The Look of Love (The Sullivans) - Chapter 3 + Audiobook + Exclusive Commentary from Bella
Hello again! I so hope you enjoyed Chapter 2 of The Look of Love (The Sullivans) and that you’re excited to read Chapter 3.
If I’m being honest, I still think Chapter 3 is one of the spiciest and most surprising chapters I’ve ever written. Once you get there, you’ll immediately know what part of the chapter I’m talking about. It might have something to do with a bathtub… :)
Without further ad, onto Chapter 3. And if you missed chapters 1 and 2, you can find them here:
and here:
Note: You can also listen to THE LOOK OF LOVE for free!
CHAPTER THREE
copyright 2022 Bella Andre / Oak Press, LLC
Please Note: My books are sexy and emotional love stories. Which is to say there will be lots of scenes where the hero and heroine are smooching (and doing much, much more!) in nearly all of my posts. 😍
Chloe wanted nothing more than to drop her bag on the bedroom floor, throw herself on the bed and curl up into a tight ball. But the wood floor looked really expensive, and she’d already dripped on it enough. She knew how people with money lived, but even so, she was impressed with this gorgeous house in the wine country. And to think it was only the guesthouse. She couldn’t imagine what the main house must look like.
She’d grown up in a lower-middle-class household with parents who always wanted more but never knew how to get it. So when she’d met her ex-husband, and he’d told her he wanted to give her the world, she’d followed his promises straight to the altar.
Little did she know at the time just how little those promises would mean. He might have given her money to spend and pretty clothes to wear, but he’d also tried to take away everything that really mattered.
With a shake of her head, as if that would help clear the ugly memories from her mind, she headed for the bathroom. Putting her bag down on the tiled floor, she stripped off her wet, dirty clothes, put them in the sink and began to wash the mud out of them. She would have loved to throw them away, but she didn’t have much with her and knew that she’d need them again in the near future. The best she could do for the time being was to get out the dirt with soap and water, wring as much of the water out by hand as she could and then hang them up to dry. Of course, she knew the house must have a washer and dryer, but spending the night in a stranger’s house—not even the stranger who’d brought her here, but a brother she’d never met—was more than enough charity.
Finally finished dealing with her clothes, she moved to the shower and was reaching in to turn on the water when she changed her mind. The bathroom had a huge whirlpool tub. She almost moaned aloud at the thought of lying in the warm water with jets massaging her legs, spine and feet.
Chloe looked back almost guiltily at the bathroom door before realizing she was being silly. It was locked, and she was finally alone. Since Chase was insisting she stay here tonight, what was wrong with availing herself of the facilities? At least those attached to her bedroom.
She hadn’t been in a tub like this since she’d left—
No. She wouldn’t let herself think of that tonight. Chloe knew she didn’t have the luxury of pretending everything was okay—not by a long shot—but deep inside she felt safe in this beautiful house surrounded by grapevines.
She supposed, a few seconds later, that it was precisely that glorious sense of safety—and the memory of how nice it had been to feel so warm and protected in Chase’s arms for the few moments that she’d let him hold her—that had her body acting so off-kilter when she stepped into the hot water.
Her skin felt extra sensitive as she slowly submerged her legs and then hips and back into the large tub. Sighing with pleasure, she laid her head on the curved rim and looked up through a skylight that was pinging with the rain from outside. She hadn’t felt feminine, or sexy, in a very long time. And yet, there had been no doubt that Chase had been attracted to her.
She should have been upset about it. After all, she’d just met him. And she was in no state of mind whatsoever to deal with anyone’s attraction. Not his or hers. And yet, a heavy, heated throbbing pulsed at the tips of her breasts, which felt even fuller than normal. Between her thighs…well, the truth was that she was burning up down there.
Heck, if she were being even the slightest bit honest with herself, she’d been on fire from the moment Chase had moved close, put one hand against her neck and held the ice pack against her cheek in his brother’s kitchen.
Both she and the woman in his bed had the same taste, it seemed.
Thinking of the naked stranger—Ellen, she’d said her name was—and her crazy suggestion had Chloe unexpectedly grinning again as she scooted down in the tub and tilted her neck backward to get her hair wet in the hot water. Mmm, that felt good. She reached for the fancy bottle of shampoo by the side and began massaging the sweet-smelling liquid into her hair.
It hadn’t been a great night by any means, but at least there’d been some unexpected humor in it. Especially the look on Chase’s face when he’d opened the bedroom door and realized they weren’t alone in his brother’s guesthouse, after all.
Chase had clearly been surprised by the naked woman—and by the fact that she was only slightly fazed by the idea of more than one person in her bed.
Chloe’s grin shifted into a semi-frown. Not just because she hadn’t thought people actually did that, but because she couldn’t understand Ellen’s thinking.
If Chase had been hers, Chloe wouldn’t share him with anyone.
The shocking train of thought stopped Chloe cold. Soap dripped into her eyelashes, and she dunked herself under the water, hoping to wash her unwelcome thoughts away, too, while she was at it.
What was wrong with her? Was she really that blockheaded? That full of fantasies and foolish dreams?
She knew better, knew that the only person she should be trusting, for a very long time, was herself.
And yet, hadn’t she been doing some verbal sparring with Chase out in the living room and kitchen? Borderline flirting, when she should have been wary. And then, when they’d found the woman waiting for him on the bed, maybe she should have been shocked, but instead Chloe hadn’t been able to hold in her laughter.
Not when finally having a reason to laugh again had felt too good. She’d had to let it out.
Amazingly, for a few moments, she’d almost felt like her old self.
Once upon a time Chloe had been a sensual woman. She hadn’t been one of those girls who was afraid of her own body. She’d loved being kissed. Caressed. She’d loved other things, too. Things her ex-husband had told her she was supposed to be ashamed of. But just because she’d done a crummy job of picking a husband didn’t mean those urges, those desires, had ever really gone away.
They’d just gone into hiding.
And Chase was, quite obviously—and unfortunately—a master of hide-and-seek.
Chloe sighed as she ran a bar of soap over her arm. She couldn’t believe her body had decided to leap to life now. Tonight of all nights, she should be focusing on getting sleep and food and figuring out what to do next.
Instead, she was lying in the bath thinking about Mr. Hotstuff with his green eyes and wicked grin. Not to mention the ridiculously great body—tall, broad-shouldered and muscular.
Frustration ate at her as she continued to soap her skin with more than a little vigor. She had a bad feeling that if she got up out of this glorious tub, instead of sinking into what was sure to be a fantastically luxurious bed and falling straight to sleep, she was going to be tossing and turning with unrequited lust all night.
No, damn it! When she’d left her now-ex-husband, she’d vowed to take care of herself. At the time she’d believed that simply meant money and jobs and housing. Evidently, she thought with a slightly rueful shake of her head, it also seemed to mean that if she was feeling unaccountably aroused, she was going to have to take care of that, too.
She shifted in the tub at the somewhat shocking thought, and as the warm water floated over her curves, she tried to figure out how long it had been since she’d enjoyed sex. Since she’d been able to explore her body and give in to its needs.
How long had she been ashamed of her natural sensuality?
If only the answers weren’t all so painful. If only the answers didn’t make her feel so powerless.
No. She wouldn’t go there tonight. Not after what she’d already been through.
Tomorrow would come soon enough. But tonight…well, maybe tonight was her chance to start taking some much-needed strides to reclaim a part of herself that she’d been forced to deny for too long. She couldn’t rebuild her entire life from scratch tonight. That would take much longer than one evening in Napa Valley. But why shouldn’t she give herself at least a small taste of the pleasure she’d denied herself for far too long?
Closing her eyes, she forced herself to unclench her jaw along with the muscles in her arms and legs. As she relaxed deeper into the warm tub, Chloe put her hands just above her breasts and held them there, feeling the quickening beat of her heart.
Her skin was warm from the water. Slowly, she ran her hands down her chest, over her full breasts, and she sucked in a breath at the surprisingly pleasurable sensations that shot through her. She used to love having a man’s hands, his mouth, playing over her skin.
She hadn’t conjured up sexy fantasies in a long time, but tonight it was only her and her hands and a tub full of steaming water. No one was here to tell her she was dirty or bad for liking what she liked.
Drawing on long-buried sensual memories, she let her mind drift to a scene where she was in a man’s arms and his head was bent down over her breasts. And then he lifted his head, and she gasped as a flush of arousal hit her right between her thighs.
Because the man looked just like Chase.
Chloe should have stopped touching herself right then. She knew she should have had the self-control to get up out of the tub, to go get the sleep she so desperately needed.
But she’d gone without for so long. Far too long. She was thirty years old and heading straight toward her sexual prime, wasn’t she?
It was one more reason to be angry about the way she’d let her life play out these past years.
And this, her innate sensuality, was one more part of her life to reclaim.
She looked around at the large, tiled bathroom. The blinds were covering the window over the tub. Her knight in shining armor was busy with another woman in a bedroom down the hall.
Chloe knew she was safe here, safer than she’d been in a very long time. Tonight she had a chance to feel normal again. And she was going to take it…even if the gorgeous face of a man she’d just met—and was impossibly tempted by even though every last brain cell she had knew better—was the very man whose image was about to have her crying out with ecstasy in a few minutes.
Keeping one hand on her breasts, she let the other slide down over her rib cage, then her stomach, until she reached the thatch of soft curls between her thighs. It was instinct to let her legs fall open in the water.
Her breath quickened as she slid her fingers down lower. Even in the water she could feel how slick she was, how ready she’d been since practically the first moment Chase had touched her, his hand threading through the hair at the base of her neck as he held the ice to her cheek. She’d been all but seared by the heat of his body against hers, even as she knew he’d been careful not to press himself too closely to her.
She didn’t have the first clue how she could have reacted like that to a complete stranger. Given what had just happened to her, the bruise still throbbing on her cheek, shouldn’t she have been flinching and hating the feel of his hands on her?
But she hadn’t been anywhere near hating Chase’s touch. Far from it, considering the amazing truth that she’d been far more tempted to rub herself against him than shove him away.
As her fingers swirled between her legs, her mind flitted back to that moment when she’d looked down at his groin. Sex had been good once, good enough that she could still imagine the kind of pleasure a man like Chase could give a woman.
Sinking so deep into the water that her nose and mouth and eyes were barely above the surface, her feet slid out further, and she accidentally kicked something in the tub that sent the jets into overdrive.
Chloe’s eyes flew open as the bubbling streams assaulted her sensitive skin. At first it was too much, too many sensations coming at her at once, but then, as she got more used to the water moving across her sore muscles, she found herself growing even more relaxed.
Lifting her hips into the jet streams felt decadent. Sinful.
And just plain good.
Moving her hand from between her legs back to her breasts, she cupped one in each hand as the water worked between her legs in the nicest possible way.
She rocked her hips up and down as she got closer and closer to the sweetest orgasm she’d had in a long, long time. Chase’s face appeared again in her head, and she didn’t even bother to stop herself from fantasizing about what his kiss would taste like, about how it would feel to have his large hands on her instead of her own.
A strange sound tried to work its way into her subconscious, but she was too far gone to pay it any attention. And then Chase’s name was on her lips as her entire body tightened down and then exploded in a thousand delicious pieces, her hips bucking closer to the wonderfully strong jets, her fingers tightening on her own breasts.
Oh, God, she loved this feeling, loved the wildness that coursed through her veins, and the calm that followed so closely after. Why had she gone so long without it?
Chloe felt so loose, so warm, that she was about to relax deeper into the tub when her brain rewound back to that moment when she’d been coming apart. To the sounds she’d heard but dismissed as her body had flown over the edge.
Her heart began to beat hard and fast again as she slowly opened her eyes. She was still disoriented enough from her orgasm for a few seconds that she was sure she couldn’t be seeing what she was seeing: Chase, standing in the doorway of the bathroom, one hand on the doorknob.
Surprise—and dangerously strong lust—were written all over his face.
Thanks for reading! You can read and listen to Chapter 4 here —> Chapter 4
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