What He Bargains (What He Wants, Book Nineteen) (86 page)

Finally, Faith nodded. “I see you,” she said softly.

He was breathing heavily. His eyes were dark, his expression somehow completely stony and also terribly pained at once. “You see that I’m fucked up beyond repair.”

She shook her head. “I see that you’ve been through terrible things.”

“Nothing you could ever even imagine in your worst nightmares.”

“I believe you,” she said, her chest catching.

“See, it wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he told her, shaking his head. He was laughing, but not with good humor.

“What was it supposed to be like?” she prodded.

“I wanted something simple. No strings, no attachments. Nothing emotional.”

“Is that why you chose me out of all the girls you could have been with? Unless—I don’t know, maybe there are dozens of others,” she said, as if realizing it for the first time.

He shook his head again. “There are no others.”

She took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m shaking,” she said, holding up her hand and realizing it was true.

Chase reached out and took her hand in his, and his touch was so gentle, so loving, that she was instantly calmed.

“I shouldn’t have told you those things,” he said softly. “I don’t know why I did.”

“Because you’ve been holding it all in for too long,” she replied, and he blinked at her, his expression startled.

“You think?”

“You can’t hold the world on your shoulders,” she told him. “You can’t be expected to do all of this alone, Chase.”

He pulled her even closer now. “My life isn’t pretty,” he said to her. “I do it alone so nobody else has to deal with it but me.”

“What if I want to deal with it?” she asked, tilting her head up towards him.

“I’d never let you get in the middle of a fucking war zone, Faith.”

She put her free hand on his chest and rubbed her palm over the surface of his skin. Now, when she drew her finger along the lines of ink, it meant something different. The truth was, she still found his tattoos sexy, but for a completely different reason.

His tattoos were personal. Deeply personal, and almost nobody knew what they meant.

But now I do.

Chase had let her in enough to tell her about those horrible things from his past. His mother, a prostitute—murdered by a killer who was never caught.

She shivered, just thinking about it.

Chase watched her as her eyes grew teary, just imagining what he’d been through in his life. And now she knew that he was carrying the weight of his history all on his own. It didn’t seem fair.

“I want to know,” she said, still caressing his chest, understanding now that it was like a map of his life. There was a code that prevented most from reading that map, but she had the code now.

The code, she realized, was Chase Winters himself. He was the one who could explain what the map meant, show her the territory in all of its grim detail.

“I can’t tell you everything,” he said, his voice tight with emotion, but still letting her touch his body. His muscles flinched a little when her fingertips ran over them. Traced the lines that swirled intricately, made pictures and words that had deep meaning, but most of which was still inscrutable to her.

“You can tell me exactly as much as you want to,” she said. “Or as little as you want to. I just need you to be aware of the fact that I’m okay. I can handle it.”

He smirked a little bit. “You think so. But it’s not quite that simple.”

“I know,” she sighed. “Nothing with you ever is, Chase.”

And then he leaned in and began kissing her mouth, softly, delicately, his lips tender and patient.

She trembled at his touch—but now the trembling was less from fear than hope, pleasure, lust, and emotion. There was a wellspring of emotion inside her, and Chase had found the way to tap into it and let it flow.

Faith hadn’t even realized that she had so much within her, but now that she felt it, the emotions threatened to overwhelm her.

Chase, as if sensing it, slowed down, kissing her softly, stroking her hair as his other hand slid around her waist and lingered on her lower back.

They stood there, kissing, their lips broadcasting so much more than either of them could truly say with words.

He’s damaged.

He’s damaged and he’s carrying terrible secrets on his back.

Chase is tortured by his past—by what happened to his mother, his father. All of it.

To have been exposed to the gangs, the violence, and then having this incredible gift fall in his lap—to be able to escape all of that ugliness and play in the NFL…it was almost too much for any one person to handle. Who wouldn’t be overwhelmed by such a drastic change?

She inhaled his breath as he kissed her more deeply now. His hands both moved to hold her face, as he broke away and looked into her eyes. “I want you to be with me,” he told her.

She felt her heart lift at his words. “But…what does that mean?”

“It means that you’re with me and me only. You don’t see any other guys. And I won’t see anybody else, either.”

Faith nodded. “I don’t want to see anyone but you.”

“Good.” He trailed his fingers down to her neckline. “And it also means I get to do things to you,” he said, his voice low and husky.

“What kinds of things?” she asked, her breath thick in her throat.

“Whatever I want.” As he said it, he took hold of her shirt and pulled it up and off. “Anything I want to do to you,” he continued, as he slid her bras straps down and then removed the bra with a quick snap of his fingers on the clasp.

Her breasts spilled out, bare, her torso naked like his now. Her nipples were stiff, hardening even more as Chase looked at her without disguising his own lust.

“I want you to have whatever you need from me,” she said, meeting his gaze.

He smiled ever so slightly, and then his hands were covering her breasts, his fingers grazing her tender nipples.

“I need a lot,” he said, still massaging her breasts, and then he suddenly grabbed her and spun her around so that she was facing away from him. “Can you handle everything that comes with this?” he asked, his breath in her ear as his palms clasped over her breasts once more, squeezing them tightly. Her nipples slid in between his two fingers and she moaned.

“I promise I can do it,” she told him. “I can handle anything.”

She didn’t know if that was true, but she wanted it to be.

“I can be very demanding,” he whispered. “And I can be rough sometimes.”

She felt his hands squeezing tighter on her breasts, and her nipples tingled expectantly. “Rough is good,” she whispered.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

Now his hands moved aggressively to her pants and he was stripping them off her, pulling her panties roughly down to her ankles too. She was going to step out of them, but he stopped her from moving. “No,” he said. “Keep it there. Don’t do anything unless I tell you to do it.”

Her pants and panties effectively bound her ankles in place.

She heard Chase unzipping behind her and then, moments later, he was grabbing her around the waist with one arm and slightly lifting her, and his erect member was sliding between her legs, pushing at her wet folds.

“Oh God,” she moaned, as he thrust inside her without much warning.

She was so wet that she was able to take him in without any pain or discomfort, despite the enormous size of him.

One arm wrapped around her waist, the other hand grabbed her hair as he thrust inside her, forcefully taking her from behind. “Fuck you are so fucking tight girl,” he said, biting her earlobe just hard enough to cause pain—but not enough to truly hurt her.

She gasped as he went all the way in, pressing his pelvis so tightly against her backside that it was as if he’d glued himself to her. His hand slid from her belly up to her breasts and squeezed them together as he pumped his cock slowly in and out of her dripping slit.

She looked down, seeing her legs shake, unable to spread wide because of the pants around her ankles. He was in tight to her, widening her with his hips, his cock, and it was very, very tight indeed.

“Oh shit,” she gasped, as he slammed her harder, then pulled her hair so that her head tilted back and his mouth could slip onto hers, suctioning there.

His tongue dove inside at the same time that he fucked her even harder, his rod smashing through her walls, caving her in with complete and utter domination.

It hurt but it felt amazing. He was so large and powerful that he could break her in two if he wasn’t careful. Yet despite his roughness, she trusted him completely.

She could feel his need, his want and even his kindness, despite the brutal smashing of his pelvis, the enormous cock that was drilling into her, sliding in and out and getting her so wet.

He began fucking her relentlessly, and now the one hand cupped her breasts and pushed them together, while the other released her hair and slid down between her legs, rubbing her clit furiously.

Chase began fucking her faster and faster. “You’ll take it exactly how I want to give it to you, won’t you?”

She nodded as he fucked her harder and faster than she’d ever been fucked. “Yes,” she cried out. “Yes.”

And then her cries turned into wild screams of abandon as she climaxed on his dick, and he lifted her into the air so that she was riding his pole as she came, sucking him in and out of her slit, her tight, juicy hole.

“Fuck,” he bellowed, and she felt him coming as she put her hands on his thighs and rode down hard on his dick, letting him blow all of himself inside her pussy.

She didn’t care about anything but the release. The beautiful, sweet agony of his sex, of his initiation.

I’m his
, she thought ecstatically as he fucked her and came inside of her.

I’m completely his
.

L
ater
, complete and total relaxation was hers—as the two of them lay in Chase’s enormous king-sized bed in his master bedroom.

Chase was completely naked, his muscular body stretched all the way out with his arm cushioning Faith’s head as she snuggled into the crook of his arm. She ran her hand across the length and breadth of his ribcage, up across his chest, scratching his nipples with her fingernails.

He sighed, contented. “Damn,” he muttered, his eyes drowsy as he stared up toward the ceiling.

She admired his jaw, the depth of his features, the strength that every pore of his body seemed to radiate.

“This is nice,” she whispered, snuggling that much closer. His arm wrapped under her neck and his hand angled toward her hair, as his fingers tangled in the strands and played with them, tingling her scalp.

“I’m going to get soft if we spend too much time like this,” he said.

She couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “I think we should do this every day.” Faith kissed his chest, and then licked his nipple, pretend biting his skin.

He sat up a little and looked at her. “You know how I said my life is complicated, right?”

She smiled, and then, as she saw the look on his face, her smile faded. “Why do I feel like I’m about to get a bomb dropped on me right about now?”

He shook his head. “I should’ve explained this shit to you from the beginning. Back when I asked you to sign those papers. You remember?”

“Yeah, of course I remember.” She sat up, too, her stomach churning with worry as she saw Chase’s expression.

He looked—almost—nervous. And she’d never seen him look that way before.

“Well, the thing is…I’ve got a lot of entanglements with my history, you know? My past. I need to protect myself.”

“I don’t understand,” Faith told him, squinting. “What—what are you—“

“Just let me get to it,” he said, sounding edgy. He drove his fist onto the mattress with a loud thump, and Faith sat further back now, moving her body away from his.

“Get to what, exactly?”

And then she understood. Her mouth dropped open. “Are you breaking up with me already?”

He smirked. “No, girl. It’s not that. It’s not even close.”

“Oh.” She rubbed her hand across her face. “I’m confused, Chase. What the heck’s going on right now? I thought things were good.”

“They are good.” He nodded, contemplative. “Yeah, they are. But maybe after I tell you what I’m about to tell you…you might not feel the same way about me anymore.”

Her stomach flipped and dropped all at once, and she felt nauseous. “This sounds bad,” she muttered. “Well, just tell me. Get it over with already.”

Chase raised his gaze to meet hers. “My agent put me in touch with this company called Club Alpha,” he said, “back when I first signed with New England. He told me that they work in this field called lifestyle management.”

“What’s that even mean?” Faith asked, genuinely curious.

“I don’t exactly know,” he chuckled, without much humor. His eyes were distant. “I just know that they meant business. They flew me and a couple other big name athletes in this private jet to Vegas, and put us up in a really expensive villa. They comped everything. Put on a party, gave us gambling money, really pulled out all the stops to show us how well connected they were.”

Faith was getting more and more restless as he continued to evade the point. “So what happened?” she said.

“What happened is, they explained to me that they understood my situation.”

“Your situation?” she repeated.

“Yeah. I’m vulnerable to being stung,” he told her. “How many rich young famous dudes get involved with some woman and then, next thing you know, it’s on the cover of some tabloid with a full interview inside? The girl sells the story and the guy’s life turns to shit.”

“I feel sick,” Faith said, putting a hand on her stomach.

“You want me to stop talking?”

“No, just say it. Please, just…just tell me the rest.”

He sighed. “I knew they were right about my problem. I have a past and my agent and my media people, they’ve made up this whole story that totally erased the gang stuff and my true past. Nobody in the mainstream media knows about my mom or the fact that I was arrested and did time when I was a juvenile.”