Drawn To You (Paloma's Edge) (8 page)

“You can
assume that Chase is a guy who sticks his dick in any orifice, but would you really feel anything for him if that’s how you thought he was?” he said nonchalantly, and handed a frisbee back to a beautiful little boy with blond curls, who ran back to his caregiver.

“That’s crossed my mind,” I murmured. “But I have reasons to
err on the side of caution. I shouldn’t think that he’s special. Especially because what ever is going on with Chase and I may not go anywhere.”

“You know what you want. Don’t get so caught up in yourself that you miss the bigger picture.”

Baffled, I had to make sure that I was talking to the same Joel who’d looked at every chick last night even when he had some pretty girls with him. “And what’s the bigger picture, wise one?”

“I don’t know
, smartass, it’s on you to figure that out!”

“Okay, why do you care about Chase, or me, or what does happen between us?”

“You’re Pierce’s cousin. And you’re the first girl who Chase has paid any attention to since I’ve met him.”

“Give me a break! You expect me to believe that
, Joel? ”

“I have no reason to lie
, Beth. And Chase doesn’t do or say anything he doesn’t mean.”

***

Chase

Watching Joel’s arm around Beth was like a punch to my stomach. I’d had a great day at work. Brody and I had few guests’ grievances to manage and Pierce credited my upbeat mood to having sex with Darcy. I was about to have a talk with him about my liking Beth and correct him about what he thought happened between Darcy and I, but then Mr. Pruitt had called him into his office.

I noticed Beth’s lush body with a heavy towel wrapped around it. The shape of her pear
-shaped ass stood out, as well her wet hair glistening from the water. As they pivoted around, they didn’t see me at first, but Rylan and Bri had. Joel’s eyebrows puckered into a frown when he met my gaze. I wanted her arms wrapped around me. I wanted to experience how her wet body felt after a good swim, or a shower, or after being underneath me. I’d liked many girls, but none who I had felt even the slightest bit of jealousy over a guy being next to them.

“What’s up, Chase?” I connected my fist with Rylan’s and I waved to
Bri. Her deep green eyes reminded me so much of Gavin. While she was willowy and unassuming, Gavin was my height and built like a brick house.

“Not bad,” I answered. “Hey
, Bri.”

“Hey
, Chase,” she said with a curl of her lips.

I walked up to
Beth and wrapped my arms around her, pleased by her equal display of affection for me as the front of her body pressed into me, her small hands clutched my arms. There was no room or question from Rylan or Joel that I would make her mine. And I had no problem working on her timetable.

“Walk with me,” I whispered in her ear and she nervously quivered, the movement of her breasts on my chest made my blood shoot straight down to my dick. “We’ll be right back
, guys,” I called out to them as I started walking her to a more secluded area on the beach.

Joel
whistled at us and a blush rose to Beth’s face.

“Hot
damn! Bottle me up some of that heat,” Joel said and fanned himself with a magazine.

***

We walked around for several minutes. I just held her hand with a firm grip and rubbed the tips of my fingers over the smooth stretch of skin over her knuckles. Knowing for sure how good she felt only made me want to disrobe her fast and seat myself inside her. Make her forget about any worries she had. She didn’t stiffen or show signs of discomfort. My intensely growing want for her and my satisfaction by just being with her were kinda tripping me up. What was it about her that made her irresistible to me?

“How was work?” The sound of her low and somewhat husky voice made the question sound less innocent than it was.

“Really good. There’s gonna be a lot of important conferences coming up. I think with the increase in guests and existing ones who are extending their stay, there won’t be an empty room at the Paloma. Except for Pierce’s penthouse.”

“I am sure Uncle Anton is excited about that.”

My hand went from her shoulder to the sexy curve of her lower back.

“Yeah, I did the brochures for him when I came to visit the first time.
Then I re-did that plain-looking Paloma website and the traffic to the site has tripled.”

She settled her hands on my arms and stopped moving. We were right by the area I was going to take her to. “Chase
, you did all that for his business. Did he pay you for it?”

“I was compensated. ” I brought my head and she chuckl
ed. “The brochure I did for fun. But I gave a complete overhaul to the site. The Paloma branding is clear. No one is gonna mistake another hotel with the Paloma. It’s easy to navigate too.”

We
started walking again. “Good. I didn’t see the site before, but when I did my research, I remember being impressed by the fact that it wasn’t one of those standard business template sites. The designs stand out.”

“That’s what I
strived for.” I smiled at her. “Mr. Pruitt was worried about that at first.”

“Is your major Graphic Design?”

“Yeah. Yours?”

“HR.”

I drew my lips down and made my hand tremble over my chest.

“HR gets a bad rep.”

“And I am sure you’ll improve that bad rep.”

She motioned her head. “Do you like working as a concierge?”

“Yeah. I haven’t had problems and most of the guests have been refreshingly down to earth. I’ve got a potential job lined up when I graduate for a marketing department at a firm. ” I lifted my shoulder. “Who knows what the future holds?”

We reached the shaded area near a gated exit and I watched her exhale a shaky breath. Her eyes roamed over my lips. She pulled her mouth in and she inched closer to me so that her sand
-covered feet were over mine. The action made her more aware of herself. Emotions that I couldn’t divine flickered across her face. Was she holding herself back from me?

Leaning my body against the gate, I lowered my head
to her and lifted her hands to the sides of my face. She massaged my face, stroking her thumb over my scar.

I brought the tip of my index finger over my mouth and brushed it over her tempting lips.
Eyes glazed over a little, she separated her mouth enough to nip on my finger a little. So, the little vixen in her was out to play. She drew a little bit of my finger into her oral heat. In a matter of seconds, my cock swelled to readiness. She started panting and I withdrew my finger. She stared at my bare chest. Shutting down entirely, she stepped back, and her face fell flat. I understood that look of self-judgment all too well, and as much as I tried to keep my mind busy in order not to think about her, it was a losing battle.

I remained where I was and sought her wandering gaze until she looked at me directly.

“I want to kiss, and lick, and suck, every inch of you. Have you trembling in the palm of my hands while you surrender your body to me so I can supply you with what you’re craving. I can see it.” I flicked my eyes from her face to her erect nipples. “And I can feel it.” I brushed my fingers over her nipples, and ran circles around them for a second. Almost inaudibly, she moaned and I dropped my hand. “And when you really let go, make no mistake, you won’t want to come back from it.”

***

I offered to take Beth home after we all went for a little competitive swim. I hadn’t been as good as I could’ve been because I’d been sidetracked. Seeing Beth’s body move into the water was like an adrenaline rush for me. She walked into the deep ends of the water and dived right in with Rylan, Joel, and Bri.

She was in the passenger side of my car again, humming along to another song on the radio. But I knew that what I’d told her wasn’t too far from her mind. While she was good at controlling how she felt from showing at times, I’d catch glimpses of her
deep in thought. Right now, though, she was pretty chill. What made her go from carefree to such self-consciousness so quickly? Was it me? Had some jerk messed her head in some way? Was that why she was here for the summer? To get her mind off of him? If so, I could the rebound guy for her. I’d used enough girls that letting Beth use me was only fair.

As another song ended and I drove into the garage to park, her music hig
h was coming down. She angled her head to the side when the car was off.

“Let’s go out this Saturday. Celebrate your first days at the Paloma.”

“I can get on board with that.”

***

Bethany

“That’s the face I had after the new-hire orientation,” Pierce said as he tipped his chin and took a seat across from me. Pierce’s sudden appearance was just what I needed to not think about Chase during my last break before the end of the day.

This morning, Pierce and Chase had been in the kitchen having coffee with Aunt Deborah and Nancy. Uncle Anton had to be in Miami to see the progress of the new hotel he was building
. He’d been preoccupied. Cassidy had told me that she’d drive me on my first day of work, but I’d heard her snoring when I knocked on her door. There was no way that I was going to interrupt her sleep. I thought she’d had an ongoing roll in the hay with this guy she’d danced with at the party three days ago. Since the party, she’d only come to the Pruitts’ to bathe and change clothes. Both Chase and Pierce had offered to drive me, and I had decided to go with Pierce. Chase’s expressive hazel eyes searched mine and I saw a little bit of longing in them. It’d been difficult for me to look at him without thinking about how his lips tasted or how strong the planes of his face had felt in my hands.

I sighed. “Mrs. Clark explained everything well, so it’s not
overwhelming.”

Pierce took a seat across from me. “Yeah, she runs a tight ship. Everything is in compliance with local and federal laws on her end. And we’ve had few infractions due to Claude’s
Energizer bunny finesse.”

I smiled. “I know! It’s like he’s everywhere at once.”

Claude chose that exact moment to open the door and make an entrance into the break room. He was an average-height man with black hair that was cut to this skin. He had sharp coffee-brown eyes and wore a light gray suit that looked custom made for his stout build. He blew me an air kiss. Upon meeting him, I instantly liked him.

“You called?” He arched his brow at Pierce, who stood up.

“It seems like I did,” Pierce said. He hauled himself up. “Family dinner is at 7 p.m.”

I nodded and he trotted out of the break room.

***

Once I was done with the personnel files, I went back to my desk to look at how much more I had to accomplish on my to-do list by Friday. If I hadn’t actually read Ms. Clark’s thorough training manual, the tasks would’ve looked insurmountable to me. The department was integrating paper files into a computerized database when most of the work had been done by hand.

Jake’s text displayed on my phone’s screen.

Jake:
How’s it going?

Me:
First day went well. You?

Jake:
I’ll tell Mariska. Doing good. Finished running some errands for Mom. Had a very good time last night =)

Me:
No surprise there! LOL. Have you at least taken these girls on second dates?

Jake:
Good one. Dates? Nah. Nothing has changed since you left.

Me:
There’s gotta be some girl who you like enough to take out.

Jake:
They know the score. I only take out three special ladies. One is done working at Luigi’s in ten minutes and the other is crushin’ real hard on Chase 2 hrs away from here.

Me:
SMH. Mariska couldn’t wait for me to tell you!

Jake:
It came up when I’d asked about you. He just better treat you right, so he’ll have nothing to worry about.

Me:
You don’t need to worry about Chase, Jake. I am just feeling him out.

Jake:
Don’t wear him out while you’re at it.

Me:
I’ll give him a rest here and there. LOL.

I locked my phone and threw it into my satchel.

“
Who put that smile on your face?” Chase queried as he stepped into the HR office and stood next to my new desk.

“Now, it’s you.”