Chapter Eight
Jasmine watched Sarge’s denim-hugged thighs move as he climbed the stairs to her apartment, a few yards in front of her. She’d insisted he go first, knowing if she felt him staring at her backside with all that brooding concentration, she’d turn around and hurtle herself right toward his sexy bulk, crying take me, take me, please. Like some kind of demented, sex-starved meteor from Planet Horny.
Parameters, parameters…
Whose idea had that been? Hers. Yes! It was a damn good idea, too, because bad things were afoot. Very bad things, indeed. She’d been feeling Sarge on a physical level since he’d shown up and mowed down Carmine at the Third Shift. Since he’d boosted her up on the kitchen counter like she weighed less than a flea and proceeded to dirty talk her panties into a twist. Tonight, though, things had…shifted. Sarge had all those qualities she remembered. He was perceptive when it came to people’s feelings, especially his sister. He could laugh at himself. Facets of a man’s personality Jasmine had assumed couldn’t be maintained when being showered with all-out fan worship.
Sarge had not only maintained those qualities, he’d turned into an entirely different monster. One that had the nerve to show up with the perfect princess necklace and look like he’d just been hit with a cement truck upon meeting his niece.
What an asshole.
Because now the situation had graduated from wanting to jump Sarge’s bones to being interested in what went on behind those blue eyes. Why had he left Hook so abruptly four years ago? What had prompted his return?
Did he sleep with tons of groupies?
Do not ask. Do not even think of maybe asking that.
She shouldn’t care. Sarge’s bedroom activities before and after they slept together—of which she was still debating the wisdom—should be a nonissue. However, while it was on her mind…of course he slept with tons of girls on the road. He was a veritable rock star with almost irritatingly good looks. All of his female admirers were probably a shit-ton younger than her, too. How would she stack up to them?
Jasmine tugged her apartment keys out of her purse, striving for nonchalance even though Sarge had an elbow propped on the doorframe, watching her like a dragon from the shadows.
“What?”
He shook his head. “Don’t what me.”
God, since when did her lock stick? She tugged and jiggled, but the damn thing wouldn’t turn. Meanwhile, Sarge’s body heat was like an industrial-sized oven beside her. “I listened to your new album at work today.”
A flicker of surprised pleasure crossed his face, but he hid it just as fast. “Yeah?”
“Mmm-hmm.” She’d told River it was a podcast playing in her headphones, figuring she’d been honest with her friend enough for one day. “Were those…thoughts always bumping around in that head of yours? Or did they show up after you got stuck in a lightning storm or something?”
Sarge braced a hand on the doorframe and leaned closer. “Which thoughts are you referring to, Jas?”
“You know.” Finally, she managed to get the door open—and not a moment too soon, since Sarge was licking his lips like a starved lion, ready to pounce. “The way you talk about women.”
His boots thunked on the wood floor as he followed her into the apartment, shrugging off his coat as he entered. “Women plural, huh? Is that what you got from my songs?”
Jasmine hung her own coat in the hall closet, relieved to be facing away. “Oh, come on.” Don’t. Don’t doooo it. “I’m sure there’s been tons of opportunities on the road for…the kind of experience you need to write…those songs.” Callate estupida.
Finished hanging her coat, Jasmine turned—and bit back a scream, nearly tumbling backward into the closet. Sarge was standing close—so damn close—with a displeased expression on his face. He looked older, wiser…and just a hint weary in a way that she tried not to let fascinate her. “I have to feel something to write a song. I have to want.” He jabbed a hand through his hair, leaving it standing out at stray angles. “I’ve never felt anything close to that on the road. Ever. And I wouldn’t call waking up to someone you don’t recognize an opportunity. I wouldn’t even give it a name because that might give it some importance.”
A spiky ball rolled through Jasmine’s chest. “Sarge, I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine.” He closed his eyes a moment, opening to reveal just a flash of temper. Pain. “Just do me a favor? At least for tonight, try to pretend like you don’t get a kick out of me with other people. Pretend it makes you fucking ill, the way I feel when I slip and imagine the reverse.”
Jasmine was left standing on liquefied knees, heart knocking against her ribs as Sarge strode into her bedroom, the way a king might. She watched as he kicked off his boots, toeing them under her bed with a heated look over his shoulder. “You coming or do I need to come get you?”
“We haven’t talked parameters yet.” When his back stiffened, she felt a rush of frustration. “While you’re here, while we’re…together this way, I don’t want people in Hook to know about it.”
He’d stopped moving. “You want to explain why?”
The frustration broke into winged pieces, demanding to be let free. “You haven’t been here. You don’t understand.”
“Try me,” Sarge said, facing her with a hooded expression.
“I…failed. Okay? I failed where you didn’t. The most ambitious girl in town didn’t even make it through the Lincoln Tunnel.” She joined him in the room to begin digging through her underwear drawer, not looking for anything in particular, just needing an activity for her hands. “They’ve treated me differently since then. Carefully. With sympathy. If they know what we’re doing, they’ll see it for something it isn’t. Me trying to recapture the success I never really had in the first place. Through you. You know they will.”
Jasmine started when she felt Sarge’s hands on her shoulders, his chest brush against her back. “I didn’t realize they made you feel like that. I’m sorry.” His lips traced up the back of her neck. “We know that’s bullshit, Jasmine. That’s what matters. If you need what we do to stay in this apartment, I won’t fight you on it. But I will fight you on your theory that you failed.”
When Sarge traced her earlobe with his tongue, she could only nod, even though the argument was one she’d already won in her head. “Not tonight, okay?”
Sarge turned her around, his eyes raking up and down her body. “Do you still have that blue dress, Jas?”
“Wait.” She did a double take, certain she’d misheard him. “What now?”
He stepped away and took an unrushed turn around her room, pausing occasionally to stoop down and look at framed photographs. “The one you wore at the Feast of San Gennaro. When you sang that solo with the church choir. Do you remember?”
Did she remember? She thought about that day constantly. The feast was an Italian festival that took place once a year. Food vendors, contests, and various forms of entertainment took over the neighborhood for an entire week in September, although in recent years it had lost some of its traditional feel, becoming more modern and infused with pop culture to draw a younger crowd.
The year she enjoyed it the most, she’d been twenty-three, still trying to jump-start her flatlining music career. The choir director for Holy Cross Church, a lovely older woman named Adeline who liked to tip back an occasional whiskey sour during the day, had insisted Jasmine join the group for a solo on the main performance stage. When she wouldn’t take no for an answer, Jasmine had relented. And God, it had been well worth giving up an hour with her date. That day marked the first and last time Jasmine performed for a riveted crowd, people gathering on sidewalks, climbing streetlamps to see her. She’d never sounded better in her life.
It was also the day she’d peaked.
“I don’t remember seeing you there,” Jasmine murmured.
Sarge picked up another photograph, this one of her and River. “I was across the street playing Whac-A-Mole. Or I was, anyway, until you started singing.”
An uncomfortable lump formed in her throat. “Why would I still have that dress? It was worn out back then. It would be a total rag by now.”
His glance in her direction was one of total confusion. “Because you looked incredible in it.” He set the picture down and turned. “Because when I picture you, it’s in that blue dress.”
“I don’t have it,” Jasmine insisted, far too quickly. There was a parting of gray skies taking place here, and she was terrified to know what they would reveal. When I picture you. How often did that happen? Since Sarge blew into town—had it only been two nights ago?—he’d been pursuing her. No hesitations. No momentary lack of focus on his goal…a goal that appeared to be her. The more he spoke and revealed, the more Jasmine wondered how far his crush extended. Did she want to know?
No. She didn’t. Didn’t want to be responsible for anything more than slaking the urges of her body. Eliminating the craving he’d originated in places she hadn’t felt sparks as far back as she could remember. If she allowed that to happen while knowing there were deeper feelings involved on Sarge’s part, the guilt and responsibility would keep her from experiencing the physical completion he was offering. The chance to have this captivating man close, so close, just for a while. Before he left and didn’t come back, possibly for another four years.
Maybe for Sarge, this wasn’t some long-carried torch. Maybe he just wanted to mark Jasmine off his spank bank list, the way men felt sentimental about their first taste of porn. The older woman he’d lusted after as a kid—no better time to satisfy that particular fantasy than on an impromptu visit home. While that possibility caused a suspicious ache deep in her stomach, it suited her far more than Sarge having feelings for her. Yes, it was much, much better. If he simply wanted his fantasy fulfilled, this was a two-way, solely physical street.
When Sarge had almost reached her, Jasmine took him off guard by meeting him halfway on that final step. The move brought their bodies flush, chest to knee, Sarge’s erection pressing against her belly button. “I have the dress.”
His upper lip twitched. “Put it on.”
Jasmine smoothed her hands up his ridged chest, biting her lip over the dips and valleys. “Don’t you want me naked?”
“Yes, I want you naked.” He grazed a thumb down the side of her breast, sending a shudder of heat straight between her thighs. “I also want to be the one who made you naked. The dress, Jasmine.”
It was hot. That was how Jasmine had to categorize a man remembering what you wore almost seven years earlier. Hot that he wanted that particular garment to be the thing he ripped off your body. Yes, hot. Not telling or emotional in any way.
Right.
With a slow brush of their bodies, she floated toward the closet, knowing she would find the blue dress at the back, hidden behind more recent purchases. She plucked it off the hanger and watched Sarge as she changed into it, buttoning the line of buttons that ran all the way down to the hem where it flirted midthigh. Sarge sat at the foot of bed, facing away. His pose was casual, but the line of tension in his shoulders looked as if it might snap him in two. They lifted and fell faster, faster…and some intuition told Jasmine she would find his eyes closed if she circled him. The vision made her heart pump faster.
“A few more parameters,” she blurted, and watched Sarge’s whip-tight muscles bunch even more through the cotton of his shirt. “If either one of us wants to bow out after tonight…no hard feelings.”
His laughter was hollow. “Won’t happen.”
Jasmine smoothed her hands down the front of her dress, over the peaks of her breasts and lower to her stomach. “How do you know?”
Sarge whipped off his T-shirt and discarded it, giving her a view of his broad, sculpted back, the twin indentations at the base of his spine. Those shoulders. “There’s a button I need to press on you,” he rasped, his hands gripping his knees. “For the next few hours, finding that hot button and pressing it over and over is my life’s fucking mission. If you want to bow out after that, it’ll only be because I wore you out or rode you too hard. And you’re too stubborn to admit either.”
She sucked in an unsteady breath. “You probably shouldn’t call a woman stubborn when you’re trying to sleep with her.”
“Stubborn is part of the reason I want her so bad. Any other rules?”
God, this man was dangerous to the detachment that was usually her salvation. He wouldn’t stop saying things that made little lights go off in unused sections of her brain. “No.”
“Good.” She could tell by his flexing triceps that he’d begun unbuttoning his jeans. “Get over here, Jas, or I’m coming to get you.”
Needing to give the flurries in her belly a moment to settle, Jasmine found her reflection in the mirror across the room. Most mornings, she couldn’t even bear to look into her own exhausted eyes, but just then, she appeared the furthest thing from exhausted. In the blue dress she’d always associated with confidence, an exultant moment frozen in time, she looked…ripe for picking. Sexual. Even a little innocent, which made what was to come a hint more exciting. As if sex with a testosterone-charged, filthy-mouthed man needed the added stimulation.
Before she could lose the loose hold on her boosted self-image, Jasmine went to Sarge and rested her hands on his wide shoulders, purring when the muscles jumped beneath her palms.
His eyes blazed, mouth falling open with an agonized sound. Big hands snaked around the backs of her knees, yanking her into the vee of his thighs. Sarge’s height put his mouth level with her pointed nipples, a position he took advantage of like a starving man, opening and closing his lips on her aroused, puckered flesh through the thin material of her dress. As he mouthed her breasts with low grunting noises, his touch slid higher, higher, to close around her bare bottom.
“Last time I saw you in this dress, I was sixteen.” His fingers dug into her twin swells of flesh, tightening hard. “Everyone was looking at you. In awe of you. And I wanted to ask what took them so fucking long.”
Without so much as a warning blink, Sarge twisted, using his grip on her backside to reverse their positions, landing her flat on her back on the bed. The hem of the dress fluttered up to rest at her waist, Jasmine’s hands moving automatically to tug it down. But Sarge’s hungry expression stopped her. His focus was nothing short of breathtaking. He’d apparently just glimpsed the promised land between her thighs, because he looked enraptured, tongue bathing his lips, big hands fisting the bedspread.
“Fuck, Jasmine. Look at your tight slit. Even after I had my fingers pumping inside you yesterday?” Shaking his head, he ran a thumb down her entrance, making her back arch on the bed. “I wondered if your pussy would be smooth as those thighs. Wondered if it would be parted a little so I could see your clit, but I can’t see a goddamn thing. God.” He sucked his lower lip into his mouth, releasing it through his teeth. “You’d never know it from the way you ground on me earlier, but that blue dress was hiding something sweet, wasn’t it?”
Refusing to take his gaze off her dampening center, Sarge ran his tongue along the inside of Jasmine’s smooth thigh. Closer, closer, to the hottest sight he’d ever laid eyes on. Jasmine—his Jasmine—with her legs parted, that blue dress rucked up around her hips. There was a bullish rise in his sternum, smoking out to fill his insides. He wanted to rear up with a shout, cover her with his body, and fuse their mouths together. Wanted to dry-fuck her with his aching dick until she was soaked and then fuck her like the world was ending. It was painful to hold back, but after last night, he was determined to give her more. Not some quick-on-the-trigger moron who didn’t recognize the treasure laid out for his consumption. A treasure representing the curse he needed to break—and he couldn’t do that if he lost himself.
Since he’d caught her off guard, she was still attempting to be modest, elegant fingers twisting in the hem, inching it down, which only made him twice as anxious to get his mouth on her flesh, to watch that caution shatter into a thousand pieces.
“Stop trying to be a good girl, baby.” He parted her flesh with his middle finger, finding her wet enough to push inside with a satisfied noise. “We’re here to be bad.”
“Oh…that’s. Am-mazing.” Jasmine thighs writhed on either side of his wrist as he stroked in and out with his finger, breaking to tease her clit with the wetness. No, no…he wanted her legs spread. Wanted her with no other options or escape routes, save releasing against his lips and tongue and chin.
Sarge used his free hand to secure her right leg to the bed, shoving her other thigh open with his opposite elbow. “Watch my tongue.” He waited until she followed his instructions before dragging his stiffened tongue through the center of her pussy, ending at her clit and pushing down hard. Hard. Until her hips were bucking, moans filling his ears. “You don’t stay open so I can see every hot little inch of you, I won’t do that again. Don’t you want me to keep licking?”
“Si. Yes, yes.”
“I know you do.” Sarge trailed a series of kisses along her delicate flesh. “You want it now. And you want to remember it later, too, so you can touch all the places I ate you. You want to remember the bad things I did.”
The idea had come to Sarge out of nowhere—and it was entirely unlike him. But the uncontrollable impulse to immortalize the first time he brought her pleasure wouldn’t leave him alone. He needed her to have proof, a memory of him as the man who’d been anything but plutonic while between her legs.
He gave her hip a gentle slap, continuing to tease her pussy with gentle bites and kisses. “Get your phone. I want you to play this back later when you’re alone and my mouth and fingers aren’t here to handle your ache.”
Two frantic, sobbing breaths. “I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can.” He lapped once at her clit before lifting his head to lock gazes with passion-fogged brown eyes. “More than that, baby, you want to. You want to watch me do it all over later.”
“I don’t,” she gasped.
“Liar.” A quick scan of the room found her iPhone sitting on the bedside table. “Go on. You can reach it.” Sarge turned his head to run his open lips up the inside of her left inner thigh. “I’ll wait right here.”
Jasmine threw her head back with a frustrated whimper, then made a grab for the phone, fingers fumbling to open the camera application. Sarge smiled against her skin as she lifted the device. And then it was on. The phone dropped to her belly the first time his tongue circled her clit, but he growled until she propped it back up. A pounding began in his head, inflicted by her taste, the way her flesh clenched when he slipped his tongue inside. Tight little thing. He couldn’t get an adequate description in his head of what her taste reminded him of, so he lifted her ass in both hands, bringing her up to meet his mouth like a fucking meal.
Yeah, it turned him on knowing she’d be pressing play on these moments again later. He thought of her coming home from a long day of work and sagging back against the front door. Pulling out her phone and sliding her hand inside her jeans, legs slipping wide. He didn’t expect the spark of jealousy to flicker in his chest. Maybe he didn’t want her touching herself. It should be him.
It should always be him.
“Stop filming,” Sarge ground out. “I’ll do this for you any time you need it. You call me and I’ll come. My tongue belongs right here.”
“N-no. No.” Her stomach shuddered down, forming a sexy hollow. “This was your idea. And I want it…want to remember…oh.”
He attacked her with his mouth, out of heat, out of frustration he didn’t quite know how to define. The possibility of living without this place between her thighs made him fucking crazed. Made him want to cause destruction. She liked having her clit sucked, so he executed the roll of his tongue, followed by prolonged suction until she finally dropped the phone with a muffled scream, fingers turning to fists in his hair.
“Sarge. Ay que rico. Don’t stop. So close. So close.”
Hearing his name coated with lust straight from Jasmine’s mouth sent a fresh bolt of need to his cock, thickening the neglected part where it snaked out from his unzipped fly. He needed to fist himself and pump until come shot from the tip, but she needed his fingers more, so he fucked himself against the bed’s edge instead, groaning against her pussy as he thrust. Her thighs were starting to lift again, probably with the intention of locking around his head, but he wasn’t having that. With rough hands, he shoved Jasmine’s legs open and gave her one final chance to orgasm before he climbed up the bed and fucked her into delirium.
His middle finger and tongue wedged inside her entrance at the same time, rotating positions once, and that was all it took. Jasmine strained beneath him on the bed, hips lifting, thighs quaking, straight out of his dirtiest dreams. Her heels shoved against his shoulders, voice cracking, but he wouldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop dragging his tongue over her clit, tasting what he’d done.
Only when her ankles finished their crusade to push him away did he allow himself to let up. Sarge prowled over her body, nudging her knees apart with his own. She still wore the blue dress, but it was beginning to wilt from the sweat he’d worked her into. Above the bodice, moisture dotted the swell of her bouncy tits. The ones he’d been thinking about since his body identified that his attraction and need belonged to one single person. One single woman.
“Gold. You taste like the color gold.” Sarge dropped to his elbows, making a quick grab for the condom he’d placed within reach on the bedspread. No sooner had he covered his dick with latex than he pressed their bodies together, groaning as their lower bodies made first contact. “Warm. A little bit like cinnamon. Perfect.” She whimpered as he jerked open a handful of the dress’s buttons, exposing dusky-pink-tipped tits, pointing right at his mouth. “Made a fucking mess of this dress, didn’t I?”
Sarge twisted his hips once and drove home, shouting a curse into the space above her head. Oh God, I’m inside Jasmine and I’m so screwed she’s perfect, perfect. Narrow and dripping and perfect. She was climaxing around him already, struggling beneath him under the swiftness of her body’s reaction, which didn’t bode well for his plan to make this last. Making sure she found her peak was no longer a problem, so what was to prevent him from tossing her trembling legs over his shoulders and ending his own torment?
But she whimpered his name and everything inside him seized. Jasmine. God, she was the most beautiful creature on the planet, and he wouldn’t turn tonight into merely a fuck session.
“Baby.” Sarge locked his arms beside her head, reared his hips back and rolled forward slowly, grinding down when he bottomed out. “Listened to my songs at work today, huh?”
“Yeah.” Out of breath, she dug her nails into his ass and jerked him forward, into the squeeze of her body, even though he couldn’t go any deeper. “Yeah, I listened.”
He kissed her earlobe, used his lips to tug it, his tongue to play. “Did you make it to the last track?” He took her by surprise with a swift backward jerk of his hips and a teeth-chattering drive forward. “The one called ‘Girl in Blue’?”
At that, Jasmine’s eyes cleared a little, but Sarge didn’t hold back. He’d bring her back to the brink, and he’d do it his way. But she wouldn’t walk away from tonight with the notion she’d been laid. More needed to take place here. He couldn’t hold back everything clawing at his insides, dying to break free.
“Did you wonder who that song was about?”
He hooked an arm beneath her knee and drew it up, up, until she moaned. “No…I-I didn’t think—”
Sarge cut her off with a hot, openmouthed kiss. He didn’t want to hear how oblivious she was to him. Didn’t want to know the meaning of the song had been lost. Five seconds into their tongues sliding together in a seduction dance, and Jasmine’s nails were biting into the flesh of his ass again, her hips tilting for another thrust of his cock. So he gave it to her good. He gave her another. And another, followed by the slap of his balls on her tight backside, until they were two desperate, groping pleasure slaves trying to rub the right spots that would just please end the pain.
“You feel that part of me smacking you? They’ve been full and hot all fucking day, needing to empty between these legs of yours. Does that make you hot, baby?” His pace was out of control, aggressive and unrelenting. “The way you lap-danced me like a stripper last night made me this way. I could barely think of you today without coming in my jeans again—and I thought of you all day.”
All my life.
The pressure rising, rising in him was undeniable. His breath was coming in quick, dizzying pants, his precipice all the higher for knowing whose body would receive him. Jasmine. God, he’d never prepared for the possessiveness that hooked around his neck with a permanence that didn’t scare him. Not at all. He’d known. Always know she was the ending for him.
Pouty lips parted, Jasmine’s head tossed side to side on the bed. “Oh God, Sarge. This is bad. This is—” Her pussy clenched on a broken moan. “So bad.”
Bad. What did she mean? He knew her body was satisfied, because he could still taste her pleasure. Could feel more on the way. Did she mean bad…because of who he was? Were they back to that? “What’s bad, baby?” he murmured at her throat, taunting, licking the salt from her pulse. “Getting it from a younger man? One who was off-limits to you? Bad girl.”
Her legs were wrapped around his hips like a python, hips lifting to meet his punishing rhythm, but her mouth whispered, “Stop…don’t say those things.”
“Do you mean that? Stop?” No answer, just an exposing of her throat, a biting of her lip, as she twisted beneath him. Jesus, he needed to release soon. Needed it more than food or oxygen. He was ramming his dick into Jasmine’s slick entrance—slap, slap, slap—his body hovering over the promise of relief. It was right there. Right there. But the lines between him and Jasmine were so blurry and needed to be defined, or it would cheapen them. He didn’t want her to see their being together as bad. Needed her to want him again when it was over.
Gritting his teeth on a tortured groan, Sarge fisted the base of his dick and drew it out of her heat. With the most substantial pain in his memory hanging between his thighs, he rolled Jasmine onto her stomach, slid his cock up the crevice of her bottom, then pushed home inside her pussy once again, shaking with the power of being back where he belonged.
“Is this what you need, Jasmine?” Sarge pumped, his sweaty body meeting the underside of her curved ass. Licking perspiration from his lips, he shook out his right hand and accompanied his drives with a slap of her backside. A second and third. “You don’t hand out the punishments anymore, babysitter, in your short, teasing skirts. It’s my turn now.” So close. It hurt. So close. No more waiting, the come was shooting up his cock, gripping his body with near-paralyzing bliss. Sarge fell flush with her body, his hips pistoning out of control, fucking, fucking, fucking. About to explode, he dropped his mouth into her hair. “I might be younger, but I’m not young. I’m a man and I’m fucking you blind. I’m your man. Say it.”
“You’re my man,” Jasmine sobbed, her inner walls gripping him as he shot off all his pent-up need into the sweetest spot on earth, reveling in her climaxing for a third time. It went on forever, her milking body leaching him of seed, his hoarse shouts ricocheting off the walls and ceiling. His hands were all over her, stroking her hair, her shoulders, her ass, as the pleasure spiraled through him, rearranging everything in its path. Changing him for good.
Finally spent, he slipped free of her body and fell to the bed, pulling her backward into an unbreakable hold before his worst fear happened and she tried to get away, close herself in the bathroom or somewhere he couldn’t see or touch or talk to her. He wouldn’t deal well with that. At all. Not after what they’d done. Not after she’d engraved her name on his soul. He thought the inscription had already been there, but it was so much more prominent now.
Get her out of his system? Break the curse?
He’d been a blind idiot thinking he could accomplish such a thing. Or to think he’d even want to rid himself of Jasmine’s claim on his being. No. Never. Right now, lying there exposed, the very idea scared him.
“Sarge,” Jasmine said, still sounding out of breath. “I—”
“Shh. I know. You’re going to tell me I’m not your man. Not permanently.” Striving for casual even though his gut was sinking under the weight of her cautious tone, he traced his fingers over her naked hip, up the inside of her arm. “I am tonight, though. I’m your man until further notice. And your man should hold you like you might escape. Because you not being here when he woke up maybe sounds like the worst thing in the world. Okay?”
There was a long pause wherein Sarge could practically hear her pulse skittering and racing and dipping. “Okay.”
His eyelids slid shut, tension fading from his neck. “Thank you.”
He tucked Jasmine’s head beneath his chin and dropped off, dreaming of the color gold.