Chapter 12
Logan
Jasmine gasps into my mouth. “Bedroom. Now,” she orders between kisses.
I lift her, and she wraps her legs around my waist. I carry her down the hallway and find the bedroom through the open door. The bed is unmade, and late afternoon light falls through the window in pale gold stripes across the sheets.
I lay her down and step back. Her black hair fans across the white pillowcase, and her chest is rising and falling. Her dark eyes are locked on mine, open and unguarded.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“I’ve been sure about you since I was sixteen years old. Get down here,” she says with a smile.
I pull my sweater over my head. She sits up and runs her hands across my chest, her fingers tracing the muscles along my ribs before flattening her palms against my stomach. Her touch is warm, moving over me like she's relearning a map she memorized a long time ago.
“You're bigger than you were,” she says, her hands sliding over my shoulders.
“I was eighteen.”
“I know. I remember what you looked like at eighteen.” Her fingers find the scar on my left side, a puck mark from three seasons ago. “What's this?”
“Blocked shot. Calgary.”
She leans forward and presses her lips to the scar. A current runs through my entire body. I cup the back of her head, tilt her face up, and lean down to kiss her again. Slower this time. Tasting her properly.
I pull her top over her head. She's in a black bra underneath, her skin smooth and warm. I run my hands down her sides and over her hips, and she shivers. I unclasp her bra, and it falls away.
“Jesus, Jasmine.”
She looks up at me. “What?”
“These are definitely bigger than I remember.” Her breasts are full and perfect.
“I was eighteen, Logan. Everything is bigger than you remember.”
“I'm not complaining.” I cup her breasts in my hands and run my thumbs across her nipples, and her breath catches. “I could do this all day.”
I lower my mouth to her neck and kiss down her collarbone and across her chest. I take her nipple in my mouth, and she arches off the bed. Her hand grips the back of my head, fingers tight in my hair.
The sound she makes is low and throaty and goes straight through me. Ten years haven't changed it. I suck gently, then harder, using my tongue in slow circles. Jasmine pulls my hair and rolls her hips against me.
“God, I missed the way you do that,” she breathes.
I let out a breathy chuckle and give the other side the same attention. She's getting louder with every pass of my tongue. Soft, desperate sounds that wreck me from the inside out. I kiss down her stomach, my lips tracing the curve of her waist, the softness of her belly, and the dip of her navel.
I hook my fingers into her leggings and pull them down along with her underwear. She lifts her hips to help.
She's naked beneath me. Curves and warm brown skin and those dark eyes on me from the pillow.
“You're staring,” she says between heavy breaths.
“I'm appreciating.”
“Appreciate faster.”
I lower myself between her legs and press my mouth to the inside of her thigh. She tenses. I kiss along the soft skin, moving higher, taking my time. Her thighs tremble on either side of my face. I breathe warm air across her center, and she grips the sheets.
“Fuck Logan, that feels so good,” she cries out.
I put my mouth on her, and she cries out. Her back lifts off the bed, her hand finds my hair, and grips hard. I slide my tongue against her in long, slow strokes, tasting her, learning her again.
She's wet and warm and moves against my mouth in a rhythm that tells me exactly what she needs. I give it to her. The reality is better than every memory I've carried around for a decade.
I slide two fingers inside her and curl them.
Her whole body shudders. I work my mouth and my fingers together, building a rhythm, listening to her breathing get faster and shorter, her sounds climbing higher.
Her thighs clamp around my head. Her hand is pulling my hair so hard it hurts and tears a groan deep from my chest.
“Don't stop,” she says. “Logan, don't stop, I'm—”
She comes with her back arched off the bed. Her body shakes against my mouth, and I hold her through it, my hands on her hips, my lips pressed against her, until the tremors slow and her grip loosens and she sinks into the mattress, breathing hard.
I kiss my way back up her body. She pulls me down and kisses me with my mouth still wet from her.
The kiss is filthy and tender at the same time.
Her hands go to my belt, unbuckling it, unzipping my jeans, pushing them down my hips.
I kick them off along with my boxers. Her hand wraps around my cock, and I drop my forehead against hers and exhale hard.
“God, Jasmine.”
“I want you inside me.”
I reach for my jeans on the floor and pull a condom from my wallet. She takes it from my hand and rolls it on. The feel of her fingers on me makes my jaw clench.
I settle between her legs. She opens for me, and I push inside her slowly, my eyes on her face.
Her eyes flutter closed, her lips part, her hands grip my shoulders.
She's tight and warm, more perfect than I remember.
I press deeper, and she wraps her legs around my waist and pulls me all the way in.
“You okay?” I ask, breathing hard.
“I'm perfect. Move.”
I move slowly at first. Long strokes, pulling almost all the way out and pushing back in until her nails dig into my shoulders. Her hips rise to meet mine and we find a rhythm that feels as natural as the first time, two teenagers on a twin bed in Long Island who somehow got it right.
“Faster,” she says against my ear.
I give it to her faster. I grip the headboard with one hand, her hip with the other, and drive into her. She meets every thrust. The bed hits the wall. She's loud, louder than she was back then, and the sounds she's making are unraveling me.
I fall on top of her, wanting to be closer. “You feel incredible,” I say into her neck.
“So do you.”
I shift the angle and hit the spot that makes her gasp. Her nails rake down my back. That's going to leave marks, but I want them. I want evidence that she's real and she's here.
“Look at me,” I say.
She opens her eyes. We lock gazes. I'm moving inside her, and she's holding my face with both hands, and for a few seconds, nothing else exists.
“I love you,” I say.
“I love you,” she says back. Her voice breaks, and her body tightens around me, and she comes again, harder this time. Her whole body clenches and shakes, her mouth open against my shoulder.
The feeling of her coming pulls me over the edge. I bury my face in her neck and let go, moaning her name. My arms give out, and I collapse against her, breathing hard, my face in her hair, her heart pounding against my chest.
We lie there tangled together, breathing. The room is quiet except for our breathing and the distant sound of the city outside her window.
“Stay tonight,” she says.
“I'm not going anywhere.” I lift my head. Her hair is a mess across the pillow. She has never been more beautiful than she is right now. “I'm staying. Tonight and every night you'll have me.”
She pulls me down and kisses me softly. I roll to the side and pull her against my chest. Her head fits into the curve of my shoulder the same way it did when we were teenagers, like it was made for that spot.
“Does your mom hate me?” I ask.
Jasmine is quiet for a second, her fingers drawing circles on my chest. “She doesn't hate you. She doesn't like you either, but mostly it's your family she has a problem with.”
“I don't blame her,” I say. I don’t want to remember the details of what my mother told Jasmine. I’m sure it was not pretty. And the worst thing is that I didn’t defend my relationship. I don’t know how Jasmine has given me another chance after all that.
“Neither do I.”
We're quiet for a moment. Her hand stills on my chest. “How are we going to do this, Logan?”
“What do you mean?”
“Us. Your parents. My mom. You know how they're going to react.”
“This is about you and me, Jasmine. Not our families.”
“I know that. But they're going to have opinions, and those opinions are going to be loud.” She tilts her head up to look at me. “Can we keep this between us for a little while? Just until we figure out what we are without everyone else weighing in.”
“Why? The sooner they get used to us being together again, the better.” I want the whole world to know that Jasmine is mine now.
“Because right now it's just us in this bed and nobody is telling me I'm making a mistake, and nobody is telling you to focus on hockey. It's nice. I want to hold onto that for a little longer before the noise starts.”
She has a point. The second my mother finds out, the phone calls will start. The Sunday dinner interrogations. Dad's silence, which is worse than his words. And Lorraine will definitely say something about the Shaws, and Jasmine will carry that around like a weight on her shoulders.
“I'm not going to hide you.”
“I'm asking for just a little time.”
“How much time?”
“Enough to be solid before the storm hits.”
I press my lips to the top of her head. “Okay. But when it's time, we tell them together.”
“Deal.”
“And I'm not lying if someone asks me directly.”
“Fair.”
“And Blake already knows.”
She laughs against my chest. “Not surprised.”
Her body relaxes against mine. The light outside the window is fading from gold to blue. The apartment is quiet and warm. I hold her and listen to her breathe, and I don't close my eyes because I don't want to miss a second of this.