He looked away from the smile because he was trying to control himself. But the alternative view was the plump curve of her pussy, exposed by her wide stance and right in line with his face. Fuck.
His hands slid from her cheeks to her lush folds. He spread them wider, drank in the ragged moan she released and the way her hips shifted. Her inner thighs were still damp and gleaming from her orgasm. He wanted to give her another. He wanted to taste her, straight from the source, to lap her up like she was the fountain of fucking immortality, but—
Control.
He wrapped a tight fist around the base of his cock and winced. “Up. I haven’t finished undressing you.”
“Oh, is that what we’re doing?” Her voice was teasing. “I thought you were just going to stay there and stare at my—”
He stood and dragged her up with a growl that was half-laughter. Her back hit his chest, and he wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed her shoulder. “Quiet, brat.”
“I like this,” she said, out of nowhere. “I like you.” Her voice faded on the last word, as if she was unsure, or surprised by what had come out of her mouth. He was, too. He knew Jasmine. He wouldn’t expect her to say something like that at the best of times. Right now, when they were in the middle of complicating everything—no, it doesn’t have to be complicated—when they were traversing relatively new territory… Rahul felt like he’d witnessed a minor fucking miracle.
But if he reacted that way, she’d freak out. So he pressed a kiss to her neck and murmured against the heated silk of her skin, “Of course you do. Everyone likes me.”
She snorted. “Shut up.” And then when he kissed her throat again, open-mouthed with the threat of teeth, right over her pulse, she moaned.
God, he loved making her moan.
Rahul reached between them to undo her bra, and she exhaled as the clasp came free. He eased the straps down her arms, and then his hands rose to cover her tits. Her nipples tightened against the centre of his palms, and somehow just that tiny sensation made his cock jump.
She laughed softly, arching back against him. “Just fuck me.”
“I’m taking my time.”
“Would it help if we agreed to do this again? Multiple times?” She turned to look at him, and her gaze was as heavy as her tone was light. There was a breath between their lips, a whisper of space that shouldn’t have even mattered, but felt like a canyon.
He crossed it, his brow bumping hers, his lips brushing hers, everything about him hungry for her. It was beginning to dawn on him that this absolutely would not be enough, so yes, her words helped.
Still, he whispered, “I already knew we’d do this again, because you can’t resist me.” He spoke right against her lips. Into her mouth. Felt her smile in response.
“I had no idea you could be this cocky.”
“That’s what happens when all the blood my brain needs travels elsewhere.”
“Nice to know I’m responsible for loosening you up.” She angled her head slightly, turned the almost-kiss into something deeper, and swept him under. She was everything. She was a hurricane.
He turned her in his arms, and the feel of her body against his was something like euphoria. His hands returned, inevitably, to her hair, sinking into the thick curls, and he used his weight to push her slowly back until she sank onto the bed. He followed, kneeling on the mattress with her soft body beneath him.
She lay back and kissed him harder, deeper, her nails digging into his shoulders and her hips arching into his cock. Heat rushed up his spine as he felt her come slowly undone beneath him, because of him—but he couldn’t think like that. Thinking like that was one of the many, many things that would end up getting him hurt.
Still, when he pushed her up the bed, and she broke the kiss, and smiled at him with those fucking eyes and said, “Condom, love?” it was hard to maintain his control. His distance. Maybe he was foolish to try.
How could he separate loving Jas from loving her body—Jas, who was her body more than anyone he’d ever met, who was present in every sense of the word, who’d had her soul in her eyes when she’d come for him?
Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he was doomed to suffer. Everything came at a price.
He rose up for a moment and didn’t miss the way her gaze slid down his abdomen, the way it settled on his erection. When he found the condom lying bright against his sheets, and tore it open and rolled it on, she bit her lip. He liked that. He wanted to bite it for her.
Instead, he lay over her again, and savoured the way she spread her thighs for him. Her legs rose up to wrap around his hips and she reached between their bodies and grasped his cock.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Looking at her and feeling her all at once might be the definition of too much.
“You remember last time?” She asked, voice low.
He choked out a laugh. “You ask me that like I could ever forget.”
Her answering chuckle was soft. She shifted slightly, guiding his cock until he could feel the heat of her, the promise of perfection hovering so fucking close. Her hand was warm and firm, but he wanted more, and he knew she’d give it to him.
“I wonder, sometimes,” she said, “if you ever think about it.”
His eyes opened. “You can’t be serious.”
“What? You’re the one who didn’t want to keep doing it.”
That’s what she thought? That he hadn’t wanted more?
He huffed out a breath. “For such a smart woman, you can be unbelievably obtuse.”
As if in response, she dug her heel into his thigh. Urged him forward. He’d like to deny her, just to hear her beg for it, but frankly, he wasn’t physically capable. He felt like he might die if he didn’t fuck her right now. Immediately. This second.
She must have felt the same, because when he sank into her, just a little, just an inch, she whimpered. Oh, he wanted more of that. Slowly, Rahul eased forward, felt her stretch to accommodate him, felt the delicious friction and impossible glide all at once. As searing pleasure tore through him, his hands cupped her cheeks. Her gaze met his, holding him together when he felt like he might unravel. Anchoring him. Always.
And holy shit, this was just as good as he remembered—only better, because she was so much more Jasmine, and he’d wanted her so badly and for so fucking long and never ever expected to have her.
“More,” she gasped, her hips jerking. He felt her, hot and wet, tightening and releasing around his cock. Gentle and rapid as a butterfly’s wings.
He kissed her, tracing his tongue over hers. “Say please.”
She sucked his lip into her mouth, and then she bit. “No.”
So Rahul pulled out. Not all the way, not completely. But he pulled out, and then he thrust back in part-way. She shifted her hips to meet him. He repeated the motion, giving her sharp, shallow strokes, never filling her completely, and it was the purest pleasure and the harshest pain he’d ever felt, because God it was so fucking good but it wasn’t everything—
At least it wasn’t until she choked out, her voice raw, “Fuck. Please. Rahul, please.”
Yeah. That was good. Good in the sort of complete and deep and satisfying way he rarely felt. He moved a hand to her hip, his fingers sinking into the soft flesh. Then he filled her to the hilt in one stroke, and cried out, the sound ragged. He saw stars for a moment before they faded to reveal Jasmine’s face, her eyes screwed shut, her brows furrowed, her lips parted. He kissed her and she clung to him, her cunt like a fist around his cock.
“So,” she panted, as his lips moved from her mouth to her jaw. “What do you think? Better than last time?”
Ah. That reminded him. He buried his hands in her hair again and enjoyed it, enjoyed the fact that he could. Then he tugged until her head tilted to the side, the line of her throat exposed to him. “That was then. This is now.”
Her laugh turned into a gasp as he kissed her neck, worshipped the tender spot just above the curve of her shoulder. “Oh, fuck, Rahul…�
��
“Jas.” He sighed. Then he thrust into her again, and savoured the way she tightened around him, the way her lashes fluttered at the feel of him. “It is better than last time,” he admitted. “This time I get to kiss you. This time you say my name.”
“I didn’t know if you’d want to kiss me,” she said. “I didn’t know you then.”
He pressed an achingly soft kiss to her lips. “You know me now.” You want me now. The thought was too much. He rose up and pushed her legs wider, opened her further, fucked her deeper. His hands clutched her hips, holding her in place as he thrust hard and fast, her rising cries urging him on. He felt sweat bead at his brow, felt his ability for reasonable speech drain away at the sight of her body beneath him, her slight breasts and round belly shaking with every thrust.
And her face. Her fucking face. Her full lips were parted as if ready to scream, her brows furrowed fiercely, her eyes burning into him. He watched as she rubbed her own clit, her hand moving just above the place where his cock stretched her open. Fuck, he loved the sight of that. And loved the way her frown deepened as she drew closer to orgasm, as she clenched around him.
He slammed into her with every year, every month, every fucking day of pent-up desire he had. That was a lot. With every thrust, he thought, Mine, and then he realised that he was saying it aloud, growling like an animal. “Mine. Mine. Jasmine—”
“Fuck,” she gasped. “I need you.”
His body sank over hers again because he didn’t know what that meant, but he knew he needed to kiss her. Desperately. His thrusts sank deeper as his mouth explored hers in a way he’d never dreamt of doing, a way that spoke of the possessiveness burning through his bloodstream. When she raked her fingers through his hair he groaned, pleasure shooting down his spine.
He slid a hand between their bodies and stroked the folds of her pussy, swollen and slick and spread open for his cock. She moaned low in her throat and he felt a shiver roll through her. When his fingers found the plump bud of her clit, she cried out, “Oh my God, please.”
Her hands tightened in his hair and the sensation went straight to his cock. As if it wasn’t going through enough already, fucking the sweetest cunt in the world, coping with the feel of her. He slid his fingers, covered in her wetness, over the tight bundle of nerves—gently, so gently even as he pounded into her. He forced himself to concentrate, to keep steady, to work her as she writhed and moaned until finally, finally—
She didn’t scream when she came; she gasped out his name as if it were air, and moaned helplessly, and shifted her hips beneath him. It was so fucking sexy, he stopped trying to hold off the inevitable and let himself come too. Something inside him came apart in the best way possible, and he groaned as relief pulsed through him. When he slumped over her, he realised that every inch of the tension he’d been carrying had finally fucked off. That was an orgasm. A fucking good one, one that left him drained and breathless and almost dizzy.
She relaxed her grip on his hair, combing through the curls lazily. He let the action soothe him. He felt weightless, better than he ever had in his life. If the world ended right that second, he wouldn’t be surprised; something so perfect had to be followed by something as terrible. Otherwise reality would be out of balance.
Only, nothing terrible came. When he finally raised his head to look at her, she wore the sort of sleepy smile that reflected everything he felt in that moment.
Well; maybe not everything. But the pleasure, and the comfort. Definitely that.
“Rahul,” she murmured.
“Yeah?”
She trailed her fingers from his hair to his neck, tracing the indent of his spine. “We should’ve done that before.”
13
Now
Jas leant back in her seat and muttered, “You vile motherfucker.”
“What was that, darling?”
She turned from the damning words on her computer screen to find Asmita looking over from the next desk, brows raised. Since the shared office was fully occupied, Jasmine should probably try to sound professional right now. But she’d never been great at professional. The truth was more her thing.
So she didn’t hide her fury as she stabbed a finger at the computer screen. “Look at this shit. It’s from CPP Housing.”
Asmita sighed. “I hope you’re not getting worked up over a group of known arseholes behaving like…” She widened her eyes in mock surprise. “Arseholes!”
Jasmine snorted. There was little humour in the sound. Lowering her voice to a self-conscious hiss, she turned the monitor towards Asmita’s desk and said, “Look at this!”
Rolling her eyes, Asmita stood and came over. Her long, glossy hair hung between them like a curtain as she studied the email. Jasmine tried to keep her outrage under control—she wasn’t particularly friendly with the other three women in the office, and she didn’t want to disturb them, either—but it was frankly impossible. Within seconds, she was quoting the damn email as if Asmita wasn’t reading it herself.
“Dear Ms. Allen,” Jasmine recited, her tone low and biting. “We regret to inform you that, under our records, there is no evidence of the claimed agreement between one Mrs. Pentergast—they couldn’t even spell her fucking name right!—and our representative. In light of this fact, we see no grounds whatsoever—no grounds whatsoever, the cheeky sods—to continue this line of investigation, and have thus closed the case.” She huffed. “Closed the case. Who the fuck do they think they are? Like it’s some TV court scene.”
Asmita straightened, her expression grim. “They’re trying to bluster their way out of trouble.”
“They’re amoral pieces of shit. They’re throwing Mrs. Prendergast and her kids onto the street.”
“We got the Prendergasts emergency housing,” Asmita reminded her.
“Yes, but they don’t know that!” Jasmine snapped. “Good Lord! Who the fuck raises these people? How do they get like this? We should—we should sue the shit out of their arses, just to teach them a lesson.”
“No,” Asmita said calmly. “We should exert just enough pressure to force them to compensate Mrs. Prendergast for the breach of contract, because court costs are not in the budget.”
Jasmine took a deep breath. “Yes. Obviously. You’re quite right.”
“Of course I’m right. Are you okay?”
Now, there was a question. “I’m fine. Just… got a bit of a headache.” Also, I slept with my best friend last night, several times, and again this morning, and I’m not quite sure what that means, but I liked it, and everything about my life feels suddenly strange and…
She’d stick to the headache story.
“Oh, dear,” Asmita murmured. “Would you like some codeine, darling?”
“No,” Jasmine sighed. “I’ve decided to stop using other people’s prescription drugs.”
“How… unusually sensible of you.”
Jasmine grunted in reply.
“Anyway,” Asmita said airily. “Speaking of Rahul—“
“Which we absolutely were not.”
“Fine.” Asmita flicked her hair irritably, like a horse, before clarifying. “Speaking of housing, and therefore your flat, and therefore your temporary accommodation, and therefore your flatmate-slash-landlord Rahul—”
“Don’t you have work to do?”
“Don’t be boring, darling. I’m trying to cheer you up. In fact, I was wondering if the two of you might like to come for a drink with Pinal and I?”
Jasmine stiffened. The two of you? Did Asmita know what they’d done last night? Was her guilt written all over her face? Her mouth felt dry, and the headache she’d invented suddenly materialised with a vicious thump at her temple. Which really served her right for telling the lie.
Eyes narrowed, suspicion dripping from her words, she said, “Why would you ask that?”
Asmita arched a brow. “Why would I ask you to come for a drink?”
“Why would you ask me and Rahul to come for a drink? We’r
e not a couple, you know. I’m not his keeper. We’re not a crime-fighting duo. We’re not a pair. You can’t stick our names together like Jasmine-and-Rahul—”
“Alright!” Asmita raised her hands with an expression of mild alarm. “Are you okay? You’re being incredibly weird right now.”
Fuck. She was, wasn’t she? Jasmine gnawed at her lower lip, then realised that probably seemed weird, too. She may have… overreacted slightly to Asmita’s wording there. Because usually, people did stick Jasmine and Rahul together, and she didn’t mind, since they were best friends.
Only now they were… what? She had no idea. Orgasm buddies? Live-in sex companions? She raised a hand to rub her aching temple. “Sorry,” she muttered. And then, as if it bore repeating: “Headache.”
“Right,” Asmita murmured skeptically. “Well, let me know. Unless all this weirdness is because, I don’t know… Rahul tripped over a rogue scented candle somewhere in the house, and hit his head and died, and you panicked because it was your candle, so you chopped him into tiny pieces and are currently storing him in his own freezer. In that case, feel free to reject the invitation summarily.”
Jasmine raised her brows. She noticed Pam, who worked on two desks over, squinting at Asmita with a combination of alarm, disbelief and vague disgust on her face.
Asmita swished her glossy hair over one shoulder and widened her eyes innocently. “What?”
Jasmine’s headache disappeared before the end of the day. Her foul mood wasn’t nearly as accommodating.
By the time Rahul came home that evening, she’d worked herself into a state of general unhappiness that felt heavy and cold and sodden, like her own personal storm cloud.
She sat and listened to the sound of his key in the door, of him kicking off his shoes. He stepped into the living room with a ready smile, but as soon as he laid eyes on her, everything about him turned still.
She huffed and sank deeper into the sofa cushions.
Wanna Bet?: An Interracial Romance Page 13
