Too Hot to Handle (Romancing the Clarksons #1)(29)

“Anticipating a yes? That’s pretty cocky.” She betrayed her intended put-down with flushed cheeks, a quick but telling glance at his mouth. “There might be a…small chance I could be persuaded.”

Jasper disguised his groan with a cough into his fist. Damn. Celibacy was turning out to be a real asshole. Everything moved in slow motion as Rita ran a hand through her helmet hair, tightening the material of her T-shirt. Spiked nipples, aroused nipples, stood out against the front. If nipples could talk, Rita’s would have been saying, Too bad, so sad, your loss, hoss.

“You just had to go and flirt with me…while looking like that, huh?” And shit, he’d said that out loud. There was a Rita-specific weightiness in his stomach, like a warm coating of lust slip-sliding down his insides. “Dammit, Rita. I’m trying here.”

Her lips parted on a puff of air. “Trying to do what?”

No one had ever cared enough to listen to him once the bed springs stopped creaking, so putting thoughts she’d so thoroughly jumbled into words wasn’t easy by any stretch. “If you could just agree to go out on a date with me tonight, without making me kiss the answer out of your mouth, I would sure appreciate it.”

“But that sounds like so much fun.”

“Fun for you.” When she flinched, the slippery weight in Jasper’s stomach turned to acid. It took two quick steps to bring him into Rita’s personal space, tipping her chin up, even though she was trying her best to look at everything but him. “Wait. Just, wait. That came out ass backwards, beautiful. Look at me, sweating in this parking lot, trying to take you out for some damn sushi. You think I don’t want to kiss you?”

“I…is that a rhetorical question?” The way he was holding her chin was smooshing her lips together, making her question emerge sounding like Izata behoribal weston?

“Jesus God, you’re cute.” He let go of her chin and planted a thumb in the corner of her mouth, before dragging it along her upper lip, feeling the slickness of original ChapStick. When had she managed to reapply it? “Here’s the thing. I swore off women. But then you came pedaling into town with this mouth, those eyes and the way they see everything…and fuck yes, I want to kiss you. I want to do all manner of things to you.”

Her breath came out in little fits against his thumb while it raked back and forth. When had he pressed her ass up against the bike? Was he even in control of his actions around this woman? He needed to be. Needed to make this time between them count. Frown lines formed between Rita’s eyebrows, so he moved his thumb up in that direction to smooth them out.

“Did you just say you swore off women?”

“I did.”

“So why are you trying to take me out for some damn sushi?”

Jasper’s mouth lost the battle with a smile, but seriousness descended almost immediately. Important. This is important. “Because I’m going to see you tonight. I don’t want to think about not seeing you. And I need to put a table between us so I can find out what’s going on in your head. Without that table, I’ll—”

“What?”

He lifted her onto the bike seat, as if his hands were being operated by a remote control in someone else’s possession. “Please don’t ask me that,” he growled. “I almost ruined everything last night.”

Rita was staring at his mouth. “Who says sex has to ruin anything?”

“I guess…” Jasper stepped between her splayed thighs and yanked her close, swallowing hard when a shudder seemed to go through them both. Fuck. Was she having as hard a time breathing as he was? “I guess if I were a different man, it would be a subject for debate. But I’m this man. And I only know you won’t want anything to do with me afterward. I’ll have served my purpose.”

Maybe he’d said too much. Or maybe he’d said just enough. Because Rita curled her hands in his shirt and pulled, pulled until he was wedged so firmly between her legs he could have rubbed her to orgasm with the ridge behind his fly, just by lifting up and down on his toes. “You said something like that last night.” She glanced up from her perusal of his panting mouth. “I didn’t really…like it then, either.”

She’d actually listened to him last night. Heard his words without writing them off as bullshit coming from a bullshitter, the way everyone tended to regard anything that came out of his mouth. Not this woman. Not yet, anyway. And one day of keeping this interesting woman’s attention was a miracle in Jasper’s book. “I’m going to try and stop saying things you don’t like, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

“If you just said a bunch of things I liked all the time,” Rita breathed, “I wouldn’t believe the good stuff when you say it.”

Jasper’s hand shot up and buried itself in her hair, as if propelled by Rita’s words. An outsider would have no idea what they were talking about. And he loved that. Coveted it. He’d never had that with a single other person, for any space of time. “Believe this, Rita. I think you’re gorgeous as sin and I need your mouth on mine.”

Rita nodded, meshing their wet lips together in the process. “I want to believe that. You might have to help me.”

“Thank Christ.”

Their mouths slanted and somehow—somehow—that feast of lips and tongue and teeth was even more potent than the night before. His knee rammed into the bike—almost as if his leg had tried to buckle—shooting pain up his right thigh, but it vanished under the pleasure. Vanished into vapor. The stroking, hot, abandon of Rita. They were both breathing through their noses so as not to break the voracious mouth-fucking they were engaging in, and that shouldn’t have been so all-out sexy. But it sure as shit was. They were attacking each other with seeking tongues and open lips, playing chicken to see who would give in first.