So Damn Beautiful (A New Adult Romance) (24 page)

His words were pounding into my head, almost
as hard as he was pounding into me.

“What do you want from me?” I screamed
out.

“I want you to come for me, Annie. I want you
to come harder than you’ve ever come before.”

Everything rose to a fever pitch at that
moment, and a delicious release sent that stream of heat cascading
through me. The wave of light nearly knocked me over, but it was
accompanied by the dark vortex of his orgasm, which poured into and
out of me. His heat mingled with mine, and we both collapsed into a
heaving mass of flesh on his bed. As if the purity of my pleasure
weren’t enough, I could feel him continuing to melt into me. His
arms reflexively wrapped around me until he was spooning me in his
bed, his warm breath nuzzling the nape of my neck. His hand cupped
my breast, and I felt all of me sigh and sink back into him. It was
perfect—this sensation of fullness and sweetness in the aftermath
of that kind of passion. I could barely believe it, but I was so
spent that I instantly felt my eyelids grow heavy, and before I
knew it, we were both asleep in each other’s arms.

In the middle of the night, we found each
other again, wordlessly.

I awoke to his hand running down my side,
gently, lightly, to my hip, as if he were taking the time to
memorize every contour and curve of my body. I turned to look at
him, and his heated gaze instantly filled me with need. His touch
was so light as it roamed my body that it drove me wild by the time
it reached my thigh. My head leaned back, my neck arching, and I
moaned, the sound emitting from deep within me. I didn’t know how
much more I could take. I was about to plead for him, to say I
needed more of him now, when he rolled on top of me. We were both
already breathing heavily.

He ran his fingers gently along my neck, then
placed tender kisses there and ran his tongue along it. When his
face hovered over mine, our eyes met. His gaze spoke of longing and
needing and wanting, as I’m sure mine did. Because I needed him
more than I’d ever needed anything in my life.

He quickly put on a condom, and I opened
myself to him. My body accepted him eagerly as I shifted to
accommodate all of him. When he was fully inside me, he sucked in a
breath and paused.

“Fuck, Annie,” he said, his head down, his
voice harsh. “You’re amazing.” He looked up, our eyes met again,
and I swear I felt a profound shift between us. That we were
experiencing something ethereal.

He started moving slowly, and it was
lovemaking through and through. Tender. Slow. Amazing.

The tormenting, slow-building tension reached
a breaking point for me when I came first, running my nails up
Chase’s back as the delicate muscles inside me contracted around
him. Soon after, Chase cried out, “Aaaa-nnie!” as he pushed into me
with several final thrusts. Then he collapsed on top of me as we
both struggled to catch our breath.

When he pushed himself up to look at me, we
smiled at each other, before I suddenly felt self-conscious and
looked away. He turned my face back toward him, his smile gone, and
kissed me deeply, intensely.

How did he have such an effect on me?

I didn’t dream that night. I experienced
perhaps the deepest and most restful sleep of my life, but when I
woke up, it was to the vague sound of sirens several blocks away
and the feeling of warm sun pouring in through the skylight. I
looked up through a haze of sleep and noticed that the skylight was
spattered with droplets of paint, as if someone had thrown several
paintbrushes up in the air.

The contents of last night began to flood my
memory, and I suddenly shot up in the bed, realizing I wasn’t in my
dorm room. Chase must have pulled the blankets up over us at some
point, because, thankfully, my body was covered.

I could barely believe what had taken place
between this beautiful boy and me. His hair was softly ruffled, and
his green eyes were both playful and soft, a combination I wasn’t
accustomed to seeing from him. He smiled and scooted closer to me
on the bed, then kissed me softly and warmly. I practically melted.
Thank goodness he didn’t appear to suffer from morning breath.

“You sleep like the dead,” he said
matter-of-factly, which made me giggle nervously.

“Actually, I’m a pretty light sleeper. I
guess I just felt . . . safe,” I said, tightening the covers around
me and wishing it were still dark outside. Chase seemed to notice,
and in response, he tore the covers off me.

“Hey!” I squealed, feeling goose bumps
forming on my skin in response to the cold gust of air. “Why'd you
do that?”

He smiled sweetly and pinned my shoulders
onto the bed as he lowered his weight onto my body, which instantly
sent a wave of heat through me. “Because you’re sexy and I want to
look at you.”

I didn’t know how to respond, but when I
noticed flecks of purple paint in his hair, I began to laugh.
“Chase . . . you . . . you have paint in your hair!”

“Oh yeah? Well, so do you!” He wrapped a few
tendrils of my hair around his fingers, and I noticed large flecks
of purple in the gold. I groaned. We must have knocked over one of
his cans of paint in our haste to get each other’s clothes off last
night. Chase didn’t seem too miffed by it, however, as he curled
his arms and legs around me and looked at me in a way that made me
feel like I was a goddess, rather than a paint-covered mess.

I closed my eyes and sighed happily, then
opened them to take a quick inventory of my surroundings. The space
was one giant room, and Chase’s bed—a queen-size mattress with no
frame—was in one corner. Overall, it was surprisingly less dingy
than I’d thought. The place was filled to the brim with industrial
trappings: distressed-brick walls, concrete floors fashionably
equipped with self-conscious fault lines and exposed beams. It was
surprisingly sunny and even somewhat cheerful, what with the tons
of canvases lying around (which Chase had obviously been putting to
good use) and the colorful murals that covered the walls with
triumphant splashes of paint.

“Have you been living here long?” I asked,
suddenly curious.

Chase shrugged. “I used to share the space
with buddies—it was just a studio, kind of. But then it became
where I spent most of my time . . . a place where Kyle and I could
crash without feeling like we were just passing through.”

“Does Kyle live here, too?” I looked around
for signs of a sixteen-year-old skateboarder but couldn’t see
any.

“Nah. Too damn independent for his own good,”
Chase chuckled. “He has friends he stays with, and sometimes he
likes to hang out here . . . but whatever. I was sixteen not that
long ago, you know?”

“Yeah, me too.” A spontaneous shudder of cold
racked my body at that moment, despite Chase’s warmth, which made
him curl into me even more.

“How are you feeling?” He looked at me
intensely and brushed my hair back gently, which made me smile. I
cupped his face in both my hands and let myself be held in his
gaze.

“I feel . . . I feel amazing, surprisingly,”
I said. “I mean, after that run-in with the cops, I thought for
sure that we were screwed, so I guess I’m experiencing some kind of
cathartic awesomeness.”

Chase shook his head, suddenly assuming a
serious demeanor. “Uh-uh, Goldilocks. I don’t think that’s what the
awesomeness is all about.”

I felt shy all over again, despite the fact
that I’d had the most mind-blowing sex of my life last night. But I
couldn’t tell if this was real or not, as there was one nagging
question on my mind. “So . . . why me?” I asked almost
reluctantly.

Chase studied me for several agonizingly long
moments, which made my heart stop.

“I guess I like blondes.” He gave me a
devious grin, which made me punch him in the arm.

“Seriously, why did last night happen?” I was
almost afraid to ask, but I had to know.

He caressed my right arm with a lingering
touch that made me feel all shuddery and weak-kneed. “I don’t know,
Annie, there was just something about you. Your eyes, your walk,
your hair, your smile, the way you held yourself, like you knew
there was something better and truer than all the bullshit. I could
see that from the moment I met you.”

“But you totally hated me!”

Chase rolled his eyes. “Seriously? You’ve
never heard the old saw about little boys being mean to little
girls not ’cause they’re trying to be dicks but ’cause they can’t
express how they really feel?”

I brushed my fingertips across his jaw. “So
you admit you like me?” I asked.

“There’s no way I would have done what we did
last night if I didn’t feel . . . something for you.” He looked
serious as he said this, almost as if he were pleading with me to
believe him. “You know, I’m used to girls liking me not for who I
am, but for who they
think
I might be.” The set to his jaw
was hard as he said this. “With you, it just felt . . . like I
could be myself, like I could talk about art without sounding like
a complete dick.”

I smiled. “Well, to be fair, you
were
a complete dick from time to time.”

“If that’s the way you interpret
passion—”

I put a finger over Chase’s lips, which felt
soft and warm. I didn’t want this to descend into another argument
between us. “I
do
appreciate your passion, Chase. And your
talent. And your body.” To further my point, I reached for him
beneath the covers, delighted to find him standing at
attention.

“Okay, my turn—what about me?”

I was confused. “What
about
you?”

“I told you why I felt something for you, but
you haven’t said why you deigned to give me the time of day after I
was such a dick to you,” he said half-jokingly. “So enlighten
me—why me?”

I looked up at the ceiling, enjoying the
spattering of radiance coming through the painted skylight. It felt
good to be this honest with Chase, this intimate. I could tell he
wasn’t accustomed to sharing his feelings with women, that he and
Daisy had probably seldom indulged in pillow talk after a hot
night. I felt both tender and flattered.

“I guess . . . when you told me more about
your family, about your brother, it made me realize you and I
aren’t so different from each other.”

He raised an eyebrow. “We aren’t?”

“Look, I don’t know what you think about me,
but I didn’t grow up with servants or a silver spoon in my mouth or
anything like that. My dad walked out on me and my mom when I was a
baby. Mom was a waitress in shitty truck-stop diners, and most of
my clothes came from those charity drives they do around the
holidays, when people collect winter coats for the poor and needy.
I came from a small town, so I didn’t have to contend with the mean
streets, but it was always a struggle.” I paused. “The only thing I
ever wanted was to immerse myself in art, so, despite all the
bullshit, I was focused. I knew there was something better out
there for me.”

Chase closed his eyes. “Awww, Goldilocks. I
had no fucking idea. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Are you kidding me? You were too busy
lecturing me about the forlorn state of gallery art to listen—I
mean
really
listen—to anything I had to say.”

He looked genuinely hurt when I said that,
which made me throw my arms around him and squeeze him. “Hey,” I
said softly. “It’s all water under the bridge. What’s important is
that we’re here right now.”

Chase nodded. “Annie, when we met a few weeks
ago? That’s not really me—it’s the armor I have to put up to deal
with all the fucking hacks and opportunists I run into. So . . .
I’m sorry.”

I widened my eyes in mock surprise. “O . . .
M . . . G . . . Stop the presses! Chase Adams says he’s sorry?”

Chase growled and pulled my hair back so that
he had better access to my breasts, which he covered with little
bites. I squealed at the sensation.

“So, you ready for breakfast?” he asked.

I took a glance around the large room. “Um,
yeah, I’m starving—but I don’t see a kitchen in here.”

Chase gave me a wicked grin. “There ain’t
one. I’m taking you out, Goldilocks. But first, I want an
appetizer.”

Before I could say or do anything, Chase dove
beneath the blanket, and I could feel his fingers and tongue set
fire to me. I looked up at the skylight, letting the sun shower
down over my face and shoulders. I noticed the paint on the
skylight was arrayed in different colors, like an accidental
rainbow that had been created in the fury of Chase’s creative
process. I closed my eyes tight and let out a moan as I dug my
fingers into the mattress.

Although it took us a while to muster the willpower to get out of
bed and keep our hands off each other, we eventually did. After a
long, luxurious bath in a clawfoot tub (which was, for some reason,
hidden away in one of Chase’s massive walk-in closets), we ended up
at a mom-and-pop diner not far down the street. I was astonished at
my appetite—I had a massive cheeseburger, which Chase seemed to
approve of (“No salads for any girl of mine,” he insisted).
Apparently, the adrenaline rush of the night before had made me
burn more calories than I could afford to lose. Thankfully, I
didn’t have any classes today, so I could go back to the dorm and
catch up on all my projects, but it was still painful to have to
part ways with Chase.

As he dropped me off at the subway station, I
began to wonder if any of this was too good to be true. I was
amazed at how sweet and funny Chase was being, but I also hoped it
wasn’t his way of keeping me on a string. I wasn’t that experienced
in the realm of sex and dating, but I knew all about guys who used
their charm and good looks to their advantage. Given all the
warnings I had received, from both friends like Kendra and enemies
like Elsie, I couldn’t help but feel somewhat guarded. Chase
noticed and grabbed me by the shoulders so we were facing each
other.