Too Hot to Handle (Romancing the Clarksons #1)(40)

He moved into her space, relieved when she didn’t try to lunge away. “Why do you seem so sad about it?”

“Why would I be sad?” She wouldn’t look at him. “I don’t know. Maybe this is how I always am in a kitchen.”

Ah, beautiful. “Talk to me about it.”

“I’d rather not.” The serene expression she slapped on was fake and they both knew it. “I’m fine.”

Jasper reached up a hand, slipped it into Rita’s hair, and used his grip to tug her body the remaining distance. “How about I kiss the fine right out of you?”

She exhaled in a big rush. “Okay. I could go for that.”

It was a gamble, to be sure. Kissing Rita in a dark, enclosed space where they were guaranteed to have zero interruptions. His lips were only a breath away from hers and already he tasted wine. Woman. Rita. There was an audible catch in her throat when he leaned in, grazing their mouths together. Those hands of hers twisted in the waistband of his jeans, as if that slight touch alone could do her in. Which made it painfully hard to restrain himself, to kiss her slowly. He pressed his lips to hers, widening them enough to rest his tongue on her full lower lip. Just resting it, and yet, a shudder passed through Rita like a roll of thunder, quaking her against him.

Without warning, she sucked his tongue between her lips, one pull, two, before she began to kiss him in earnest. Jasper’s answering moan was so loud he wondered if anyone could hear it above the music next door. His cock. His goddamn cock sagged under the rush of hot need, then hoisted like a rising anchor inside his pants. Rita had to feel it, because she whimpered into his mouth, her hands growing more insistent on the waistband of his pants. There was none of her usual hesitancy in the kiss. He could all but feel Rita trying to distract herself from whatever ghosts the kitchen had stirred back to life. “Rita, beautiful…let’s stop and catch our breath here—”

“Please,” she breathed, golden-brown eyes focused on his mouth as if it were her last meal. “Don’t you need me back?”

“Yes,” he gritted. “That’s why I’m trying to take it slow.”

“Oh…Jesus. I can’t take the riddles anymore. I’m not as experienced at playing…whatever game this is.” When Rita slid out from under him, walking in a stilted manner toward the exit while smoothing her haywire hair, Jasper pounded his fists on the metal rack. Fuck, he wanted to give in. Wanted to drag her back out into the dining room and create his first lasting memory there. One neither of them would forget for the rest of their lives. If she hadn’t shut down on him right before they’d kissed—if he hadn’t felt right on the verge of knowing her, really knowing her tonight—maybe it would have been their time. Their right time.

But he would be selling them short. I can push for more. I will create time for more, somehow, some way. Whatever it takes.

“Wait up. I’ll walk you back.”

She disappeared around the kitchen wall, boots sounding on the dining room floor toward the restaurant’s front. “That’s really not necessary,” she called.

Hell. That was definitely hurt in her tone. “Rita,” he grated, jogging after her. Thankfully, he caught her just before she swung the entrance door open, yanking her back against him. “Don’t leave like this. You might as well drive a stake through my chest, walking out of here with that wobble in your voice.”

Her sharp laugh was devoid of humor. “What is this about for you? What do you want from me?”

Everything. This acquaintance with Rita was no longer some test of his worth. It was something bigger. He could feel it. “Time. I need more time with you, Rita.”

“There is no time. There was never going to be any time.” She tried to jerk away, but Jasper held tight until she settled with a heaved-out breath. “God, I know it’s a double standard, but…it’s kind of shitty, as a woman, to be turned down for sex like that. Are you playing a game with me?”

“No,” he groaned into her shoulder, feeling as though his insides were being blowtorched. “God, no, beautiful. I wouldn’t do that. You can feel how much I want to be inside you, right?”

“Thus confusing me more.”

“Okay.” Maybe in order for more time to be a possibility—for her to even want more time with him—Jasper needed to leap first. Could he do that without pushing Rita away? Making himself a laughingstock in her eyes, too? “Would you listen for a few minutes?”

There must have been gravity behind his question, because Rita’s tension ebbed as she turned in his arms. She sidestepped him and nodded once, falling into one of the dining room chairs. He immediately memorized which one.

It took Jasper a few beats to collect his thoughts, being that he’d never spoken of the incident out loud. Now that it had come time to share with another person, sourness ran rampant in his stomach. “One night, a couple years back, I was on a bender. Nothing new for me—I was probably on a bender more often than I was off one.” He glanced at the wall separating the eatery from the Liquor Hole. “Anyway, I fell asleep in my office. Woke up the next evening and headed out to the bar for a glass of water, but the space had been booked. Women were taking up most of the bar with these giant sub sandwiches and Norah Jones music. Back then, I didn’t schedule events of that sort. Really, I just let the place run itself, so I figured one of the bartenders booked a party.”