Too Hot to Handle (Romancing the Clarksons #1)(62)

“Did I?” she whispered. “Don’t answer that. I know I did.”

Jasper expected Rita to rip his shirt off or climb his hips. Something. Her expression spoke of all sorts of filthy intentions. So when she slipped out from beneath his pressing body and paced toward the rear of the house, Jasper saw his own puzzled features reflected back in the glass door. “Rita?”

She unlocked the sliding glass door leading out back. “There’s enough moonlight to show me around outside.” Why did she look flustered all of a sudden? “Show me your favorite spot in the backyard.”

He followed Rita out the door, but needed a few moments to start breathing again upon spotting her beneath his piñon tree. In comparison to the giant white moon she looked so small—the opposite of his heart’s reaction, which sounded like the bass from an industrial stereo system crashing against the walls of his chest cavity. She stood with one hand on the swing, which had hung from the tree since he’d bought the place. He’d never used it. Never even considered it, really. But there wasn’t a doubt in his mind it would never look the same now that she’d touched it.

Distracted by the tension in her shoulders, Jasper joined her at the swing, planting a kiss on her bare shoulder. “Why did you run away from me like that?” His mouth traveled up to her ear, tasting, breathing. “Lord, I’m in a fucking state over you. Pushing me away when I need you this bad is cruel.”

“That’s just it,” Rita shuddered out. “I don’t want you to think I came here just so you’ll take me to bed. Not after today.”

Lord above, he was going to be a medical phenomenon by morning. The first man to die from his heart tearing straight out of his chest. “Rita, I know—”

“No, you don’t.” Rita actually stomped her foot. “You don’t know how much I like spending time with you. Anyone would.” Her fingers twisted in the hem of her shorts. “Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but keeping my family in town these two days…you might have started something you’ll never fully realize. You’ve got so much. Someday some—”

Jasper lunged into her space, framing her jaw with both hands. “Don’t say it. You say the words someone else and it won’t be pretty, Rita.” Enough was enough. He appreciated Rita wanting to reassure him that red-hot fucking wasn’t her sole reason for coming home with him tonight, but he’d already known that. It had been right there in her eyes on the mesa that morning. Then again when he walked into the glow of the campfire. Thank God. Thank God he’d gone out into the desert tonight instead of licking his wounds, staring at the clock next to a half-empty whiskey bottle, waiting for her to leave town. “If I did something for you, your family, I’m damned glad. But I’ve got one night with you and I don’t intend to waste it. I went two years without sex, Rita, and that lack barely registered most days.” He unsnapped her shorts, pushing them down her hips, allowing them to fall to the ground. “But one full day without being inside you? And it feels like I’ve gone a fucking millennium without coming.”





Chapter Twenty-Nine



Rita was going to disgrace herself any moment by panting like a golden retriever. Big, erotically focused, and dangerous in the moonlight, she’d never seen anything or anyone hotter than the man touching her. Jasper’s flat, calloused palm smoothed back and forth between her legs, wearing a path in the silk of her panties. God, she could have come just from the friction, but when he hooked a finger in the material and continued to run it from the beginning of her feminine lips to the underside of her ass, she stopped breathing altogether, her body jerking at the skin-on-skin contact.

“Sensitive girl. I make you that way this afternoon?” His knuckle teased her clit, up and down, in a circle. “I was rough, wasn’t I, beautiful? Going to make it up to you.” The groan that left his mouth blew a shiver up her spine. “And then I’m going to fuck you up all over again.”

“Yes.”

No sooner did the plea leave her mouth than the panties were snatched clean off her body, her backside landing on the smooth wooden swing with a slap. “Spread your thighs wide for me, beautiful. I need a look at my fantasy pussy.” He waited until Rita obeyed, breathless anticipation in the provocative movement, before he unzipped his jeans and drew out his heavy-looking flesh, holding it inches from her exposed center. Already, his teeth were gritted, sweat dotting his forehead. “This is what’s going to pass for conversation tonight. Small talk is going to be my tongue flicking against your clit until you cry out my name like a swear word. My headboard slapping the wall is going to be our heart-to-heart. And that gorgeous body riding my dick is going to be our nighttime prayers. You with me, Rita?”

Uncle. She almost shouted the surrender. Because who in the world even spoke like that? It was magnificent and filthy and she couldn’t match that kind of sensual mastery. Could she? The way Jasper ran his thumb over the head of his erection and licked his lips, the way he’d praised her for that afternoon, forced Rita to consider that she was more than just a match for Jasper’s lethal skill. Maybe she was even the perfect counterpoint for it.

“Whatever you’re thinking about, beautiful, scoot to the end of the swing and think about it harder.” He dropped to his knees in front of her open legs, sliding his palms along her inner thighs. “It’s making you all wet and shiny. Should I be jealous?”