Too Hot to Handle (Romancing the Clarksons #1)(53)

He watched through hazy vision as her knuckles turned white on the desk’s edge, felt her bottom lift against his belly—and lost his grip on reality. The room faded to black around him, or he might have lost consciousness, his body draining of tension, pleasure wrapping around his gut like slowly fading fog. It wasn’t the two years of abstaining making his reaction so fierce, so all consuming. Rita. It was Rita. It was so obvious in the way his heart tried to rip through his chest, the way he gathered her up like a greedy man, coveting, holding on to a life raft in a storm.

“Rita, oh God. Rita.” They deflated onto the desk, every inch of their bodies molded together in an arch to accommodate the bent-over position. Jasper burrowed his face into the curve of her neck, positive he would never breathe normally again. Or eat or sleep or talk normally. Ever again. An intense urgency still existed inside him, despite his body’s utterly sated state. It had something to do with her choppy breathing, his weight pressing her down. Was she comfortable? Had he been too rough? What happened now? She probably needed something from him, and he had no experience making a woman feel cared for after sex. They usually just took care of themselves, but he couldn’t allow that to be the case with Rita. God, he was desperate for the chance to care for her.

Jasper opened his mouth to speak, but stopped when he noticed her knuckles were still white where they gripped the desk. Which led to a whole slew of noticing. Tension crept back into her body beneath him, her breath slowing and eventually stopping altogether. Distance yawned between them, two sides of fertile earth cracking apart with the force of an earthquake. It was like watching his own personal nightmare play out on a movie screen.

“Rita,” he tried, hoarsely. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Her fingers straightened, flexed, her flattened palms sliding back toward her sides. “What could be wrong?” The sound of her clearing her throat was gentle, guarded. “That was…wow. The best I’ve ever had.”

A hardball hit him square in the stomach. “Good to know.”

“Yeah.” Rita pushed upward, forcing Jasper to lift off of her, easing from the heat of her body and stepping back to watch her with caution.

She was a goddamn sight, flushed from their rigorous session, the fading sheen of sweat making her fresh and dewy. But all Jasper could see was the way her hand lifted, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. The polite, impersonal, How-soon-can-I-leave smile she cast in his direction. And he might have just slipped right into uncharted territory in Pissed-Off Land. The shame, the anger, the denial over acting the available stud—it accumulated, starting in his fingertips, encompassing his entire being in a matter of seconds. Zero to one hundred and fifty.

Best she’d ever had. Nothing about him as a man. Only his skill. Worse, Rita might have initiated the impersonal romp, but instead of correcting the balance between them, he’d followed through and proven himself the good fuck with no strings attached everyone knew him to be. Maybe they’d been right all along.

“Go,” he managed to say, pushing the single syllable through stiff lips, replacing his cock inside his jeans with brisk movements.

Rita paused in the act of buttoning her shorts. “What?”

“Go.” Self-preservation was a powerful thing, it turned out. More powerful than the voice shouting at him to hold her, to not allow her to leave. Because that was exactly what Rita was preparing to do. Fuck him and run. Just like the rest of them, only this time he wouldn’t remain standing so easily. He could not—would not—beg and watch her leave anyway. It would kill him. So he would do the opposite. Maybe it would be the difference between folding and staying upright. “Go on. You got what was coming to you. Sorry I made you wait a couple days.” Making sure to look her square in the eye so she could see how she’d fucking wrecked him, Jasper strode to the door and threw it open. “Get out.”

Rita flinched like she’d been slapped, but somehow Jasper still sensed a lack of surprise over his reaction as she hurried through fixing her askew bra, tugging the shirt over her head. When her arm went through the head hole and she was forced to try again, a sob wrenched from her mouth, fingers tangling in their haste to correct the garment. Without thinking, Jasper lunged toward Rita a giant step, reaching out to assist her, but she was already past him.

“I didn’t…this wasn’t me. Or-or you,” Rita said at the door, turning slightly, fist pressed to her mouth. “Someday someone will stay afterward. I promise.”

Jasper swore he could hear every single footstep she took from his bar to the motel. Counted them off like they were the remaining seconds of a game where his life was at stake. And when the buzzer went off, he’d lost.





Chapter Twenty-Four



Rita was well acquainted with walks of shame. And she didn’t consider taking public transportation home from a man’s house—in last night’s clothes—shameful. No, this half-jog down the dusty main drag through Hurley was the epitome of shame. Passersby slowed in their cars¸ some even rolling down their windows to inquire if she needed assistance, to which she could only manage a tight head shake. With each step, her feet slid up and back on the soles of her boots, almost as if she’d shrunk with the overpowering self-disgust. Up ahead, the car-repair garage grew larger, and that’s where she headed, desperate for the Suburban to be ready so they could get the hell out of Dodge.