Page 43 of Playing with Forever
And yet, here he was, providing both.
It would be so easy to take what he was offering and pretend it was enough, but I knew myself. I was already falling for him—hard—and when Chase eventually walked away, it was going to hurt like hell. Because no matter how safe his promises sounded, I couldn’t deny the truth.
I wanted all of him.
And I was terrified I’d never be enough to make him stay.
CHAPTER17
Chase
It only took a few days of living with Andrea for us to establish a routine.
That second night, Andrea fell asleep on the couch cuddled against me while we watched a movie. At first, I carried her to the guest room again, but when I tried to put her down, she’d given me the most unhappy, disappointed look on her face and I hadn’t had the heart to abandon her. She’d had such a hard day—her stalker making their presence known again and then burning the casserole, drudging up those terrible memories—and I just couldn’t bring myself to leave her alone.
I took her to my bed instead and held her, because I’d had a fucking rough day, too, and needed that comfort just as much.
Three days later and it all just felt natural. And comfortable. Like this was where Andrea belonged…in my bed. In my life.
I’d never had any kind of relationship like this with a woman before. Andrea was there in the morning, smiling at me, and at night we tended to just have a quiet evening in, watching movies or playing two-person board games or reading together on the sofa. I think I surprised her by being someone who preferred that kind of low key solitude, like the fact that I was into BDSM meant I also was into skydiving every single weekend and clubbing. And sure, I did enjoy a fun adrenaline rush as much as the next person, but I was also in my thirties with a demanding job, and the last thing Andrea needed right now was even more excitement.
Even though I’d assured her that I could buy a new casserole pan and there was no harm done to the oven, and I could definitely afford more pasta and cheese, Andrea still seemed to want to make it up to me, cooking dinner the last few nights. I hadn’t had something homemade in ages, and I appreciated the effort because everything she made was delicious. But I also didn’t want her thinking she had to make my meals, because she was a guest in my home.
If I was being honest with myself, she didn’t feel like a guest. She felt like she belonged here just as much as I did.
And that thought process was incredibly dangerous.
It would’ve been easier to push the situation out of my mind if I’d had a serious assignment to distract me, but my current one was babysitting Naomi Starr, an A-list actress who was in Vegas for a movie premiere, and I was the unlucky guy who’d been tasked as her security detail for the past few days. Today—which she’d had off from making any appearances—she’d spent shopping at all the high end luxury stores. Nothing going on threat-wise, just me having to make sure that paparazzi and zealous fans didn’t encroach on her personal space while she just wanted to exist like a normal person. But it was a dull, boring, mind-numbing task, which meant I had too much time to think about Andrea, and our situation.
When I was able to head back into the office later that day, I stopped by the tech department to check in with Tate, our IT guy for the most part. I’d given him all the information Andrea had provided to me about her ex-boyfriend, Heath, so Tate could run a check on the other man and see if there was any evidence of him possibly tampering with her tire, or sending her the flowers.
“Anything to report?” I asked him, hoping like hell he’d discovered something incriminating.
“Still searching,” he said, his eyes on the computer screen in front of him, while I stood on the other side of his desk. “So far, I haven’t been able to find anything concrete. I mean, I agree with you it’s weird that Heath went out of his way to go to the grocery store he knows Andrea uses, but I haven’t noticed anything on his social media or his credit card purchases that raises a red flag. I thought it would be clever of him to buy himself the gift card for the florist say, a month ago, and then use the gift card for the flowers now, but he hasn’t bought anything from any florist, gift card or otherwise.”
I jammed my hand through my hair in frustration. “Maybe he somehow paid cash.”
“Which we both know is impossible to trace,” Tate said, finally reclining back in his chair and glancing at me.
I nodded. Heath was my most likely suspect right now. He’d already expressed an interest in getting back together with Andrea and I thought the grocery store run-in was concerning. And, he had intimate knowledge of her Lily tattoo.
Sure, it might’ve been just low-level creepy to try and stage a natural meet-cute, to prompt Andrea to think about them as a couple again and feeling like it was fate. It was alarming how many times people would do that in real life, attempting to craft their own rom-com moment with the object of their affection instead of just being an adult and texting or calling to ask the person out.
Even though Heath was number one on the list, I also hadn’t ruled out the possibility that this was some random person who’d fixated on Andrea after meeting her once or seeing her somewhere—it did happen, unfortunately—but overwhelmingly the stalker, the abuser, the attacker, was someone the victim knew personally.
“I’ll keep digging whenever I have the chance,” Tate said, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“Thank you.” Andrea wasn’t a paying customer, and Tate was doing me a huge favor by looking into Heath for me, and I appreciated his time.
I felt restless and wound tight as I drove to Andrea’s work to pick her up. It hadn’t yet been a week so she was still letting me drive her to and from work, but if nothing else happened in that time, I knew she’d insist on more independence. I didn’t want to keep her on a leash, at least not outside of the bedroom, but I couldn’t shake the feeling the danger wasn’t over. Those flowers were proof enough, even though I wasn’t sure Andrea would agree, they were sufficient to prolong my chauffeuring duties.
I parked up in front of her building and Andrea came out, smiling at me as she made her way to the car. She was wearing a tan, form fitting skirt that ended just above the knee, and a white blouse that buttoned up the front, and low heeled sandals. There was nothing overtly sexy about the outfit—it was actually quite modest—but I’d seen the pale pink bra and panty set she’d put on that morning. My dick twitched in my pants when I recalled thinking about bending her over the nearest flat surface, hiking that skirt up to her hips, and fucking her from behind before I dropped her off at work, so she’d feel me for the rest of the day.
Alas, we’d been running late, but that erotic fantasy flooded my mind again. That tension inside of me shifted, and I suddenly felt very keyed up, in an entirely different way.
Since moving Andrea into my condo, we hadn’t messed around at all, despite sleeping in the same bed. I didn’t want Andrea to feel like she had to have sex with me just because she was staying at my place, and I didn’t want to pressure her to play when she was going through this ordeal. But it had been a while since we’d done anything fun and we’d originally planned to go to the club together when we found her tire slashed…
An idea formed, and it made me wonder just how daring Andrea was willing to be.
