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by Tessa Bailey
“Not long,” she said breezily.
Jasper licked his lips. “Going to need specifics.”
Rita turned, giving Jasper a front-row seat to watch her nipples pout. When her hand drifted over his cock, Jasper cursed under his breath, and he cursed again when Rita smiled. “You look hot, too, Jasper.” A squeezing of his flesh began. Rough and rhythmic. But her gaze was glued to his covered chest. “I could be persuaded to hurry if you got a little more comfortable.”
Jasper had whipped off his T-shirt before Rita finished making the not-so-subtle request. “Look your fill, Rita.” She removed her touch from his dick and he growled in reproof, reaching out to tug a fistful of dark hair. “You’re very brave teasing me like this. Especially when you’ve felt what you’ve got coming in your hand.”
Her nipples visibly straining at Jasper’s words, Rita’s eyes went liquid with an added depth. “I think you make me brave.”
Christ. His palms were sweating, his cock filling up in the thigh of his jeans. But his heart, now that demanded his attention more than anything. I made her brave? Hallelujah, I finally did something right. In that moment, he knew a lifetime of bad decisions was worth that new sparkle in Rita’s gaze as it traced down his stomach, roving over his belt buckle. “Starting now, Rita, for each minute it takes to put that thing in the oven, I’m going to give your incredible ass a slap. You understand me?”
“Yes,” she breathed, turning after a beat passed to add the batter she’d mixed into a baking dish. It gave Jasper an opportunity to appreciate the flexing of her naked thighs, the contours of her perky butt. Sure as shooting, that thong wasn’t leaving this house, because he’d be using it to stroke off for the next forty-odd years. The time he’d been allotted to check out his woman also gave Jasper time to get impatient, unfortunately.
Closing in on Rita, he pressed his lap to her tush, his right hand sliding around to grip her pussy. “You wouldn’t be going slow on purpose, now, would you, Rita?”
A feminine whimper, a dip of her knees, was his answer.
“Get it done,” he rasped into her hair. “So I can get you done.”
“Oh my God, oh my God,” she chanted, her movements far less graceful now that he was rocking his cock against her bottom, groaning with the need to fuck. Her hips bumped against the counter with the motion of his body. When he decided a minute had passed, he stepped to the side and delivered a spanking that echoed off the walls of his kitchen. Arrested by Rita’s profile, Jasper watched her go through so many reactions at once he couldn’t name them all and settle on delighted outrage.
“Clock’s ticking, beautiful,” he husked, conforming his lap to her bottom once again, getting back into that dirty, rolling rhythm. Squeezing her compact pussy in a way that might be distracting to her but turned him inside out. Had him growling into the back of her neck. “Such a hot fucking piece.”
“I-I can’t think.”
“Don’t think, then.” He looked over her shoulder to find her holding the bowl over the baking dish, getting ready to pour. Almost there. “Just do.”
After only a slight hesitation, Rita let the batter fold over itself—again and again—into the dish. Slowly, like ribbons falling from steady hands. Not even faltering when his palm glanced off her backside twice more. Knowing the moment was more important than his rampant need, Jasper released Rita, allowing her to insert the dish into the oven and carefully close the door.
Rita’s radiant smile when she faced him again almost knocked him over. “Get over here,” he said instead of letting gravity take him.
The command emerged despite his throat being strangled, thankfully bringing Rita running the three steps separating them. She leaped into his arms, legs sliding around his hips like a wet dream. There was no way to hold back now. Jasper set to devouring Rita’s mouth, tongue-fucking it, blissing out over the greediness of her fingers in his hair. “You did it,” he murmured, pulling away just enough to deliver the praise she deserved. “You did it, Rit—”
Apparently, Rita only wanted praise of the physical variety, and that was just goddamn fine with Jasper. He reversed their positions, ramming Rita’s tight body up against the refrigerator. Giving her lewd thrusts right through his jeans, her thong. Her head fell back against the hard surface, giving him the arch of her neck to feast on.
“I know when my woman needs a fuck.” Jasper yanked aside Rita’s thong, then set about unzipping his jeans. “I know all about it, don’t I?”
“Was it the naked cooking that tipped you off—”
Jasper cut off her sarcasm with a nip of her earlobe. “Knew you were a smart-ass when I spotted you on the side of the road.”
Her laughter was pure, free exhilaration. “A smarter man would’ve kept driving.”
“No,” he snapped. Then softer, “No. If you were stranded on that road every day, from now until eternity, I would stop, every single time. I would replay the last few days over and over again, trying to change the outcome.”
“The outcome?”
“Yeah.” Maybe it was the clear quality of her gaze, the impending sense of finality, but honesty poured forth like the soufflé batter, twisting and spreading. “There might have been something I could have done differently along the way. Something to make it impossible for you to leave. I’d do it over until I got it right.”
And the flash of genuine sympathy in her eyes was not welcome. Not welcome to a man who was hours from having his heart dragged away like cans on the back of a rented limousine. It pissed him off good. His common sense sent a memo to his male pride and was staunchly rejected. “Jasper…”
“Let’s use that mouth for kissing, instead of saying things you don’t mean,” he said, retrieving a condom from his pocket, ripping the wrapper open with his teeth. He tasted the trepidation in Rita’s kiss when their lips tangled again, but licked her tongue until it melted away. Turned into breathy sounds and writhing hips. Jasper used his body to brace Rita against the refrigerator and reached between them to roll on the condom. “Round two, Rita.”
He pushed himself home, already halfway to a climax from hearing Rita’s shocked intake of breath. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” He sucked her lower and upper lips in turn, scraping his teeth over the curve of her neck, harder than necessary. “Feels real good after you’ve been acting the cock tease, doesn’t it?”
There was anger in his voice, punishment in his harsh movements, but nothing could curtail it. Rita didn’t want him to, either. It was easy to tell by the way she absorbed his first thrust with almost a relieved cry, thighs tightening around his hips. Maybe she even wanted to be punished on some level for leaving him. Jasper hated the idea of that, but his body didn’t pay the logistics any mind. It wanted sustenance, and Rita was a royal feast.
“God, Rita. I can feel that little lace edge of your thong rubbing up and down my cock.” He gave her a full minute of nonstop bucking, stopping only when her pussy locked up, a telltale sign she was near the edge. She wailed and dug her nails into his shoulders when he paused, but she settled when he started a slow bump and grind. “Yeah, beautiful. Fucking is that much sweeter when you’ve driven a man to the point where he wants to jack off in his own kitchen, isn’t it?” He dropped his forehead onto her shoulder and groaned. “I’m not finishing you down here. You’re going to leave your scent in my bed, you understand me?”
“Yes,” she moaned, curling around Jasper as he advanced toward the stairs, still impaled on his dick. There was a mirror at the top of his staircase, and something about the way he could see her dangling feet vibrate every time he took a step made him hot beyond words. Almost hot enough to drop down into the top step and fuck, fuck, fuck until they were both shaking and screaming. “Please, hurry,” she said near his ear. “I’m dying. I’m not going to make it.”
“You will,” Jasper returned through clenched teeth. As soon as they cleared the door frame to his bedroom, Rita was flat on her back on the bed, Jasper covering as much of her
body as he could. Arms wrapped beneath her shoulders, stomachs flush. Not able to get close enough. With a powerful need to feel the orgasm move through her body, Jasper fastened their mouths together and worked himself into Rita, again and again, groaning over the feel of her heels buried in his lower back, digging his own heels into the bed so he could fuck her as hard as humanly possible. “Go on, Rita. Give me that come. Give it to me in my bed. Mess up my sheets like you’ve messed me up.”
Dammit, the anger in his voice had no place between them. There was room for nothing between them. Nothing. But he couldn’t rein it in, couldn’t stop the overflow. Tears were rolling down her temples, from regret or arousal, but her body urged him on. Begged his body to use hers. Her fingernails broke the skin of his ass as he pumped, her pussy starting to quake, and Jasper kissed her through the storm, guiding her safely to the other side, asking for her to do the same.
“Rita. My God, Rita.” He tucked his sweating forehead into her neck and rocked himself into her perfection one final time, letting go with a muffled roar. It should have been enough to clear him from the downpour, but all the same obstacles remained on the other side, urging Jasper to gather her body close and hope they disappeared. “I guess…I guess we’ll make love on the next try, huh?”
His attempt at humor didn’t ease the tension in Rita’s shoulders any, nor in his. But she didn’t leave. She didn’t leave. She allowed Jasper to tuck her into the safety of his body, falling asleep shortly after. Jasper was the only one left awake to hear the timer go off on the oven downstairs.
Done.
Chapter Thirty-One
Rita was unsettled. Everything was unsettled. Her stomach housed an army of nerves so rowdy they were leaving little footprints wherever they trampled. Looking back at the last twenty-four hours, the revelations from her siblings and herself, the all-night, mind-blowing sexual awakening, she should have been exhilarated. Relieved. Definitely not stressed, being that she’d lost count of her orgasms somewhere around eight. But the man she’d gone to sleep beside, the man who’d acted as her second set of hands while making a soufflé? That was not the stiff, quiet man who’d just dropped her off outside the motel on his way to the Liquor Hole.
Of course, when Rita walked into the room, Peggy greeted her like a college roommate does after a kegger. Big, speculative eyes and a knowing grin. Although, to be fair, that was the expression Peggy usually wore. Whatever she saw in Rita’s face caused some of her enthusiasm to slip, however. “Sage is trying to read and I was distracting her, so I’m heading Aaron’s way to check on his tooth. You want to walk with me?”
Until yesterday, Rita would have avoided Aaron like the Black Death, but things were different now. They’d both admitted to being fuckups, putting them on even footing for the first time in—forever. And, honestly, she didn’t feel like avoiding much of anything, anymore. “Okay, sure.”
Rita tossed her purse onto the bed and followed her sister out of the room. “Why does Aaron need his tooth checked? Isn’t that something he can do himself?”
Peggy combed slim fingers through her curls. “He’s refusing to take the unmanly painkillers, so I’ve been crushing them up and hiding them in his food. Like a good sister.” She wrinkled her nose at Rita while locking the motel-room door. “You’re not behaving like a woman who spent the night getting the bejeezus boned out of her.”
“Where do you come up with this stuff?” Rita hedged, following Peggy down the path. Having no desire whatsoever to describe the blurred line that had formed overnight between her and Jasper, she intended to leave the conversation there. Until she remembered Peggy’s attempts to talk—actually talk—to her on their first night in Hurley. How Rita had basically blown her off. How hard could it be to make a small effort, especially when Peggy had helped unburden all of them by forcing the trust exercise? “How does one usually behave when they’ve had the bejeezus boned out of them?”
“Hmm.” Peggy visibly tried to hide her grin, but white blasted across her face when her lips surrendered the fight. “There’s usually some gloating. I could really go for some gloating.”
“Gloating.” Rita drummed her index finger against her lips. “I think towards the end, I bypassed Jesus and actually glimpsed the three wise men.”
“Oh, no fair.” The words traveled out of Peggy’s mouth on a giggle. “I’ve only had three-wise-men sex once.”
“Well, it is the trickiest kind of sex, due to the wise men being very barn-animal adjacent. You don’t want to go quite that far.”
Holy shit. Who knew it would feel so awesome to make her little sister laugh? Watching Peggy bend at the waist and let loose the musical sound, she could see Peggy at age nine, laughing exactly the same way on her towel at the community pool.
I think I might leave Jasper worse off than when I arrived. She wanted to say the words out loud, to see if Peggy’s reaction mirrored her own horror at the thought. But saying it out loud might make the possibility real. So she simply allowed the words to continue ricocheting around her head. I should have stayed away from him when he told me his issue with women leaving. I was selfish and when I drive away he won’t be reachable to anyone else. Maybe ever.
“I’m thinking of staying in New York,” Peggy said suddenly. “When we get there. I’m thinking I could spend some time applying to the major department stores. What personal shopper wouldn’t want to work in Saks or Bloomingdale’s or Barneys—am I right?”
Peggy was rambling, meaning she was nervous. More nervous than the news warranted, although it was still a big bombshell. “Okay. That’s a pretty huge move. When did you—”
“I was thinking we could do it together. You know?” Peggy shadowboxed the air. “Two sisters, making it in the big city. Laverne and Shirley with better hair. And hopefully some hotter neighbors.”
Shock struck Rita in the belly, robbing her of speech. Now more than ever, Rita was convinced her mother had had an ulterior motive when she’d made the final wish. The four of them had already begun to drift apart when Miriam got sick, and although their mother made a practice of staying out of her children’s business, it wouldn’t have escaped her notice when they stopped having even the obligatory holiday brunch at Wayfare. Less than a week out of San Diego and her siblings had become less of a mystery. But they were still complicated riddles she hadn’t begun to decipher. Miriam might have forced them into this situation, but she’d done it for a reason.
So why was Rita hesitating? An image of their imaginary apartment rolled to the front of her mind. Half pink, frilly pandemonium. Half dark and eclectic. Loud pop music that Rita would be forced to drown out with Black Sabbath. It would be a nightmare. It would be—the chance of a lifetime to get closer to the sister she barely knew. To find out why Peggy—the type of woman any man would want to nail down—was carrying a torch for one who apparently didn’t want her in return.
The longer she went without answering, the more Peggy withdrew, growing quiet and staring out into the parking lot without her signature smile. “I guess that’s a no.”
“It’s not a no,” Rita rushed to say. “You’ve just had more time to think about it than me. Like…a whole three days…”
“Well, there’s a roundabout way of saying I’m impulsive.”
Rita stopped outside Aaron and Belmont’s door, tugging her sister to a stop before she could knock. “It’s a great fucking idea, Peggy, just let me think.” The inside of her throat felt itchy. “I’m just…I’m having a hard time thinking past tonight. Once we get back on the road, things will be different.”
Peggy’s gaze was suddenly wiser than Rita had ever seen it. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
Behind Peggy, the door swung open to reveal Aaron. The swelling in his cheek had gone down, along with a hint of his outward ego, it seemed, after last night. He gave Rita a brisk nod before ruffling Peggy’s hair. “What are you two squawking about out here?”
“Nothing,” Peggy chirped. “Just getting bac
k on the road.”
Aaron stepped aside, signaling they should enter his room. “Yeah. I guess we’ve all been thinking about it.”
Rita stepped across the threshold, aware that it was her first time in Aaron and Belmont’s room, while Peggy had probably been in there countless times. Both sides of the space were meticulously clean, although Belmont’s was tidy to the point of not even looking slept in. Maybe the divide between the two brothers was invisible, but it was there in the air, hanging down, like jungle vines. Just another reminder to Rita how much she had left to find out about her family. What had Belmont and Aaron been avoiding speaking about for so long?
“Do you have a game plan for Iowa?” Rita asked, sitting down on the corner of Belmont’s bed. “Besides show up and be charming?”
Aaron smirked while uncapping a bottle of water. “That’s been enough to work for me in the past.” He gulped a sip. “But, yeah. Not anymore. Not after San Diego.”
Peggy flopped down beside Rita. “You going to tell us what happened?”
“Nope. Although you’ll find out once we hit Iowa. Shit tends to follow you around in politics.” He shifted in his loafers. “I’ll be glad to have you both there. Climbing my way back into the fold isn’t going to be easy.”
Rita felt Peggy glance over at her but didn’t look back. Instead, she focused on her brother, the unnatural tension in his shoulders, the set of his jaw. “You sure that fold is somewhere you want to be, Aaron?”
“Of course it is.” His sharp gaze lifted. “I don’t fit anywhere else.”
“Maybe we were never meant to fit in,” Rita murmured up at the ceiling. “Maybe it’s a good thing.”
Rita thought of the way Jasper’s kitchen had embraced her. Thought of the sense of coming home when she’d walked into Buried Treasure. When she’d stood on the mesa’s edge, looking out at the desert. Lying in the grass of Jasper’s backyard. So many times since crossing Hurley’s county line, she’d faced an odd sense of adjustment. Almost uncomfortable. But, just as often, she’d experienced the sensation of sinking into a warm bath. There was no way to judge the effect of three days anywhere, though. Doing so would be silly. Giving up everything for a fling, knowing damn well there was a major possibility she could disappoint Jasper, would be shortsighted. This trip with her siblings, this promise to her mother—it was where she needed to be. She owed it to Miriam. Owed it to them. Owed it to herself.