Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

EASTON

L eave it to me to have to actively force myself to not disappear into my head surrounded by some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I want to be here. I want to be able to do this. Why is it so fucking hard for me when it comes easily to everyone else?

Because you’re nothing but a pretty, broken little doll…

Oh hell, not that voice. Please. Anything but that.

A shudder rolls down my spine as my throat dries out. Chase is too busy for me. He’s talking animatedly to his coworkers, with one hand picking at his remaining fries and the other is emphasizing his story. They’ve all tried so hard to include me, Chase especially, but I messed up. My focus got drawn away from them for too long and now I can’t seem to find my way back. I’m drifting further and further out to sea and there’s no one to pull me back in when Chase is occupied.

That’s such bullshit. Why am I so fucking helpless? He’s going to give up on me and he’d be well within his right to do so. I just showed up here and threw myself at his feet, begging for shelter and somehow that’s still not enough for me? I need him to care about me too?

He was right, I am ungrateful…

The music is too loud, pounding in my ears. It feels like everyone is screaming, and it’s surface of the sun hot in here all of a sudden. My leg starts bouncing under the table, itching to run away, but I’m fucking trapped. And the worst part is that beneath it all, I can hear him as clearly as if he was standing right in front of me. An endless loop of the highlight reel, each time he lost it on me—the cutting things he’d say, how he’d hurt me. I’m lost to it, paralyzed as the nightmares ravage me.

I’m drowning.

When something cold is forced into my mouth, I’m too shocked to scream. In the dim light, his eyes are darker than normal but I’d know them anywhere. Chase is standing over me, worrying his lip between his teeth. That doesn’t explain why my mouth is so fucking cold though. His warm hand covers my mouth when he clocks my confusion.

“It’s ice. Keep it in your mouth and let it melt. It’ll help, okay?” His voice is so warm, like a blanket over my raw nerve endings. I find myself nodding and leaning further into him. He removes his hand in favor of threading it through my sweaty hair. “I’ve got you, it’s okay.” He sighs, clearly relieved. Like I scared him.

It occurs to me that I have no idea where the fuck we are. It’s quieter here than in the bar, I know that much. The air is cooler, making goosebumps break out over my now clammy skin. An alley. That’s where we are. Chase must have taken me outside when he saw I was losing it.

The ice cube is all but melted now. I don’t know if I need another one, but it is helping keep my thoughts on the present and not spiral out of control. I only need to open my mouth before Chase slides another one in with a self-assured little smirk. “Sometimes, I have decent ideas,” he muses. “I need to pay our tab, then we can go home. Sound good?”

Oh fuck. That one hit me in front of all his coworkers. He’s probably so embarrassed of me. No, no, no… “Stop it,” he demands, bopping me softly on the nose. “No runaway thoughts. Suck your ice cube and breathe. That’s it.” That firm tone makes my thighs clench together pathetically. “They didn’t even notice, Chaos. They all left the table to go play pool and when you didn’t move, that’s when I saw it. I told them we were going out for some fresh air, but they didn’t see that anything was wrong. But for what’s it's worth, even if they did, they wouldn’t have judged you.”

Moving the ice around, I mumble, “Can we go in to say goodbye first?”

Chase’s eyes soften. “Yeah, sweetheart.”

He’s not mad at me. He’s not embarrassed of me. I’m sucking his dick tonight, I’ve had enough ice cubes.

~~~

You know, if I’d thought this plan through a little better, I’d have remembered I don’t have any game. No idea how to tell him what I want to do. How to initiate. I don’t think I’ve even sucked a dick without the phrase it's the least you can do thrown in there somewhere. Now I want to do this so fucking badly that my mouth is watering, and feel like I can't speak the language I need to. He’s a perfect gentleman on the way home, intertwining our fingers and resting them just above my knee. So respectful, given that I just lost it in public. I’m still reeling from how he just knew how to handle it and get me back to functional so easily. But now I’m good again, and I want him.

I can do this. Think of the reward.

“Iwannasuckyourdick!” I blurt into the silent car. A hacking cough gives me the bravery to look over, only to find him fucking choking to death. “Fuck, are you okay? ”

He waves me off, but can’t seem to catch his breath. Oh my god, we’re going to crash and die because I wanted to suck a dick. Exactly like my parents said when they kicked me out. Okay, not exactly, but close enough. By the time the fucking Grim Reaper decides to leave Chase earthbound for the night, my cheeks are hot enough to fry an egg on, and I have to look out the car window so he can’t see my lip trembling. This is what I get for putting myself out there, I’m just lucky he seems fine.

“Sweetheart,” he says with a gravelly voice. Guilt and embarrassment battle for dominance in my gut. Maybe he’ll slow down the car enough for me to jump out. If he tries to let me down easy after that absolute shit show, I might try regardless. “Look at me.” It’s one of his softer commands as far as they go, but he might as well have shouted for how helpless I am to resist him.

“What?” I snap too harshly.

Chase furrows his eyebrows. “I’m sorry. You surprised me is all. I wasn’t expecting it.”

I can already tell how this is going to end. “But you don’t want me. I get it. It’s fine. I didn’t even want to, anyway.” I sound like a petulant child. He knows it, I know it, the guy in the next car vaping like he’s entering a cloud-making competition knows it. Whatever.

“Did I say that?” he asks in that firm tone that makes my thighs clench together. Damn it. I don’t answer. Rhetorical questions never end well for me historically. He sighs heavily. “Easton, I’m trying to take things slow because I’m trying to meet you where you’re at. Don’t misunderstand, I never not want you. It’s taking all of my self-control to not fuck you into the mattress every night.”

A squeak works its way out of my throat before I can stop it. Chase smirks, the evil bastard. I fucking hate it. Okay, I don’t, but he has got to stop saying things like this if he doesn’t want my brain to leak out of my ears.

My dick thickens at the mere thought. “That. Do that,” I practically beg.

He pulls into his driveway, turning off the car before facing me. “I’m a patient man, Easton. There’s plenty of time to do everything I want to do to you and then some, no reason to rush. I’m going to take my time with you.”

And then I pounce. The last word is barely out of his mouth before my lips attack his furiously. Chase’s tongue demands entry that I easily grant. He’s just as desperate as I am, which seems significant to the last remaining brain cell in my skull that’s not busy chanting his name. Someone moans, it’s probably me. But the humiliation that’s always within my reach can’t be found. Not when his lips are hot and demanding on my own. A switch has been flipped, and it leaves me feeling ravenous.

Chase’s hands explore my body with fervor, outlining the hollow of my collarbone and applying the slightest touch of pressure to the delicate lines of my neck. I realize in this moment it feels nothing like the harshness of my past. With Chase, it’s exhilarating and profoundly intimate. I don’t have to protect my most easily damaged parts because he won’t hurt me.

That is definitely something to dissect later. Now, all I can concern myself with is if I am able to wait long enough to get out of the car before I get my mouth on him. Chase breaks us apart before I can decide, panting with his pupils blown all to hell. I did that. Me. “Inside, now,” Chase orders. It goes straight to my dick, making me almost trip over myself attempting to obey.

I stumble inside, but don’t make it past the washing machine. He didn’t tell me where to go, and apparently, I like precise instructions. Who fucking knew? Chase crowds me from behind, his presence bringing goosebumps to my skin. His hands slide around my hips before he pulls me against him. I gasp but manage to keep the moan back. He’s so warm and solid against me. With his thick arms wrapped around me, I feel safe. Protected. Wanted.

Chase’s lips trail over my jaw and neck, sending shivers down my spine. But it’s not enough. I need more. Chase grunts as I spin in his arms, but doesn’t miss a beat. Just picks me up underneath my ass and hefts me up with no effort at all. Take that, Mr. You Need To Watch Your Figure. The door to his bedroom gets elbowed open before he drops me right in the middle of his bed. I fall into a fit of laughter.

“You’re so fucking perfect, Chaos,” Chase murmurs as he shakes his head with a smile. I like him like this, wanting but still so very happy. It’s contagious. He breaks through the darkest clouds that linger over me and gives me the warmth and sunshine I crave.

When he pulls his shirt over his head, my mouth dries out. He’s covered in tattoos from his collarbone to his hips; so many I can’t even hope to catalog them all. The butterfly above his heart stands out though. It’s a mismatch of bright colors, not within the lines hardly at all. Something in me cracks wide open at the sight, immediately knowing where it came from.

He must notice my staring because he rolls his eyes playfully. “You try explaining to Sage why she can’t color in a tattoo before I get it. She brought it up every single damn time I talked to her for months. That kid is something else.”

“I think that one is my favorite,” I add, making grabby hands at him so I can have my hands on him again.

Thankfully, he complies without argument, blanketing me in with his weight. Just what I wanted. “Mine too,” he says against my lips. After a few heated kisses, my hands roam over all his beautiful bare skin, and his hand skates under my T-shirt. “Let me see you.”

Normally, I might feel self-conscious, but with Chase hungrily drinking in the sight of me fully clothed, there isn’t much room for it in my brain. I know I’m not defined like him, but he isn’t bothered, so if I’m going to freak out about it, I’ll do it later. I shed the shirt in a hurry before nibbling on his jawline and making him groan. Now I just want to make good on my promise. His hips brush mine, sending a bolt of lighting through me when I feel his hard cock against mine. It’s tempting to get off like this, if only so I can keep kissing him, but I have to taste him, and if I have one skill in the bedroom that I feel confident in, it’s sucking dick. Part of me wants to show off, make him lose his mind and draw out some of that praise that lights me up.

All it takes is a slight push on his shoulder for him to roll so that I’m on top without ever having to abandon my exploration down his neck. He tastes so fucking good, like sugar and mint.

“Fuck, Easton,” he moans when I bite his bottom lip between my teeth. I’m goddamned starved for him, I can’t get enough. We’re both still in jeans and that is unacceptable, so with a huff, I start trying to undo the button. Chase laughs when my hand shakes too much. “Having trouble, beautiful?”

“Shut up,” I grumble, but the smile that’s tugging on the corners of my mouth gives me away.

“These fucking dimples.” It comes out somewhere in between a groan and a sigh, but then he undoes his jeans and shoves them down his tree trunk thighs. Getting a look at the fucking python tenting his black boxers, a nervous breath catches in my throat. Holy shit. Call it pre-game jitters or whatever, but goddamn. My skills are about to be put to the test. Here goes nothing.

Leaning back on my haunches, I get my first full look at Chase Adler spread out before me, and what a picture he paints. My fingers twitch in solidarity. He’s fucking gorgeous, all that muscle and tanned skin covered in artwork of all kinds. A perfect V in his abdomen with a line of dark hair leading downwards. But what fucking kills me is the look on his face. Unreal eyes swallowed up by desire, lips dark red from the mauling of my own, the panting breaths making his chest rise and fall, hell, even the way his hair has been untidied from my inability to keep my hands out of it.

And he says I’m perfect? Wanting anyone else is suddenly a foreign concept. No one could hold a candle to Chase. He’s forever ingrained in my memory just like this.

“You still with me, Chaos?” he asks, breaking me out of my thoughts. After blinking the mist out of my eyes, I flash him a genuine smile.

“Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

He nods, and I find myself incredibly grateful that he checks in and listens to my answers. If I say I’m okay, he believes me.

I run my finger under the elastic of his underwear, noting the way his breath hitches in anticipation before hooking them and pulling them down. He rests his arms behind his head, content to let me have the reins, and while I can’t get enough of the way he can get me out of my head and take control, it’s my turn to do that for him. His briefs are bunched up on his thighs, revealing his thick cock, flushed red with a sliver of pre-come at the tip that I can’t help but to taste, and his heavy balls.

Chase sucks in a breath as I tongue his slit before pressing needy, open-mouthed kisses along his length. When I’ve got him writhing beneath me, I work my way back up and suck his tip in my mouth.

“That’s it,” he groans. “You look so fucking good with my cock in your mouth. ”

I take pride in the fact that I can see pleasure on his face building by the second. He is struggling to hold onto control the further into my throat I take him. It creates a sense of achievement deep within my soul. Saliva runs down him, coating the way for me to take him deeper and deeper until his cock is cutting off the flow of oxygen from my lungs. Chase brings his hand to the back of my head, not to take control; more like he needs the contact to keep him grounded.

Feeling his eyes on me while I’m choking on him makes me squirm desperately against the mattress. It’s empowering, being able to bring this out in him. Perfectly composed Chase, all fucked-up just for me.

When I swallow, he barks out a strangled curse. My own poor neglected dick is about to burst without any attention at all, getting him off is almost too much for me without embarrassing myself. I ease up, both so I can suck in a much-needed breath of air and so that I can watch his face while I prepare to finish him off.

His balls are drawn up tight as I roll them in my palm, squeezing gently. His silky skin glides against my hand as I grip him and suck him simultaneously, pushing him towards completion.

Hearing Chase’s moans of pleasure has me fighting the need to explode.

“Chaos, your mouth feels too good, I can’t hang on any longer.” He warns me in case I want to pull off, but I have other ideas. With a gentle tug on his balls as I suck him deeply, his release hits him with a muffled shout. The salty liquid coats my tongue, filling my mouth with his delicious taste. It’s a bit bitter and a bit sweet and entirely Chase.

When he’s wrung dry, I shove a hand in my briefs and wrap it around my cock. I’m already so, so close. An obscene moan falls from my lips, and suddenly I’m being hauled up to the top of the bed.

“No fucking way. Mine,” Chase growls, still breathless from his orgasm, but no less determined. He sits me high on his chest, scrambling my brain for a minute. His intent is pretty fucking clear, but I’ve only been on one end of this transaction. On autopilot, I pull myself out and feed it to him. The wet heat of his mouth almost has me coming before it can even start. Holyfuckingshit. Holyfuckingshit. It’s too good and Chase isn’t making it easy to hold out. His wicked tongue has me seeing fucking stars as he sucks me as deep as he can at this angle.

It’s fast and messy and so unbelievably perfect. “Chase,” I whine. It’s all I can manage to warn him before my orgasm crashes into me with a force I’ve never felt before. He sucks me through it until my vision is hazy and my bones are liquid. I’m not even sure what’s holding me upright at this point. But Chase has me, that’s the one solid fact that I latch on to. When he’s got me, I’m good.

He maneuvers me so that we’re laying side by side, swapping lazy kisses while we come down from our highs. As the dopamine wanes, I feel a sense of guilt creeping in. Those presents from his family did a number on me today, and he deserves to know why I was so on edge. I’m trying so fucking hard to communicate with him, but it’s an internal fight every single time. My past is warring it out with the present and it’s confusing. I’m not great at these things, but I want to make an effort. I know he’s not Aaron, and he wants me to talk to him. Doesn’t make starting the conversation any easier, though.

“I did a dumb thing,” I admit in a whisper. His expression is a mystery with how I’m laying on his chest, but his muscles contract beneath me.

“What dumb thing?” he asks in a perfectly neutral tone, his hand stroking up and down my back. If I couldn’t hear his heartbeat kick up, I’d think he was simply curious, but of course I fucked up already and worried him.

After clearing my suddenly dry throat, I push on. “I swear, I tried to get over it on my own. Even took a shower to wash away the bad feelings, just like you told me to.”

“Easton, what did you do, sweetheart?”

Breathe. Breathe. You’re not in trouble. “I opened all the presents.”

He exhales heavily. “Why was it hard for you?”

“Um.” That’s not what I thought he’d say. Also fairly complicated. “It was a lot. The art supplies. I haven’t exactly, um, since. Yeah.”

Good job, idiot. Not even English. “Easton, are you trying to say you haven’t been painting?”

Someone should give him an award for his fluent Easton-ese. “Yes.”

His next question is a blow, but I was expecting it. “Since when?”

“Since I got disowned.”

It goes down like fire, engulfing my esophagus and making its way down. I gave up an intrinsic part of me four years ago and admitting it out loud is as humiliating as it is painful. Looking back, abandoning art was one of the things that I did for him, when I should have seen him asking me to as one of the signs I should have ended things. There was only a short time in between that night I spent poolside with Chase that ended so horribly and moving in with my new boyfriend. My dreams were as big as the sky before everything went wrong. Art school and galleries featuring me as crystalline in my head as the visions of me burning in eternal fire. They mixed as well as oil and water but they were both there. Always.

Then he crushed my newly re-blooming passion under the toe of his Tom Ford shoes before it even had a chance to unfurl, and I let him.

Chase’s voice is like that now. Like I stomped on something precious to him. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I know. Please, don’t think I’m ungrateful. It just messed me up a little.”

He rests his cheek on the top of my head, a firm weight that eases a bit off my uneasiness. “I saw your hands. It looked like it messed you up more than a little,” he tells me.

The storm clouds that follow me are gathering, growing heavier and darker day by day, and my fingernails took the brunt of that impending dread today. There’s no denying it. With the absence of cuts and bruises littering my skin, I needed to feel the pain somewhere physical. Clenching my fists through the waves of anguish the art supplies brought up and feeling that electric jolt was grounding. Obviously, not foolproof, and definitely not the best way to keep the worst of it at bay, but it did help.

Carefully, I say, “It was a mistake. Doing it when you were gone and not telling you, it was still bothering me.” My voice is thick, the fear of disappointment an iron ball in my chest. “I’m sorry. I’m trying.”

One kiss to my hair, then another. “Easton, do you think I’m upset with you?”

It’s easier like this, when he can’t see me. Like admitting your insecurities to an especially warm and firm body pillow. “Always.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s easy for you to say that you’re not, even act like you’re not, but it’s not so simple to convince myself of it. I’m always going in a thousand different directions, and at least nine hundred end with you deciding I’m too much to deal with. ”

His hand halts its movement, I almost whimper. “Okay. I can work on that.”

I’m delusional, there’s no other explanation. “W-what?” I stutter.

Another kiss, this one near apologetic. “It’s got to be hard, overthinking like that. I’ll do better about over-explaining myself so you don’t have as much room to run off with your thoughts.”

Something unbearable happens beneath my ribcage, something too vast and complicated that makes my heart actually skip a beat. “Chase,” I choke out.

He sounds steadfast in his accountability. “It’s not a burden, Easton, so don’t even try. Just something I wasn’t fully aware I needed to be doing. If it helps you even in a small way, that’s all I want. It’s been fast, you and me, but I mean it when I say I’m in your corner.”

“Okay.” It’s all I can force out with my head spinning as it is. This is a lot for one day. Not all of it bad, in fact some of it incredible, but still a lot. Chase is so opposite of what I grew accustomed to that it’s hard to take it all in at once. Or ever, if I’m being honest with myself.

But for now, he’s here. Right beside me while I battle my demons and hope to come out on the other side so I can be a full person. For him, for me. So that I can prove to myself that what Aaron took from me isn’t gone forever.