Protecting Melissa (Holiday Cove 4)

“You’re so beautiful, Melissa.” Chase said, staring down at me in a way that made me feel like the only woman on earth. He rocked into me and stole my breath away before I could object. “I could make sweet love to you all day.”

“I won’t object,” I teased, catching my breath.

I dug my fingers into his back, urging him to go harder and then slid my fingertips down his smooth back muscles and over his perfect, firm ass. I gripped into his ass cheeks and Chase responded with a deep, hard thrust. I groaned into his shoulder and gripped his hips with my thighs. He lifted up onto his hands and looked down our bodies, and I followed his gaze down to where we connected and watched as he entered me. The sight was sexy as hell and I gripped him tighter.

“Shit,” he gasped, pulsing back into me, this time thicker.

He was ready and I was too. I grabbed his ass and pulled him into me and he lost his control. I arched back as he released inside me and tumbled over the edge of my own slow-burning release a heartbeat later.

Afterward, we relaxed together, my head on his chest and my hand flat against his toned stomach. The way we nestled together made it seem as though we were long time lovers who knew every inch of each other from memory and immediately conformed to the fit. The sense of it made me feel so safe and secure that it was hard not to fall asleep and stay there beside him through the whole night. As much as I would’ve loved to wake up beside him, I knew at least for the time being—it was an impossible dream.

I could only hope that someday things would be different.

28

Chase

After breakfast, the next morning, I left Melissa and Jackson on board the boat to go into town where I had a better chance of getting a cell phone signal. I made my way to a small café and asked the hostess for a table outside. She took me to a small iron table on the patio and I ordered a coffee. She flashed a friendly smile and then left me alone to go back inside. I scanned through my phone and found the number of the burner phone that Matt had used to call the last time we’d been in touch. Once the woman returned and dropped off my coffee, I dialed the number. “Come on, man. Pick up.”

“Hello?”

Relief washed over me at the sound of my brother’s voice. I tried not to think about him too much since our last call, forcing all of my energy into keeping Melissa and Jackson safe, but in the back of my mind I’d been acutely aware of the fact that their lives weren’t the only ones in jeopardy.

If O’Keefe thought Matt had any information or was holding out on him, I wasn’t sure how far he’d go to get him to spill. He’d already had his cronies confront Matt on the street. Luckily, they’d only shaken him up to get information about Melissa’s whereabouts and left him unharmed. But I knew what people were capable of when they were desperate, and I had to figure that O’Keefe was rapidly approaching that point.

I just hoped that Matt would get out of town before it got that far.

Matt was one of the smartest people I knew and knew the law inside and out. An advantage I hoped he was exploiting in an effort to keep O’Keefe and his men away. Restraining orders, police reports, whatever it took.

Otherwise, once I knew Melissa was safe, I’d have to take care of it and it wouldn’t be pretty.

“Matt, it’s me, Chase.” I glanced around the outdoor seating area suspiciously. With the tracker on a cargo ship to Los Angeles, there was no reason Henry would send men all the way to Manzanilla. They wouldn’t know we were here. If any of them had survived the explosion—which I hadn’t been able to check into yet—they’d likely be called back to California to regroup.

I didn’t know the full extent of O’Keefe’s criminal activities, but he clearly wasn’t an amateur and wasn’t likely to make stupid mistakes. He was cold, calculating, and precise. The tracker sewn into Melissa’s purse had told me that much. He wasn’t the kind of guy to leap first and look later.

From what Melissa had told me in our late-night conversations, he’d started out as a regular, albeit extremely ambitious, kind of guy. I wasn’t sure at what point he’d taken the wrong turn and ended up as some kind of billionaire crime lord. There was a part of me that didn’t want to ever meet O’Keefe, mostly because I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep myself from tearing him limb from limb. However, I was curious to actually get in a room with him and find out what makes him tick.