Aisha picked up the boy pup when he struggled to climb the stairs and snuggled him under her chin. Jase held the other pup in a similar position. The dog was tiny against his big chest, and Jase looked as happy as a little kid.
Did she want to go in? Oh yes, but—
Don’t play me, okay? Jase’s long ago simple, but serious request played back in her head. If she went into his cabin, it would be saying something. They both knew it. Her stomach flipped. She thought about Katelyn’s advice—and how, before driving away, Katelyn made it clear it wasn’t just about some business or career thing. It was about how to live: how Aisha should approach life.
Jase grinned his slow grin. “We’d have the place to ourselves. Colton is off being Colton—don’t think I’ll see him until Monday.”
Aisha looked into his warm eyes and what she saw there made her tingle all over and feel happy and sure. She mentally added a line to her and Katelyn’s epic T-shirt: Don’t do anything from a place of fear—and don’t not do something you need to because of fear.
Returning Jase’s smile, Aisha opened the door wide.
Inside the house, Jase quickly tucked the dogs into the kennel he’d borrowed from Jo and stashed in the bathroom, then he turned out their light, shut the door and returned to the kitchen. Aisha thought the speed with which he settled the dogs into bed was strange, until he turned to her and said, “Don’t get me wrong. I love the puppies—but this, you, here . . . It’s too rare a treat to squander.”
Something in Aisha’s stomach flipped. “So, um, what do you want to do? Watch a movie or something?”
Jase reached out and caught her hand. “Or something,” he said, placing her palm on his chest, just below his sternum. She could feel his heart beating and it was as if her own blood’s rhythm changed to match his.
His eyes locked on hers, asking permission. When her chin lifted in reply, he bent and dropped his mouth to hers. All her tension left her in a huge shuddering sigh—and then she kissed him back.
They stood like that for a long while, kissing, exploring lightly—mouths only, bodies close but not quite touching.
Yet even this barely-skimming-the-surface level of physical contact plunged Aisha in way over her head. She could hardly breathe for wanting him. Her senses bobbed and swam with awareness of his proximity. So close, so damn, teasingly, torturously close. His scent. The homemade soap she stocked each River’s Sigh cabin with—new for this season, cedar and spice, mmm!—but also just him . . . and maybe a tinge of puppy. How the hell was that hot? But somehow it was, it really, really was.
She was drowning in the desire to grab him and pull him toward her and force him to stop kissing her with such restraint. For a heady second, she wondered if his hands-off approach was way sexier than if he’d grabbed her straight off. This was not like kissing the few other boys she had in her life. That was fruit punch compared to wine: sweet and sugary versus a mind altering, sway-inducing, full-body rush of heat and blood. And it wasn’t remotely like being with Evan. That relationship, she knew now, with the worst of its horror and shame softened by a few years of growing, was always more of a curiosity thing, a desire to escape the void she felt after her mom died, a desperate attempt to feel anything except sad (and, wow, had that backfired!). It had never involved true, real wanting. It had never kindled a connection she could feel even when they were apart. Not like this.
No, she thought suddenly. No more thinking about any of that. Only of Jase. Better yet, no more thinking, period. Only feeling.
Like Jase read her mind, he took her by the hips and sashayed her backwards.
Aisha tried to see over her shoulder. “Where are—”
“Shhh.” He put a gentle hand to her face, redirecting her gaze to his once more, then silenced her with his lips, continuing to walk her backwards. When the ladder to the loft bumped lightly against the back of her calves, Jase lifted her like she was a feather and deposited her on the second rung. Instinctually, she placed her hands on his shoulder for balance. Her breasts were inches from his chest, her pelvic bowl much more in line with his—
“Better access.” He grinned, eyes gleaming with humor—and unmistakeable heat. “Plus, it wouldn’t do to get a crick in my neck just when it’s getting good.”
“No, no, wouldn’t do at all,” Aisha said breathlessly. His big hands still framed her hips, and his thumbs moved in soft circles over her hipbones, while his firm fingers kneaded the V at the base of her spine and massaged the top of her buttocks. She sighed in pleasure and felt him smile against her mouth.
He pulled away long enough to whisper, “Like that?”
“It’s . . .okay.” But she knew the raggedness of her voice gave her away. Like didn’t begin to describe the sensations rolling through her.
He gently nudged her legs apart with his knee and slid his leg further until she was basically riding him. The pressure of his thigh against her humming parts was . . . excruciatingly pleasurable. He was still kneading her ass and as his tongue explored and prodded her mouth, it all felt so good she just couldn’t contain herself—
A tiny moan escaped her, and he untangled his limbs from hers and stepped back. Her whole body objected.
“Get naked,” he said, but it wasn’t his usual sweet, tentative tone. It was commanding, authoritative. Sexy as hell.
She balked—but only because she knew she should. Or felt she should. Or . . . damn. She didn’t know.
His voice softened but was no less sure. “We won’t do anything—I won’t do anything—you don’t want to.”
Keeping her eyes locked to his, Aisha complied. She put her hand on his chest and pushed, so he stepped back some more, then she hopped off the ladder.
She shrugged one shoulder out of her boat necked top, then the other—then slowly, very slowly pulled it up over her head and let it fall to the floor. She waited a moment before easing off one platform wedge—and then the other. His eyes darted up to meet hers, then locked on her fly, which made her smile. She slowly undid the button, then released the little side hook and dragged the zipper down. Finally, still taking her time, she shimmied out of her 50s style capris.
She smiled at the heat in Jase’s eyes as she stood there in her panties and bralette. Thanks to Katelyn’s ongoing passion for creating retro “undergarments,” she had a plethora of cute scanty things and she was so pleased to be wearing them.
“You are . . . so beautiful.” Jase’s whisper was reverent, and he ran a finger down her cheek, across her clavicle and back, then down to the hollow between her breasts and up again.
She inhaled sharply, her eyes closing.
And then he was smoothing his hands over the curve of her shoulders and down her arms. The sensation of Jase’s strong, slightly calloused hands against her skin was delicious and she shivered while her insides melted.
“I knew your body would match your heart.”
“That sounds like something only a poet would say,” she whispered back.
They laughed together and somehow that was so hot too.
“Your turn, buddy.”
Jase didn’t need to be told twice. He yanked his sweatshirt and tank top off as one and tossed them aside, then dropped his jeans and stepped out of them, balancing on one foot then the other to pull off his socks. While Aisha had enjoyed watching him respond to her unhurried clothing removal and thought him doing a slow reveal sometime in the near future was a marvellous idea, there was something flattering in his impatience to be free of his clothes.
He stood before her in nothing but tight-fitted boxer briefs that hugged every ridge and bulge from hip to mid-thigh. Oh my. Apparently, he enjoyed seeing her reaction to his near-naked state too. That rare flash of cocky confidence glinted in his eyes and in the quirk of his smile.
He scooped her into his arms and carried her up the ladder to his room. She hated—and adored—how his sheer physical prowess made her zing. “You Tarzan, I Jane!”
He grunted good-sportedly.
And then they were upstairs, on his bed—on bedding that Aisha no longer had the privilege of cleaning every day, but that was pristine all the same—and then they were both very, very quiet.
Despite her excitement, Aisha was sure that at some point, something Jase did would be an awful trigger—but nothing could be further from it. Every way he touched her, only made her strain against him harder, only made her want him to touch her more . . . And every way she stroked him, explored him, only made her feel . . . like she was actually a woman, in control, with power over her pleasure and his.
And in the end, it was Jase, not her, that pulled back and paused the endless caresses and intensifying longing, sounding breathless. “We . . . should stop for now.”
He pulled her hard against him though, and she growled into his neck with frustration. “I know you’re right, but—”
“We have time, little mama.”
“Dude, no,” Aisha exclaimed and to her relief, a surge of mirth cooled her ardor just a tad. “I’ve been meaning to tell you since the first time you said it. The little mama thing—so terrible. Not sexy. Not sexy, at all.”
Jase chuckled, low and deep. Pressed against him, Aisha felt the rumble of it go through her whole body—setting all her parts a jangle and aflame once more. Dang it, okay . . . Maybe everything he did was sexy to her.
Jase laughed again, like he was reading her embarrassing thoughts—and then, giving her a lip-bitingly-scrumptious view his glutes, he headed down the ladder and retrieved her clothes.