A Wish Upon Jasmine

by Laura Florand

  The counter invited. He set her on it so that he could have his hands free, to run over her as much as he liked. “I like this skirt.” Some handkerchief hem, flowing and flirty. A romantic’s idea of a dress for a summer evening. His hands sank into its softness and the muscle of her thigh underneath. A man could slide and rub and play with that skirt, against her legs. He didn’t have to push it up and invade.

  She could wrap her legs around him and still have fabric spilling over her, not straightaway stripped bare.

  She touched a finger to his third button, still buttoned, rubbing it as if she could wish it away.

  “You can undo it,” he murmured, sneaking kisses over her ear, through her hair, down to her shoulder, back up to her forehead. Just anywhere a kiss could fall and not take over. I’ve seduced. I’ve taken. You take now. You take me.

  She smiled a little as she rubbed the button again. And then carefully undid it. And then the next. And then the next. There she paused, one finger sneaking in like a secret between the parted panels of his shirt, stroking his chest.

  Warmth swelled in him. Not heat, not burning, but this great, massive, erotic warmth, overcoming him like sun on snow, melting everything. “You can undo all of them.” He bent his head into her soft curls. “All of them, Jasmin.”

  She rested her forehead on his chest, between the parted panels, and took a deep breath. Savoring his scent still. Desire washed through him again, this mounting, insistent wave, like he was a sandcastle and it was going to tear him down. He stroked her back, running his fingers up and down, finding spots that made her shiver and sigh a little and take another deep breath of him.

  “I’d like it,” he whispered into her curls, “if you’d do that. Very much.” You have no idea how much.

  She stroked her hands over his chest, through the shirt, fisting the fabric against his skin. The touch sank hot through his body. He braced his knee against the cabinet door under the counter, to keep from driving into her.

  She found a button and undid it, her head still tucked into his chest. His hand stroked firm up her back, sinking into her hair at her nape. Don’t stop.

  She didn’t. Her fingertips brushed against his skin as she bared another button’s worth and then another. He breathed slow, concentrating on that breathing, hands dipping down her back to her butt for something he could hold on to. Flick, went those fingers. And flick, and flick. Little electric teases of sensation, again and again.

  He grabbed her hand as soon as the panels fell apart and pressed it against his bared ribs. She got that hint. She ran her hands over his ribs and up his chest with so much care he could have been a jasmine blossom she was afraid of crushing.

  Which was ridiculous, of course. He was the very opposite of fragile. He was the one who went into battle to protect all those fragile things behind him.

  “You can touch me”—harder, he had been going to say. A lot harder. But the softness and the care were so fascinating that the words changed even as he tried to say them—“any way you want.” I think you’ve made my body utterly yours.

  Her hands slid up over his shoulders and pushed his shirt down, and his heart pounded so hard he had to let go of her butt and grip the counter. Steady. Steady. Let her set the pace.

  He was hungry like a child in front of a bakery window to know what she would do if she led the way.

  His shirt got caught at his elbows. He pried his hand free to let her pull it off that arm, then the other. It brushed against his skin as it fell to the floor, and his breath filled his body with too much air. He felt too light and too heavy, as if he could sail across the sky and as if his gravity would suck everything about her in and crush it in his hunger.

  Gripping the counter, he buried his face in the hair spilling over her shoulder, twisting through it until he could kiss the curve of her shoulder. Kiss up her throat to her ear. Slide his lips down to her shoulders, lost in the scent and fall of her hair. She drew her hands down his back, the whole length, from his shoulders to his waist, and he forgot himself and bit her.

  She made a little sound.

  “Sorry.” He kissed the spot.

  She turned her head into the join of his neck and shoulder and bit him. Then kissed it.

  It yanked one huge thread out of his already unraveling control. “Jasmin.”

  She pressed her face against his shoulder, her arms tightening around his waist. “In New York, you only knew me as Jess,” she whispered. “Whenever you call me Jasmin, it’s like you know me whole.”

  He slipped his hand from the counter to her thigh, one greedy grip of skirt and her. “I like both. The Jess you are to your friends, and the Jasmin you are to the people who—” He turned his head into her hair again, stifling what he’d almost said. He drew a long breath and let it slowly out.

  “There aren’t any other people. You’re the only one who’s ever said my name quite that way.”

  He didn’t know what to make of that. It left him feeling exposed again, as if the way he said her name stripped him naked.

  She stripped him and stripped him and stripped him, didn’t she? Right down to bare skin, and then she just kept going. Worse, he wasn’t even sure she tried. It just happened to him, as if his clothes dissolved in her presence.

  “Jasmin.” Oh, damn, he’d said it again. With this huskiness in it, all raw. He bunched her skirt up toward her hip. His hand curved over the uppermost point of her thigh, his thumb stretching down inside it.

  Her body flexed, her arms tightening so that her breasts pressed against him as she opened her mouth against his throat.

  “Jasmin.” I love this room. But right now…I don’t want to do that tree trunk over again. I don’t want to push you back on this counter. Test scents on your skin.

  Oh, yes, I do. I want to do everything. But today…“Ask me up?”

  He’d wanted her to ask without prompting. But arousal had surged him right past that stupid barrier.

  “Yes,” she whispered against his skin.

  He almost hesitated. She’d skipped over asking him, just said yes to his own asking. But that would be a stupid thing to get hung up over, right now. He was Damien Rosier. He took what he wanted, he didn’t wait for invitations.

  Anyway…yes was close enough.

  He picked her up, wrapping her thighs around his hips, her skirt spilling over his legs and his hands as he gripped her butt. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, her eyes fascinated and wanting and a little shy, still, but…yes, they invited. She held on tight to him, as if she wanted to make sure he didn’t get away.

  Well, good. That would be absolutely shitty, if he got away.

  He focused on those inviting eyes as he carried her up the dim staircase, their pelvises rubbing maddeningly with each step. Yes. Want me. Trust me. Ask me in.

  It was a small room, with a bed in it that had been old even in the forties. Heavy furniture that had been put in here in the nineteenth century, and which, once its weight was up those stairs, no one had ever bothered to move again.

  The embroidered sheets were white against that dark wood. The scents here were quieter, simpler. A rush of lavender as he laid her down on the bed. The twine of jasmine coming through the window. A base of old wood and musty time.

  Her space. Hunger pounded thickly in him as he pressed his hands into the mattress on either side of her head. “You’re so pretty,” he said with this sense of helplessness before his own words. That was what she was, jolie, this lovely, rich, sweet, human pretty that made him want to kiss her forever, and yet the word seemed so inadequate to the power of the feeling.

  All words were inadequate, though. Even kisses were, but he tried them anyway, kiss and kiss and kiss. Slow down, part of his mind tried to tell his mounting urgency. How many times did you come yesterday? Surely only twenty-four hours later you can manage to take your time.

  All the time that filled this room, held there, like something precious.

  We can take forever.
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br />   He buried his head in her hair, breathing the lavender sheets through the soft sweet scent that lingered from her shampoo. She drew her hands down his back and up, gripping and caressing over his shoulders, his arms, all the way down to his wrists, in an exploration of his body that reminded him of that first time. He’d found his way back.

  But this time was stronger, and it was richer, and yes, it had more dirt on it, and that made it even better. Like it could survive.

  “I like dirt,” he said, his hand tightening in her hair, and she blinked up at him, confused.

  “You like it dirty?” she murmured finally, sensual teasing.

  “I—” Well, yes, also. The idea of doing dirty, kinky things to her beat at him like a full sun, heating everything, and yet… “Not right now.” Dirty might have its place and time, but it wasn’t this one.

  Precious and careful had their space and time, too.

  She wrapped her hands behind his head and twisted her hips against his, her eyes so wicked and slumberous. “Maybe a little dirty?”

  She was so damn perfect for him. He scooped his hand under her butt, pressing their hips together. “Maybe a little.” He rocked his hips against hers.

  Her hands sank into his hair, stinging as she lifted herself until her mouth was close to his ear. “You make me feel dirty,” she whispered. “I think I’d do anything with you.”

  Hell. It fused his brain. “Shh.” He covered her mouth with his hand.

  She sucked on the skin of his palm.

  Hell. He shoved away from the bed and went to the window, taking a deep breath of the jasmine that grew there. He looked back.

  Jess had sat up on the edge of the mattress, her hands clenching in the sheets on either side of her thighs. “You are gorgeous,” she said in English, stunned. “The way you look against that window—I could eat you. I don’t understand how you can be so gorgeous and here.”

  He shook his head, not sure how to tell her how beautiful she was when that wasn’t even what mattered. He knew hundreds of beautiful women. Top model, world famous beautiful. She was different. She was her.

  She made his insides shake.

  He reached through the window, grabbed three tangled vines of jasmine, and yanked them free of the mass. Then started back across the room.

  ***

  Jess’s breath shortened as two long strides brought Damien back to her. That beautiful, hard body, the way he cut through a room, as if his movements were a sword’s, but with a suppleness and muscle to them like a panther’s. She wanted to be able to sink her hands into that tight butt of his and feel the way his muscles worked as he prowled.

  She’d tousled that perfect haircut, his black hair all hers now. She’d brought that hungry glitter to his eyes. She’d gotten that shirt off his body, so that the ridged abs made her fingers itch to touch, so that her eyes could follow all those lean, hard muscles that forced the world to his will. All hers. She reached for him.

  He caught her hands, the jasmine vine pressing against one wrist as he held it. His thumbs rubbed in the center of her palms. Then he pushed her back on the bed, gently, covering her body with his, kissing her.

  God, she loved the power in his body and how much effort it took him to hold it in check. She dragged her hands down his arms, savoring his texture and trying to crack his control.

  He let her hands get all the way to his wrists, then twisted his hands and caught hers again, pulling them above her head. He tickled her arms with the jasmine blossoms, trailing the vines up the inside of her wrists. Then he twined them around her wrists. In and out, wrapping around.

  He was taking over again. He was good at that—reaching his hand down into her dark space, hauling her out of it, saving her. But this time…she wanted to be the one who stretched out her hand. She wanted to reach.

  “Look at that.” His deep voice purred dark the length of her body. “You’re caught by yourself. Jasmin.”

  “Aren’t we all? Damien.”

  He shook his head, the hypocrite, and kissed down her forearms, his five o’clock shadow brushing against that sensitive skin. She shivered. His tongue teased at the inner bend of her elbow, and her arms stretched, jasmine-bound, to let him reach still more of her skin. He kissed and teased with tongue and teeth, brought his callused thumbs down her arms and drew patterns with his thumbnails.

  “Damien.” He dissolved her.

  “Jasmin.” He kissed over the curve of her biceps, so much subtler than the curve of his.

  “Damien Rosier,” she said. That name she hadn’t known the first time. But now she thought, What an incredible whole his past and his loyalty to his family make out of him.

  “Jasmin Bianchi.” He kissed her lips, his curved. “Unspoiled. Not a brat.”

  She shook her head in reproach at the reference, but the movement brushed their lips together, and he slipped between hers, tongue and taking. She lifted her bound hands—carefully, so as not to lose the vine twining green and white around her wrists—to his chest. “Be careful what you wish for,” she whispered.

  “From me?” He held her eyes with beautiful gray-green. “Wish for anything you want.”

  You. “This. I wish for this.”

  A flicker of temper in his eyes.

  She rubbed the jasmine flowers around her wrists against his chest. “I know you want me to wish for the moon and the stars, Damien. But it’s the same to me. You always were like wishing for a star.”

  His body jerked. “Oh, hell,” he muttered. “Jess.” He kissed her, fierce and tender.

  Damn, she wanted to touch him. Just touch him all over, not be shy, not give him the lead, just take. Take everything she wanted from him and trust that she could get it. She was a perfumer, damn it. At the very least, she knew how to capture the essence of something ephemeral and fragile and treasure it in a bottle.

  She pushed at his shoulders, her jasmine manacles unraveling. The force in her hands startled him. That mobile black eyebrow went up a little as he rolled slowly back, searching her face. “You know what?” She sat astride him, lifting up her hands. “I don’t think I like being caught by my own self.”

  She shook the jasmine free, and it fell on his chest. She caught it and drew it across his skin, tickling him with the small glossy leaves and silky flowers. “Maybe you can get caught by me instead.” She grabbed his wrists.

  Both his eyebrows were up now, but he let her take those strong wrists she couldn’t possibly move without his yielding. He let her bring them together on his chest and twine the vines around them, weaving in and out, tucking in the ends to try to get the vine to hold.

  Propped up a little on her headboard, he gazed down at his wrists, held captive by a garland of white flowers. He didn’t resist the slightest bit. His lashes stayed lowered, eyes impossible to read, but his mouth definitely curved. “Volontiers,” he murmured.

  Willingly. But in French, it sounded so sexy that her thighs tightened on him.

  That curve of his mouth deepened. He nestled his body lower on the bed, so that the headboard no longer propped him up, and tucked his jasmine-bound hands above his head. And lifted his hips against hers, deliberately, pressing her up off the bed.

  Damn, she wanted to get his pants off and feel his unabashed arousal more unabashedly still.

  Well, she was on top, wasn’t she? He was bound by her. So she reached for the button of his jeans, and his breath sucked in.

  Ooh, nice little space there under his waistband when his stomach went concave. She bypassed the button and teased her fingers down into it, grazing as far as she could. The muscles on his arms corded, his fingers finding the edge of her pillow and gripping it hard.

  “Oh, look,” she murmured gleefully. “I can be mean to you, too.”

  “If I let you.” Deep warning, even as his hips pressed up again.

  She met his eyes limpidly. “I wish you would.”

  His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Jasmin.”

  “Well…you wanted som
ething hard to do, didn’t you, Damien?” She walked her fingers up his chest and then back down, toying around his navel. “Since just wishing for your hugs and kisses didn’t seem like enough?”

  “I’m not seven anymore,” he said between his teeth.

  She laughed and twisted her hips against his, enjoying the view of that very adult male body straining under hers. “Now how did I figure that out?”

  “Can I take back what I said about you not being a brat?”

  “It depends.” She stroked her fingers down again, teasing that fine trail of dark hair down under the waist of his jeans. “Are you going to spoil me?”

  “How about I spoil you for any other man?” He thrust his hips again. “How about that?”

  “Too easy.” She made a face. “You’ve already done that. I thought you wanted a challenge.”

  His body stilled, his gaze locking with hers, and she realized what she had just said.

  Damn honesty and daring. Her cheeks flushed under that gaze. He brought his bound hands to her hair and caught a handful of locks, pulling her head down with them until he could kiss her. He held her by her hair for his kiss, tightening his hold, kissing her and kissing her, hard, thrusting his tongue into her mouth as if he was on top and taking over her.

  “Cheater,” she managed when she could finally get herself to break free. She didn’t break far, her head collapsing on his chest as she breathed shakily.

  He brought his bound hands behind her head, capturing her. “Show me your weaknesses, and I’ll exploit every one.” He made it sound like the most delicious promise, all wrapped up in a warning.

  “Yeah?” She braced herself up again, kneading her fingers into his shoulders. “Are you going to take me over?” A rub of her hips against his. “Buy me up?”

  “Yes.” He said it as matter-of-factly as he’d once taken over her company in fact. Done deal. Mine.

  “This is my space,” she said defiantly, just because there was something erotic about arguing, while they held each other captive.

  He gave a purring, villain’s laugh. “Go ahead, Jasmin. Make this little space for yourself here. I like that. Because remember, the whole town that wraps around it is all mine.”