Chapter 6
Jasmine
Antonio carries me down the hallway, his arms steady beneath my thighs and back. I trace the lines of his shoulders, enjoying the warmth of his skin under my palms.
I’m already aching for him, my body humming from everything that happened on the dock. His shirt is gone. Mine is gone. I’m in nothing but my shorts.
He pushes open his bedroom door with his foot and stops. Every muscle in his body turns to stone.
“There you are,” a voice purrs from inside the room. “I was starting to think you’d never return.”
I go cold.
I turn my head toward the voice. A dark-haired woman is sprawled naked across his sheets. She’s smiling until her gaze lands on me.
The smile falters. “Oh,” she says. “You didn’t mention you had company.”
Antonio’s arms tighten around me. I feel his chest expand with a breath he doesn’t release.
“Dani.” His voice is dangerous. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
She sits up slowly, making no effort to cover herself. She has the kind of body that comes from daily exercise and calorie counting. Everything I’m not right now.
“You said I could come by whenever you were in the area.” She tilts her head, studying me with open curiosity. “I saw your car while I was driving by and figured you’d want company. The front door was unlocked.”
He has a history with her. This woman knows this house and knows him. She expected to find him alone, waiting, the way he’s apparently been before.
In the same bed he was about to lay me down in.
“Put me down,” I whisper.
“Jasmine...”
“Put me down.”
He lowers me to my feet, but his hands remain firm at my waist as if he’s afraid I’ll bolt. He’s not wrong. Every instinct is screaming at me to run.
But I can’t stop staring at her, and the way she looks at me like I’m an inconvenient nuisance.
“I told you this morning I wasn’t interested,” Antonio says. He’s moved in front of me now, partially blocking my view of her. “You need to leave. Now.”
This morning. He saw her this morning.
Dani laughs. “Antonio, don’t be dramatic. You always say that.” She swings her legs off the bed, standing without a shred of modesty. “And you always change your mind.” Her gaze slides past him to me, appraising. “I can wait my turn.”
My turn.
Like I’m interchangeable. Like we both are.
I think about Vegas. Waking up alone in that hotel room, the sheets still warm from his body. The time I spent convincing myself he’d come back. The humiliation of finally accepting he wouldn’t.
“There’s nothing to wait for,” Antonio says.
“If you say so.” She reaches for a silk robe draped over a chair and slips it on, tying it loosely at the waist. Her unbothered smile is back now. “I’ll let myself out. But you have my number.”
“Get the fuck out of my house before I call the cops. And don’t ever come back.”
“Cute. Enjoy him while you can, sweetheart.” She sweeps her gaze over me before returning it to Antonio. “Have fun. Call me when the novelty wears off.” With that, she’s gone.
The silence that follows is unbearable.
I look down at myself. Half-naked. Standing in the doorway of a bedroom where another woman was waiting for the man who was just about to make love to me.
A woman who clearly knows the routine. Who expected to be in his bed tonight because that’s how it’s always worked.
I am so stupid. “I need to get dressed.” My voice doesn’t shake. I’m proud of that.
“Jasmine, wait.” He reaches for me.
I step back. His hand falls to his side.
“I need a minute.” I cross my arms over my bare chest, suddenly aware of how exposed I am. “Please.”
He crosses to the dresser and pulls out a t-shirt, handing it to me without a word. I slip it over my head, grateful for the barrier of soft cotton between my skin and the air.
“I need to make sure she actually leaves,” he says. “And I have calls to make. But I’m coming right back.” His eyes hold mine. “Don’t disappear into your head right now. Please. Give me ten minutes to handle this, and then we’ll talk. That’s all I’m asking.”
He reads my hesitation and steps closer. “Ten minutes,” he repeats. “I’m not letting this end like this. Not because of her.” Then he’s gone.
I make it to my room before the first sob breaks free. I close the door and lock it before my legs give out slowly, and I slide down until I’m sitting on the floor, knees pulled to my chest.
He knocks twenty minutes later. “Jasmine. She’s gone.”
I don’t move. “There was a woman naked in your bed.” My voice comes out hoarse. “Waiting for you. And I almost...” The words catch in my throat. “I almost let myself become one of them. Again.”
“You’re not one of them.”
“How would I know the difference?” I’m shaking now. “She looked at me like I was just the Tuesday girl before she took over for Wednesday.”
“Open the door, Jasmine.”
“I don’t know what you want. I don’t know anything.” I hate how my voice wavers. “She knew the house and expected you to be open and available.”
On the other side, I hear him exhale heavily. “I haven’t touched her in over a year.”
“You saw her this morning.”
“She was at the cafe. I told her I wasn’t interested. End of story.”
“Clearly not the end, since she was waiting naked in your bed.
“Because she’s entitled and persistent.” He tries the handle. It doesn’t budge. “The police and her employer have been notified.”
I lean my head back against the door, suddenly exhausted. “Antonio, I’m not angry that you have a past. I have a past, too. I’m angry because ten minutes ago, I was ready to let you in. Completely. And now I’m standing here wondering if I’m just the next woman you’ll get bored with.”
“I know how it looks. I’m asking you to see past it.”
“We’re not together. You can sleep with whoever you want. But I can’t be part of the rotation. I won’t be.”
“There is no rotation. I’m not going to stand here and pretend I’ve been a saint. I haven’t. But I need you to hear me when I tell you that no other woman except you has made me want to be different.”
My heart stumbles. “Antonio...”
“You terrify me.” The confession comes out rough, almost angry. “I don’t do this. I don’t chase. I don’t explain myself. I don’t stand here stripped of every single defense, hoping you won’t walk away.”
“Then why are you?”
A long silence. When he speaks again, his voice is raw.
“Because you’ve already gotten under my skin and I can’t fucking get you out.”
I push myself up from the floor, legs unsteady. My hand moves to the lock, and I pull the door open before I’ve fully decided what to say.
He’s braced against the frame, head bowed, shoulders tight. When he looks up, his face is wrecked.
“You can’t say things like that.”
“I can.” He doesn’t move. “Because it’s true.”
I want to hold on to the image of Dani sprawled across his bed, but I can’t stop the other memories from invading.
Him bringing me lemon water every morning. The way he helped me out of the tub without a single teasing comment. Him reading to me for hours to shake loose my writer’s block and holding me through the storm.
I grab his face and kiss him.
His response is immediate. Hands finding my waist, sliding around to my lower back, pulling me against him.
And even now, with his mouth hungry on mine, his touch avoids hurting my injured body.
He guides me backward into the room, one hand cradling the back of my head. When my calves hit the edge of the mattress, he eases me down onto it, following me there without breaking the kiss.
He hovers over me, careful not to press against my healing body. “I want to fucking devour you. But I need you to tell me what hurts.”
“Nothing hurts right now.”
“Liar.” His thumb traces my jaw. “Your ribs. Your wrist.”
“Are fine.”
“Jasmine.”
I answer by pulling the t-shirt over my head.
His gaze drops to my bare chest, and his breath leaves him in a slow, shattered exhale.
“Christ, Jasmine.”
I reach for him with my good hand, pulling him down to me. “Stop talking.”
He obeys.
His mouth crashes back to mine, pouring every unspoken apology into the kiss, and I let myself drown in it. My breasts feel heavy, and my nipples tighten into peaks against his chest. The slight swell of my belly presses against his abs.
Antonio trails his mouth down my jaw, my throat, lingering at the pulse point where my heart hammers wildly. He nips at my collarbone, soothing the sting with his tongue, and I arch into him.
His fingers hook into the waistband of my shorts. I lift my hips and he drags them down my legs, taking my underwear with them. They disappear somewhere off the edge of the bed.
His lips find the swell of my breasts, and oh God, the pregnancy has made them so damn sensitive. He circles one nipple with his tongue before drawing it into his mouth.
The suction is gentle at first, then firmer, pulling a gasp from deep in my throat. I thread my fingers through his dark waves, holding him there as sparks shoot straight to my core.
“Antonio...” My voice is breathy, needy.
The ache between my thighs builds, my body remembering how he feels, how he tastes.
He releases my nipple with a soft pop, and kisses a path down my sternum, over the small curve of my expanding belly. His hands frame it, before pressing a kiss just above my navel, and I feel a flutter inside, like the baby senses him too.
His eyes snap to mine, concerned. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” My voice catches. “The baby’s moving again.”
His eyes go wide and his hand immediately covers my bump. He waits, body completely still except for the rapid rise and fall of his chest.
When the flutter comes again, softer this time, I know he can’t feel it yet.
“Still too early for you,” I whisper. “But it’s there. Stronger than before.”
His forehead drops to mine. “How does it feel?”
“Like champagne bubbles,” I say.
Antonio stays there for a moment, breathing me in. He presses a slow, lingering kiss to my lips before shifting his weight, his hands sliding from my stomach to the outsides of my thighs.
He nips at the sensitive skin of my hips as he settles between my legs. He’s on his knees now, one hand lifting my thigh while the other spreads me open with a tenderness that borders on torment.
“Deus, you’re beautiful,” he groans, his gaze fixed on my swollen, glistening sex and the dark curls framing it. “So wet for me already. T?o pronta.”
Before I can apologize for the lack of grooming, I feel the warm, wet drag of his tongue from my ass to my clit. The sensation is electric, sending shockwaves through my body.
I cry out, my hips bucking, but he holds me steady. He does it again, flatter this time, lapping at me like he’s savoring every drop. My slickness coats his tongue, and he hums in approval.
“Oh fuck,” I gasp, my good hand clutching the sheets, the other hovering uselessly in its brace.
The pregnancy has made everything more intense. My clit throbs with every flick, like one wrong move could shatter me.
Antonio doesn’t rush. He explores me with his mouth, tracing circles around my clit before sucking it between his lips.
His tongue dips inside me, thrusting shallowly, and I feel myself clench around nothing, desperate for more. He adds a finger, then two, curling them upward to stroke that spot deep inside while his lips seal over my clit, sucking.
The pleasure builds like a storm. My skin prickles with heat, causing sweat to bead on my forehead while my breaths come in short, desperate pants.
“Antonio... please... don’t stop.” My voice breaks with need as I rock against his face, grinding into his mouth.
“That’s it, querida,” he murmurs. “Give it to me. Come for me—eu quero tudo.” I want it all. His tongue flattens, lashing faster now, relentless, while his fingers pump in and out, hitting that perfect angle every time.
It’s too much. The tension snaps, and I come undone, my body convulsing as the orgasm rips through me. I cream against his mouth and my juices flood his tongue.
He drinks me in greedily, licking and sucking through every tremor, prolonging the bliss until I’m shaking. My thighs loosen around his head, but he stays there, letting me ride out the aftershocks.
When I finally go limp, he crawls back up my body and his shorts disappear. I feel the hard length of him pressing against my thigh.
He kisses me deeply, letting me taste myself on his tongue.