The words were barely out of his mouth when Jasmine whipped the white material over her head, tossing it beside them on the couch. Sarge almost went off in his jeans. Jesus. Jesus. His youth had been filled with prayers that those breasts would spill out of her bathing suit top, but seeing them up close and personal blew his fantasy to hell. “Gorgeous,” he managed. “They’re…you are gorgeous.”

Why did she look surprised? As if no one had told her in a while. “Show me.”

Sarge gripped Jasmine’s ass and yanked her close, swallowing a groan at the new positioning of his cock, wedged between her pussy and his stomach. Hunger to taste had him salivating, licking his lips as he leaned in to draw on her nipples. When Sarge finally got there, finally suctioned his lips around one straining, rose-tinted bud, the hunger turned desperate. The unfulfilled needs of his past packed themselves into a right hook, knocking out present Sarge, leaving only the starved, frustrated young man he’d been those years ago. He wasn’t gentle about drawing Jasmine close, so close she was grinding down on his hard dick just by breathing. His mouth slipped from one breast to the other, his parted lips dragging through the valley between with panting breaths. “Kept them from me. You kept them from me. I just wanted to see…needed to see…”

Jasmine’s fingers shook as they transferred from his shoulders to his hair, fingernails raking along his scalp. His grip on her ass gained strength, rocking his body like a ship in a storm, jerking her up and down on his erection. Although “erection” was a weak word for his entire body hovering on the brink of goddamn insanity. Jasmine. He was sucking Jasmine’s tits and his body could barely stand the inferno he’d been plunged into.

“Sarge. Please, I…oh God.” Her thighs strained from their spread position on his lap, inched a touch wider. “If y-you keep doing that, I’m going to—”

“Good.” He all but roared the word against her shiny nipple and felt a shiver pass through her undulating body. “Ride me, use me, come on me. God knows I’ve used the thought of you to come for a fucking decade.”

Sarge grated the last word with his mouth around her nipple, then hollowed his cheeks getting that sweet peak sucked good and hard. Somewhere in the back of his head, he knew his hold on her ass would leave bruises, but stopping the torment of Jasmine dry-humping him through their clothes would be far worse torture. When she climaxed, Jasmine shook like a leaf, breathy, fragmented words bursting free on gusts of breath. “Oh God…you’re…oh it’s…so good.”

Sarge watched her in awe while lapping at her nipples. One, then the other. “Want another, baby?”

Really, he was in no position to be offering her a second orgasm. The head of his cock was wet with precome, probably visible against the front of his pants. Tremors were rocking through his thighs and stomach with the urge to fuck. To pin her down, plow himself deep, and pump like a nasty dog. This had started as a way to take the fear out of her eyes, hadn’t it? Jesus. He could barely think through the desire eating him alive. Still, if she needed more, he would find a way to hold back.

Sarge leaned in to kiss her mouth, a long, groaning kiss as his hand landed on her backside with a light slap. “You need more? Go get it, Jas. Let’s see how wet we can get that little red strip of shorts guarding your pussy.”

“No,” Jasmine gasped, pushing him back against the couch, her hips beginning a slow bucking motion, like a dancer in a music video. “You already gave me more. This morning…and now. But you haven’t—”

“You’re not making me come in my jeans, Jasmine.” He almost choked on the male pride that clouded up his throat. The obnoxious buzz of embarrassment left over from his teenage years. “Not now. Not as a man.”

“Yes.” Determination flared in Jasmine’s expression, and then there was nothing but the repeated stroking friction from the base of his cock up…back down…

“Stop,” he groaned, his hands contradicting the command by sliding down the back of her shorts to encounter the bare flesh of her ass, punishing it with a kneading massage. “You can’t do this to me again.”

Oh fuck, he wasn’t going to make it. The more extreme his mental agony became, the faster she whipped her hips up and back, her open mouth dragging over his with every movement. “Sarge,” she moaned. “You feel so good. So huge.”

Call him a cliché, but that was his point of no return. Hearing the woman that haunted his fantasies refer to his cock as huge robbed his balls of their weight, sending moisture from deep, deep down in the root of him to dampen the lap of his jeans. His throat was scraped raw from saying her name, but he couldn’t remember having said it once. Never had he been so satisfied from an orgasm and he knew, knew it was Jasmine, the woman watching him in amazement from her perch on his thighs. Maybe later he would interpret that expression differently, but not right now. Now he only saw his tormentor delighted by how much control she had over his body. How much control she’d always had over it.

And he’d just busted in his pants as if he hadn’t aged a goddamn day.

“That makes you happy, doesn’t it?” He invaded her personal space, bringing their faces close. “Knowing how easily you can get me off?”

“Yeah,” she whispered, scrutinizing his face. “It kind of does.”

Anger—directed at his past and current self, and at Jasmine—spit hot lava against the inside of his gut. He had to get out of there. Clean himself off. Play his guitar. Something. Anything but having Jasmine looking at him like some exotic specimen she’d never encountered.

He picked Jasmine up by the hips and set her aside on the couch. “I’m going to turn in,” he said, hating the curtness in his voice, but too embarrassed to change it. “Thanks for not putting my stuff on the curb, all right?”

He was already at the guest room door when she spoke. “Sarge—”

The door closed before she could continue. No way would he sit there and listen to Jasmine try to convince him his reaction was natural. Normal. It wasn’t.

And instead of doing something to rid himself of the curse, every encounter with Jasmine only seemed to increase its potency. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would regroup.

His sanity depended on it.

Jasmine kept it real. If you interviewed the Taveras family, they would tell you she told the truth and didn’t smother it in sugar. It wasn’t just a matter of telling people when their new haircut looked a mess or they were acting a damn fool. It was more than that. She owned up to her mistakes and felt no qualms with admitting her error in judgment.

Once during senior year of high school, she’d accidentally burned off a hunk of River’s hair with a curling iron, and instead of trying to hide it or simply apologizing, she’d snipped off an equal piece of her own, so they could match. Just one month ago, she’d clipped another shopper’s car bumper at the mall and waited outside for an hour until the person emerged. And okay, her tenacity had somewhat stemmed from the hope they could trade cash instead of going through their insurance companies. New Jersey rates were no joke.

Point being, since Sarge had shown back up in Hook, she’d been running in a mistake marathon. Really delicious, pulse-pounding, unforgettable, ooey-gooey mistakes. With her best friend’s little—okay, maybe not so little at all—brother, a man seven years her junior. Who even did that? Everyone knew it was only hot the other way around. When a guy hooked up with his best friend’s little sister after being tempted into a near coma. Who didn’t get a little hot thinking about that? But this? This was veritable cradle robbery of a guy she’d once been paid to supervise during his adolescence. Worse, it had been done behind River’s back. Her best friend on the planet.