In Deep: Chase & Emma (All In Book 1) (21 page)

The thing was, when I
thought about it, it had always really been Tori’s dream. She was
the one who thrived on gossip, who constantly sought a wider
audience, who truly craved an escape from her “real” job
waitressing so she could blog for a living. Me? I’d gone along for
the ride because it had been fun. I hadn’t devoted nearly as much
time to it as she had, and parts of her writing style and choice of
content had always made me a little uncomfortable. I didn’t mind
the bubbly, silly stuff, but sometimes she could get nasty,
commenting on a celebrity’s weight gain or whether photos revealed
that someone was cheating.

I’d voiced dissent
along the way, but Tori was good at filtering that out. Plus, I could
see the numbers as well as she could, and the kinds of posts she
wrote drew a lot more attention, activity and blog followers than my
mellow, feel-good features. And, if I was honest with myself, a big
reason why I hadn’t put my foot down was because I didn’t like
conflict. Tori could do conflict. She’d learned from her parents
how to throw a knock-down, drag-out fight and I didn’t want any
part of that.

But I couldn’t run a
feature on Chase. The very idea seemed absurd now, and if it meant
walking away from seven years of work on our blog, then so be it. I
just hoped it didn’t also mean walking away from the 16 years of
friendship Tori and I had as well.

The airport in Rio was
a zoo, and the public transport set up to get to the Olympic village
was packed to the gills, but at least everything looked to be
completed and functioning. I knew the government had been scrambling,
teams of workers at it round-the-clock to get everything finished and
set up for the millions of visitors pouring in for the games.

Megan and I stuck close
through it all, and I was glad for her company. Together, all the
chaos and crowds felt more exhilarating than frightening, especially
when she started pointing out athletes to me. They weren’t too hard
to spot as most wore their team traveling jerseys.

“Gymnast,” she
hissed, pointing her finger behind her phone at a group to my right
on the tram.

Subtle as I could, I
looked over and found Mr. Dreamy, looking all cute in a boy band kind
of way with swooshed hair and a dimpled smile. He clearly knew it,
too, as he chatted up a few ladies who’d found their way over to
him. His team jersey announced his nationality as German, but he
either also spoke English or they were all fluent in the
international language of love as conversation and laughter flowed
freely.

“Water polo.” Megan
tilted her head in the other direction, her eyes wide. I swiveled my
head—casually of course, pretending to fix my hair—and spotted a
Russian behemoth, more bear than man, glowering down at the tram as
if we’d all done him wrong. Slowly, I turned back.

“Scary,” I
whispered.

“Big man hits ball,”
she whispered back in a caveman voice.

“I am so glad I’m
not playing water polo against that man.”

She laughed. “I think
he’d pick you up and launch you into the net.”

The Olympic Village had
plenty of kiosks with maps and orientation guides wearing bright
orange jumpsuits offering directions, but it still took me upward of
an hour to find the compound where Tori and I would be staying. I
should have stuck with the swim team entourage. I hadn’t fully
processed how huge the area would be, with over thirty buildings
containing thousands of condos plus parks and bike paths and shops
everywhere. Chase and I had discussed meeting up that night. Now I
wondered if I’d manage to make it to his physical therapy session
tomorrow morning, even if I started finding my way over to it right
then.

Tori was not there when I arrived,
as expected. I did manage to get through to her via text. She
responded quickly.

Tori: YOU MUST COME HERE NOW

A slurry of emojis
followed, including a barfing face, and then a photo of what looked
like blurred lights in a dark club and maybe a few faces. But no
address.

Chase checked in as well, wanting to
make sure I arrived safely, wanting to see me.

Chase: Want me to send a car to pick
you up and bring you over to my place?

I paused, my fingers
hovering over the keys. Should I? The answer was yes, of course, yes.
And so that’s exactly what I did, letting a car whisk me away to
the sweet house he and a few of his teammates were renting just
outside the fray of the Olympic Village. The mood was celebratory, in
a stone cold sober kind of a way, and no one seemed to bat an eye
when I walked in and Chase greeted me with a full-body hug and a deep
kiss.

Chase and I and a bunch
of the group with and on the U.S. Swim team spent the whole next day
together, starry-eyed, walking around, getting familiar with the new
setting. I got to be with Chase when he first walked in and saw the
pool where they’d be competing. At this point, we didn’t care
anymore. We held hands, tight, walking into the Olympics Aquatics
Stadium.

“There it is!” I
fairly jumped up and down with excitement. The arena was huge, set up
to hold around 15,000 spectators. They’d all be watching the
swimmers in those 10 lanes, but really most eyes would be on Chase,
in the middle of the pool, pushing ahead.

He gazed down at it,
nodded his head, and gave me a slow smile. “That’s where it’s
all going to happen.”

I had no idea where he
found his cool, calm confidence. I personally felt like throwing up
and I wasn’t even the one going to compete.

It was a good thing he
knew how to deal with the spotlight, because he sure was in it. At
six foot three, with his face on the cover of every magazine smart
enough to put him on it, everyone recognized Chase everywhere we
went. After the pool, we made the mistake of trying to grab lunch at
a café nearby. We didn’t even get up to the front of the line
before he was swarmed with admirers, people asking for photos and
autographs.

After that, he joined
his team for meals, accepting it as a necessity for the games. No
private, romantic tête-à-tête dinners for us at a quiet little
table in the corner, at least not while we were in Rio for the next
week. But after, he assured me, after we’d have all the time
together in the world.

The night before the
opening ceremony, he had a meeting with his team, of course, and Tori
had plans with the Italian soccer team, of course again. This time, I
did meet her out at the nightclub where she apparently was keeping
office hours. It seemed to be the only way in which I could manage to
talk to her. She hadn’t been responding to my texts. I almost felt
like she was avoiding me. I texted Chase the address and hoped he’d
be able to join us later.

“There she fucking
is!” Tori shrieked from across the bar when I walked in. “I
wondered if you’d even made it to Rio!”

“Hey, sorry,”
apologies came tumbling out of my mouth, though she was as much to
blame as me for our missing each other. Sure, I’d been spending
most of my time with Chase and his team, but it wasn’t as if she’d
been sitting back in the condo waiting for me. The couple of times
I’d stopped back there to grab clothes and toiletries, she’d been
nowhere to be seen.

“Drink!” I had
shots thrust in front of me, guys giving me hugs, arms pulling me out
onto the dance floor. When in Rome! I joined them, sidestepping the
majority of the hard drinks but bringing it on the dance floor. Oh
my, those Italian men with their dark good looks and the way they
moved their hips! Such rhythm!

One of them started
hitting on me, telling me I was bellissima and claiming to not
believe me that I wasn’t there to compete in the games, I was so
fit and perfect. He was fun to dance with, so I didn’t mind, and
after the first couple of refusals he stopped trying to get me drunk.
Until I made the ultimate mistake.

“So what position do
you play on the soccer team?” I asked, trying to be polite.

He and several of his
teammates heard my ultimate party foul. They all erupted in a roar.
“Football! Not soccer! Drink!”

A shot appeared out of
thin air, big and fat and looking suspiciously like tequila. Until an
even larger hand dropped in from above and snatched it away.

“If the lady doesn’t
want to drink, you’re not going to make her.”

Chase. A smile broke
across my face. My hero.

“But you do know you
can’t call it soccer outside the U.S.,” he whispered to me,
wrapping me in his arms.

“I know! I’ll never
make that mistake again.”

“Now, do I have to
beat anyone up?” he asked, his finger under my chin as we started
to sway to the music. “I saw one of those soccer players hitting on
you pretty hard.”

“Oh, Leo’s
harmless.”

“First name basis,
are we?”

“Not like that,” I
assured him.

“Chase the Ace!”
Tori swooped in, snaking her arms around my man.

“Tori?” Chase
mouthed her name as he looked at me. I nodded. My crazy friend, drunk
as a skunk.

“I hear you two have
been getting to know each other!” she sang out, waggling her finger
between us. “Naughty, naughty! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!
Which means you can do a whole hell of a lot!” She burst out into
gales of laughter, making her way over to the bar again and a circle
of gorgeous, attentive Italian men. Chase and I stayed a bit longer,
then made our escape. Chase called a car and we headed back to the
house he was renting.

Sitting together in the
back seat, he stretched his arm out behind me. “So that’s your
best friend?”

“Since we were nine,”
I confirmed. “She’s crazy, I know, but she’s a lot of fun. And
she’s been a really good friend to me, always there when things go
horribly, tragically wrong with men.”

“Men who weren’t
me. That was the problem.”

“Obviously,” I
agreed, but I continued on the earlier subject. “I know you
probably don’t get it. Tori and I are really different.”

“Oh no, I do get it,”
he insisted. “The friends you make when you’re younger, they’re
in.” He peaked his fingers together as if forming the roof of a
house. “You get real tight when you go through stuff as a kid.”

“Right?” I was the
first person to admit, Tori was off her rocker, but all those nights
we’d stayed up sharing secrets, the good stuff and the bad, our
fears and dreams, it went deep. Plus, neither of us had a sister, so
I guessed we’d become that for each other. You didn’t cut out a
sister.

“I’ve got friends…”
He shook his head. “Thankfully, you’ll be meeting Liam later this
week. He’s the one I can take out in public.” He cracked himself
up. “Ian might bite your head off. He’s a cranky son-of-a-bitch.
And Jax, well, he’d probably try to talk you out of your panties.”

“It wouldn’t work,”
I reassured him.

“You know, it does
all the time, though,” he marveled at his friend’s skills. “Even
though he has a criminal record.”

“You’re friends
with a criminal?” I wasn’t one to judge, but, really?

“I’m not just
friends with him. I’d lay down my life for him.”

OK. That was intense.
It wasn’t the first time I’d taken note of that characteristic in
him. It did make me wonder, though. It was clear with Chase, if you
were in, you were in. But how did that work on the other side? What
if someone did something that pissed him off? Were they out forever?

Back at the house, a
bunch of his teammates were still up with a few friends, sitting
around watching TV. We said our hellos, but then headed back into his
bedroom. We hadn’t seen nearly enough of each other over the past
few days.

He locked the door
behind us, backing me up against the far wall, pressing me against it
with hot kisses. “You’re driving me crazy in this dress.” He
licked kisses down my throat, to my cleavage, unzipping my dress to
get more access. It fell to the floor and he wasted no time in
pulling off my panties and reaching up to find me slick and waiting.

“I want you so much,”
he whispered into my ear, moving against me, touching me as only he
knew how, coaxing desire from inside me deep. “I hated seeing you
surrounded by those men tonight at the club,” he grit out.

“You know nothing was
going on.” I kissed his throat, his shoulders, his perfectly
chiseled chest. I missed touching him so much. I hadn’t even been
able to work on him as often as I wanted over the past couple of
days—less workouts, more team meetings, more PR obligations had
meant so much less time together. He stepped out of his jeans and
briefs and brought his thick cock into the palm of his hand as he
pulled on a condom. Then he returned to me, kissing, pinning me
against the wall.

“But I want everyone
to know,” he told me, speaking the words low and hot into my ear.
“You’re mine.” He drove into me in one swift, full thrust. I
gasped, my eyes wide he stretched and filled me so much. I moved to
grab onto his shoulders, but he took my wrists and brought them up
above my head where he could pin them in one of his large hands
against the wall.

“Mine,” he
repeated, taking me hard and rough against the wall, grasping my ass
as he held me and fucked me. I wrapped my legs around his waist and
surrendered to it, the feel of complete possession. He looked down at
me, predatory, commanding, hard and driving, claiming me. And as he
clasped my wrists and held me firm against the wall, he drove into me
again and again, ruthless, demanding everything from me. I started to
moan, loudly, but he covered it with a quick, deep kiss.

“You need to keep it
quiet, my beauty,” he reminded me. We had company, right outside
the door. “Can you keep quiet when you come?” Now his voice
sounded wicked, teasing, as he brought his finger to my clit, pushing
against it as he thrust. I was so wet. He slid in deep, the friction
between us so intense I didn’t know if I could keep quiet. I
whimpered, closing my eyes, trying to silence myself as the storm
built inside me