Just as a twinge of pride tickled in her chest from the satisfaction of not giving in to her body’s base instinct, she heard a sound behind her. Spinning around, she came face to chest with a shirtless Chase Malone.
Oh boy.
Obviously her body had not been on board with her previous pep talk, because at the sight of Chase’s bare chest, her mouth instantly watered and there was a quickening in her core. Down girl, Krista instructed her lady parts. What she should have done was rein in her eyes, which took in every line, every muscle that ran down Chase’s sinfully sexy abdomen and painfully perfect chest. The sight caused a pulsing need between her legs.
“What are you doing?” Chase’s deep voice sent a thrill racing down Krista’s spine. The normal everyday timbre in Chase’s voice was enough to dampen panties, but just one syllable from Chase’s just-woke-up-voice was orgasm inducing.
Krista’s body instantly reacted to his deep melodic tone, and she clenched her hand around the cottony softness of Teddy.
Mind, she reminded herself. Her mind was running things. Her tongue ran across the seam of her lips as her chest rose and fell in rapid succession at the intense desire that was exploding inside of her.
As she licked her lips, a nervous habit she’d had from the time she was a child, she heard a very familiar sound—a sound Krista honestly could not believe she’d forgotten. Chase exhaled loudly through his nose. The moment the audible air exchange registered in her consciousness, her eyes automatically darted towards Chase’s sweats. Her knee-jerk optical reaction occurred because there were only two reasons Chase Malone made that sound: one, he was mad, or two, he was turned on.
After more than a little obvious visual inspection of Chase’s naughty parts, Krista was happily assured that she was not the only one being affected-slash-tormented by this unexpected, middle-of-the-night, face-to-face. Somehow the knowledge that he still wanted her, maybe even as much as she wanted him, was oddly empowering. It shouldn’t have made any difference whether or not he’d popped wood, but it did.
A small smile tilted her lips.
“Krista.” Chase’s tone sounded equal parts questioning and aroused. “Why are you holding a bear?”
For a moment, Krista had forgotten where she was, what she was doing, maybe even who she was. Chase had always had that irritating effect on her. His question snapped her back to the here and now like a splash of cold water on her face.
“It’s for Bear,” she explained, looking back up into his gorgeous eyes. As soon as they made eye contact, Krista felt a jolt of awareness hit her like a lightning bolt. His light brown eyes felt like they could see all the way down into her soul.
Well, that’s no good.
She tried as inconspicuously as possible to move her eyes lower. Unfortunately, that landed her eyes staring smack dab at his lips. Nope. That wouldn’t work either. A small degree of panic began to rise up inside of her. Where the hell was she supposed to look? His Adonis-like chest and abdomen? His tented sweats? His tingle-inducing stare? His lickable lips? None of those were viable options if she wanted to make it out of here without jumping him.
This was the problem with Chase. Even his damn hands were sexy. And you would have thought that after dating on and off since sixth grade she would have grown immune to his appeal. In fact, it felt as if her body—even her soul—had been asleep since the night he’d driven out of her parents’ driveway and her life when they were teens, and was only now waking up.
Chase wrinkled his brow. “I know it’s a bear.”
“What?” Krista was not following. She tried to hit rewind on the conversation they were having in hopes of catching up, but it was a no-go. It seemed that unrelenting lust had wiped her short-term memory clean as a whistle.
A look of concern swept over Chase’s face. He tilted his head towards her, clarifying, “You said, ‘It’s a bear.’ I know it’s a bear.”
And just like that, she was back up to speed. Now that she was cooking with gas, Krista promised herself that she would not be sidetracked by Chase’s sexiest-man-alive-ness—a title he’d earned not once, not twice, but three times!—and would take back control of this situation.
She held up the object of the confusion. “This is Teddy. Bear is your mom’s dog. He is staying with me. Teddy is Bear’s favorite toy. He can’t sleep without him.”
There. That was precise and to the point. Mission accomplished.
Although Krista was not one to pat herself on the back, she did believe that she deserved bonus points for the fact that not one drop of drool had escaped her mouth during her five-sentence explanation. She was pretty proud of herself. He might make hundreds of thousands of women swoon-slash-drool on a daily basis, but she refused to be one of them.