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.
“No,” came his voice. “The trouble usually comes when I’m awake.”
Crazy enough, she knew exactly what he meant. Sleep was the time to block everything out. Forget all the self-doubt and fear of the future and just…drop off for a while. But why would Sarge have a need to block out anything? He was internationally renowned, loved, and emulated for his work. If she’d reached his heights, she would never want to sleep again. “Maybe it’ll help if you play your guitar.” No answer for long minutes. “Sarge?”
“I can play you something, but I can’t sing.”
She arched an eyebrow toward the ceiling. “Why not?”
His laugh sent her right hand fluttering to her belly, where it flattened and rubbed in a needy circle. “You banned me from using my gutter mouth around you.”
Her hand stilled. “All your songs require gutter mouth?”
“All of them,” Sarge said huskily, making the darkness pulse around her.
Before she could stop herself, Jasmine trailed her fingertips up her stomach, to the valley between her breasts. No one could see her. It was fine. The shame was hers alone to bear. “Fine. Just play something slow.”
For the next few minutes, she could hear Sarge getting out of bed and padding over to his luggage before flipping open the locks on his guitar case. The guest bed creaked as he sat back down and plucked a few strings. A trail of cohesive notes danced in the air, accompanied by his steady breathing, the gentle tap of his hand against the wooden instrument, as he kept time. The melody was so bold and full—almost tangible—she could feel every pluck of the strings in her middle, deep, deep, deep down. She tried to keep her legs still in the sheets, but they wouldn’t stop moving with the beats and pauses. Her eyes drifted shut, heightening her sense of hearing…and swore his intakes of air grew shorter as the music swelled.
Ay Dios. The music wasn’t the only thing swelling. The seams of her underwear felt abrasive against her sensitive areas, so close to the epicenter of need at the juncture of her thighs. When it occurred to Jasmine that a whispered plea into the darkness could bring Sarge into her bedroom, where he would weigh her down with his aggressively hot body, she almost gave in and used restless fingers to stroke at the thrumming ache. But the music cut out suddenly, the abrupt silence having the effect of a fluorescent light being flipped on.
“Why did you stop?” Jasmine called, when she’d regained her relative composure. “I liked that one.”
She thought she heard Sarge say something in the neighborhood of you should, but couldn’t be positive. Her eyelids were beginning to droop, even as the sounds of Sarge replacing his guitar in its case filled the small apartment. How odd that the song had relaxed her, even as it excited her body. But the oddity of the situation lay in the fact that it didn’t feel odd at all. A mixture of comfort and confusion seemed to fit perfectly with her new perception of Sarge.
Jasmine reached for the forever-unused pillow propped beside her on the bed, wedging it between her thighs in an attempt to cull the rush of sensation. Just before she drifted off, she heard Sarge say, “That was the last censored version you’re getting, Jas.”
Her pulse skittered in her veins, sending her into tumultuous, heated, and forbidden dreams. They were full of disjointed groans and grabbing hands. Gratified grunts and straining bodies. A man was there, grappling for the upper hand, but her dream self continued to close her eyes—attempting to block him out—while luring him closer with her body. Until…oh God, until he grew tired of her mixed signals and struggled her into submission. Pinning her wrists at her sides, his hair dragging a trail over her belly button as he licked down to a core that had never felt so empty.
“Fill me,” Jasmine breathed, waking herself as the words echoed like a shout in a tunnel. Sweat was still warm on her skin, shock working its way into her conscious to find the room illuminated by daylight. A quick check of her clock told her she’d woken before her alarm, something she never did.
Thank God. A fluttering hand found her damp chest. The last thing she needed when she felt so primed for pleasure, so rattled with the ferocity of her dreams, was to come face-to-face with the newly minted man who she feared had somehow inspired them, although she’d be damned before saying it out loud.
Jasmine’s toes were still curled when they met the cool hardwood floor. Her knees shook a little as she stood, slipped from the room, and beelined for the bathroom, refusing to spare so much as a glance into the guest room. A quick shower had her feeling somewhat refreshed, but pulling on her soft, worn-in jeans was a separate issue altogether. They slid up freshly shaven legs like a caress, folding her around her hips and backside like a squeeze from two hands. Putting on her basic cotton bra chafed her sensitive nipples, sending her teeth burrowing into an already-chewed-on bottom lip to hold in the resulting whimper.
Across the hallway, the partially open guest room was an eight-hundred-pound gorilla, taunting her, tempting her to take just a quick look at the six-foot-two man inhabiting her Ikea spare bed, but she somehow resisted. God, she really needed to get out of the apartment before Sarge woke up. For whatever reason, he seemed determined to throw her off-balance, and her game was already knocked askew this morning.
Jasmine tiptoed to the apartment’s front door and made an absent grab for her keys on the console table—and came up empty. The lining of her stomach burned hot when she remembered where she’d left them. Yesterday, while getting ready for her date, she’d swapped her regular purse for the clutch she stored in the guest room closet. Her car keys—along with the multitude of spare keys to her parents’ house and River’s—were still inside, as they hadn’t fit inside the tiny clutch. If she wanted to make it to work on time—and there was no choice if she didn’t want her pay docked—she’d have to venture into the spare room to retrieve the damn keys.
“Shit.” Jasmine walked in a circle. “Shit.”
She took a bracing breath. This was no big deal. She’d just walk inside, grab the purse, and mosey on out. Ignoring the startlingly magnetic rock star in her bed might be difficult, but she worked an assembly line for eight grueling hours a day. This would be gravy.
“You got this, girl,” she murmured, walking on the balls of her feet toward the guest room. Not wanting to chance the door creaking, she slipped in sideways through the opening, attempting to keep her eyes on the prize, also known as the purse on the bedside table. One step, two—
Sarge muttered something in his sleep and turned over on the bed. Everything south of Jasmine’s breastbone tugged. Don’t look…don’t look…
She looked. And her chin fell.
Sarge took up the entire queen-size bed, one foot dangling off the end, the other raised higher, thanks to his bent right leg having fallen open, pointing away from Jasmine. Oh no. He was…completely and dangerously naked, nary a sheet to cover him as they’d all been kicked to the farthest reaches of the bed. Just all of him out there for the world to see, if the world were capable of sitting inside her tiny apartment. And sweet mother of heaven, he was a revelation. It wasn’t just his overall big, rugged, sleeping-bear vibe that turned her ovaries into a funnel cloud. It wasn’t his sturdy, muscular thighs, his tattoo-wrapped biceps, or his egg carton stomach, either. That would have been quite enough to keep her in fantasy material for years.
It was his…manhood. There really wasn’t a more accurate term to describe it. Jasmine had seen dicks in her lifetime. In real life and on her laptop screen. What Sarge had going on was so very much more. It sprouted from a dark patch of hair at the top of his spread thighs and it…lounged against his abdomen like a brawny ruler, looking down on his subjects. He was aroused. Very much so. In a way that she could relate to after the fevered dreams she’d only so recently woken from. It had to be a trick of her overwrought imagination, but she swore she could see the thick vein pulsing along the underside of his distended flesh, swore it beat in time with her pulse.
Dampness spread between her legs, more noticeable and swift than she’d ever encountered before. The need to touch herself and find relief became tantamount. Choppy breathing was a disjointed echo in her ears, telling her it needed to be now. Now. Now.
But not here. No way. Not where Sarge would see her and know how she’d been affected. Although “affected” was such a silly term for the pressing need to use her fingers on the rapidly dampening flesh inside her underwear.
The car. It would have to be her car.
More than a little irritated that she’d been reduced to auto-masturbation, but too turned on to talk herself off the ledge, Jasmine took a few hurried steps, snatched up the keys and spun toward the door—
“Jas?” came Sarge’s sleep-roughened voice behind her. “What…?”
Knowing she absolutely shouldn’t, but apparently residing in a self-destructive realm that morning, she peeked over her shoulder, her desire taking on a whole new meaning. Sarge, clearly regaining more and more consciousness by the moment, had wrapped his hand around his erection, abs flexing as he attempted to sit up. Then he did something that seemed to suspend all time and space.
His fist descended in one single hip-thrusting stroke as he watched her.
Mother of God.
Jasmine booked it, chanting the words “too young, too young, too young” as she slammed out of the apartment and down the stairwell to the parking lot, located behind the building. A tremor ran through her hand as she unlocked the car and slipped into the passenger seat, her breath puffing out white in front of her. She didn’t bother putting the keys in the ignition. There was no time. She simply tossed them on the passenger seat, fumbling with breathless anticipation to unzip jeans pulled on with such resolve minutes earlier. Resolve that incinerated with the act of slipping seeking fingers down the front of her panties.
“Yes. Oh God,” Jasmine moaned as her middle finger and forefinger met her clit. Her chest heaved, thighs widening as she treated the starved bud to quick, no-nonsense strokes. The quickening that began in her loins was immediate and powerful, a thunderbolt across a black night sky. Her flesh grew slippery beneath the pads of her fingers, the sounds of her gasps bouncing off the car’s interior. The orgasm loomed as her heels pressed down, digging into the driver’s side footwell. Christ, she just needed to take the edge off before it sharpened any further—
The passenger side door opened, jolting Jasmine on the seat. She knew it was Sarge. She knew the moment cool air invaded the car and purred over her fevered skin, yet did nothing to cool her need. Looking toward the passenger side to confirm he’d followed her was pointless—deep down she’d known he’d come, hadn’t she?—so Jasmine threw her head back on the seat as the door clicked closed, eyes sealed shut.
Her own wrist was circled by a rough, masculine hold and yanked free of her underwear. One slow-motion beat passed. Two. Almost as if he was waiting for her to protest, but she’d shut down her better judgment in favor of almighty relief. As long as she didn’t open her eyes. She would hold on to that safeguard at all costs, despite the fact that it only made sense to her overwrought mind.
She heard Sarge’s weight shift closer on the neighboring seat…and—callused fingers dragged over her shuddering belly. Lower, lower until they met the pulsing bud begging for attention between her legs, teasing with a light downward rub that nonetheless set off a bomb blast inside her. Jasmine’s broken moan pierced the air, answered by Sarge’s guttural grunt, making her future climax burn even brighter, more intense as he shoved his mouth up against her ear and shook out a scalding breath.
“Liked what you saw, baby?”
Yes. Goddammit, yes. Jasmine stabbed her teeth into her bottom lip to contain the harsh sentiment, praying her silence wouldn’t make him stop. The car’s interior seemed to close in around her, the sounds of passing traffic on the nearby street doing nothing to detract from the extreme sense of airlessness. Stark, enfolding intimacy. They were the only two people awake, right here, right now, and she would die if he didn’t deliver what she needed. There was no chance of that, though, because Sarge’s mouth found the skin behind her ear and introduced it to his tongue, just as two big fingers slid down on either side of her clit, caging sacred flesh between rough knuckles.
“This is what I’ve been chasing. Fuck. Right here. You want to know how long you’ve been teasing me with this pussy?” A light pinch of her nub made her knees jerk together on a gasp. “I’m going to tell you anyway, but a yes would make my cock harder. Say yes—now—so I can replay it later and pretend you’re whispering it from your knees and unzipping my goddamn jeans.”
“You’re—” Jasmine broke off as he shoved his middle finger into her heat, pushing deeper until she screamed his name. Even then, he didn’t stop, grinding his fist against her damp flesh, a motion that twisted his middle finger inside her. Static crackled inside her ears, a weightless tickle beginning midthigh. If he didn’t stop, this would be over quick. So quick. But that was what she wanted, right? Yes, but she hadn’t expected to be overwhelmed so completely. “You’re not…last night, you said you w-wouldn’t talk like that anymore.”
“It doesn’t feel like you want me to stop talking, Jas. It feels like just seeing my cock already has you halfway to busting.” He scraped his stubble up the side of her neck. “If you’d just crawled into bed with me, I’d have made you sit on it. Bet you would have ridden me hard enough to break the bed. So soaked, you would have slid all over my fucking lap like some kind of dream.”
Jasmine’s inner walls clenched around his finger with so much power, her head slammed back against the seat. “Oh…oh no. Sarge, this is—”
“So bad it’s good. So good it’s bad.” His voice was sharp-edged and sexy beside her ear. “Stop overthinking it, baby, and open your legs to get fingered.”
It was easy to do what he said, because he didn’t speak like the Sarge of her recollection. This man, this brutal, uncompromising man, was a naughty fantasy come to life, even though compared to the treatment he was inflicting on her body and senses, her fantasies prior to now had been watered-down garbage. She’d never been this hot in her life, never felt the tide between her hips rise so high. If she wasn’t careful, it would immerse her…but caution was a presence inside her breastbone, preventing her complete downfall. So yes, yes, she opened her legs and felt his thick finger slip deeper, felt the heel of his hand fondle her clit.
“Good,” Sarge growled. “Now I’m going to tell you how long you’ve tortured me with this pretty daydream between your thighs.”
He reached across her body and yanked open her hastily thrown-on jacket, before lifting the hem of her T-shirt to expose the puckered breasts straining inside her bra. Jasmine’s eyes were closed, but she could practically feel his expression shift into one of awe, but that image messed with her head, so she pictured lust instead.
One abrasive palm skated slowly across her cleavage. “I saw you. Changing for bed one night when you probably thought no one was home besides you and my sister.” The thrusting of his fingers between her legs picked up speed, as if compelled by whatever his memory was projecting. In deep, out shallow, in deep…again. Again. “I was just walking down the hallway, saw you through a crack in the door. You had on tight purple underwear and no shirt…on your knees going through your overnight bag.” She heard him swallow hard. “They were tugged to the side, just a little, so I could see some of your pussy, baby. But it was enough to know I’d never—ever—stop thinking about getting inside of it.”
No. No, she couldn’t be getting increasingly hotter the more he revealed. It was just his hand, just his touch. His wide thumb replaced the grinding heel of his hand, giving her the concentrated pressure she needed to zoom closer to release. “Please, right there. Keep going.”
“You think I could stop? I’d sell my fucking soul to watch you come.” Jasmine’s mouth fell open on a moan when his lips traced over the edge of her bra, his tongue dipping inside and running the length of the material. His breath floated over her, hot and sultry, inspiring goose bumps straight down her body. “Yeah, you were twenty-three when I saw you in those little purple mindfucks.” He sucked her nipple through the cotton bra with a lusty sound before releasing it with a quick lick. “You’ve got some damn nerve being twice as hot now, Jas.”
That statement alone made the breath pause in her throat, tempted her to finally open her eyes and look at Sarge. But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—look at him while her body reached such an unbelievable peak, or she’d be an addict for life. She was at the base of the mountain now, climbing, climbing, racing toward the top, a white-hot clench dropping lower until her hands were clawing at the car door and Sarge’s shoulder to keep her corporeal self on the vinyl seat, while the inner being that existed for pleasure alone lifted and bumped along the car’s ceiling.
Sarge added a second finger inside Jasmine, and her answering whimper sounded like a different woman. Not her. It couldn’t be her. But it was. In that moment, she was a woman who let a man pleasure her inside a car, out in public, and didn’t give a thought to the consequences. The only responsibility resting on her shoulders was to herself. The cataclysmic need funneling around her, inside her, an undeniable force of nature. And God, Jasmine wanted to come for Sarge. Wanted to fulfill his fantasy. Create a new one. Right now, inside this car, it didn’t feel wrong.
Later, it would, but—
Sarge planted the back of his wrist on the inside of her jeans, wedging his hand and holding his fingers at a slant. “Fuck yourself on my fingers. When you’re sliding, riding and bouncing up and down on my dick later, I want to know how those hips look from the side.”
With those heated words driving her higher, Jasmine chanced cracking an eyelid to see Sarge’s head tilt to the right, to get a better view from the side, licking his upper lip as he looked. His gaze was glassy, fevered, that square jaw tighter than she’d ever seen anyone’s. Forcing her eyes back closed before she never wanted to close them again, Jasmine gripped the steering wheel, tweaked her hips back and slid down onto Sarge’s large fingers once again. “Shit,” she breathed. “Feels so good.”
“More,” he demanded, his tone dark and rocky. “More. Take more, but know that I can fill you so much more with what I’ve got in my pants.”
“Y-yes,” she said on a stuttered exhale. “I know…I saw.”
Jesus, had she really said that out loud? It ceased to matter amid their mutual heavy breathing, the sound of her backside sliding on the seat as she worked up and down his fingers.
Something told her the noises falling from Sarge’s mouth would ring in her head for days. Broken, desperate growls, interrupted by rushed pulls of air. Like he was drowning, just like her. “You did see it, didn’t you, baby? Saw me all fat and dying to come? I spent the night listening to your tight body roll around on that creaky bed. You’ve never heard it creak the way it will if I convince you to fuck me.” His thumb went into overdrive on her clit, fast and relentless. “But don’t worry, baby. I promise no one will hear it over you screaming to get me deeper.”
Her bucking hips twisted on his final word, sending a multitude of sensations firing through her blood, seizing her muscles in a locked position to let the pleasure dance on the mountaintop. She wanted to get away, she wanted to get closer, her body didn’t know what to do, how to handle the shaking relief. There was even a hint of frustration that she’d only ever been halfway to completion until now, never having been propelled to such a level of fulfilled lust, but it drifted away when she started to come down. It didn’t happen all at once, but in softening degrees.
When an iota of mental consciousness became possible, Jasmine heard her own voice repeating “yes, yes, yes,” on a throaty loop. Felt Sarge’s tongue raking up and down the side of her neck, his teeth taking small bites from her shoulder.
Jasmine no longer kept her eyes closed as a defense mechanism, but because she didn’t have the strength to lift her lids. Something jabbed in her throat when she felt Sarge—now kissing across her shoulder—tug her panties back into place and zip her jeans.
“I’m not going to sit here waiting for some big talk to fuck everything up,” he gritted out, arousal thick in his tone. “I’m going to go back inside. I’m going to use the same hand that just made you come to jerk myself off. So damn hard. And later? Later, I’m going to hope you come home wanting the real thing from me.” He took her hand and squeezed it around what could only be his denim-covered erection. “Baby, we both know the real thing is what I’ve got.”
“You’re so arrogant now,” she whispered on a huffed breath, unable to put the required exasperation in her voice.
“No, I’m not. I’m overcompensating for the fear that you’re going to take one orgasm and run.” He sounded almost angry. “You should know I’m going to make doing that really hard for you.”
God, why wouldn’t her heart stop slamming against her ribs? “Somehow I already knew that.”
“Good. Maybe you’re finally paying attention where I’m concerned.” When his mouth settled at the corner of Jasmine’s mouth, she startled, and Sarge sighed. “Be safe at work, will you?”
“Okay,” she murmured as he left the car, the door closing with a firm click behind his retreating form.
Holy shit. Something told her safety wasn’t a concern at work this week. The hazards started and ended with the big compelling man crashing out in her home.