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Out in the hall, the elevator waited, and we got on. “Actually,” I said, holding the doors open. “I need to use the bathroom. Mark’s waiting outside. I’ll meet you down there.”
“Sure,” he said accommodatingly, then gave me the keypad code to get into the apartment.
Jasper was nowhere in sight, so I crossed the living room and mounted the stairs two at a time and hunted down their bedroom.
He faced the deck doors in the all-white room. Through the reflection of the glass I could see him hugging a coffee mug, deep in thought. “Did you let him fuck you?” I asked crudely.
Jasper whirled around, biting off a curse as a small tidal wave of coffee crashed over the rim of the cup to land on his hand. He discarded the mug on the mahogany nightstand. “What are you doing up here?” he asked in a panic, his gaze darting into the hall behind me. He dried his hand on the fitted pajama joggers he wore, and the matching navy Henley hung off his shoulder. The collar had been stretched. Like a fist had taken a hold of it and pulled.
“He’s waiting in the car. Now answer me,” I said impatiently, advancing further into the room. The bed separated us, and my insides churned from how rumpled it was, how slept in, how used it appeared. How much it smelled like Jasper, reminding me of how little my place smelled of him. I subtly inhaled, my jealousy heightening when punched with a second scent belonging to Daniel. My cheek twitched involuntarily.
“No,” he said. “We didn’t have sex.”
“Then why does it look like someone’s had their hands on you?”
He crossed his arms defensively, his biceps poking at the waffled fabric of his shirt. “He was jetlagged all weekend, re-acclimating after the huge time difference. We talked about his trip a bit, what little he could legally share. Then we mostly slept or did our own thing at different ends of the apartment. I was exhausted, too,” he said significantly. “This morning he promised to make me coffee for having woken me up so early with his call from Leland. I guess he forgot it was brewing and ran back to bring it to me, as I was still in bed. I was walking him to the door when you showed up.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” I said, stalking him to his side of the bed. Again, Jasper’s stare fixated on the hall, then back to me. “Where did he touch you?”
“Cole,” he cautioned, still not answering me. “Not here. We can’t have this conversation here.”
My shoes bumped up against his bare toes, and I palmed his nape, rubbing my thumb over the soft hair there. His breathing turned jittery, and he brushed a finger over the bags under my eyes.
“Did you sleep at all?” he asked.
“No. Not really,” I said before dipping my head to his exposed shoulder and inhaling up to his ear. He smelled like coffee. Like someone had taken a sip before tugging his shirt to the side and laying their mouth on him. I bit him there, replacing the last memory of what had happened in that spot. Now when he thought of it, he’d think of me.
Jasper stiffened, crying out, and I withdrew my teeth before breaking the skin. “Don’t worry, my mark will be gone long beforedinner.” My words dripped with venom. A venom I’d never had toward him before. I cupped his cock and noted nothing else—besides the cotton joggers—stood between my hand and his semi-erect length. Was it swelling for me? Or was it left over from whatever Daniel had started but hopefully couldn’t finish?
“Maybe if you didn’t walk around with your dick swinging in these pants, he wouldn’t need to lay a hand on you.” I’d heard myself. I understood how unlike myself I sounded. How irrational my argument was. I didn’t care. I didn’t care that I could be blowing his marriage to smithereens if Daniel walked in on us now. Right then, I only cared about whether or not my hands, my mouth, and my cock, had been the last thing to touch him intimately.
My behavior lit a fire behind his eyes, and the soft, submissive version of him began to melt away. “Get out,” he said firmly.“Now.”
“No,” I growled, fighting a hand into the back of his pants and down his cleft to see how tight or loose he was. He let me in, his lips pale and flat, but he seemed to understand what needed to be done to get rid of me. He was dry, no signs of morning sex, and honestly, he should’ve been too sore for sex after the last night we’d had together—which had been partially the point.
While he complied with my inspection of his opening, he drew the line when I reached around for his cock. “Don’t,” he said, taking a hold of my wrist and yanking my hand out of his bottoms. My fingers moved to his throat as I caught him up in a brutal kiss. “Cole,” he said, breaking away only to be pulled back in. “Stop.”
I couldn’t. I needed him. I needed himimmediately.I needed him on the bed he shared with his husband. I needed Daniel to charge in and make the executive decision Jasper couldn’t.
He backed away, and I followed, never relinquishing his lips. Jasper bumped into the nightstand, knocking something over, his coffee, maybe. And I wrestled to get his pants down while he fought to keep them up.
“Yes,” he panted, then again more pointedly,“Yes.”
I leaped away as if splashed with fire, eyes expanding. He’d used his safeword.
“You don’t come in here and demand to know what’s going on. You don’t get to fuck my life up, no matter how fucked up you think it already is. Not here, Cole. You can say and do what you want anywhere else, but you leave any destruction that may happen in my home to me.” His words hissed like steam.
I’d never seen him so upset. He stared at me as if he didn’t know me, but there was hurt there, too. Hurt for me, for us both, and I held on to it as I tried to pull my shit together.
Dragging a hand over my beard, I aimed for the bedroom door, stopping to lean against the jamb, to recoup some strength. “You said to call or text whenever Ineededyou,” I said with meaning, my back to him.
“That hasn’t changed,” he said in a relieved tone, ready to forgive me now that I’d put a few feet between us.
“Keep your phone close at all times.” I shot him a look over my shoulder. “I’ll be needing you often.” And with that I left, calling on my professionalism, and years of experience in dealing with individuals I disliked for the sake of business, in order to survive the ride into the office with Daniel.
Leaving Daniel to answer a call in the vestibule outside the elevators, I pushed through Nexcom’s glass doors, intent on making it to my office without being stopped. Becca bolted up from the receptionist desk, sticky note in hand. “Mr. Kincaid—”
“Pass the message along to Leland, Becca,” I said, working hard not to come off irritable as I breezed by.
