The Look of Love (The Sullivans): Chapter 9 + Audiobook + Exclusive Commentary from Bella

I hope you loved Chapter 8 of The Look of Love (The Sullivans)!

At last, in Chapter 9, Chase and Chloe are going to have their first kiss! I absolutely loved writing this chapter. The first kiss is always explosive, especially when preceded by 8 chapters of sizzling hot attraction.

If you’ve missed any of the previous chapters you can find them here:

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7 / Chapter 8

Enjoy Chapter 9!

Note: You can also listen to THE LOOK OF LOVE for free!

AUDIOBOOK:

Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4 / Chapter 5 / Chapter 6 / Chapter 7 / Chapter 8 / Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

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. 😍

As Chloe threaded her fingers through his hair and pulled his face down to hers, it took every ounce of control Chase possessed to keep his hands on the rail.

But when her lips touched his, just a whisper of a kiss…his control was lost.

He wanted to touch her everywhere at once, but it was a straight shot for his hands from the rail to her lower back and the incredibly sexy curve of her hips.

Her mouth was so soft, so damn sweet, as she pressed one kiss after another against his lips. If he could have, he would have prolonged the gentle exploration. But he’d been waiting too damn long for this kiss. Running one hand up her spine, he cupped the back of her neck, threaded his hand into her silky hair, and held her captive beneath him while he tasted her.

She gasped against his mouth, and somewhere in the back of his head he started to wonder if he was hurting her. He was about to force himself to lift his mouth from hers when he felt it: her tongue coming out to stroke against his.

Jesus, he’d thought about this moment a hundred times in the past twenty-four hours, but nothing he’d come up with, nothing he’d envisioned in his fantasies, came anywhere close to the reality of how soft, how sweet, how sensual, kissing Chloe really was.

Chase had always loved kissing. To his surprise, most women liked to rush past that part of their sensual dance, even though sometimes a kiss could be just as good as full-blown sex.

Better, even.

Especially when he was kissing Chloe.

He could have spent hours on her mouth, learning her taste, her pleasure. Judging by the way she was kissing him back, with a passion that echoed his, he had a feeling she would be up for exactly that.

Slowly stroking his tongue against hers, he reveled in the taste of her, the feel of her, the little moans of pleasure she was making as they connected so intimately. Drawing back slightly, he gently sucked her lower lip in between his teeth for a soft nip at the sensitive flesh there, being sure to give her upper lip the same treatment. And then their tongues were back at it until she did the same to his mouth, tasting, taking, nipping, biting his flesh so perfectly.

“Chloe.” He groaned her name against her lips, and she licked across his once more before looking at him, flushed and lovely and awash with desire.

She was panting when she admitted, “I’ve never been kissed like that before.”

The innocence of her words, the look on her face—like she’d just experienced heaven—had him taking her lips again. Devouring them.

Chase didn’t have any idea how long they kissed like a man and a woman who were starving for each other, but all the while he was intensely aware of the soft press of her breasts against his chest, along with the sexy curve of her hips where he was holding her against him. He was torn between continuing to kiss her lips and tasting his way down her incredible body.

Just then she shifted slightly in his arms, pressing her breasts and hips even closer into him, and the decision was taken away from him.

He’d been blessed enough to see her beautiful naked skin when he’d walked in on her in the bathtub the previous evening. But he hadn’t been able to touch her. He hadn’t been able to run his tongue over her. He hadn’t been able to kiss every dip and curve.

Now, nothing could have stopped him from having all that. From having her.

Chase began to run kisses over her face, across her cheekbones, over her chin, down to her neck. He licked into the hollow of her collarbones and felt her weight come more firmly against him, as if she could barely hold herself up.

Chase had learned early on how to elicit a sensual response from women, and he’d always enjoyed their pleasure as much as his own. But Chloe’s response—and his need for her—was different from that of any other woman he’d been with. Their connection was not only more immediate, it was also stronger, ran deeper…and was so much hotter.

When he ran his tongue over her skin again, the softly desperate sound she made had him moving his hand from where he’d been cupping her neck down to a thin strap on her shoulder. She was soft, so damn soft that he almost lost the thread of what he was doing, but then she took a deep, shaking breath, her breasts moving against his chest, swelling up beneath the top of her dress.

And he remembered exactly why he needed to slide the strap off her lovely skin.

A picture of her breasts—water from the bathtub beading and sliding over her soft flesh—would be forever imprinted on his brain. But now that he was just seconds away from actually being able to touch, to taste them, Chase could barely get his hands to work right.

He needed to get the straps off.

And then, silk was sliding down over her shoulders, and he didn’t even need to give her dress a yank, because Chloe was two steps ahead of him, lifting her arms from the confines of her dress and shimmying her upper body so that the bodice slipped one inch, and then another, and then one more still, until her breasts popped out from beneath the thin fabric.

Desire momentarily immobilized Chase as he drank her in. Her breasts were perfect, full and round, beautifully natural in the way they lay against her chest, tipped up to him with desire.

He was utterly mesmerized as his hands warred with his mouth for the pleasure of being the first to touch her.

His hands won by a hair as he reached out to cup her, his fingertips stroking across the hard peaks of her breasts before cupping the softest flesh he’d ever felt in his entire life.

“Oh, God. Chase.”

He tore his gaze away from her breasts, from the contrast of her pale skin against his tanned fingers, to see that she was staring in wonder at exactly the same thing. Her eyes lifted to his a moment later, and the heat, the pleasure, in them had him pressing his mouth to hers again, her breasts still in his hands.

Their kiss took on a different sheen this time, the desperation for each other kicking up another notch. Chloe was rubbing and pressing her breasts against his hands, almost as if she was begging for something. As if she was begging for more.

“Watch, Chloe.” Drawing back from her mouth, he trained his gaze back on her breasts as he ran his thumbs over the taut peaks. “Look how responsive you are to my touch.”

She whimpered as he caressed the taut flesh again, harder this time, and then again. Her nipples puckered beneath his thumbs.

“Please, Chase.”

He barely heard her request, her words more breath than anything else, but he understood exactly what she was saying. Because he needed the exact same thing she did.

Chase bent his head down, and she arched her back to make herself more available to him. In one smooth motion, he laved his tongue over her incredibly soft skin. A part of him wanted to spend all night there, with his tongue on her breasts, running it across every inch of her. But his lips, his teeth, had other ideas, and it was barely a moment later that he was closing his mouth down over her nipple, swirling his tongue over her even as his teeth lightly scraped the rigid, aroused flesh.

She made a soft moan then that had him throbbing dangerously in his jeans.

There was nothing feigned about her response. Chloe was pure sensuality, just as he’d known she would be. He’d watched her come apart in the bathtub, and yet, being a part of that pleasure tonight, being the reason she was drowning in desire, put what he’d been feeling for her in another stratosphere entirely.

They’d talked about being friends—she’d told him how much she needed that—but after spending the past twenty-four hours in a nearly constant state of arousal for her, he couldn’t stop himself from bunching her skirt up with his hands and running one hand up her bare thigh.

Turning his attention to her other breast, his mouth closed down over it just as his fingers found her panties, damp with arousal.

“Yes,” she gasped as he tugged on her breast with his lips, moving his hand up between her thighs so that he could slide his fingers in beneath the thin fabric.

Worries, concerns, reservations—they all flew out the window as he found her slick, and so damned hot, with his hand. She was practically bucking in his arms, arching into his mouth, opening her legs to give him better access to every part of her. Moments later, Chloe was crying out her pleasure, and her inner muscles were clamping down on him in a beautiful, out-of-control rhythm. She was a living, breathing orgasm beneath his mouth and hands.

Her release seemed to go on forever, from one peak to the next, and Chase felt like the luckiest guy on the planet. He wanted to do nothing from here on out but make her come. Watch her come. Listen to her come.

He wanted to give up everything for her. And it would all be worth it, just to be witness to such overarching, all-consuming pleasure.

Amazingly, when she finally settled back down in his arms, instead of being satisfied, she looked up at him and said, “Please, Chase. More. I need more.”

He knew just what she was asking for—she wanted him to take her, right then and there on his brother’s porch in the middle of the vines.

Chase had never wanted anything so badly. Never.

Only, when she’d been asking for more, her words had slurred together. Just the slightest bit.

But he heard it.

Worse, he could see now that her eyes were a little unfocused. Maybe even blurry. And not just because of her orgasm.

Chase didn’t want to have to ask himself if she was drunk, if she wasn’t totally in control of what she was doing with him out on his brother’s porch. He wanted to believe that the slurring had everything to do with how good he was making her feel and not the number of times her wineglass had been refilled. He knew he could do anything he wanted to her right now, turn her around on the balcony so that her hips were pressed up against his groin while he lifted her skirt. He could fill his hands with the perfect, heavy weight of her breasts while he slid into her from behind. And both of them could get what they desperately needed.

But, damn it, he just couldn’t do it.

Not when he knew he’d never—ever—be able to live with himself if this went even further and Chloe woke up in the morning not knowing what she’d done. Not if she had one single regret about him.

Chase couldn’t be one more man to take something away from her.

Which meant that he needed to stop this.

Now.

Not wanting to startle her, he slowly moved his hand from between her legs, letting the dress fall back down. A moment later he was gently pulling up the bodice, covering up breasts that he would kill to taste again.

“What are you doing?” Her words were heavy with both desire and confusion. “Why are you stopping?”

“I think it’s time to get you home to bed.”

Her mouth moved into a sensual pout. “I’m not tired, Chase. Not yet.”

Sweet Lord, it was hard not to take another kiss from that mouth. Even harder not to rip off her dress and take her right there on the wood-plank decking.

“You’re lovely, Chloe, so damned lovely,” he ground out through his unquenched desire, “but I can’t take advantage of you like this.”

The pout turned stubborn and, if it was possible, even prettier. “You’re not taking advantage of me,” she insisted. “I’m the one who kissed you, remember?”

This was even harder than he’d thought it would be. Because the last thing he wanted to do was hurt her feelings. He didn’t want her to think he didn’t desire her like crazy.

“I want this more than you can imagine, but I need you to be completely with me when we finally make love.”

“I was with you.” She lifted her mouth back to his, whispering, “I’m still with you,” against his lips as she kissed him softly, then licked out against his lower lip.

He couldn’t hold back his frustrated groan as he made himself drag his mouth away from hers. “I don’t want you to look back at this tomorrow morning and hate me because I took advantage of you when you were drunk.”

“I’m not drunk!”

“You’re not completely sober, either,” he made himself say in a gentle voice.

Suddenly, the fight went out of her. And she looked crushed. Completely crushed.

Hating to see that look on her face, hating the fact that doing the right thing had hurt her, anyway, Chase said, “You don’t know how hard this is for me to do.”

Her steps were mostly steady as she turned and began to walk away from him, but every now and then she seemed to catch and right herself on her heels.

Chase knew he was right to have done what he’d done. But it didn’t make him feel any better. Not when he could feel Chloe’s hurt and embarrassment radiating from her during the silent walk back to the guesthouse.

She didn’t so much as look at him as she waited for him to unlock the front door. Even though he was desperate to reach for her, to pull her against him, he let her walk past.

“We’ll talk in the morning.”

She stopped then, looking at him over her shoulder for a moment. Her bright eyes were dulled now. Without saying a word, she walked into her bedroom and closed the door with a soft click.

He got into an ice-cold shower and the mental picture of her breasts in his hands, the taste of her on his tongue, the feel of her aroused, slick flesh pushing and squeezing against his fingers, had him needing to take himself into his own hands despite the freezing water. Chase couldn’t stop wondering—what was wrong with him?

He’d had a warm, wet and willing woman in his arms just minutes ago.

And he’d walked away from her.

Thanks for reading and keep an eye out for Chapter 10!

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