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“Whoa!” Jasper caught me around my back before I hit the pads and helped me straighten up. He grimaced. “Sorry.”
I waved off his apology, hoping my cheeks hadn’t flushed too much from the momentary embrace. “It’s a little different from what we’re used to. At least we were steady while I was up in the air.”
“While I was standing still,” Jasper muttered.
I managed to laugh. “We’ll work on that too.”
As we went through the motions of several more standing lifts, I felt the tension radiating off Jasper gradually loosen. When I suggested that we’d proven ourselves enough that he should try carrying me around the room in the pose, he even let out a laugh of his own, if a short one.
“Sure, Punk. If you trust me to swing you around on the ice, I guess this is actually safer.”
I prodded him in the bicep. “You can carry me anywhere you like.”
I’d spoken without thinking, tossing out the generic flirting remark, but the definite flash of interest in Jasper’s gaze got me heated up all over again. As he stepped up to me, my pussy clenched.
Down, girl. This is work time, not play time.
Some part of me didn’t see why it couldn’t be both, though.
Jasper’s solid hands gripped me firmly and hoisted me into the air with new confidence. I caught a wobble before it became a problem and lifted my arm and upper leg into the right configuration.
He stepped forward tentatively and then with a little more speed, rotating in a circuit of the room similar to the loop he’d skate on the rink. He’d almost made it all the way around when his body swayed a little to the right, and I started to slide in his hold.
“Shit!” he mumbled as he tried to steady both of us, but gravity took over. In his hasty attempt to catch me, he ended up tripping over one of the pads.
We both fell in their midst, me landing partly on top of Jasper with anoomphof breath from his lungs.
Jasper tipped his head back against the foam chunks. “Great. So we can handle lifts as long as we’re staying perfectly still. That’ll work out well.”
I snorted. “It was only our first attempt. And walking is pretty different from skating.”
I eased myself a little upward, and the feel of my body shifting against his muscular frame sent a spike of arousal shooting through me.
Jasper’s gaze jerked to mine, his face flushing as if he’d felt it too, and suddenly I couldn’t help saying, “Maybe we should take a little break to make sure we’re at our best.”
Jasper studied me with an inscrutable expression. “A break, huh? Trying to get out of the hard parts?”
But there was no animosity in his tone, and he didn’t make the slightest move to nudge me off him.
Taking a gamble, I sat up over him and pressed my hands against his sculpted chest as if to pin him down. I gazed down at him through my eyelashes, tamping down the rush of need rising up from between my legs.
“We had fun the other night, didn’t we? It seemed like we were getting in sync in other ways. You know the whole thing with Rafael was a misunderstanding. Is there some other reason you’ve been keeping your distance?”
Jasper’s voice turned rough. “Lou, I— I figured maybe it would be better to keep things professional after all.”
I cocked my head. “Because that’s what you want or that’s what you think you’re supposed to do? We don’thaveto go there again. But I’m totally on board, and I don’t think it’ll be a problem professionally either.”
His eyes smoldered as he took me in. I’d swear I could feel his skin growing hotter through his shirt.
But he still hesitated. “The thing is… it already has gotten kind of messy even though we decided we’d avoid that. I’m not really the type to go for a quick lay and then forget about it. I don’t want to just screw around like it doesn’t mean anything.”
I blinked at him with a flutter in my chest. This wasn’t where I’d expected this conversation to go.
“Is that your way of saying itwouldmean something to you?”
His gaze darted away from me for a second as if he were embarrassed. “Maybe I wasn’t the friendliest ever when we met—”
I couldn’t hold back a guffaw at that understatement.
