Chapter 34
JASMINE
Aweek ago, I’d been avoiding this guy like the plague, intent on cutting ties before I could fall any deeper. Now, I was staring up into his eyes, silently begging him to stay with me for another night. It’s funny how things change.
Last week, I’d genuinely thought it was over.
Or rather, that it had to be over if I had any hope of preserving my independence.
Then I’d found out he’d lost his dream project and was going back to the States, and suddenly, it’d seemed only polite to bring him on a cruise of Upper Egypt with his best local friend.
I knew Isaac would love it, especially if he had his engineer buddy to talk technical with.
Or maybe I simply hadn’t wanted Isaac to leave.
All I was absolutely sure of as I looked into those blue eyes and waited for an answer was that there was something here, something more, and I would be devastated if I lost it.
For a second, I thought he might pull away and head back outside to the balcony, where he’d spent at least half of last night, but then he tucked my hair gently behind my ear and lowered his lips to mine for another kiss.
“Yeah, okay,” he said softly. “Let’s go to bed, Jasmine.”
Relief smacked into me like a freight train, so intense that it made me lightheaded. “Thank God. I thought you might insist on making some more friends on the riverbank first.”
He chuckled, reaching for my hand to twine our fingers together. “Maybe tomorrow.”
He scooped me up off my feet and carried me the last few steps to the bed. “Isaac!”
“What? You were moving too slowly.”
“I was not.” I smiled when he laid me down on the mattress. “You must suddenly just be really impatient.”
“I’m always impatient with you,” he murmured, already lowering his head to plant hot kisses on my neck. “I thought you already knew that.”
“I do.” I reached for the hem of his shirt. “It’s just that I thought, maybe, you…”
“Maybe I, what, Jasmine?” he asked when I didn’t finish the sentence, glancing up at me as he lifted his arms so I could pull the T-shirt off.
I dropped it on the floor without looking where it went, my eyes never leaving his. “It’s nothing, really. It was just, uh, last night. The shower. You didn’t come. You didn’t come to bed for a long time either.”
Isaac blinked a couple times. Then his eyebrows swept up and laughter sparked to life in his eyes. “So you thought I wasn’t interested anymore?”
“Maybe.”
He laughed. “You are not that insecure.”
I gave his arm a playful smack, unable to bite back a laugh of my own. “I’m not. You know I’m not. It’s just that you’ve never passed up the opportunity to see me naked before, so I wondered. That’s all.”
“True, and I shouldn’t have passed up the opportunity yesterday either.
” Those lips curved into a smirk and he slid his hands under my sundress, hooking his fingers into the waistband of my panties.
“Let’s not repeat the same mistake, shall we?
If I could, I’d spend the rest of my life seeing you naked. ”
After pulling my panties clean off, he flung them across the room. Holding my gaze, he started on the dress itself and got rid of that just as fast, making my bra disappear not even a full thirty seconds later.
Suddenly finding myself utterly bare under his gaze, I squirmed a little, my eyes narrowing on his. “Why do I suddenly feel like I’m going to regret telling you that?”
He shrugged one broad shoulder and very deliberately let his eyes drop away from mine. They traveled across the length of my body so slowly that it was almost like I could feel them caressing me, lingering in both obvious and not so obvious places.
He hovered on the curve of my neck, my collarbones, my wrists, and my ankles. I reached for his hand and folded our fingers together, but I didn’t move otherwise, simply lying there and letting him look at me.
When he finally brought his eyes back up to mine, his cheeks were flushed and his lids were heavy, arousal and desire written across every inch of that handsome face, but his gaze was also soft. Like what he was feeling went much deeper than just the urge to bury himself inside me.
“I would never make you regret telling me anything, Jasmine.” He kept looking only into my eyes, but his hands skated up my sides until he reached my breasts, cupping them in his palms before stroking the pads of his thumbs across my nipples.
My breath caught, heat racing through me and pooling between my legs, but I didn’t look away from him either.
“I wasn’t expecting that phone call, is all. But I’m here now and I’m fine.”
“Are you?”
“Probably not, if I’m being honest,” he murmured, but then he pinched my nipples and groaned when I gasped. “I feel fine, but I’d also just really rather not think about it right now.”
“Okay,” I agreed, holding his gaze for one more beat before I smiled. “Well, I think I can come up with a few ways we can distract you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I sat up and sealed my lips over his, sliding my fingers into the waistband of his shorts.
As I kissed him, I worked the fly open, keeping my movements light and slow once his pants were off.
I wrapped my fingers around his thick shaft, stroking like I had all the time in the world.
Isaac trembled and snaked an arm around my hips, pulling me closer but not trying to rush me or speed things up.
We were both now sitting on the bed, him on his knees between my legs, and he bent his head to kiss me harder, running his free hand along the inside of my thigh. Taking a page out of my book, he kept his touches infuriatingly light, his fingertips barely ghosting across my skin.
I moaned and lay back on the bed, bringing him with me until we were side by side, facing each other.
Our hands kept working and our kisses slowly became sloppier and sloppier.
He wasn’t even really touching me yet, but I was soaked and aching, and judging by how choppy his breathing had become, he felt the same way.
Without giving him any warning of what I was about to do, I broke our kiss and slid down on the mattress, taking him into my mouth and sucking him nice and deep.
Isaac muttered a string of breathless curses but didn’t try to stop me, simply bringing his hands to my head and sliding his fingers into my hair.
I smiled around him, genuinely loving the way he always let me do whatever I wanted while at the same time, always taking charge. It was a delicate line, but Isaac walked it like he had a master’s degree in how to turn me on.
“Fuck, Jasmine,” he moaned. “Just like that.”
Naturally, I didn’t listen, moving my head a little faster and wrapping my fingers a little tighter around his base. He let out a throaty chuckle, his hips slowly starting to rock into my mouth.
Encouraged that he seemed to like it, I kept doing exactly what I had been for a few more minutes before upping my pace again. This time, he tensed and blew out a shuddering breath, and when I glanced up, his eyes were closed, his brow furrowed in concentration, and his shoulders caving in.
He suddenly opened his eyes and looked right at me, catching me staring up at him.
He rolled his hips a few more times with definite intention, holding my gaze with fire burning in his eyes.
Just as I thought he was about to let go, he pulled his hips back, sliding out of my mouth and grabbing under my arms to haul me up.
I laughed as he rolled me onto my back a little higher up on the bed, but it turned into a loud moan when he crawled back onto his knees and planted his face between my legs. “Oh!”
One thing I’d learned was that Isaac could do this all night without tiring or getting bored, and he was really, really good at it. Within seconds of licking through my folds, his fingers were wrapped around my hips, anchoring me as I bucked and writhed.
Heat enveloped my clit when he sucked it into his mouth, his fingers toying at my entrance and his tongue circling around and around that sensitive little bud.
I was so swollen and ready after noticing all the ways he’d reacted to me doing this to him that it took no time at all before an orgasm was building.
My thighs started trembling, my muscles tensed, and my eyes slammed shut as I felt it starting deep down inside.
Isaac moaned but stayed the course, not changing a single thing until my entire body was shaking with pleasure, my mind consumed with nothing but the spectacular climax that left me boneless and panting in the aftermath.
Without saying a word, he moved back up the length of my body, kissing me deeply as he stroked a thumb gently across my cheekbone. I kissed him back, turning into him and sliding an arm around his neck to hold him to me.
“I want you, Isaac,” I murmured against his lips. “Take me. Now.”
“Bossy as ever,” he teased, but his voice was rough and throaty, cracking a little before he pressed another kiss to my lips. “I’m not going to argue against that idea, though.”
“That’s because you know my ideas are always best.”
He chuckled, sat up, and reached into the nightstand drawer, pulling out a condom and quickly rolling it on.
While he was busy protecting us, I took in the way the muscles in his forearm rippled a bit on every movement and how fast his chest was rising and falling, and a fresh wave of desire crashed into me.
This man. God, this man. What are you doing to me, Isaac Thayer?
I’d never been this girl before. One orgasm was plenty as far as my body was usually concerned, but not with him.
Zara had called me dick-drunk earlier, but when he sank into me just a few seconds later, those blue eyes blazing into mine and his hands wrapped around my fingers, a whole other term popped into my head.
A term I hadn’t associated with a man in a romantic sense before, but I had a sneaky suspicion it was true when it came to him.
Isaac moaned and brought his lips to mine, kissing me hard as his hips went to work establishing a rhythm that nearly broke me in half, but in the best possible way.
My thoughts scattered and my hips arched, my fingers sliding into his hair and holding him tight. As soon as I tugged at the strands, he cursed and swelled inside me, and a few seconds later, his orgasm triggered another of my own.
We lay panting together in the aftermath, the sun setting across the Nile beyond the large windows. It took a while before we’d caught our breath, but when I finally looked up at him again, he was already smiling.
“What?” I asked.
He rolled us over so my head was still on his arm, but I was on my back now with him half on top of me. “You didn’t plan on going up for dinner tonight, did you?”
“Well, I did, but I’m suddenly feeling like room service instead.”
“Okay, but later,” he murmured, then kissed me again and I didn’t even try to argue, just wrapping my arms around him and holding him until eventually, hours later, I finally fell asleep in his arms.
When I opened my eyes again, it was light outside, morning sun shining in and spilling across the wooden floors.
Isaac was still fast asleep beside me, so I moved slowly, not wanting to wake him as I reached for my phone to check the time.
It looked early enough to go back to sleep, but I wanted to be sure.
Unfortunately, my clock wasn’t the only thing waiting on my screen.
There was a message there too, from my father, reminding me to be home in three days.
An ominous feeling twisted in my gut as I stared at the words he’d sent, wondering what would be waiting for me when I got back to the estate, but I would try to figure it out later. For now, I set the phone back down and curled up around Isaac, promptly falling asleep again.
Whatever was going to happen when we got back to Cairo was still days away, and I refused to let it steal the extreme happiness I was feeling right now. Isaac made me feel at peace, like everything was going to be okay, and I’d been waiting too long to feel like this to let anything take it away.