Too Hot to Handle (Romancing the Clarksons #1)(46)

And as of now—or back at the motel, rather—Jasper was done holding back.

Good Christ, when he’d thought Rita was gone, he’d been dead set on going after her. Dead set. All the times he’d put the brakes on getting physical had flown through his head like winged monkeys, cackling at him. He’d lost his chance. She’d needed him, trusted him to touch, kiss, fuck her body—and he’d said no? Was he goddamn crazy? His mission to be a decent man in Rita’s eyes had seemed stupid and insignificant when compared to the seismic pull in her direction. Why would you pass up the chance to have her any way you could?

No one like Rita would pass through this place again, and she’d gifted Jasper with her time. She wouldn’t be sorry about that. He wouldn’t let her be.

Jasper’s truck reached the mesa’s flat top and he threw the car into park, leaving it running so their air conditioner would remain on. “I won’t make you go outside, indoor girl.” Having given himself permission to act on his body’s needs, his voice sounded rough as he slid an arm around Rita’s shoulders. “We can stay in here and look just fine.”

Wow. Apparently his smooth talk had been downgraded to high-school level—along with his choice of date spot—because now that he knew sex with Rita was on the horizon, his tongue weighed about eight pounds. Right along with his cock. The damn thing could have reached up and honked the horn if directed.

Rita leaned forward in the seat, releasing a slow breath as she looked through the windshield. “This is amazing. How high are we?”

“Around two thousand feet, if I recall.” The way she’d pushed toward the dashboard to look out the window had created a gap at the back of her pants, giving him a nice view of her nude-colored thong. “Rita—”

Rita got out of the truck.

Jasper’s surprise kept him in place a moment as he watched her walk to the front bumper, but he finally followed. The wind whipped at her hair, throwing it into chaos around her face, but thankfully the sun was behind clouds that morning, leaving them surrounded by shadows. “I think I need to…get out of the car more often.”

His throat—the one scientists would study when he eventually keeled over from lack of Rita—wanted to question that statement. Ask her what it meant. Examine it from seventeen dozen angles. But he’d brought her there with a mission. Urgency the likes of which he’d been battered with at the motel didn’t fade easily. So Jasper found himself blocking Rita’s view of the scenery, nodding when she correctly interpreted the want in his gaze.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Hi.”

Jasper curled a finger in Rita’s waistband, tugging her up against his body—slow, languid—maintaining eye contact as he walked her backward toward the rear truck bed. The way she stumbled and whispered a curse under her breath, forehead creasing, struck him like a fastball to the sternum. She could have been gone and he’d have missed this chance. No more. No more waiting.

“Jasper…”

He unlatched the tailgate, letting it drop with a bang, then taking her startled gasp as his opportunity to get kissing. God, how long had it been since their mouths had been together? Couldn’t have been just last night when he was immediately drowning, fighting against the need for air. His hands wove through her hair, holding tight as he sat back on the lowered tailgate, pulling Rita up onto his lap, her knees thudding on the steel at either side of his hips. Smooth as smoke, they melded together, Jasper taking hold of her ass, urging her to rock against his pained dick, which she did, groaning up at the sky.

“Back of a truck ain’t ideal, Rita,” he rasped. “I know it. But no matter where you ride it, beautiful, it’s going to satisfy you. That’s what I do.” One-handed, he reached between them and set to work getting his belt unhooked, gritting his teeth over the blinding pressure behind his fly. “I need to do that for you. No idea…you have no idea how bad.”

Rita’s eyes were at half mast, her chin reddened from his stubble. She couldn’t seem to stop kissing him long enough to get her pants off, though, and the longer it took, the more Jasper’s pulse slammed in a critical rhythm.

With a gritted oath, he abandoned his own zipper in favor of Rita’s, ripping it down, hoarse commands issuing from his mouth without warning. “Need to get you naked from the waist down, need you on my cock.” Through the thin material of her T-shirt, his mouth closed around her tits, sucking through the cotton, nipping with his teeth. “What was I thinking, making us wait? I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m—”

“Stop.” Rita threw herself forward, whimpering into his neck, taking hold of his busy wrists between them. “Jasper, no. This isn’t all you do. We…let’s…hold on a second.”

His brain had a hard time catching up, because every spare pint of blood in his body was visiting elsewhere. “I have condoms. Three of them.”

“Good. That’s good, but…” Her face was flushed when she straightened. Whatever his expression put across caused her to sag, even as breath raced in and out of her swollen mouth. “Jasper, I got into your truck this morning to be with you. I’m here—in the actual outdoors—to be with you. I like you.” She pressed a kiss to his mouth, then another, those hands sliding through his hair like ocean water. “We’ll be together like this. Right now, though…” Unable to completely hide her sexual frustration, Rita winced and sucked in a breath as she shifted off Jasper’s lap. “You think we could just talk a while?”