Favorite Places (A TroubleMaker Novel, #2) (11 page)

“Um, excuse me.”
She stopped in front of a door that led to the bathroom.

He sighed with relief.
From the moment he’d discovered she’d left his place, Chase had been so uncharacteristically
worried about her. More worried than even he wanted to admit to himself. His insides
were in knots. They’d untied a little when he’d found her on the side of the road,
but one look at her small apartment tightened his gut all over again.

“Do you mind?”
she prompted.

Standing in her
little shabby apartment, worry turned to anger. Nothing about Jessina Landi was
adding up. “What the hell are you doing living in a place like this when you
have a bachelor’s degree in accounting? And as intelligent as you are, why the
hell are you working as a waitress in some dive called Big Daddy’s Kitchen?”

“Oh my God! What
the hell did you do! Did you do have me investigated or something?”

“I sure did. Let’s
not forget, hon’, you’re married to one of the wealthiest men in the state of Nevada.”
Chase was still waiting on the final report from James Hobart, the P.I. he’d
hired, but from her bright red face and trembling hands, he thought it was best
not to mention it. “So answer me, Jess. Why do you live here?”

She came at him
fast, her finger flinging with each word. “Chase Lennox, where I live and what
I do, none of it is your damn business. Besides, it’s very rude to insult
someone in their own home. I appreciate the lift, but if you’re gonna be a
jackass and start ordering me around again, you can haul your condescending ass
right back out the door!” She stopped with her finger pointing to the only
entrance and exit.

He smiled. “Not wise,
my dear.” His eyes dropped to her finger. “Like I told you before, you’re irresistible
when you’re angry.” He wanted to grab her wagging finger, but stayed a safe
distance away. “So, if you want to keep that zone of yours all comfy, you’d
better take two steps back and put that finger somewhere where I can’t see it, like
behind your back. Otherwise, I swear I’ll drag you over to that bed and take
care of all that sexy-angry you’ve got going on.”

She gasped but heeded
his warning and stumbled back until she hit the wall. “You think you can—”

“Hands behind
your back,” he leaned forward, “or I’m gonna have to become one with your
comfort zone.” The woman always needed a bit of coaxing, but Chase was more
than willing to give it to her. True to his name, he liked the chase and the
challenge, and as cocky as he was, Chase knew he could reach out and take her
anytime he wanted. He could easily carry her over to the tiny bed and have his
wicked ways with her. Hell. Her eyes had told him so. Problem was he wasn’t
sure that the only thing he’d be giving to her was between his legs. In her
absence, he was pretty sure it was his heart that was worried about her, and
not his dick.

She placed her
hands behind her back and released a haughty hiss.

“Good girl,” he
heard himself whisper aloud.

“You’re a
bastard,” she declared, as she’d evidently heard him too. “I honestly believed
that apology of yours when you said you were sorry for ordering me up to your
apartment like some kind of child earlier, but now I see that it was all
bullshit.”

“We all make
mistakes, Jess.” He shrugged, acknowledging his own blunder. The comment he
made about her apartment had been rude, wrong, and, no doubt, hurtful. And now
he had to take his punishment like a man. Let her beat him up a little bit for
it. Strangely, that thought turned him on all the more.

“Yeah!” she
huffed. “Let’s talk about your mistakes, starting with you thinking for one
minute that you know me. You pegged me for someone who’s all about the money, but
you couldn’t be more wrong. I have everything I need right here, and anything
else would just be icing on the cake, a better model. A newer car, a bigger
apartment, nicer clothes—all that is just materialistic clutter. Unlike you,
Mr. Can’t-even-change-his-own-tire, I don’t need any of it! You’re so narrow-minded.
You wouldn’t know the first thing about living humbly, about being broke or
struggling, would you? You damn, narcissistic jerk! You’re so bored with all of
your riches the only way you can get off is by being in control and ordering
people around.”

Ouch!
Okay…that hurt.
He’d agreed to hold his tongue for a
minute. Let her lash him with hers. And he’d been hit by some pretty crass,
stinging words before, but he’d never let his ‘narcissistic’ ass be pushed to
the ground from it. And he wasn’t about to start now.

“On the
contrary, I’m not ordering you to do anything.” He allowed a smile to slip over
his lips. “First, by placing your hands behind your back, you have all the
control right now. It’s the only reason why I’m not ripping those nice,
inexpensive clothes off your angry little body and throwing you onto that bed
and start shaking these thin walls.”

Her mouth opened,
but Chase was quick to reclaim her diligence.

“And, second, sweetheart,
you completely misunderstood my apology.” Her mouth slowly closed. He had her full
attention again. “What I meant was that I shouldn’t have sent you away when, again,
you disrespected me and my frequent requests to call me by my given name. What
I really am sorry about was not taking care of you right then and there in my
office.” She was spitting fire from her eyes, but he held his smile. “Because
we both know that’s what you really wanted, wasn’t it, Jessina? You wanted me
to punish you, to treat you like a bad girl, to teach you a lesson?”

Her eyes slanted,
but no words fell from her pretty pink mouth. Her shoulder, however, had twitched.

“Uh-uh-uh!” he warned
with a shake of the finger. “You move those hands, and I’ll be forced to do
something about it. Or, are you trying to test me again? Do you want me to
break my word?”

“Your word? Really,
like that means anything. Didn’t you just apologize for not keeping it, for not
taking care of me back in your office?”

“Hmm,” he
grimaced. “I suppose that was a bit hypocritical of me, wasn’t it? Well, I’m
not gonna lie to you. It’s not going be easy to keep my hands off you,
especially when every inch of the man that I am wants you, but as long as you
behave, as long as you keep being a
good girl
, I promise I will not
pursue you.”

She looked him dead in
the eyes. “You want Caplin, and you’re horny. That’s the only reason you want
me. This has nothing to do with your feelings or with me. It just has to do
with your bank account and your dick.”

He stopped himself from reaching out for her so he could tell
her or, better yet, show her that just wasn’t true.

Hold up. Wait a damn
minute…
Why would I want to do that?

Could what he
felt for her be more than just sexual? Did Chase’s feelings for Jessina Landi truly
go beyond his dick?
Son of a bitch!
He thought he’d always protected
himself against something like this from ever happening… again.

That knot pulled
tight deep in his gut.

He’d been
obsessed with Caplin for the past year, but the sudden realization that she
truly meant just as much to him had almost knocked Chase right onto his
narcissistic ass. And as all this unexpected self-awareness was going on, Chase
was looking right at her.

Her eyes
softened as though she could see the affliction and affection he was
clandestinely harboring for her.

Shit
!
He had to get it together. He couldn’t let her know he was falling for her, if
that’s what was going on. He had to fluster her until he could figure out the
strange feelings messing up his head, and quite possibly his heart. And he knew
exactly what to do to get the job done. He dropped his eyes to her breasts, and
hers followed. “See that spot right there, where the top of your shirt and the
soft, fleshy part of your skin begins?”

She glanced back
up at him from the area he was speaking of, her angry eyes now filled with something
else, with want and hunger. She bit her lip. “Yeah?”

“I want to put my
mouth there, pull down your shirt, and trail kisses along your skin until my
lips make it to your hard little nipple.” Her eyes widened. “Oh yeah,
sweetheart, we both know your nipple is aching and in need of my mouth right
now, isn’t it?”

Jessina’s hands tightened
behind her back. She squeezed until her knuckles hurt. Her breasts swelled from
his words. They turned hot and heavy, filling any gaps left in her lace bra.
Her hard little nipples had peaked. They begged to be free of the material that
stood between her and his delectable mouth.
Damn that mouth!
She’d known
it was nothing but trouble, right from the first moment she’d met him on the trolley.

“But you’re in
control here, so you tell me, Jess.” His eyes skimmed over her breasts again. “What
do
you
want?”

Angry or not, she
wanted him to release her control, to rip her clothes off and throw her onto
the damn bed as he’d threatened. She unclamped the tight grip of her sweaty
hands and lowered them to her sides, never taking her gaze off his steady,
watchful eyes.

Ignoring her
defiant hand-removal, a little smile slipped up the corner of his mouth.

She shifted her
gaze to his chest, and when he didn’t follow through with his bed-tossing
threat, she said, “What I want is to take this dripping-wet shirt off you.” She
lifted shaky hands to the top button, still secretly waiting for him to drag
her to the bed. But he didn’t. So she started to do what she had imagined an
hour earlier in his warm car.

She unbuttoned
his shirt. With each button she unfastened, more muscular abs came into view.
She yanked up the bottom of his shirt and pulled it from his pants to undo the
last one. During the whole ordeal, he remained unmoving and silent. It drove
her just about as crazy as his scent. She placed the palm of her hands on his
chest, remembering the trolley ride, how she’d fallen into the wall of muscles.
If someone had told her then that she’d be touching him now, without that crisp
white shirt on, she never would have believed it. She glided her hands up to
his broad shoulders and
started to push the shirt down.  She heard a
faint but audible, low, masculine growl. Her eyes snapped up, only to find Chase
gazing down at her. His usual slow and deliberate stare replaced by something
far more intense and wild. She thought he was going to react, but he only
watched her from beneath heavy hoods.

Once his shirt
was completely removed, Jessina decided the safest thing to do was to step away
from the growling, enticing beast. She took the wet shirt into the bathroom and
hung it over the shower rod. When she walked back into the bedroom, she found
that Chase had managed to recompose himself. He was standing there, shirtless,
with a hand casually slipped in his pant pocket. She glanced around the room in
a panic. She had to get out of there before
she
threw herself onto the bed.
But he was blocking the doorway. During her nervous attempt to find a suitable
getaway, something caught her eye in the mirror above her dresser.

Holy
shit!
Chase’s Lennox, of all people, had a tattoo. The
ink gradually spanned across his broad shoulders, one masterful artwork on a
masterful canvas.

“Like it?”

She pulled her gaze from his back and looked him in the eye. “Yes.
I do. I’m just surprised you have it.”

He shrugged. “A military
buddy of mine owns a tattoo parlor. During one of my leaves, I stayed with him
for a few weeks.” He gave her a boyish grin. “That’s the kind of thing I do
when I’m bored,” he said, an obvious jab at her remark about him being bored
and rich and needing to be in control to get off.

“I have a
cousin, Lucky, who owns a couple tattoo shops,” she said, ignoring the intended
dig.

“Lucky?”

“Yeah,” she
murmured, drawn to the design on his back. She walked over and stood behind
him. “What is it?”

The muscles in
his shoulder bunched as his other hand pushed deep into his pant pocket. “It’s
one of his own designs.”

She touched the
base of his spine and drew a finger up his back. His muscles flexed. She
followed the ink with her finger. Her hands glided outward over the detailed, tribal-looking
design that enhanced the perfect shape of his shoulders blades. “This is
absolutely…” she paused, awed by the complexity of the shapes and the design
and the simple fact that he even had a tattoo in the first place. Yet again, Chase
Lennox, the hot, multimillionaire, trolley-ride guy was humanized. “Chase, it’s
beautiful.”

His head turned
over his left shoulder, and a dark eyebrow lifted. “Chase?”

Jessina’s hand
stilled. The teasing gesture on his face went from lighthearted to obscure. Her
hand slowly slid down his arm, lightly passing his fingers. About to break
contact, he caught her fingertips and pulled her back to him. The dangerous need
in his eyes made her heart race. “You said I’m in control,” she quickly reminded
him.

“You are,” he
alleged, but didn’t let go of her hand. Instead, his grip tightened. “But I
like hearing you say my name. Say it again, and I’ll give you all the control
you want.”