Ride Page 18

  Chase huffs a low rumble of laughter, his hand slipping down to cup at the curve of my ass. “Then why don’t we do something about it?”

  “About looking good?”

  “Yeah.”

  I squeal as Chase hauls me up and over his shoulder, effortlessly throwing me into a fireman’s lift.

  “Chase—”

  His hand slaps my ass. “Coy doesn’t work when I know you want it.”

  I do. But I don’t want to be caught by the others. Not by my colleagues. Thankfully there’s no sign of them as Chase pushes open the door. They must be in the tub out back. We’re alone as Chase carries me up the stairs and into his room, throwing me on the bed.

  He’s not waiting. As I push myself to prop on my elbows he begins to tug off his snow gear, all that hard muscle moving smoothly as he tugs away his jacket and T-shirt, his baggy board pants and his boxers. His cock bobs free of his waistband, its head kissing at the trail of hair which leads up to his belly button.

  He looks at me like he’s going to eat me.

  “I want your mouth.”

  I laugh, my fingers moving over the zip of my jacket and my body arching so I can toss it away. “For sweet tender kisses?”

  Chase grunts, catching at my ankles and tugging me closer so that he can work on my boots. “I don’t think we’re a sweet tender kisses thing.”

  No, we’re not. But I don’t care. I’m enthralled by the animal roughness of him. The way he strips me with greedy tugs before he crashes over me for a kiss. Not tender. Not sweet. Deep and hot and hungry, his teeth biting my lips until they sting, his tongue claiming the hollow of my mouth with a thoughtless dominance. I slip my hand between us, taking his hardness into my grip for a teasing squeeze.

  Chase grunts at that, shoving himself up and away. For a moment he looks down at me, flushed and open mouthed.

  “Suck me.” It’s a demand. “I want to feel your tongue on my cock.”

  He isn’t gentle. Once I take him in my mouth he twists his fingers in my hair, the hold burning as I tilt my face to see the drop of his head, his eyes closed, his mouth parted to an O.

  “Fuck.” He shudders, the word hardly a shaping of his heavy breath. “Like that.”

  He feels so good in my mouth. Hot and hard, too much for me to take into my throat without gagging a little over his length. That makes him grunt, the hard planes of his belly tensing. I can feel his twitching indecision in the movements of his fingers through my hair, torn between the need to hold me close and the need to be inside another part of me.

  He doesn’t stay indecisive for long.

  “You want me to fuck you?” His voice is ragged.

  Yes, yes. I try to tell him with the sweep of my tongue and the hollow of my cheeks, the enthusiastic bob of my head.

  When Chase grabs me he’s rough. His hands hold tight at my shoulders as he shoves me over, face down on the bed. One fist tugs my hip up as the other braces low over my spine.

  “Wait,” is a rasped order. I can feel the mattress move as he leans to the bedside drawer, and then there’s the ripping sound of a foil packet torn on his teeth.

  There’s no warning after that. Only his cock, buried inside of me in one savage thrust.

  I cry out his name, and everything splinters with too much and yes and the good-ache pain of being opened by him.

  “Brooke.” It’s grunted at my ear as Chase begins a slow, solid pound into me, each thrust shoving to full sink. It hurts a little. He’s too big. It’s too quick. But god, it’s amazing.

  “Your pussy feels so good wrapped around my cock. So fucking good.”

  His fingers find my clit, and it’s all I can do not to cry out with how good it feels. His hips slam against my raised ass as he pounds into me, all that muscle riding me as expertly as he rode the mountains today.

  “Come.” He bites it at my ear, grinding his cock into me, holding the deepest penetration all the way into my aching core. “Come for me.”

  He’s starting to pound me again, and where my face is smashed against the pillow I whimper out the too-much-good of it, each slam of his body into mine forcing the breath from my lungs and spiking pleasure along my spine.

  “Please—please—please—”

  “Beg me,” Chase growls. “Say you want me. Say you need me inside of you.”

  “Please. Make me come. Chase. Please. Fuck me.”

  It’s so much I’m almost sobbing with it. Chase pounds on, relentless, until as I begin to spasm with my orgasm he grunts out his own. My hips pinned in his fingers. His body slammed into mine. Both of us, breaking apart together.

  After there’s only the quiet. Our panting.

  Chase’s fingers are gentle when they brush my hair away from my face, and if I didn’t know better I’d say his kiss was tender and sweet. His mouth lingers at mine as if he doesn’t want to leave my taste behind.

  “Brooke …”

  Heartbeats. Moments.

  Then Chase is pulling out of me and standing up, giving me that twisted grin again.

  “I’m gonna go shower.”

  When he goes I’m left aching in more ways than I should be. Something uncomfortable curls low in my chest, preventing me from fully enjoying the afterglow.

  I don’t know what it can be. We’ve just had sex so amazing that my body still tingles—apart from that stupid ache. We’ve had a great day.

  I’m fine. It’s not like I want him to come back. That’s just a stupid way of setting myself up for hurt when he really does go.

  I push the ache away.

  It’s not serious.

  21

  The reporter is an idiot.

  “So how do you find living the high life?” She’s meant to be asking all three athletes, but it’s Chase her body inclines toward as she leans over the lodge’s huge dining table. Now and again she taps her pen to her parted lips, bright red lipstick marking the plastic. Why would she even need one? She’s recording this conversation on her iPhone, just like all journalists do when they don’t live in the Jurassic.

  JJ laughs, flicking a look to Chase over the table. “High as in altitude?” He clearly knows what the woman is actually asking, but he doesn’t appreciate the question.

  The woman flips her glossy hair and continues to be the least professional she could possibly be. She’s tiny between the sprawled masculine bulk about the table. JJ is nursing a Coke Zero, and opposite him Chase occasionally throws a potato chip into his mouth. At JJ’s side, closer to my place on the couch, Hanne is slowly folding an origami crane out of scrap paper.

  “I mean, it’s no secret that you’re some of the most famous and highest-paid athletes in extreme sports.” The reporter flutters her eyelashes. “That must come with a lot of perks. Just look at this lodge, for one. And the partying, the women …” The quirk of her smile is matched by a meaningful arch of her perfectly plucked brows. “Don’t tell me you don’t make the most of it.”

  I thought this woman was meant to be a sports reporter? That’s what the sponsor who set this meeting up promised. Instead she’s more interested in what goes on in the boys’ spare time.

  Not Hanne’s. Hanne’s worked that out, too, and she’s pissed. I can see the chill in her eyes all the way from over here, where I lie on the couch with an ice pack around the ankle I hurt yesterday.

  “I’ve never appreciated the women.” Hanne’s smile isn’t a smile at all, just a thin wound drawn over her face. “We could talk about all the dicks that throw themselves at me …”

  The reporter’s smile is sickly sweet as too much cotton candy. “I’m sure they do.”

  It’s at that point Hanne can’t take it anymore. Her chair screeches as she pushes it back from the table, waving a hand to JJ’s concerned look. “I’m getting a drink. You guys keep going.”

  Hanne does get a Coke, but she brings it back to the couch where she curls up by my feet and shoots me a disgusted look. She doesn’t really bother to make her voice that low. “I swear,
this storm had better pass so we can get back in the heli. Another day of this and I’m going to kill someone.”

  “Me too,” I murmur with a sympathetic look. Mostly though I’m distracted, straining all my attention toward where Chase slouches in his chair, his legs spread into a wide, dominant V before him.

  He doesn’t look to me once.

  “So—the partying.” The reporter is fluttering her eyelashes again. “Do you gentlemen have girlfriends at the moment?”

  Hanne draws a breath. I have the sense she’s going to say something, her eyes flicking to me, but she swallows it away and replaces it with a sigh as she pushes back up to her feet. “I’m going to find Dinkler and Ryan. Good luck surviving this.”

  I hardly notice her go.

  JJ laughs in disbelief. “Yeah. No. Not for me.”

  The reporter clicks her tongue in a flirtatious chide. “Really? It seems such a waste. And you, Chase?”

  Chase’s shoulders tense before he rolls them out with deliberate slowness, muscles shifting under his T-shirt. The faintest beginnings of a scowl trace over his forehead. His look, though—I know that look. Guarded. Impenetrable. All that blue as hard as the line of his stubbled jaw.

  “I don’t do girlfriends.”

  There. So she can leave her questions. As if they’re even interesting. As if anyone wants to hear about some athletes’ love lives.

  The journalist twists her heavily glossed lips into a knowing smirk. “So you play the field? I saw the photo of your New Year’s celebration in Japan. There were some very beautiful women on your arm then.”

  The photo flashes before my eyes. They were beautiful girls, sure. But Chase’s arms around them were polite, not intimate. He was posing for a photo. The journalist doesn’t know him at all. Not like I do. She hasn’t seen the Chase that I have, the one beyond the photos and the headlines. The one who wasn’t interested in the snowbunnies at the party in Laax.

  The one who called me after that New Year’s party, when he was alone at midnight.

  Chase’s jaw hardens over the hidden work of his molars. For a moment his neck twitches, and I have this crazy idea he’ll look at me. But instead his stare to the journalist holds. “I’m not a monk. But I’m not a loudspeaker, either.”

  The reporter grins. “Gentlemen don’t kiss and tell, I suppose.”

  Chase’s grimace might pass for a smile, if you were socially incompetent. “I’m not a gentleman.” The low of his voice has taken on a rougher edge, the words forced and raw. “I just don’t feel the need to tell you and a few hundred thousand strangers about all the girls I fuck.”

  In profile I can see JJ’s face crumple with a despairing frown. “Shit, man. Next time remind me to make sure PR’s here when you do an interview.”

  Not that the reporter seems to mind. She’s loving it. I’m surprised her panties haven’t hit the floor already.

  Which is fine. Chase is allowed to do what he wants. We’re not serious. Just like I want it. There’s a reason we use condoms every time, even though I’m on the pill—I’d be an idiot to think that Chase keeps it in his pants when I’m not around. What man could be offered whatever he wants, and still be faithful?

  Not that you can even be faithful when it’s just—

  I gasp, tugging the ice pack away from my leg. I’ve held it there too long, slow to realize that it’s been hurting.

  Chase’s face jerks toward me as if he’s pulled on a string. His expression is still hard, an unhappy twist marring his forehead. His mouth has caught on the very beginning of a word, let out as only a puff of air.

  The reporter looks, too. Her eyes slide between us as her brows rise with catty delight.

  I could hit her. Instead I force out the best smile I can manage, shaking my head and waving the icepack as some sort of explanation.

  Something ticks at the edge of Chase’s jaw. When he turns back to the others he slouches lower in his chair, reaching for the empty chip packet and beginning to tear it into pieces.

  JJ clears his throat. “Right. Why don’t we talk work.”

  The reporter smiles innocently. “Of course. Whatever you want.” The words roll filthy in her mouth. She affects a pointless little clearing of her throat as she resettles her pen over her notepad. “How do you see yourself in comparison to the boarders who’ve come before you? I know in a lot of your recent films both of you have made references back to some of the greats.”

  JJ seems relieved the conversation has turned this way. “Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Chase and I, you know, when we were kids together—just ski bums, begging our parents to let us spend all winter boarding—we’d watch all the films back then. All the greats. And I think you learn from them, you know? Where the bar is. What can be done, and what you need to beat. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Everything like that.”

  The reporter nods enthusiastically. “Yes. And Chase, you must hear this a lot. Your power—your aggression on the slopes—the risks you take. I see lots of comparisons to Trent Hadley.”

  “Yeah, of course,” Chase says, leaning forward as he latches on to the topic. “I see that. Trent’s been a big factor in my career.”

  I drop the ice pack off the edge of the couch.

  Smooth, Brooke, smooth. I could kick myself. At least I have the excuse to look away as I bend over to fish for it from the floor, swallowing down the sick taste at the back of my throat.

  When I straighten back into my seat I find that Chase’s eyes are stuck on me, his eyebrows raised. Confusion lines his forehead. After a beat he looks back to the reporter, his voice at once steadier and more careful than before.

  “I mean, Trent really opened up big-mountain boarding in a way no one had ever done before. So yeah, I’ve always looked up to him.”

  Looked up to him.

  I close my eyes—Trent’s eyes, that pale green—and push to my feet. I’m wobbly. It must be my ankle, now numb from the ice, the muscle beneath still strained. I need to get out of here.

  The reporter’s eyes snap toward me like a predator’s, that infuriating catty smirk tugging at the edge of her lips. Her gaze ticks between Chase and me. “Oh, sweetheart.” Her voice is a simper. “Have I upset you? Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked, about, you know …” She waggles her eyebrows suggestively, tilting her head toward Chase.

  “You shouldn’t have,” JJ agrees.

  “It’s nothing to do with her,” Chase snaps at exactly the same moment.

  My heart plummets to the bottom of my chest.

  I don’t care about him having sex with other women. I don’t. The thing we have is fun, and it’s easy, and it’s good. Even if I do feel that stupid ache at the idea of him touching them, I know it’s stupid. I know it is. We’re not serious. I don’t want us to be. I don’t want to get hurt again.

  It’s just Trent—the idea that anyone looks up to Trent, let alone Chase. Not because there’s anything special between us. Just because I like him, and Trent—Trent—

  I rush out of the room, my eyes burning and my throat dry.

  The knocking is persistent. Whoever it is doesn’t seem to believe that I’m really busy.

  “Brooke.” It’s Chase, sounding tired. “Open the door.”

  I hunch over my laptop, stabbing more fiercely at the keys. “I’m busy at the moment. I’ll come down for dinner.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you at dinner. I want to talk to you now.”

  “I’m editing. Just give me like—half an hour.” To sort myself out. To calm down. To stop thinking of Trent, and that awful woman, and—

  “You can’t hide away like this. I want to see that you’re …” There’s a grunt, and the dull impact of something coming to rest against the door. Chase’s voice is quieter when it comes again.

  “I want to talk.”

  I catch my lip between my teeth, my fingers pausing on the keys. Is he angry? Is he disappointed? Is he … worried?

  Why should I be hiding in here like a little girl who’s
ashamed? I’ve done nothing wrong. I have nothing to feel bad about.

  “Brooke.” Chase’s voice is caught between his teeth. “Please.”

  I don’t open the door enough for Chase to come in. He’s standing there under his own private thundercloud, the line of his jaw set and his eyes intense in the way they used to be. The way I can’t read. Can’t understand.

  The whole point of not serious is that it’s simple. That it’s safe. What’s on Chase’s face isn’t simple at all.

  “You’ve been crying.”

  I shake my head and tug on something like a smile. “That’s ridiculous. I’m just working.”

  One of Chase’s eyebrows rises. “Right,” he doesn’t agree. “Working.” He doesn’t quite make air quotes around it, his hand instead coming to press at the door as he tilts his head toward the room it obscures. “Let me in.”

  I’m going to say no when I’m stopped by the press of Chase’s palm to my cheek, his fingers slipping into my hair.

  His voice is so soft. “Open the door.”

  It takes me a moment to move, the ghost of Chase’s touch still tingling on my cheek. The room feels too small for the bulk of his body. I don’t know where I fit anymore. As he closes the door behind us I settle on standing awkwardly by the bed, turning around to face Chase. Over my chest my arms are crossed too tight.

  “What’s up?” My brightness rings false.

  Chase just stares at me, his tongue testing the corner of his mouth. Those broad shoulders rise on a breath, but the words never come. Instead he steps away from me to my desk, where he flops into the chair with his legs apart and his elbows on his knees.

  I’m not used to him looking up at me.

  “Is this because she asked about other girls?”

  It shouldn’t sting. Why am I being so stupid?

  I try out a laugh, but it comes out brittle and forced from the aching shell of my chest. “We’re not an item.”

  Chase’s jaw tightens. “No, we’re not. But the way you reacted when she said it—”