Chapter 19
Jason
A huff of laughter I never would have believed I was capable of in this moment gets lost in the press of my mouth against hers, swallowed by this crushing wave of rightness and relief.
Our lips slide together, brushing back and forth in a deliberate, slow tease that is the opposite in every way of that frantic kiss I took in the rain…
Starting with the fact that this time, Rowan looks like she might stab me if I don’t give it to her.
But also… I’m in control.
Of each taste of her I take.
Of every measured sip of her lips.
There’s no rushing. No uncertainty. Just the insane feel of her fingers sifting into my hair as mine bunch in the denim at her hips, pulling her in as close as I can.
She gives up this little moan that tells me she likes it, that she wants more.
Anything.
I touch the corner of her mouth with the slow drag of my tongue.
Jesus, I can feel her tremble.
And when she opens to me, our eyes lock, holding for a weighted beat, lips barely touching. Like we’re on the brink of something big. Something powerful and real.
There’s the smallest quake in her breath, and it’s the breaking point for both of us.
We crash together in a kiss that’s equal parts need and relief and something I don’t even have a name for.
Her arms link tight around my neck. She pulls me in as we devour each other like we’ve been waiting ten years to do it. Or one of us has anyway.
Only the way she’s kissing me, it doesn’t feel one-sided. It feels raw and hungry and edged with a desperation the guy inside me who’s wanted her from the first time I saw her wants to read way more into than he probably should.
But damn, it’s so hot the way she’s using her arms to pull herself higher, to kiss me harder. And when she rocks against me— Fuck.
“Want you,” I growl against her parted lips, my fist tightening in her damp hair.
“Want you too,” she murmurs against my mouth before moaning around the thrust of my tongue. Because yeah, I want in.
I want in everywhere.
Every. Way. I. Can. Get. It.
I want to lick into her mouth and to feel her wriggle beneath me when my breath finds the whorl of her ear. I want my fingers sliding over the softness I can feel against my fly.
I want to slip through her wetness and tease the spots that make her gasp and shake.
I want to feel her slick warmth give way around me as I take her, sinking deep and deeper until our bodies are connected as completely as they can be. Until there isn’t room for a single thing to come between us.
Christ, I want everything.
Not just her body. All of her.
I want this thing we nearly started ten years ago and has felt like a hole in my chest since the second it slipped away.
Her back meets the wall, and her legs come around me, her heel at my thigh urging me closer. I lean in, pinning her there with my body, pushing her higher with my hips, dragging her down and against where I’m hard for her with the firm grasp of my hands at her perfect ass.
“Yes,” she breathes, as I taste her pulse point and that sexy spot beneath her ear.
So good. Never thought I’d be able to touch her like this.
It’s sweeter than I ever imagined. But still, “Tell me to stop, and I will.” I have to say it, need her to know.
“Don’t stop,” she pants, pulling at my shirt here and there. “This might be crazy, but I don’t care.”
“Nothing crazy about it.” Right. Perfect. Just like this delicious spot on her neck.
“Nothing?” she challenges on a breathless laugh that is my new favorite sound in the world.
“Not. One. Single. Thing.”
“Agree to disagree, crazy man,” she purrs into my hair as I lick into the hollow between her breasts. “We do this once. Get it out of our systems.”
I stop moving.
She keeps wrestling with my shirt. “No strings. No messy complications.”
What? “Rowan, wait. I don’t want—” I cut off at the press of her fingers against my lips.
“You aren’t going to hurt me or use me or break my heart or whatever it is you don’t want to do, Jason.”
“No.” It’s none of those things. I’m not looking for a one-night fling or some throwaway encounter. “This isn’t—”
“I’m serious about this being an escape for me, Jason.
So please don’t worry about me getting weird about it.
” She gives me the kind of understanding look that says she doesn’t understand at all.
“This is a moment out of time with a man I trust. I want you. And I just… I didn’t want to ruin anything by making a big deal about it, but I needed you to know that we’re on the same page about what this is… ”
That pause is for me, so I meet her waiting eyes and tell us both what she’s asking to hear. What she needs this to be. “Fun.”
She nods, her kiss-swollen lips half parted in a smile that has to be enough. “And what it isn’t?”
“The start of something…” Meaningful, real, lasting. “Serious.”
Because this woman is coming off a broken engagement following a five-year relationship. She’s lost a father figure. Been uprooted from her job and friends and home. And she wants a break from having to decide where and how to rebuild her life. She said it before.
Of course she’s not looking to start some messy, complicated relationship with the guy who surprised her during what was supposed to be time away from worrying about all those things.
I get it.
And I can do it. I can give her what she needs.
She’s resumed fighting my shirt, thankfully oblivious to the retrofitting happening inside my head.
“Too wet,” she murmurs, needy frustration edging the softness of her words as she releases the fabric bunched at my sides.
I let go too. Of an idea I’ve been holding onto for the better part of a decade.
This doesn’t have to be some epic love story.
They might run in my family, but this is not that. It’s fun. And if it’s all I get, then I’ll take it.
No strings. No expectations. Just me giving Rowan the best time she’s ever had.
“Too wet?” I dip in for a dirty kiss, then, “Not possible. But I’ll get you damned close.”
She pulls back with a stunned gasp that I’d put somewhere between curious and Hell, yes. “You are…”
“Not joking.” I’m dead serious. This girl is going to come harder than she ever has before. For me.
I catch her mouth again.
She purrs around my invading tongue, and yeah, I like it too. I like how she’s flush against me again, captive in the cradle of my hands, perfect tits against my chest, legs wrapped around my waist so we rub together with every step I take.
And I fucking love that she’s so caught up in this thing between us, temporary as it is, that she doesn’t notice anything else.
Like where the hell we are as I kiss her like the world is ending and I may never get another chance.
“What the heck?” She looks around in confusion and then down at the bathroom counter beneath her.
When her eyes come up, I shrug. “Told you I could make it through the cabin without looking.”
Rowan
“I’m impressed.” I mean it too. But I’m talking more about the way he kisses than the fact that he can navigate this space with his eyes closed… and a woman wrapped around him.
“Yeah? All it took was ten years.”
I shake my head. “I was impressed from the night I met you.”
There isn’t much light coming through the window, but I can see his wry smile. The doubt. And I hate that I’ve given him ten years of reasons not to take me at my word.
“I’m serious. And not because of how handsome you were.
Or because of the hockey stuff.” Though on their own he was a standout in both.
“You were kind and funny and generous and…” I lift a shoulder, letting my fingers find the hem of the shirt I couldn’t make enough headway with when I was pinned against it.
“Fine, and you were the most handsome guy I’d ever seen. ”
Rubbing at his neck, he peers out the window at the gray sky and sway of the trees beyond. “But.”
I nod. “But once my mother noticed Ed, me noticing anything about you stopped being an option.” I couldn’t let myself have feelings for him, because I couldn’t risk jeopardizing her goals.
I think he understands. At least as much as someone outside the mother-daughter dynamic between us could.
A beat passes, stretching long enough that I wonder if I shouldn’t have said anything at all. If I might have ruined this moment by explaining the one that changed everything all those years ago.
I tug at his shirt. “Jason?”
Something passes across his face, or maybe it’s just a shifting shadow, because in the next beat, the slant of his mouth is the promise of pure sin.
Wow.
“But now…” He brushes my fingers from his shirt, taking hold of the hem himself and lifting it in a slow, stacked-abs and glistening-golden-skin reveal. “You’re open to the impressing?”
Oh. My. God.
I blink, fast-nodding like some pervy weirdo.
At least I’m not chanting Take it off, take it off.
“Take it off.” I slap a hand over my mouth, squinching my eyes closed. I’m going to die.
“Not unless you’re watching, beautiful.”
I open one eye. Then at the sight of that smile, I open them both. “Jason. I like you for your mind… too.”
“Thanks for that,” he laughs. And the sound of it makes me warm in places that have startlingly little to do with the sexy strip tease and unhinged kissing escape.
But then he’s stripping his shirt off. Not all sexy slow, but like a man prioritizing a skin-to-skin exchange. Which is exponentially hotter.
He pulls it over his head, tossing it into a heap in the corner before reaching for my shirt. “May I?”
Again with the too-eager nodding, but his smile only gets wider. Warmer.
He peels off my top, folding it at the far edge of the sink instead of throwing it on the floor beside his. Then pausing, he bites his lip before turning back.
And when he does, there’s nothing playful about the way his eyes roam over me.
I’m still wearing my jeans and bra and probably a few dirt smudges, but I feel naked beneath his hungry eyes. Beautiful. Alluring.
This look is all reverence and heat and calculating desire à la where-to-start-first in one scorching head-to-toe and back-again study that from any other man might make me uncomfortable. But with Jason?
His prediction about how wet I was going to get doesn’t seem so outlandish all of a sudden.
I reach for his belt loop, hooking my finger and drawing him closer. “We’re wearing too many clothes.”
His big hands cover my knees as he dips down, catching my mouth in a languid kiss.
Then he’s pushing my legs wide as I fumble with his fly, only managing to free the top button before his fingers spread and slide up the inside of my thighs.
At the apex, his thumbs brush torturously slowly up the center seam of my jeans…
One. Then with the barest increase in pressure and a matching curl of his tongue around mine… the other.
Pleasure, sharp and powerful, spears through my center, stealing my breath.
“Too many clothes is an easy fix.” He tugs at my jeans just so, somehow finding another means of building the pressure where I’m most sensitive under the guise of undoing the button and zip.
He steps out from between the vee of my legs, and I hop off the counter to start shimmying the stiff damp fabric down my hips. Jason’s mouth is a half grin as he watches my intended strip tease turn into yet another awkward, near-stumbling attempt to get naked for him.
“Com’ere.” Sitting on the edge of the tub, he slips his index finger into the jeans where they’re stuck just above my thighs… so the back of his knuckle rubs at the tender skin through my panties when he crooks his finger and coaxes me forward.
“You know exactly what you’re doing,” I murmur, letting him pull me between his knees.
The cocky smile nearly undoes me right there. But then he answers…
“I do.”