Breathe (32 page)

He slid his hand down to curl it around the back of her neck and he whispered, “Mornin’, baby.”

She blinked and he watched her lick her lips, his gut clenching a good way this time, a fucking good one and she breathed, “That sounds a lot better in real life.”

Chace grinned.

“Not that it isn’t good on the phone,” she hastened to add.

Chace’s grin turned into a smile.

“Or that the phone isn’t real life,” she continued.

Chace just kept smiling.

“Just that it’s better in person,” she finished.

Chace’s body started shaking with his chuckle.

He might be amused but she was absolutely not wrong.

He bent his head, pressed his face in her neck and whispered against her skin, “You feelin’ okay?”

“Yeah,” she replied and his arm gave her a squeeze.

“Inside,” he clarified gently. “Okay?”

“A little achy,” she told him quietly. “Not a bad achy. Just a heretofore unknown, um… achy.”

“Bath didn’t help,” he muttered.

For some reason, his words made her relax deeper into his frame.

After this, her soft musical voice came at him, still quiet. “It isn’t bad but I’ll take some ibuprofen with breakfast.”

He lifted his head and looked down at her in his kitchen, his shirt, his arms in the morning.

He was wrong.

Or maybe it was just that yesterday, she was fucking pretty.

Today, she was beautiful.

And today, she was his.

She tipped her head to the side.

“Do you have any?”

He wasn’t following.

“Any what?”

“Ibuprofen.”

Right. She was achy.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“Good,” she muttered, her eyes drifted to the side and then came back to him. “Bacon, honey.”

“Right,” he whispered, bent his neck, kissed her nose and let her go.

She turned to the bacon.

He moved to the cupboard where he kept his vitamins and painkillers.

“So, making lemonade out of lemons, now I get to ask you since you’re awake instead of springing it on you,” she started. “Do you like poached eggs?” He grabbed the bottle of ibuprofen, looked at her as he closed the cupboard and saw she was grinning at him over her shoulder. “I make world class poached eggs.”

Chace felt his lips tip up. “World class?”

“Well, they haven’t been sanctioned thus by a cordon bleu panel but my Dad calls them that.”

He moved in behind her, slid an arm around her, hand gliding over his shirt and hitting the silk of her nightie at her belly as his other hand put the bottle by her coffee mug.

In her neck he muttered, “Yeah, I like poached eggs.”

That got him a breathy, “Good.”

He kissed her neck and moved away to get himself a mug for coffee.

“Honey?” she called as he was pouring it. His head turned her way to see her face soft, her ear dipped to her shoulder, her crystal blue eyes intent on him. “Hazelnut half and half,” she went on quietly. “Thank you for thinking of that. My favorite.”

Clearly, her father hadn’t phoned since his visit and briefed her about their plans for next weekend. Or if he did, he understandably didn’t share that part.

Chace was going to have to tell her about Silas Goodknight’s visit. He’d intended to do it last night.

He’d do it that morning.

After he very quickly ate her world class poached eggs.

And after he, not very quickly, ate other parts of her.

Then he’d tell her.

* * * * *

Something Chace learned about Faye the night before was that, with very few inhibitions and minimal coaxing to get her beyond them, Faye trusted him and had zero issues with giving herself to him, giving into what he was making her feel and enjoying the fuck out of it.

This was something that held true that morning after poached eggs, coffee and enough light, non-taxing conversation to ascertain that she was, indeed, comfortable with him in his house, his shirt and her nightie.

Which meant he was open to picking her up, carrying her to the couch and making short work of getting her excited and squirming under him so he could pull off her panties and give her a very hot, very long orgasm using his mouth between her legs to do it.

But something he learned about Faye that morning after he made her come, moved over her, settled them both on their sides, held her as she came down and their after oral sex whispers went from little bits of nothing to him telling her about her father’s visit was something that surprised him.

That was that Faye Goodknight had a fucking explosive temper.

It was, like everything about her, cute.

But it was also seriously volatile.

He learned this when he shared about her father and felt her body go rock-solid in his arms as he watched her eyes narrow.

His arms around her tightened in an effort at containment when he quit talking and she asked in a quiet voice that was not her usual sweet, cute quiet but a dangerous quiet, “Pardon?”

“Honey, it’s okay” he assured her. “He was doin’ his duty as a Dad and it ended well.”

She said nothing for several long seconds.

Then, as if he didn’t speak, she repeated, “
Pardon?
”

“Faye –”

He got no further because she tore out of his arms, sitting up abruptly. She rolled the half an inch she had to the edge of the couch which meant she nearly fell over the side. Moving quickly, if angrily, she somehow managed to get her feet under her, straightened up with her head bent, whipping around, taking her gleaming sheets of hair with it so they flowed with her movements.

She did this while she demanded to know, “Where’s my fraking purse?”

“Faye –” he tried again as she bent over, snatched up her sexy green satin panties and clumsily pulled them up her legs, nearly tripping, cute as all fuck.

Chace, head in his hand, elbow in the couch, watched with not a small amount of absorption as her heart-shaped ass appeared briefly before she settled the panties on her hips and his shirt fell over her again, hiding her from his view.

Through this, she cut him off and kept ranting.

“I’d kill him but I love him so that’s out. This means he gets the edge of my tongue. I mean, I like hazelnut half and half but I cannot
believe
he showed at your house unannounced to say what he said! Now where’s my
fraking
purse?”

She was stomping, heading toward the arch, her neck twisting this way and that. She spied something and changed directions jerkily, coming back his way as Chace got up on a forearm in the couch.

“Faye, honey, calm down. It was not a big deal.”

She snatched the phone out of the base that was on the table over the side of the sectional and her eyes sliced to him.

Oh yeah. Totally fucking pissed.

And totally cute.

Chace fought back a smile.

“It is to me!” she snapped loudly, bent her head, her hair fell forward and he heard his phone beeping because her thumb was jabbing at the buttons.

Chace pushed out of the couch, got to his feet and rounded it as he watched her put the phone to her ear and start pacing.

“Mom,” she said into it before he got to her, “I want to talk to Dad.
Immediately.
”

Since he didn’t make it to her in time, Chace decided to settle in and enjoy the show. So he rested his ass on the back of the couch, stretched out his legs, crossed them at the ankles, his arms on his chest and did just that.

“Yes, there’s something
wrong,
” she continued, still pacing. “Let me talk to Dad.”

There was a pause while she halted in a stilted way and stared obviously unseeing out his French doors.

Then she went on, “I
know
it’s time for church. I don’t
care
if you’re late. This is important. You can sneak in the back.”

Another pause to let her mother speak before she carried on.

“I don’t care if Dad’s favorite part is singing the hymns at the beginning of the service, I told you, this is important.” Pause then a hissed, seriously pissed, “
Yes,
it’s about his visit to Chace.”

She listened again as she yanked her hand through her hair, pulling it back, her body jerked with agitation and she started pacing again but when her hand went out of her hair, it fell right back around her face.

She was cute. She was being funny. She looked fucking fantastic pacing through the space between his kitchen and living room in her sexy nightie and his shirt, her long legs on display, her hair swinging around. Not to mention, his stomach was full of her damned fine food and the taste of her was still in his mouth.

All this meant Chace was amused, relaxed and content.

Therefore he was completely unprepared for Faye rocking his entire fucking world.

“That was not fraking
cool
Mom. It wasn’t
cool.
Dad doesn’t know and it’s none of his business but I’ll tell you since you won’t let me talk to him then
you
can tell him, Chace has been through enough. He doesn’t like surprises. He doesn’t need hassle. And I won’t stand for it!”

Chace felt his body get tight and he stopped watching her and started staring at her.

“Yes! I know that fraking means the f-word,
Mom.
In a television show! I’m the one who told
you,
remember? When the Cylons explode our world and we’re aboard a spaceship in a ragtag convoy trying to stay alive and find earth, you can take me to task for saying the word
frak!
Until then, no and definitely not
now!
”

She halted facing his French doors again and stared out as she listened.

Then she spoke again.

“Right, well, don’t hold your breath for that, Mom, seeing as I’m going to be a kickass fighter pilot like Starbuck so I’ll be out in my Viper most of the time, fighting the Cylons to keep you alive so you won’t have time to give me a lecture about cursing.”

Another pause, this one lengthy.

Then, “I don’t care. It’s not good that he shared his thoughts about Chace
to Chace
, thoughts he had because of town gossip. That’s not good. That doesn’t say nice things about
Dad
not
Chace.
It was judgmental and uncalled for. But it’s more, Mom. It doesn’t say good things about
me.
Because it says Dad doesn’t trust
me
to be smart enough to see past the hot guy Chace is to who he
really
is
underneath
. That would be a good man I can trust, who takes care of me, makes me feel safe, makes me feel good, teases me, likes me for me and who’s worth my time. Even if Dad had concerns about Chace, he should know
me
better than that. I may be a dreamer, Mom, but you raised me, so did he so I’m not a stupid dreamer. I’m just
a dreamer.
And I’ll point out he should have showed Chace respect not only as a man but as the man everyone in this fraking town knows him to be but also Dad should have shown
me
respect by keeping his mouth
shut.
”

She fell silent but this didn’t last long.

“No, I still want to talk to him. Tell him to call me after church. I have a few things to say.”

An even shorter pause.

Then, “Okay, and just so you know, I’m angry but still, if I found you were an unknown model of Cylon, I wouldn’t kill you because you’re my Mom. But I would find you a habitable planet and dump you there. I’m also angry enough to dump Gaius there with you. He’s brilliant but he’s annoyingly arrogant, smug, a total jerk, completely self-serving and unpredictable. You’d hate him. So that tells you just how angry I am at you for not letting me speak my mind to Dad. Enjoy church and I’ll see you next Saturday.”

Then without waiting for a response from her mother, she beeped off the phone and whirled to him.

Once she had his eyes, she snapped, “God!”

Then she clamped her mouth shut and glared at him.

Chace studied her, her cheeks pink, her eyes heated, thinking, with that hair, he shouldn’t be surprised her temper was fiery.

He studied her thinking that he was feeling something he didn’t quite get, didn’t know what it was because he’d never felt it before. He just knew that whatever it was was huge and it was good.