Page 49 of Kiss & Collide
He was silent for the short ride back to the hotel, and silent as they crossed the wood-paneled lobby hung with oil paintings and scattered with antiques.
When they got in the elevator, she looked at him in question. “Third floor,” he mumbled. She stabbed the button. So he wasn’t feeling chatty. That was usually exactly what she was after. Violet wasn’t an idiot. It didn’t take much to realize that Sophiewas Chase’s version of Ian. So why did she feel like she needed him to say something, explain something?
He tapped his key card to open the door and ushered her inside. There was a lamp on by the bed, casting the room in soft golden light. The bed looked like a palace, with an ornate carved, gilded headboard and swags of red brocade fabric to either side. It was covered in a luxurious red velvet duvet and a heap of tufted gold throw pillows.
She turned to Chase, smiling in anticipation, and his hands slowly went up to her hips. God, she’d missed this. It felt like forever since she’d been with him in Paris. Why had she been avoiding him when she knew he could make her feel like this?
She ran her hands up over his rock-hard chest to grasp the back of his neck. But just as she was about to tug his head down and kiss him, he turned his head a bit to the side, eyes closed.
What the fuck? He was usually the one kissing her. She rarely initiated. And now when she actuallywantedto kiss him, he wasn’t even looking at her. His warm body was still pressed up against hers, and his hands were still sliding down her body, but Chase himself felt a million miles away.
“Hey …”
His hands tightened on her hips, but his eyes were still closed. There was still this sense of wrongness she couldn’t quite identify.
“Chase.”
She pushed away from him and took a step back. Finally, he opened his eyes and looked at her, surprised.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I wanted to have sex with you. But I’m getting the feeling you don’t really want to have sex with me right now.”
He let out a humorless huff, eyes on the floor. “Don’t be ridiculous, Violet. Of course I want to. I always want to.”
“But you’re not … here. With me, right now. You’re a million miles away. With someone else.”
And while she had very few scruples about who she had sex with and why, if she was going to have sex with someone, she wanted to be the only person in their head for the event.
“What? Who?”
“You tell me. But I’m guessing it’s Sophie.” She took a deep breath and did the thing she never did. She asked. “So, tell me, what happened there?”
20
“She’s nobody,” Chase said, a knee-jerk reaction.
Violet scoffed, crossing her arms over her chest. “Sure. Nobody. Her and Liam, two complete nobodies you can’t manage to hold a normal conversation with.”
He turned away, raking his hand through his hair. “It’s ancient history.”
“Doesn’t feel that way right now.”
He winced. That was bad, what had just happened between them. She wasn’t wrong. He had not been thinking about Violet, and that was really shitty.
“I’m sorry, Violet. I was an ass.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed and dropped his head into his hands. She was quiet for a beat, then he heard her cross the room and sit down next to him. “Tell me about her.”
“It’s not important.”
“The fuck it’s not. Tell me.”
He drew a deep breath and raised his head. He kept his eyes on the far wall. “I told you I was in Hansbach’s young driver program with Liam.”
“Yeah.”
“We were best friends back then.”
