Page 13 of Chase's Kind of Trouble
Baby? I silently mouth a word that might as well be in French, it’s so foreign to my world.
The gigantic man from the alley, the golden-eyed gladiator who kissed me, stretches like a big animal and pats his chest with a hand that rival’s a bear paw in size. “Come back down here, babe. I like you laying on my chest.”
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again, my throat going dry as a brick oven.
“I…don’t even know who you are.”
“Chase Montgomery.”
Chase. A strong name for a powerful man.
A tremble works through me as we stare at each other. Well, I search his face instead of just staring.
Because how can I not?
He’s…gorgeous.
A light scruff hugs his jaw, paying homage to the angles, catching the glow from a fireplace in brown embers and tiny golden streaks.
But it might be the eyes that hit me the hardest.
There’s a depth to his stare. A man who has seen and done things of unimaginable difficulty has that deep, ancient, knowing look.
Chase Montgomery is a man of mystery. An enigma. A protector with scars, and stories in his gaze.
A ripple of awareness slides down from my scalp to my fingertips. An electrical current tuning into him.
“Where am I?”
He tips his chin, eyes softening as he glances around the gigantic cabin’s living room. “Home.”
Another foreign word. I haven’t called anywhere home since my family died when I was seventeen. Since then, it’s been cheap apartments, and even friend’s couches where I could sleep between my two jobs.
But he says the word home as if that’s an explanation for…everything.
“How do you feel?” he asks, his thumb making a slow circle on the soft inner part of my arm.
“Dazed.”
I glance around, expecting to see unicorns or something that proves I’m asleep and this is all a weird dream.
But alas, nothing mystical or odd, except the man lying next to me who is calling me baby, touching me with warmpossessiveness, and who kissed me like he was dying for a taste last night.
A tingle builds in my stomach, and it’s not emptiness. No… it’s bubbly warmth. A champagne bath.
An affect he seems to have on me frequently, if I remember last night correctly.
I scrub my fingers over my eyes, trying to dissipate the fog. He’s still watching me when my hand falls limply to grip the couch we’re lying on.
Or he’s lying on and I’m hanging on the edge like a skittish bird that might fly away.
Only I don’t think I can. Some part of me is drawn to him like moth to flame, which makes him even more dangerous.
Beautiful things only hurt people like me.
Shifting, I stretch my legs, planting my feet on the floor. Weird. I’m wearing socks. I didn’t have any on at work.
“Are these your socks?”
