Strong Enough (Tall, Dark, and Dangerous #1)(78)

The heat of it, hotter than the bath water. The wetness of it, wetter than the bath water. I fist my fingers in his hair and hold him to me. He curls his arms around the backs of my thighs and nudges my legs apart before pulling one up onto his shoulder, opening me to him so that I am at his wonderful mercy.

Like a man possessed, Jasper devours me. His hunger is so voracious, it sizzles in the air around us. I’ve never been so wanted. And I’ve never wanted so much.

With swirls and licks and thrusts of his tongue, Jasper pulls me apart at the seams. My straining body convulses and my locked knee buckles. But I don’t fall. Jasper supports me with his strong arms and his relentless tongue.

When I can neither stand nor speak, Jasper rises to scoop me into his arms and carry me purposefully into the next room. In one smooth motion, he turns me toward him and sits on the end of the bed. Just as I’m noticing that all the sheets are in a pile on the floor, I hear the zip of a zipper and then I’m being impaled on him.

My body responds as if we weren’t separated all this time. After a moment’s adjustment to his gasp-inducing size, I stretch around him and take him into the very center of me. All the way in.

I throw back my head, air lost in my lungs, speech lost on my tongue, and I just feel. My arms are draped around Jasper’s shoulders, nowhere near touching in the back, and I feel him tremble again. When I open my eyes to look at him, his hot whiskey gaze is fixed on me.

The longer we watch each other, the more pronounced his tremor becomes. My heart and mind are intent on him, but my body is thinking more about where he’s seated within me than anything else that’s happening.

“Jasper?” I ask, my voice coarse and rough, even to my own ears.

He closes his eyes and I see his jaw clench. “Just give me a second.”

“Is something wrong?”

At this, he opens back up and looks at me. “You’re perfect. I just want to enjoy this. Just . . . this.”

“Does that mean you’re not already?”

“No. I just don’t want to go too fast and risk—”

He stops abruptly, provoking my next question.

“Risk what?”

A fine bead of sweat is breaking out on his brow.

The pause is long before he answers. “Risk hurting you.”

I take his face in my hands, my eyes boring into his. “You won’t hurt me. You never have. I want all that you have to give, Jasper. Rough or gentle, sweet or dirty. I love it all.”

I sit up slightly and then ease back down onto him. Jasper grabs my hips to still me, air hissing through his teeth. “Muse, I’m warning you . . .”

I smile down at him, pushing at his shoulders so that he’ll lie back. Reluctantly, he does. I lean over him, letting him slip nearly all the way out of me. “Consider me warned,” I say just before I press my mouth to his and move back onto him.

There is another pause, this one shorter, just before one big hand cups the back of my head to crush our lips together and the other one splays at the top of my butt to hold our bodies tight while he grinds his hips up into mine.

With a guttural grunt and the thrust of his tongue, Jasper pulls out of me and pumps back in. I know instinctively this is the moment he’s giving up his fight. Seconds later, with a near-violent abandon, he begins to ravage my mouth, both hands now at my hips, guiding me into a wild, hard rhythm on him.

He moves me on him, grinding and sliding, the friction unbearably delicious. When his hand slips between us and his finger finds my folds, I tip over the edge I was so precariously clinging to.

“J-J-Jasper,” I half pant, half moan.

“God, you’re amazing,” he growls, rolling over until he’s on top of me, pounding his body into mine.

Sensation ripples through me in explosion after explosion. His thick, rigid body inside mine, his lips sucking at my nipple, his hand wrapped around the top of my thigh, holding my hips up and keeping me open.

And just before I catch my breath and begin my descent, I feel Jasper stiffen in my arms as his cock pulses and throbs within me. Heat pours into me and I take it all in, hoarding it greedily and milking him for more.

“I can’t be without you again,” he breathes into my ear in a harsh and winded voice. “Ever. Not ever, Muse. Do you hear me?”

He flexes his hips, spurting the last of himself into me just before he tips me up to take him a fraction deeper. Like he wants to bury himself in me as far as he can. And I want him to. I want anything he’ll give me. And I don’t ever want to let it go.

I wrap my arms around his shoulders as far as they’ll go and I hold Jasper to me. We are as joined as two people can be, the indelible bond we share transcending even that which just happened between our bodies. I know this moment has changed everything. I don’t know what tomorrow holds, I don’t know what heartbreak might lie ahead, but I don’t care. I can’t care. He is the ocean that swallows my emptiness. He doesn’t fill it; he makes it as though there was never a space there. He is a part of me and with him it’s all or nothing. And I’ve had the nothing. I’ve lived with the nothing for months. I’m not interested in one more minute of it.

“I love you,” I mumble, my lips pressed to the salty skin of his throat. “Iloveyou Iloveyou Iloveyou.”





FORTY