What He Bargains (What He Wants, Book Nineteen) (85 page)

You’ve been here before. And it was a lot of fun
.

It caused her to smile a secret grin.

“What’s so funny?” Chase asked, glancing over at her as he went to the refrigerator.

“Nothing,” she answered, her cheeks already flaming from embarrassment over what she’d been remembering.

“Want a beer? I’m having one,” he told her, pulling a Budweiser bottle out of the stainless steel fridge.

“Sure, why not?” she said, agreeably shrugging. At this point, any resistance she might’ve felt about doing this again was gone.

I’ve been fired, I’m probably going to be homeless soon. But right now, there’s no place else I’d rather be.

She laughed a little at the thought, and as Chase approached with the bottle of beer, he regarded her with a bemused look. “Come on, Faith. Penny for your thoughts.”

She took the ice-cold beer and sipped it, noting that it tasted smooth and good. “I was thinking that I don’t quite mind being fired right about now.”

Chase grinned as he took a long swig from his bottle, looking at her as he did so. He swallowed and nodded. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” he told her. His grin faded as he stood in front of her, his hulking, masculine presence both intimidating and exciting all at once.

“I’m not sure I believe you,” she said. “You could’ve at least texted me after the last time we hung out.”

He took another swig from his beer. “Truth is,” he said, sighing, “I was hoping to forget about you, Faith.”

“Why?”

“Because, I don’t need any more complications in my life right now. I’m trying to keep shit simple.”

She watched him as he paced in front of the table—the table upon which he’d so forcefully screwed her the last time they were together. Her nipples stiffened just remembering it.

“Well I don’t want to complicate your life, Chase.”

Was that true, though? Maybe she did want to complicate it. If she wanted anything, it was to be a part of his world, his thoughts, to be one of the few things he truly cared about the way he cared about football.

“You might not want to, but women always complicate things.” He stared at her, challenging her to deny it.

“What if I’m worth it?” she asked.

His nostrils flared. “What if I’m not?”

“I’m not sure what would even make you say that.”

“Because, I know who I am. You don’t know anything about my life and the things that I deal with.”

“But you could try trusting me enough to tell me a few things,” she offered.

“I don’t know about that.” He suddenly put his beer down and then pulled his sweatshirt over his head, dropping it on one of the hard-backed chairs. Now he was in a tight, frayed white t-shirt that displayed his arms, his chest, and she could see the tattoos even through the thin material—just faint shadows for now.

Faith could hardly stand to look at him without feeling like she was being overcome with the need of him, the desperation for him. She didn’t want him to sense it, so she turned away and went to the leather couch, dropping into it and sipping at her beer.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him walking towards her. “During the Green Bay game, I was out there getting my ass kicked,” he said, as if she’d asked about it and he was only now answering her. “I was getting knocked around by these fucking animals, hitting me from all sides. And you know what I thought during the worst of it?”

She finally looked up from her beer, forcing her eyes to meet his, even though it made her chest ache and her belly fill with butterflies. “What did you think?” she said.

He didn’t break eye contact with her as he responded. “I thought to myself, I just want to go home and have Faith waiting there for me. I want to say fuck it to this crazy sport, and fuck all the people trying to take shit from me, all the people who want something from me—and to go and be with the one person who actually seems to want to give me something.”

His eyes were so intent on her as he stood there, the most physically stunning man she’d ever seen in her life. And he was looking only at her, and he’d just told her things that couldn’t be true. It must have been a dream, or she was actually insane and drooling in some loony bin right now, having a hallucination about the most famous football player in the world saying these things to her.

“I don’t even know what to say,” she finally gasped.

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“I’m just confused.”

“This thing with you isn’t supposed to be complicated,” he said.

“So this is a thing?” she said, raising an eyebrow. “What kind of thing is it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. And then he moved to the couch and sat down next to her, and she slid over to make room for him.

His massive body nearly took up every spare inch, and his legs were touching hers. She felt her skin break into goose flesh as he made physical contact.

“I feel like maybe I’m losing my mind,” Faith admitted, laughing a little.

“Why?”

“This just seems surreal. I mean, you’re—you’re you.”

“Last I checked,” he grinned, his eyes burning into hers as she looked away.

“And I’m just some average girl. I don’t know why you’re with me.”

“Don’t say that,” he told her, reaching out and touching her face gently, causing her to look at him again. His hand was so large that she couldn’t even fathom how he could touch her so softly, so kindly.

“Is it wrong that I care about you already, when we hardly even know each other?” she asked him, finally meeting his gaze.

“I like that you’d even say that to me,” he told her, sliding closer. His hand dropped to her leg and slid up and down on her thigh. “Say it again.”

“What? That I care about you?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Say that again.”

She smiled, blushing. “I care about you.”

He moved forward, leaning towards her now. “Say it again.”

“I…I care about you, Chase.”

“Again.” Now his lips were almost touching hers, and she could see clearly the bruising and red scratches around his eyes, the split lip that was somehow sexier than anything she’d ever seen.

“I care about you,” she whispered, her heart beating so fast, as his lips pushed against hers, and his tongue entered her mouth.

She moaned, having wanted this so badly, having thought about him almost nonstop since the moment they’d met.

And now, he was with her, and he was even better than she remembered.

His lips teased her, sometimes gently sucking and then other times becoming suddenly aggressive, as if he wanted to open her mouth wider so that he could taste her more and more and more.

And then his hands were sliding up her legs, to her waist, holding her momentarily as he kissed her.

As they became more and more fervent, Chase’s hands slid up and cupped her breasts through her shirt. He leaned in, pressing his significant weight against her, as she slid back on the couch.

Chase was on top of her now, his body hovering over hers, his arms holding his body up as he kissed her more deeply now—so deeply that she felt her pussy moistening in anticipation.

Faith reached up and grabbed his strong, tight buttocks with both hands and then pulled him into her hips, as she opened her legs and locked them around him.

He grunted appreciatively, pressing his bulging cock against her pussy. They were both fully clothed, but his pressure stimulated her, and Faith turned her head and cried out.

“Fuck, baby, I want you,” he groaned and then sucked her earlobe as his hands grasped her breasts, greedy, thumbing her nipples.

“I want you too,” she said, breathless.

He was dry fucking her and she liked it. His cock was hard as a rock, hammering down at her pussy, as she pushed back up into him with her own hips. She swiveled her pelvis, rocked against him as he grew more quick and heated, his lips trailing down her neck.

“I love your body,” she said, grabbing his strong forearms and then feeling up his arms, to his huge biceps, enjoying every contour.

“Yeah, you like it?” Chase said, driving his hips into hers again.

Her pussy was electric with wet desire. She nodded, moaning, rubbing her hands up his arms. “I love your tattoos,” she said, looking at the one on his upper right bicep, as she slid her fingertips under the sleeve of his t-shirt and pushed the material up towards his shoulder.

“You like ink, huh,” he said, watching her face as he teased her with his bulging cock, pressing against her hard.

“I do,” she whispered.

“Say it,” he commanded her.

“I like your ink,” she sighed, as he thrust again and again.

As she was trailing her fingers along his upper bicep, she noticed that there was a raised bump on his skin where a bullet hole had been tattooed, along with tattooed cracks, making it look as if the bullet had punctured the surface of something. Above the bullet hole was the phrase “bullet proof,” tattooed in fancy lettering.

“What’s this?” she purred, rubbing the raised area of his skin where the tattoo of the bullet was displayed.

Chase suddenly jerked his arm away from her probing fingers and sat back on the couch. His eyes had changed from seductive to suspicious in a flash. “Why are you so interested in my tattoos?” he said, unrolling his sleeve to cover the ink she’d been curious about.

Faith was confused. She slid into a sitting position, smoothing her hair behind her ear. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I just think they’re sexy.”

Chase stood up and began pacing. “See, this is exactly the shit I was talking about,” he said, as if to himself. “Complicated. I don’t need fucking complications in my life.”

“I don’t need to know about your tattoos if you don’t want me to. I won’t ever ask again.”

He turned and faced her. “But you’ll keep wondering, won’t you?” he challenged. “You’ll always wonder why I wouldn’t tell you what it meant.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Why are you attacking me for something so small?”

“Because,” he said, “it’s not just some little thing. It’s my life, Faith.” He stared at her. “You’re messing with my life.”

“I’m messing with
your
life?” she said, completely baffled. “You must be joking.”

“No, I’m not joking.”

She was starting to feel angry now. “Last I checked, you’re the one who got me fired from my job. You’re the one making me sign papers, making me play by your rules. It’s my life that’s getting messed with, not yours.”

“I guess it seems that way to you,” he muttered.

“It is that way, Chase.” She stood up. “And I don’t really need this shit either.” She started to walk past him, fully intending to exit his home and keep going until she reached the nearest T stop, from which she could get back to her apartment.

But before she could even get by him, Chase’s hand grabbed her arm, lightning fast, stopping her. “Don’t,” he said.

She glared at him. “Let me go.”

Then he did let her go, and she started walking again.

“You want to know?” he said, his voice raising.

“No, I don’t want to know anything,” she called back over her shoulder, still determined to leave.

I don’t need this crap
, she thought, even as her heart told her that she couldn’t possibly resist him.
Not even for a second.

“That tattoo is where I got shot,” he said, and that did stop her in her tracks.

Her mind raced with this new piece of information. Nobody—nobody—had ever reported anything about Chase having been shot in his life. Was he lying? But why would he lie about something like that? And she’d felt the scar herself. So it had to have been something…

Faith turned around and looked at him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

He stared at her for a long moment, and then he stripped off his shirt and threw it to the floor. Chase was standing bare-chested, and he looked both proud and ashamed, vulnerable and strangely defiant as he watched her watching him.

He pointed to a tattoo under his left pectoral. What was pictured there was a red bow, as if a present had been untied. “That’s where I got stabbed,” he said.

She felt suddenly faint. “Chase, please…”

“You wanted to know, right?” he asked, stepping towards her now. “You wanted to know about my cool, funky little tattoos. You thought to yourself, he’s like some cool hipster football player with all those neat little pictures drawn on his body. Sexy, right?”

She couldn’t look at him anymore. “I don’t know what I thought.”

“Tell the truth, Faith. You don’t really want to fucking know about me, about the reality of my life. You don’t really want to know that my mother was a prostitute who got murdered by some john, and the cops never bothered catching whoever did it.”

She wanted to cover her ears. “Please,” she begged, as if he might stop talking.

But he continued. “Shit, you definitely didn’t want to know that I never even met my father. Or the fact that both me and my little brother were in a gang in Detroit, and we dealt drugs and mugged people and fought with other gangs and tried to kill people who fucked with us.” He was walking closer and closer to her as he said these things.

She couldn’t breathe or swallow, and her heart was racing, her body frozen in fear and confusion. This couldn’t be true. None of this stuff was public knowledge.

He’s just messing with me.

But she knew—she knew as much as she knew anything, that he wasn’t lying.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” she said.

“Just look at me,” he demanded.

And so she did look at him. The tattoos looked totally different now to her, as she surveyed them and realized that most, if not all of them, had to have some kind of gang significance. Even if she didn’t know exactly what they meant, she understood that they weren’t just cool symbols like what her friends would get from time to time.

Friends who’d stroll into a tattoo parlor and page through books with pictures and drawings and symbols—they’d get a tribal band, a leprechaun, a heart with a boy’s name in it.

Those kinds of tattoos weren’t anything like what Chase Winters had emblazoned on his body. And the reasons for them were altogether different as well.