I woke slowly the next morning, wondering why it was still so dark. I'd felt like I'd been asleep forever, yet somehow there wasn't even the faintest sliver of light anywhere. I also knew I wasn't in my bed. This bed was lumpy and uncomfortable and my body hurt all over from laying in it for far too long.
I needed to get up. I needed to stretch in an attempt to ease some of my discomfort, but something was holding me down, keeping me from being able to move. I grabbed at my waist where the binding was stretched over me, and I realized it was an arm.
Panic gripped me and I began to thrash around, trying to break free. I kicked out with my legs and heard a groan as my captive rolled off me and hit the floor with a loud thump.
I scrambled from the bed now that I was free and stumbled in the unfamiliar surroundings, falling to the floor myself in my haste to escape.
" Blair," Chuck's voice rang out in the darkness and I stilled instantly as I suddenly remember where I was and what was happening to me.
" Blair, are you alright ?" He called again when I didn't answer him.
" I'm fine." I mumbled as I struggled to a sitting position on the floor.
" I guess we should have left a light on or something." He grumbled as the bed shifted where it was resting against my back.
" Yeah, I guess we should have." I agreed, clutching my throbbing head, which I had hit on the side of the bed when I fell. " I'm sorry I kicked you. Are you okay ?"
He groaned again, quietly this time and I felt his hand brush my shoulder. " I'm fine since I wasn't planning on having children in the near future."
" Oh," I mumbled, not realizing before that I had accidentally kicked him THERE.
" You can be pretty feisty when you need to be." He chuckled.
" I didn't know it was you." I tried again to apologize.
His hand connected with my shoulder again, but this time it just rested there. " Would it have made any difference ?" He asked quietly.
" Of course, I wouldn't have kicked you had I known it was you."
" I'm sorry I was on your side of the bed. I didn't do it on purpose. I must've rolled over in my sleep. Are you sure you're okay ?"
" Yeah, I'm fine, since I wasn't planning on thinking in the near future." I muttered under my breath.
I heard him move abruptly and I assumed he sat up. " You hit your head ?"
The next thing I knew he was dragging me from the floor and easing me back onto the bed. " It's not bad. Not even a bump." I protested.
I felt his arm come around me as he leaned in close. I tensed automatically as the familiar electricity shot through me and the desire to feel his lips nearly smothered me.
He was leaning closer still, so near I could feel his heart thumping against my chest. I wet my lips instinctively and forgot to think about how I would react after he kissed me, I was too busy anticipating the kiss itself.
Just as I thought I could almost feel his lips brushing tentatively against mine, I heard a soft click and the room was flooded in a yellowish diffused light from the low wattage lamp we had found and put beside the bed.
I leaned back quickly as I realized I was sitting there like an idiot with my back arched into him and my head tilted towards his face. I also clamped my parted lips shut. God I must have looked like an idiot.
He hadn't been about to kiss me. He was just groping for the lamp in the dark.
His eyebrows quirked up at me questioningly and I knew he hadn't missed my fumble. " You sure you're okay ?" He prompted.
" I'm fine. Like I said, it isn't bad."
I started to get up, trying to untangle myself and escape the room before I could get anymore embarrassed..
But he caught my wrist and held me steady before I could get too far. " What the hell was that all about?" His voice was quiet with just an edge of something else to it.
" All what ?" I pretended like I didn't know what he was talking about.
" You know very well what." He said, closer to me.
I glanced down at his hand still holding mine and it felt like a knife being driven into my side as I looked back up at him. " Let me go."
" Talk to me first." He demanded.
" I just thought ...." I started off, but I had no idea where to go from there, so I cleared my throat and started again. " It doesn't matter what thought. I was wrong. Now I'm going to the bathroom."
Then I wrenched my hand from his and fled, shutting the door behind me.
The rest of the space was frigid and I wanted nothing more than to return as quickly as possible to the warmth of the bedroom, but I knew that was impossible now. I knew all the progress we had made the night before was gone. Gone with one silly, stupid little mistake. When he finally emerged from the room, there would be awkwardness and discomfort and neither of us would know what to say to the other.
All because I thought he was about to kiss me.
And what would have happened if he had ? Would I have fallen into his arms and pulled him back down to the bed ? Would I have eventually found the strength to pull away and somehow summoned the anger that I knew I should have felt ?
I heard the bedroom open and I glanced around at him. But he didn't look up or even paused as he crossed the hall and shut the bathroom door behind him.
I went to the fridge and pulled out the ingredients I needed to make a descent breakfast. I decided not to turn back around when I heard the door open again a few minutes later. I still steadfastly refused to budge when his footsteps came up behind me and or when I felt him so close to me, I could smell the scent of mouthwash in the air.
I cleared my throat and went about my business, cracking eggs into a bowl to scramble.
Suddenly, there was an hand covering my wrist and I dropped the whisk an instant before I felt myself being turned towards him.
I gasped at the look of heat and desire in his eyes as he grabbed me to him and surrounded me with his arms. Then he was kissing me and it was beautiful and delicious. His luscious lips caressed mine so softly and insistently I couldn't think of anything besides him.
I moaned into him as his tongue flicked over the roof of my mouth and grazed across my own tongue.
He sighed audibly as I let myself relax and sink into the feel of his body, so strong and sturdy against mine.
When he was done, he pulled back and his normal, wolfish grin was firmly in place as he stepped away from me, leaving me leaning against the counter to keep my balance.
I realized suddenly that I had really, really missed that grin.
" Now that, THAT is out of the way," He drawled, his smug, confident, low whisper back, "What's for breakfast ?"
I stared at him completely dumbfounded as he leaned casually back against the counter as if nothing had happened and folded his long arms over his chest.
" What the fuck ?" I hissed when I realized he wasn't going to say anything else about what had just happened.
He turned, leaving his hip still against the counter and his smile still in place. " That was what you wanted. I saw it in your eyes in the bedroom. It's what you thought was going to happen." He moved closer still and touched the hair that was brushing my shoulder. " It's okay, Blair. It's what I've been wanting to do since I woke up down here with you in my arms."
I stopped watching his eyes at some point and started concentrating on his lips instead. I eyed them intently as they moved over every word that left his mouth. All I could think about was how wonderful they felt pressed against my own.
I glanced up as they stopped moving and sat still, slightly parted and a rosy pink color, so full and supple, so amazingly strong, with just the least bit of stumble surrounding them. I remembered all the things those lips could do to me, how they could make me feel. Their slick, sleek moisture gliding over me, pressing against all the perfect places that only Chuck could find. The way they formed the filthy, degrading, disgusting things that he muttered against my ear in the throes of passion. Things that turned my insides to goo and my whole being vibrate with wanting him. The perfectly shaped 'o' they made as his eyes light up right before he...
" Blair," His lips moved again, pulling me from my thoughts and back to the rest of the man beside me. " What is going on in that beautiful brain of yours ? Didn't you just tell me you weren't planning on thinking in the near future ? " He purred as he closed the distance between us.
But it was really good thinking, I answered slightly, as I watched him move.
His hand came up to brush the hair from my shoulder again. And his fingers caught my attention next. Long, thick fingers that could make me shiver with just the barest brush from them. Soft and untouched by any sort of manual labor, his hands could glide over my skin so smoothly, so soothingly and the next instant they were digging into my flesh causing me to nearly gasp out loud at their almost bruising pressure. The way the palms of them held my breasts as his thumbs flicked over my nipples. The way the fingers splayed over my flesh as if he were trying to feel as much of me as he could at one time. The way they worshiped my body, hugging the curve of my hip, the bend of my leg, my roundness of my shoulder. It was like every one of my curves was made to fit perfectly into those hands. The places his fingers found, places no one else had ever touched, places that made my entire body coil like a spring ready to snap from the pressure they caused.
He was so close, yet he remained completely still, giving me all the opportunity I wanted to devour him with my gaze. And I was.
His pupils were large, dilated with desire and smoldering under dark lashes and his thick eyebrow. The color whirled in his eyes, a deep brown mixed with what looked like liquid gold. I had the silly thought that if I could touch their color it would feel velvety and lush, something heavy and so soft, like mink perhaps.
His cheeks were slightly flushed, mingling with his light skin tone and turning it a pleasant pinkish, creamy color. His hair was unkempt and unruly, the way I liked it. It was better this way, instead of all perfectly in place and behaved. Like this I could imagine that I was to blame for its dishevel. My fingers twitched involuntarily with the need to feel its amazing softness, softness that caressed my fingertips, entwining them in its decadent chocolaty perfection. I had grown longer over the last year. A changed that definitely suited him, as I spied a few wisps of brown falling nearly to his brow line.
It took me a moment to realize that it was my finger that came into view, tracing over that brow, then down the side of his face over his cheekbone, a cheekbone some women would kill for, high and arched. Another bit of excellence in his already nearly too sublime face.
" Chuck," It was a whisper and it startled me. I was so lost I hadn't even realized I was the one speaking.
" What ?" His breath caressed my cheek. " Tell me what you want, Blair."
" I..." I hesitated, the warning alarms in my brain were so loud they nearly drowned out the desire screaming at me.
" I'm doing what you asked. I'm not giving you the option of blaming me later. I'm not touching you unless you tell me its what you want." He told me, his tone firm, yet soft.
I considered his words carefully. He was right. If I gave in and let him touch me like this, I would regret it later and I would take that regret at my weakness out on him. This way he was taking that escape route away from me.
Typical Bass, I smiled, covering his bases. Making sure I knew exactly what I was doing. Giving me no way out.
He was the snake in the Garden of Eden, so very, very tempting yet leaving the choice to me.
Do I take the apple and bite or walk away and hang on to my sanity, my survival ?
Well, it was me. It was me and it was Chuck and I did the only thing I had every done under the same circumstances.
I grabbed the front of his shirt, hauled him closer into me with all my strength and sank my teeth into the forbidden fruit.