Page 43 of Chad's Chase

“Listen, you might be able to give me orders when I’m working in your club, but you can’t—”

“This has nothing to do with me being your ‘boss’.”

Then it hit me. Nadia hadn’t been lying. They were fucking.

“So Nadia wasn’t lying, huh? Youarescrewing her.” I couldn’t help the pang of jealousy seething under my skin. Picturing Chad touching and kissing someone else was making me feel things I didn’t care to feel.

Chad stopped walking. “Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not gonna stop seeing Nadia just because you have property issues and can’t stand me rubbing my pussy in her face from time to time. Not stealing her from you, Alpha Boy. Just borrowing. My girl left me on short notice.”

With an abrupt movement, he gripped my shoulders and jerked me into him, our bodies smashing together. Even in the darkness, his eyes burned, like torches in a bat-filled cave. I felt them, like hot pins pricking my eyeballs.

No idea what this look from him meant.

“How can you talk to me like this?” he growled in a low, deep crawl, like a crocodile sneaking through the still, quiet river at night-time. “Do you feel nothing at all when we kiss? When we fuck?”

Of course I do, you piece of shit! And I hate myself for it.

I felt things I couldn’t even understand yet. I felt things Ididunderstand but didn’t want to acknowledge. I felt things that were wrong, but so very right. I felt things. Chad made mefeelthings.

“I feel fleeting pleasure.”

Grip tightening on my shoulders, he gritted out, “That’s all?”

“That’s all,” I prevaricated. “Sorry, I’m a dike. I ‘feel’ forwomen.”

“Then why do you have sex with me?”

“Because you’re a little uptight…”—I shrugged my shoulders in his grip to prove my point— “…and it seems Nadia’s not playing her part well. So…I thought I’d help.”

Instantly, his hands fell from my shoulders and settled at his sides. This defeated expression on his face, as if he’d just lost a challenge or something. “In that case, what just happened won’t be happening again. I’m not typical. I’m not an archetype. I’mChad. I don’t just fuck because I can. I’m carefully selective in who I introduce my dick to. See, fucking, the whole act, the art of it, it has tomeansomething to me.”

What???

I kept a straight face, struggling to hide my shock, finding it astoundingly difficult to believe that someone like Chad—wealthy, irresistibly good-looking, tempting, fuckable, sex incarnation—wouldnotindulge in meaningless sex.

“So what does sex with Nadia mean to you?” The jealousy still lingered, it never left.

Shaking his head and turning away from me, he resumed walking. “Sex with Nadia never happened.”

“You’re saying she was lying?” I tried to keep up with his strides which were getting longer, swifter.

No answer, only feet crunching against gravel.

Grabbing his arm, I stopped him, and he slowly turned his head to me. Nerves suddenly descended on me as I shuffled on my feet. “And what do you…feel…when you kiss…me?”

Pulling my fingers from around his strong bicep, he dropped my hand like it was contaminated, stepped into my space, dipped his chin so his gaze lowered to mine, and leaned in until our lips were a whisper apart. My breath, I held it, excited. I fucking loved his mouth on mine. But he didn’t kiss me. Instead, he said in his smooth, quiet voice, “Forget about me, Blood. Go back to sucking pussies.”

Next he was walking away.

Addled, it took me a moment to wake up from the face slap. What was happening? Between Chad and me, that is. Everything was moving so confusingly fast I couldn’t comprehend what he was about.

I’d assumed he only wanted to screw me, because, well, that’s what men did. They see a woman they think they need to have, they go after her, get what they want and…that’s it. Sometimes, if the meet-ups for sex were prolonged, it may or may not evolve into something more. But for the most part, when men and women carelessly fucked like Chad and I did—on a sofa banquette in the VIP room of a strip club and on spiky, itchy grass in an open garden—it usually evolved into nothing, it was so debauched.

Wasn’t this what heterosexuals called a fling?

The last thing I expected was for Chad to imply that fucking wasn’t just fucking to him. But actually meant something. Meant what?