Chapter 17

Melany

A LITTLE OVER a month had passed since I moved in with Chance and my professional and personal lives were flowing with relative ease. Logan was even friendlier at work since that night at the bar. He’d taken to seeking me out if we didn’t happen to run into each other. He was a sweet guy, and he made me laugh, but my stomach didn’t flutter the way it used to. It still did a little flip, but the hummingbirds that had taken up residence for the past five years seemed to have closed up shop and moved.

Constance finally got her wish and met Chance when the four of us met up for dinner one night. She’d lucked out with finding a babysitter, so she insisted we go somewhere where she didn’t have to cook and could have other people wait on her.

Frank and Chance took to each other instantly. He even managed to charm Connie within the first five minutes of us sitting down. The night had gone great, which, in a way, was kind of terrible. It had only caused my crush to grow that much more. But the silver lining was that I’d learned to keep it pushed back to the far recesses of my mind. It was just a silly crush. It wasn’t anything to get all worked up about. Chance and I were friends and always would be.

Of course, there were times we fought, but even those times weren’t all that bad. Most fights started over something stupid, like how he was still holding firm on his refusal to let me contribute financially to our current living arrangement. We’d argue and, within a few minutes, he’d make a joke, I’d forget what I was mad about, and the world would continue spinning. But in the time I’d been there, I discovered a way to help out without suspicion, while easing my guilt at the same time, at least a little bit.

I cooked dinner most nights and had started tidying up when he wasn’t looking—which didn’t count for much, seeing as he was obsessively clean for a man. I wasn’t one to not pull my weight, so if he wouldn’t let me pay, then I’d be his glorified housekeeper whether he liked it or not.

After looking in my closet and seeing I was running low on clothes, I’d decided it was time to do laundry. I was so used to having to trek to the laundromat since the washer and dryer at my mother’s house had broken years ago and I didn’t have the money to replace them, that I was pretty excited about the fact Chance had a laundry room of his very own just a few feet from my bedroom.

Gathering up the last of my dirty clothes and tossing them in the hamper, I went to set it on top of the washer and decided to see if Chance needed me to wash anything of his since I was doing laundry anyway.

“Hey, Chance?” I called, pushing the door to his bedroom open. He wasn’t anywhere in the room, but I could hear the sound of the shower running, and his bathroom door was partially cracked, so I decided to move closer and call out, “I’m doing laundry. Want me to wash your stuff while I’m at it?”

He didn’t answer. “Chance?” I repeated, stepping toward the door when something from the corner of my eye caught my attention. The door was opened just enough for me to see his reflection in the bathroom mirror clearly, and what I’d just walked in on had me frozen in place. The air whooshed from my lungs and my entire body caught fire as I stood immobile, watching Chance’s solid, naked body as water sloshed over each defined muscle. He was standing in profile, his eyes squeezed closed, one hand propped on the tile wall as his head dropped back. The look on his face was a mixture of agony and bliss, and I couldn’t have looked away if I wanted to—which I most certainly didn’t.

The muscles in his right arm tensed and released over and over, drawing my gaze further down his body until it stopped on the most erotic thing I’d ever seen. His hand was wrapped firmly around his thick, rigid erection, pumping hard and fast as the spray from the showerhead rained down on him.

The sight of the strained length, of him pleasuring himself at almost a brutal pace caused my pulse to skyrocket. My heart was beating so furiously I feared it would pound right through my chest.

My lungs finally protested at the lack of air, forcing me to pull in a shaky breath. It felt like every cell in my body had come to life. Heat coiled tight in my belly as arousal flooded my senses. There was no other way to describe him in that very moment other than… glorious. Every hard, wet inch of him was sheer perfection.

I wanted to touch him, taste him. Desire clawed from deep within my belly, making it difficult to stay rooted in place, especially since I wanted nothing more than to push the door open and join him in that shower, replacing his hand with my own.

God, I’d never felt this way before. It was thrilling and scary all at the same time. I continued to stand there like a voyeur as he jerked off, clenching my thighs together in a hopeless effort to alleviate the sudden needy ache between my legs.

When his hips began to move, thrusting in time with each pump of his fist, that ache grew even more intense, and a deep, wanton moan escaped my lips.

I slapped my hands over my mouth in an attempt to catch the noise, but it was too late. He could have heard me. I needed to get the hell out of there. I had no business creeping on my friend the way I was, but even as my brain screamed at me to run, I couldn’t get my feet to cooperate.

“Fuuuuuck,” he groaned a moment later, his teeth clenching so tight I could see the muscle ticking in his jaw from where I stood.

My gaze shot back down just as his hand and hips began to move faster. Curse words echoed through the bathroom, his entire body locked tight, and with a loud moan he began to come. His head collapsed forward as he grunted his release, and I watched transfixed as he exploded on his hand with one word whispered over and over with every spurt. “Melany.”

My name on his lips was enough to snap me out of the haze of desire. It was then that I was able to finally make my body move. I shot from the room like the hounds of hell were nipping at my heels. I was breathing like I’d just run a marathon by the time I got to my bedroom and slammed the door behind me. Every fiber of my body was pulled tight with a foreign sensation. After witnessing something so private, my body craved its own release. I’d had sex exactly two times in my entire life, neither of those times being pleasurable. The only orgasms I’d ever experienced were of my own doing. But, with the mental image of Chance in the shower firmly planted in the front of my brain, I felt like all it would take was a small breeze to send me flying over the edge.

This must have been what Constance was talking about when she mentioned Chance being perfect spank bank material. And, dear Lord in Heaven, was she ever right!

After several minutes of Lamaze-type breathing, I was finally able to get my heart rate out of the danger zone. I wasn’t sure how I was going to face Chance after what I’d seen. I had no doubt I’d turn into a stuttering, blushing mess, but I couldn’t lock myself in my room forever.

I was confident, dammit! Or at least I was getting better at pretending to be confident. Besides, I had clothes to wash, dinner to prepare, and an apartment to clean. With one last fortifying breath, I did something that was completely out of character. I pulled up my big girl panties, opened the bedroom door, and walked out, determined to continue my day as planned. I dumped a load of clothes in the wash and moved to the kitchen to begin chopping vegetables for a salad.

Then I saw him step out of his bedroom, his hair still dripping from the shower, wearing nothing but a pair of loose basketball shorts that rested low on his trim hips…

And everything went to hell.

Chance

I’D CAUGHT HER watching me as I jacked off in the shower.

And just the realization that she stood there with her cheeks flushed pink and her chest heaving with every breath as she stared was enough to make me come harder than I had in a really fucking long time.

I woke earlier that morning with another raging hard-on after spending the night dreaming of Melany. After spending the next few hours going over some case files, surrounded by her intoxicating scent, I decided a nice long run was exactly what my body needed in order to calm down. After exhausting my body to the point where I could trust myself to be around her without tackling her to the floor and mounting her like a goddamned horny dog, I headed back to the apartment.

Then it all went to shit the second I walked through the door.

Melany was bent over the coffee table, picking up a glass of water. It was a harmless task that would have probably gone unnoticed… if it hadn’t been her, and she hadn’t been wearing those cotton shorts that hugged her luscious ass. The instant I saw it, I got hard. She stood up, smiled sweetly over her shoulder, and that insane, feral desire to take her surged through my bloodstream.

I grunted something about needing a shower and hightailed it to my room. Once the warm water hit my body, I knew I had no other choice but to take matters into my own hands… literally. My dick was a ticking time bomb that I needed to get under control. So that’s exactly what I started to do.

I was so hard my balls actually ached, and the relief I felt when my fingers finally wrapped around my cock was so intense I couldn’t focus on anything else.

Then I heard her tiny, high-pitched gasp.

From my peripheral vision, I saw her reflection in my bathroom mirror. She was standing just feet away from the partially open bathroom door. Her eyes were wide and every inch of her bare skin was burning with that blush I’d come to love so much. I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted to. Knowing she was there was a heady rush, making my cock swell thicker as I fucked my fist. Having her live and in person was so much better than just fantasizing that it was her tiny little hand wrapped around me. I’d have given anything in that very moment for her to push through the door and join me. I wanted to fuck her against the shower wall, bent over the bathroom counter, on all fours on the bathroom floor.

I wanted her in every possible way.

I clenched my eyes closed and allowed myself to envision her coming to me, stripping her clothes off and pulling the door to the shower stall open. My balls grew tight, tingles shot to the very base of my spine, and I knew I was close. A quick peek showed she was still there, front and center for the show. Melany, the girl I’d spent weeks falling for, was going to watch me blow my load.

“Fuuuuuck,” I groaned. Seconds later, I lost it. I came so hard I saw stars. Without thinking, without even realizing I was doing it, I chanted her name like a prayer as the last of my release shot against the tiles. I almost collapsed under the weight of my orgasm. It took several seconds for my breathing to regulate, for my vision to clear. And by the time my senses returned and I turned to look, she was gone.

As I dried off and pulled on a clean pair of underwear and shorts, I almost convinced myself that I imagined the whole thing, that she hadn’t really been there watching, enraptured. But then I left my bedroom and realized it hadn’t all been in my head.

She was in the kitchen when I walked into the living room, and the moment her eyes met mine, they went wide, the amber color several shades darker. I knew right then that she’d liked what she’d seen. No, from the way her cheeks glowed crimson, I knew she fucking loved it, but she didn’t have the first clue how to act.

“H-hi. You have a good run?”

I bit my lip to keep from smiling. The little peeper didn’t know I’d caught her.

“Fine,” I answered casually, rounding the island and moving to the fridge for a bottle of water. “Very… relaxing. Great stress reliever.”

She let out a little squeak at the double entendre, letting me know she was still deeply affected by what she saw. A light bulb went off in my head. She was just as turned on by me as I was by her, and this was the perfect opportunity to start using that to my advantage.

A little brush here, a light caress there, and maybe, just maybe, I’d be able to drive her so wild she wouldn’t be able to control herself.

“What are you doing?” I asked, coming to stand behind her, so close I could feel the heat radiating from her skin and smell the seductive floral notes of her perfume.

Her back went stiff and I heard her gulp. “M-making a salad to go with dinner.”

I reached around her, taking care to brush my arm against hers as I snatched up a piece of carrot and popped it in my mouth.

“Mmm,” I hummed only inches from her ear. “Good, I’m starving.”

She shivered, actually fucking shivered. And to my immense delight, her body swayed backward, coming into contact with mine unconsciously.

“Y-yeah?”

I lowered my voice and let out a rumbled, “Oh yeah. Really worked up an appetite, you know?”

The knife dropped from her hand midchop and clattered to the counter. That was when I knew I’d pushed enough for now. Any further and my plan might backfire and she could collapse onto the floor. I had to remember that she was new to all of this.

Grabbing one last piece of carrot, I tossed it into my mouth and backed away. “Let me know when it’s ready.”

Then, against every single bodily instinct I had, I left the kitchen. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do, but I told myself this was a marathon, not a sprint. It was the long game that mattered.

And I’d just landed the first shot.

Game on, Melany, I thought with a wicked grin as I collapsed onto the couch and flipped on the TV.

Game fucking on.