Craved: A Chosen Ones Novel (12 page)

“Chase, will you see that Alex gets in?” Whitney slurred her words as she spoke. “Kellen and I are going back to his place.” She winked at me none too inconspicuously.

“Yeah, of course. I’ll take care of her.”

She looked him over from head to toe, clearly undressing him with her eyes. “I bet you will take
good
care of her.”

I was too be embarrassed by her emphasis on the word good.

The two of them took off towards the parking garage and Chase grabbed my hand to help steady me as we walked towards my apartment’t lobby entrance.

As soon as my eyes opened the next morning the events of the prior night came flooding back to me. The elevator ride up to my floor and unlocking the door then walking into my apartment and changing into a t-shirt was all one blurry mush in my head, but what followed after Chase insisted on putting me into my bed before he left was not. In fact, it was as see through as a painstakingly polished glass window in all its embarrassing, translucent glory.
 

I remembered Chase trying to avoid looking at me from the waist down. He gallantly tried to keep his eyes trained to my face. But they traveled low every now and again and as soon as he realized they did, the snapped his eyes back up. I also remembered him holding up my comforter while I got in the bed and then pulling it up to my chin. I remembered thinking how soft and warm the bed felt but how it would feel even more warm with him in it with me. I threw back the covers and told him to get in. The look on his face flashed from shocked, to heated, to pained, then to regretful. He tensely said he should be leaving and if I had a spare key, he would lock the door behind him and return it to me the following day. His refusal hit at my pride and made me all the more insistent on getting my way.
 

I was a brat like that when under the influence. I had problems with the word no and was all about instant gratification. I raised up on me knees and circled my arms around his neck. The move caught him off guard which was why I was able to use the weight of my body to physically throw him off balance. I fell on my back against the bed and he fell on top of me. We stayed like that, unmoving for a minute. I looked at him as he looked down at me. The look in his sapphire eye was strained times a million. Like he was fighting against something with every ounce of strength he possessed.
 

“I liked kissing you earlier,” I whispered. “Kiss me again.”

I didn’t wait for him to oblige. I pulled his face to mine and crushed our lips together. I’d never initiated a kiss before and for a fleeting second I was afraid he would not kiss me back. Acceptance, not rejection, was what followed. He opened his mouth and my tongue shot into his as his shot into mine. They encircled, and danced with and explored one another. I don’t know if I escalated it or he did, but it changed into something more. I tightened my hold around his neck and my hips raised off the bed to meet his, grinding against him. I felt the rigidness of him against my core and softly moaned into his mouth. The action seemed to make him grow harder and his hips jerked against mine. My body felt like it was on fire and a raging need to feel him everywhere at once burned on the surface of my skin. My nipples hardened beneath the thin fabric of my t-shirt with the need as my underwear became damp.
 

It was then that I noticed his hands weren’t touching me. The only contact between us was our lips and our hips. His hands remained braced against my head board, helping him to hold himself up and keep most of his weight from relaxing onto me. I frowned, not liking it. Something had to be done about it. I lifted my legs and wrapped them around his waist. I moved my hands to his back, shivering as I felt the muscles strain and bunch beneath my touch. I pushed down on his, trying my damnedest to pull him down on me, but he didn’t budge.
 

“What’s wrong?” I breathed into his ear.
 

“Fuck,” he cursed on a half growl, half groan. He slapped the headboard with his right palm then what little of his weight was pressing down on me disappeared.
 

My body protested at its absence. I sat up to pull him back to me but he deftly moved off the bed and out of my reach.
 

He must have seen the look of rejection that flashed in my eyes because he came near me again. He stood on the side of the bed and took my face between his hands. He chastely kissed the top of my forehead, then the tip of my nose, then my lips. “It’s not you. I promise. It’s me and the wrongness of the situation. You’re intoxicated and I’d be an ass to take advantage of that.”

“I am not—” I started to protest but then abruptly drew my words up short. Maybe I was drunk. Drunk people always claimed not to be when they actually were. My face reddened at the realization. The embarrassment that flooded me was like a bucket of ice water being dumped over my head. It shocked me back to my senses. “Oh God,” I groaned. “I’m so—“ the apology did not make it pass my lips.
 

My stomach roiled and I felt its liquid contents coming up burning my esophagus. I shot out of the bed and sprinted to my bathroom. I made it to the toilet just in time. I heard Chase walk up behind me. He knelt on the tile beside me and pulled my hair back out of my face. When I was finished he reached over to the bathtub and handed me a wash cloth that hung on its rack. I wiped my mouth with it and he took it back. He turned on the tub’s water and drenched it. He wrung it out and handed the towel back to me.

 
“Wrap it around your neck. It will help.”

I followed his instructions as I stood up. He took my elbow and walked me back to the bed. I was out like a light before the comforter ever made it to my chin.

“Ugh!” I groaned then threw the covers over my head trying to physically hide from the mortification. I wanted to close my eyes and never open them again. Then I wouldn’t be forced to face Chase later on when we patrolled together. I’d literally thrown myself at him last night. It would have been more digestible if I’d done it sober but the fact that I was inebriated made it all the more embarrassing.
 

The smell of cooked eggs and bacon brought me from under the comforter. Whitney was home early given that she’d left with her hot track guy last night. I expected her to be gone past noon. When she stayed over at someone else’s place she always slept in late. Not that I was complaining. Her coming home early and in a no doubt chipper mood meant I got a home cooked breakfast. I tossed the comfoter off of me not bothering to find a pair of sweatpants. It was just her and I who lived in the apartment and she was as close to me as a sister.
 

“Not that I’m complaining because I get breakfast, but how come you came home so early?” I stopped dead in my tracks just as I exited my room when I saw that it was not my roommate who stood at the stove in the kitchen.
 

Chase, still in his dress pants but now shirtless and barefoot, turned in my direction. Sapphire eyes and deep dimples greeted me. I tried really hard to keep my eyes on his face but my hormones won out over my will. My eyes dropped to his bare chest and then to his stomach.
 

Forget a six pack, he had a
twelve
pack, and was that even possible?! Every muscle in his abdomen was toned, hard, and corded. Hell, those three adjectives probably described every muscle in his body for that matter. But he was’t body builder ripped. His physique was more elegant, more subtly powerful—like an Olympic swimmer who trains everyday of their life. My eyes zeroed in on a trail of dark hair that originated below his navel and disappeared beneath the waist of his pants, hanging low on his hips without a belt present. My mind started painting a picture of what the lower half of him would look like disrobed. It wanted to know just how far the dark line traveled and where exactly it stopped at. I reached out with a mental hand and rubbed it across the still wet canvas, smearing the work of art that my mind was creating.
 

“You stayed over last night?”
Well duh, Alex. Way to state the obvious.
My shock made my words come out sounding like a question and an accusation.

 
“I hoped you wouldn’t mind.
 
You passed out and you never told me where the spare key was. I didn’t want to leave with the door unlocked.”

“No it’s cool. Um, thanks. That was cool of you.”
 
Him parading in front of me shirtless was having a limiting effect my vocabulary.
 

Chase slid a perfectly grilled omelette out of a skillet and onto a purple and white plate. “I figured you’d be hungry. Considering you threw up everything you ate before you went to sleep.”
 
He pulled out the kitchen drawer beside the stove then the one beside the dishwasher. It was in the second one that he found what he sought. He pulled out two forks. He placed one fork on the place and sat it on the island in the middle of the kitchen. He turned around and grabbed another already made plate. He sat that plate on the island to and parked his butt in a bar stool in front of it. He pulled out the stool beside him. “Are you going to eat or just stand there looking at me?”
 

I would have thought that the flex of his pecs was a mere coincidence if not for the facetious grin that followed. I kept my expression neutral and wholly unaffected. It was bad enough I’d made a fool out of myself once, I refused to do so again. I was grateful that my inability to keep the contents of my stomach down was the only thing from last night he brought up.
 

The tantalizing smell of the food is what made my feet shuffle across the floor and me sit on the stool beside him. I picked up the fork and cut a piece of the omelette off from the rest. When I placed it inside my mouth and chewed down on it, an array of flavor exploded inside my mouth and I almost moaned aloud. It was the most delicious mix of fried egg, bacon, scallions, and cheese I’d ever tasted. “This is delicious. You know how to cook? I feel like most guys my age don’t.”

His dimples flashed me when he chuckled and looking at them this close up in the morning when my mind was still kind of foggy, I momentarily forgot how to breathe. “My mother isn’t much of a cook and neither was my dad when he was alive. Their idea of dinner was frozen lasagna or take-out. I hated both of those options so I had to learn to fend for myself.”

I put another piece of omelette into my mouth and managed not to moan a second time. “Sounds like my grandparents. Except, they have an in-house cook so I wasn’t left to my own devices. I didn’t have to cook food for myself until I started college and found out campus food isn’t all it is cracked up to be. I eventually got tired of take-out everyday so I started experimenting with cooking. Freshman year, I was a mess. I could barely boil water without burning it.” I noticed the twitch at the corner of his lips and stopped talking. “Don’t you dare laugh at me. I will throw you shirtless and barefoot out of my apartment if you do.”

He held his hands up in defense as he looked around the kitchen and the apartment beyond. “Who’s laughing?”

“You aren’t…yet. But your mouth looks suspiciously like you’re trying really hard not to.”

He pursed his lips into a thin line. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you don’t,” I drawled. “But just know that you have been warned. I am very sensitive about my cooking.” I pointed my fork at him as if it was a weapon I wouldn’t hesitate to spear him with if he did indeed laugh.
 

He shoveled omelette into his mouth instead and chewed.
Smart decision.
 

We ate the rest of the time in companionable silence. Afterwards, I told him he could go ahead and take off and I’d take care of the dishes. He stayed and helped me anyway before doing so.
 

I stood at my front door with him on one side of it and me on the other. He was no longer barefoot and though he hadn’t bothered to put his jacket back on he did halfway bother with the dress shirt. The buttons on the lower half of it were haphazardly done up. He hadn’t bothered with the top ones, leaving a tanned expanse of the smooth skin along his chest exposed. It looked so much better completely bare as opposed to partially covered.
 

“Bye,” I told him not knowing what else to say.
 

He grinned at me then responded with the same singular word. He turned around a took two steps then did a one eighty to face me again. He closed the gap his legs had placed between us. His right arm snaked around my back and pulled me flush against him. His left hand tangled in my hair which all of the curls had fallen out of and he kissed me hard on the mouth. His hips ground into mine and I felt the hard length of him against my stomach. It seared the spot that it touched and sent delicious shivers racing up and back down my body. His hand left my hair and his fingers lightly trailed the length of my neck then down my shoulder. When they grazed the outer swell of my breast,
 
my nipples hardened and throbbed for more direct attention. But his fingers kept moving down my side and down my hip and passed the hem of my t-shirt. They traced slow circles around my outer thigh that left a trail of tingling sensations there and everywhere else.
 

I don’t remember moving them, but my hands circled around him and clutched at his back. I soundlessly moaned into his mouth and when I did so both of his hands moved to cup my exposed cheeks. He kissed me a moment longer then let go and stepped back.
 

He sighed like a big, lazy cat contented at the moment but looking still slightly starved yet wanting to save and savor his caught prey. Because let’s be honest, if we were playing cat-and-mouse, we both knew which one of us was the cat and which one of us was the mouse. Even now, a low thrum of strong, masculine power quietly hummed about him.
 

“That,” he spoke low and hotly, “is only a fraction of what I wanted to do last night. But like I said, I would have been an ass for doing it. I’m trying to be decent, but that has never been one of my finer qualities. I’ll see you later and you can either choose to forget last night and this moment or not. I’ll go along with whatever decision you make.” He stepped in close to me again but this time he didn’t kiss me like he did before. He took my face gingerly between his hands and sweetly kissed my forehead. Then he pulled back and left without looking back.