B0161IZ63U (A) (26 page)

Lila was the first to pull away. 

His eyes remained closed, still holding her head close, still lost in a dream, continuing to place soft kisses on her lips.

Her eyes cut to the clock on the console.

“We’ve officially… Been making out… In this car… For an hour.”  She couldn’t finish a full sentence passed his roving lips.

He cupped her jaw in both hands, demanding her full attention as he savored her.

“You make me… Feel… Like I’m sixteen, again.”

At those words, Chase finally pulled away, lips smacking their disagreement in his retreat.  His stormy eyes searched hers.

Lila’s eyes fell to his lap.  His sweats were so tented with his arousal that it nearly touched the bottom of the steering wheel.  She licked her lips at the sight.

He noticed, pushing her hair back from her face.  He wanted to see her, seeing him. What she did to him.  “I make you feel sixteen, huh?”

“Mmm.... Amongst many other things.”

“Isn’t that when your P.E. teacher bent you over for the first time?  When you were sixteen?”

“He was my
English
teacher.”  Her hands traveled his body, from his collarbones to his abs, moving over every hard ridge, while avoiding the hardest of all. “And, yes, I was sixteen when he finally bent me over.”

He laughed with her, pushing a stray piece of hair behind her ear.  “I was thinking about that the other day.  About you having an affair with your teacher.”

Lila licked her lips, eyes racing back to his lap.  Her mouth filled with saliva, yearning to pull the waistband of those sweats down and taste him.  Sample his cum.  Peel him apart, one lick and suck at a time, until he was screaming out his release.

“Is that why you care so much about fighting for Julie?  Why you’re willing to put your promotion on the line?  You care enough about that promotion to hide us away in your garage, but not enough to sit quietly while the university brushes Julie off.  Maybe you see yourself in her.”

“Josh didn’t rape me,” Lila protested.  “Maybe some people would see it that way, but I don’t.  I really was in love with him.”

His fingers ran the length of her hair, moved down her neck, and lingered in the deep v of her blouse, fluttering against the dark line her plump breasts made.  “Maybe you were afraid
not
to love him.  Afraid of what it would mean, and that’s why what Julie is going through means this much to you.”

A long silence passed, and Lila was surprised when her eyes filled with tears.  “Josh never hurt me, but maybe he lived at the end of a different channel of hurt. One that I’d experienced long before him.”

“Tell me,” Chase said.

Her frown moved into a smile as her eyes fell to his lips.  “Kiss me.”

“No.  Talk to me.”

Her eyes rose back to his, and she reached up and cupped his cheeks.

He zeroed in on the delicate gold necklace around her neck.

They both covered the golden dove at the same time, meeting eyes once more.  It was the necklace Lila’s younger sister, Danielle, had given her before she’d committed suicide.  She’d been sixteen at the time.

“That girl in Harvard Yard jumped.  She jumped the same way Danni jumped.  In a public place, in her bra and panties…” Lila said.  “I don’t know the reason my baby sister jumped. I just know that she did, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could’ve done to stop it.  I didn’t even see it coming.”

Chase nodded.   “That’s your trigger.  Kids that are hurting, but too scared to say it.  That’s always been your trigger.  Maybe it’s because there’s still a lot of things you’re still too scared to say.” Chase licked his lips.  “Did somebody hurt you, Lila?” He didn’t wait for the answer because he already knew it.  Even if she never told him, he already knew.  “Were you very young?” 

Lila moved her hand to the chest of his t-shirt, watching as it covered his heart.  She didn’t answer.  “I’m willing to put my promotion on the line to fight for Julie, and not for us, because I know that you’re not going to go leap off the edge of some building, just because you have to wait a little while longer for me.”

“Trust me, if I were going to, I would’ve done it a long time ago.”

“Exactly,” she said.  “Girls like Julie?  They
can’t
wait.”

“What about you?” he pressed on, even as she continued dodging him, keeping his fingers tinkering the dove as her soft hands returned to massaging his face.  “How long are you going to wait?”

“What am I waiting for?”

“You tell me.”  His eyes went to her lips.  “Call me crazy, but I doubt there were any faculty like you walking the halls of the Remington School for Girls when your English teacher was bending you over his desk.  Even if you had convinced yourself it was love.”

Her eyes searched his.  “The same way
you’ve
convinced yourself it’s love?”

His face fell.  “That’s not the same.”

“Isn’t it?”

“You and I?”  His voice rose, he became defensive.  “No.  You and I are not the same as you and Josh.”

“How are we different?”

“How
aren’t
we?”

She noticed he was deflecting, but she wasn’t letting him off the hook.  “How am I different from Josh, or the guys who hurt Julie, or whatever monster drove that poor girl to leap to her death?  How am I any different from them, making out with a freshman in my garage?”

“Sophomore in two months.”

“That’s not the point, Chase.  You need to be free to enjoy your life, but here I am, stifling you.  You haven’t even entered your twenties, and I’ve almost finished mine.  You need to be free.”

He cupped her cheeks.  “Being with you
has
freed me.  Do you know when I was in shackles?  Back in New York, when I couldn’t touch you.  When I was sure my brother would kill himself working to make sure I never did.  That was when I was in chains
,
Lila.”  He leaned in and kissed her, pulling away with effort.   “This is freedom.  Just this.  Me and you.  I told you I would wait for you for the rest of my life, and I meant it.”

She sighed.

“But I hope to god you won’t ask me to,” he added, smiling.

She leaned over and matched his kiss with one of her own, grinning when he stole a few more.

“All I want to do is take care of you,” he said.  “No matter what happens, I’ll always take care of you.  Let me.  Talk to me.”

A long silence moved between them, but their eyes never wavered from each other.

“You can’t chase away my monsters,” she whispered.

His eyebrows pulled.  “Why not?  You’ve been chasing mine away since I was thirteen.  Since the second I laid eyes on you.”

She bent across the gearshift and covered his lips with hers, allowing them to linger just long enough to make her intensions clear.  She pulled back only an inch, and looked up at him.

His eyes had fallen closed, conversation forgotten, as he was now back inside that beautiful dream running in his head.

She kissed him, once more, just to let him know it wasn’t a dream. It was real.  Everything she was feeling, that she’d been feeling for a long time before then, was real.   The sound of his moan coming alive between their lips was almost indiscernible, but she heard it.  Her lips left his with a soft smack.  She pulled away, leaving the tiniest whisper of space, taking in his face.

His eyes were watching her intensely, rife with a mixture of confusion and ecstasy.

“You do take care of me.  You always have.” She answered the unasked question on his face.  She leaned in for more of his lips, already addicted to his taste. Her mouth dropped in surprise when he pulled back ever so slightly, denying her.  She immediately reached up and cupped his cheeks.

He took her wrists in his hands, his eyes growing soft.

“I want to take you out.”  He swallowed hard.  “On a real date.  I want to drive out of the state, far away from here, to a place where we don’t have to hide.  Just you, me…” He motioned between them.  “This.  I want to hold your hand outside of this house.  I want to look at you across a table without you looking over your shoulder every five seconds.”  He swallowed.  “Grams has a beach house in Portland.  It’s about a two-hour drive from here.”

A smile replaced the worried frown on her face.

“Okay.” She blushed.

Chase had never seen a more beautiful sight, and he pulled back, once more, when she went for his lips again.  His entire body rolled with chills.  Denying her took every inch of will he had, but he wanted to do this right.  He
needed
to do this right.

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”  He started his truck.  “Can you open the garage door for me on your way inside?”

“Well, I--” Lila faltered at his abruptness, the engine shaking the seat under her. “Do you want to come inside for a little while?”

Chase took the steering in a death grip as he watched her.  He recognized the carnal expression on her face instantly.  He knew the darkness that swept across those big brown eyes when she wanted to fuck better than he knew his own name.  He’d watched her bestow that look upon many men, most of them unworthy of her, each one hitting him a little harder than the last.  He’d watched her give it to his own brother, dreaming of the day when she’d look at him that way--like she wanted to do unspeakable things to him, let him inside, make him cum.  He immediately grew harder in his sweats.  It was almost unbearable, how badly he wanted to do the same to her, but it had to be right.

“It’s late,” he said. “I’ll call you in the morning.”

She made a wounded face, but a smile laced it.

“Okay.” She ran her nails down the front of her chest until she reached the neckline of her tank top, tucking her fingers into it.  She tugged it gently, enough that her bare breast nearly spilled out of the cheap cotton.  She released the neckline and cupped her hand around one weighty globe softly, biting her lip as his eyes followed her hand.   She pinched her nipple under the fabric.  The action sent a pained frown sweeping across his face. “If you’re sure,” she breathed.

He almost gave in right then, struggling to remind himself that this woman was used to men fucking her senseless the moment she gave the green light.  He needed to make sure he stood out from that pack.  He needed her to know that he was different from every idiot she’d ever let into her bed prior to him.  To guarantee she would never let another one in, again.

His eyes stayed on that dip in her top, that finger tugging her nipple, even as she turned and unlocked the passenger door.

In about half a second, if she was still within reach, he knew he would pull her back and finish what she’d just started.

Thankfully, she hopped down onto the floor of her garage before that sliver of time had elapsed, that sliver of time where his sanity had almost teetered right over the edge.

Her brown eyes glowed.  “Good night, Chase.”

Jamming his eyes shut as she slammed the passenger door closed, his hand flew to his dick.  He hissed softly when he cupped the pounding head through his sweats.  The pain mixed with pleasure that roared through him was surely present in his eyes once he’d reopened them, watching her circle the truck.  The swing of those hips had claimed him from the moment he’d laid eyes on her, and it owned him still as she climbed the stairs to the door of her house.  He craned his neck out of the driver’s side window to see.

With one last look at him, over her shoulder, Lila pressed her finger to the garage door opener.  An inviting smile curled her lips.

His eyes fell from that smile and down to the short shorts that hugged her ass, transfixed.  He tightened his hold on his dick, so close to hopping out of that truck and taking what she was offering, the pain of fighting it became almost unbearable.

The garage door growled to life as it opened behind him. The light from the outside world crept in.  He couldn’t believe how little he wanted any part of it.

As the door jumbled to a stop at the roof of the garage, Chase watched the tight curve of her ass bounce as she climbed the rest of the steps into her house.

The garage was open.  The world was back.  It was his to return to.

But he had no interest in a world that didn’t have her in it.

--

Lila stirred awake that Friday afternoon, frowning at the tiny buzz of pain that shot up her back. From her heavily lidded eyes, the sun bounced off the modern waterfront home and blazed through the windshield, waking her further.

She groaned as her eyes fluttered open completely, peering out of the truck’s windshield.  The house was more modern than she’d imagined, all corners and sharp edges, with a glass garage door, a flat metal roof, and weathered wood paneling running vertically from the beautifully landscaped ground.

It was a gorgeous house, but colder than she’d imagined would be Bitsy and Frank, Chase’s grandparents, taste.

Even inside the closed doors of the truck, she could hear the waves pounding relentlessly on the beach as if she were laying right on it.  She could see them crashing, as well.  The house sat on a small hill, a cul-de-sac that descended right down to the shore, nothing but water, rocks and sand for acres.

It was enough to stir anyone awake, just to see the beauty.

Lila sat tall and stretched, arching heavily.  She reached behind her in an attempt to touch the pulsating part of her back, but her arm wasn’t long enough.

Chase reached across the gearshift and touched it for her, putting just enough pressure to elicit a groan from her. 

It was a sound he planned on hearing all weekend.

“We’re in Maine.” He smiled.  “You slept the whole way.”

She threw him a look.  “I’m sorry.  I was so exhausted.”

“You’ve always been a terrible road trip partner, so I came prepared with my own entertainment.”

She slapped his hand away, her heart fluttering to life at the sound of his laughter.

“I am a
great
road trip partner.”

“Whatever you say.”  He removed the keys from the ignition and hopped out, circling around the front of the car and opening the passenger door for her.

Lila had to do a few more stretches before she was ready to climb out.  Her body rolled with warmth as she watched him watching her every move.  She took the hand he was offering her once she was done. As he helped her to the ground, he took a step forward, circling his arm around her waist and pulling her body to his.