He heard her gulp, followed by wavering but determined words. “Whatever this is, it’s not happening. I won’t let it.” She shifted against him, her shuddering exhale fanning his collarbone when he only pressed closer to keep her from rubbing against his cock, which would cause all hell to break loose in his jeans. “Sarge. W-what is this? You’re my…best friend’s kid brother.”
Finally, he found the power to speak around the arousal clawing along his spine. His mouth was a centimeter from hers now, but he had no memory of when he’d moved. Both sets of their lips were parted, hot, hurried breaths clashing between them. “I haven’t been a kid for a damn long while, Jasmine. You want to feel it again and make sure?”
Her lips parted in shock, pink appearing on her cheeks. “Sarge.”
He recognized that tone as her stern, no-nonsense, I’ll-tell-your-parents-about-this-behavior tone, and it propelled him to take his warning a little further, even though something told him she was working hard to pull off her disapproving attitude. “No more fixing me sandwiches. No more ruffling my goddamn hair.” He reached down and grasped her hand, bringing it to the back of his head, moving it in a messy circle. “If I ever feel your fingers in my hair again, they’d better be pulling my face closer to whatever I’m licking.”
The sound that tumbled from her lips was part sob, part hiccup, hands scrabbling against his shoulders to push him away. He let her go, because she needed to know he would always stop when she indicated he should. Always. No matter how much it ached to stop touching her.
The hand Jasmine shoved through her dark hair shook, but her voice was steel. “You can’t just talk to me like that.”
Honestly, he wanted to laugh up at the cracked ceiling. She obviously hadn’t been paying close attention to his song lyrics. “Look, I say what I’m thinking now. Keeping it to myself never did me much good.”
“Oh yeah?” She kicked off her high heels in the direction of the tiny dining alcove, near the kitchen’s entrance. “Well, it’ll do me some good.”
Sarge crossed his arms, smiling inwardly as an idea presented itself. “Fine. You’ll get no more gutter mouth from me as long as I’m in town.”
Her chin lifted, but she was suspicious. “Thanks…”
“But you have to take a bite of this sandwich.” He felt the amusement slip from his expression, but couldn’t stop it from going. Yeah, it was important to him that her last meal not be from some unworthy son of a bitch. But there was a darker part of him that wanted to fall asleep knowing he’d put something he’d made in her stomach. Ah, come on, who was he kidding? He wouldn’t sleep a damn second tonight. It would take him an hour to figure out how to wring his cock out without her hearing across the hall. And if the past were any indication, once wouldn’t be enough where Jasmine was concerned. “What’s it going to be?” he asked, his voice having dropped around fifty octaves.
“Oh for the love of…” Jasmine stomped across the kitchen barefoot, obviously uncaring that her tits were bouncing like sweet little temptations as she went. Sarge stepped closer as she took the bite, swallowing a growl when her teeth sank into the bread and she chewed, swallowing a few seconds later. “Happy?”
God, he wanted to smear the lipstick painting her mouth. Over to her chin, across her cheek, down her belly. “You have no idea.”
She held up a single finger. “That sounded like gutter mouth in disguise.”
“You know me so well.”
Jasmine paused at the kitchen’s threshold, one hand lingering on the frame as she perused him over her shoulder. “I thought I did.”
Chapter Four
Jasmine never had trouble sleeping. Since childhood, she’d had the ability to black out as soon as her head hit the pillow. Couch armrests, car doors, and folded arms were all fair game. At the factory, she was famous for catnaps in the break room while vending machines vended and employees chattered. So there was just no excuse for being wide-awake with three glasses of wine in her system. Dreamland should have been an easy destination, reached in mere seconds, but no. No, she had a too-young man with an ambitious mouth right across the dark, narrow hallway.
There wasn’t a chance—negative chances, in fact—that Sarge could back up the talk with the walk. She’d dated plenty of men who spoke a big game and failed to handle business in downtown Ladyville.
Oh, but he’d been so convincing. So specific. There had been knowledge in those baby blues she didn’t recall from before. Honestly, she didn’t recall that kind of try-me-you’ll-love-me attitude from anyone she’d spent time with. Coupled with that moan? That moan that made her body feel like an object to be lusted after? In the mirror across the room, she could see herself in her white nightshirt, and the image sent a flush climbing her neck. Nipples distended against the cotton material, lips parted as she struggled to regain composure. So very non-Jasmine.
Coño. Knock it off. It was River’s brother she was thinking about. She’d attended his middle and high school graduations when she was already in her twenties. This little bud of attraction—and it was little…teeny tiny, minuscule, a speck, really—she’d felt between her thighs when the silk of her underwear had slipped down his rigid fly, it had to have been a fluke. An unwelcome one.
Jasmine went on occasional dates, enjoyed male companionship, and afterward, she slept the sleep of angels. No second-guessing her actions or wondering what would happen when the sun came up. No replaying interactions or trying to recapture the feel of a man’s body with a now-scandalized pillow. God, if anyone in Hook knew she was lusting after a man seven years her junior—a famous musician nonetheless—she would never live it down. Everyone in this town had a long memory, and they remembered just-watch-me-blow-this-town-and-your-mind Jasmine. What’s more, they remembered her failure to succeed almost as well as she did. They would view her taking up with Sarge as an attempt to recapture her youth—the future she’d never lived up to—and she wouldn’t be able to stand the sympathy that would garner.
Especially if it turned out they were right. Less than a week until her thirtieth birthday, she could be having a one-third-of-life crisis. There was simply no other way to explain why she felt like she might suffocate if a certain honor-defending, potty-mouthed musician didn’t follow through on his threats.
She sighed. Tomorrow, he would find another place to crash and she could put the embarrassing crisis behind her, never telling another soul as long as she lived. Poof. It would be gone. Never happen—
“You awake in there, too, Jas?”
Jasmine’s back arched on the bed as Sarge’s voice shimmered along her spine, down the small of her back. God, had she been breathing heavily? Had she voiced her inexcusable thoughts out loud?
“I know you are,” he continued, his tone dark and teasing.
“How?” Jasmine answered, before her brain could intercede.
Sarge was silent a moment, but when he spoke, he sounded different. More… aware. Heated. “I can hear your legs moving in the sheets.”
Jasmine turned her face into the pillow to release an unsteady breath. “You shouldn’t be listening that closely.”
Another heavy beat passed. “Who’s to decide what we shouldn’t do?”
Lord save me from this guy. Had this seductively masculine man been hiding under the surface the entire time she’d known him, just waiting for an almighty growth spurt to make the results known? Because goddamn, someone needed to alert Guinness to make Sarge’s changes a matter of public record. Her eighteen-year-old self would have called him “diesel” and sucked her teeth when he walked by. “Do you always have trouble sleeping?” Jasmine asked weakly.