Page 85 of Hired Husband

She smiled before rising up on her toes to kiss me, only lifting her mouth away from mine after wrapping her arms securely around my neck. “So come to bed, Isaac. I’m pretty sure I’ve had enough of the outside world myself for today.”

CHAPTER 34

JASMINE

Aweek ago, I’d been avoiding this guy like the plague, intent on cutting ties before I could fall any deeper. Now, I was staring up into his eyes, silently begging him to stay with me for another night. It’s funny how things change.

Last week, I’d genuinely thought it was over. Or rather, that it had to be over if I had any hope of preserving my independence. Then I’d found out he’d lost his dream project and was going back to the States, and suddenly, it’d seemed only polite to bring him on a cruise of Upper Egypt with his best local friend. I knew Isaac would love it, especially if he had his engineer buddy to talk technical with.

Or maybe I simply hadn’t wanted Isaac to leave.

All I was absolutely sure of as I looked into those blue eyes and waited for an answer was that there was something here, something more, and I would be devastated if I lost it. For a second, I thought he might pull away and head back outside to the balcony, where he’d spent at least half of last night, but then he tucked my hair gently behind my ear and lowered his lips to mine for another kiss.

“Yeah, okay,” he said softly. “Let’s go to bed, Jasmine.”

Relief smacked into me like a freight train, so intense that it made me lightheaded. “Thank God. I thought you might insist on making some more friends on the riverbank first.”

He chuckled, reaching for my hand to twine our fingers together. “Maybe tomorrow.”

He scooped me up off my feet and carried me the last few steps to the bed. “Isaac!”

“What? You were moving too slowly.”

“I was not.” I smiled when he laid me down on the mattress. “You must suddenly just be really impatient.”

“I’m always impatient with you,” he murmured, already lowering his head to plant hot kisses on my neck. “I thought you already knew that.”

“I do.” I reached for the hem of his shirt. “It’s just that I thought, maybe, you…”

“Maybe I, what, Jasmine?” he asked when I didn’t finish the sentence, glancing up at me as he lifted his arms so I could pull the T-shirt off.

I dropped it on the floor without looking where it went, my eyes never leaving his. “It’s nothing, really. It was just, uh, last night. The shower. You didn’t come. You didn’t come to bed for a long time either.”

Isaac blinked a couple times. Then his eyebrows swept up and laughter sparked to life in his eyes. “So you thought I wasn’t interested anymore?”

“Maybe.”

He laughed. “You are not that insecure.”

I gave his arm a playful smack, unable to bite back a laugh of my own. “I’m not. You know I’m not. It’s just that you’ve never passed up the opportunity to see me naked before, so I wondered. That’s all.”

“True, and I shouldn’t have passed up the opportunity yesterday either.” Those lips curved into a smirk and he slid his hands under my sundress, hooking his fingers into the waistband of my panties. “Let’s not repeat the same mistake, shall we? If I could, I’d spend the rest of my life seeing you naked.”

After pulling my panties clean off, he flung them across the room. Holding my gaze, he started on the dress itself and got rid of that just as fast, making my bra disappear not even a full thirty seconds later.

Suddenly finding myself utterly bare under his gaze, I squirmed a little, my eyes narrowing on his. “Why do I suddenly feel like I’m going to regret telling you that?”

He shrugged one broad shoulder and very deliberately let his eyes drop away from mine. They traveled across the length of my body so slowly that it was almost like I could feel them caressing me, lingering in both obvious and not so obvious places.

He hovered on the curve of my neck, my collarbones, my wrists, and my ankles. I reached for his hand and folded our fingers together, but I didn’t move otherwise, simply lying there and letting him look at me.

When he finally brought his eyes back up to mine, his cheeks were flushed and his lids were heavy, arousal and desire written across every inch of that handsome face, but his gaze was also soft. Like what he was feeling went much deeper than just the urge to bury himself inside me.

“I would never make you regret telling me anything, Jasmine.” He kept looking only into my eyes, but his hands skated up my sides until he reached my breasts, cupping them in his palms before stroking the pads of his thumbs across my nipples. My breath caught, heat racing through me and pooling between my legs, but I didn’t look away from him either. “I wasn’t expecting that phone call, is all. But I’m here now and I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

“Probably not, if I’m being honest,” he murmured, but then he pinched my nipples and groaned when I gasped. “I feel fine, but I’d also just really rather not think about it right now.”