Breathe (28 page)

I could tell by the seriousness mingled with serious warmth in his eyes he meant that. All of it. All he’d said.

Every word.

And because he did, I smiled at him.

His eyes dropped to my mouth before they closed slowly. That warm, raw thing I’d seen over pizza and deep conversation our first date was sweeping through his handsome features before he did what he did that night. Eyes closed, he tipped his head forward so his forehead was touching mine.

“Chace,” I whispered, watched his eyes open and his head went back.

Then he announced, “Time to feed you.”

I blinked. His body moved as if he was going to move away from me but my arms tightened around him.

“Chace,” I called again, he stilled and looked at me.

Then something else hit me and since I had his attention, I had to say something about it.

So I did, but I didn’t say it.

I stammered it.

“I… uh, well, um… you know… uh, that is,” I finished on a rush, “what about you?”

His features cleared and it was then he smiled at me.

It was a new smile. Wicked.

And also wicked hot.

Oh my.

Then he said quietly, “Just had my hand down your pants, honey, still gotta know, how real can you take it right now?”

“Real?”

“Real.”

I didn’t know the answer to that question.

But he told me I was safe in that bed and since Chace stopped giving mixed messages, I’d never felt unsafe around him.

So I invited, “Sock it to me.”

He kept smiling his wicked smile, but it was now tinged with amusement. He rolled partly into me so I had no choice but to go to my back. He was partly on top of me and he pulled one arm from around me to plant a forearm in the bed beside me.

Then he looked down at me, dipped his face back to close and he said gently, “Later, for you, I’m gonna take my time. I’m gonna do everything I can to give you everything you need to prepare to take me. What I couldn’t know is if you take care of you. If you don’t, like it just did, it could go fast for you so this wouldn’t give me time to prepare you. Now,” his lips tipped up, “you’re good. It’ll give me the time I need. Then it’ll be good again for you and also for me.”

Okay, maybe I wasn’t ready for that kind of real. I knew this because I felt my cheeks warm.

Still, I mumbled, “Oh. Okay.”

Chace chuckled so I knew he didn’t miss my blush. He bent and brushed his mouth against mine before he lifted away again and whispered, “We’ll work up to straight talk about sex.”

This seemed like a good idea.

“I’d appreciate that,” I whispered back.

Chace’s body shook a little with his amusement. I didn’t have the chance to feel much of it because he rolled over me then pulled me out of bed and onto my feet.

It was at this point I realized my jeans were undone and I was wearing nothing up top but my emerald green, satin, demi-cup bra with the little, tight diagonal pleats across the cups and tiny edge of dove gray lace.

Chace was bent to tag my shirt off the floor and my hands quickly went to my jeans.

He straightened, his eyes dropped to my torso and stayed there as his hand came out to offer me my shirt and I got the zip up.

“Take that, I’ll do this,” he ordered, his hand not holding my shirt coming out to curl into my waistband and he tugged me to him.

I bit my lip, took the shirt and started to pull it on.

It was over my head and Chace’s fingers had done up my button and were working my belt when he muttered, “When we work up to straight talk, I’ll tell you exactly how I feel about your bra.”

Oh my fraking Lord.

Well, one thing about that, it was good to know the bra was a worthwhile purchase.

I yanked my shirt down and avoided Chace’s eyes.

He finished with my belt but used a finger hooked in the buckle to tug me even closer and the intimacy of this sent my eyes skidding to him.

“I’ll amend my statement in a way since you’re safe with me anywhere but especially in my bed and also especially in this room,” he told me the instant he got my eyes.

“Uh… okay,” I whispered, happy to hear it, even if it was mostly a repeated statement though not getting why he said it.

Chace, who had demonstrated often he could read me, read me. I knew this when he kept talking.

“What I’m sayin’, Faye, is, you’re avoiding my eyes because maybe you’re embarrassed or feelin’ shy and uncertain about what to do next.”

His hand came up, shifted my hair off my shoulder then curled around the side of my neck. But his eyes never left mine throughout this or when he used his finger hooked into my belt buckle to pull me even closer and his face dipped to mine.

“I like you,” he whispered. “I hope you’re gettin’ that. I like all I know about you even what I already knew that you were gonna tell me earlier. That bein’ that no one’s been in there. That is, no one now but me. And last, I like knowin’ the town’s cute, sweet, pretty, shy librarian who I’m datin’ wears sexy underwear.” His smile hit his eyes which were all I could see and he went on, “I like it a lot, baby. A fuckuva lot. So you got not one thing to be embarrassed, shy or uncertain about. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I whispered, giving him a small, relieved smile because I was relieved and not in a small way.

“Good,” he whispered back, lifted his chin, kissed my nose then let go of me in the two places he had hold of me but grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the room.

Seeing as my eyes were closed since he was kissing me and carrying me on the way to his room, on the way out of it, I could finally take in his house.

Which, as he moved me through it, was really nice. It was an extension of him. Masculine (very), good taste and western.

It was also massive. We kept going (and going and going!) and then finally hit an enormous room that was both family room and kitchen. They were enormous in their own right but put together they were
massive
. Not to mention his sectional which was the like I’d never seen before. It was, essentially, three full couches.
Three.

I figured Misty lived here with him but I didn’t figure he lounged on his couch with her watching TV, mostly because he told me he spent zero time with her if he could help it. This meant that couch had been a couch for one. Which was crazy.

“Uh… you have a lot of room,” I noted as he led me to the kitchen.

“Yep,” he agreed.

“This is a lot of room for just one person,” I remarked as he stopped me by an island that could act as a guest bed for three adolescent children. Just pump up an air mattress, toss it on top and hope they didn’t roll off.

He didn’t reply to my remark.

Instead, he asked, “You drink red or white wine with tacos?”

I looked to him to see he was standing at his fridge. “Tacos?”

“Ground beef, packet seasoning, store bought shit to put on top. I’m not a cook. Don’t like doin’ it. But gotta eat and when I eat, I like to eat shit I like. If it comes out of a packet, so be it. They might not be Rosalinda’s or even close. But they don’t suck. So, we’re havin’ tacos.”

“I like tacos,” I informed him though I liked Rosalinda’s Mexican food better. You had to drive to Chantelle to get it, but Chantelle wasn’t very far and Rosalinda’s was so good, it was worth the trip. When I didn’t drive to Chantelle but I had a taste for tacos, I used the packet stuff too. So I decided to inform Chace of this fact. “I also make packet tacos, FYI.”

“Good to know,” he muttered, his lips tipped up then, “Red or white?”

“Red.”

He moved to a bottle of wine sitting on his counter.

I moved to a stool, pulled it out and hefted my booty on it.

“Room to grow.”

This was Chace. I stared at his back at his weird comment that came out of nowhere as he shifted to the side to open a drawer and pull out a corkscrew.

“Pardon?”

He nabbed the bottle, turned to me and his eyes locked on mine in a way I forgot how to breathe.

“Room to grow,” he repeated then explained. “Another thing that sucked about life when my future included Misty. Didn’t think I’d have what I wanted and what I wanted was why I got this place. I bought this house to put a woman in it then plant a family in it. So it’s big because I want three kids. Room to grow.”

Holy.

Frak
.

“Room to grow,” I whispered breathily, unable to tear my eyes from his.

“Yep,” he answered firmly then asked. “You want kids?”

“Uh… yeah.” I was still whispering and it was still breathily.

“How many?” he went on.

“Three.”

Yep, still whispering. Yep, still breathy. Also, incidentally, it was the truth.

Chace smiled.

I quit breathing.

I forced my eyes from his and took in the bottle of wine.

Then I asked, “Didn’t you get champagne?”

“Fuck,” he muttered and my gaze went back to him. “Forgot.”

I was disappointed and tried to hide it but I still enquired, “You forgot the champagne?”

“No,” he answered, putting the bottle of red back on the counter. “You leadin’ the night tellin’ me you had a clean pair of panties in your purse, I forgot that I bought champagne at all.”

I bit my lip even though I got a little happy niggle that I was able to make him forget anything.

He grinned and I had a feeling, the way he did it, that he read my mind.

I had no time to react to this because he walked down a back hall and disappeared.

He came back with two trumpet shaped champagne flutes that had cute teeny, tiny little horseshoes etched around the bottom just above the stem. I didn’t know how but they managed to be classy and cool rather than looking kitschy like some of that kind of thing could look. Perhaps it was the etchings which were precise, almost elegant and not cartoony. Perhaps it was the quality of the crystal that was so clean and fine it showed prisms in his overhead lights. Whatever it was, they were awesome.

Chace set them on the island by me, his manner like they were no better than plastic and headed back to the fridge as I offered, “Anything I can do to help?”

He turned with the bottle of champagne, the fridge closing behind him and had his mouth open to speak when we both heard a knock on the door.

His eyes went in the direction of the front door. They were narrowed under drawn brows and his jaw had gone hard. It was kind of a scary look. But my eyes dropped to his shirt, which was untucked, the three buttons I’d unbuttoned were still unbuttoned and I saw a sprinkling of reddish brown chest hair. Not a thick, matte of hair but a short, sexy
sprinkling.

By sexy I actually meant unbelievably
fraking
sexy.

My mouth started watering.

Chace would undoubtedly not think chest hair was sexy, but I knew whatever he was thinking were very unsexy thoughts when he growled, “Fuckin’ shit,” put the bottle on the counter by the glasses and came to me.

He ran his fingers through the length of my hair at the side, bent and whispered, “Be right back.” Then he kissed my forehead, his fingers left my hair and I twisted on my stool to watch him prowl (oh jeez, he was prowling) to the door.

Even with him prowling and impatient, my eyes watched him move, his broad shoulders not even close to being hidden by his shirt, his long legs in his jeans, his arms loose at his sides and it was, as ever, a good show.

Over dinner at my place that week, he’d told me he was a swimmer and ran track in high school and kept it up since then. He swam at the YMCA in Chantelle twice a week, ran five miles twice a week, ten miles once a week and had weights at his house where he did weight training twice a week.

This effort paid off for him in a big way and since he maintained his body and pushed it on occasion, he knew what it could do and the way he walked, in total command of his frame, communicated that.

I had a feeling with that and what had happened in his bedroom, this boded well for what Chace referred to as “later”. A shiver ran up my spine the likes I’d never felt before but I liked it a whole lot.

I smiled to myself and my eyes drifted to the champagne. I needed a drink. I’d had a Chace’s hand down my pants orgasm. That definitely called for champagne. I wanted to open the bottle but from our very first date, if Chace was with me, I’d not poured myself a drink or bought myself one.

It was then it occurred to me that Chace was kind of old-fashioned. He had no trouble with me cooking for him and serving up the food. But he didn’t want me to pour my own drink. He helped with dishes if he was at my place but he was strictly a dry and put away man. Strictly as in, there were clearly boundaries. Men didn’t wash. They dried and put away. Men didn’t serve up food. They poured drinks.

It was definitely old-fashioned.