Page 7 of Chase’s Kind of Trouble (Obsessive Protectors #3)

SEVEN

Celeste

This feels so good. Warm. Cozy. I nuzzle in, my face borrowing into—what is that?

“Oh my god!”

I sit up, almost flipping off of the couch, I move so fast.

A big hand latches around my elbow. The grip is gentle this time, unlike the way Jeremy grabbed me.

And the stranger is watching me with warm concern as he tugs me back down. “Easy, baby.”

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 warm possessiveness, 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?”

My toes wiggle inside the soft, yummy, thick material.

“They’re clean.” He chuckles warmly. “Promise.”

Oh god. More champagne bubbles, only this time they fill my whole body.

“I really need to go.”

“No,” he counters, “you need to rest, Celeste. You had a hard evening at work before that dickhead terrorized you. ”

“I need to go to work, I have to—” I squeak when he tugs me down to lie next to him, my body suddenly nestled up to his warm strength.

“You don’t have to work,” he says with a conviction that I cannot understand.

“Yes, I do.”

“Let me worry about that.”

What?

Stiffly, I lie next to the overwhelming length of his body, more confused than ever. He barely fits on the couch and it’s a big sectional.

Why do I love his size so much?

I must have a trauma hangover.

That’s it.

But that’s beside the point. I have more pressing matters. “My rent is due, and my landlord just doubled it.”

His chest rumbles, a thick arm snakes along my back, snuggles me closer. “We’ll talk more about that.”

About my rent?

Then he…

Kisses me again. This time, I’m not as shocked, so my mouth doesn’t fly open, but he’s on it. That devilish tongue of his parting the way, making me shiver with excitement when he licks into me, a carnal conquest.

I’m afraid to admit, I love it. All the ways he tastes me. Slow and gently. Rough and deep. It’s a buffet of sensations, every one of them eliciting a different kind of tingle in my body.

This time he doesn’t only twist his fingers into my hair, his other hand goes on a walkabout. Down my spine, along my waist, where he finds skin beneath my shirt.

My breathing speeds, I’m basically panting into his mouth, fighting his tongue with mine, losing my mind.

When he grips my ribs, his thumb skating below my small breast, I whimper, throaty and loud. A sound I’ve never made in my life.

He pulls back with a curse. “Goddamn. I can’t fucking believe how good you taste, how good you feel. If that’s any indication what you’re going to be like when I get my mouth?—”

He stops himself when he realizes I’m grinning.

I blink at the ceiling. What. Is. Happening?

“Did I hit my head on the way here last night?”

He chuckles as he smoothes a hand down my hair until it’s resting warmly against my skin, cradling the back of my neck. “No, but you hit me over the head with your beauty.”