Too Hot to Handle (Romancing the Clarksons #1)(81)

“I told you, didn’t I?” His voice was rough and smooth, all at once, in her ear. “Told you I’d make love to you, just like this. With our fingers wrapped nice and tight around the headboard.” A leisurely grind of his hips turned biting at the end, eliciting a slap where their flesh connected. “What else did I say?”

“You…” Rita wet her lips, enjoying the strain of her arm muscles on the pillow, the sweaty glide of their bodies as Jasper rolled up and back. “You w-were going to say things in my ear. Things you can’t say in the light.”

Rita shifted her hips so the base of Jasper’s erection would make contact, both of them groaning when their sensitive spots rubbed, glided, rubbed. “That’s what I said,” Jasper panted, dropping his mouth to her breasts, laving her right nipple with a skilled tongue. “And I’m a man of my word.”

“I know,” Rita whispered, wishing her arms were free so she could run greedy hands down his back, yank him deeper. Hold him. “I know you are.”

Jasper plowed slowly into her, receding, driving forward again. “When I saw you on the side of the road, Rita”—his perspiration-soaked head fell into the crook of her neck, but he lifted it to say the next words in her ear—“I saw my wife. I knew.”

A sound she couldn’t describe—maybe an overjoyed whimper—left her mouth. She turned her head to kiss Jasper, falling into some deep, dark rabbit hole of passion when he made love to her with masculine lips, an eager tongue. All the while, his lower body pumped, robbing her of reason. Except for one circular thought that spun in revolutions inside her head. “The way you looked at me, like no one else was there. No one has ever looked at me like that.” Her fingers tightened on the headboard, a quickening beginning in her middle. “If you had kept on driving your bike, right out of Hurley…just kept going. I would have held on tight and let you take me.”

“Rita.” Hard kisses rained down the side of her face. “Rita.”

His movements hastened, the headboard beginning to bump the wall each time he demanded entrance into her body. She started to spiral higher, her thighs lifting to take Jasper deeper, back bowing, sobs breaking past her lips. “Jasper.” Her eyes widened when one of Jasper’s hands left the headboard, drifting down to surround her throat. That familiar thrill only he had ever brought to the forefront blazed bright, her release so close, so close. “Please.”

Jasper’s eyes were glassy, filled with lust as his grip tightened. Just enough to propel Rita into oblivion. “Feel that, Rita? That’s the grip I’ve felt around my heart since you got here. Don’t ever let go. Please.”

“Never. I never will.” Managing to get her arms free, she threw them around Jasper, holding him as his body imploded on top of hers, loud, male growls bathing her ears. His body undulating, working his need free in stilted, feverish thrusts. The headboard gave a few final slams against the wall.

A short time later, sweat drying on their bodies, hearts beating full with contentment, Rita turned on her side to face Jasper. “Is that what the kids are calling ‘reading the specials’ these days?”

Jasper rolled her into a bear hug, his husky laugher already as familiar as a favorite song. “You want specials, beautiful?” The house settled with comforting creaks around them, as if it had been waiting, hoping—and now it was satisfied. “I was thinking for Sunday brunch, we could serve belgian waffles—”

“With blueberry compote, drizzled butter-cream sauce…and bacon. Always bacon…”

“Always.” She felt Jasper grin into her hair, prompting her to do the same against his neck, enjoying its vibration. “We can test it out in the morning.”

“In the morning,” Rita sighed out. “Every morning.”

Legs twined together, arms holding one another close, they agreed without words to drift off together. After all, come tomorrow, they had a restaurant to run.

They woke up with the dawn. Smiling.





Look for the second book in Tessa Bailey’s Romancing the Clarksons series, Too Wild to Tame, available in September 2016.



A preview follows.





Chapter One




Welcome to hell,” Aaron muttered, maneuvering the Suburban to avoid a patch of ice on the narrow road. In the passenger seat, Old Man lifted his white, furry head—and if dogs could grimace, Aaron’s new, unexpected pet was nailing it. Their eyes met across the console, one fuzzy eyebrow twitching as if to say This is where you bring me, human?

Aaron sighed and went back to scanning the street for the campsite. The term man’s best friend was apparently up for interpretation. He’d barely achieved grudging respect with Old Man between New Mexico and Iowa. Still, the bare minimum of mutual appreciation was more than he could garner from the other occupants of the Suburban, wasn’t it? When it came to his siblings, he took what he could get. Although now only three Clarksons remained, as opposed to the four they’d started the journey with. A cross-country journey with no discernable purpose.

Unless you counted fulfilling your mother’s dying wish as a purpose. In Aaron’s opinion, they were simply indulging a whim that might have been different had their mother been in a different mood or written the fateful journal entry—which had put them on the road to New York City—on a different day.