Lust and Other Drugs (8 page)

“You told me you’d never had a boyfriend. No one’s first is
ever their last.” He’d as much as confessed he’d wanted to be her last. Shit.
He couldn’t say things like that. Not now. “Then it passed. We were friends.
Best friends.”

“And now you have medical school and I have my career.”

It both thrilled and dismayed him that she understood. He’d
had this picture of her pining for him, and if he was honest with himself, he
kind of wanted it to be true. And finding out it wasn’t…

“I want things to be as they were,” Anne said.

Then why, for fuck’s sake, wouldn’t she put on a shirt? He
was standing in the doorway practically slavering over her, and she was talking
about things being as they were.

“But I want to keep fucking you too.”

If his cock got any harder, it was going to splinter in
half.

“Chase,” she moved closer to grab his hand, “I don’t want to
lose our friendship either. But I think we will if we don’t explore this. It
happened. There’s no turning back. We can go forward and choose the parameters
of our friendship and if that ends up being the closeness we’ve always had,
where we laugh about that ‘experimental’ time after college, so be it. But this
isn’t going to go away.”

Now that he had permission, Chase made no attempt to stop
his gaze from raking down her body, and he was pleased to see the same hunger
in her eyes. Maybe she was right?

He reached out to touch her face, his palm cupping her cheek
and his thumb sliding over the fullness of her lips. Chase meant it to be an
affectionate caress, but the contact with her skin burned away all of his good
intentions, few though they were to begin with, and he drew his hand down the
slim column of her throat to the valley between her breasts.

“Think about it, Chase.”

“I am,” he confessed.

She laughed and slapped his hand away. “No, really think
about it. So we don’t have any regrets. We can talk after Justin’s party.”

“I thought he had that dinner theater thing?”

“He does, but his frat is having a party after. It’s
high-school themed.” Anne shook her head. “We spent years trying to forget it
and now they want us to relive it. I think it’s just for the sex games.”

“What?” Chase didn’t think he was hearing her correctly.

“You know, Spin the Bottle? Seven in Heaven? Truth or Dare?”

“And we’re going to this? I could be studying and you could
be painting, but instead we’re going to hang out with a bunch of drunken frat
boys?”

“Don’t you want to see what it will be like to be stuck in a
closet with me now?” She sat down on the bed.

“We have perfectly good closets here.” As a grown man, he
didn’t see the appeal.

She rolled her eyes but since she was still topless, it
didn’t have the same effect. “You don’t have to go. But I think it will be fun.
Remember that last game of Truth or Dare on the senior trip?”

“When we snuck into Ms. Jeffrey’s room and found her vibrators?”

Anne laughed. “Yeah, that one thing was like a moped. I
swear to God, it had to run on rocket fuel. And Doug and Aaron had a sword
fight with them?”

“Poor woman. Remember when she caught them? She just walked
past them like she didn’t even see what they were doing, but told us we’d all
better be in bed in ten minutes.”

“I can’t imagine how embarrassed she was. I’d die. Or pray
for death. We were little shits.”

“And you want to go relive this?”

“Sure. Why not? And Justin asked me to go.”

“You just want to get Gin and Seth in a closet together.”

“That too.” Anne nodded. “So, if you don’t want to go in the
closet, maybe we’ll go into the Truth or Dare room and I’ll dare you to do
something, like kiss Justin.”

Chase raised a brow. The idea didn’t appeal to him, but
making Anne blush did. So did turning her on. One mouth was much the same as
another. If it would make Anne hot, he’d kiss anyone she told him to. “Would
you like that?”

“Maybe.” She bit her lip and her cheeks colored, as he knew
they would.

Yeah, she liked that a lot. “There’ve been hundreds of
requests on Dreamed Desire for some man-on-man action. Were you one of those?
Who do you want to see me with?” He sat down on the bed and leaned into her,
brushing his lips across the pulse in her throat. “Tell me your fantasy.”

She wrapped her arms around him and arched against his
mouth. “I thought you were going to think about things?”

“I
have
been thinking about them, Anne.” He stroked
his knuckles down the curve of her breast. “I can’t stop thinking about them.”

Anne turned on the bed to straddle him and braced her palms
on his shoulders. “Maybe you should be telling me
your
fantasy, Chase?”

“You gave me my fantasy last night.”

She moaned softly and her nails scored his back as she clung
tighter. “We should stop so I have time to get ready.” But she made no move to
push him away.

“Fuck that. Stay here with me.”

“Why?” Anne pressed her lips against his neck, returning his
caress.

“Because I asked.”

“As my best friend or my lover?” She rolled her hips, grinding
against him.

“Both.”

Chapter Seven

How he expected things not to change was beyond Anne.

Already he was asking to be treated differently than her
other friends. She’d promised she’d go to the party and Chase wanted her to
ditch it to spend time with him. He wanted her to choose him over their other
friends. How was she supposed to know where the line was? It was hard to make
the right decisions when his hands were scorching her skin.

“If we’re just friends, why do you get priority over a
promise I made?” Her question was serious, but her tone was light, teasing.

He dipped his head to her breast, his mouth hot and hungry
on her nipple. “I want what I want, when I want it, Anne. And so do you,” he
murmured around the tightened bud, completely unrepentant.

Anne pushed her fingers through his hair to tug him away
from her breast. “Chase, as good as this is, I mean it. I want to fuck you, but
we have to set some ground rules.”

“Only if we talk about it in the hot tub.”

“Only if you keep your hands to yourself.”

“That’s not fair.” He laughed as he lowered his mouth toward
her breast again.

“Life rarely is.” Anne knew they loved each other, but they
weren’t
in love
. And she wanted the physical part of a relationship and
knew Chase did too, but that’s where the waters got muddy. If they didn’t want
the rest of the trappings of a relationship, where were the lines?

She knew he had to keep filming for Dreamed Desire, but
there were shoots of him with other women. Could she handle knowing that her
sex partner wasn’t
just
hers? Or would it matter because they’d always
been best friends? Anne hadn’t been jealous watching him on the site, but did
that change when he was fucking her too? Did she have the right to say she
didn’t want to share him?

Anne wished she had definitive answers for those questions
but she didn’t, and she was very aware that while some things sounded perfectly
reasonable on paper, they weren’t always applicable in real life.

“I was in the hot tub for way too long earlier. I’m going to
be all scaly if you make me get in again.”

“Dr. Donovan prescribes another leisurely soak and a
full-body rubdown with the lotion of your choice.”

Anne watched the easy smile light his face and it struck
something inside her. Something she didn’t want to acknowledge. Her fingers
were still twisting in the dark locks of hair that hung over his collar.

Jesus, his mouth was made of sin no matter what expression
he wore on his face.

“And if you get in the tub, I’ll go with you to that party.”
His hands were still on her hips and she was having trouble thinking about
anything besides the hard ridge of his cock against her pussy.

She was still a bit sore from the night previous, even after
the soak, but Chase was a drug and she’d take another hit any way she could get
it.

“I thought you had to study?”

“I’ll study later and sleep when I’m dead.”

He eased to the edge of the bed with Anne still wrapped
around him and stood, taking her with him. She squealed and clung more tightly,
loving the play of muscles rippling under her fingers.

“No,” she squeaked. “I can’t get in with just my panties. I
want to wear them tonight.”

“Fine. You don’t need them anyway.”

“I thought you said you were going to keep your hands to
yourself?” Anne was having a hard time with that herself. Part of her just
wanted to say “fuck it all” and go with whatever happened, no matter the
consequences.

“You’re right.” He deposited her on the mattress. “Better
find your suit.”

“I left it outside.” Her cheeks colored and she felt stupid
for being embarrassed. After everything they’d already done together, Chase
knowing she’d been outside naked wasn’t even a drop in the bucket.

“I’ll meet you in the tub.” He winked at her.

Anne changed out on the deck, feeling exquisitely naughty.
She liked feeling so brazen and exposed. After all, getting caught naked had
already had its perks. She was definitely going to hold him to his promise of
the rubdown. Her skin would be as flaky as a good pie crust after a second dip.

The water was still perfect but it didn’t soothe her as she’d
hoped. Anne was tempted to use the jets for a quick one-off so she could at
least maintain rational thought with Chase in the hot tub.

But he was faster. He emerged from the house only seconds
after she’d decided to appropriate the jets for licentious use.

Anne was sure she’d had blinders on growing up as she took
in his body. How had she slept comfortably next to
that
during their
secret sleepovers in high school? How had she cuddled up next to him on movie
nights and not noticed his biceps? The broad plane of his chest? That jaw that
was like granite?

Or his cock, tool of the devil that it was, engineered
specifically to make her pussy ache every time she thought of it.

He was so obviously and deliciously hard, his Speedo doing
nothing to hide his generous gifts.

She bit her lip and was reminded again that if she kept
doing that, especially looking at Chase, she was going to bite it right off.

He slid into the water next to her, his arms spread like
wings on the edge of the hot tub. “So, you wanted to talk?”

Anne was unexpectedly tongue-tied. Even though she reminded
herself that this was just Chase. She’d always been able to tell him anything.
But he was suddenly the popular jock and she felt like the girl with glasses
and braces in the corner, reading Byron and dreaming that the poet wore his
face.

It was stupid.

So, she blurted, “Will you tell me about the site?”

“What do you want to know?” Chase met her gaze squarely.

“Everything?” Anne laughed. “I want details. It kind of hurt
that you didn’t think you could tell me.”

“The same way that you didn’t think you could tell me you’d
been using said site?” Chase admonished with another smirk.

“Okay, I see your point.” She blushed.

“That still embarrasses you, even though I’ve already seen
parts of you even
you
haven’t seen?”

“Yeah, kind of. That’s not something I’ve ever shared with
anyone.”

“That you jill off to me?” He sounded so pleased with
himself.

There was the Chase she knew so well, the confident man so
sure of his own appeal, but she couldn’t let him one-up her.

“I didn’t only
jill off
to you, Chase. I objectified
you. I used you like a stripper would a new pole,” Anne said boldly with a
smile. When she saw the hard set of his jaw and the muscle tic in his cheek,
she knew she’d won that round, but she couldn’t resist going for the bonus
point. “Even after I stopped using the site, I couldn’t stop imagining you, or
innocent things we’d done together, and what they could have been. Sleeping in
the same bed on our senior trip, the warmth of our bodies together in the dark.
It was so cold and sometimes I wish we’d done other things to warm up. I wish
my first time had been with you, too.”

He wasn’t about to be outdone. “Every video I’ve posted on
Dreamed Desire, I was thinking of you.”

She gasped in surprise. All of that want, the lust she’d
seen in his eyes when he’d finally shown his face—it was all for her. It made
her clench her thighs together, hard, as if that could stop the onslaught of
need that throbbed in her cunt.

“Are you saying that to one-up me, or are you saying it
because it’s true?” she asked, biting her bottom lip in anticipation. How had
this already careened so far off course? This was supposed to be a discussion
about boundaries, but instead of setting any, they were bulldozing through them.

“I would tell you to come here and see for yourself, but we
promised we wouldn’t touch.” His mouth curved in a seductive smile.

“Keep taunting me, Chase Donovan, and just see what you
get.”

“This was your idea, sweetheart.”

“You’re the one who said you wanted to be in here with me.”

“You’re the one who demanded we take a hands-off approach.”
He made a gesture as if he were helpless against her.

“You’re the one who gave in to my demands.”

“I’m not made of stone,” he tossed back lightly, gliding
across the space between them to illustrate his point.

“I beg to differ,” Anne taunted and moistened her lips. His
gaze zeroed in on her mouth.

Just as he bent his head to kiss her, Gin and Seth barreled
through the door with wine and four glasses and Chase jerked away from her.

“Dang, Anne. Have you been in there since we left?” Gin
asked as she pulled off her dress, revealing her cute pink-and-black polka-dot
bikini. “You don’t mind if we join you, do you?”