What the Heart Wants (What the Heart Wants, #1)(16)

His mouth traveled down to the tops of her breasts, sensitizing her skin every inch along the way. On the return trip, he reclaimed her lips, while his hand went inside her blouse, touching and caressing.

Laurel’s eyes closed, her cheeks burned, and she let her head roll back again, offering him her throat. This should never end. She wanted more.

The bed creaked as Jase shifted his weight so he was on top of her all the way down, with one of his legs between hers.

“Laurel, sweetheart,” he whispered, first circling the outer edge of her lips with the tip of his tongue, then coaxing them open and tracing the inside rim of her mouth. She shuddered and moaned again, which seemed to excite him even more. His breathing was loud and ragged.

He slipped his fingers under the band of her old-fashioned cotton bra, releasing it to tease her sensitized nipples with his tongue and teeth and hand. His other hand moved up under her skirt, bunching it and her half-slip up around her waist. When his hand moved back down, her panties ended up below her knees.

Her panties! Laurel’s eyes snapped open. An alarm bell rang in her brain.

“Jase—”

Immediately his tongue plunged in and out of her mouth in a sharp, swift movement that frightened her, then thrilled her. The alarm turned itself off.

Her blouse and bra disappeared, and one of his hands was at her breasts again, kneading them and manipulating the sensitive nipples. His other hand was below, stroking her stomach and the outside of her legs.

He circled and teased, approaching the juncture of her legs, then moving away, then returning—touching, teasing, exploring, and, finally, finding.

She whimpered and rotated her head in frustration. Her entire body had become a strange new creature, a wonderful new creature of sensation and delight. She moved tentatively against his hand, and he rewarded her with a low-voiced growl.

The alarm bell rang again as he moved his weight onto her more fully, and his hard erection rested against her stomach, with only the knit fabric of his briefs between them. She looked up at him. His eyes were glassy, his face flushed, barely unrecognizable. His hot hand reached down to free himself from his underwear, and she knew what would come next. He wanted to do the thing to her that her mother had warned her against, the thing that would ruin her forever in the eyes of God and her parents and all of Bosque Bend.

One of his hands continued to work her as the other eased down his briefs. She could feel him now, his maleness, against the flesh of her body. She didn’t want to do this, but she didn’t know how to get out of it either. Had she promised something that he would hate her for if she didn’t follow through on? Maybe it wouldn’t matter, because he could tell everyone he’d done it to her anyway.

He tried to wrap her hand around himself.

“Touch me, Laurel. Feel how much I want you.”

She froze in horror, and all her fine madness fled. She wasn’t Juliet Capulet or Joan of Arc after all. She wasn’t even a sexy heroine from one of Mrs. Bridges’s paperbacks. She was plain, simple Laurel Elizabeth Harlow, the preacher’s daughter, a good girl, and she wasn’t ready for all this. Pulling her hand back, she tried to roll away from him.

At first he didn’t seem to realize what was going on and grabbed at her hand again.

“No, Jase! Let me go!”

“I love you, Laurel. I adore you,” he crooned, returning to her breasts and face, but she twisted her head to avoid his lips and willed herself not to respond to his touch.

Her voice dropped to a soft plea. “Jase, we can’t don’t do this. Please.”

He closed his eyes for a long second, then released her hands and rolled off her to sit on the edge of the bed. His loud breath rasped in the quiet room as he stared at the far wall. “Get dressed. I’ll take you home.”

Then, like a naked young Hercules, he strode down the hall toward the bathroom.

Laurel didn’t need a second invitation. With a wary eye on the door, she pulled her skirt and slip down to cover her naked thighs, scurried about the room to retrieve her panties, bra, and blouse, and dressed faster than she ever had before in her life. Standing on tiptoe, she checked herself out in the small mirror over the bureau next to the door. Her hair was a mess, and her face looked like she had a fever.

After running her fingers through her hair to smooth it, she pressed her cheeks with her hands to bring down their color. Her lips were swollen and her eyes were dark and hollow, but there was nothing she could do about that. She’d have to sneak in the side door and stay in her room for an hour or so before facing Mama and Daddy.

There were probably marks on her body too, maybe bruises, but she was the only one who would see them.

Jase emerged from the bathroom. He’d pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt that he hadn’t bothered to button. “You ready?” His voice was gruff and curt.

“Yes.”

“I have to get some shoes.”

She backed up as he entered the room, her eyes following his every move as he reached under the bed for his sneakers, but he didn’t even glance at her. She might have been in Ethiopia for all he seemed to care.

She looked at the room one last time and felt sick to her stomach. It was all so sordid—the tuna tin of cigarette butts, the football posters and lurid pinups, the unmade bed.

“Let’s go,” he said, standing beside the doorway, his face expressionless, the color high in his cheeks.