She drew her knees back, giving him more access, and she tightened around him while giving his ass another squeeze. He came then, seated himself so firmly in her that she didn’t know where he began and she ended and she didn’t care. In that instant they were one flesh, united in the sublime perfection of the best orgasm of her life.
His breath came in jagged little puffs and he jerked and pulsed inside of her, setting off little sparklers of pleasure deep inside her womb. Tension melted out of every muscle and the smile that slid over her mouth was absolutely euphoric. She knew she looked like a smitten moron and she didn’t care.
She slid a finger up his spine and he drew back to look at her.
“I think that you’re going to have to take advantage of me again,” Rorie said.
He grinned. “I’m going to need more beer.”
She was still breathless, but managed to chuckle. “I’ll buy stock in Anheuser-Busch.”
His smile faded a bit, turned serious. “I leave in two days.”
Rorie understood exactly what he meant. I’m temporary. This won’t last. I can’t stay. And if she’d learned anything from Holland, it was that. Chase would leave. But she was going to get as much of him as she could before that happened and she’d deal with the consequences later.
“Then we’d better not waste any time, huh?”
6
AS A RULE, Chase didn’t spend the night in a woman’s bed. Though he was a soldier and had been trained to fall asleep when the opportunity existed whatever the circumstances—honest to God, he could doze through a hurricane while wrapped around a light post if necessary—he still nevertheless always knew his exit plan and typically rolled out of bed a few minutes post coital bliss. The implied intimacy of actually spending the night with a woman fostered a false sense of hope for the relationship and therefore he typically abstained.
He hadn’t last night.
His gaze drifted to Rorie, who was presently seated on his bed going through a box of his old photographs and school paraphernalia he’d never bothered to get rid of. A soft smile curled her lips and the light from the tall windows spilled over her hair, painting the black locks with a silvery glow.
“You were such a baby,” she said, studying an old baseball picture. “Just look at that face. Smooth as a baby’s butt.”
“I don’t know if I like that comparison,” Chase muttered, sending her a dark look while he carefully stacked up old clothes to be given to a local charity.
She sighed. “I always thought you were handsome, you know,” she told him matter-of-factly. “You and Richard Chandler. But you were the one I used to dream about going to the prom with.”
Irrationally pleased, Chase looked up at her. “Really?”
She laughed. “I had the biggest crush on you,” she confessed with a self-conscious chuckle. “And when I went to work for your father, it only got worse. He was always telling me stories about you, how spectacular you were.”
Chase felt his expression freeze with surprise. He’d never imagined that his father would ever have had anything nice to say about him. He’d never issued the first pat on the back or paid him the least bit of a compliment.
“He’d show me parts of the house you’d worked on or tell me about your promotions,” she continued, unaware of the little bombshell she’d just dropped. She looked up and grinned at him. “You’ve had the starring role in a lot of my fantasies for years,” she confided. “I bet that sounds silly to you, doesn’t it?”
Chase grinned. “You just told me that you’ve had fantasies about me,” he said, running the pad of his thumb along her cheek. “And that’s not silly in the least. It’s damned flattering.” He frowned. “Of course, whether or not I’ve lived up to those fantasies…now, that’s another kettle of fish altogether.”
She laughed and the sound made something near his heart shift. Affection welled in his chest as he stared at her and he suddenly realized her answer was much more important than he’d realized. “Oh, you have more than lived up to them, I can assure you.” She sighed. “Numerous times, as you well know.”
Chase grinned, unaccountably relieved. And he did know.
Last night on the kitchen table, then again just after midnight in her canopied bed—the one his father had actually bought for her, she’d confided—and again this morning, in the shower they’d taken together. He couldn’t get enough of her. Couldn’t seem to slake his lust, to take the edge off. It was slightly terrifying, particularly considering he was leaving bright and early the day after tomorrow. This explosive relationship would come to an abrupt end, would finish just as quickly as it had flared. The thought left him unreasonably depressed.
Chase told himself that he’d met her at a vulnerable point in his life, at a crossroads between tragedies—Mosul and the death of his father. He told himself that he was clinging to her because of the sex and the sex was phenomenal because of the extraordinary circumstances.
And he was hoping if he kept telling himself this, at some point he’d start believing it.
He grinned at her and felt masculine satisfaction swell in his chest. “I aim to please.”
“And hit the bull’s-eye every time.”
He shrugged. “What’s the point otherwise?”
“Exactly, but from past experience I can tell you that not all men are as concerned with hitting the mark as you are.”
Though he knew she wasn’t a virgin, the idea of another man touching her made a red haze swim before his eyes and a nauseous feeling swirl unhappily in his gut.
“Oh?” he asked, fishing, of course.
She looked up, seemingly realizing that she’d said too much. “Not a lot of experience,” she qualified. “I was a late bloomer and didn’t have a lot of time for… Well, I just didn’t have the time to invest in relationships. I dated Shane Compton for a while. Do you remember him?”
Chase nodded, his jaw hardening. “Vaguely.”
“We were very briefly engaged.”
He pictured her in a white gown and felt something strange shift around in his chest. He’d never imagined a lover in a white gown. Not once and, while he was firmly rooted in denial, he wasn’t so stupid that he didn’t recognize the significance. “How briefly?”
A rueful smile drifted over her lips and she tossed another picture back into the box. “Long enough for him to convince me not to wait for the honeymoon, then he called everything off.”
“Bastard.”
“Slimy, miserable, rotten lying bastard,” she corrected, making him smile. “But it was my own fault for being stupid. I knew better. I just had wanted to wait. My parents hadn’t and I wasn’t what you would call a happy surprise. I was a we-have-to-get-married baby and I don’t think either of them ever truly forgave me for that.”
He felt his fingers tighten around a T-shirt and was surprised at the level of violence he suddenly wanted to deliver on her behalf. “Bitch and bastard respectively, then.”
“I agree.”
No wonder his father had done so much for her, had essentially taken her in. She hadn’t had anyone. He knew she’d always been working at the Dip-N-Sip when he’d gone in. Clearly that had been out of necessity. She’d already mentioned that she’d grown up in Piney Acres, a run-down little trailer park on the bad side of town.
“Do you see them much? Your parents, I mean?”
She shook her head. “Not if I can help it. All they ever want is money, so I try to avoid them as much as possible.”
He felt his shoulders sag. “That sucks, Rorie.”
“That’s why your dad was so special to me, Chase.” She looked up and her bright blue eyes caught his. She cocked her head. “I know he wasn’t your favorite person, but he was good to me. In a lot of ways, he saved me.”
“You would have saved yourself.”
“True,” she admitted. “But it would have taken me a lot longer than it did. Your dad gave me a job and put me through school. Did I tell you that?” she asked, referr
ing to the latter, he assumed.
“That he’d sent you to college? No,” he admitted.
“He did.” She looked around the room and released a little sigh. “It’s funny, though, you know? You grew up here in this beautiful house and saw nothing but a pile of old boards and hard work. I grew up in a crappy single-wide and dreamed of living in a house like this.” She laughed softly. “I thought if I had great home I wouldn’t have any problems. I guess anywhere can be a prison if it’s somewhere you don’t want to be, eh?”
Chase silently agreed. Unsettled, he opened another drawer and started pulling things out. “It wasn’t so much the house as it was Holland,” he finally told her, not altogether sure of why he felt compelled to share that little bit of insight with her.
“Oh?” she said, using his own ploy against him.
He grinned, letting her know that he hadn’t missed it, and she smiled in return. He felt that peculiar sensation in his chest again and quelled the panic that suddenly set in.
Easy, boy. It’s nerves. It’s the sex. It’s the circumstances. Nothing to freak out over.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m glad he was good to you, Rorie, I really am.” He winced. “But he made my life a living hell.”
She made a sympathetic sound. “I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t be. He was the one who owed me an apology.” And he’d never get it now, Chase realized. Things would never be resolved. He would never get the pat on the back, the I’m-proud-of-you-son moment he’d secretly yearned for most of his life. The opportunity was past.
“He was that terrible, then?”
“He was horrible. Nothing—nothing—was ever good enough. Do you have any idea how many times I refinished the spindles on the staircase? How many times I stripped, sanded and restained each and every one of those difficult little things? Dozens,” he told her. “Over and over and over again. ‘Surely you can do better than that, Chase,’” he mimicked his father. “‘You missed a spot here, son. Start over.’” He laughed bitterly. “And he meant it. There was no repairing one little bad spot—it was redo the whole damned thing. Every time.” Another disbelieving chuckle rumbled from his chest. “Every freaking time.”
“We did refurbish the carriage house together, so I do have a general idea of what you’re talking about.” She frowned. “Though he must have learned his lesson from you because he would catch himself criticizing and would stop and tell me I was doing fine.” She laughed. “And, of course, if he was being unreasonable, I’d simply tell him he was full of shit.”
Chase felt his eyes widen and he choked on a shocked laugh. “You didn’t.”
She laughed. “Oh, yes, I did. Don’t get me wrong, I was grateful, but I wasn’t going to let him bully me. I was not a perfectionist and if that’s what he was looking for, then he would have to do it himself.” She chuckled and her gaze turned inward. “He was shocked at first—I don’t guess anyone had ever had the nerve to argue with him before—but he just laughed it off and told me I had moxie.”
Chase shook his head. “I don’t think he would have laughed it off if I’d told him he was full of shit.”
She chewed the inside of her cheek and her eyes twinkled with humor. “Probably not. You were his son, after all. I wasn’t and therefore probably got away with a lot of things you didn’t.” She paused. “But he always bragged about you, you know. Said you had a better hand than seasoned carpenters and had an eye for detail that was unmatched.”
Shock detonated through him once again and he tried to play it off by lobbing a pair of old socks into the waste-basket. He cleared his throat. “Really? Wow. He, uh…” He laughed uneasily. “He never mentioned anything like that to me.”
“That’s too bad,” she said, as though she hadn’t just punched a hole through his gut with her offhand account. “It would have been better coming from him.”
True, Chase thought, his throat working with the effort to stay clear. Emotion he’d denied and hadn’t wanted to deal with reared up and threatened to take him down.
He was afraid he wouldn’t resurface.
Rather than deal with it—feel it—he launched himself at Rorie, tackling her against the bed. The breath whooshed out of her lungs and she squealed with delight as his lips found her neck.
“I thought we weren’t going to do this until after we’d gotten your room finished.”
“Change of plans.” He unbuttoned her shirt and buried his nose in her cleavage.
“No beer first?”
“You talk too much.”
She flexed her hips up against him and her hot little hands tugged his shirt from his jeans. “Then you should probably find a better way to occupy my mouth.”
Smiling, he kissed her again. “I aim to please.”
7
“THE INNER SANCTUM,” Chase breathed, stepping into his father’s room the next day.
“I’ve never been in here, either,” Rorie said. “Just walked by and caught a glimpse through the open door.”
Holland had had a canopied bed, as well, only his was much more grand and masculine. The top was wide, heavily carved and draped with red velvet. The wood—mahogany, she thought—was dark and topped with marble. Wool rugs painted the floor and vintage Audubon prints hung on the walls. The room smelled of orange furniture polish and Old Spice and her eyes inexplicably filled with tears.
She missed her friend.
“Hey, hey, hey,” Chase said, wrapping her in a hug. She must have sniffled and given herself away. “It’s all right, Rorie.”
She swallowed thickly. “It will be, I know. I just miss him.”
Predictably, as soon as the conversation turned to anything remotely close to emotional territory, Chase kissed her. And that kiss almost always turned into something much more substantial. She knew he was into her, knew that he enjoyed the sex as much as she did—and that was a lot—but this determination simply to not think about the tough things by substituting thought for action wasn’t healthy.
Unfortunately, he was leaving in the morning and she didn’t have the willpower or the wherewithal to tell him that.
Because, God help her, she wanted him just as much.
Though it took every bit of strength she possessed, she slowly ended the kiss. “We’d better get to work,” she reminded him. “I have plans for you this evening, so we’ve got to stick to the timeline.”
He nodded regretfully. “You’re right.” He turned to the closet. “All of the clothes can be given to charity, of course,” he said. “Let’s start there.”
They worked in silence for the better part of the morning, carefully bagging up the contents of Holland’s closet, which, strangely enough, included a lot of Chase’s mother’s things. That had thrown him. “He never got rid of this stuff,” he said, fingering a silk blouse. “Wow. I just always thought…”
“You thought what?”
His lips twisted. “I thought that he didn’t care that she’d left and yet he kept her things, almost as if he were hoping she’d come back.”
“Come back?” Rorie asked, confused. “I thought she died.”
His expression was thoughtful and he continued to stare at the shirt. “She did. But she’d left first. Packed a single bag and walked out on us.”
Ahh. Holland had never mentioned that part. He’d just told her that Serena had died. She swallowed, wondering if he’d been too ashamed to tell her that his wife had left him. And not just him, but her son. How could she? How could she have left them? Her gaze drifted to Chase. But it certainly explained a lot.
“He would talk about her occasionally,” she told him. “Said she could make the best apple pie he’d ever had in his life and that the first time he’d seen her smile, he knew she was the girl for him.”
“I can’t believe he didn’t get rid of this stuff,” Chase muttered. “I watched him wad up her obituary and toss it in the trash. He hadn’t batted a lash, hadn’t shed the first tear.”
“Granted, that’s
the usual way people express grief, but not everyone is the same.” You take me to bed when you get too close to an emotional meltdown, she thought but didn’t say. Rorie blew out a breath. “He cared, Chase. He just kept everything close to his vest.”
“I wish he hadn’t,” he said. “I always felt weak for caring that she’d walked out on us.”
Her head jerked up. “Weak? For caring that your mother left you?” She was appalled. How could he— Why would he—
His mouth curled into that cynical smile. “You live with the ice monster, you take on some of his qualities.”
“But he wasn’t an ice monster, was he?”
Chase shoved the blouse into the bag. “Not as much as I’d thought,” he muttered.
Well, that was progress at least. She started to point out that she’d thought he was cold for not crying at his own father’s funeral, but once again bit her tongue. Chase Harrison had absolutely no idea how to express his emotions. He covered pain with a grin and substituted sex for the harder stuff, the things he didn’t want to deal with. He was a master at avoiding anything emotionally unpleasant.
And she was relatively certain she was falling in love with him. Not just the fantasy, not as a byproduct of the crush, but him.
And that was going to be especially emotionally unpleasant when he left tomorrow morning.
IF FINDING his mother’s clothes still waiting for her in the closet had shaken Chase, then discovering the scrapbook of his accomplishments tucked inside his father’s bedside drawer rattled him to his foundation. He felt the bed shift as Rorie settled in next to him.
“What have you got there?” She gasped and traced a finger over a newspaper clipping announcing his ROTC scholarship. “Look at you,” she breathed. “What’s this for?”
He told her, but had to clear his throat twice before he could get the words out. He flipped through the rest of the book, his world shifting with every page.
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