Will Not Remember, Cannot Forget

She had broken up with Nate and come to him. He cannot quite wrap his mind around that. Why him? Why not Serena? They were on speaking terms again. Or that little blonde thing that was always by her side lately? What was her name? Jeanie? Jenny? Something like that. Or, hell, why not Dorota?

Anyone other than him!

It isn’t like he has any skill with this sort of thing. He has no experience with relationships at all, and his father hasn’t exactly been a good role model either with his revolving door women, so what does Blair expect him to do for her? Pat her back ineffectually and offer false words of sympathy?

Chuck supposes he could summon something to say, but it wouldn’t sound consoling at all. He is far too enthusiastic at the moment. So perhaps it is best to keep quiet for now.

Silently, he escorts her inside Victrola to his private table and pours them both flutes of Cristal. Before he can lift his own glass to his lips, however, she has already drained hers and is busy helping herself to a second.

That is disconcerting. Not because the champagne is ridiculously expensive, although it most certainly is, or that Blair drinking to get drunk is particularly unusual, because she, like everyone else in the Upper East Side, does on occasion. Alcohol overindulgence, after all, is as common as divorce here. But in public, Blair typically is a nurse one beverage all evening kind of girl. She only really imbibes in private with trusted friends, away from potential spies with pesky camera phones.

He thinks maybe she is in shock. Could she seriously not have seen this coming?

Wait a minute. Who is he kidding? This is Blair Waldorf, queen of denial. Obviously this would have caught her unawares! She had been together with Nathaniel forever, and would have just simply ignored all the indications that a ‘happily-ever-after’ between them was not to be. Shit, she had been probably been planning her wedding before she received her first Barbie Dream House, and her personal Prince Charming had surely become Nate as soon as they’d met at age five. How many times in the intervening years had she envisioned the heirloom Vanderbilt ring gracing her finger? Hundreds? Thousands? To have that dream shattered? Her life plan derailed? It had to be bothering her, even if she isn’t actually showing it.

She isn’t showing anything, actually. Beside him, she seems detached as she begins downing her second drink.

“Blair, are you – ” he says, touching her shoulder, worry evident on his features.

She jerks away. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she snaps, effectively cutting him off, repeating her earlier declaration from before they had even made it inside past the velvet rope.

Well, at least that had elicited some kind of response from her. Should he keep pressing? Deliberately try to piss her off? He glances at her beside him, sees her staring straight ahead at the women shimmying onstage in crimson and black corsets. An annoyed Waldorf had to be better than a numb Waldorf, right?

“I know you don’t want to talk about what happened, but – ”

“Relief,” she blurts out abruptly. “I feel relief.” She still doesn’t look at him, but keeps watching the burlesque performers as though transfixed. Her head is nodding slightly in time with the music. “You know,” she continues, a hint of a smile curving her mouth as her eyes stay glued on the dancers, “I got moves.”

“Really?” he snorts, sitting up. She really couldn’t have given him a better opportunity to goad her into fury. “Then why don’t you get up there?”

She laughs. “I’m just saying, I have moves.”

“Come on,” he prods, nudging her. “You’re ten times hotter than any of those girls.”

She finally tears her gaze from the stage to glare at him briefly. “I know what you’re doing, Bass,” she sighs, turning away from him once more. He grins at that, thinking that of course Blair knows what he is up to. If the situation was reversed, she would doubtless be doing the same thing to him.

Their conversation lapses, a contemplative mood falling between them as the music swells throughout the club in a throbbing wash of sound until she eventually she looks back at him, a hint of disbelief on her face. “You really don’t think I’ll go up there,” she states.

He shakes his head, smirking. “I know you won’t do it,” he says smugly. He understands that she is, first and foremost, a Waldorf, and a Waldorf would never –

“Guard my drink,” she replies, the very words a challenge.

Chuck raises his eyebrows at that, gesturing forward, daring her to follow through on her boast, silently calling her bluff. With a resolute expression, she rises and makes her way towards the stage.

He leans back against the cushions and grins. She won’t do it. She’ll chicken out at the last second, and come skittering back to her seat embarrassed, for which he plans to mock her at length. Naturally, that will make her so upset with him that she won’t be thinking of –

Holy shit!

She’s on the damn stage! Staring back at him defiantly, taking off her headband, and tossing it out into the crowd screaming encouragements at her.

What the fuck.

With a smirk that rivals his, she reaches slowly for the zipper on the side of her dress. As she begins sliding it down, Chuck’s mouth falls open, copying the fastener’s descent. A second later, and the fabric pools around her ankles leaving her standing there in nothing but a few strands of pearls and a lacy silk slip.

He can’t take his eyes off her.

It isn’t that her movements are provocative. She’s just up there running one hand down the opposite arm and swaying her hips slightly out of sync with the pulsing music, hardly dancing at all. It isn’t even that what she has stripped down to is risqué. She’s still wearing more than most of the females in this club, and although technically one could call her slip a piece of lingerie, it isn’t sheer or sexy or anything other than modest.

And yet he cannot look away.

Blair Waldorf is always impeccably attired, pristine in her perfection. Her nails are never chipped, her lipstick never smeared, her curls never out of place. Her very flawlessness makes her untouchable, like a china doll behind glass. Look, but do not touch, and she never lets anyone see her less than immaculate. So for her to be up there onstage, like that, is huge, and they both know it.

She may still be in a slip that covers more than it reveals, but in Chuck’s estimation, she might as well be naked. From the instant she removes her headband, he starts seeing her that way and watching him drink her image in like that makes her feel that way. It doesn’t matter that he has seen her in less while swimming at the pool, or that she has worn gowns cut much more seductively, because those outfits have always been part of her entirely put together façade. To both of them, the missing hair accessory and discarded dress make her nude.

It’s like the whole world has distilled down to just them and this moment. The awareness of everything else fades away because the only thing that exists right now is him and her in this place together, smiling at each other as if they’ve never really seen one another before.

Without conscious thought, he rises, approaching the stage.

“Who’s that girl?” someone says, words he barely hears.

“I have no idea,” he responds honestly. He doesn’t recognize this girl, this bare and beautiful and breathtaking siren giving him a private show, and yet he does. She is the vixen he used to dream of, his fantasy woman, before she had transformed into Blair. He would know her anywhere, and dimly he grasps she had always been Blair, the Blair in front of him now, freed from the harsh strictures she imposes upon herself, laughing and carefree, comfortable and secure in her own skin.

He sips his champagne and salutes her, because he doesn’t know what else to do. He is in awe.

But the song is ending, and as it does, reality comes crashing back. Blair blinks at him, her self-assurance slipping as she notices the mob of onlookers egging her on. She freezes, suddenly vulnerable, and Chuck is rushing to the stage, helping her down and wishing he had an overcoat or a blanket or something so he could drape it over her to protect her from the lecherous stares of the men leering at her.

As it is, he wraps his arms around her, ushering her towards the exit as she looks at him gratefully. Once outside, he calls Arthur, and thankfully they don’t have to wait long before the limo arrives to pick them up. The two climb inside, and before rolling up the partition, Chuck instructs his chauffer to turn up the heat since Blair had shivered in the cold night air.

“Thanks for the lift home,” she says as the limo drives sedately through the streets of Manhattan.

From the opposite side of the bench seat, Chuck looks at her, remembering the way she had been onstage just minutes prior. “You were… amazing up there,” he breathes.

Tentatively she edges across the leather cushions until she is beside him, her face leaning towards his in what is most definitely going to become a kiss. Their lips meet, soft and hesitant, and just as her mouth begins to part under his, he draws back.

This isn’t right, he thinks. This is Blair, his harshest critic, his worst enemy, his best friend’s…

She’s single now, a tiny voice in his head urgently reminds him.

Yeah, but she’s still off-limits, single or not, and she’s been drinking, and she isn’t herself, and she doesn’t even like him and…

Oh, but she’s looking at him now with heavy lidded eyes, her gaze so dark with unveiled lust that he feels like there is not enough air in the back of the limo.

“You sure?” he manages to whisper.

In response, she leans forward to kiss him again, and all further misgivings are forgotten for the time being. Once more, her lips part under his, and this time he allows the tip of his tongue to venture past her teeth and brush against hers. She tastes like champagne and something else, something elusive and indefinably Blair. He can’t get enough of it.

And suddenly, it is all occurring so swiftly that he can do little more than react.

Her manicured fingers thread through his hair, alternately tugging and massaging, and the feeling is exquisite. He pulls her into his lap, and she grinds her pelvis against him tantalizingly, causing him to groan into her mouth. He is hard, so very aroused, and there is no way she can miss it and he doesn’t care, and she doesn’t seem to care either since she is unbuttoning his suit jacket and helping him shrug out of it, but he is carefully trying to confine his touches to neutral areas, or at least as neutral as can be when he is touching her, because he still cannot believe he is kissing her at all and he keeps expecting her to rear back at any moment and slap him.

Despite his attempts at chivalry, however, one of his hands finds its way to her leg unbidden. He caresses her thigh, and the warmth of her skin burns into his palm through her stockings. Next he is toying with the silken straps holding up her slip, daring to slide one off her pale shoulder. He wishes he had the courage to slip its twin down as well so that the garment would fall completely, but he isn’t that bold and he doesn’t know how far he is allowed to go in this and knowing his luck she would probably respond badly and accuse him of being a perv and taking liberties.

So he is endeavoring to be content in letting her guide him and choose how this encounter will play out and to what extent it will go, when unexpectedly her hands are rubbing his cock through his trousers, and one of her fingers is dipping beneath his waistband and Chuck is so shocked that inadvertently he remembers all of the reasons he needed to avoid her in the first place, the chief one being her feelings for his best friend.

He tries to subdue the small hands now fumbling at his belt, but she fights his effort. She wants to escape, to forget, to drown in sensation. He knows she doesn’t want to be stopped, doesn’t want to slow down enough to think because if she did, this would so not be happening.

Hell, it shouldn’t be happening. Not like this. Not with him. Not for a girl like Blair Waldorf. She is worth more. A proper bed with rose strewn sheets. Candles and caresses and whispers of forever. She deserves that. Not this. Not a frantic fuck in the back of the limo.

He has to end this. He knows he does, even though every nerve in him is screaming to give in, to abandon all logic until the world only consists of her lips and his hips driving them towards a place from which they can never return, come what may. But once long ago he believed in romance, and in the dimmest recesses of his heart, perhaps he does still because right now he recognizes that taking her like this is wrong. It can’t happen. She doesn’t really want this anyway. Hell, she’s closing her eyes and almost certainly wishing he was someone else.

He breaks their kiss and manages to gasp, “I’m not him.”

“What?” she pants as she tries to recapture his lips.

He swallows and turns his head away. He repeats in a firmer voice into the cloud of her hair, “I’m not Nathaniel.”

She immediately tenses above him. He can tell he’s gotten through to her when she draws away. “No, you’re Chuck Bass… and I’m Blair Waldorf,” she sighs into the thick silence.

He lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He can’t look at her. His altruism only extends so far. She may not want him, but oh sweet Jesus how he wants her, has always wanted her, he realizes.

Fate is a cruel fickle bitch.

Suddenly, she’s cupping his face, the pressure of her fingers demanding he open his eyes. He does and she is incredibly close. Her chocolate gaze penetrates into his, smoldering with intensity.

“We’re Chuck and Blair. Blair and Chuck,” she whispers as she searches his features. It’s like she is looking right through all his defenses, peering past the sneer he hides behind into his essence. He feels completely exposed, and yet unafraid. He blinks and he’ll be damned if his eyes aren’t stinging. Her thumb traces the outline of his full bottom lip and even that brief touch is excruciatingly pleasurable. His eyes roll back and she smiles at the effect she has on him before leaning forward and pressing their foreheads together. “Now shut up and take me.”

He is so going to hell.

With a strangled cry, he buries his fingers into her curls and pulls her mouth to his. His kisses are rushed, hungry, greedy, like he’s trying to ravish her before she changes her mind. Then he forces himself to take it slow, do it right. He’ll probably never be given another opportunity like this, and he wants to memorize each second, savor every moment. And though he has no flowers or words of love, he can at least give her this. A first time worth remembering, even if it isn’t how she had dreamed and he isn’t the boy it should have been with.

Still kissing her, he brushes his hands up her sides to her breasts. When she doesn’t pull away, he takes one in each palm, kneading softly, the slip she wears the only thing inhibiting skin to skin contact. She whimpers in protest as his hands leave her, only to moan when his fingertips skim over the column of her throat, her collarbones, her shoulders, whisking the slender straps off in the process.

The silk slithers down, revealing her chest. Chuck stares for a second at those small, firm orbs. Then with a wicked smile, he lowers his head, tongue tracing around one taut nipple before drawing the dusky peak into his mouth. As he suckles first one, and then the other, she arches her back, wordlessly offering more of herself up, and he takes advantage.

He leans her back, hiking the hem of the slip up to her waist. Hooking his fingers under the tops of her hose, he draws them off while leaving her underwear on. Starting at her feet, he traces concentric circles on her smooth skin, moving ever upwards, closer and closer to the apex between her legs. By the time he reaches her inner thighs, she is trembling in expectation, her breathing heavy, and from sight alone, he can tell her panties are damp, drenched from her anticipation of his masterful touch when at last he gets there.

Pleased, he presses the heel of his hand against her covered sex, rubbing leisurely forward and back while his thumb flicks side to side.

“Chuck!” she exclaims, her head thrashing against the seats.

“Yes?” he inquires while he continues to tease her unmercifully through the sodden lace.

“Please… please,” she pants, milky thighs quivering, spine bowing.

“Please what, princess?” he replies as he deftly slides her thong down her legs. “Say the words.”

“I… I want you,” she pleads looking him in the eyes. “Please, Chuck, I need you.”

“All in good time,” he smirks as he finally cups her, fingers sliding between her silken folds as a cry escapes her throat. He barely has a chance to probe there when her palms start pressing against him with insistent force. He draws back, thinking she wants him to stop, but she just keeps pushing until he topples over. Crawling astride him, she grabs fistfuls of his shirt and yanks, buttons and fabric giving way under the onslaught.

He tenses, recalling the last time his clothing had been torn from him as he had lain beneath a girl. But as Blair’s hands shove his undershirt out of the way to explore the planes of his abdomen, he reminds himself that while the eyes above him may be angry, they are brown and not blue. Her caress is gentle, and he wills himself to relax, to let the momentary panic fade away along with the memory as he focuses on Blair’s words.

“I’m done being played with Bass,” she glares.

He grins at her, his little wildcat, his frustrated spitfire. “Whatever my lady commands,” he says, stretching up his neck and pulling her down for a kiss her unyielding flesh seems not to want. He coaxes her lips apart, tongue plunging into the confines of her mouth to war with hers, and she begins kissing him back in earnest, the movements mimicking what their bodies are yearning to do as she undulates above him.

Then she is breaking the kiss, reaching once more for his belt. Chuck helps her this time, and soon his trousers are undone. Blair tries to straddle him again, but he prevents her with a firm grip on her waist.

“Not yet,” he states, shaking his head.

He extends an arm, groping blindly around next to the seat, until he finally lifts up his crumbled suit coat. He withdraws something from the pocket before dropping the jacket unceremoniously back onto the floor. Comprehension dawns in her molten brown eyes as he holds up the silver square. Taking it from him, she tears open the foil packet and begins working at unrolling the sheath over him. He could easily do it faster than her inexpert fingers, but he makes no move to assist her. This is her last chance to back out, the point of no return. He is already sure, but he doesn’t want to rush her decision in any way.

Before long, however, she is back on top of him, positioning herself. The head of his cock brushes against her slit, and even through the thin layer of latex, he can feel her liquid heat. They pause like that, their gazes meeting, and although they do not realize it, their expressions are mirrors of each other, equal parts trepidation and tenderness. They both understand that this moment, this act is irrevocable, and still their eyes are full of longing and fear because although Blair is the only real virgin between them, in this instance Chuck may as well be one too. This is the first time he cares about his partner, where sex means more than just getting off. This is how his first time should have been, how it would have been if not for Georgina.

As though by some unspoken signal, they simultaneously take a breath as she lowers herself upon his length. As he enters her, she is so hot and wet and wonderfully tight. Partway down, she hesitates and at her brief uncertainty he automatically begins to withdraw. Then with a look of determination, she forces herself the rest of the way down before he can pull away any further. Pain flashes through her eyes before she squeezes them shut, and she hisses through her teeth.

Chuck cradles her to him, feeling like the worst kind of self-absorbed ass for having hurt her, even though it was unavoidable. He strokes her back, her arms, her hair, murmuring apologies against her skin, as he gives her time to adjust to his invasion.

When she eventually raises her head, he brushes his hand over her cheek. “I’m sorry,” he repeats.

Then she is shushing him with her fingers against his lips. Gingerly, she raises her hips a fraction and settles back down upon him. The slight movement causes Chuck’s head to drop back against the leather cushions in obvious enjoyment.

“Oh God, Blair,” he breathes, his voice husky. She laughs faintly at his reaction, the staccato sound contracting her narrow channel even more around his dick. He groans at the delicious torment of it, suppressing the impulse to flip them over so he can pound into her sleek wetness. Instead, he lies there, allowing her to experiment with angles and depth and speed to discover what she prefers. As she grows increasingly more confident, his burning gaze devours the sight of her riding him, finding that special rhythm of desire.

When she does, her eyes widen with the dawning awareness that something is building within her. Seeing that look of surprise, Chuck smiles like the arrogant bastard he is, and thrusts up sharply to meet her next downward plunge. It is only his grip on her waist, the firm guidance of his hands that keeps her rocking upon his dick as she moans, her voice deep and sultry and utterly without inhibition.

Then she needs no more encouragement. Her hips instinctively roll in tandem with his, searching for something for which she has no names, no words, only incoherent sounds of need.

Sooner than he would have thought possible she is there, hovering in that space between agony and ecstasy. Her breaths are hitching in her throat, her legs shaking as she nears that edge of bliss. But as she closes in upon it, she backs off imperceptibly, afraid to let it happen, to lose that last shred of control.

The next time he senses her approaching that precipice and she begins to slow down, he sits up, pulling her closer while quickening his own pace, each stroke strong and sure and to the point. His hand slides between them, to that place where their bodies are conjoined, fingers seeking, seeking, until her gasp lets him know he’s found the spot as her own movement upon him falters.

“Let go, princess,” he whispers, his voice beseeching. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

She meets his eyes, a thread of fear in those russet pools. He looks back at her intimately, compelling her to have faith in him, begging her without words not to stop but to remain in his arms and share this with him.

And with a kiss, she stays. She nips lightly at his lower lip and her hips begin searching for the rhythm to match his once more. She grasps at his shoulders, clinging desperately to him, trusting him implicitly to keep her safe as she propels towards the unknown.

Then Blair wrenches her mouth from his, her breath against the side of his face and all he can see is her tousled chestnut curls and she’s purring in his ear, whispering words Blair Waldorf would never say in a voice Blair Waldorf would never use and it’s so fucking hot hearing her come undone that way that he doesn’t think he can keep this up much longer when she tenses, spasms, clenching around his cock in waves as she arches, forcing him deeper into her core. Her nails scratch trails down his back, but he barely feels it because she is throwing her head back and crying out in pleasure, and the word leaving her ruby lips is his name, and that sound destroys all resistance and he follows her into the abyss.

Long seconds later, they collapse back onto the leather seats, Blair nestled upon Chuck, his arms curving possessively around her as their racing heartbeats gradually return to normal.

Eventually, she lifts herself minutely to see his face. A profound look passes silently between them and their lips meet again. This kiss is unlike any they have shared before. No passion, no pretense, just pure emotion. A kiss saying all the things they as yet cannot give voice to.

They are still kissing like that when the limo abruptly stops, breaking them from their reverie. Blair, suddenly timid, slides away, smoothing her slip back over her nakedness and searching hurriedly on the floor for her shoes. He hardly has time to pull his pants back up before she is getting out of the limo. He reaches out and grabs her hand as she steps onto the curb, and she turns back to look at him.

He intends to say something, but the words die in his throat as he catches sight of her face. He thinks she may just be the most beautiful girl he has ever seen, the most beautiful girl in the world as she smiles shyly at him.

“Goodnight Chuck,” she whispers, a blush rising in her cheeks.

“Goodnight Blair,” he echoes.

She swallows, withdrawing her hand from his. “Chuck, I…” she starts, as a look of confusion passes over her face. Then she slams the door and is gone, running up the steps of her building as he watches. Once she disappears inside, he leans back upon the seats, closes his eyes, and waits.

Since his last horrible run in with the psychotic bitch, nausea always hits after he sleeps with someone. A feeling of panic will invariably strike with the sickly sweet smell of vanilla and chase him from the arms of a pretty woman and into the shower in a vain attempt to wash away the sensation of phantom fingers. It has become an inevitability.

It’s only when the limo stops and Arthur opens the door for him to exit that he realizes the feeling hasn’t come. He still is relaxed, the taste of Blair upon his lips and the faintest hint of her flowery perfume lingering in the air. The only recollection assaulting his senses tonight is of her. The haunting memory of Georgina, with her cruel laugh and harsh caresses like a distinctive presence in his head, is fading, its power to wound dwindling.

In a daze, he climbs out of the limo and strolls into the lobby, feeling like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. As he steps into the elevator, he glimpses his reflection in the polished surface of the metal doors. He sees he is smiling. A big, stupid, idiotic smile that looks peculiar on his face, yet feels incredibly right. He presses a button, and even before reaching his destination, before stepping out into the cool evening air on the roof of the Place Hotel to ruminate on the events of this night, he knows what he is going to do in the morning.

Chuck Bass is going to pick Blair Waldorf up and take her out to breakfast, in public, on a date, because he simply has to see her again, and he doesn’t give a shit who knows or what the consequences might be or how Nate will react.

Life has become much more complicated, but he has a plan and he doesn’t fucking care about anything else right now besides seeing it through.

Because he has been subconsciously waiting for this for a long time, and yet if he thought that was long he has no idea what he’s in for.

Because he…

He…

Oh damn it all.

He loves her.