Lust and Other Drugs (11 page)

He pushed her up on a worktable, tugging her jeans and
panties off as he knelt in front of her. “You should have said so. I thought
there wasn’t anything we couldn’t tell each other?”

Chase pressed his mouth to the inside of her knee and she
shivered, spreading her legs wider for him. “It didn’t bother you to see me
with Seth?”

“I didn’t see you. I left when you went inside.” His breath
ghosted over her wet pussy. “And I know he can’t make you feel like I do.”

There was the arrogance that would serve him so well in his
chosen profession. It stung that he didn’t care someone else had touched her,
kissed her.

“But he can,” Anne blurted. “He made me so wet with his
hands, his mouth—” She broke off when his tongue slipped over her clit.

“Then why isn’t
he
fucking you, lovely Anne?” He
lapped at her some more. “Why isn’t it him on his knees in front of you? Why
isn’t it
his
tongue buried in your cunt?” Chase suckled her clit into
his mouth and held it between his teeth gently while his tongue worked her.

She couldn’t answer him. She didn’t want to, because she’d
have to speak the words, admit to him that he was the only one she wanted.

That she loved him.

“Shut up and fuck me,” Anne demanded, her tone harsher than
she meant it to be, unable to hide the anger at him and herself for feeling
these things.

“I want your cum on my lips first.”

Anne shuddered and carded her fingers through his hair,
bringing him closer to her needy cunt. She let go of every emotion roiling
through her, determined only to feel in the moment. To bask in every sensation
his body could wring out of hers.

His tongue delved into her slick folds, flicking back up over
her clit and working the bud until she was shuddering against him, coming
against his mouth as he’d demanded.

“How many times did I make you come today, Anne?” he
murmured as he licked his lips and moved up her body to her breasts, her throat
and finally her mouth.

He kissed her hard and she tasted herself on his lips and
tongue.

She pushed off the table. “On your back, Donovan.”

Chase laughed against her mouth and sank down onto a bright
blue tarp that had probably been laid out on the floor of the shed for just
this purpose. Her eyes were drawn to his cock, swollen and dark against his
chiseled stomach.

She straddled him, teasing her cunt back and forth down the
length of shaft. When he moved his hands up to guide her hips, Anne grabbed his
wrists and pushed them above his head.

“Don’t touch. It’s my turn.”

With his great strength, he could have easily broken her
hold and freed her hands. He could have grabbed her hips and she’d have
followed his lead and probably come again. Chase played her body so well.

But he didn’t do any of those things. He surrendered to her,
put himself into her keeping.

Anne worked her way down his body, trailing her lips over
rippling muscle and smooth, hot skin. When her breath fanned over the crown of
his cock, his hips bucked, bringing his shaft to her mouth.

Her tongue darted out across the velvety tip, tasting where
she’d rubbed herself on him and the pearly fluid of his pre-cum. When she
closed her mouth over him and took his cock deep into her mouth, his whole body
tensed and strained to push farther.

She loved that she had this power over him too, that for all
the control she felt she’d surrendered to him, he’d done the same for her. Anne
wrapped her hand around his shaft and continued to lick and suck at his
engorged flesh, her cunt aching as she did, readying her to be fucked yet
again.

Anne performed every swipe of her tongue with relish, every
motion of her hand up and down his thick shaft a gift.

“Let me touch you,” he rasped.

“No. I can’t think when you do. This is about what I can do
to you now, Chase.” Anne had to get some control back. She already felt like a
puppet, with him jerking the strings.

“It’s always about what you do to me. Watching you come,
tasting it, feeling your cunt clenching around my cock while you scream my
name…there’s nothing better.”

She shivered as his words washed over her. “Be quiet or I’ll
gag you. I’m in control here,” Anne said, more to reassure herself than
actually instruct him.

“Do you want to tie me up?”

“I said,
be quiet
.” Anne knew the only way to make
him stop talking and to finish what she’d started was to put something in his
mouth. So she crawled off his body and then moved to straddle him so that her
knees were braced outside his shoulders, and she could continue teasing his cock
while he licked her to another orgasm.

Anne took her time, licking him, tasting him. She sucked his
cock deep into her mouth and worked up and down his shaft, bringing him ever
closer to completion. When his cock surged against her tongue, she withdrew before
he came and began teasing him all over again.

He returned the caresses, the teasing licks, his tongue
alternately thrusting into her cunt and whipping over her clit. She didn’t want
to finish this way. She wanted his cock inside her.

Anne drew her long leg from across his shoulders and then
straddled his hips. She eased down onto his cock, her channel slick and ready
for him. She loved this position, how full she felt, how deep he was inside
her.

A low sound tore from him and his hands wouldn’t be denied
any longer. His fingers dug into her hips as she rocked against him. It felt
damn good, but for the concrete beneath her knees.

Chase seemed to know. He pushed up until he was sitting
upright and wound his arms around her, putting his thighs between her and the
concrete. He bucked his hips, pushing into her, matching her rhythm.

She took his mouth with the same possession and intensity as
he’d done to her and when she broke the kiss, hips still grinding down to meet
his thrusts, he murmured, “I love your kiss.”

And I love you, Chase Donovan.

God, why had she done this to herself? Things were better
when that damn declaration wasn’t on the tip of her tongue. It made everything
so bittersweet.

She clenched around his cock, squeezing and releasing,
drawing them both closer to orgasm, and this time she was ready for him to
come. Otherwise her mouth was going to betray her, and she knew Chase. After
she’d uttered those words, things would never be right between them again.

“And the way you feel,” he murmured against her mouth as he
slipped a hand between them to work her clit with his thumb, “when you’re about
to come and your pussy is so tight and hot.”

“Stop trying to make me come first,” she growled in
frustration, even though she felt as though she was going shatter around him.

He nipped at her bottom lip, still thrusting up, hard and
sure. “I’m not competing with you, Annie. I just want it to be as good as your
fantasy.”

She kissed him again, something to keep her traitorous mouth
busy so she didn’t tell him everything she was feeling. Anne concentrated on
the physicality of their intimacy. The friction of his cock in her cunt, the
rhythm of their bodies moving together, the taste of his mouth, the strength of
his body moving beneath hers.

He increased the speed and pressure of his thumb while his
cock surged and he came in a hot jet. Even as he orgasmed, he didn’t stop
manipulating her swollen bud. Anne tensed and shuddered when she finally came
for his expert fingers then collapsed, boneless and weak against him.

Chase held her for a long while and she buried her face in
his neck.

“I need to tell you something,” Chase began slowly, but then
was silent for what seemed like forever.

“Only if you want to.” Anne decided if it had taken him that
long to say whatever it was, it must be something horrible. Fear knotted her
gut.

“Nothing happened with Gin.”

She reared back. “I call bullshit. She’s been after you
forever and—”

“She said you were in love with me.”

Anne might as well have been hit with a stun gun for all the
good her mouth did her. She couldn’t form words for a reply. All she could do
was fall into his eyes and pray something would catch her before she crashed
and burned.

Until she blurted, “I kissed Seth.”

“I know.” Chase pushed a lock of hair away from her face and
tucked it behind her ear. “You told me.”

“I thought you and Gin…”

“I know that too.”

“You don’t seem to care that I kissed him.”

“I’d rather you
didn’t
kiss him, but I know he’s not
me. He can’t do for you what I can.”

“And what’s that?” Anne asked, hating the breathy sound to
her voice. Her words sounded like some desperate plea for a declaration.

“Didn’t I just demonstrate?” He kissed her forehead.

“Yeah, you did,” she said quietly. “I’m really tired. I’m
ready to go home.”

She was ready to be home only so she could escape to her
room and figure out just how to extract herself from the pile of shit she’d
stepped in by falling in love with a man who wasn’t in love with her.

Chapter Ten

On the way home, Anne had been quiet and Chase hadn’t pushed
her. She’d gone straight to her room and slipped beneath her blankets. Her body
thrummed with a contented soreness but her mind was another matter entirely.

Anne knew things couldn’t continue this way, and she
resolved to tell Chase the next day that no matter how good the sex was, it had
to stop. For the sake of their friendship.

And her sanity.

She’d finally fallen asleep in self-defense to get her brain
to shut up and was surprised when she’d awakened with the urge to paint, but
she knew better than to ignore her muse. She dragged herself and materials out
into the living room as quietly as she could.

Anne had always loved this house because of the way it
catered to her artist’s eye, the way the morning light shone through the window
in the living room. It was like shards of diamonds, frosting everything it
touched with glitter. As the light danced across her, she almost imagined it
was fairies kissing her fingers and blessing her work. It stirred her muse and
made her tingle with expectation.

It had been a long time since she’d painted. She’d been
using her Mac to channel her creativity instead of a brush. But she missed the
smells of the paint, feeling the wood of the brush between her fingers and the
stark, bright beauty of an untouched canvas. She’d been finalizing her
portfolio to submit to Hallmark. Technically it was a day job, but it could
launch her career the same as it had done for Thomas Kinkade. They weren’t
exactly hiring, although they were always looking for new talent.

Her professor had told her it was a waste of her time, that
paper cards were going the way of the dodo the same as paper books. Anne
thought he was full of shit. Sure, the market was changing and she designed
covers for e-books, but it was simply another form of art.

Anne had been beyond thrilled when Marco Delonzi had visited
her design class. He’d been doing book covers since the eighties and he had the
original paintings of some of the covers from her favorite books. Marco had
encouraged her and even helped her get her portfolio together. She just had a
few tweaks left before submission.

While she was excited for that, those paintings and designs
were already done. There was newness crackling around her hands like lightning
and she had to get it on canvas. Chase had put her easel in the corner and
there were canvasses of varying sizes stacked against it. The easel had been
the first thing she’d brought over when they’d decided she was going to move
in. Though she hadn’t used it in a while, it seemed important for it to be here.
Chase had thought so too.

Ugh! Anne wished he wasn’t her last thought for the night
and first thought of the morning. She had to stop thinking about him.

She spread the drop cloth and set up the easel and chose a
canvas. Anne let her hands travel over each one with her eyes closed before she
decided. She’d paused over the largest one and laughed at herself. Anne was the
kind of girl to jump in with both feet first. There was nothing like diving
back into the deep sea with her muse and all that virgin white space to fill.

Anne had no idea what it was going to be, but there would be
lots of bright color. She’d minored in Art History and had read accounts of
sculptors who oftentimes said they were simply releasing the images already
trapped in the stone when they were sculpting. They didn’t choose the shapes
the stones would take beneath their chisels, they were already there, waiting
to be set free. Maybe that’s what she was doing with the canvas. Anne wasn’t
choosing the image, only setting it free.

Then it came to her, the image fully formed like Athena from
Zeus’ skull.

The dawn. An homage to the beginning of all things.

Sharp images flashed through her brain like photographs,
blendings of colors and contrasts like The Great Nebula in Orion. But she couldn’t
begin with all that white. Births and beginnings often came from the dark. The
endless pitch of space, the cruel veil of the night or the silent darkness of
the womb. She needed black. A black matte for the backdrop of the birth of a
new dawn, a new world and new universe.

A loud knock sounded on the door but Anne didn’t stop to see
who it was. If it was someone she knew, they’d come in anyway. She was working.
Even though she was just blackening the canvas and she’d have to stop to allow
it to cure for several hours, Anne didn’t want to interrupt the flow.

“Hey, girly. You’re working!” Gin said as she galloped into
the living room.

“Yep,” Anne replied as she made another bold stroke of
black.

“Um, are you depressed?” Gin cocked her head to the side.

“Why?”