Crystal Cove (Friday Harbor #4)(46)

“Open for me,” he said against her breast.

Her legs parted, revealing a slow leak of wetness.

“Wider.”

She obeyed, burning with embarrassment, aroused beyond anything she had ever thought possible. His thumb came to rest at the center of sensation, stroking and tickling with butterfly lightness. Craving more pressure, dying for it, she hitched upward against his hand.

Instantly his touch was withdrawn.

She sobbed his name, her h*ps lowering, her hands clenching at her sides. Jason waited, his discipline absolute. The silence was punctured only by the agitated gusts of her breathing. Pleading words hovered at her lips … Do something. Anything. After what felt like an eternity, he touched her again, parting the fervid flesh, massaging gently. Tension gathered like folds of silk, layering until it accumulated in the weight of pleasure.

He slid two fingers in her, his touch gentle but insistent. She felt him stretching her. Another finger, the inner pressure uncomfortable. She began to protest, but he wouldn’t stop, thrusting slowly as he told her that she would take everything he gave her, and then he slid lower on her body, licking and nibbling. She was lost, her breath coming in sobs and gasps.

His mouth closed over her tender flesh in a long sucking kiss. She cried out and shuddered, unable to stop the rush, unable to control anything. More visceral sensation, and more, until she thought she would pass out, but instead she was pushed into a lush, hot, briary release that bore no resemblance to the weak spasms she’d felt in the past.

The feeling came from all directions, coursing wildly through her. Gradually it broke into slow-ebbing ripples. His tongue rested on her, soothing every intimate quiver and twitch. His fingers flexed inside her. Justine moaned, her body replete.

But he wasn’t finished. He pressed deeper, more of a pulse than a thrust, over and over. Using his mouth, he built the sensations with fiendish patience, staying with her, not letting her twist away. Unbelievably, the heat was flooding her again. “No,” she whispered, certain that she couldn’t survive it again, but he wouldn’t stop, only drove her ruthlessly into another cl**ax. By the time he had finished, she was limp and half conscious.

Pressing a kiss to the skin of her inner thigh, Jason left the bed and went into the bathroom.

As she heard the shower running, Justine sat up, blinking and rubbing her eyes. “What about your turn?” she asked dazedly, but he didn’t hear her over the running water.

Standing on unsteady legs, Justine went to the bathroom and opened the glass stall. She flinched as a mist of cold water hit her face. He was taking a cold shower, his body facing away from her to allow the spray to hit his chest and run downward over his aroused body. He was a magnificent sight, his skin honey colored under a shimmer of water, his shoulders and back and bu**ocks a mass of bulging muscle.

“Jason,” she said, bewildered, “why are you doing that? Come back to bed. Please—”

He glanced at her over his shoulder. “We don’t have condoms.”

Justine steeled herself against the chilling spray and reached into the stall to turn up the water temperature. When it had warmed sufficiently, she stepped into the shower with him. She embraced him from behind, pressing her cheek on his smooth back. “We don’t need condoms,” she said. “I’m on birth control.”

His tone was vaguely apologetic. “I always use them. A personal rule.”

“Oh. Okay.” Flattening herself against his back, she savored the heat of the water rushing over them both, as if they were one being instead of two. Her hands slid slowly around his middle, palms riding the unsettled pattern of his breathing. Carefully her fingers investigated the subtle depressions between the sturdy framework of his ribs.

Her blind exploration progressed to the coarse silk of body hair, a fine pathway leading to a denser, thicker patch. He tensed in every muscle as her hand closed around hard, distended flesh. She caressed him up and down, gripping at intervals.

A harsh gasp escaped him, and another, and he turned in the slender compass of her arms to grip her body high and tight against his. She was lifted nearly off her toes, her weight pitched forward. He ground against her abdomen in water-slicked thrusts, and in a matter of seconds he muffled a low growl into the wet ribbons of her hair. Pleasure unraveled in the heat of constant rushing water, rushing and receding, leaving them entangled and spent.

Eventually Justine thought that she should unwrap herself from around him, but Jason seemed in no hurry to let go. And she wasn’t certain where to start anyway … there seemed no way to separate out which limbs and hands and heartbeats belonged to whom.

* * *

Mercifully, breakfast was not a long sit-down meal. Instead Rosemary had set out food on the kitchen counter: fig muffins, sliced fruit, and plain yogurt made at a local dairy. Although Justine was tempted to maintain an injured silence, she found herself joining in the casual conversation, all of them covering the underlying tension as if with a tarpaulin.

She had been deceived by Rosemary and Sage, but that didn’t negate all the good things they had done for her in the past. She loved them. She wasn’t sure how her trust in them could be restored. But love was not something that could be thrown away easily. Even imperfect love.

Besides, it was awfully hard to act cool and resentful when she was basking in an afterglow that wouldn’t quit, her nerve endings glowing like fiber-optic filaments. She kept glancing at Jason, who looked athletic and sexy in the T-shirt and board shorts that Sage had washed for him. Every now and then he sent her a brief, private smile that made her light-headed. This is what it’s supposed to feel like, her senses told her. This is what you were missing. And she wanted more.