Just Let Me Love You

by S. R. Grey

  She’s looking at me, waiting, so I give her an answer. “Yes, it’s true.”

  She blows out a breath and reaches back, her hand grasping for a chair. “You and Chase are married?” Sitting down with a thud, she says, “When did this happen? How did I not know?” She turns to Will. “Were you there? How long have you known?”

  “I only found out yesterday,” Will replies. “Chase told me while we were at lunch. Right before…”

  He trails off, and I try to get us back to what’s more important at the moment.

  “We can talk about all of this later,” I state. “Right now, I want to see Chase.”

  Actually, I need to see Chase. I’ve missed him and ached for him. But knowing he’s hurt and in pain increases my pull to him. Our bond is that strong.

  Will says kindly, “Come on, Kay. I’ll take you to him.”

  My eyes flutter briefly to Abby. I’m not looking for her approval, but I don’t want more drama when Chase is released.

  Her green eyes meet mine, sad, resigned. Her son got married without telling her. He didn’t trust her enough to share. Abby knows she’s made mistakes, but the extent of the damage she has wrought has never been as clear to her as it is right now.

  I can’t be cruel, though, so I offer my hand to her, and say, “Come on, we can all go see him together.”

  Abby doesn’t take my hand; she makes no move to stand. “No,” she says. “He’s yours, Kay. This is the way it should be. Chase is a man, and you’re his wife. He doesn’t need his mom.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” I say.

  “It is, though.” Abby wipes at a single tear. “I lost him a long time ago. And I have no one to blame but myself.”

  I close my eyes. What can I say?

  “Come on,” Will says.

  I open my eyes and nod.

  And then we go to Chase.

  Chase

  My dreams are weird, with a past, a present, and a maybe-future. I mean, what else would this mean—me, Kay, and a little boy, riding in a car? There may be a little girl there, too, but I’m not sure.

  Back to the little boy…maybe he is supposed to be Will in my dream. But why would Will still be a little kid, while I’m my current age?

  Two more things: if the little boy is my kid brother then why are his eyes blue—like mine. Not green, like Will’s. And why is his hair dark—like Kay’s—not blond, not light-brown?

  I don’t have any answers, so I return to dreaming, only this time I dream of Kay. Shit, my dream is so vivid I swear I smell my girl—sweet, clean, pure. Kay tells me she’s not so pure, but she is. She’s the bright light to my dark soul. If she wasn’t in my life, where would I be? I was slipping and falling before I met her. Only a month out of prison and set on reforming—that was me. But I was still so drawn to sin.

  With Kay, for the first time in my life, I think I may make it. Sweet girl gives me purpose, and she gives me the strength to work through the things that have been holding me back.

  “Chase.” I hear her voice, almost as if she is right here at the hospital. Crazy.

  “Kay,” I reply, eyes closed tightly. “I wish you were really here.”

  A soft hand caresses my arm. “I am really here, Chase,” she says.

  “Why?”

  “You were in an accident, baby.” Oh, that’s right. “Will called, and I flew out last night.”

  I open my eyes.

  This is not a dream. Thank fuck.

  Kay is here, next to my bed.

  In my bed would be better, I think. And then I say exactly that.

  Will, behind Kay, mutters, “Dude, even in the hospital.” He shakes his head. “You are so oversexed.”

  I roll my eyes and think of about a hundred smartass comebacks. But now is not the time.

  “Hey, I’ll catch you in a few,” Will continues as he heads to the door. “You two need some time alone.”

  “You don’t have to go,” I say at the same time as Kay.

  We look at each other and smile.

  “No,” Will says, grinning. “I think you both could use some quiet time. Just keep it PG-13. Mom or the nurse could walk in at any time. Oh, and by the way, Chase, Mom knows you and Kay are married.”

  “Is that true?” My gaze goes to Kay.

  “Yes,” she replies.

  “Did you—”

  Will cuts me off, “No, I told Mom. She was giving Kay a hard time about coming back to your room.”

  Kay shrugs. “It’s no big deal, Chase.”

  Will clears his throat, and asks, “Are you mad at me, bro? That I told Mom your secret.”

  “No,” I reply.

  And I’m not angry, not at all. Kay and I weren’t planning on keeping our marriage a secret forever. Probably best if the news trickles out slowly like this.

  “All right, I’m out of here,” Will says on a loud exhale. “You kids behave now, okay?”

  Kay and I laugh and agree to “behave.”

  When my brother is out the door, I turn to my wife. “Will, the voice of reason,” I say, chuckling. “I really must have hit my head, like, hard.”

  “Speaking of which…” Kay frowns and scoots her chair closer to the bed. She touches the bandage covering the stitches on the side of my head. “How are you feeling?”

  “Eh,” I murmur, “so-so. Better, I have to say, now that you’re here.”

  Kay shakes her head, and she looks so damn stricken. “God, you gave me such a scare, Chase Gartner.”

  I reach for her hand. “Do you really think I’d leave you a widow this early in the game? We’re only just getting started, remember?”

  “God, Chase.” She closes her eyes and winces. “Don’t even say words like widow. A life without you wouldn’t be worth living.”

  “Hey…” I squeeze her hand. “Open your eyes and look at me.”

  When Kay’s soft caramels find my eyes, I continue. “Don’t say that. If something were to happen to me, I’d want you to go on.”

  In a voice choked on emotion, she whispers, “I really don’t think I could.”

  “You’d have to, Kay,” I insist.

  She shakes her head. “No. I swear I wouldn’t want to.”

  “Hey, hey.” I try a different way of convincing her. “What if it wasn’t just you? What if there was a child to live for?”

  We’ve had this talk before, but nothing has ever been one hundred-percent decided. Having this brush with mortality, though, has made me more determined than ever to create a child with the woman I love.

  I just hope she’s on the same page.

  “Have you thought about it?” I tentatively ask.

  She knows what I mean, and she replies, “Of course I’ve thought about it.”

  I can’t discern where her thoughts lie, so I say, “If you’re not ready, Kay—”

  “No, I’m ready.”

  My eyes hold hers. “You’re sure? Like, you’re for sure, for sure ready.”

  That earns me a smile from her, as well as a tiny laugh, and then a mock-chastising, “Chase.”

  But then, more seriously, she adds, “I’ve thought about it a lot. And, at first, after we originally talked about having a baby, I did have some reservations.”

  “Oh?”

  I must sound miffed, as Kay quickly amends, “Not about you, Chase. My reservations were about myself.”

  “You have to be kidding me. You’d make the best mom and you know it.”

  “Maybe,” she says, her tone doubtful.

  And then she tells me her fears.

  I understand how her past has shaped her view of herself, but still, I reassure her, “You’re going to be a great mother, babe. You can’t keep thinking about the past. We’ve been through this.”

  Kay is mostly healed, but she still sometimes doubts herself because of the Sarah-thing.

  But she sounds more certain of her abilities to parent when she says, “I know, Chase. I just slip sometimes, though.” And then she adds, �
�You’re going to be the best parent, though. Our child will be lucky to be loved by you.”

  Kay is always telling me I love with my whole heart, my whole being, and maybe that’s true. I do love completely, like how I love my brother…and how I love Kay. Thing is, my girl loves fully and completely, too.

  “Come here.” I tug her hand, urging her to come closer, even though I’m mired in tubes and wires.

  Kay helps me shift that shit aside, and then she’s right there with me on the hospital bed, lying by my side.

  I turn my head and lean down until my lips meet hers.

  And then I kiss her.

  With our lips touching, she murmurs, “I don’t want to hurt you, Chase, with all the tubes and stuff.”

  The thought of her hurting me is so laughable that I find myself pulling back and chuckling.

  “Hurt me?” I can’t stop laughing. “How in the world could you ever hurt me?”

  “You know…” She touches a tube running to my arm. “What if I knock something out?”

  “You won’t.” I pull her back to me. “And even if you did, I’ll survive.” As I brush my lips back and forth over hers, I whisper, “No more talking, okay?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She complies, and I kiss her. Her lips part, opening for me, and I touch my tongue to hers. Kay lets out a little moan and goes lax in my arms.

  I’m suddenly hard as fuck, and I want her like nobody’s business. “Lift up your dress,” I command.

  Kay leans back, and I take the opportunity to trail kisses down her neck, until I have her rasping, “Okay. Let me take my panties off.”

  I never stop kissing her, even as she lifts her dress to slip her panties down her legs. My lips travel down to her cleavage, kissing the neckline of her dress. And then I reach up and pop open a few buttons, exposing her lacy bra.

  Kay is practically panting as she moves to straddle me, and I push up the stupid, fucking hospital gown I’m wearing and give her the tip of my cock. “Unh…” she moans.

  She’s always incoherent at times like these, and I have to smile, pleased at my effect on her.

  “Ease down on me, baby girl.” Arching my hips, I make it simple for her to impale herself on my dick.

  And she does, with no hesitation.

  “Fuck,” I utter when we’re fully joined. “You are so fucking wet. You must like hospital sex.”

  “I like you, Chase Gartner,” she says.

  She circles her hips, and then moves up and down my shaft slowly and lazily. It’s all gentle and easy, at first. But then we start fucking—hard and dirty, and a little nasty. After all, what we’re doing is forbidden and we could easily get caught, which makes it all the better.

  Kay’s hands are on my chest, and my hands are in her hair. The bed’s making an awful racket, as is Kay, which compels me to whisper, “Shh, babe. Someone’s gonna hear us.”

  “I don’t care,” she tells me. “Just keep doing what you’re doing, Chase. Fuck me as hard as you can.”

  Her cursing, which is rare unless we’re in bed, makes me start to come. “Shit,” I groan. I prolong as long as I can, stilling inside of her, but my release is past the point of no return.

  Kay starts to pulse around me as I come.

  We are still panting, recovering, when, to my surprise, I realize I am still rock-hard.

  “Want to go again?” I ask, raising a brow and thrusting up into her.

  “Yes, but”—Kay glances at the door—“what if someone comes in.”

  I laugh. “You weren’t worried about someone coming in before.” A strategic shift of my hips, cock still buried deep inside, makes her look like she’s reconsidering.

  “Still want to stop?” I ask.

  “No, no way.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  And it’s true. Kay will always be my girl.

  Kay

  Messing around in Chase’s hospital bed is like playing with fire. And we find ourselves almost burnt. Luckily, though, I hear the voices outside the door before anyone ventures in.

  “We need to make sure we’re decent,” I whisper to Chase. “There’s someone in the hall.”

  But Chase is not done with me.

  He thrusts upward, hard. “Not yet,” he rasps, just before his hot mouth descends to one exposed breast.

  “Uh, I don’t—” Another forceful thrust, and I’m panting a different tune. “Oh, my God, I changed my mind. Don’t stop, don’t stop.”

  “Wasn’t planning on it,” Chase rasps.

  When he feels my release, he lets himself go, and not more than a minute later, the door swings open.

  “Close call,” I murmur as I’m adjusting my dress and jumping back over to the chair next to Chase’s bed with a speed I didn’t know I possessed.

  “Sheesh,” I say, out of breath and still straightening my clothes. “We were almost caught red-handed.”

  Chase adjusts the sheet on his bed and whispers over to me, “That’s what made it even more fun, right?”

  I can’t argue that point, so I just smile.

  A lady in a white lab coat, the doctor, walks over to the bed. She’s busy looking down at a clipboard, so I assume she’s seen nothing. Chase’s mom and Will are right behind her.

  But just then, when I think our secret will never be discovered, I notice my pink panties sticking out from under the sheet covering Chase. Oh, no!

  “How are we feeling today, Mr. Gartner?” the doctor asks, smiling kindly.

  Thank God she’s focused on Chase and not me, because I can’t stop staring at the rogue panties.

  Chase, unaware of my oversight in getting dressed, replies to the doctor, “Great, I feel really good. I think I’m ready to get out of here.”

  “Well, let’s check you over and then I’ll make a final decision on releasing you.”

  The doctor sends me an accusatory glance as she moves closer to Chase, and I’m fairly certain she’s figured out that we just had sex. After all, she is a doctor, right? She probably knows the signs to look for, like my flushed face, or Chase’s sly smile.

  Crap, I hope it doesn’t smell like sex in here. And then there are those damn pink panties. Talk about a dead giveaway.

  When the doctor glances back down at her clipboard, I attract Chase’s attention by nodding to the incriminating evidence of our lust gone wild. He chuckles when he sees the article of clothing I’m referring to. And then, to my relief, he covertly tucks the evidence farther under the sheet, all without the doctor noticing a thing.

  Abby, though, sees Chase’s actions and frowns accordingly.

  Will, the ever-observant little shit, barks out a laugh.

  “Great,” I mutter under my breath. I know then that four of the five people in the room have now seen those damn panties.

  The doctor looks up from her clipboard and gets down to business, focusing on her patient. After checking Chase’s vital signs, she examines his head wound. With the bandage off, the stitches are in full view, and I wince at how painful they appear. There’s a jagged line of black threads along the side of Chase’s head.

  Covered, his injury didn’t seem so bad, not as real. But I can’t deny the icy stab of reality that comes over me when I see how badly he’s been hurt. It’s a grim reminder that Chase could have been ended up a lot worse than this.

  Reaching over, I grab his hand and mouth, “I love you,”

  “I love you, too,” he replies, his eyes searching mine. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  Part of Chase’s silky, light-brown hair has been shaved off. When he sees me staring and staring, he chuckles and says, “Guess I’ll be getting this evened up and going back to a prison buzz cut for a while.”

  “Guess so,” I say. But I’m sure you’ll still look hot, I think to myself.

  Abby and Will continue to hang back, observing everything quietly.

  While the doctor is writing notes on her clipboard, Chase asks her, “So, what’s the verdict, doc? Am
I good to go?”

  “Actually, yes,” she replies, glancing up. “I’m discharging you today.”

  With his eyes moving to me, Chase asks, “Any travel restrictions?”

  The doctor shakes her head. “No, no restrictions at all. But I want you to follow-up with your family physician when you return to Ohio. And, of course, anything unusual that pops up, like sudden-onset headaches, blurred vision, that sort of thing, I want you to head straight to the ER.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Chase replies with a mock-salute and a smile that delivers.

  The doctor blushes at Chase’s charming ways.

  “Anyway,” she says, smiling back at Chase. “A nurse will be in with instructions for your aftercare. I think if all goes well, you should be right as rain from here on out.”

  “Not that he was all that right beforehand,” Will mutters.

  He’s teasing, but Abby quickly chastises him. “Will!”

  Chase laughs and says, “Relax, Mom.” Turning to his brother, he adds. “And you—just wait till I’m back to one-hundred percent. We’ll see who’s ‘right,’ then. Or more likely, who is left upright.”

  “Bring it on, bro,” Will shoots back as he pretends to flex.

  Abby rolls her eyes, but like how I feel, there is relief and happiness in her expression. She’s glad Chase and Will are both okay and able to joke around. I know this because the alternative is unthinkable…for both her and me.

  The doctor leaves, and Chase and I get down to the business of discussing when we should head back to Ohio.

  “You should stay a while longer,” Abby breaks in. “Greg will be back tomorrow. I’d like to make a special dinner so we can all celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?” Chase wants to know.

  “That you and Will are okay, for one. And”—her gaze flits from Chase’s face to mine—“we should also celebrate that you two are now married.”

  I know this is Abby’s way of saying she’s accepted our marriage, even though we chose an unorthodox route.

  “So, it’s decided?” Abby prompts.

  “I don’t know, Mom,” Chase says. “I kind of just wanted to go home, you know?”

  “Yeah,” Abby replies, eyes downcast, “I know you need to get back.”

  But when Will pipes in with, “Please, dude, what’s one more day?” I know we’ll be staying through the weekend. Not that I mind.