where she’d bitten down into a tendon as she’d come apart in his arms. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” She looked stunned by what she’d done to his skin. “I’ve never done anything like that before.”

Beyond glad that she was starting to really let herself go with him, he said, “You’re the one who’s going to have bruises from the door if I don’t get you into the bath right away.”

Her legs still wrapped around his hips, he carried her through the house to the bedroom. Continuing to the bathroom, he kept her right there on his lap as he turned on the taps and tested the water. “Perfect.”

After pulling her dress off and removing her bra, he lowered her into the tub. She seemed reluctant to let go of him.

“Aren’t you coming in, too?”

He didn’t say anything at first, just let himself drink her in. He loved the way she’d held onto him. Being with her like this was so natural, so right. Chase knew he could never be with a woman who spent her life worrying about what she ate, about whether or not she had cellulite or a little extra flesh on her stomach. He spent all day with women—and men—who were obsessed with what was on the outside.

Chloe’s natural self-confidence, which he was watching return by leaps and bounds with every hour that passed, along with her very real beauty, was the perfect antidote to all of that self-conscious preening. He loved the fact that her nails weren’t painted, that she wasn’t waxed bald between her thighs, that she hadn’t dyed her hair or whitened her teeth. She looked like a woman should.

“You’re staring at me.”

“Yes, I am. And you’re so lovely I’m going to be staring a whole lot more.”

She blushed. “Come join me in the tub.”

But even though he was desperate to get in the water with her, all day he’d been thinking about the conversation they’d had that morning.

“Remember that first night I found you in the tub?”

“I honestly don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget.”

“You’re in the bathtub again.” He paused. “And we know each other better now.”

“We certainly do,” she said softly.

The question hung silently between them: What would have happened that night if she’d trusted him? And was there any chance that she trusted him enough now for what he was asking her to do?

There was only one way to find out.

“I’ve wondered a thousand times how that night could have played out differently,” he told her in a low voice.

And then he saw it—renewed excitement and arousal moving across her beautiful face. Looking down at the water, she licked her lips and took a deep breath. When she looked back up at him, she was transformed: A sensuous creature from head to toe.

“Why don’t we find out?” She didn’t give him any time to catch his breath before she said, “I think I’m going to soap up now.” Her voice was husky, and almost enough to have him forgetting about the whole thing and just diving in there to pull her down over him again.

Instead, he made himself take one step back, and then another, until he was backed up against the sink. He yanked off his T-shirt and stood there naked, his erection throbbing hard against his stomach as he watched her reach for the soap.

That first night when he’d walked in on her in the tub, he should have left the room immediately. But wild horses couldn’t have dragged him away. Hell, the entire house could have been falling down around them and he still would have stood there, unable to do anything but stare at Chloe in awe.

Tonight, he was standing again in the bathroom, watching her slowly, sensuously, begin to run a bar of soap down her outstretched legs. She had such smooth skin, such pretty thigh and calf muscles, such lovely toes.

Slowly, she lowered her leg back into the water, then lifted the other.

His erection was a living thing against his lower stomach, a heartbeat away from dragging the rest of him across the room and into the tub to get at her. Knowing he had to hold onto something to keep from reaching for her, he grabbed a towel off the rack beside him and gripped it tight enough to tear it in two.

* * *

Chloe didn’t need to look at Chase to feel the heady strength of his desire from across the room. She loved how powerful she felt, teasing him this way. And she loved the fact that he wanted it just as much as she did.

God, she thought with a barely repressed moan, it was going to be good when he finally joined her in the tub.

It was so tempting just to give in to that need, to throw the soap down and reach out for the gorgeous man standing on the other side of the bathroom watching her with utter lust.

But the anticipation of that moment would only make it sweeter when it finally came.

Still, she had to work really, really hard to keep her voice steady as she continued to play their sexy game. “Just give me a sec, okay? And then you can hand me that towel.” She couldn’t repress a small smile as she looked at him and said, “You don’t mind waiting, do you?”

“No.”

Not bothering to hide her grin at how strangled the one short word had sounded, she dipped the lavender scented bar of soap back into the water. Once wet, she began the slow process of running it over her collarbones, and then lower, and lower still.

The tips of her breasts had already beaded tightly beneath the heat of his gaze, but as she came closer and closer to them with the suds, she couldn’t believe how much more sensitive her skin felt. Almost as if one touch from her soapy fingers—combined with the devastating desire in Chase’s eyes—would be enough to have her crying out his name.

The soap slipped from her fingers and water splashed up onto her face.

Chase’s voice came from across the room, low and borderline desperate. “I think the bar of soap slipped between your legs.”

She had no idea what came over her then, how on earth a wanton seductress could have taken her over so quickly. If ever there was a time and place for reticence—for fear—to lift their ugly heads, it was here. It was now. And the truth was, a large part of her was shocked by how her hidden desires were bubbling up one after the other with Chase...and that she was actually letting them out.

The smart, rational thing would be to end the game right away, before it went any further. She should be doing everything she could to keep the truth of who she really was from Chase, should be making sure that he could never come back one day in the future and hurt her with it.

But when she looked up at him, she simply couldn’t find a way to reconcile all of those fears with the beautiful man clutching the towel for dear life. And, ultimately, her body didn’t really care about her latent fears at present. Not when such beautiful satisfaction awaited her in his arms.

Which was why she found herself saying, “Maybe I would have better luck looking for it on my hands and knees.”

Chase blew out a pained breath. “I’m not sure I’m going to survive this.”

Moving slowly, carefully, in the slick and soapy tub, she sat up until she was kneeling. Water streamed off her breasts. Reaching into the water for the soap, she said, “Ah, there it is, slippery little sucker.”

A moment later she was going fully onto her hands and knees, lifting enough out of the water that she could feel cool air rushing between her thighs, over her belly, before picking the soap up and moving back into a kneeling position.

She could hear Chase’s heavy breathing as she pushed her wet hair off of her chest and shoulders with her free hand, then ran the bar of soap over her collarbones, over her arms, across her stomach, and then, finally, her breasts.

She ran the soap over one breast and as it stiffened into an ever tighter point, he groaned. The truth was, Chloe could barely stifle her own whimper of need as she asked, “Everything okay, Hotstuff?”

She had no idea how she managed to ask the question in such a steady voice.

He choked out a strangled laugh at his nickname. “Everything is perfect.” His voice wasn’t quite as steady as hers. He nodded at her naked body in the tub. “You’re going to be really clean.”

Yes, she would. Because she wasn’t done yet. Not by a long shot.

Cupping her hands in the water, she lifted them and poured water down her chest. Suds washed down over her breasts and rib cage and stomach.

When she’d washed the soap off of her chest, she picked up the bar of soap and looked straight at Chase. A muscle was jumping in his jaw and his hands were tightly fisted on the sides of the towel. She couldn’t see his hard-on behind the towel, but she didn’t need to.

“Just one more place I need to get nice and clean.” She didn’t take her eyes from her hot voyeur as she lifted up so that her bottom and the upper half of her thighs were out of the water. She moved her knees apart several inches in the bottom of the tub, then took the soap and placed it just below her belly button.

Chloe felt like she was all nerve endings. The soap slipped away from her again, but this time she wasn’t about to retrieve it from the bottom of the tub. She desperately needed to touch herself and her breath left her lungs in a rush as her fingertips brushed over her sex.

“Don’t stop.” Chase’s breath was coming out just as fast as hers. “Please don’t stop.”

And as she let her fingers continued stroking, sliding through her wetness until she could feel the tremors building from way down deep, suddenly he was there with her, his large body wrapped around her, his warmth taking away any chill that remained. In one hard stroke he pushed inside her to the hilt and she pushed back into him just as hard, wanting him even deeper, even closer.

The water splashed all around the room as he held her steady with one arm around her waist while driving into her again and then again as she begged him for more, more, more until the orgasm she’d been teasing him with joined with Chase’s impending release, swelling big enough to break through her entire soul like a tidal wave.

* * *

Chloe smiled at him as he dried her off and Chase loved the way she leaned into his touch, rather than away from it as she once had. Picking her up, he moved to the chair in the corner and pulled her onto his lap. She curled into him like a contented kitten.