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  “I don’t give a shit what you call me.” Chase doesn’t have to make an effort for the words to carry over all this bass. “I don’t give a shit what you do to me. But if you lay a finger on that woman without her permission I will make you piss fucking blood. Am I making myself clear?”

  The other guy doesn’t say a thing.

  “Get out,” Chase snarls.

  I don’t realize I’m shaking until he’s gone. Until Chase is turning to me, all that muscle still wound tight with adrenaline.

  Until he takes me in his arms, his eyes searching my face with a jerky quick.

  Concern wrinkles over his forehead and tightens his cup at my shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  I can’t find the words. All I can do is lean into the unexpected press of Chase’s lips to my forehead, steadying my breathing with the gentle stroke of his thumb at my arm.

  “Why don’t we get out of here,” Chase murmurs.

  I nod. It’s the only thing I’m sure of.

  17

  We don’t say a word on the way back to Hanne’s apartment. Maybe Chase doesn’t want to risk breaking this fragile thing any more than I do. I tuck in against him, his arm about my shoulders, and when we come across patches of ice he supports me with the solid grip of his hand.

  “You’re freezing,” Chase murmurs as he watches me shiver out of my jacket in the hall. “Go put something warm on. I’ll make us drinks.”

  The apartment is weirdly quiet without Hanne. I take my time finding a sweater, tugging it on before I wrap my arms about myself and close my eyes. I can hear Chase in the kitchen, his movements telegraphed in the clink of metal and the soft opening and closing of cupboards.

  I hesitate with my hand on the door, taking a deep breath before I open it.

  Chase doesn’t notice me in the doorway. I watch him for heartbeats as he tends to the pan on the burner. He moves with a neat efficiency, the dark lines of his tattoo flexing as he adjusts the flame and swirls the pan carefully. Something that isn’t entirely concentration lines his forehead.

  I’ve seen him board. I’ve seen him in clubs and bars and restaurants. I’ve seen him in his room in the dark. But watching him now, when he doesn’t know that I’m here, feels … like something else. Something intimate. Something quiet.

  It reminds me of home, and I don’t know why.

  “Glühwein,” I say finally.

  Chase looks up, his wide-eyed surprise taking a moment to settle. “Yeah.” His smile is faint but honest. “You can get these instant packs for it. I knew Hanne would have some.”

  “Alex liked it, too.” I stand with my arms wrapped about myself, watching as Chase checks the temperature of the liquid with a fingertip before clicking the burner down to zero. “She called it ‘glue wine.’ ”

  “Your friend.” Chase has his back turned to me, reaching up into one of the cupboards for mugs. The planes of his muscles slink under the dark fabric of his T-shirt. “I was worried you’d go with her.”

  Confusion purses at my lips. “You were the one who wanted me to leave.”

  Something tugs at the corner of Chase’s mouth. He wipes it away with the back of his hand before reaching for the pan’s handle. With his face turned down I can’t see what’s in his eyes.

  “You think I …”

  Something huffs from his lungs, barely louder than the sound of the glühwein pouring into the mugs.

  “I never wanted you to go.”

  My swallow sticks in my throat.

  Chase reaches for a teaspoon to give the glühwein a stir it doesn’t need. “I guess …”

  It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him look helpless. There’s something like defeat in his shrug.

  “I guess I’m as bad with women as Hanne’s probably told you.”

  It’s an escape, not an answer. But it doesn’t matter when Chase is smiling at me, catching up the mugs as he pads over barefoot. “Here.” He nudges one into my hands. “Go on. Get on the couch.”

  For a moment I don’t move. I just hold my mug, and look up, up at Chase’s face.

  “I thought you were going to hurt him.”

  Chase’s look down to me is inscrutable. The twist at the edge of his lips isn’t a smile at all. “I used to have a bit of a reputation,” sounds like I wasn’t. “I had a bad few years.”

  It takes me a moment of wordless confusion to link that with the year’s boarding he missed in his late teens. I was too young to really remember it. My Google searches turned up a few mentions of “personal issues.” But fifteen years ago social media didn’t exist, and the world’s best up-and-coming competition rider could easily fall off the map for a few months.

  Especially when he came back the next winter to take a record number of golds at the X Games.

  “When you weren’t boarding?”

  Chase huffs a grim laugh. “Yeah. And the few years after that. I gave up the pointless bar brawls a while ago, though.” He closes his mouth over something else, instead reaching his hand for mine. One of his fingers slides feather soft along the cupped shell of my own. The blue of his eyes is fixed on my wrist rather than my face, as if the steam coming from the glühwein fascinates him.

  “Unless someone’s hurting you, apparently.”

  The moment hangs in the air, glittering and still as a pendant at the end of a chain. I swear time has stopped. There’s only the way Chase looks down at me. The touch of his tongue’s tip to his mouth’s edge.

  Words clog in my mouth and ache in my throat.

  Instead Chase steps away, padding over to the coffee table and bending to put his mug down on it. “I’ll get the fire going.” It’s not a suggestion. He’s already moving, his broad hands spanning wide enough to each pick up two logs at a time. The turn of his back to me indicates that the conversation is over.

  I’ll just muck it up if I say something, anyway. Better to settle onto the couch, curling into the cushions. The glühwein’s still too hot to sip, so I set it down on the table beside his.

  “What do you like about it?” Chase doesn’t turn to ask the question. His voice echoes strangely from the brick back of the fireplace. “The photography.”

  “I guess …”

  No one’s ever really asked that before.

  I realize he’s glancing at the prints on the table. You can only really tell how well a photograph works when you see it in the flesh. There are several of Hanne. One or two of JJ. But the one Chase is looking at is of himself, flying free through the air.

  Somehow the expression on Chase’s face isn’t that of a man looking in a mirror. Instead he looks at the photo the way he looked at me when we first rode together. Like he’s seeing something new. Something different. Something that he didn’t expect to find.

  Chase doesn’t hunt after the words I’ve lost. There’s a whoosh of flames as he ignites the kindling, and then only silence as he waits until the larger logs can be neatly stacked.

  The truth reveals itself in the space that he gives me to answer his question.

  “I like to capture the moment someone’s perfect.”

  Chase’s shoulders move over a barely there chuckle. “No one’s perfect.”

  “Yes, they are.” There’s so much I don’t know … but this truth in this moment is clear as the mountain air. “Sometimes we’re perfect. When we do the things we’re meant to do. When we show who we really are.”

  Chase pokes at the fire once or twice before he straightens. Still he doesn’t turn around to face me. From the breadth of his back, those muscles wrapped heavy over his biceps and neck, I can’t read anything.

  “Brooke …”

  In his mouth my name sounds like a question and an answer. Like a beginning.

  I can’t breathe, afraid even a whisper of air would be enough to brush his words away.

  But Chase doesn’t speak at all. Instead he moves, supple muscle sliding into action. He covers the space between us in a few strides before sinking to his knees in front of me. So clo
se I can see the race of his pulse at his neck and feel the heat of his breath on my skin. The perfect blue of his eyes isn’t total at all. Golden flecks spark over his irises, the brightest of secrets.

  He’s so big. So powerful. But in this moment, as Chase kneels before me, the shields are gone from his eyes. The way he looks up at me is a flayed-bare honesty, more true for how it’s unsure. The tick of his gaze searches my face, hungry for a thing I can’t name.

  “I’m not very perfect.”

  No, he’s not. He’s an ass and he’s selfish and he can be so rude, and …

  That flop of dark hair needs someone to straighten it again.

  My fingers tremble as they stroke over his wrist, the tendons strained where his palm braces beside my thigh. “I don’t care. I want you.”

  The honesty feels raw and vulnerable in my chest.

  Something like a sigh ripples the muscles over Chase’s shoulders. For a moment he dips closer to me, that tight-grip control loosening, before he catches himself again. His jaw tightens, his knuckles gripping white at the couch beside me.

  “I’m honest.” The assertion is rough in his voice. “You know what this is.”

  I do. Simple. Uncomplicated. Just sex. Just Chase, riding me with the same control and power he uses to ride mountains.

  I tell him: “Yes.”

  A deep breath shudders through Chase as he drops his eyes from mine. His fingertip trails light as breath over the wool-wrapped curve of my thigh. “Yes?”

  Nothing serious.

  Nothing that could go wrong.

  Beneath his touch I quiver, and my answer is only a whisper.

  “Yes.”

  Chase claims me like a wildfire. That unsure look is wiped away by the brutal certainty of his want. All the space between us is gone and we’re pressed together, the bulk of his torso pushing open my thighs and his fingers tangling in my hair. Beneath the demand of his grip I let my head tilt and my mouth open and there’s only heat—want—the claim of his appetite, his muscle pressing me down.

  We’re clumsy as together we tear at his shirt. He has to straighten to tug it over his head, revealing those planes of muscle and scar. The story of all the thrills he’s sought and the risks he’s taken.

  Everything is movement. The slink of Chase’s spine that rubs him over me. The roving grip of his hands. The hungry sounds as he trails his mouth down to my neck, tugging my shirt up and my bra down so that with a grunt of hunger his mouth can claim my nipple. Soft sucks, sharp nips, and beneath him I quiver with want as he soothes bitten pain with the sweep of his tongue.

  He seems reluctant to move away. His hand clenches at my other breast, gripping needy at my flesh, as his mouth finds mine again. All that hot-wet breath, and the scrape of his stubble over my skin. When he pulls back I arch after him, chasing for his lips and finding instead the fix of those after-dark eyes.

  “I want to taste you.”

  “Chase—”

  Effortlessly Chase pushes my greedy fingers away. His hands cuff at my wrists, forcing my arms back over my head so that pinned I writhe for him.

  “I want to feel you twitching on my tongue.” Slow, sure, he drips the words over my lips in time with the thrust of his hips. “I want you to be dripping wet with how much you want my cock.”

  My whimper makes him smile, his lips tight above his set jaw.

  “You want that? You want my mouth on you?”

  He doesn’t wait for the yes I can’t say. His hands are rough at my legs, tugging down my pantyhose and panties to a discarded tangle about one of my ankles. Against the exposure I twitch my legs together—but Chase wants to see. He shoves his palms to my thighs, spreading me open for the rapacious sweep of his gaze. The animal growl he makes is involuntarily, swept away with the swipe of his tongue over his lips.

  “I promised to make you scream my name.”

  I don’t have time to agree before he buries his face between my legs.

  He licks over me with soft, teasing laps until my thighs quiver against the cuff of his palms, his merciless strength keeping me open for him. He dips his tongue inside of me and hums with pleasure as his hungry open mouth envelops me. He goes nowhere near my clit, not until I’m whimpering, my hands fisted in his hair.

  “Chase.”

  “What?” He looks so sinful, resting a bristled cheek on the inside of my thigh and turning those deep blue eyes up toward me. All of that cautious questioning has been replaced by a smirk, my wetness glistening over his stubble.

  “Chase, please.”

  Chase hums, the very tip of his tongue flicking a tease over my clit. “Please what.”

  “Make me come. Chase. Make—”

  The blunt thrust of his fingers into me makes me arch tight as a bowstring. Two of them, large and thick, stretching me open. The sound I make trembles in the air.

  “Not my name.” Chase’s teased correction of what I should shout doesn’t linger. He’s already lowering his mouth again to my wetness, his tongue’s tight-point tip swirling about my clit.

  The delicate tease is only foreplay. Without warning Chase devours me, his mouth roughening with greedy want. The wing of his arm pins his elbow at my knee, holding me wide open for the steady thrust of his fingers. I’m losing my mind. It doesn’t matter that I’m spread out over Hanne’s couch. It doesn’t matter that she could come back anytime. All that exists is riding the work of Chase’s hand, pushing his face against me, arching my spine for the trace of his fingers over my nipple—

  Trace, and pinch, his tongue swirling over me as the fingers inside of me curl just there and I’m broken.

  Chase devours me as I cry out. He pins my bucking hips beneath the strength of his white-knuckle grip, keeping me spread vulnerable to the attack of his clever mouth and his plundering fingers.

  Only when I whimper does he pull back, looking up at me flushed, his breath heavy on my skin. Beneath his T-shirt his chest heaves over his own panting, and his mouth is wet and messy with my want.

  The moment hangs, fragile, before Chase’s grin spreads.

  His reach for my nipple is lazily slow, his eyes tracing the catching pinch of his fingers before they drop lower again to where his other hand works between my legs. I can’t help but imagine what he can see: the wanton spread of my thighs about the slick slide of his fingers, opening me for him.

  He stares, and I feel the blush spread over my cheeks.

  “You’re so fucking beautiful.”

  And then he’s gone.

  Not for long. Chase jerks me up, his tug on my wrists rough, his muscled chest a solid stop to my forward momentum.

  “Your room. Now.”

  I couldn’t argue if I wanted to. It’s all I can do to stumble forward under the onslaught of his greedy hands—gripping at my ass, searching for my wetness, his fingers dipping inside of me and forcing the air from my lungs.

  “Where—”

  Chase doesn’t let me decide. He throws me over the bed, though he stays at the side. With unthinking confidence he unclips his belt, slithering it free of its loops before a hook of his thumbs slides his jeans and boxer shorts to the floor.

  My heavy breaths tingle over my parted lips as I look over him. That ridged muscle banding over his abdomen. The thickness of his thighs. The length of his cock, the tip already glistening with his frustrated want.

  I don’t know whether my swallow is more nervous or hungry.

  Chase pauses once he’s naked, staring at me as if he could eat the way I look at him. For just one second he reaches forward, his hand cupping the line of my jaw so that he can sweep his thumb over my lower lip.

  “You have no idea how much I want to be in your mouth.”

  But he wants something more than that. It’s dark in his lust-black eyes as he stares at me, and as he rips the foil packet taken from his pocket between his teeth it’s only him I can look at. Chase, staring at me as if I’m the only thing in the world.

  I’ve never had a one-night st
and look at me like that. It sends shivers over my skin.

  I let myself fall back as Chase slinks over me, his palms braced by my shoulders, his muscled thighs pushing their way between the tremble of my own. I can feel him hard against me, and as he leans close to kiss wet below my jaw the kink of his hips drags the head of his cock over the wetness between my legs.

  My moan makes him laugh, the sound nuzzled hot and heavy at my ear.

  “Told you I’d make you desperate for it.”

  “Don’t get cocky,” I whisper. Something in the humor frees me to reach for him, to press my palms to the banded muscle over his ribs and dig my nails into his skin. “You haven’t made me scream your name yet.”

  “Yet,” Chase agrees, and in one smooth thrust he buries himself in me.

  I can’t help but cry out. So much or too much and I can’t tell, only feel the overwhelming thickness of him inside of me. Chase sinks to catch the sound with his mouth before pressing his forehead to mine.

  … And then he doesn’t move at all, his eyes so close and so dark. So open.

  For a moment there’s only that look.

  Chase’s grin is lopsided when he finds it. “Too much?”

  Worry. It looks unfamiliar on his face. Something twists in my stomach.

  “No.” It’s hardly a whisper. “Chase,” is stronger. I need him. I need to kiss him, to spread my thighs wider for him, to hear his grunt as he sinks deeper into me. The muscles of his arms and back tense with tight-held control as he begins a slow grind of his hips, working over me.

  He’s just as expert here as he is on the slopes. All that power, tethered and controlled.

  I don’t want it to be. I press my eyes tight shut and find his ear, shivering as he hits right there, slowly opening for him so the too much becomes so good, giving him all of my moans.

  “I want you.”

  Chase doesn’t need to be told twice. The slow slink of his spine breaks on a surge of power as he pushes up to his knees. Roughly he grabs my legs and slings them up over his chest, bracing the tight of my calves against his lean. I can feel his body working against mine, the smooth thrust and shove of his movements.