Crystal Cove (Friday Harbor #4)(55)

She went behind him and began to soap up his back, admiring the powerful contours. “I whistle while I’m mopping floors or vacuuming. Usually the beginning of that Black Keys song on the commercials. One day I whistled it so much that Zoë actually came after me with a spatula.” She paused as she heard him chuckle. “When I’m bored,” she continued, “I shop for stuff I don’t need on the Internet. And I can stop playing a game, any kind of game, right in the middle, and never go back to it.”

“Really? How can you do that?” Jason sounded genuinely mystified.

“Short attention span. I also love to give advice to people who haven’t asked for it.” She reached around him, her soapy hands coasting over his groin to grip the taut, heavy shaft. “And as you’ve recently discovered, I give aphrodisiacs to unsuspecting guests at my inn.”

He was fully erect, his breathing sharp-edged. “You make a habit of it?” he managed to ask.

“You’re the first, actually.”

“I’ll be the last.”

Her fingers tightened and slid along the length of him. “How should I do it?” she whispered against his wet back. “Like this?… Or that?”

“That’s…” He was forced to take an extra breath. “God. Yes. That.” Lowering his head, he braced his hands against the wall, his chest heaving.

Justine curved herself to his back and caressed him while water rushed over them both and white steam curled through the air. He muttered a few words, endearments, curses, and she drank in the sounds of his excitement. Her hold on him became urgent, her hand pumping and priming the sensation, the heat gathering hard and fast. He came with a low, helpless sound, and she crooned and pulled the pleasure from him, relishing his rough masculine shudders.

Jason turned off the shower and dried them both with a thick white towel. “Now you.”

She shook her head. “I don’t need anything.”

Jason gripped the nape of her neck carefully, and bent his mouth to her ear. “You need what I’m about to give you,” he whispered, and every hair on her body lifted. Taking her back to bed, he pulled the covers down and stretched her out on the sheets.

He loomed over her, drawing his fingertips over her body, mapping the most sensitive nerves. She writhed and whispered for him to go faster. But it would be done at his pace, slow as summer twilight. He persisted until she was still and quiet, breathing deeply. Heat danced up to the surface of her skin wherever his lips touched, wherever his body pressed her.

He had already learned too much about her, and he was using it, playing her. Moving down between her thighs, he licked between the lips of her sex, tugging at the soft flange, and when the desire turned too raw, she whimpered and pushed at his head. But he grabbed her hands and held them tightly, and made her hold still, made her take it. The sensation went right to the top of her skull. She jolted with every melting stroke, the pleasure racing through her veins, sparks snapping and colliding. Her legs spread and her toes curled as she felt the beginnings of release, but he stopped and lifted his head.

Deliberately he pinned her with his weight, entering her with a low, heavy slide. He trapped her arms over her head and stared down at her with those intent dark eyes, while he circled his h*ps in a deliberate grind, teasing unmercifully. She thrashed and squirmed in an agony of tension, gasping out incoherent words … oh please now please … and she heard his quiet laugh as he made love to her with wrenching slowness, sending her into helpless spasms.

Later in the night she awakened with his hands on her again, his mouth at her breast. She moaned as he slid inside her, her head rolling back against his supportive arm. Sensation rippled through her, and the ripples became waves, and the waves surged without stopping.

The hours blended into a long, dark fantasy. She had never suspected that pleasure could be so varied, so dazzling. And then there were the drowsy conversations in between, when they lay together and savored words as if they were kisses.

“What was it like in the monastery?” Justine whispered, wanting to know more about an experience that was completely alien to her. “Did you like staying there?”

His hand stroked slowly over her back. “No. But I needed it.”

“Why?”

“I was tired of feeling like nothing mattered. Of going through the motions. Zen teaches you that everything is important. Even a task like washing a bowl is worth doing well. It helps you to be aware, so that entire days and weeks of your life don’t slip away.”

Justine rested her head on his shoulder, her hand splayed gently over his heartbeat. “Did you have to do a lot of meditation?”

“In the evenings. The day started at four in the morning with a communal lecture. After that we had breakfast followed by work like weeding the garden or chopping wood. In the afternoon each disciple would have a private meeting with the temple master, the Roshi. And then meditation was after dinner. The Roshi assigned a question to each of us. While you meditate on it, you try to quiet your mind and understand its meaning. Some people struggle for years to find the answer.”

His fingertips discovered the fine chain around her neck, tracing over it gently as he continued. “One night I had a vision while I was meditating. I was in a temple, walking toward a shadow that was shaped exactly like me. I realized that I was the temple—and the shadow was the empty space where a soul should have been.”