The Chase (Briar U #1)

24 Fitz

24

FITZ

S UMMER IS IN MY BED . N OT THE SEASON . T HE GIRL . T HE beautiful, topless girl who just woke me up from a nap and told me she’s tired of fighting her attraction to me.

I know there’s more we need to talk about. I all but begged her not to go out with Hunter earlier, and she’d still walked out the door. And I’m sure she has questions for me, questions I’ll undoubtedly have a difficult time answering. Not because I don’t want to, but because I’m scared to.

Summer scares me. She always has. She makes me want to open up, and that’s not a normal urge for me.

And speaking of urges, she unleashes a pretty basic one when she brings her fingertips to my lips and gently strokes them.

I inch closer, doing everything in my power not to look at her tits. Don’t get me wrong—I’m dying to. But I’m about to offer her an out before this gets out of hand, and if she takes it, I’d rather we stopped before I get too attached to those tits.

“Are you sure?” I whisper.

“One hundred percent.” A note of vulnerability enters her voice. “Are you?”

I can’t stop a laugh from flying out.

Summer’s entire body stiffens. “Are you kidd—”

“No,” I say quickly, “I’m not laughing at you. I promise. It’s just…am I sure? Fuck, Summer, I jerk off to the thought of you every single day. I can’t get you out of my head, and it only got worse after you gave me a blowjob. Now I jerk off twice a day.”

She responds by kissing me senseless.

Yeah, neither of us is going to stop this. It’s been a long time coming. A long fucking time.

Our clothes come off. I’m not sure how or when, but suddenly I’m naked and rolling on top of her, one leg sliding between both of hers, my lower body grinding against her softness. Her mouth is fused to mine, and she lifts her hips, shamelessly rubbing herself on my dick, straining to get closer.

My tongue prods the seam of her lips. She parts them on command, granting me access. When I swirl my tongue over hers, she gives a desperate moan that vibrates through my body. I chuckle and retreat, nibbling her full lower lip before peppering kisses along her jaw.

When I reach her neck, she slants her head and my mouth latches onto her flesh, sucking gently. She whimpers and rocks harder against me.

She tries to reach between us to grab my dick, but I gently swat her hands away. “Nuh-uh,” I murmur. “You’re always the one making me feel good. It’s my turn.”

And then I proceed to tease the living hell out of her. Forget drugs—you want a real high? Suck on Summer’s perfect tits. Kiss the surprisingly sensitive spot right below her belly button and watch her hips arch as her pussy seeks the heat of your cock.

My stubble scrapes the underside of one round, perky breast as I lick my way back up to toy with her nipples some more. I spend an obscene amount of time kissing and licking her, while she grabs my head to keep me in place. Ha. Like I’m going anywhere. I suck one nipple hard enough to elicit a loud moan from her lips, then flick my tongue in feather-light movements over each hard bud until Summer’s hips begin to thrash again.

“Fitz,” she begs. “No more teasing. I need…”

I slide down and bury my face between her legs. “This what you need?” I groan against her flesh.

Her ass shoots off the mattress.

Chuckling, I grasp her hips to steady her before teasing her with my tongue. Every long, lazy lick summons from her a whimper or a moan or a breathy sigh. When I push one finger inside, her inner muscles greedily clamp around it, and the top of my dick nearly blows off. Oh man, she’s amazingly tight. My brain goes hazy as I capture her clit in my mouth and suck on it, while my finger languidly moves inside her.

“Oh my God,” she says in a choked voice. “Don’t stop. I’m getting close—”

I stop.

“Why!” Summer wails.

I drag my tongue over my lips. Fuck, she’s all I can taste. “Not yet,” I say, sitting up.

“What gives you the right to decide that?” she huffs. “It’s my body, Colin!”

“It’s my tongue,” I say with a cheeky grin.

“I want to come.”

“Don’t we all.”

“Arrrgghh!” Her cry of frustration triggers my laughter. “I hate you, you know that?”

“No you don’t.”

“I’m going to die if I don’t have an orgasm.” Her tone is grave. “Like, actually die. And then you’ll have to explain to my father how my death could’ve been prevented if only you’d finished going down on me. My father , Fitz. Is that really what you want?”

I press my lips together to fight another wave of laughter. This girl is the best. The goddamn best. “Tell you what,” I say thickly. “Why don’t we compromise?” I open the bottom drawer of my nightstand and produce a condom. “We can both come, and nobody has to die.”

“Greatest idea ever.”

She watches as I rise on my knees to suit up. I gaze down at her, and my breath catches. Her cheeks are flushed, green eyes glittering with arousal, chest heaving with every labored breath. I’ve never seen a sexier sight.

Her breathing gets choppier. “Why aren’t you in me?”

Good question.

I lower my naked body over hers and slide into her in one achingly slow stroke. Oh fuck . It’s the best feeling in the world. It’s…a sense of belonging I’ve never felt before. And my chest expands in the strangest way when I look at Summer and see the way she’s looking at me in return.

I think she’s feeling it, too.

The bedsprings squeak when I start to move. Slow, shallow thrusts, filling her only to withdraw each time she tries to pull me in deeper.

“More,” she begs.

“No.”

My restraint impresses even me. I’m dying to quicken the tempo. Dying to find release. But I also never want this to end. I never want to lose this sensation of sheer rightness .

So I drag it out, my hips thrusting and releasing so carefully that beads of sweat break out on my forehead. When Summer tries to hook her legs around my ass, I reprimand her by biting her neck and withdrawing completely.

“Dammit, Fitz…please. Please, please, please .”

I’ve reduced her to begging. Hell yeah.

A husky laugh rumbles out of my chest. “I think I like tormenting you.” To punctuate that, I glide my cock into her again and slowly rotate my hips.

She clings to my shoulders, her tits crushed against my chest. Her nipples are like sun-warmed little pebbles that dig in to my flesh. Her pussy grips me tight enough to bring black dots to my vision.

“I need to come.”

It’s that one shaky word— need —that causes me to give in. Need, not want. I’ve tortured her long enough.

With an agonized groan, I thrust as deep as I can, and off we go. The sex becomes hard and fast and dirty. This time I let her wrap her legs around me, and the new angle means I’m rubbing against her clit with each downstroke. She comes first, and I’m not far behind, and then we’re both gasping with pleasure and rocking together as if we’ve done this a hundred times before.

Maybe I black out, because when the pleasure finally ebbs, I’m on my back and Summer is lying on top of me, and I can’t remember how we got in this position. The spent condom is by my left knee. I don’t remember removing it, either. With my last remaining burst of energy, I pick it up, tie it off, and drop it on the nightstand.

Summer rests her cheek on my collarbone. “Your heart’s beating so fast.”

“So’s yours.” The rapid flutter of her pulse vibrates against my chest, almost in time to my own erratic heartbeat. I tangle my fingers in her hair.

She sighs happily. “I like cuddling naked with you.”

“Me too,” I say gruffly.

“I like having sex with you.” Her breath heats my left nipple, making me shiver. “I like you, period. I like you a lot.”

“I…” My mouth goes dry. I almost say ‘ ditto’ and then realize how dismissive that sounds. So I say the next best thing—nothing.

Because that’s how I roll.

Summer senses the shift in my demeanor. I know she does, because she releases a quiet sigh. But to my surprise, she doesn’t lose her temper the way she has the other times I haven’t offered the sweet words and reassurances she clearly needs.

“I had an epiphany earlier.”

I stroke her hair.

“Did you?”

“Mmm-hmmm. I keep expecting you to be open about your feelings and make yourself vulnerable in front of me, and maybe that’s not fair.” She absently runs her fingers over my abdomen, leaving goose bumps in her wake. “I have to remember that not everyone is like me. I say whatever’s on my mind.”

“Saying what’s on your mind isn’t the same as sharing what you feel,” I point out.

“I do that too.”

I laugh. “True.”

She goes silent, and I can practically hear her brain working. “I don’t share everything .”

Curiosity tugs at me. “You keeping secrets from me, eh?”

“Not just from you. I keep secrets from everyone.”

I doubt it. Like she said, Summer’s one of the most open people I’ve ever met. “Uh-huh. Such as?”

“Ha. I’m not revealing anything unless I know I’m getting something in return.” She props up on one elbow. “I’ll make you a deal. Give me one thing. One vulnerable, real moment. And if you do, I’ll…” She purses her lips for a second. “I’ll tell you why I started the fire in my sorority house.”

That gets my attention. It’s the first time she’s admitted that she’d intentionally set the fire.

“Deal,” I tell her. “But you have to go first.”

“I knew you’d say that.” She crawls forward and reaches for the fleece blanket that’s balled up at the foot of the bed.

“Are you cold?” I ask.

“Of course I’m cold. This is New England.” She wraps the blanket around her shoulders and returns to sit close to my side.

Me, I’m sprawled on my back, buck-naked, and my body is still on fire. I tend to run hot.

“Okay, you have to promise not to tell anyone.” I don’t miss the chord of embarrassment in her voice. “The only people I’ve told are my parents.”

“What about Dean? And your other brother?”

“Nicky and Dicky think I got drunk at a toga party and knocked over a candle,” she admits.

“And that’s not what happened?”

Summer shakes her head.

The plot thickens… “So what did happen?”

“You have to promise, Fitz.”

Her green eyes are more serious than I’ve ever seen them. “I promise.”

She brings her hand to her mouth and begins chewing on her thumbnail. First time I’ve ever seen her bite her nails. It’s alarming, and I don’t like it. Gently, I reach up and capture her hand. I bring it down to my chest, where I cover it with my palm.

“There was a toga party,” she finally says. “That part is true. And I was drunk, but not as drunk as my brothers believe. The Kappa house has a huge enclosed porch, right off the sitting room. Actually, I guess it wasn’t really a porch. More like a sunroom. It was an addition to the mansion, and there was this massive wall of windows, with thick drapes.” She shrugs wryly. “Highly flammable drapes, as it turned out.”

“Oh boy.”

“Yup.” She tries to chew on her other thumb, so I steal that hand too and clasp it to my chest. “I’m pretty much the only one who used the sunroom. It wasn’t well insulated, so it was usually super cold. I’d go and sit out there, mostly when I was in a crappy mood and needed to be alone. Anyway, there was a toga party. We were cohosting it with the Alpha Phi frat, and a few of the frat members were in my Sociology class. The TA gave our midterm papers back that morning, so the guys were talking about their grades and I overheard them.” Her tone turns bleak. “I guess they all aced it. Meanwhile, I got an F.”

I swallow a sigh. “Ah, babe. I’m sorry.” The term of endearment slips out before I can stop it, but I’m not sure Summer even notices.

Shame darkens her eyes. “I plagiarized it.”

The revelation stuns me. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah.” Her voice cracks. “I didn’t realize it was considered plagiarism, though. I paraphrased from a bunch of websites and didn’t source them properly. Anything with a direct quote, I cited. But not the other references. I stuck them in the bibliography, but I guess I didn’t do it right.” She rubs her eyes, and when she looks at me, there’s misery clouding her expression. “I was already having so much trouble with that paper, Fitz. It was a mess. I went in for extra help, but it wasn’t enough. I emailed the TA and asked for more help, but he was a total dick and told me he’d accommodated me as much as he could. And, well, you saw what happens when I get overwhelmed.”

Sympathy fills my chest. “I’m sorry.”

“I turned in the paper knowing I’d get a shitty grade, but I didn’t expect an F. And when I tried to talk to the TA after class and explain that I hadn’t intentionally plagiarized, he gave me the ‘too bad, so sad’ speech and said I could appeal the grade with the college if I wanted, but that he doubted they’d overturn it.”

When I let go of her hands, Summer cinches the blanket tighter to her body. “Fast forward to the party. The frat boys were bragging about their grades, and I was standing there in a ridiculous toga feeling like a complete moron. I was…” She groans softly. “I was so frigging tired of being the village idiot, you know? Just knowing that my paper was upstairs on my desk, with that big red F and the word ‘plagiarism’ written on it in capital letters. I was pissed. And I just wanted to, I don’t know, eliminate all the evidence of my stupidity.”

My heart splinters at her stricken tone, then cracks in two when I see her eyes. Jesus. She actually believes what she’s saying. She truly thinks of herself as stupid.

“So I went upstairs and grabbed the midterm, and then went down to the sunroom and lit a match. There was a big ceramic bowl on a table under one of the windows. I tossed the burning essay into it.” She sighs. “I honestly thought it would burn itself out. It probably would’ve, if it weren’t for the drapes and the fact that someone left the window open.” She shakes her head in amazement. “Of all the nights for someone other than me to be in there, right?”

I have to chuckle.

“So,” she continues, “the breeze fanned the flames and the drapes caught fire and the sunroom was no more.”

“Did it seriously burn to the ground?”

“No. I mean, the outer wall was completely destroyed and needs to be rebuilt, but the part that was attached to the actual mansion remained intact.” She hangs her head in shame. “When the fire department came, I lied and said I knocked over a candle when I was dancing on the table. Like, ‘Oops, I’m just a drunk sorority girl in a toga!’ They labeled it an accident, my parents wrote hefty checks to the sorority and the school, and I was very nicely asked to leave.”

“Wow.” I sit up against the headboard and pull her toward me. She’s cocooned in fleece, so I run a comforting hand over her scalp. “Let me get this straight,” I say gently. “You’d rather people think you’re a drunk party girl than know that you got an F on a term paper?”

“Pretty much.” She tips her head so she can meet my eyes. “But it sounds really ridiculous when you say it out loud.”

I cup her cheek, sweeping my thumb over her lower lip. It trembles when I make contact with it. “You’re not stupid, Summer. You have a learning disability. There’s a difference.”

“I know that.” The lack of conviction in her tone thoroughly troubles me, but she doesn’t give me a chance to probe any deeper. “There. Now you know something truly embarrassing about me. It’s your turn.”

When I don’t respond right away, she pokes her hand out of the blanket and laces her fingers through mine.

“Share something, anything. You promised me something real, Fitz.”

I did promise. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy for me to give it to her. “I…” I grumble with frustration. “I’m not holding back on purpose,” I tell her. “It’s just…a habit.”

“A habit.” Her forehead creases. “Holding back is a habit?”

“Yes. I don’t talk about what I’m feeling.”

“Why not, though?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. I guess I…got used to whatever I said being used against me.”

“What on earth does that mean?”

Discomfort creeps up my spine, until the back of my neck feels cold, tight. The instinct to flee is strong, but so is Summer’s grip on my hand. I draw a breath.

“Fitz?” she prompts.

I exhale. “My parents went through an ugly divorce when I was ten. My dad cheated. Though if you ask him, it’s because my mom drove him to it. Either way, they couldn’t stand each other back then, and they can’t stand each other now.”

“I’m sorry. That sounds rough.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Until I turned twelve, they had joint custody. And then Dad started dating some woman Mom despised, so she decided to sue for full custody of me. Dad got pissed and decided he deserved full custody. And that’s when the head games began.”

“Head games…?”

“The custody battle was even uglier than the divorce. They used me to hurt each other.”

Her eyes widen. “How so?”

“Whenever I was alone with Dad, he’d try to coerce me into saying bad shit about Mom. She did the same thing. If I complained to Dad that Mom wouldn’t let me play ball hockey with my friends until I cleaned my room, suddenly there’d be a social worker coming by and asking me if I felt ‘socially isolated’ by my mother. If I told Mom that Dad let me eat sugary cereal before bedtime, a different social worker would show up interrogating me about everything Dad fed me. It was all being documented too. Every word I said went right back to the lawyers.”

“Oh my gosh, that’s awful.”

“They were throwing out accusations of neglect, emotional abuse, ‘nutritional deprivation.’” I shake my head in disapproval. “And I couldn’t tell them how I felt about it. About anything at all, in fact. Otherwise the blame game would start.”

“The blame game?”

“If I was sad about something? It’s your father’s fault. If I was mad? Your mother’s fault. I was nervous about the school play? It’s because your dad didn’t run lines with you. If something scared me? It’s ’cause your mom’s raising a pussy. ” I let out a breath as I remember how exhausting it was to have a single conversation with them. Hell, it’s equally exhausting now.

“Did you go to court and tell the judge which parent you wanted to live with?” Summer asks curiously. “Wouldn’t that have solved the whole custody battle?”

“You’d think. I did go to court. Well, it was more of a conference room with a bunch of tables, but there was a judge.”

I cringe even thinking about it. I remember holding a social worker’s hand as she led me into the room and asked me to sit down. My parents were seated next to their respective lawyers. Mom was pleading at me with her eyes. Dad gave me that encouraging look that said, ‘I know you’ll make the right decision.’ Everyone was staring at me. It was fucking brutal.

“The judge asked me to describe my routine at each of their houses.” I absently rub Summer’s knuckles. “She asked me questions about what I ate, whether I enjoyed playing hockey—a bunch of questions that made me realize they’d told the lawyers everything I’d ever said to them. And then the judge asked me who I wanted to live with.”

Summer’s breath hitches. “Who did you pick?”

My lips twitch in amusement. “I pleaded the Fifth.”

Her jaw drops. “You were twelve, and you pleaded the Fifth?”

“Yup. I think I saw someone do it on CSI or some shit.” I snicker. “The judge said I couldn’t do that and urged me to pick. So I said both. I wanted to live with both.” I offer a wry smile. “She awarded them joint custody, which was what they’d started off with. She said she felt it was better for my mental and emotional wellbeing to spend equal time with both of them.”

“Did things get better after that? Did your parents settle down?”

“Nope. They kept trash-talking each other to me. Still do to this day, though not as bad as before.”

She frowns. “How’d you deal with it when you were growing up?”

“By becoming invisible,” I say roughly. “I mean, there was one rebellious phase where I got my first tat behind their back and dared them to pay attention to me, but mostly I hid in my room. As long as they couldn’t see me, they weren’t able to poison me against each other.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”

I shrug.

“You’re doing it again,” she teases with a smile. “Okay, listen. I know you’re used to having your feelings twisted into something negative, but I promise you, anything you tell me will stay in our sacred trust circle. I will never, ever report it to the judge.”

I find myself smiling back. “I’m sorry. Bad habit. I’ll try to break it.” I shoot her a stern look. “But only if you promise to stop being so hard on yourself. You’ve got to stop telling yourself you’re stupid.”

“I’ll try,” she says, and I suppose I can’t ask for more than that. “Are you hungry? I never ended up having dinner.”

I want to ask her why not, what happened on the date with Hunter, but I tamp down the urge. I really don’t want to kill the mood by bringing up another guy. That can wait till tomorrow.

I want tonight to be about just me and Summer.