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“Okay. I’m listening,” I said, folding my hands and watching her expression.
“When you talked about the carnival, it sounded really cute. It’s not that I want to go. It’s that it’s the first time I let myself think about how nice it would have been, you know, to be a mom. I was lonely growing up, like I said, but I always thought I’d have kids. Chris, well, he wanted to have a baby, I think to tie me to him and also to have something to threaten or hurt to keep me in line. There was no way in hell I was going to get pregnant. He had stealthed me when we were using condoms, but I was on the pill, too. He found the pills one time, got so mad at me and flushed them. I went on the birth control shot in secret. It wasn’t the kind of home I’d want for a baby. I couldn’t even keep myself safe with him. Trying to raise a child with him would be another level of nightmare. So I shut down the part of me that wanted to be a mother, and I told myself I didn’t deserve it anyway because I’d cut off my own mom and wouldn’t talk to her because she didn’t welcome Chris into our lives. But when you said that about the face painting, that was it, that idea of kneeling down by a little kid and asking what she wanted and her saying she wanted to be a fairy, so they paint sparkles and purple swirls on her face and she’s so excited and wants to see how it looks—I could see it all so clear. It was like a band-aid ripping off, it hurt but it uncovered what it had been hiding. The longing for a baby.” She sighed.
“I think that’s a good thing. For one, you’ll be an amazing mom. You’re fun and brave and loving,” I said. “Our mom used to build forts with us in the living room. Extravagant ones using all the chairs and couch cushions and quilts off the bed. These things had multiple rooms and everything. When I was about five she and I built a pretend plane out of the picnic table and some rowboat paddles. I wore a pan on my head like a helmet and some swim goggles.” I chuckled. “She encouraged me to be imaginative and take risks, and when I got hurt, she’d patch me up, give me a hug and let me try again. She didn’t try to overprotect me—Jake did that plenty. But I grew up knowing it was safe for me to try and fail and keep going. That was her biggest gift to me.”
Jasmine hugged me. “She sounds incredible. I wish I could meet her.”
“So, do I. She’d tell you to keep moving forward. Don’t let what he did decide your future.”
“I’ll try,” she said. She nestled into me. It felt so good, the way it had when I came to the office yesterday and held her when she was afraid. The perfect fit of her against my chest. I started counting backward from one million in my head to try to keep my reactions under tight control. The soft curves of her pressed against me threatened to rip my will power to confetti in an instant if I let myself think about it. Even with my stubborn focus on counting, my cock stirred to life. I kept my eyes open and fixed on the light switch on the wall opposite. If I let my eyes drift shut and took a long breath I’d hopefully calm down.
“Don’t give up on the life you wanted because a bad man tried to wreck you.”
“Thanks. And thanks for listening,” she said, pulling back from the hug.
Jasmine’s smile was shy, her face flushed. Her blue eyes seared through me. Heat washed over me, made me breathless.
I lost count in spite of my best efforts.
My hands framed her face. I bent close and kissed her. It shook me to my bones, the force of that kiss. It wasn’t a blaze of lightning or fireworks as I’d been led to believe by novels and films all my life. It was a sudden stillness and a shift, an opening, like a lever was pulled and my life swiveled around into something entirely different. It would never be the same and neither would I. Not after kissing Jasmine.
“Eli,” she said against my lips before I parted hers to taste her fully. She wrapped her arms around my back and held me close, tilted her head to let me taste and tease her at a more satisfactory angle. I groaned in spite of myself and gathered her up in my arms, lifted her off her feet. I wanted to claim her, but more than that, I wanted to pull her into me, protect her, let her feel what I couldn’t put into words. That I’d been in love with her longer than I cared to admit. That it damn near killed me not to make love to her yesterday—had that been only yesterday? It seemed like it was last month or last year. Everything had telescoped since then.
I made myself lift my head and set her back on her feet. I took a step back, then another. As much as I wanted to consume her, wipe out every fear and bad memory with my touch, she had to make this decision, not me. I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand, paced over to the other side of my desk and braced my hands on it, head down as I drew in a ragged breath. I took a drink of water. Then I composed myself enough to face her without raw arousal in my face.
“Would you like a drink?” I asked, acting civilized when I felt like roaring and ripping off our clothes.
She shook her head, hair tumbling out of her topknot from my roaming hands. Her clothes were disheveled—also my handiwork, and her lips bright pink and swollen. She looked delectable and it wasn’t easy to keep myself where I stood with the desk between us.
“I don’t want water, Eli,” she said. “I want you to lock the door.”
A heart-pounding rush rolled through me as I followed her directions without ever taking my eyes off her. She held my gaze with eyes full of affection and desire, so lovely that even her smile seemed to fill something aching inside me.
“I locked the door,” I said.
“Will you come sit here with me?” she said, “Like we did the other day? When you were playing with my hair, and then you held me.”
“You’ve got some specific stage direction here,” said wryly.
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it I was emotional and scared and it wasn’t a good time to make a big change like that, but I want what I want. Timing has never been my strong suit. Let’s just see what happens.”
“Not to ruin the surprise but I can tell you what happens. Unless you plan to tie me down, which I’m also not against if it’s what you’re into,” I said with a grin.
I couldn’t keep from grinning. Because there was a sweetness in this moment where we hung on the precipice, anticipation that was its own delicious agony.
There was so much to say, but I, who prided myself on my IQ, my education, my vocabulary, was at a loss for words. I sat on the couch in my office beside her. She was tucked in the corner with her shoes off, her feet curled under her as she had been the day before. I leaned back, arms along the back of the cushions. I tipped my head back and shut my eyes, listening, breathing in the watermelon shampoo and cinnamon gum smell of her. Waiting, not relaxed but coiled and ready as any predator in the brush, I let her come to me.
First the soft rustle of fabric as she changed position, next the physical dip of the cushion beneath me shifting with her movement. Then some primal sense detected her approach, maybe her heat signature disturbing the air or the lifting of the hairs on my arms. I flexed my hand, and I could already feel her smooth skin beneath my palm, her hair twisted in my fingers, could see her face transformed in ecstasy as though it were stamped on the dark behind my eyelids. Every sense was awake to her, and I who had wanted to consume her was instead consumed, as Jasmine herself blocked out everything else in my awareness.
If she had been any other woman, I would have expected to open my eyes and find her straddling my lap, perhaps with her shirt removed already, a naughty smile on her face that told me she was ready for a ride. But this was Jasmine. My old friend. The person who scheduled my days and reminded me when I had an eye appointment, who had placed her warm hand on my back last May when I heard that a friend from the Navy died in a car accident. She was the one who roasted me mercilessly and still made it clear she respected me, who trusted me to be with her and hear her truth when she was scared about Chris’s reappearance.
This was Jasmine. I felt the warmth of her settle against my leg and the pressure of her cheek on my thigh as she lay down with her head in my lap. My body went rigid at the contact, at the trust and pure consent in that pose. I opened my eyes and my body instinctively curved toward her. I unclipped her topknot and let it unwind in my palm, then soothed her scalp with my fingertips. I savored the silken strands between my fingers as I combed them through her hair. She hummed a little, enjoying it, and that sound alone made me harden even more. I wondered how long I’d last at this, with her head in my lap and my cock jerking in anticipation.
She rolled onto her back and stared up at me, blinking fast, her pulse visible at her throat. I traced her forehead, her brows, the line of her nose and across her cheekbones with my fingertip. Tenderly I ran my fingertips over her lips. I felt her tremble under my gaze, my touch, saw the flutter of her lashes in response, the way she swallowed hard. I continued to follow the line of her features, her chin and jawline, the shell of her ear, the curve of her neck. My fingertips were on her collarbone when she drew a shaky breath and reached for me. I knew it was too much for her, and I loved seeing how long she could hold out before she broke and had to stop me.
She sat up and pressed her lips to the corner of my mouth. I made a throttled sound, to my surprise because a soft kiss just west of the mark shouldn’t have triggered that deep a reaction. I turned toward her and our lips locked, clinging together before I started to kiss her in earnest. She rose up on her knees to kiss me back. I wrapped an arm around her and bore her down onto the cushions. She smiled at me. I looked down at her beautiful face. “Have you ever thought about this? About us?” I asked her. She nodded.
“I’ve worn out batteries thinking about us,” she admitted, eyes sparkling. “What am I doing when you think of me? If you think of me.”
