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by Tessa Bailey
“Jasper—” Rita started, but he cut her off.
“I’ll just ask for one favor from you Clarksons, if you don’t mind.” He pushed Rita’s hair back behind her ear, memorizing the texture against his finger pads. “Hearing the way Rita—and you all—talk about Miriam, I know going to New York is important. Rita wants to learn a new trade and there’s no better place to do that.” God, he was still hanging on. Still pushing for more. Maybe he wasn’t capable of giving up. “But I need one more day. I need Rita there when I open Buried Treasure tomorrow night.”
As expected, Aaron was the first to protest. “You’ve got nerve. I’ll give you that.” He started to turn away, but his gaze snagged on Rita. Whatever he saw in his sister’s expression made him do a double take and sigh up at the desert sky. “Ah, fuck it. One extra day, right?”
Peggy jumped up with a series of fluttering hand-claps. “All of us can help out. If the Clarksons know one thing, it’s the restaurant business.”
“She’s right,” Rita husked, a smile playing around her mouth. “We all had summer jobs at Wayfare, even before I went to culinary school. They’ll be a big help if they don’t annoy you to death first.”
“I’m sold.” Damn, Jasper was so glad that haunted look was gone from her eyes that he was considering going to church on Sunday to give thanks. There was nothing holy about what he wanted from Rita tonight, though. Not a single thing. He leaned in to whisper against her ear. “Come sleep in my bed, Rita.”
She was nodding before he finished speaking.
Everyone had stood to leave, all appearing slightly shell-shocked in their own way, when Glen’s voice brought them up short. “Hell’s bells. The exercise worked.” He whooped loud enough to flicker the fire. “Do y’all mind leaving a Yelp review?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Showing his house to a woman was a first for Jasper. Rosemary had been over a few times to fuss, way back when he’d purchased the property. But having Rita walk the old floorboards, her eyes roaming over his couch, his bread box, his wall of old maps—that was something different altogether. Her voice made his living room softer, somehow. Made the lights glow like lanterns. Made his furniture seem more inviting. Oh, mother of God, he loved having her there. She accepted a glass of wine from him in the kitchen and something began to sing in the back of his mind. A comforting hum with an underlying note of steel that insisted handing Rita wine in his kitchen was an activity meant to be performed as a routine.
Stop. Stop thinking like that. You have Rita here now. Don’t waste time wishing for the impossible or being greedy. Just savor the moment.
“I can’t believe they didn’t yell or… God, they didn’t even seem mad,” Rita breathed over the rim of her glass, referring to her siblings. She smiled to herself a moment, then appeared to shake herself. “How much did you pay the mechanic to lie about the Suburban?”
“Well.” Grinning, Jasper braced himself on the kitchen island. “He had a bar tab at the Liquor Hole as long as my arm. Let’s just say we called it even.”
“Very crafty.” Her eyes sparkled. “If Belmont hadn’t busted Aaron’s tooth, would you have made a second bribe?”
“My firstborn. Without hesitation.”
She laughed and Jasper about buckled over the way the sound slid down the walls of his home, filling it with life. “Thank you.” The words from her own mouth seemed to startle her, but, maybe in the spirit of the evening so far, she kept going. “For bribing someone to keep me around. For wanting me around so badly.”
Jasper’s feet carried him around the island until he was in his favorite place: within reaching distance of Rita. He tunneled his fingers through her hair, drawing her the remaining foot toward him. Promises dug like tiny tractors in his gut, excavating vital components of what impulse directed him to say, leaving messes behind. Allowing anything to go unsaid when so much had been admitted already tonight, when they were barefoot in his kitchen, seemed like a damn travesty. I would make a new bribe every day for the rest of my life if I thought staying here would make you happy.
He couldn’t say those words out loud, lest she balk at the pressure. But he could sure as hell show Rita how they made him feel. How she made him feel. “Thanking me for wanting you around is like…water thanking a man for taking a drink…on the hottest day of the year.” When Jasper pressed their mouths together, she went a little breathless, making his head buzz. “I’m sorry about this afternoon, Rita. I’ve been tied in a goddamn knot.”
“No. No.” Without looking, she set her glass of wine down on the island behind him, before crossing her wrists behind his neck, elevating onto her toes. “I can’t believe I haven’t apologized yet. Maybe I was hoping you’d forgotten.”
“Forgotten?” Jasper reversed their positions in the space of a second, pushing her backside up against the island. Using the hair around his fingers for leverage to tug her head back. It allowed him to look down at her, because, yeah, she liked that. Liked when the dominant part of him came out to play. “You think I’ll ever forget the way you lifted your ass at the end and tightened your pussy muscles?” He growled deep in his throat. “A man doesn’t forget coming so hard he forgets his own name. A man doesn’t forget a woman like you gasping when she sees his cock.”
“Did I?” she whispered. “Don’t answer that. I know I did.”
Jasper expected Rita to rip his shirt off or climb his hips. Something. Her expression spoke of all sorts of filthy intentions. So when she slipped out from beneath his pressing body and paced toward the rear of the house, Jasper saw his own puzzled features reflected back in the glass door. “Rita?”
She unlocked the sliding glass door leading out back. “There’s enough moonlight to show me around outside.” Why did she look flustered all of a sudden? “Show me your favorite spot in the backyard.”
He followed Rita out the door, but needed a few moments to start breathing again upon spotting her beneath his piñon tree. In comparison to the giant white moon she looked so small—the opposite of his heart’s reaction, which sounded like the bass from an industrial stereo system crashing against the walls of his chest cavity. She stood with one hand on the swing, which had hung from the tree since he’d bought the place. He’d never used it. Never even considered it, really. But there wasn’t a doubt in his mind it would never look the same now that she’d touched it.
Distracted by the tension in her shoulders, Jasper joined her at the swing, planting a kiss on her bare shoulder. “Why did you run away from me like that?” His mouth traveled up to her ear, tasting, breathing. “Lord, I’m in a fucking state over you. Pushing me away when I need you this bad is cruel.”
“That’s just it,” Rita shuddered out. “I don’t want you to think I came here just so you’ll take me to bed. Not after today.”
Lord above, he was going to be a medical phenomenon by morning. The first man to die from his heart tearing straight out of his chest. “Rita, I know—”
“No, you don’t.” Rita actually stomped her foot. “You don’t know how much I like spending time with you. Anyone would.” Her fingers twisted in the hem of her shorts. “Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but keeping my family in town these two days…you might have started something you’ll never fully realize. You’ve got so much. Someday some—”
Jasper lunged into her space, framing her jaw with both hands. “Don’t say it. You say the words someone else and it won’t be pretty, Rita.” Enough was enough. He appreciated Rita wanting to reassure him that red-hot fucking wasn’t her sole reason for coming home with him tonight, but he’d already known that. It had been right there in her eyes on the mesa that morning. Then again when he walked into the glow of the campfire. Thank God. Thank God he’d gone out into the desert tonight instead of licking his wounds, staring at the clock next to a half-empty whiskey bottle, waiting for her to leave town. “If I did something for you, your family, I’m damned glad. But I’ve got one night with you and I don’t intend to waste it. I
went two years without sex, Rita, and that lack barely registered most days.” He unsnapped her shorts, pushing them down her hips, allowing them to fall to the ground. “But one full day without being inside you? And it feels like I’ve gone a fucking millennium without coming.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rita was going to disgrace herself any moment by panting like a golden retriever. Big, erotically focused, and dangerous in the moonlight, she’d never seen anything or anyone hotter than the man touching her. Jasper’s flat, calloused palm smoothed back and forth between her legs, wearing a path in the silk of her panties. God, she could have come just from the friction, but when he hooked a finger in the material and continued to run it from the beginning of her feminine lips to the underside of her ass, she stopped breathing altogether, her body jerking at the skin-on-skin contact.
“Sensitive girl. I make you that way this afternoon?” His knuckle teased her clit, up and down, in a circle. “I was rough, wasn’t I, beautiful? Going to make it up to you.” The groan that left his mouth blew a shiver up her spine. “And then I’m going to fuck you up all over again.”
“Yes.”
No sooner did the plea leave her mouth than the panties were snatched clean off her body, her backside landing on the smooth wooden swing with a slap. “Spread your thighs wide for me, beautiful. I need a look at my fantasy pussy.” He waited until Rita obeyed, breathless anticipation in the provocative movement, before he unzipped his jeans and drew out his heavy-looking flesh, holding it inches from her exposed center. Already, his teeth were gritted, sweat dotting his forehead. “This is what’s going to pass for conversation tonight. Small talk is going to be my tongue flicking against your clit until you cry out my name like a swear word. My headboard slapping the wall is going to be our heart-to-heart. And that gorgeous body riding my dick is going to be our nighttime prayers. You with me, Rita?”
Uncle. She almost shouted the surrender. Because who in the world even spoke like that? It was magnificent and filthy and she couldn’t match that kind of sensual mastery. Could she? The way Jasper ran his thumb over the head of his erection and licked his lips, the way he’d praised her for that afternoon, forced Rita to consider that she was more than just a match for Jasper’s lethal skill. Maybe she was even the perfect counterpoint for it.
“Whatever you’re thinking about, beautiful, scoot to the end of the swing and think about it harder.” He dropped to his knees in front of her open legs, sliding his palms along her inner thighs. “It’s making you all wet and shiny. Should I be jealous?”
“No,” Rita whispered, holding on to the swing for balance, because, yeah, Jasper was definitely blowing warm air along her dampening flesh. Oh, Christ, who knew that could feel so good? It was as if he traced her with a single fingertip. “I’m thinking about how you talk to me. Wishing I c-could get away with saying things like that.”
Jasper smiled against the inside of her knee before trailing his tongue higher, toward the core on which his eyes were so intently focused. “Ah, beautiful. You’re welcome say whatever comes into that head of yours. But I reckon there will be consequences.
So close. He’s so close. A little farther. “What kind of consequences?”
Rita grappled to hang on to the ropes when Jasper threw both of her legs over his shoulders, grabbing her backside and yanking her to the swing’s edge. “Why don’t we find out?” Locking blue eyes on her, Jasper delivered a long, stiff-tongued lick, starting off an electric buzz between her ears. “Let’s hear what you have to say while I’m going to work”—another devastating slide of his tongue—“on this delicious pussy you’re showing off for me.”
Concentration was not a viable option with Jasper’s hands squeezing and releasing the globes of her backside, with his determined tongue wreaking havoc on her every sense. Her every nerve ending. The ropes creaked inside her hands, her heels finding purchase in the flexing muscles of his back. “Oh, please. Oh…can you…?”
“Can I what?” Jasper paused midlick to growl. “Ask me, goddammit. I’m on my knees giving you head, beautiful. That means my mouth is at your service.”
Rita struggled to inhale. “I just…I love your fingers and—”
“Ahh, Jesus.” He dropped a kiss on top of her clit. “This pretty thing remembers me from before, doesn’t she? Misses being filled up, poor girl.”
“Yes,” Rita gasped, then louder, “Yes,” when Jasper pumped his middle finger into her, flicking his tongue against her tingling bud, attention on her all the while. His eyes were glazed over, his sounds of masculine pleasure rippling over her flesh. Did she taste as good as Jasper made it seem? Because wow. Wow. Had he just snarled against the slight entrance to her body? Jasper was just as desperate for her as she was for him, and that assurance imbued her with breathtaking confidence she’d never experienced before. It toppled her barriers and let words overrun the ruins. “You were so big in my mouth this morning. I wanted you to keep going…wanted to taste you.”
Rita’s confession ended in a scream when Jasper bent his finger inside her, attacking a spot she’d always sworn was a mythical location. “Consequences, Rita,” Jasper breathed against her, his cheekbones more prominent from what appeared to be rampant desire. Brought forth by her words? Yes…
“When y-you asked me if I wanted you to touch my breasts…”
His tongue slipped inside her, causing her to trail off with a moan, but Jasper slapped her outer thigh with a resounding smack, putting her back on track, even as he drove his tongue in and out with an efficiency that made her dizzy.
“I wanted to ask i-if you would…” He sucked on her clit, drawing hard, forcing the rest of her confession out on a rushed exhale. “If you would put yourself between them. My breasts.”
Jasper’s guttural exhale, coupled with the pull of his mouth on her most sensitized flesh, pushed Rita past the point of return. The thighs slung over Jasper’s shoulders shook, totally out of her control. His crooked finger was joined by a second, those skillful digits combining forces to exploit Rita’s G-spot, while he quite simply feasted on her. Jasper’s tongue licked around the bases of his fingers and over her clit, never stopping, never easing up. Making a meal out of her.
Just when Rita thought she couldn’t take another single second of the perfect torture, Jasper shoved to his feet, wrapping an arm around the back of Rita’s hips. Their lips went wild against each other, tongues thrashing inside Rita’s mouth, then Jasper’s. When he finally pulled away and allowed her to take in a hefty drag of oxygen, ripping Rita’s shirt over her head, the sex in his eyes sucked that air right back out. “You wanted me to fuck your tits, is that right?” He plowed his available hand through her hair before bringing his open mouth down on hers for a kiss so carnal her thighs widened without a command from her brain. “Slip my cock up and down in your sweat. Right in front of your gorgeous face. Fuck. You know how hot that would make me? Watching you watch me thrust, up close like that?” As if picturing the scene, Jasper bent down and sucked at the swell of her right breast, cheeks hollowing. “That would have ended with me dripping off your nipples.”
Rita released one of the ropes to grip Jasper’s tight backside, pulling him closer, his body heat, his touch now a necessity. “I would have loved that.”
There was no way to prepare for Jasper’s entering her body. One moment, they were french-kissing like the two most sexually charged people on the planet, Jasper covering himself with thin latex…the next—ahhh—she was filled to stretching with his arousal. “Consequences,” he grated right into her ear, seating himself more firmly, curling Rita’s toes with the zap of sensation. “Christ, beautiful. You didn’t start slow with the dirty talk, did you? Telling me you wanted me to flood that sexy mouth. Telling me new places you’d like to feel me.”
“I want to feel you right where you are,” she husked. “Oh my God, it’s so thick. I can feel it beating.”
“Rita.” Jasper nudged her forehead with his own, a frustrated ac
tion that ended in them sliding into another erotic kiss. “You knock that shit off right now. I’m trying to savor you, not jackhammer your brains out.”
“Do it,” she moaned, propping her bent legs higher on his hips, using them as leverage to lift off the swing. “I need you. Hard like before.”
“Hard like before, yes. But this time you’ll look me in the eye while I’m ringing your bell. You understand me?” Jasper pressed her back down into the swing, bearing down with his lower body, grinding her into the wood until she whimpered. “And at some point tonight, I’m going to make love to you. The kind of sex that takes an hour of slow rocking and pumping. The kind where we wrap our fingers together, then twine them around the headboard. And I whisper things in your ear I can’t say in the light. Promise me.”
“I promise,” Rita responded, her thighs already starting to tremble from the way he pressed down on her oversensitive flesh. But there was more now. Her heart was in the game, squeezing and lifting and twisting at the beautiful words coming out of Jasper’s mouth. She couldn’t allow them to sink in too deep, though. Couldn’t dwell on them or hurt would follow—and she didn’t want to hurt tonight. Tonight and some of tomorrow was all she had, which meant she needed a distraction from the reality that she only had one full night to spend with this man. “P-please, Jasper. Move inside me.”
The tension inside him snapped and the world started spinning again. He burrowed his face into her neck with a groan, his hips beginning a slow rhythm of knocking back the swing on which Rita was perched, before letting the wooden seat carry her back down onto his erection. A back-and-forth arc that resulted in Rita bouncing off of Jasper’s lap with the sound of smacked flesh, swinging back, then gliding forward again on the air.