Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 77930 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77930 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
In other words, exactly the kind of person that should be off-limits for a crush.
I stepped into the backyard and pulled out my phone to check it before going to find Carla.
I froze when I saw a notification from twenty minutes ago—right before Chase had arrived.
It was from him. And it was enough to drag me right back into wanting more, right when I knew I shouldn’t.
Chase Blau: So when can I film you again?
Chase Blau: Because it’s been all I can think about.
13
CHASE
“Something’s up. Spill,” I said to Adam the moment the front door closed. The rest of the crew had just packed up and left for the day. Adam was in his dining room, breaking down a couple of the pink pastry boxes that I’d brought in this morning.
He looked back at me as I leaned on the archway that led into the dining area, giving me a doe-eyed, innocent look.
“What do you mean?”
I lifted my brows. “You know exactly what I mean.”
I watched as he swallowed, slowly looking like he’d been caught in the act of something awful. “I’m sorry for what happened the other night. If you’re worried about me wanting more from you, you don’t have to. I can control myself, and I’m not going to expect anything from you just because I jerked off in front of you.”
He said it all like he’d rehearsed it. I held up my hands. “Wait a second,” I said. “Okay. Maybe you don’t know what I meant, actually.”
“Did I do something else?”
The poor, poor, beautiful man. How could he think he had done anything wrong when in reality the only thing I’d wanted to do all day was finally get him alone?
“All day today you’ve been avoiding my eyes,” I told him. “I thought I was going to be the one who needed to apologize about the other night. To tell you there’s no pressure on you to do more.”
Since he’d left my house that morning, I’d wondered if I’d taken things too far. I knew I had nothing to offer Adam that he truly wanted—I wasn’t in the market for a relationship, and he clearly wanted that.
I wanted him, really fucking badly. But I wasn’t going to lead him on.
Adam started to float around the dining area, cleaning up boxes and wiping at the table even though it seemed perfectly clean.
“You were busy today,” he said. “I didn’t want to interrupt what you had going on with Emmett, and I know you two hung out yesterday. It’s okay, Chase.”
“Oh my God,” I said, realization dawning on me like a bolt from the sky. “You thought I might want to hook up with Emmett?”
He furrowed his brow. “That’s not a weird thing to assume. You hook up with whoever you want to.”
I turned my head to one side. “True. But I only talked to Emmett yesterday because I happened to stop by the Fixer Brothers offices when he was there for a general meeting with them. They were all sitting in the conference room, and they finished up when I came by, and Emmett got talking with me about cameras, and it turns out he really likes to collect old ones.”
“He likes to collect old clocks, too,” Adam said. “He was talking with me about it this morning.”
I waggled my eyebrows. “So you have something going with him, too, apparently,” I teased him.
Adam rolled his eyes. “Not my type. Nice guy, though.”
“Not my type either,” I said, watching with some sort of devious delight as I realized I was seeing Adam jealous for the first time. “I’m sure Emmett would be a lot of guys’ dream catch. Rich as hell, gay, and genuinely nice. But there’s no spark there for me.”
Adam nodded slowly. “I see.”
“Holy shit,” I said, unable to keep a smile off my face. “You totally got jealous. All day long. You wanted to paw at me like a possessive animal, didn’t you?”
The blush appeared on Adam’s cheeks and that devious feeling inside me only deepened, going straight to my cock. God, he looked good like that.
“Jealous isn’t the right word,” he said. “I just figured because you’re so charming, why wouldn’t you get something going with a single, available guy?”
I clicked my tongue. “Because, to be perfectly honest, my dick is kind of laser-focused on one guy lately,” I admitted.
It was exactly the type of thing I shouldn’t have been saying.
I bit the inside of my cheek as tension bloomed throughout me. I didn’t want to lead him on, but I also couldn’t lie to him. There was nobody else I was sexually interested in right now, because Adam was like a bright, shining star at the center of all of my fantasies. I couldn’t stop thinking about him, even though I knew it was dangerous.