My exhaustion was taking its toll. The shower beckoned, as did my bed. The bed won; I stripped off my clothes, crawling naked beneath the covers. The cat curled up against the small of my back and I was asleep almost instantly.
The phone woke me sometime later. The sky was still gray; I had no idea what time it was, nor did I care. I pulled the blankets over my head, cursed the phone and went back to the depths of sleep.
It was dark when I finally surfaced to some semblance of wakefulness. The cat grumbled his way to the kitchen and watched me as I made dinner. I carried on a one-sided conversation with him, feeding him bits of chicken to make up for not being home. It seemed to satisfy both of us.
The answering machine light was blinking, a reminder of my interrupted sleep. I pressed play and heard the usual litany of Sunday afternoon messages: my mother, Leslie. And then Chase. Three times; three messages.
He wanted to see me. He’d actually wanted me to come see him at his condo Sunday afternoon. I glanced at the clock; it was past ten o’clock. I’d been asleep over twelve hours. That’s not going to happen.
I hit redial and Chase answered on the first ring.
“Where have you been?” His voice was tense; I could hear club noises in the background, making it hard to hear him.
“I was out.” All I heard were club noises. Chase was silent.
I heard the sound of a door slamming and the background noises were abruptly cut off.
“You were with Jake.” Chase’s voice was just as tense, but now crystal clear.
I took a deep breath. “Yes, I was.” There was a sharp noise on the other end of the line. I frowned at the phone.
“Are you okay, Chase?”
“No, not really. I decided I don’t like the idea of you fucking around with Jake.”
I was instantly angry. “That’s not fair. We don’t have an exclusive relationship, Chase.”
“I don’t feel like being fair right now. And why don’t we?”
“Chase, I’m not having this conversation over the phone. It’s late and I’m tired.”
There was a pause, his voice softening. “I wanted to see you today. I miss you. Come to the ranch tomorrow.”
There were things I wanted to talk about with Chase, little things that were bothering me. Along with the big white horse in the room; the fact Chase was unable to tell me he loved me.
I agreed to meet Chase at the ranch late in the day. The phone call to Jake was painful; I could hear the pain in his voice.
“I know you need to do this. Just don’t drag this out, Abby. Please.”
***
Monday dawned bright and clear, but my emotions were just as cloudy as they had been on the weekend. I felt torn, confused, and heartsick. My head hurt, my stomach churned and nothing seemed to make any sense.
Leslie stopped by mid-morning. For once she sat quietly in the chair across from my desk as I retold my weekend adventures with first Chase, then Jake.
“Oh, Abby. This is a mess. How’d you get so tangled up with two such different guys?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea. My heart got away from me, I think.”
She leaned forward, a scowl creasing her forehead. “So, who’s it going to be?”
I looked up at her. She sat back, breathing out through pursed lips. “Oh, you have no idea, do you, Abby? It’s written all over your face.”
My head found that familiar spot on my desk again. I closed my eyes.
“No, Leslie, I don’t.”
***
The drive to the ranch went far too quickly. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see Chase; I just didn’t want to make a decision. Why couldn’t I just have both? Slide back and forth between the two? Not make a choice?
Because they deserve better than that.
Chase was waiting on the porch, looking far too sexy in faded jeans and a tight black t-shirt, his feet bare. I pulled up in front of the house and he walked down to meet me, opening the car door for me.
“You made good time.” He leaned down to kiss me. I sensed tension in his body; his eyes held a glint that made me wary.
We walked up the steps into the house. Chase led me to the kitchen and I pulled out one of the stools at the counter.
“You want a beer?” He turned to me and I nodded. He rummaged around in the refrigerator, pulling out two longneck bottles.
One cold bottle appeared in front of me. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“I want to understand what this is between us. No one is happy with this limbo we’ve ended up in. But I can’t make a decision without some answers.”
“So it’s come to that, has it? Did Jake tell you that you needed to make a decision? Him or me?”
He was more right than he knew, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
“No one makes me do anything. I’m making a decision for my own sake, Chase.”
With a nod he drained his beer, setting it next to several other empties on the counter before grabbing another one from the refrigerator. This isn’t what I want here…get control, of yourself and him.
“Chase, come sit with me on the porch.” I stood, holding out my hand. I twitched my fingers at him, the same gesture he’d used with me, the one I suspected he used on temperamental horses.
He came out slowly from behind the counter, still not meeting my eyes. He took my hand, leading me out to the porch. We sat on the swing in the dark, watching fireflies over the meadow for a time, still holding hands. Finally Chase sighed, blowing out a long breath.
“I’m sorry for being sharp with you on the phone, Abby. It wasn’t fair, you were right. But it drives a stake through me to think of you with anyone else, even if it’s just with Jake, as his submissive.”
He took a swallow of his beer. His voice was tight when he spoke. “Did you need to ask permission from Jake to come see me tonight?”
I frowned at him. “Where did that come from? You know very well I’m not in a twenty-four seven role with Jake. Are you that jealous?”
“Could be that I am.” He scraped at the label on his bottle with a thumbnail, lost in thought for a moment.
“Look, I know that I owe you an explanation. I just don’t know where to begin.”
I waited. For what, I wasn’t sure. Reassurance? To be let off the hook by him telling me that I really didn’t have to explain after all? Whatever I was searching for in the silence I didn’t get it. He let go of my hand, running it through his hair.
“I told you I ran the ranch for a few years before I went to New York, to college. During that time, there was a girl here, a daughter of one of the ranch hands. Amanda…Mandy is what we called her. I loved her more than I could stand. I believed she loved me.”
He watched a moth circling the porch light. “She could ride a horse better than anyone I’d ever seen; it was like she just became the horse. There was a fire in her that I’d never found in anyone else. I’m surprised we didn’t set the hayloft on fire.” He laughed softly.
“I have scars from her, real scars. She bit and scratched and tore me up, in more ways than one. We came together with such force, it was all consuming, for me. I thought for her. She was all I could think about.” Chase looked down, worrying the label on the bottle again.
“She left at the end of that summer. Packed up without a word, was gone before I knew it. Her daddy said she’d decided, just like that, to go back to live with her mother in St. Louis.” He paused.
“I was going to ask her to marry me.”
I reached out, touching his shoulder. He flinched and I pulled my hand back.
“I left for New York then, got a job, applied for college. Got accepted for the following fall. My father was so angry with me; he didn’t speak to me for over a year. We’d finally gotten things pretty much patched up, but then he and my mom were killed.”
He finished his beer, setting the empty bottle on the porch floor.
“College wasn’t where I belonged either, but I was damned if I would
come back here as a failure. So I stuck it out, managed to get through that first year without killing myself. Like I said, it was insane. I pretty much tried to drink my way through most of it. I also discovered all those pretty girls, needing nothing more than my charming smile to come with me, let me bed them and then send them on their way. Never saw them again; can’t tell you their names, probably didn’t ask. It made me feel better, just using them like Mandy used me. But in the end, there was always this huge whistling hole in my heart.”
He stretched his arms over his head. “I found the bondage clubs about the same time I was flunking out of college. There was a great deal of release for me, in being a dominant. The mental and emotional discipline helped me work through a lot of the pain.”
The memory of Chase’s methodical, almost prayerful, way that he used the ropes on me in the club came back.
“It helped me focus, helped me get my head out of my ass.” He laughed suddenly, startling me.
“And it’s sure the hell a great way to have sex with women, with no strings attached. You know that, or you did until Jake overstepped his boundaries.”
I flinched in the dark, the swing jumping erratically.
“So he did break his rules.” I heard Chase’s laughter again, darker this time.
“Jake shouldn’t be a dominant. He’s not cut out for the role. He doesn’t have the strength for it or the discipline.”
Anger flared instantly. “You don’t know what my relationship with Jake is like. You have no call to comment.”
“I struck a nerve, I guess.” Chase shifted on the swing, setting it to rock in a sickening arc.
“You’re right, I don’t know about your relationship, but I do know about his previous one. It was a failure, the girl disappeared. It wasn’t pretty, from what I understand.”
“You knew Jane?” I remembered Jake had said she’d taken him to Chase’s club.
“I didn’t, but Stacy did. They worked at the same club. She said Jane talked incessantly about Jake, his shortcomings, his brutality, how he abused her rather than being a true Dom who is all in control at all times.”
I drew a sharp breath. “That’s not true. That’s now how it happened. Jake told me the whole story.”
I could feel Chase’s eyes on me in the soft dark. “I’m sure he told you his side of the story, by his lights. You know the saying. There’s three sides to every story: his, hers, and the truth.”
“Jake’s not like that, not at all.” My voice was shaking with anger. “You can’t know the truth.”
“Darling, you can’t either. You can only know what he’s told you.” He spread his hands. “I can only know what I’ve been told. You’ll have to make up your own mind about him.
“But I can tell you, from seeing him at the club, my first impressions are usually pretty damn accurate. He’s not cut out to be a dominant. You’re going to be the one getting hurt here and I don’t want that.”
My anger boiled over. I got off the swing, kicking over Chase’s beer bottle, sending it spinning across the floorboards of the porch.
“You don’t need to look out for me. I can do that myself.” I was breathing hard, my voice rough, fists balled at my sides.
Chase stood, crossing the short distance between us. His hands were on my shoulders, fingers digging into my skin. I twisted against him, but he only held me harder.
“Abby, you’re the most important thing in my life right now. If you got hurt and I could have stopped it, I couldn’t live with myself.”
I wanted to spit at him. “You’re just jealous. You want something someone else has, like a possession, like your horses…your damn fillies. It’s not me that you want. You just want what belongs to Jake.”
Chase’s face was inches from mine, his breath hot on my cheeks.
“I want you because I love you, Abby.”
Chase lowered his head, his mouth seeking mine. I twisted my head, trying to avoid his kiss, but he found my lips anyway.
And in that instant, I was lost. I stopped struggling against him, instead throwing my body against his. He let go of my shoulders and my arms were around his neck, my fingers in his hair, pulling him to me.
I wasn’t looking for the truth anymore; this was for me now. I wanted Chase, urgently, on some deep level that I didn’t really understand, didn’t want to understand. I only had need and desire.
His lips raked over my mouth, his hands holding me against the length of him. We were locked in this grip for what seemed like an eternity, my body instantly heated and aching for release.
Chase broke away, scooping me up in his arms. The screen door slammed against the side of the house, almost torn from its hinges as we went into the house. He turned down the narrow hallway, pushing a door open with his shoulder.
He set me on my feet, my body sliding down his, every inch of me wanting contact with him. There was an instant where I could have run, the fleeting image of Jake in my mind, but it was gone in a heartbeat, consumed in the passion and lust that ran through my veins.
My fingers tore at Chase’s t-shirt, pulling the hem from his jeans, sliding my hand beneath, over his flat stomach. He pulled the shirt over his head, tossing it in the corner and my hands moved higher, over the broad expanse of his chest, my mouth descending on his hard dark nipples, biting and sucking.
Chase’s hands were searching for the buttons on my shirt, finally just tugging it over my head. I felt his hands at my breasts, and there was no hope for the bra this time. It came away in two pieces in his hands, dropped unceremoniously to the floor.
We broke apart briefly, struggling with zippers and snaps and buttons on jeans. Chase yanked mine down my legs, my panties carried along.
I reached greedily for Chase’s erection, peeling back his jeans, my hands wrapped around the shaft of his cock. I met his eyes, hot and intense, his lips pulled back in a feral smile that would have scared me had I not matched the one I knew was on my own face.
He had my breasts in his hands, palming my hard nipples, making me arch against him. I let go of his cock, sliding my hands up his body, pulling his face down. My mouth found his, lips and tongue and teeth teasing, prodding, biting, unrestrained.
Chase’s hands moved down my back, cupping my ass, pulling me hard against his body, his erection rubbing against my stomach.
In one swift movement, Chase picked me up, tipping me across the bed, my legs wrapping instinctively around his waist as he stood between them. He leaned forward, brought his mouth down on mine again, his hands planted on either side of my face, his fingers tangling in my hair. His kiss was brutal, lips grinding against mine, bruising them against my teeth.
His cock brushed against my body, up my thighs, tantalizingly close. Chase stood up then, pulling me by the hips to the very edge of the bed, bracing his knees against the mattress.
I looked up at him in the dim light spilling in from the open door behind him. His face was in cast in shadow but his eyes caught the light, boring down on me with an intensity that only made the fire inside me burn hotter.
“Oh, Chase!” I stretched my arms up, reaching for him, aching to feel his body against mine, to feel him inside me.
He drove himself into me with a hoarse cry, his body slamming into me, pushing me up the bed. His fingers dug into my hips, pulling me back to the edge of the bed, denying me the chance to hold him, to be crushed by his body.
“I want to watch you.” Each word was accompanied by a thrust of his cock into my body.
“I want to see you while I’m inside of you, Abby.”
I flung my arms over my head, letting him take me on his wild ride. He grabbed my legs, pulling them up his body, my heels resting on his shoulders, fingers caressing then pinching the insides of my thighs.
It was hard and fast, Chase taking no prisoners. The breath tore from his throat, his face contorted in a grimace that could have been as much pain as pleasure. There was no other sound from him but his harsh breathing.
My own body rocketed toward some dizzying peak. I pulled against Chase with my legs, arching my back, twisting myself against his body, his hands beneath my ass now, his fingers in my flesh.
When I came it was with terrific speed, my hands pulling the covers loose, my body arching up against Chase. He kept up his frantic pace, his eyes never leaving me as I flung myself against him, against the bed, every muscle taut. I felt him inside me, my body contracting around his cock, feeling every contour as I jerked and moaned beneath his hot gaze.
Only then, when I was on the downhill slide of my orgasm, my body fluid and yielding, did he lower himself to me, letting me wrap leaden arms around his neck, finally letting me kiss him.
He tore his mouth away; his final deep thrust into me accompanied by a sound of release…conquest. Buried in me, he shuddered violently, his hips grinding against me, the familiar flooding warmth of his orgasm filling me.
I held him against me then, his body covered in sweat, breathing hard. We stayed like that a long time, until he finally pulled away from me.
He looked down, his eyes unreadable in the dim room. I saw him hold out his hand and I took it, following blindly as he led me up the stairs to his own room.
We crawled into his big bed, under the sheets and blankets, arms around each other. I thought he’d fallen asleep; his breathing had changed, regular and deep. But then he spoke.
“You had other questions, didn’t you? About me, I mean. Ask if you want. I’ll tell you what you want to know, everything, no matter what it is.”
I was quiet a long time, long enough for him to say my name.
“I’m awake. I’m thinking.”
His laugh rumbled against my ear. “Okay. Just checking.”
“You said you had a sub, but something happened. What happened?”
“She fell in love with me. That simple. She wanted more than I could give her, way more than I was ready to give. She came into my life at a time when I’d decided I was never going to love any woman again. I cared about her, I did. But as a submissive. I cared about her safety, her pleasure, her well being. But I couldn’t love her. I finally told her she had to leave.”
Stripped (Dominated By The Billionaire) Guilty Pleasures #2 - BBW Erotic Romance Page 10