Drawn To You (Paloma's Edge) (20 page)

Joel folded his arms, his copper hair down to his ears already. “Because she’s never had to beg for it.” His grimace conveyed that he’d been at Cassidy’s mercy when they’d hooked up years ago. “Now, run along to one of those men, why don’t you? I don’t think they’re real selective.”

We began digging into our meals and I did
n’t catch when Cassidy returned to Mona and their dates.

***

“Stay with me tonight, or I should say, for the morning,” I told Beth as I drove into the intersection that led into two different directions—where the Pruitts resided and Bri and Gavin’s house.

Beth’s face heated
. “I don’t have—”

“I’ve got extra toiletries for you. Chase knows where they are,” Bri said in a chi
pper tone that made Beth redden uncontrollably. “And you can wash your clothes and hang them in the backyard. They’ll be dry in no time.”

Beth surveyed Bri through the mirror. “
Sleep over,” Bri insisted.

For the rest of the ride to Gavin and Bri’s house, we listened to songs on the radio. Bri had dosed off and I helped her get to the front of the house.
With droopy eyes, Bri walked inside, headed up the steps, and told us to have a good night with a knowing quirk playing on her lips.

By the time we made it to my guestroom, Beth had loosened her hair and dabbed off the little makeup she had on. She glanced around the room and then her gaze settled on me. “I’d like to shower,” she said in a quiet voice.

We slowly walked into the bathroom and I pushed the door open.

***

Bethany

Chase shut the door behind him as I put the water on. I opened the cabinet next to the door and I took a bar of soap, as well as a big towel. He shed his shirt and his pants in a relaxed manner. Liquid warmth pooled between my legs.

“You don’t mind if I shower with you, do you?” he asked.

“No, you did sweat a lot at the bar, ” I reasoned with a smile. As I tested the temperature with my hands, Chase swatted my butt with a towel.

“I didn’t hear you complaining,” he said as he tugged the edges of his boxers
down to reveal how defined the V from his waist down to his groin was. And I wanted to lick that area until his knees wobbled. Until he was begging me to take him into his mouth and suck him dry.

“I wasn’t.
” I took my time taking off my top and his focus drifted below my face, his breath heaving in and out of his chest. I shook my finger at him. “And because you swatted my ass, I get to wash you…everywhere.”

“Babe, are you trying to call the shots?”

I really liked it when he called me babe. Chase edged closer until he was right in front of me. He lowered himself and pulled down my skirt. He tore my black thong from my mound. The pressure caused my clit to pulse. Bringing his face an inch from my little circle of pubic hair, he inhaled me, making a noise that sounded like his voice was strangled in his throat. My body flushed scarlet red.

With a self-satisfied expression, Chase pulled down his boxers and his girth protruded past his belly button and forward.
A sprinkle of hair surrounded his cock. He opened the shower curtain. The lukewarm spray dampened his face. He held out his hand to me and I clutched onto him because my knees felt like jelly. His bare ass flexed as he went into the far corner of the shower.

Compared to my ex Gregory, Chase was truly magnificent with his sheer strength and
an overall powerful physique. “Hand me the washcloth,” I tried with my most stern face, but Chase chuckled at me, following my command. I crouched down in order to get the bar of soap that I absentmindedly left on the edge of the shower, and lathered the washcloth. And as a consequence, his cock jerked.

“My fucking dick,” Chase said with a shake of his head.

I gripped my hand on the dial and shot him a glare. “We’re naked.” I cornered him and took his hand, and guided the tip of his index finger into my entrance. He sucked in a harsh breath and then he moistened his lips. “Fuck, babe. You drenching my fingertip,” he said, and lightly hit his head against the shower wall.

And
my eyes zeroed in on his erection. I took a step backwards directly under the water and he dropped both of his hands. “Yes. That’s not from the water.” My voice came out as a hoarse whisper. “And I am gonna get wetter. This”—I gestured between us—“is how you make feel. This is not random or meaningless. It’s all you.”

“
Make me clean.” His voice was faint.

I didn’t say anything because there was an intense vulnerability in his hazel gaze. His eyes hadn’t aged like
they did on many men with strong features like him. And, for a split second, his hazel eyes clashed with his brutish beauty. I worked up some more foam since the lather had been washed off from the water. As I scrubbed his outsized shoulders, he pivoted so that I worked on his back as he raised his hands upwards, planting his hands on the tile walls. While his body was not bulky, the muscled planes in his back contracted as he broadened his stance for me. I pressed the washcloth onto his back, digging my fingers into it. A gratified noise escaped his lips, reverberating through his upper body. His brawny legs matched the thickness of his arms. I hung the towel over my shoulder and speedily reached for the bar of soap, and then I rubbed it between my hands. The vibe was more tranquil. I’d never met a guy who’d been insecure about how being promiscuous he had been or was. I didn’t want him to define himself by his past behavior anymore, but he had to come to terms with that on his own.

“You didn’t want any barrier in the way when you can have your hands on me alone, huh?” He gave me an easy smile
. The front of his body was open to me again.

“Nope,” I said. “I couldn’t wait to get my hands on you.”

I tried to extend the heels of my feet to wash his neck and down to his chest, almost falling on my butt. He took hold of me, his hardness coming in contact with my stomach, but I maintained eye contact with him. I gathered my bearings just when he dipped his head to me, his hands propped on my hips. As Chase kissed me voraciously, my heart thudded wildly in my chest.

Afterwards
, I caught my balance and soaped up his dick, followed by his large and weighty testicles. I continued in between, over his taut buttocks. Rinsing my hands, I retrieved the washcloth again, cleansing his neck first, then his jaw and his sharp cheekbones, where he had his deep scar on the right side of his face.

Once I scrubbed his t-zone, I queried, “How’d you get
your scar, Chase?”

Leaning into me, Chase put us both directly under the spray. He rubbed his forehead, the muscles in his corded neck, arms, biceps and triceps firm
ing more than I thought possible as the soap ran over the ridges of his abdomen, down his manhood, and over his powerhouse thighs, his knees, and ankles. Gently, he took the cloth from me, and began to roughly wash his surprisingly smooth feet.

“I got into a fight,” he answered minutes later.

Worry constricted my chest. “Over what?”

“I was young and very dumb. I don’t like to revisit that time of my life,” he replied, like that was a satisfactory answer.

“I think the young and dumb p
art applies to a lot of people.” I paused and rinsed the washcloth. “Are you ever gonna tell me what the fight was about?”

I looked at him through the rush of water
. Chase shifted his gaze to his hands. “Babe, I’d like to say yes, but I won’t lie. In general, I don’t go there and I find no good can come from thinking about what happened way back when.”

I crossed my arms over my
breasts, feeling very exposed. “But you don’t think that it’s a part of you? It can’t be healthy to keep that to yourself.”

“I’ve moved on from that. I am in school, I am apart of a great football team. I have a contracted job that I am gonna start any day now. I
’ve got you, and the rest of our friends.” He said it as if he was spelling something out to me. His evasiveness, coupled with the cooler water, doused my arousal and my good mood.

“Does Pierce know what the fight was about?” I asked. “I know that you don’t really talk to Rylan, or Joel, or even Gavin since you moved in here. But Pierce is your best friend.”

His expression flattened. “No, he doesn’t pry.”

“Oh, is that what I am doing? Prying into your life? My boyfriend’s life?”

A regretful look flickered over his features. “Babe, I didn’t mean—”

“No, Chase. You meant it,” I told him. “I am gonna shower. Alone.”

He gave me a tentative kiss on the tip of my nose, stepped out of the shower, and grabbed a towel from the cabinet. Briskly, he toweled himself off, his back turned to me. I adjusted the dial to a warmer temperature, and when the water beat down my back, he was gone.

***

“Babe,” Chase whispered a couple of hours later. He slid his arms under my head and pulled me against him. I opened my eyes and my hands chilled. My entire body absorbed his warmth, and it hit me how much I’d craved being with him since I’d asked him to sleep in the living room after I’d showered. I felt his thickening erection pressed against my rear, but he didn’t move. He was all too used to denying his body when he was around me.

“I didn’t mean to get so angry with you,” I said, feeling bad about how I’d rejected him earlier this morning. When he’d asked if I wanted to stay over in the car, the first thought that had crossed my mind had been that I’d get to wake up with him. I’d pushed him to talk about how he’d gotten that scar and I’d remember
ed that Pierce had said that Chase hadn’t pushed him to talk about he and Mona—or anything, I gathered. In fact, Chase hadn’t pushed me to talk about Cindy. I’d just wanted to let him know about her because I’d begun to trust him and because I missed her. It just hurt a little that he didn’t want to confide in me like I had with him.

“My heart is in this,” he said. “You’re important to me, but this is all new.”

“I understand,” I whispered back, which was partially true. I still disagreed with how resistant he was to talking to me about his life, but I didn’t want to burden him with what I wanted from him.

“
But this is where I am at.” I rotated around and grasped his large hands. I fixed my gaze on his handsome face, noting that he hadn’t looked like he slept much, and I felt like a bitch. Determination filled his hazel eyes. “You don’t know how hard it was for me to tell you how loose I was.”

“I saw,” I said. “I am just asking you not to stop trying.”

“We’ve got one more hour of sleep before I drive you back to your uncle’s so you can get dressed for work.”

Chase

“Did Mr. Penverick approve the seventh version of the logo?” Pierce asked. He propped his feet up on the coffee table in Bri and Gavin’s living room. It’d been three days since I’d been employed by Mr. Penverick to do his logo, redo the menu, and edit their online commercial for the bakery company he had out in Miami. He was already established in the competitive restaurant business. I knew that I was cheaper than graphic designers with a degree and more experience, but working for Mr. Penverick had been a real learning curve for me. I didn’t feel like I was being cheated.

I read the short email that I’d just opened up. “He did.” Pierce slapped me on the back. “And I finished editing the video
for their online commercial.” I closed my laptop and eyed him. “How’s everything with you?”

“I broke it off with Mona yesterday.”

I spoke flatly to keep the skepticism out of my voice. “Is this temporary or forever?”

“Forever, man.” He grimaced.

I excused myself for a second and went into the kitchen to get us some iced tea, and returned to Pierce on the other side of the couch. He pushed his feet off the coffee table and I placed his glass of iced tea on it. “Wanna tell me what went down?”

A look of surprise flashed across his face and changed to relief. I gulped some
of my drink down, feeling like a grade-A dick for not knowing that he wanted to talk about it further. “Mona said that I looked through her.”

I frowned.
“Huh?”

“While we were…smashing, she was saying that I wasn’t into it.”

“Oh,” I said, flicking my eyes at my laptop.

“And I admitted to her that I felt nothing from it. Don’t even know how the man downstairs functioned.”

“No argument?” He shook his head. “She didn’t throw any objects at you?”

“Nah. Nothing like before.
And she apologized for trying to get my attention by coming to La Floridita with Cassidy. She thought that I would’ve been mad at her, but I wasn’t.”

“Hmm.”

After a long pause, he asked, “Is that why you weren’t messing with any of the girls? ’Cause you felt nothing?”

“One of the reasons,” I admitted. “This has gotta be hard on you
, because she was your first.”

“You know what’s really sad, Chase?”

I notched my chin up to him.

“I couldn’t tell her
when the sex stopped meaning anything. Like, I don’t even know if it ever really did just because we were each other’s first.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah. And she knew it too. I told her we’d been each other’s crutch for too long. You know? We did our own thing for years, back in our schools and because we’re here, we went back to our old ways.”

I shook my head as Pierce stood up.
“Drop by again after you go to your parents’ house,” I told him. “There’s an eighty year old bottle of scotch that’s collecting dust in the closet in my guestroom.”

“Sounds like a plan,”
We bumped fists. “You don’t want me to send Nancy or Beth a message for you?” A corner of his lips tugged up.

“I keep in touch with my women,” I assured him.

***

Bethany

“Oh, Pierce!” Aunt Deborah ran out of the kitchen in her high heels and ran into the living room, holding Pierce at arm’s length, examining him. “You need a haircut.” His blond hair had grown
to frame his face from the short cut he’d had weeks ago.

“The boys and I are gonna go for a haircut real soon.” He hugged her tightly and his expression fell when he t
ook in her appearance. While Aunt Deborah was dressed in one of her impeccable suits and her chic bob was updated, upon closer inspection, it was clear that she had been dejected since the two most important men in her life had been at odds with each other.

“I can schedule an appointment for you with Seamus
. Your friends, especially Joel, let their hair get all crazy.” She pursed her lips. “It was cute when you all were little.”

“We still kill it,” Pierce said. “Chase keeps his cut fresh,” he pointed out.

Aunt Deborah motioned with her head. “He does,” she agreed, as if there weren’t any conflicts where Chase was concerned. “And so should my handsome, bright, amazing son.”

She kissed him on the cheek and he bunched up his face like he had when he was
a toddler.

“Plus, I don’t want one of my heads of guest services to look like a surfer
instead of my employee,” Uncle Anton remarked from his seat at the dinner table, ignoring Pierce’s mention of Chase. A disapproving expression grew on Nancy’s face as she placed the pitcher of drinks on the table.

“Says the CEO who wears
too-tight polo shirts, cargo shorts, and fugly sandals to work,” Pierce quipped.

“Pierce,” Uncle Anton said with a half-grin.

“Father.” Pierce matched his tone, and he stalked over to me and kissed my forehead. “Noodles.”

I patted his back and Cassidy came into the living room. I wanted to love her, but I didn’t even like her. And I didn’t even want to dislike like her over a guy, but she didn’t have respect for anyone, including the people at this table who did love her. When it came to family
I supposed one didn’t need to like them in order to love them. Liking your family just made loving them easier.

“Evening, everyone,” Cassidy said
, and sat down next to me when there was plenty of room to sit on another chair.

Pierce
released Nancy from his hug and he sat between Aunt Deborah and Nancy, whose face had brightened since he came through the door. He didn’t even look at his sister.

“Would you like more baked potatoes?” Cassidy asked
after most of us were about done with our meals. Aunt Deborah couldn’t keep the smile from her face and Nancy kept checking that Pierce ate enough. Uncle Anton appeared to be content to have his wife close to him again, but he didn’t attempt to shower her with affection like I bet he wanted to.

“Thank you.” I placed a baked potato on my plate, spread some butter, and put some oregano on it.
Cassidy had a twisted expression on her face.

“I’d h
eard that you and Mona broke up,” Cassidy said, and it brought a sad look to Aunt Deborah’s face. Uncle Anton forced himself to straighten his face.

“I thought you two got involved at too young an age.” She rubbed his back and Pierce didn’t act like he was unaffected.

“She’s a great girl,” Pierce said. “We’ve been putting this off.”

“And I hope this is
it for you two. You have no business—”

“Anton!” Aunt Deborah reprimanded.

“Mom, he knows everything, remember?” he said facetiously. She sent Uncle Anton a scathing look that meant he wouldn’t be sharing a bed with her in the near future. “On that note,” Pierce said, taking out his cell phone as if he was checking for messages or any missed calls. Pierced touched the screen on his phone and the sound of strong winds and water played in the background. It was a recording.

“
Just the person I was looking for,
” Chase had said. Cassidy’s utensils clattered on top of her dish. Uncle Anton was about to interrupt but Aunt Deborah shushed him.

Cassidy had
snickered. “
I knew you’d eventually come around
,” she had remarked.

“
What exactly do you mean?
” Chase had feigned ignorance.

“
That I can make you forget about her
,” she’d urged.

“
Put your top back on!
”

She
’d giggled. “
Oh, come on, I don’t think you’re a prude. I’ll show you what you’ve been missing.
”

“
Nah. Tell your dad the truth and then we’ll talk
,” he’d lied.

“
Get over it, will you? I told Father that I didn’t discourage you—
”

“
But that’s another lie
,” Chase had cut in. “
And I don’t fuck with women who act like children.
”

“Turn that off,” Uncle Anton ground out, his stormy blue gaze ma
king Cassidy’s face blanch. Nancy started gathering all of the dishes and went into the kitchen, not risking a glance at anyone.

“I think this means that you owe my boy a big apology,” Pierce told Uncle Anton. Aunt Deborah laid her hands on Pierce’s arm
.

“Father, I can explain—”

Uncle Anton’s eyebrows shot up, lining his forehead. “Not another a peep out of you until I say so.”

“Excuse me,” I murmured and
trotted towards the staircase.

***

Chase

“How come you didn’t tell me that Cassidy came to you here and that you recorded the conversation?” Beth asked me while we sat on my chair on the beach.

Last night Pierce had played the conversation I’d record
ed between Cassidy and I when she’d approached me on the beach during his family dinner. He didn’t come by after he’d had dinner, but we’d talked on the phone after he’d gone to his room at Rylan’s house.

The moment I saw that it was Cassidy on the beach, I’d decided not to get riled up and use the situation to my advantage, to play it smart, not act on my impulse to bark at her for her actions. I’d had a part in the mess Cassidy had caused
, and I’d fed into her sickness when she’d been on the beach, making her think that she’d been right all along and that I just needed some more coaxing. I’d gotten the truth out of her once and for all.

“You would’ve told her off at La Florid
ita.”

She softly sighed, with an expression that told me
I was correct.

“Uncle Anton looked wrecked last night,” she said. “It was a really harsh way for him to
learn about his daughter.”

I rubbed her arms from underneath the gray hoodie
she carried with her regularly. “It was, but Pierce told me that Cassidy needed to be put on the spot in order for her behavior to sink in. Did she come up with any other lies?”

“
She was going to.”

“And if Pierce had handed his d
ad the recording, Cassidy wouldn’t have been taken off guard or may not have been embarrassed. Sometimes those very emotions make you realize that you have a problem.”

Beth shook her head as her phone chirped
, and the image on the screen was of some pretty-ass motherfucker with a thick head of brown hair that was picture perfect for a L’Oreal commercial.

“Jake!” Beth exclaimed and sat up on my lap, her legs
on either side of my waist. I immediately felt better, and so did the rest of me. Her gaze didn’t waver from me. “Well, I told you to clean out your room years ago… You know if I was there, I’d be doing the cleaning while you fixed me something.” She rolled her eyes. “My cooking isn’t that bad.” Her chuckling washed over me. She loved her best friend, but I didn’t see any trace of anything more in her face or in the sound of her voice.

Beth started squealing and her breasts jostled, reminding by how perky and round they were.

“I’ll find out… Uh huh… It’d be perfect if they said yes.” Beth handed me her phone. “Jake wants to talk to you.” I dragged my fingers from her behind and took the phone with a groan. She sent me an infectious grin.

“Hey
, Chase. This is Jake,” he greeted me with a deep voice that didn’t match with his pretty-boy face.

“Jake,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Straight to the point. I like that. Mariska has got Saturday and Sunday off, and we’re gonna be at Paloma’s Edge on Saturday.”

I watched Beth’s delighted countenance. Jake and Mariska were a huge part of who
she was. I wanted to see Beth through their eyes.

Beth started
kissing my chest and continued down to my stomach. Fortunately, the umbrella shielded us from most people. She sat back up, taking the hoodie off her shoulders.

“
See you then.”

“Yup. We’ll talk one way or the other,” he said with a touch of warning
, but I wasn’t sweating it.

“For sure.” I returned the phone to her. The titillating gleam in
her eyes disappeared. “Yes, Jake,” she said. “And I’ll text all the info to you and Mariska.” She pressed the end button and snuggled up against my shirtless chest.

I grazed my lips on her forehead. Once the sun
set, we headed to Bri and Gavin’s for dinner.

***

Bethany

I stretched out on the other side of Brianna’s bed and switched to another picture that I had of Jake on my phone. I’d shown her the two photos I had of Mariska—the goofy one and her classic senior photo. Dinner with some of the guys and her had been great, but when she’d headed to her room and I’d come out of the bathroom because Rylan had been using the one by the living room, we’d stayed in her room. Pierce was still at work at the Paloma, since Claude went away with away his family for the weekend.