Author: Bella Andre

Her ball slammed into his with perfect precision, knocking his blue ball completely out of the game.

Straightening up, she gave him such a gleeful look—so pretty, so pure, so sweet to the core—it was all he could do not to fall on one knee in the sand and propose to her right then and there.

“One more perfect shot and I win,” she told him with great satisfaction. “And then you’re mine.”

He could sprint around a track, row across a lake without losing his breath. But with Chloe, it happened all the time.

He saw the way her hand trembled as she picked up the final red ball. She looked at him, held his gaze for a long moment before turning back to the game and letting the ball go in one graceful roll, where it landed right next to the jack.

And she won.

But instead of turning to him with a victorious cheer, she simply stood and stared at the balls. Finally, she turned back to him. “I guess we should go now.”

He wanted to tell her it was just a game. He wanted to pull her into his arms and tell her there was nothing to be worried about.

But something stopped him—the same thing that had stopped him from heading into the city over the past four days and taking her ex apart.

Chase knew Chloe’s strength, could sense how deeply rooted it was in her from that first moment on the side of the road.

But it wasn’t enough that he knew it.

Chloe needed to know her own strength, too. And that loving him wouldn’t ever diminish it.

Walking over to where she stood, he held out his hand to her. And waited for her to make up her mind about tonight. About whether she was going to claim not just her spoils...but all of him, body and soul.

Finally, she reached back to him and just as their fingers slid together, said, “It would have been so much easier if you had won.”

“I know,” he said, “but I never stood a chance of holding on to my heart with you.” He held her gaze. “Not for one single second.”

Chapter Seventeen

Anything.

Everything.

Chloe’s mouth grew drier and drier during their drive back to Marcus’s winery, her heart pounding harder and harder.

She tried to talk herself around all the reasons she shouldn’t be freaking out.

1. She wasn’t a scared virgin.

2. She and Chase had already had sex lots of times.

3. He loved her.

4. And she was pretty damn sure she was falling in love with him.

Oh God, that was exactly the problem.

She loved him.

Chloe wasn’t actually sure it would be easier to be the one in control of their lovemaking tonight if she didn’t love him, but two bodies coming together, a tangle of mouths and hands and limbs that were a world apart from emotion, from love, seemed so much easier all of sudden.

Just sex. That had been what she’d wanted. Or, at least, it had been all she’d told herself she wanted from Chase.

But her heart knew better.

Her heart had always known exactly what it longed for.

And her heart would never deny that love—pure, honest love—was all she’d ever wanted. All she’d ever needed.

A part of her was surprised that Chase hadn’t tried to ease her nerves during the drive. She could feel his concern, just as much as she could feel his desire. She knew he didn’t like watching her sit beside him with her insides shredded and torn. But instead of jumping in to save her, instead of trying to smooth everything over for her, he was giving her space to work things out on her own.

God, she only loved him more for that, for the faith he had in her to know the right thing to do, even when she was convinced she didn’t have the first clue.

As they drove through the Sullivan Winery gates, Chase reached for her hand and she could feel his confidence, his love, settle in through her skin, shimmying in past her flesh to her bones, all the way down to her soul.

A smile finally came to her lips, the first one since she’d won their game and realized what she’d done to herself. “Let’s go in.”

They let go of each other’s hands only long enough to get out of the car. It felt so right to walk beside Chase, to feel his strength, his steadiness beside her. Instead of waiting for him to open the door, she put her hand on the unlocked doorknob and pushed it open, leading the way into the living room.

“That first night, when you brought me here, I was scared,” she admitted. Strange how that was the easy part of her admission. Harder, so much harder, was saying, “Somehow, even then, even when I didn’t think I’d ever be able to feel anything again, I wanted you.” She put her hands on either side of his face. “I wanted to touch you.” She brushed her fingertips over his jaw, then up against his cheekbones and into his hair. “I wanted to know if you’d make my skin burn the way it is now.” She pressed up on her tippy-toes and said, against his mouth, “And I wanted so badly to taste you here.”

Her lips barely brushed his, just enough for her to know that he tasted a little like the chocolate from their dessert and the wine they’d had during dinner. But mostly he tasted like Chase…the beautiful man who had brought her soul back to life.

She slid her hands through his soft, dark hair, then down the back of his neck to his shoulders. “I wanted to undress you and see if you were as perfect as you looked.” She could feel his heart beating against her palm as her fingers went to the buttons at the top of his shirt. “I had a hunch you would be,” she whispered as she uncovered his chest, one glorious inch at a time.

She had to press her lips against his bare skin and a low groan rumbled from his chest, but he didn’t try to take charge of her night with him.

She couldn’t keep her hands from shaking as she worked open the rest of the row of buttons, pulling the hem of his shirt from his pants before slipping it off his shoulders and letting it fall to the floor behind them.

“I’ve never really had a chance to just look at you.” Even as she said the words, his muscles across his chest and abdomen were flexing and tightening. “You look a little tense,” she murmured, enjoying being in control like this so much more than she ever would have guessed.

She moved close again and pressed her palms flat against his chest and began to stroke over his pecs, the indentations of his abs rippling as she caressed him. “Does that help?” she asked him in a naughty voice.

“Yes.” His lie was raw.

Hungry.

Borderline desperate.

She leaned in, pressing her lips to the curve of his neck and shoulder. “Then I’ll have to do it more.”

She licked at his skin, wetting it before she nipped at him with her teeth. For a moment, she knew how a vampire must feel, how hard it must have been for Edward not to sink his teeth into Bella’s sweet flesh in those vampire movies she’d watched alone this year.

He groaned again, his skin and muscles vibrating against her outstretched hands.

Somehow, she dragged her mouth from him to continue what she’d started.

He was hers for the night.

Hers.

Chloe planned to wring every ounce of pleasure, of joy, from these precious hours, from every sweet minute with Chase.

Placing her fingers over his belt buckle, she began to work the leather. His skin was warm everywhere she brushed against it and her little hum of happiness sounded in the silent room.

“Lovely.” Chase’s compliment resonated through every cell in her body, coming to a stop right behind her breastbone. “The way you look when you’re undressing me.” He paused, waiting until she lifted her eyes to his. “You undo me, Chloe.”

She swallowed at the look in his eyes, at the fact that she felt like he was caressing her, stroking her, without ever needing to touch her.

His mouth was a distraction from her plan to strip his clothes off the rest of the way, but such a wonderful one. With her hands still on his belt, she went back up on her toes and kissed him softly again.

They both knew this kiss was a promise of what was to come, a promise that he’d know exactly what he meant to her by the time the sun rose in the vineyard outside.

Her breath came in short little puffs as she drew back and turned her attention to his pants. His zipper came undone a moment after she drew his belt apart, and then she was pushing his clothes away, watching with pleasure as his trousers dropped to the ground. Chase stepped out of them, moving closer to her as he did so, close enough that she could feel the heat of his thick erection against her belly.

He was gorgeous, sinfully so, standing before her in only his boxers. But she wouldn’t be satisfied until she had stripped him bare, just the way he always stripped away all the layers of protection she’d tried to wrap herself in. Every time they’d made love, Chase hadn’t just removed her clothes, he’d slowly begun to strip away her fears. Her hesitations. Her long-held belief that she couldn’t ever have the love of a man as good as this one.

She wanted to tear the cotton from his hips…but at the same time, she wanted to go as slow as she could to savor every moment of discovering Chase.

In the end, her hands took over from her brain, moving to hook a thumb into each side of his boxers. She had to lift the cotton over his erection, and once she’d cleared it, she stopped, mesmerized. “You make me want to do things I haven’t wanted to do in a long time.”

He didn’t need to say the words, Then do them, for her to hear it. She didn’t need his silent urging to help her move to her knees before him, either. And she certainly didn’t need his encouragement to lean forward and press her tongue against his hard flesh.

“Chloe.”

His hands, which he’d kept so carefully at his sides until now, came into her hair.

She felt hungry, wild, and so damn happy to be right where she was with Chase against her lips. If anyone had told her a week ago she’d love being like this with a man again—with any man on the planet—she would have known them to be certifiably insane.

But, oh, it was beyond lovely to taste Chase, to feel his hands tighten on her hair, to know that she was driving him insane with pleasure with her tongue, with the slightest scratch of her teeth over the flared head. As she opened her mouth wide enough to suck him in between her lips, his thigh muscles tightened, hardened almost to stone against her hands where she was holding on to him.

His pleasure was hers, too, as she drew him in deeper inside her mouth, down her throat. She could feel how careful he was to let her lead and though she loved him for it, she wanted to feel him lose control, wanted to know that she was the woman responsible for breaking his control to pieces.

Pure feminine instinct driving her every move, she moved one hand from his thigh to cup the tightening flesh below his erection, and then the other to wrap around the base of his thick shaft. Her tongue lashed circles on his sensitive skin.

“You’ve got to stop,” she heard him say as if from a long distance away. “I can’t hold back much longer.”

She didn’t want him to. Despite the fact that her body was crying for his touch, regardless of how good it would feel to drag him down on the floor with her so that she could climb over him and take him into her, she wanted this more.

So instead of stopping, she simply gave over everything she was, gave everything she had, to pleasuring the man who’d shown her that there didn’t have to be a limit to joy.

She could feel him growing bigger, thicker in her hand, could taste his arousal on her tongue. But she needed more, needed all of him, and as she took him in deep again, she moaned over his hard flesh without thinking about what that vibration would do to him.

A second later his deeply pleasured groan was followed by his vow of love, a vow that reverberated throughout the room as his shaft began to pulse and grow between her lips. She had to open wider for his thrusts, for the increased girth that filled her mouth as he pressed in hard against the back of her throat and he gave her everything she wanted, all of his control.