by Heather Long
Well if that didn’t sober me, nothing would.
“Second, I got the message that you don’t like the fancy, anonymous dinners in places where you’re on display. I should have fucking figured that part out on my own. You perform on stage, you don’t want to live there.”
Even when it was the only life I had, living my life one song at a time.
“Third, I’m a guy, and you had a real issue when we were fooling around. Do I want to fuck you? Yes. Can I fucking wait? Also yes. So if you want to have sex with me, I’m in, Swan. All in.”
The blunt directness of every statement paired with how straightforward he was in his delivery without an ounce of anger to taint the atmosphere had tears clogging my throat again.
“Fourth, let me be explicit—I asked you out for a date because I want to do this right. I want more with you than just a casual fuck.”
I swallowed the lump forming.
“You’re way more to me than that. And while I’m not one hundred percent sure about this whole sharing thing, ’cause I know you and Vaughn are having sex still—not that you could miss it.”
I bit my lip so I didn’t laugh.
“And there are times when I want to dislocate his jaw for putting his mouth on you, much less that metal filled dick of his.” The last was a damn near growl, and he adjusted his grip on the steering wheel—both hands. He was trying so hard. I reached over to slide my fingers through his hair, and he let out this long breath. “He’s my brother and I want you to be happy. So I’m working on all of that. But that means when I think you’re telling me you want to have sex with me, I want to make absolutely sure that you want to have sex with me.”
I want you to be happy.
I turned the words over and over in my head.
“Emersyn?” Jasper’s voice seemed to come from a long way away, and I snapped my gaze up and back to the present. The frown he wore was dark, and his eyes were intense. He’d even yanked off his sunglasses. I still had my fingers in his hair, and I sighed. “Talk to me.”
“Sorry, I think that’s like the second time in my life someone’s said that to me.”
“I need a little help here, Swan. Which part? ’Cause I promise, I must threaten one of my brothers at least weekly, and I know you’ve heard me do it.”
A watery laugh escaped. He wasn’t wrong about that. “The part about wanting me to be happy.”
Fuck, I sounded so small, and Jasper’s knuckles went white on the steering wheel. I licked my lips.
“Sorry. I really don’t know how to date, apparently. Maybe deep existential stuff falls under the no column.”
“There was nothing existential about that statement.”
The tears clawing at the back of my throat refused to be dislodged, but I couldn’t let them out again. Not after the nightmare. Not after breaking like I had with Kellan. I couldn’t do that. Not again.
“Fuck it,” he growled abruptly. “Did you mean it when you said you trusted me?”
That question held so much meaning in it. Every movement in a silks routine had a moment to release and a moment to catch. You had to know when to do both. You had to trust the silks to catch you. You had to trust your body to let go. You had to fall to fly.
“Yes,” I promised him, sliding my hand down his arm and catching his hand as he released the steering wheel to grip mine. “I mean it. I trust you.”
All in. Catch. Release. Fall. Fly.
“You’ll catch me.” I didn’t know if he would understand what that meant, but in the last few weeks, he’d done everything I could have asked for and more. He’d pushed himself because I asked him to, and all he’d asked from me in return was to trust him.
The raw tension holding me hostage let go at that admission. It was scary as fuck the first time you fell. But that was how you knew you were still alive. We didn’t exchange another word as he finally left the highway and turned down toward a hotel that sat on another bluff overlooking the water.
It was a gorgeous, colonial revival style set of buildings with a huge main structure and what looked like bungalows beyond two wings that curved off to the sides of the central building. White columns marked the entrances, and there was a red, almost sandstone roof crowning it. The road winding from the highway to it had some beautiful landscaping, even if it was mostly brown and faded under the wintry sun.
Speaking of which, that sun was rapidly sinking in the sky, and I reached for my hat and tugged it back on. The guys didn’t want anyone to recognize me. This place was pretty upscale, if somewhat deserted. “I don’t know if they’re open,” I said as we drew closer.
“They are,” Jasper said, grinning. “Trust me.”
“Don’t abuse it,” I murmured, but his grin didn’t diminish one iota.
“I promise, I won’t.” He followed the road around to where a parking area held a few vehicles. After choosing a slot for us away from the others and backing into it, he slid open the glove compartment.
The gun present inside surprised me. It shouldn’t. But it did.
“I don’t suppose you know how to use this?”
“What gave me away?” I wasn’t sure if it was my reply or my tone that made him grin.
“Okay, we’ll fix that soon enough.”
A thrill barreled through me. He was going to teach me how to fire a gun? To use one?
Before I could totally grapple with that, he pulled something else out of his pocket and depressed a button. A knife flicked out the end. “Easy enough, yeah?” He snapped it closed, then pressed the button and the blade flicked out again.
“Um, how long am I going to be in the car?”
“Not long, Swan, I promise. But I’m not leaving you exposed without protection. So, car is on, heat is on. Gun is in there. It’s very simple—point and shoot. Just press this button here on the side before you squeeze the trigger. The knife, far more basic, but slashes work. Cut them across the palm or the eyes, that will slow them down. If you have to stab them to get away, you fucking stab them.”
“Groin work?” I should probably feel worse about this whole plan, but all I had to think about were those guys at the park or the man in the kitchen at the shop.
Or Eric.
Or Uncle Bradley.
“Bloodthirsty,” he murmured, then kissed me hard and swift. “I like it. I’ll be right back. If you need me, you slam your hand down on this horn and blare it for all its worth.”
I licked my lips.
He pushed open his door after giving me another hard kiss that sent feeling sizzling through me. “Lock the door.” Command filled those three words, and I was tempted to flip him off, even playfully. But I didn’t.
Instead, I just reached over and hit the door locks as he waited and watched. His pleased smile sent another pulse of heat to bounce through my system, and I clenched my thighs.
Between waking up between Vaughn and Kellan that morning, playing with Rome all day, and then the drive, I ached with wanting so bad, and more…I just wanted to spend more time with him.
With all of them.
But I really had missed Jasper.
I twisted in the seat and tracked him across the parking lot. It wasn’t until I sat back and let out a little girly giggle, hand fixed around the handle of the knife, that it hit me.
In front of me, the sun had begun its descent toward the water, and I let out a slow smile. If I were to compile the list of amazing days I’d had in my life, this one already counted in the top ten. Maybe the top five.
Probably the top two, who was I kidding?
Six months.
Six months without a show. Without a rehearsal. Without my uncle. Without Eric. Without pain.
Tonight, I was going out on a date…for real.
As promised, Jasper was back at the car in less than ten minutes. He slid inside as soon as I unlocked the doors and leaned over to cup my face. The swift seal of his mouth to mine sent my pulse racing, and I leaned into the touch, clasping his wrist, as eager
to hold on to him as he seemed to be to taste me.
“Fuck, that was too long to be gone,” he whispered.
“It was ten minutes.”
“Trust me, felt a fuck load longer.” Another hard kiss that made me want to climb over into his lap, and he let me go. “Hang on, we’re almost there.”
We were almost…
But he pulled out smoothly and instead of heading out the way we came, he took another route through the lot to a hidden drive. Curiosity burned in me, but I held fast to his hand as he navigated the curves in the rapidly dropping darkness. The sun was a red ball sinking into the water, and a part of me was torn between watching it and watching Jasper.
Jasper won.
Every time.
Just around a bend, out of sight of the main buildings, was a little bungalow in the same colonial revival style with what I supposed was a red slate roof. Jasper backed into the slot clearly marked for it and grinned. “Told you we were almost here.”
I handed him the knife back, and when he took that and then the gun out of the glove compartment, I didn’t say a word.
“Stay put,” he ordered again, this time though, he turned off the car. He tucked the gun into his belt at the back and pulled his shirt over it to cover before circling the car and opening my door. “My beautiful swan?”
I laughed and clasped his hand. The effect was kind of ridiculous when you considered what I was wearing, but I’d never felt more like a lady than when he winked and pushed the door closed before locking the car. The air outside was even colder than it had been back in the harbor. The breeze coming off the ocean was almost a gale. I shuddered almost immediately, and Jasper pulled me into his side, one arm around me. He guided me up onto a darkened porch that lit up at our approach. Motion sensor lights. Nice.
It also let me get a good look at the windows. The place had them on all sides, and the interior looked like a huge room.
“What is this?”
“This,” Jasper said as he unlocked the door with a key card and held it open for me, “is one of five staff bungalows on the property. They look really nice ’cause they are, but they aren’t fancy. They are warm, comfortable, and have great views.” He locked the door behind us and moved over to the fireplace. He flicked on a switch, and it flamed to life.
Gas fireplace.
He adjusted a dial. “There’s another one upstairs,” he told me. “I’ll get it turned on. Between them, they can warm this place pretty well.”
I followed after him, more curious than anything else. The big wide room we were in had a couple of sofas, a pair of armchairs, a six-seater dining table, and what had to be a little kitchen off to the side. There was a deck on the back and a pair of doors that opened out onto it. The view was spectacular with the setting sun filling all the windows.
Upstairs, Jasper had gone into a huge room to the right. There were three doors up here, and I toed off my shoes as I followed him into the bedroom. He was turning on another fireplace.
“And they let you just check into a staff bungalow?” I unzipped my hoodie as he turned around. The lights were still off, and only the fire illuminated the room. Unlike downstairs, the windows were all shuttered up here. So maybe they were closed for the winter months.
“The summer most of us were sixteen, we got jobs up here,” he told me, gaze fixed on me as I set the hoodie down, then reached for my shirt and tugged it over my head. “The group home wasn’t always fun in the summer.”
I swore I could feel his caress as his gaze skated over me, even as I dropped my hands to my borrowed sweatpants and peeled them off. The dance pants under them came next.
Jasper chuckled, then cleared his throat. “Anyway, the summer job came with lodging. So all of us got to stay here for the summer while we worked.”
I nodded slowly. “Sounds like fun. What did you do?” I left the pants and sweatpants atop my borrowed hoodie. My nipples were on point, but the heat from the gas fireplace couldn’t quite compete with the fire in his expression. The bra unsnapped with one hand, and I slid it down my arms and tossed it behind me before I slid my thumbs into the sides of my panties. “Jasper?”
He snapped his gaze up to my eyes.
“What did you do?” I repeated the question and just barely managed to stifle my laughter at the stunned expression on his face. Considering he’d turned me inside and out pulling orgasm after orgasm out of me and he’d definitely seen me naked, the fact he was so riveted filled me with a quiet kind of pleasure.
“Pretty much whatever they needed. Sometimes bellman, that kind of sucked, but the tips were good. Lifeguard backup, too young to be an actual lifeguard, but we could help keep watch. Waiter. Sometimes at the cabanas or the restaurant. Little bit of everything really.”
He licked his lips, and I peeled the panties down and stepped out of them. The hungry way he tracked me with his gaze encouraged me to pose, just a little. He was right about one thing—I did love to perform, even if I didn’t want to be on display.
Halfway to him, I stopped and put my hands on my hips. “Sounds like fun.”
“It was,” he admitted, a strangled note in his voice. “I think—Why are we talking about that?”
“Because you’re still wearing clothes and I didn’t get to see you last time, so I let you watch me… Now I want to see you.”
The firelight flickered over his face as he rubbed his beard. “Yes, ma’am,” he said slowly as I retreated toward the bed. I swore my mouth had gone dry with anticipation as he moved to follow me. “I promise, you can see anything you want.”
At his nearness, I slid up onto the bed on my knees, still retreating a little as he closed the distance.
“What was your favorite part about that summer?”
He set the knife and the gun down on the nightstand. I ignored both, keeping my attention fixed on him. I swore my cunt pulsed every time his gaze flicked to mine, and my breasts were damn near aching. He hadn’t even touched me yet. The taste of him lingered on my lips.
“The freedom,” he admitted, unbuttoning his shirt with far more swiftness than I had used in stripping. He tossed it to join my clothes and already had his belt undone and out before I processed he’d lost his shoes.
“I get that,” I said softly. “There’s nothing quite like freedom.”
“No, Swan,” he agreed as his jeans hit the floor and took whatever briefs or boxers he’d been wearing with them. “There isn’t.”
Holy hell. He wasn’t built all in beautiful lines and colorful muscle like Vaughn, but there was a raw kind of beauty to Jasper. To my delight, he held still under my perusal. His cock was as thick as I’d imagined it, long and curved toward the tip. There was a fine dusting of hair everywhere from his chest to his legs to the deep brown curls at the base of his dick.
Compact muscles flexed and rippled in his legs and his arms. Toned. Fit. But there were scars too—scars that made me ease forward, one step at a time on my knees. A circular one below his breast bone. Another longer, more ragged one on his side. The tangled vines I’d seen on his chest before formed over his left pec, almost like a circle with little strands escaping.
When I reached out with one hand to smooth over the tattoo, I swore his chest muscle flexed. He was tight, compact, built more like I would expect a crewman. He could pull his weight.
I trailed my fingers down his arm. The tattoo was just the one sleeve that went up to his elbow. But there was more, on his side, words that I hadn’t seen before.
“Swan,” he said in a near strangled tone, and I pulled my gaze up to his. Want burned back at me. “Emersyn.” He said my name like a caress. “Is there anything else you want to know?”
“I want to know everything.”
Bless him, he swallowed hard but nodded. “Ask away.” Not once did he move a muscle, even though I was touching him. If there had been even a minuscule amount of doubt left in me about trusting him, it vanished.
“But it can wait. I want you more.”
The moment he brushed two blunt fingers against my clit, he swore again. I was soaked and aching for him. The minute he went south with his kisses though, I gripped his hair and tugged, pulling up those sultry gray eyes that stared right into my soul. The firelight turned them almost molten silver.
“I want you,” I repeated. “I need you to fuck me, Jasper. I need to feel all of you this time.” Heat swept over my face, and I wrapped my legs around his hips, arching my back. I’d barely gotten to brush his dick with the fingers of my free hand when he caught my wrist and pinned it to the bed.
When he caught my other hand and eased it from his hair to pin it next to my head, I met his stare openly. “Fuck me, Swan, I don’t know if I can be gentle.”
“I didn’t ask you for gentle.” To be honest, they all needed to stop acting like I would break. “I want you. I want your anger. I want your rage. I want your heat. I want—” His mouth slammed down and cut off the rest of my words as he pinned me in place. When his cock slid against the dampness of my cunt, I swore we both groaned, then we reached for his dick together.
As soon as he was at the right angle, he slammed into me in one relentless push that had me seeing stars.
“More,” I begged as he threw his head back and groaned. The rock of his hips pulled him out and then slammed into me again, and on the third thrust, I arched up to meet his lips, nipping at his teeth as I kissed him.
The little bite did what nothing else had. Jasper pinned both of my arms this time and took over the kiss, matching the thrust of his tongue to the rhythm of his cock, and both drove into me at such a frenetic pace that I couldn’t catch my breath. My heart thundered in my ears, and the glide of his skin on mine, the rasp of his beard where it rubbed my face while his lips kept me prisoner, matched only to the pounding of his cock hitting deep inside me.
