Finally, Caden lifted his head and smiled down at me. “My motel is just down the road.”
I let out a ragged laugh. “That’s good, otherwise we’d be doing it in the Speeding Dragon in the parking lot.”
I still don’t know how we actually made it into Caden’s motel room, but we did. We fell through the door kissing, and trying like hell to undress each other, our feet tripping and stumbling, our tongues tangling.
The end of the bed halted our frenzied progress. The backs of my calves struck it, toppling us both over. We hit the mattress together in a tumble of arms and legs and laughter. And then we were both naked, our clothes discarded with wild abandon, our bare skin sliding together, our breaths mingling.
When I flattened Caden to his back, straddling his hips, my sex rubbing against his naked erection, he let out a groan I felt all the way to my soul.
“Wait wait wait,” he said, pleasure etching his face. Without warning, he flipped me onto my back.
I squealed with delighted surprise, the sound becoming a groan as forceful as his when he dragged his lips down over my belly to the junction of my thighs. He explored every inch of my flesh down there. Every. Inch. He propelled me to the very heights of pleasure with his tongue, over and over, keeping me balanced there, like an inferno burning on the tip of a pin, until I begged him to make me come.
He didn’t. Instead, he rose up over my body and turned his masterful mouth to the rest of my body. My breasts, my throat, my belly button, my hips, the inside of my elbows.
I writhed on the bed, on the tip of the pin, burning up, on the cusp of eruption. It was too much. Too much. Hooking my thighs around his hips, I snared two fistfuls of his hair and yanked his head up.
“We have the rest of our lives for long foreplay, O’Dae,” I declared, holding his gaze. Oh man, his eyes were so ablaze with desire and need I almost came staring into them. “Right now, I want you inside me.”
“Condom,” he groaned. I didn’t hear the word, only felt its vibration in his chest and saw it form on his lips. His voice was too strained, too hoarse for me to hear. I didn’t care. I knew what his voice sounded like. I knew how his accent would make the word sound. I knew how the vowels would form in the back of his mouth, how the consonants would form on his tongue. I didn’t need to hear it to love it. It wasn’t necessary. And neither was . . .
“I’m protected,” I said, watching his eyes. “And I trust you.”
He grew still. Every part of him. Every part except that which nestled against my sex. It throbbed, each pulse nudging my folds with gentle pressure.
“Are you . . .” he began, and then stopped to let out a choppy breath. His hips rested against mine, his long sinewy legs framing my thighs. I reveled in the weight of his body on mine, its strength and warmth and connection. “Are you sure? The box of condoms you bought are in my bag. If you want I can—”
“Do you want?” I asked around my pounding heart.
Another raw groan vibrated low in his chest and he closed his eyes. “Chase, the thought of sliding into you with nothing between us . . . the thought of being naked inside you . . .” He opened his eyes again. “I want that fucking more than I can say.”
I smiled, and touched his cheek with shaky fingers. “Me too.”
He gazed down at me. “Everything you are, Chase Sinclair,” he said, “is everything I want and love.”
Sheer, pure happiness flooded through me, and then exquisite concentrated pleasure replaced it as Caden buried himself inside me in one fluid stroke. We moved as one, our bodies joined in the most intimate of ways. He filled me, stretched me, making my head spin and my body burn with pleasure. I arched beneath him, my legs encircling his hips, my lips on his throat, his collarbone. The salty heat of his sweat-slicked skin stirred a carnal lust in me. I clawed at his back, wanting more of him. Needing more of him.
I cried out his name, undone and remade in the pleasure he wrought on me, created in me.
My release crashed through me, wave after wave, and then Caden came and I erupted again, his hot breath on the side of my neck, the smell of his body, the sensation of his orgasm flooding into me detonated another orgasm in me, more powerful than any other.
We finally slumped on the bed together, the shuddering pulses of our climaxes fading, until at last we were still and breathless. I rested my cheek on his chest and draped my thigh over his hip, my hand loosely cupping his shoulder. He drew languid circles on my back with his fingertips as we lay there, neither of us talking.
And that was when I felt it. Or heard it? Or both.
His heartbeat. In my ear. So soft I might have been imagining it. Lying there with my cheek and ear pressed to his chest, I experienced his heartbeat. It was everything I knew it would be.
“I love you,” I said, the words growing more powerful more significant every time.
“Of course you do,” he answered against my cheek. “Took you freaking long enough to admit though.”
I lifted my head to grin at him. “Hey, you think something as amazing as this –” I waved my hand up and down the length of my side, “– was ever going to be easy?”
“It was bloody expensive,” he answered with his own grin. “Do you have any clue how much flights to LA from Melbourne cost? I’ve been pulling in hours and hours of intern work just so I could fly over here as often as I could, just to have you scowl at me.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “I have a feeling that veterinarian you work for back in Melbourne wasn’t upset about all those extra hours. I’ve seen the posts she tags you in on Facebook. If you were a Tootsie Roll she’d be tearing off your wrapper and eating you.”
He burst out laughing. Like his voice, it radiated through my body in a sensory caress I absolutely loved. “Is that jealousy I hear in your voice, Chase Sinclair?”
I twisted my lips into a righteous pout. “Hell yeah. You’re my property, O’Dae. She’s just going to have to find another Tootsie Roll.”
“We don’t have Tootsie Rolls in Australia,” he pointed out.
“Well,” I said, snuggling back down against his chest and tightening my leg around his hip, “she sure as hell can’t have mine.”
We stayed that way for a long time, just lying together, breathing in perfect harmony. Eventually, as I began to feel my eyes grow heavy with sleep, I raised my head and met his gaze. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
I shrugged. “Not giving up on me.”
“Ahhh,” he said, trailing his fingertips over my back. “That. Yeah, that was never going to happen. Mind you, I had pictures in my head of us old and grey and wrinkly with walking-frames and you still pretending you didn’t like me.”
I snorted.
He grinned. “Actually, you were a pretty damn sexy old lady. The only one in the nursing home with her eyebrow pierced, a butt tattoo and wearing Doc Martens.”
I couldn’t help but giggle.
“And I was a very dirty old man,” he finished.
“I bet you were.”
We fell asleep in each other’s arms, and I came to accept that falling asleep in Caden’s arms was the only place I wanted to fall asleep, with my cheek on his chest, feeling his heart beat in rhythm with mine, imagining us growing old together, me and my dirty-old-man husband.
Caden
My fourth morning of waking up in America was my favorite one of all.
Chase was beside me when I opened my eyes, she was gloriously naked, she was smiling in her sleep, and she loved me.
I’d suspected she did for some time but I’d only been ninety-nine percent convinced of it. Well, maybe ninety percent. Then, when I’d seen her with Donald the Dude in LAX that percentage had slipped a little. Yesterday afternoon, when she’d headed back to San Diego that percentage had slipped some more, but it had stubbornly stayed above fifty percent.
Now, lying here with her by my side, studying her face as she smiled in her sleep, I knew one hundred percent she loved me.
Fuck a duck, it was a good feeling. The best.
I didn’t wake her, I lay still and watched her sleep, loving the fact I could. Loving her.
She finally stirred a few minutes later, stretching and arching on the bed like a cat, yawning and scrunching up her face unabashedly.
“Good morning,” I said as her heavy-lidded eyes found mine.
Her smile grew wider, soft with sleep. “Morning.”
“Wanna go for a swim?”
A husky laugh fell from her. “I don’t have my swimming suit here.”
I flashed a grin at her. “Well, in that case, may I suggest some other form of morning exercise?”
“Hell yeah,” she answered, before pulling my head to hers for a kiss that made it loud and clear the morning exercise I had in mind was exactly the exercise she had in mind as well. I’m not sure, but I think we may have woken the guests in the rooms either side of ours. There had to be some reason for them banging on the walls, right?
I was rubbing my hair dry with a towel after my shower when Chase entered the bathroom and perched her butt on the edge of the basin, her gaze contemplative. “I had an epiphany when I walked out of Donald’s place last night.”
Her words made me pause. “K.”
She let out a ragged breath, and dragged her hands through the spikey blue mess of her hair. “I think it explains why I was so stupid about him, and I need to tell you.”
Throat thickening, I nodded. “Shoot.”
Her answering laugh was wry.. She scraped her fingers over her scalp again and then looked at me. “You know what my dad is like, right?”
I had to bite back the words, You mean a wanker? He wasn’t. Well, not really. He was . . . hmmm, let’s go with an elitist. He’d done everything in his power to make Brendon’s life hell. During Tanner’s fight with leukemia, Charles Sinclair had started legal proceedings to have Amanda and Brendon declared unfit parents. He had a vision for his daughter and his grandson that didn’t include an Australian personal trainer, regardless of how great a guy that Australian personal trainer was. When his vision unraveled, Charles became an angry, bitter father and father-in-law.
I’ve yet to see Charles meet Brendon’s eyes. They are rarely in the same room together. From what I understand, last Thanksgiving he refused to go to Amanda and Brendon’s home, thereby not seeing his daughter and grandson on a day that’s meant to be all about showing your thanks for those you love.
That’s the kind of behavior that illustrates his candidacy for Wanker of the Year in my opinion, but he’s also been less than welcoming to me. You’d think, given my bone marrow helped save his only grandson’s life, he’d be a little more open, but I barely get more than a grunt from him whenever we come face to face.
I can deal with that. My father – absent in my life since I was twelve – isn’t exactly in the running for Dad of the Year. I know what fathers can be like. What I didn’t like was the way Charles spoke to Chase. The last time I was in the same room as Charles, he’d told Chase she had to get her life sorted out and stop using her hearing impairment as an excuse for being pathetic.
I don’t think the word pathetic could ever be attached to Chase, in any way. But I bit my tongue back then, just as I did now. A guy didn’t tell the girl he loved he thought her father was a dick, no matter how much evidence supported the opinion. That’s just not the right thing to do. I also had to believe Charles loved his daughters. I had to believe what he did to Amanda and Brendon came from a place of love, no matter how misguided and deluded. I have to believe the way he treats Chase comes from that same place. Otherwise, I’d be likely not to bite my tongue any longer, and no amount of joking would save me from destroying any civil relationship I’d have with the man I hoped would one day be my father-in-law.
“Yeah,” I said now, draping the towel over my shoulders. “I know what your dad is like.”
Mischief twinkled in Chase’s eyes. “Love your diplomatic tone, O’Dae.”
I grinned.
“Anyways,” she went on, hoisting herself up onto the cabinet to swing her legs a little, her heels striking against the doors in gentle thuds, “Dad gets under my skin a bit.”
I had no hope of stopping my snort at that understatement.
Chase pulled a face at me. “Yeah, yeah. I know what you’re thinking.” She sighed, a sadness filling her face for a moment. “We don’t always see eye to eye. I know he loves me, I don’t doubt that, but he also . . . cripples me, if that makes sense. I don’t think he means to, but I’ve grown up with him telling me I’m defective.”
I ground my teeth, fighting to keep the emotion from my face. Defective? What kind of father called his daughter defective?
“Because of that defect, he’s been over protective. Like, big time over protective. You remember when I lost it so much on the road when you yelled at me? I suspect I probably wouldn’t have reacted the way I did if it wasn’t for Dad telling me my whole life I couldn’t do the things normal kids do because of my hearing. So yeah, he kind of messed me up a little that way.” She gave me an almost shy smile. “In case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Hmmm,” I responded, with my own small smile. “Might have. Maybe.”
She laughed. If you asked me for an example of melancholy, that laugh was it.
“In Dad’s opinion,” she went on, studying her toes, “the way to beat my defect was to excel academically. He told me it was my brain that would make me stand out in the world. I grew up thinking I had no chance of being anything but a defective smart person. When I decided not to study English Lit at college, Dad was disgusted. Mortified in fact. Art, and anything relating to art, isn’t a real subject in Dad’s not-so-humble opinion. Hell, even when my old school principal suggested I submit my college application essay about art as therapy to a national writing competition, Dad wasn’t appeased. So when . . .” She paused, a frown pulling at her eyebrows. “So when I went to college, I threw myself into my practical studies and neglected my theory ones. Just to piss Dad off.”
Lifting her gaze to me, she chewed her lip. “I know deep down I was hurting myself, but at the time, I just wanted to hurt him. Does that make sense?”
I nodded. Every joke I’d made at my parents’ expense about their separation had been about doing the same thing: hurting someone. Although to be fair, that pain wasn’t directed at them, but rather myself.
“Everything changed,” she said, frowning again, “when I started Donald’s class. He didn’t treat me like I was a little girl, or broken, or needing special attention. He treated me like I was normal. Like my thoughts mattered.” A tear slipped from her eye but she rubbed it away with the back of her hand before I could move, returning her gaze to her toes. “I needed to know that more than anything else. What’s a girl to do when she knows her thoughts, her life, the decisions she made about that life, aren’t good enough for her father? She goes looking for a father figure they are good enough for, and unfortunately I found that father figure in Donald. So then, when he first told me I was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen,” she continued, her cheeks red, her eyes downcast, “it made me feel like I was actually a real woman. Which basically means I’m a walking, talking cliché. You want to see what classic textbook Daddy issues look like? I’m the living example, right here.”
I waited for her to raise her head before speaking. It was hard to keep my voice calm, but I did. For her, I did.
“A real woman isn’t about being sexy, Chase,” I said when she looked at me. “Not in my opinion. A real woman doesn’t need to be sexy. She needs to be herself. Believe in herself. Be true to who she is. That’s what makes a woman gorgeous. That’s the reason I fell in love with you.”
She regarded me, anguish shining in her eyes. “I wish I’d met you before Donald and I . . .” She broke off, gazing at the space above my head. When she looked at me again, another tear was trickling down her cheek. “I was in awe of Donald. He was the popular professor, and lots of girls in my class lust
ed after him. But it was me he chose to have a relationship with.”
Her voice cracked on relationship. My heart thumped fast as another tear trickled from her eye.
I wanted to go to her, but I know Chase. She wasn’t ready for me to go to her yet. So I stood my ground, as hard as that was, and waited.
“It wasn’t until he began to complain about little things,” she said, her wet eyes finding mine again, “like the fact I tend to speak louder in crowds, or my speech is hard to follow sometimes, that I started to realize his idea of sexy had little to do with my personality. By that time, I was addicted to him.” She sighed. “And that’s the single most miserable thing I’ve ever confessed in my life. But it’s the truth. I was addicted enough that when he dumped me because I wasn’t suitable serious relationship material, I begged him to change his mind. Pleaded with him not to end us.”
Another sigh escaped as she shook her head and raked her fingers through her hair. Disgust etched her face. “It took finding him with another student for me to wake up,” she said. “I might have been addicted to him, but I’m not stupid.”
The hot anger I’d felt for her father narrowed to an icy cold knife of fury at Donald the Dude. No, Donald the Dude was the wrong name. Donald the Dick.
Chase gave me a lopsided shrug. “And then you came crashing into my life, with your sock puppets and sense of humor, and obvious interest in me, and I had no freaking clue what to do.”
My throat grew thick. “But now you do?”
She levered herself off the basin and smoothed her hands around my waist. “I do.”
Undeniable (Always Book 3) Page 22