Crazy Love - Krista & Chase (9 page)

“What are you doing?” Chase’s deep voice sent a thrill racing down Krista’s spine. The normal everyday timbre in Chase’s voice was enough to dampen panties, but just one syllable from Chase’s just-woke-up-voice was orgasm inducing.

Krista’s body instantly reacted to his deep melodic tone, and she clenched her hand around the cottony softness of Teddy.

Mind,
she reminded herself. Her mind was running things. Her tongue ran across the seam of her lips as her chest rose and fell in rapid succession at the intense desire that was exploding inside of her.

As she licked her lips, a nervous habit she’d had from the time she was a child, she heard a very familiar sound—a sound Krista honestly could not believe she’d forgotten. Chase exhaled
loudly
through his nose. The moment the audible air exchange registered in her consciousness, her eyes automatically darted towards Chase’s sweats. Her knee-jerk optical reaction occurred because there were only two reasons Chase Malone made that sound: one, he was mad, or two, he was turned on.

After more than a little obvious visual inspection of Chase’s naughty parts, Krista was happily assured that she was not the only one being affected-slash-tormented by this unexpected, middle-of-the-night, face-to-face. Somehow the knowledge that he still wanted her, maybe even as much as she wanted him, was oddly empowering. It shouldn’t have made any difference whether or not he’d popped wood, but it did.

A small smile tilted her lips.

“Krista.” Chase’s tone sounded equal parts questioning and aroused. “Why are you holding a bear?”

For a moment, Krista had forgotten where she was, what she was doing, maybe even who she was. Chase had always had that irritating effect on her. His question snapped her back to the here and now like a splash of cold water on her face.

“It’s for Bear,” she explained, looking back up into his gorgeous eyes. As soon as they made eye contact, Krista felt a jolt of awareness hit her like a lightning bolt. His light brown eyes felt like they could see all the way down into her soul.

Well, that’s no good.

She tried as inconspicuously as possible to move her eyes lower. Unfortunately, that landed her eyes staring smack dab at his lips. Nope. That wouldn’t work either. A small degree of panic began to rise up inside of her. Where the hell was she supposed to look? His Adonis-like chest and abdomen? His tented sweats? His tingle-inducing stare? His lickable lips? None of those were viable options if she wanted to make it out of here without jumping him.

This was the problem with Chase. Even his damn hands were sexy. And you would have thought that after dating on and off since sixth grade she would have grown immune to his appeal. In fact, it felt as if her body—even her soul—had been asleep since the night he’d driven out of her parents’ driveway and her life when they were teens, and was only now waking up.

Chase wrinkled his brow. “I know it’s a bear.”

“What?” Krista was not following. She tried to hit rewind on the conversation they were having in hopes of catching up, but it was a no-go. It seemed that unrelenting lust had wiped her short-term memory clean as a whistle.

A look of concern swept over Chase’s face. He tilted his head towards her, clarifying, “You said, ‘It’s a bear.’ I know it’s a bear.”

And just like that, she was back up to speed. Now that she was cooking with gas, Krista promised herself that she would not be sidetracked by Chase’s sexiest-man-alive-ness—a title he’d earned not once, not twice, but three times!—and would take back control of this situation.

She held up the object of the confusion. “This is Teddy. Bear is your mom’s dog. He is staying with me. Teddy is Bear’s favorite toy. He can’t sleep without him.”

There. That was precise and to the point. Mission accomplished.

Although Krista was not one to pat herself on the back, she did believe that she deserved bonus points for the fact that not one drop of drool had escaped her mouth during her five-sentence explanation. She was pretty proud of herself. He might make hundreds of thousands of women swoon-slash-drool on a daily basis, but she refused to be one of them.

Take that, rock star
.

* * *

Chase was trying to think clearly, which wasn’t in the ballpark of easy. It wasn’t even in the parking lot of the ballpark of easy, considering the fact that all of his blood had traveled south and was busy fighting for space in his straining erection. A noise in the hall had woken him from a very nice dream he was having that starred the woman who stood in front of him now. His condition wasn’t helped by the fact that her pajamas consisted of tiny shorts and a tank top that looked like a second skin. He was relieved he’d even been able to speak.

It was taking all the willpower he had—and some he didn’t even know he possessed—to not pull her to him so he could feel her soft curves against his body. To cover his mouth with hers and suck the tongue that had trailed along her plump lips, causing his steel rod to pulse heavily. To reach out and run his hands through her silky red hair. To thread his fingers, fist them at the nape of her neck, and tug just enough that she gasped with pleasure.

His hands fisted at his sides in restraint, desire crashing over him. Chase had
never
forgotten just how powerful Krista’s appeal was. He’d never forgotten how he hadn’t just needed or wanted her—he’d ached for her. Craved her.

Even though the memory had never left him, experiencing the intensity after years of being deprived of it was staggering. His fingers dug into the skin on his palm.

Her eyes. Her smile. Her hair. He’d missed every part of her so much that being this close but unable to touch her was agony.

“Oookay.” Her brows rose. “Good talk. Nighty night.”

She spun around on her heels, her long red hair whipped around, and the citrusy sent of her shampoo filled the small hallway.

“You still use the same shampoo,” Chase stated. It wasn’t a question. He knew she did.

She looked over her shoulder her emerald-green eyes widening with surprise. “Yep.” Quickly masking her shock at his observation she nodded her head once stubbornly before spinning back around and heading towards the door.

“Krista.”

He didn’t want her to go. In fact, in this moment, he would have done just about anything to make her stay, to spend even a few more minutes with him. But he’d seen the determined look in her eye. She was leaving and there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot he could do about it. Unless he got creative.

“Bear has a bear?” he asked. Moving the subject off them and away from the silent, sex-infused communication their bodies were engaged in was the only hope of keeping her here even a minute longer.

She stopped up short. Her large pink slippers slid against the newly mopped entryway, causing her to wobble. He reached for her, but before he touched her, she caught her balance and turned. Now she was facing him once again. He tried to suppress a smile that was trying desperately to break across his face. Her ninja-like quickness had always amused him. She was so tiny, so delicate, so graceful. But when she wanted to move, she
moved
.

“Yes, Bear has a teddy bear,” she spoke matter-of-factly, in the same tone she would use to tell someone what time it was or that the sky was blue.

Chase knew her. He was sure that she was trying to hide the amusement in the ridiculousness of her statement in hopes of keeping him at arm’s length. When Krista decided to shut someone out, she built walls—high walls—that were protected by not only a deep moat surrounding its perimeter, but also snipers positioned around her heart and mind. Those suckers shot down anything that tried to pass.

He’d seen it happen with several girls who she’d considered her best friends when they were in high school. They’d betrayed her, normal girl stuff, and when they’d come crawling back to make amends, they’d pulled out all the stops. Tears. Notes saying how much they missed her. One of the girls, the blond one, had brought a collage of pictures of her with her excommunicated group of friends to Krista’s house. Krista had studied the picture-covered cardboard carefully, Chase had even seen a small smile appear on her lips. He’d thought maybe, just maybe, the ice had been cracking. That this girl had done the unthinkable and put a small chink in Krista’s emotional armor. He’d been wrong. Once she had finished looking it over, she’d asked, actually
told
, her no-longer friend to leave and take her “art project” with her.

For two years, the girls had tried to get back in Krista’s good graces. No matter what they’d done, nothing had worked. Krista would joke around with Chase sometimes and say that they were dead to her. She didn’t care if they cried, begged, or pulled on her heartstrings, that friendship had sailed.

Her sisters had even tried to talk Krista into forgiving the girls. They’d said that it was better to forgive and forget. He could still remember like it was yesterday, sitting at the Sloans’ kitchen table after Haley had said that and Krista immediately answering back with a cold look in her eye. “
Oh,
I forgive them. But I will never forget
.”

Chase just never imagined he’d be on the receiving end of that look in her eye. But here he was. Staring right at it.

“You can bring Bear back here. I can keep him,” Chase offered.

The company would be nice, and Chase had never had a dog. His dad hadn’t allowed pets in the house, and once he’d left, he’d started touring almost immediately. It wasn’t really a lifestyle suitable for pets.

“No,” she said firmly. “Bear doesn’t like men. Well…men he doesn’t know.”

“I’m good with dogs,” Chase countered, his lips turning up into a smile.

He’d lived in a world where most people didn’t tell him no. In fact,
no one
told him no. It was oddly refreshing to have someone not just be a ‘yes man,’ or ‘yes woman’. In this case, Krista was definitely
all woman
.

“You’re good with a lot of things. That’s not the point,” Krista immediately shot back. Challenge glimmered in her mesmerizing eyes.

“What
is
the point then?” Chase raised his left brow, loving this exchange.

“The point is Bear stays with me. Who knows how long you’ll even be here.” Krista turned on her heels back towards the door.

“Can I take you to dinner tomorrow?” he asked just as her hand wrapped around the doorknob.

She froze. He saw her shoulders tense. “No.”

“Why not?” he countered before she could turn the knob.

“Because,” she said curtly as he watched her wrist pivot, turning the handle down.

Chase closed the distance between them, stepping behind Krista. Out of pure instinct, he reached up and flattened his hand on the door.

“Because why?” he asked, as the scent of her shampoo once again wafted up into his senses. He inhaled deeply as he stared down at the top of her head.

She turned around slowly, her sea-green eyes lifting beneath her thick, dark lashes, and he felt his heart slam into his chest. She was only inches away from him. Her head tilted up to accommodate his six-foot-one stature, which was in stark contrast to her five-foot-two. He watched as her lips parted and she breathed slowly but heavily.

“Because. I don’t want to go to dinner,” she said spacing her words evenly apart.

Her voice wasn’t as steady as he was sure she’d wanted it to be. And as much energy as she was putting into hiding her body’s response to him, the eyes really were the windows to the soul. She might very well have shut him out on a mental level, but she definitely was not having the same success on a physical level. Her eyes were telling the whole story.

“You sure? From what I remember, you do like to eat,” he stated with a questioning tone, cocking his head to one side, knowing full well what reaction he would invoke. He was as sure of her response as he was that the sun rose in the east and set in the west.

Her eating habits had always been a sore subject to Krista. Chase could remember countless times when her family had teasingly referred to her as the bottomless pit, said she must have a hollow leg, compared her eating habits with that of an entire football team, and they were always quick to point out the fact that she could out-eat any of her older male cousins. It was all done good-naturedly, but for some reason, it had rubbed Krista the wrong way. Instead of taking pride in the fact that she could eat anything and not gain a pound, Krista found it insulting somehow.

Not that that had stopped her family, or, it seemed now, Chase. Normally he wouldn’t intentionally try to ruffle Krista’s feathers, even though it was sexy as hell when said feathers got a little ruffled. But desperate times called for desperate measures. He wasn’t going to get into Krista’s good graces, that much he knew for a fact. His only hope was to get her talking. And if exchanging verbal jabs was the only way to get her in the ring, then so be it.

As if on cue, she locked her jaw, her lips pursed in a forced smile, and her eyes slanted in irritation.

It was too damn cute. He didn’t even attempt to hide the amusement in his eyes. His blatant enjoyment at her reaction caused her expression to grow even more irritated.