"I love to garden," Sara confided. "I was thinking that all those pots on the step could be put to good use, if you don't mind," she asked him.
He stabbed at his food. "Why would I mind?" he answered.
Sara's smile lit her up from the inside. Chase glanced up and stared.
Watching him wrestle with his attraction was probably the best entertainment Hannah had enjoyed in years. She couldn't wait to tell her husband that Westy, the baddest boy in SEAL Team Twelve, had fallen hard.
But the evening wasn't over yet. They retired to the living room, where Kendal popped a video about bobcats into his VCR. He'd checked it out at the library. Hannah seated herself intentionally in the armchair, leaving Chase and Sara to share the sofa. She sat at one end; he at the other.
But every glance, every nuance of their body language, betrayed nerve-plucking awareness of each other.
An hour later, Hannah decided to let nature take its course. Chase trailed her into the kitchen, where she carried her glass. "You're not leavin', are you?" he asked with a hint of desperation.
"Yeah, it's getting late. I need to pester some IRS people who left the office early on Friday. I still don't have those tax returns for Willard Smith that I requested."
"You could stay a little longer," he suggested.
She put her hands on his shoulders, thinking he was certainly a lot shorter than Luther was. "You'll be fine without me, Westy," she reassured him. "Stop fighting it," she added on a whisper. "That only makes it worse."
The muscles flexing under her hand were every bit as dense as Luther's, though.
With a sisterly pat, she let him go. Bidding Sara good night, she thanked her and Kendal both for an enjoyable evening.
Chase escorted her out to her car, notably quiet.
"Check in with me tomorrow," Hannah invited, slipping behind the wheel. She couldn't wait to find out how his evening ended.
"Take it slow on the way home," he replied. "Watch for deer."
She backed up, executing a swift U-turn. A final glance in her rearview mirror showed Chase still standing in the driveway, looking as tense as a loaded gun.
Hannah chuckled.
Sara tucked a sleepy Kendal into bed. They discussed the possibility of a play date tomorrow with Kendal's new friend, Eric. She left his room, confident that he would be happy here in Broken Arrow, even after Chase was gone.
Hearing Chase in the shower, she slipped into her own room to prepare for bed. She had just donned the pale pink nightgown Rachel had bought for her and was heading to the kitchen for a glass of cold water, when Chase emerged from the bathroom, towel girded around his hips.
They collided—slinky polyester meeting warm, moist skin—and jumped back.
"Sorry."
A tense silence ensued as they eyed each other under the hall light. A water droplet slid from Chase's collarbone, over a dense pectoral muscle, and down washboard abs, drawing Sara's gaze down to where the towel covered his lean hips. His half-naked splendor made her head spin. She readied for the wall, needing it to keep her balance.
"Good night," Chase said, but he seemed incapable of turning away.
She thought of the kiss they'd shared before she left for Texas. For days after, she'd recited all the reasons why she couldn't kiss Chase like that again. Oddly enough, she couldn't recall a single one of those reasons right now.
With an impulsive step, she closed the space between them, rolled up on her toes, and kissed his cheek. "Good night."
His response was far more demonstrative. In a lightning move, he hooked an arm around her waist. He hauled her against him, caught her lips with his, and kissed her hard.
With a groan of relief, Sara kissed him back, blindly, arms coiling around his neck, fingers sliding into his damp, wavy hair. The kiss was a scalding eruption of repressed passion.
It escalated to the next level as Chase backed her against the wall, using the partition to secure her to him as he slid his scorching palms up her body and cupped both of her breasts. "Tell me to stop," he commanded roughly.
"Don't stop," she countered, welcoming the heady plundering of his tongue as he kissed her again.
He grasped her bottom, lifting her higher. His towel shifted. Sara groaned as his arousal prodded her hip.
With a glance at Kendal's closed door, he turned and half carried Sara into her darkened bedroom, kicking the door shut behind him.
There in the cool shadows, he kissed and kissed and kissed her, until her senses were befuddled, and she was too weak to stand.
He eased her onto the edge of the bed. "Be right back," he promised, releasing her.
As he disappeared down the hall, securing his towel as he went, she wondered what he was up to. At the same time, she questioned herself. Was she really going to do this, acting against her better judgment?
But how could she stop now, when every cell in her body, every nerve, every inch of skin cried out for his touch?
Chase reappeared with a fistful of shiny wrappers. He'd closed the door and tossed them onto the bedside table before she realized what they were.
"Oh," she said, wondering how to tell him that condoms weren't necessary.
He didn't seem inclined to talk. He reached for her again, pressing her gently back into the patch of moonlight that warmed her sheets. Then he came up over her, tugging the towel off his hips.
Oh, my heavens.
Her heart pounded with anticipation. She'd never seen anything more erotic than the way Chase looked, braced on his elbows above her, eyes hot with desire, fully aroused.
"You're so beautiful," he rasped, his thoughts obviously running parallel to hers.
He put his mouth to the artery that pulsed warmly at the side of her neck. With nips and licks, he followed the slender column to the curve of her shoulder and lower, pushing down the straps of her nightgown as he went. He peeled back the slinky fabric of her gown, revealing her breasts to the moonlight.
With a groan, he lowered his head. Sara gasped and arched her back, welcoming the scalding heat of his mouth as he worshipped her tenderly, honestly. Her fingers sifted through the untamed locks of his hair, finding it soft, silky to the touch.
Drawing her nipples into peaks, he blew a moist stream of air over them as he lifted the hem of her nightgown past her thighs. His work-roughened hands skimmed her hips, her abdomen, and slipped between her legs to caress the warm, moist fabric in between. "Sara," he whispered with intense feeling.
She couldn't believe it either, that her private fantasies were becoming real, that they were even more powerful than she'd imagined.
She touched him back, smoothing her hands over the breadth of his shoulders, to the furred mounds of his chest muscles, over rock-hard abs, and lower, until she held him in her hands, thinking ...
Oh, yes, this'II be nothing like it was with Garret.
But then he was easing away from her, and she realized his intent with a hot flash of anticipation. His tongue slid warmly along her inner thigh, so close that she thought she would die. Then, again, closer still. He dragged her panties over her hips and nudged her legs apart.
She had to fist the sheets to keep the bed from whirling. Intense, heated pleasure spread from the apex of her thighs to her breasts, to every extremity of her body. Chase pressed his palm into the plane of her pelvis. He slipped a finger into her warmth, and then two, his tongue never ceasing its gentle lashing.
A fever swept through Sara, moistening her skin. She looked down at her breasts, gilded with moonlight. Beyond them was Chase, his bright eyes watchful even in the dark, waiting for her to ...
Oh, my God
... to fall apart.
With a sob of bliss, she climaxed.
He brought her gently back to earth. When her eyes fluttered open, he was reaching for a condom.
"You don't need that," she said, hardly recognizing the husky voice that came from her.
At the verge of tearing it open, he hesitated. "You want me to stop?" he asked on a strange note.
"Oh, no. Oh, Chase, I wouldn't do that." She came up on her elbows. "It's just that … you can't get me pregnant. I can't have any more children."
Even in the shadows, she saw his searching look. "Complications?"
"Lots of complications," she admitted. "So many that I gave Garret Power of Attorney because I was hospitalized for weeks before my due date. I had no idea he'd use it the way he did."
Chase frowned and waited.
"He told the doctor that I wanted my tubes tied so that it would never happen again," she added. "Garret told me later that he never wanted children in the first place."
Chase didn't move. Sara sensed his anger growing. "I have to say something," he finally grated. "That man had better not come anywhere close to you ever again, or I'll rip his fucking head off."
The lethal tone in which he spoke made Sara's blood run cold. "Don't say that," she whispered, not in defense of Garret but because she didn't want Chase to have to go to jail for protecting her. "He won't find me here," she reassured him.
"No," Chase agreed with a shuddering breath. He reached out and gently stroked the side of her face, "I'm sorry," he added. "I shouldn't have said that."
"That's okay." His vehemence gave her hope that he cared about her, enough to come back to her when his four years were up. His gentle touch had her melting all over again.
He drew her lips toward his and kissed her in a way that indicated that he wasn't going to stop this time.
She thrilled at the silent, possessive message. She wanted to be claimed by him, utterly and completely taken. With a groan of surrender, she fitted her body to his, optimistic that their union would bind them in a deep and mysterious way, keeping him in her life.
Cradling her close, he kissed her as he eased into her welcoming wetness. She could sense his restraint. He was being gentle with her, penetrating inch by slow inch, as if she might otherwise break.
"More," she begged, hips surging to meet him. She wanted to be overcome, to be whisked away to another world, stolen from the past and made his.
Still, he held back, permeating her senses with ecstasy, one layer at a time until, at last, there wasn't any question that she was his. With a cry of relief, Sara gave rein to her sexual expression. After years of repression, nothing felt more intensely satisfying than Chase cradling her, straining to get closer, deeper. Surely, they'd return to this again and again.
It was a homecoming.
He even went the extra mile to ensure that she was with him at the end, sliding a hand between their bodies to coax her over the edge. They tumbled together, bound in a way that defied explanation.
Chase was afraid to move. He was still inside of Sara, subject to aftershocks, following a tsunami of a climax.
The vulnerability that hit him in the wake of that natural disaster had him holding his breath. If he moved, something around his heart would shift like tectonic plates on the earth's crust, bringing more calamity.
Her chest rose and fell beneath him, faintly damp, incredibly soft. "Oh, my goodness," she breathed a note of discovery.
He forced himself to speak. "You okay?"
She gave an incredulous laugh. "Okay? Oh, yes, I'm okay."
He grunted, still afraid to move. He just clung to her.
She smoothed the hair from his face, quietly content to let him hold her. "I have to say something," she finally whispered, mimicking his sentence structure earlier. "And I don't really want to say it but if something were to happen to you ... I'd want you to know."
He swallowed convulsively.
"I think I love you," she said on a note of wonder.
He flinched instinctively. In the past, when his lovers said those words, he'd carefully withdrawn his warmth and passion, making it gently clear that he had no head
with which to love them back.
Only this time, he could feel his heart expanding, rising toward his throat. Agony and euphoria raked through, digging through the crust that hardened him.
For no reason that he could comprehend—except that it'd happened right here in his mother's bed—he relived his earliest childhood memory.
It was the night of his father's death. His mother held him in her arms. He remembered her tears falling onto the backs of his hands as she held him close and sobbed.
Years later, he'd been the one to hold her, as Linc covered the baby's grave with dirt.
They'd had each other. Up until the day they rushed her to the hospital where she'd died.
The day they'd brought her body home and put her in the ground next to the baby, Chase realized, with relief, that he couldn't feel a thing.
He'd turned his heart off, flipped the switch.
It was exactly that ability that made him good at what he did. He killed for a living, untouched by torment or remorse.
How could a simple
I
think I love you
bring back all the loss and pain that his mother's death should have caused him?
To his horror, it hit him with crushing force, dragging him under waves of despair. A sound like a sob ripped out of him. He hid his face against Sara's neck, mortified.
"It's okay," she soothed. It was as if she understood. "I'm here."
He couldn't make it go away. The grief that he'd buried when he was fifteen years old was suddenly resurrected, prompted perhaps by Jesse's death. The pain was staggering.
Sara held him fiercely, wordlessly, as he choked on his sobs.
After a long, long while, the agony receded to manageable proportions. Chase rolled to his side, and held his breath to regain his composure. Mortified, he kept his eyes closed.
Sara turned to face him. He could tell, even with his eyes closed, that she was looking at him in the moon glow.
He was unable to explain himself, so he pretended to sleep. What did she think of him now? he wondered. Was she brokenhearted that he hadn't returned her words of love? Or did she think that he was certifiable?
He felt her move and quelled his startle reflex when she reached out to stroke his cheekbone and the line of his jaw. She looped an arm around him and snuggled closer.