Seemingly satisfied with that answer, the man patted Riley briskly on the arm before stepping around him and heading back down the stairs.
Riley took a deep breath and opened the door, stepping into the darkened apartment. It took a moment for his vision to adjust to the dim light. He waited until it did before closing the front door. He looked around the small space and saw empty pizza boxes, Chinese food containers, wine bottles, bags of chips, and Snickers wrappers strewn across the kitchen table, the couch, and the floor. It smelled stale, like old food.
He stepped around and over the junk food debris and headed to what he assumed was the bedroom. “Chelle, open up. The landlord let me in,” he said as he knocked on the door.
Again, no answer.
He turned the knob and slowly pushed it open. In the room he could make out a chest of drawers against the far wall, a small desk in the left corner, a chair beside the door that had more empty food containers and a bed in the middle of the room.
In the center of the bed he saw a small form covered up with blankets. He stepped closer and not-so-quietly said, “Hey, Chelle. Wake up, sleepy head. You have company.”
He waited to see if he detected any movement. When nothing happened he took two steps to the head of the bed and pulled the deep purple comforter back revealing a dark-haired sleeping beauty.
He glanced up and down, taking a quick inventory of her stats. She was breathing steadily and sleeping soundly, in what was probably alcohol induced slumber from how deeply passed out she seemed to be.
Man, she was gorgeous. She really did look like a princess.
He thought back to the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale he had seen as a kid, on the big screen. Hmm. He seemed to remember something about a kiss. Looking down at Chelle’s perfect red lips, he was tempted to lean down and brush his mouth against hers.
Shaking his head and moving quickly away from the side of the bed he raked his hands through his hair. This poor girl was passed out, and from the looks of the apartment was not doing so well emotionally. And what was his first reaction? He wanted to make-out with her. What the hell was wrong with him? He needed to get a grip.
He grimaced. He was certainly no Prince Charming.
He stepped back into the safety of the small living room and assessed the situation, mentally took note of what needed to be done. Looking around, he realized that the apartment was in worse shape than he had originally thought. There was no way he was going to make his flight tonight.
He had some calls to make, a rental car to return (no way was he paying $40 a day for parking) and, finally - some cleaning to do.
--- ~ ---
Chelle came awake to the sound of a beating drum. Why would someone be playing a drum indoors? Especially this loudly?
She tried to open her eyes, but found that her eyelids were encased in concrete. At least that was how it felt. They were heavy, and felt abrasive and itchy on her delicate eyes. She tried even harder to open them, but resigned herself to the fact that it was a losing battle.
If she could just get the drummer to stop banging!
She decided that she needed to sit up. Maybe that simple act would help her to open her eyes, to become aware of her surroundings. When she tried to lift her head, however, she realized her mistake. HUGE mistake! Her stomach rolled with nausea, and the banging sound became louder and was accompanied by sharp pains – pains that felt like ragged shards of glass being twisted viciously into her brain.
Note to self: Vodka and pizza do not mix.
That's when she realized that there was no mystery drummer in the bedroom (although if she didn't feel so crappy, she may not have objected to having a mystery drummer in her bedroom...). The thump-thump-thumping she heard was the pounding of her own head.
She laid her head back down in defeat, but did come up with a plan. She decided that she would lay perfectly still long enough for the nausea to pass, and then maybe she would just try and ROLL out of bed. Gravity, FTW!
She carefully placed her hands over her stomach and concentrated on breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth.
“You awake sleeping beauty?”
At the sound of the deep voice, adrenaline overcame all of her symptoms and Chelle bolted upright in bed, her eyes flying open.
Adrenaline didn't help her vision, though, and it was pretty fuzzy. She was having a hard time focusing. She could just make out a shadowy figure sitting in the chair across from the bed. Just as she was getting ready to scream bloody murder, the figure spoke again.
“Chelle, its Riley. Don’t be scared.”
The deep sexy voice certainly sounded like Riley. From what she could make out of his features, the seated figure looked like (a blurry version of) Riley. The frame was right – the blurry blob had Riley's wide, muscled shoulders and taut, sculpted waist. The rest of the features fit, as well. She could barely make out dark blonde hair and sun-kissed tanned skin.
But what in God’s name would Riley Sloan be doing here!?
“Riley?” Chelle spoke his name in disbelief. Trying to make some sort of sense of what was going on, she asked, “Is it...what are you...why are you here?”
“Sightseeing.”
“What?” she asked, bewildered.
“Sightseeing,” he repeated.
“In my bedroom?” she murmured, puzzled. She rubbed her eyes, trying to clear her vision to see if he was really here, in the flesh. After all these years. Live and in person – and in a chair that sat only a few feet away from her.
Was it true? Or was he just a smoking hot hallucination?
Probably the latter, she concluded.
She was most likely experiencing the final stages of her complete and total mental melt down.
Well, she thought sanguinely, I can think of worse ways to lose my mind than imagining the sexiest man in the world in my bedroom with me. If I have to go crazy, at least I have company.
Or, at least I'm imagining I do...
The figment of her imagination smiled at her and said, “Jason called me. Katie was worried about you. She's been trying to get a hold of you for a few days. When she wasn’t able to reach you, she wanted to fly home early to check on you. But, since I was already in California, they asked if I could stop by and make sure that you were doing alright.”
Okay, so maybe not a figment of her addled imagination. She didn't imagine that some sexy hallucination she conjured up would sit there talking to her about phone calls and plane schedules.
She said, “I haven’t gotten any calls from her.” She reached over to retrieve her phone from the nightstand but her arms were so heavy that she didn’t quite make it.
“Your phone was dead. It’s charging in the kitchen.”
She tried to get out of bed, fueled by new urgency, saying, “I need to go call her.”
However, it seemed that even new urgency was not enough to overcome physical deficits, and this proved to be much trickier than she had assumed it would be. The blankets she lay in were wrapped around her tightly, and try as she might to free her arms and legs, it felt as though her limbs were filled with lead. She was having a tough time disentangling herself.
Riley stood and stepped towards her. She stopped writhing and just stared. Good LORD that was a mighty fine male specimen moving toward her! Riley was wearing a white v-neck t- shirt that he filled out like one of the models she used to drool over on the Calvin Klein billboards. Well, to be fair, she'd actually drooled over them because they reminded her of Riley...
He looked like a Greek God in jeans.
He stood beside her bed, “I already called them last night after I got here, and I let them know that you were okay.”
He picked up a bottle of water that she hadn’t noticed was sitting on the night stand.
“You got here last night?” she asked incredulously as he twisted the cap and handed the bottle to her. She took the proffered bottle and, as she did, her fingers brushed his.
Her body reacted as if
she had gotten an electric shock. A zinging sensation raced from the pads of her fingertips where she had felt his hand beneath hers and zoomed all the way up her arm. She shivered.
Trying to cover up her completely out of proportion physical reaction to this innocent touch, she quickly brought the water bottle to her lips and started sipping from it. She had no idea if she had, in fact, been successful in concealing her reaction. Maybe he'd think she'd been...thirsty? It was worth a shot. When she looked up at him, he DID seem to have a small smirk on his lips. But she could have been imagining it.
“Yes, I got here last night. The landlord let me in. I tried to wake you, but you were passed out cold.”
“Where did you sleep?” she asked as she took another small sip of water. She definitely felt a little dehydrated...in addition to all of the other things that she was definitely feeling.
“I didn’t,” he answered matter-of-factly.
Her brow furrowed, “You didn’t sleep?”
He simply shook his head.
“At all?”
He shook his head again.
Chelle knew that she was still a little (well, maybe a lot) foggy-brained...but that simply didn’t make any sense. She was certain she would be having the same reaction even if she were clear-headed. Why in the world would he not sleep?
Well, she thought dryly, only one way to find out.
“Why didn’t you sleep?”
“I didn’t want you to wake up and be scared that some guy was in the apartment. Plus, I didn’t know how much you had drunk, so I wanted to make sure you were alright.”
“So you just watched me sleep,” she smiled sheepishly before taking another drink of water, “Sorry that must have been boring.”
His voice dropped an octave and there was almost a growl to it as he said softly, “No, it wasn’t.”
She shivered again, this time solely from the baritone vibrations of his voice. Her eyes shot up to meet his. He looked down at her, his gaze intense and…hot. She felt a tightening in her stomach (and a fluttering a little farther south) from just the expression in his eyes alone.
Wow. He had such amazing eyes.
It was almost as if she could lose herself in them, they were deep and always held so much emotion. She had forgotten what looking into them made her feel. It was like when you didn't eat a favorite food for several years. Obviously, you remembered how much you loved it, but the passing of time makes that memory almost academic.
Until, of course, you taste it again. Then, the flavors hitting your taste buds bring all the memories of every time you ever tasted that food flooding back to you at once, all the emotion connected to it, and you truly remember how much you loved it. And you're amazed that you could have ever forgotten.
When you put a forkful of that long-forgotten favorite food into your mouth again, it was like a mouth orgasm. This was like that. But with eyes. It was an eye orgasm. An eyegasm, if you will.
She felt her breath begin to quicken.
Riley took a step back from the side of the bed and cleared his throat. “Why don’t you take a shower or a bath or whatever and I’ll go make some breakfast.”
He turned and started towards the bedroom door, walking with purpose.
“Umm, I’m not sure there’s anything to make.”
He stopped mid-exit. Without turning back to face her, he said lightly, “Then I’ll go down to the market on the corner. Do you have any requests?”
Riley stood perfectly still and Chelle took a moment to appreciate the view from the back. Man, he looked as good going as he did coming. His back muscles were taut beneath the thin white cotton of his t-shirt, and HOLY MOLY, he had a perfect rear-end. He had the kind of physique that people carved marble statues of. It really wasn’t fair for one man to be that insanely hot.
“Chelle?” He turned back towards her, and she realized belatedly that she had let the silence go on an uncomfortably long time.
She immediately shot her gaze up to his face, her eyes becoming as big as saucers. Embarrassment caused heat to race up her face, coloring her cheeks a deep red, she was sure.
She was pretty certain that he had caught her staring at his backside, but he didn’t make a comment about it. “Huh?” she asked innocently.
“What sounds good for breakfast?” The corners of his lips twitched as though he was trying to suppress a smile.
Well, even if she had been caught, at least Riley was too much of a gentleman to call her out on it.
“Oh, right. Umm, yeah. If you could just get me some orange juice and maybe bread for toast that would be good,” she stammered. She wasn’t sure if her stomach could handle much more than that.
“Got it,” he smiled and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him – but not before he favored her with a small wink. She smiled weakly. So, he had seen.
She flopped back on the bed, letting out a loud groan as she covered her face.
“Oh, and Chelle?” she heard him say as the door cracked back open.
She popped back up into a sitting position, and said, “Yes?” in as non-nonchalant a tone as she could manage.
“Take a picture next time,” he said, a light teasing tone playing at the edges of his voice, “It'll last longer.”
Chapter Four
As Riley stepped outside of the apartment building onto the street a cold gust of wind hit him smack dab in the face.
Good, he thought. Since he wasn't in a position to take a cold shower then the chill of the wind would be the next best thing.
Damn it. Big mistake. Thinking of a 'cold shower' made him think of any kind of shower...and that had him imagining Chelle, upstairs, naked...water dripping down her skin...
DAMN!
He shook his head. That was not a visual he should be entertaining. It was bad enough he had been sporting wood for about five hours now.
The first thing he had done last night after checking on Chelle was call Jason and let him know that he could tell Katie that Chelle was fine, and that he was letting her sleep but would be staying the night to make sure she was alright. Jason had thanked him, a relieved tone in his voice that let Riley know that Katie's worry over Chelle had probably been impacting their enjoyment of the honeymoon.
As soon as he had hung up he gave the apartment a thorough cleaning and then he went into the bedroom to wait for Chelle to wake up.
The last thing he had expected was to get hard just watching her sleep but, damn. She was just so beautiful.
It also didn’t help that she kept twisting and turning under the covers, giving him brief glimpses of skin. Then she must have gotten warm, because at about 4 am she started kicking the covers completely off.
That wouldn’t have been any cause for concern except for the fact that she was only wearing a thin grey t-shirt and white cotton panties. The t-shirt kept riding up her waist exposing her tight, flat, sexy-as-hell belly. Which in turn kept making Riley picture trailing his fingertips over it...oh, God. It made Riley’s mouth water just thinking about it now.
And that didn't even begin to cover her gorgeous long, toned legs and her ass...damn. Her ass was, in and of itself, a thing of dreams. In fact, her whole body was like a walking, breathing wet dream come to life.
Riley must have covered her back up with the blankets at least a half a dozen times, but she just kept kicking and shoving the covers back off of her. It was like, even in her sleep, she knew how profoundly she affected him and wanted to make the effect as powerful as possible. It was enough to drive a man crazy!
He had almost laughed out loud when she apologized to him for how “boring” it must have been to sit up all night and watch her sleep. Yeah, right. If she knew what he had been thinking about the whole night, she wouldn't be the one apologizing, that was for damn sure. He would.
Then she had looked up at him, the same way she used to when they were kids, on those nights when they would stay up talking till the sun came up. It was almost too much for him. He had almo
st lost control. Because, when it came down to it, she wasn’t some naïve young teenager smiling up at him anymore.
Rachelle Thomas had grown up. She was a woman now. She was all woman. And it took every ounce of self-discipline, self-control...hell, self-preservation that Riley could muster to resist the urge to pin her back down on the bed and kiss that look of wonder off of her face and replace it with a look of ecstasy.
Add to that the fact he had caught her checking his ass...well, he knew if he didn’t get out of there ASAP he would not, could not, be responsible for his actions. He was only human.
Now, as he stepped into the small grocery store on the corner, he knew he was going to have to come up with a game plan to make it through the day, and one thing that game plan was absolutely going to include was leaving the apartment and getting out into the city. He was just a man, after all. A mortal man of flesh and blood. He knew that he absolutely could not trust himself to be alone in that apartment for the entire long day until eight pm, when he needed to leave to catch his flight.
He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he knew he only had a little bit of time to figure it out. Once she was showered and done eating breakfast, if he didn’t have a plan of action solidly in place, he honestly didn’t think he could control himself.
---~---
Chelle finished her shower and stepped out onto the yellow floor mat. She dried off with a white fluffy towel and then wrapped it around her body snugly.
She was feeling a little more human...which was both good and bad. She was glad to have her wits about her again and to be thinking more clearly, that was true enough. But with that clarity came the knowledge that Riley Sloan was here.
In the flesh. And WHOA NELLY what flesh that was!
Riley had always been handsome. He had always made her heart skip a beat. As a pre-teen and teenager, butterflies would flitter around in her stomach whenever he had been near - but nothing...NOTHING...could have prepared her for what he looked like now, or the effect he was having on her in...well, not so much her stomach...let’s just say an area slightly south of her stomach.
My Last - Riley & Chelle Page 5