Page 66 of When the Fake Snow Falls

I blink. “Am I done?”

Both his hands are on my legs now, and I have no idea when the other one mirrored the first. “You were cutting my hair.”

“Right.” I nod. “Yeah, I’m done.”

He’s watching me carefully. “Look, if I overstepped with something I said, I didn’t mean?—”

“No!” I say, and it comes out louder than I meant it to. “No. Don’t . . .” My words come out breathless. “Don’t stop talking.”

He cocks an eyebrow. “Don’t stop talking?”

My cheeks flare. “I just mean—” I wet my lips. “I like when you say things.”

Both hands move up a little higher, his thumbs grazing the inside of my upper thighs. “Like when I say you turn me on? Because, Candace, I . . .”

His thumbs creep dangerously close to where I’m aching to be touched, but I panic. I sit in his lap, straddling him before he can get that far. As soon as I sit, I can feel how true his laststatement was. He’s hard and thick between my legs, and it takes all my self-control not to rock against him. Even without the added movement, Chase sucks in a breath, his hands wasting no time sliding up to cup my ass.

“I like the things you say.” I’m rethinking this position now that I can feel how perfectly he fits between my legs, but I try to stay focused. “I like spending time with you, but I can’t sleep with you.”

He lets out a breath as he adjusts to me on top of him. “I wasn’t asking you?—”

“I know, but you don’t want me to say Jack Frost, so I’m letting you know what would make me say it.”

He nods, looking more serious. It isn’t until he says, “Can’t or don’t want to?” that he looks more like his usual self, up to no good.

My heart pounds in my chest. “What do you mean?”

His mouth pulls into a half smile. “They’re two very different things. You said you can’t sleep with me. Is that because you don’t want to? Or is something else preventing us from both getting what we want?” His fingers trace along my lower back as he waits for me to give him an answer.

“Despicable,” I say with a light laugh and a shake of my head. His entire body radiates heat, and my hands explore the lines and grooves of his muscled stomach.

There’s a wicked glint behind his eyes. “So I’ve been told.” He holds my gaze for another beat before relenting. “Okay, fine. We won’t sleep together.” He gives me a playful lift of his brow, and I brace myself for whatever he’s about to say. “But you still want me to say whatever thought pops into my head? No thought is off limits?”

My lips twist. “No thought is off limits.”

He sits up straight, pulling me flush against him. Feeling the bulge of him pressed against me pulls a gasp from my lips, the added pressure creating a delicious ache between my legs.

His voice is low and husky when he says, “Good. Because I’m going to need you to move those hips for me, beautiful. Give me something to think about when I fuck my hand later.”

He presses his lips to my throat, and I suck in a breath. My hands weave through his still damp hair, pulling it at the roots and forcing his mouth up to meet mine. He tastes like mint, and when his tongue sweeps over my bottom lip, I gladly open for him to kiss me deeper. His tongue drags over mine, and my hips roll. I’m desperate to create friction between us for my own selfish reasons, but when he groans and says, “Fuck. Good girl,” I almost self-combust.

My mouth moves to his neck where I leave an open-mouthed kiss, and then another, and another—all while slowly grinding against him. I nip at his jawline, and the sound of his breath catching will forever haunt me in the best way. This kiss was a terrible idea. I can already feel my resolve slipping. The back of my mind desperately tries to come up with excuses to go back on my words, even though I only said them minutes ago. Thank God we’re confined to this kitchen chair. There’s only so much damage we can do here.

We’re all tongue, teeth, and lips, and every tiny new thing I discover sends a wave of excitement through me. Like the way he grips me tighter when I take his bottom lip between my teeth. Or the way he weaves his hand in my hair when he wants to kiss me deeper. Even the way he grips my hips to still them, as if the movement he asked for is too much to bear. They’re all fragments of a bigger picture clicking into place, and I’m dying to see the finished result even though that’s the one thing I said I wouldn’t do with him.

Eventually, Chase’s kisses slow before he leans his head back and stares at the ceiling, breathing hard. “Is the dress you got for the event ugly?”

Through panting breaths, I let out a bewildered laugh. “What?”

Rolling his head to look at me, he says, “Please tell me the dress you’re wearing Friday is hideous. Because if it’s not, I think it might put me over the edge. You could kill me, Candace.”

“What are you talking about?” I say with another laugh. “You saw me in a dress when we went on our ‘not date.’”

His eyebrows furrow. “That was definitely a date.”

“A fake date.”

He holds my stare like he’s considering whether to argue with me. “Fine. Yes, I saw you in a dress for our ‘fake date.’” He releases his grip on the back of my neck to put air quotes around the words. “But I had no idea how you tasted or moved . . .” His hands slide up my thighs on either side until his thumbs hook at my hips. “I had no idea how youfelt.” He shakes his head. “I was so naïve. So blissfully ignorant of what I was missing.”

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