I refused to think about why I chose to go to his apartment instead of calling him and asking him to leave the license somewhere for me. I got showered and dressed in my most flattering jeans and a shirt that pulled across my chest and arms in a way that showed off the muscles I worked hard to maintain. Then I went to Chase’s apartment.
“Adan?” he asked through the door when I knocked.
It took me off guard, because I hadn’t told him I was coming. Eventually, I said, “Uh, yeah. Ahem, it’s me.”
The locks turned and then he pulled the door open. My confusion took a backseat and lust moved front and center as soon as I saw him. He was wearing skintight white pants and a white tank top that showed his sculpted arms and defined pecs. It looked like he had painted under his eyes with some dark pencil, which made the blue pop even more, and his lips shimmered, looking kissable.
“Come in. Everything is ready except the garlic bread, but that just needs to broil for five minutes.”
He stepped to the side and I walked in, trying to catch up to what was happening. The apartment was as clean as when I’d left. There was a salad and a pan of something cheesy on the counter. It looked like lasagna. And next to it sat my driver’s license.
“I picked up some beer for you,” he said as he walked to the fridge. I dropped my gaze to his ass and moaned out loud. Fuck me. Those white pants left nothing to the imagination, and I didn’t know guys could wear thong underwear. “Do you want one or do you want to start with water?”
“Beer,” I rasped.
He retrieved a bottle from the fridge, twisted off the cap, and handed it to me. I gulped half of it down, wiped the back of my hand across my mouth, and focused on what was happening. Still had no clue.
“Chase?”
“Uh-huh.” He was slipping a cookie tray with bread on it into the oven.
“What’s going on?”
“I waited to put the bread in so it’d be warm for dinner.”
Nope. Still lost.
“But how did you know I was coming over? We didn’t talk about it.” I had a moment of fear where I thought I’d lost my mind. “Did we?”
He looked at me, moved his gaze over to my license, and then looked at me again, raising one eyebrow.
“Oh.” So my mind was intact, but my subtlety was lacking in subtlety. I opened my mouth to deny his implication, to say I had misplaced my license, to explain I had no intention of seeing him again. But he had worked so hard on dinner, and I didn’t want to be rude. Also, he was spot-on. But that had nothing to do with it.
“I made a tres leches cake for dessert.” He reached up and picked a couple of plates off the shelf, and I snagged my license and stuffed it into my wallet as quickly as possible. “I know tiramisu would go better with Italian, but I want to impress you, and my tres leches is the best.”
“Baby, if you want to impress me, all you have to do is drop your pants and bend over. There’s no reason to spend all day in the kitchen.”
He snorted and shook his head. “I can’t believe you say shit like that.”
“Is it working?” I asked with a waggle of my eyebrows.
“Depends on your goal.” He dished a large serving of lasagna onto a plate and added a couple of salad leaves. “If it’s to make me laugh, then, yeah.”
The time for subtlety was long gone. I had to get rid of my hard-on, and taking care of it myself, again, wasn’t doing much to satisfy me. “The goal is getting you into bed,” I said.
Meeting my gaze, he quietly said, “Surprisingly enough, yeah, I think it’s working on that front too.” He handed me the plate. “Lord knows why.”
“Because I’m suave,” I explained.
“You’re cheesy,” he responded as he scooped a lot of salad and a bit of lasagna onto his plate. “Go ahead and sit. The bread should be ready.”
I was about to remind him that he’d just agreed to go to bed with me, but the food looked delicious, so I decided I could eat first and fuck after. We chit-chatted a little, but mostly I ate my body weight in lasagna and Chase smiled.
When we were almost done, I dragged the last piece of bread through the tomato sauce on my otherwise empty plate—except for those damn salad leaves, but that didn’t count—and asked, “So what made you change your mind?”
Chase swallowed the food in his mouth, took a sip of water, and then said, “Change my mind?”
“Yeah. Last weekend you were like a Victorian maiden protecting her virtue, and today you offered me your ass seconds after I walked in the door. What gives?”