by Tessa Bailey
If you don’t dream big, what’s the point of dreaming at all? She’d said those exact words countless times. Written them in yearbooks…and yeah, she’d even said them to Sarge. The problem with dreaming, though, was that when it came time to do? That’s when shit got real. That’s when rejection letters—or oftentimes no response at all—started popping the little dream balloons one by one, until the ground at her feet was littered with useless scraps of rubber. Jasmine could still hear the dial tone in her ear, feel her last hope slip away. Not marketable. Not current enough. Not now.
When it had come time to face facts, that her window of opportunity had closed and it was time to start behaving like an adult, Jasmine had bitten the bullet and applied for a position at the factory, much to the quiet disappointment of everyone with whom she’d attended high school. That first day on the assembly line had been a tough pill to swallow. But she’d put her head down, gotten to work…and hadn’t lifted it since.
The warning bell pealed, telling workers that lunchtime was ending in ten minutes. Realizing she hadn’t even taken a bite of her sandwich, Jasmine made a grab for it, but was distracted when her cell phone rang.
Los Angeles area code? It had to be Sarge. And oh Lord, some very important lady muscles went tight at the prospect of hearing that voice in her ear, right where it had been this morning. With a blown-out breath, she answered. “Hi.”
“Hey, Jas.” Instead of the gruff, seductive tone she’d been expecting, he sounded out of breath. Stressed. “You busy?”
“I’m on my break.” She set the sandwich back down. “Is everything okay?”
He hummed a noncommittal sound, but she could hear booted footsteps moving in the background. “Depends on your definition of okay, I guess.”
“I’m going to need you to stop being vague.”
His gust of rich laughter hit her ear, making her shiver. “Fair enough. I, uh…” Was he running? “I noticed you didn’t have any Christmas decorations up in the apartment, so I stopped on my way back from the city, thinking I’d grab some, right?” More pounding footsteps. “But it turns out someone filmed that little scuffle with your date at the Third Shift last night and it’s all over the Web. I’ve got a few photographers giving me a workout, trying to get a statement. Are you eating lunch?”
During the course of Sarge’s explanation, Jasmine had stood up, staring in the direction of Manhattan as if she could pinpoint his location. “You’re running away from paparazzi…and asking me about lunch?”
“You left without eating breakfast and I feel responsible.”
A hot flutter wound through Jasmine’s middle, a secret smile curling her lips. “Are you in need of some assistance, Naughty Prince?”
His growl crawled down the line. “You been looking me up, baby?”
Good God. How could be make her stomach dip with a single gruff question? “I’m not that far out of the loop,” Jasmine murmured. In a small town like Hook, people tended to talk about their homegrown hero. She’d always laughed it off, remembering the young man he’d been, not equating him with the rock god everyone described him as. Now everything about him was coming through a fresh perspective. “And you didn’t answer my question.”
When he spoke, his voice echoed, as if he’d entered a small space. “Listen, I don’t think I can get back on the same train.” His heavy sigh tugged something inside her chest. “If you can get out of work, I’m in a Dunkin’ Donuts bathroom just out of Newark.”
“You’re not serious.”
“There’s Christmas decorations in it for you,” he coaxed.
That gave her pause. He was only supposed to spend one night. Now he wanted to decorate with her? Bad idea. Bad. On cue, the end-of-lunch bell gave a deafening peal, forcing her to make a call. “I’ll tell the floor manager I’m feeling sick,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Funny.”
Chapter Six
All right, so being rescued from a Dunkin’ Donuts bathroom wasn’t Sarge’s finest moment. But on the bright side, he was back inside Jasmine’s apartment, his possessions were still in the guest room, and he could smell her shampoo through the bathroom door. That’s right. Jasmine was taking a shower, mere yards from where he stood untangling a box of Christmas lights. Keeping his hands occupied was a necessity, because if she stayed in the bathroom much longer with the sound of water pelting the tub after rolling off her body, he might have to join her.
After she’d called him from outside the doughnut shop, pushing open the passenger-side door and peeling out of the parking lot the second he dived in, their ride back to Hook had been somewhat tense. From the passenger seat, he’d watched Jasmine brush at grease stains on her coveralls, tugging at her collar, and shifting uncomfortably. If he didn’t know Jasmine, he would have thought she was…embarrassed. And not just because the last time they’d been together, he’d had his hand down her pants. No sooner had they walked into the apartment than she was grabbing a change of clothes and shutting herself in the bathroom.
When Jasmine finally emerged, the scent that escaped with her from the bathroom produced a low groan from his throat. She’d thrown on red terry cloth shorts and a tight-fitting white tank top, and the lingering shower steam had molded the material to her tits. Sarge’s mouth was devoid of moisture in seconds. Would tonight be the night he worked her out of his conscious? Impossible to tell. She seemed to have thrown up an even bigger wall between them since that morning, but he found himself reluctant to tear it down…with sex. There was a vulnerability to Jasmine now that he would have never equated with her in the past. And there was an answering discomfort in his chest as a result.
Jasmine narrowed her gaze at his feet. Or more accurately, the spindly little pine tree he’d dug up from the median across the street while she’d been in the shower. “What is that?”
“It’s your Christmas tree.” He considered the greenery, spotting what looked like chewed gum stuck to the bark. “All right, so it’s more of a Christmas branch, but I was improvising.”
She tapped the hairbrush she held against her thigh. “I didn’t…you don’t need to do any of this.”
“Ah, come on.” He picked up the lights again, plugging them into an outlet to make sure they worked. A stall tactic while he figured out how to make her stop looking so defensive. “I haven’t decorated for Christmas in years. Humor me?”
All right, sweet. That appeared to work. Jasmine nodded, running the brush through her hair…and making it damn difficult to keep from staring. The red material of her shorts hugged the flesh where he’d buried his fingers only that morning. He needed them there again, but some mysterious intuition told him not to push. Not yet. Sarge laid the lights down on the couch and reached for the Christmas branch, but paused when singing infiltrated the quiet apartment, soft at first, then louder. Voices from outside lifted in harmony together in a familiar Christmas carol that brought a smile to his face.
“The church still sends the choir around, huh?” After a moment, Jasmine nodded. “Let’s go out and join them,” he said on impulse, holding out a hand for her to take.
“What? No. I can’t.” She appeared frozen to the spot. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”
There was actual apprehension in her voice, in her tense demeanor, and it made his hand drop. “I haven’t heard you sing once since I got back, Jasmine. I remember when you couldn’t go five minutes.”
“I don’t remember that,” said too quickly.
Sarge moved in her direction. “Yes, you do.”
“You’ve called me a liar twice today,” she said, warding him off with a hand.
“And I was right both times.” He walked right into her touch. “If you talk to me about it, I’ll understand.”
Her laughter was abrupt and didn’t disguise the sadness. “Crowds of people buying tickets to watch you sing, major labels offering you deals…the same labels that closed their door in my face. You couldn’t understand, Sarge.”
/> Ouch. “No, but I understand rejection. And there are days I don’t want to sing, either, Jasmine. A lot of them.” He circled her wrist and pulled her close, willing her to look up at him, which she finally did. “Come on, baby. Let’s go show them how it’s done.”
Sarge held his breath as—for just a split second—she looked to be considering whether to go outside, chewing her lip in a distracting way. He was watching her so closely, he saw fear. Fear that flickered into something else. Intention. Maybe a hint of self-preservation, too. It should have prepared him for what came next, but nothing could have. Nothing ever would. Jasmine sidled close, letting her curves brush over him…and then she hit him with a heavy-lidded look that called to mind sweaty, middle-of-the-night sex. She picked up his hand and slid it beneath her tank top, stopping just beneath her tits, then guiding it over one pointed mound oh so slowly. “I’d rather stay inside where it’s warm, wouldn’t you?”
He was caught midgroan when she nudged him backward. The backs of his legs hit the couch and he went down onto the cushions, Jasmine wasting no time straddling his lap. Jesus. This is what he’d wanted. A way out of his obsession. A way to break the curse. But even as lust raced through him, common sense reared its head. Common sense and the fact that he cared about her, no matter the torture she’d put him through. It’s a tactic. Don’t go down without a fight. “I know you’re just trying to distract me.” Sarge tried to avoid looking at the gorgeous mouth hovering so close. Lost the battle. “Ahhh. You’d really seduce me just to avoid singing? How bad is it, Jas?”
“Stop.” Jasmine slid her fingers into his hair, brought their mouths against each other. “Please, stop?”
It was like being under hypnosis. Not just his mind, but his body. The woman who ruled both had said please and stolen his willpower. His dick swelled, enthusiastic to make contact with the entrance to her body, even through their clothes. His hands itched to throw her down on the couch and punish her for ruining him. For everything. For everyone. But he could feel the hurt inside her, and digging it up at the root needed to take precedent. “Talk to me, baby. Where did your voice go?”
“No one wants to hear it,” she breathed against his mouth.
“I do.” Kissing her mouth was a temptation he couldn’t turn down, but he pulled back after only one wet meshing of lips. God, her taste. “I can hear you in my head right now. I’ve never forgotten—”
Jasmine shot forward and captured his mouth, the kiss desperate. Sarge growled when their tongues met, testosterone gripping him below the belt. There was a warning in the back of his mind, reminding him Jasmine was only avoiding a conversation, but his body felt only the pull of need radiating from her. Physical need. It called to his own and swamped his good intentions. “Tell me now where you want this to go,” he rasped, drawing on her bottom lip. “If we’re going to fuck, I need to blow off some steam first. You’ve had my cock hard since this morning, and I’m already right on the edge.”
Her fingers flexed on his shoulders, digging into muscle. “I don’t…I’m not ready to go there yet.” She spread her knees wider on the couch, rubbing herself against his bulge with a whimper. “But w-we shouldn’t be doing this, Sar—”
Sarge interrupted her with an openmouthed kiss, an aggressive one that bent her backward over his thighs. “Got it, baby. No fucking.” He hooked his fingers under the hem of her tank top. “You going to let me see your tits, though, Jas? Going to let me have a suck of those tips?” Through the material of her tank, he licked over one pointed peak. “If you let me take this tank top off, I can fuck you without taking out my cock.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when Jasmine whipped the white material over her head, tossing it beside them on the couch. Sarge almost went off in his jeans. Jesus. Jesus. His youth had been filled with prayers that those breasts would spill out of her bathing suit top, but seeing them up close and personal blew his fantasy to hell. “Gorgeous,” he managed. “They’re…you are gorgeous.”
Why did she look surprised? As if no one had told her in a while. “Show me.”
Sarge gripped Jasmine’s ass and yanked her close, swallowing a groan at the new positioning of his cock, wedged between her pussy and his stomach. Hunger to taste had him salivating, licking his lips as he leaned in to draw on her nipples. When Sarge finally got there, finally suctioned his lips around one straining, rose-tinted bud, the hunger turned desperate. The unfulfilled needs of his past packed themselves into a right hook, knocking out present Sarge, leaving only the starved, frustrated young man he’d been those years ago. He wasn’t gentle about drawing Jasmine close, so close she was grinding down on his hard dick just by breathing. His mouth slipped from one breast to the other, his parted lips dragging through the valley between with panting breaths. “Kept them from me. You kept them from me. I just wanted to see…needed to see…”
Jasmine’s fingers shook as they transferred from his shoulders to his hair, fingernails raking along his scalp. His grip on her ass gained strength, rocking his body like a ship in a storm, jerking her up and down on his erection. Although “erection” was a weak word for his entire body hovering on the brink of goddamn insanity. Jasmine. He was sucking Jasmine’s tits and his body could barely stand the inferno he’d been plunged into.
“Sarge. Please, I…oh God.” Her thighs strained from their spread position on his lap, inched a touch wider. “If y-you keep doing that, I’m going to—”
“Good.” He all but roared the word against her shiny nipple and felt a shiver pass through her undulating body. “Ride me, use me, come on me. God knows I’ve used the thought of you to come for a fucking decade.”
Sarge grated the last word with his mouth around her nipple, then hollowed his cheeks getting that sweet peak sucked good and hard. Somewhere in the back of his head, he knew his hold on her ass would leave bruises, but stopping the torment of Jasmine dry-humping him through their clothes would be far worse torture. When she climaxed, Jasmine shook like a leaf, breathy, fragmented words bursting free on gusts of breath. “Oh God…you’re…oh it’s…so good.”
Sarge watched her in awe while lapping at her nipples. One, then the other. “Want another, baby?”
Really, he was in no position to be offering her a second orgasm. The head of his cock was wet with precome, probably visible against the front of his pants. Tremors were rocking through his thighs and stomach with the urge to fuck. To pin her down, plow himself deep, and pump like a nasty dog. This had started as a way to take the fear out of her eyes, hadn’t it? Jesus. He could barely think through the desire eating him alive. Still, if she needed more, he would find a way to hold back.
Sarge leaned in to kiss her mouth, a long, groaning kiss as his hand landed on her backside with a light slap. “You need more? Go get it, Jas. Let’s see how wet we can get that little red strip of shorts guarding your pussy.”
“No,” Jasmine gasped, pushing him back against the couch, her hips beginning a slow bucking motion, like a dancer in a music video. “You already gave me more. This morning…and now. But you haven’t—”
“You’re not making me come in my jeans, Jasmine.” He almost choked on the male pride that clouded up his throat. The obnoxious buzz of embarrassment left over from his teenage years. “Not now. Not as a man.”
“Yes.” Determination flared in Jasmine’s expression, and then there was nothing but the repeated stroking friction from the base of his cock up…back down…
“Stop,” he groaned, his hands contradicting the command by sliding down the back of her shorts to encounter the bare flesh of her ass, punishing it with a kneading massage. “You can’t do this to me again.”
Oh fuck, he wasn’t going to make it. The more extreme his mental agony became, the faster she whipped her hips up and back, her open mouth dragging over his with every movement. “Sarge,” she moaned. “You feel so good. So huge.”
Call him a cliché, but that was his point of no return. Hearing the woman that haunted his
fantasies refer to his cock as huge robbed his balls of their weight, sending moisture from deep, deep down in the root of him to dampen the lap of his jeans. His throat was scraped raw from saying her name, but he couldn’t remember having said it once. Never had he been so satisfied from an orgasm and he knew, knew it was Jasmine, the woman watching him in amazement from her perch on his thighs. Maybe later he would interpret that expression differently, but not right now. Now he only saw his tormentor delighted by how much control she had over his body. How much control she’d always had over it.
And he’d just busted in his pants as if he hadn’t aged a goddamn day.
“That makes you happy, doesn’t it?” He invaded her personal space, bringing their faces close. “Knowing how easily you can get me off?”
“Yeah,” she whispered, scrutinizing his face. “It kind of does.”
Anger—directed at his past and current self, and at Jasmine—spit hot lava against the inside of his gut. He had to get out of there. Clean himself off. Play his guitar. Something. Anything but having Jasmine looking at him like some exotic specimen she’d never encountered.
He picked Jasmine up by the hips and set her aside on the couch. “I’m going to turn in,” he said, hating the curtness in his voice, but too embarrassed to change it. “Thanks for not putting my stuff on the curb, all right?”
He was already at the guest room door when she spoke. “Sarge—”
The door closed before she could continue. No way would he sit there and listen to Jasmine try to convince him his reaction was natural. Normal. It wasn’t.
And instead of doing something to rid himself of the curse, every encounter with Jasmine only seemed to increase its potency. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would regroup.
