Strong Enough(89)

“Muse, I—”

“Make love to me, Jasper. Please.” I move his hand down my body. I guide it between my legs. The thought that someone else might’ve forced himself on me only makes me want Jasper that much more. The touch of the man I want. The touch of the man I love. The touch of the man I think loves me.

He holds perfectly still for a few seconds until I press one of my fingers onto his and guide it between my folds. Tentatively, he rubs me, his eyes never leaving mine. Long ovals, fluid, teasing, until my stomach tightens with a different kind of emotion.

Jasper lengthens his stroke until he is moving ever closer to my opening. When he reaches it, he eases a single finger inside. Sweetly, tenderly.

Desire gushes through me and I feel my muscles clamp around his digit. Our eyes are still glued together. Inseparable. Desperate. Jasper brings his thumb into play, massaging me with it as his finger gently explores me from the inside. He increases his rhythm just enough to take me up to the next notch. I press the back of his hand with my own, a silent plea for more.

Jasper wets his lips and slides another finger into me, thrusting deeper, yet still only slowly forcing me higher and higher. My breath is coming faster. My hips are moving against his hand. Jasper’s eyes are darkening and the world around me is fading.

Then, with a growl that thrills me and movements so fast they surprise me, Jasper lifts me to my feet to stand in the tub in front of him. He leans forward and buries his tongue between my legs, like he couldn’t wait another minute to taste me. A starving man offered a feast, and he accepted.

The heat of it, hotter than the bath water. The wetness of it, wetter than the bath water. I fist my fingers in his hair and hold him to me. He curls his arms around the backs of my thighs and nudges my legs apart before pulling one up onto his shoulder, opening me to him so that I am at his wonderful mercy.

Like a man possessed, Jasper devours me. His hunger is so voracious, it sizzles in the air around us. I’ve never been so wanted. And I’ve never wanted so much.

With swirls and licks and thrusts of his tongue, Jasper pulls me apart at the seams. My straining body convulses and my locked knee buckles. But I don’t fall. Jasper supports me with his strong arms and his relentless tongue.

When I can neither stand nor speak, Jasper rises to scoop me into his arms and carry me purposefully into the next room. In one smooth motion, he turns me toward him and sits on the end of the bed. Just as I’m noticing that all the sheets are in a pile on the floor, I hear the zip of a zipper and then I’m being impaled on him.

My body responds as if we weren’t separated all this time. After a moment’s adjustment to his gasp-inducing size, I stretch around him and take him into the very center of me. All the way in.

I throw back my head, air lost in my lungs, speech lost on my tongue, and I just feel. My arms are draped around Jasper’s shoulders, nowhere near touching in the back, and I feel him tremble again. When I open my eyes to look at him, his hot whiskey gaze is fixed on me.

The longer we watch each other, the more pronounced his tremor becomes. My heart and mind are intent on him, but my body is thinking more about where he’s seated within me than anything else that’s happening.

“Jasper?” I ask, my voice coarse and rough, even to my own ears.

He closes his eyes and I see his jaw clench. “Just give me a second.”

“Is something wrong?”

At this, he opens back up and looks at me. “You’re perfect. I just want to enjoy this. Just . . . this.”

“Does that mean you’re not already?”

“No. I just don’t want to go too fast and risk—”

He stops abruptly, provoking my next question.

“Risk what?”

A fine bead of sweat is breaking out on his brow.

The pause is long before he answers. “Risk hurting you.”

I take his face in my hands, my eyes boring into his. “You won’t hurt me. You never have. I want all that you have to give, Jasper. Rough or gentle, sweet or dirty. I love it all.”

I sit up slightly and then ease back down onto him. Jasper grabs my hips to still me, air hissing through his teeth. “Muse, I’m warning you . . .”

I smile down at him, pushing at his shoulders so that he’ll lie back. Reluctantly, he does. I lean over him, letting him slip nearly all the way out of me. “Consider me warned,” I say just before I press my mouth to his and move back onto him.

There is another pause, this one shorter, just before one big hand cups the back of my head to crush our lips together and the other one splays at the top of my butt to hold our bodies tight while he grinds his hips up into mine.