“I’m really not hungry,” she muttered as he flopped the grilled cheese onto a plate and cut it in half.
Sarge lifted one half to his mouth and blew on the edge, all the while easing back toward her at the counter. When he was inches away, her knees shot back together, but he let his lower abdomen rest against them anyway, wanting—needing—to see how she would react. But she stayed still, a wealth of caution radiating from her tense form. Those deep brown eyes seemed to liquefy as she focused in on his mouth…and that was all she wrote. His hard-on grew more prominent in his jeans, contouring to the curve of his fly. Again, that desperate moan climbed in his throat, the one that would give him away as a man obsessed, but he staved it off. The need to jerk himself off had been this intense only one other time in his life, and it had involved Jasmine in a glittery gold bikini, oiling herself up on a towel in his backyard. He’d been seventeen—Jasmine, twenty-four—and after five minutes of watching the torture from his bedroom window, he’d laid face down in his bed and come, groaning into his pillow, after two frantic pumps.
Now, Sarge lifted the sandwich to her mouth, letting the crust brush against the seam of her plump lips. “Eat it for me.” Of its own accord, his left hand dropped to her ankle, teasing the inside with back and forth brushes of his thumb. “I don’t want your last meal tonight to be one that guy paid for. Not while I’m in town.”
Brown eyes clashed with blue. “I don’t think…eating this particular meal is a very good idea.”
His thumb dipped into her shoe, sliding along the arch of her foot. “It’s just a sandwich, Jas. Humor me?”
The more pressure he applied to the sensitive section of her foot, the more her eyelids fluttered, but after a moment of the treatment, she shook her head and sat up straighter. “No, it’s not just a sandwich. It’s you forcing me to admit I made a bad decision in terms of who I date.” She pushed away the grilled cheese. “I’m fine admitting that to myself, but not someone else. You’re judging.”
She tried to slide off the counter, but on impulse, Sarge stepped between her legs at the last minute, forcing her to slide down his lap to the floor. It was a big fucking mistake, even though the answering bliss in his groin as her * slid over the bulge behind his zipper felt nothing like one. Still, it ripped the Band-Aid off the moan he’d managed to cage since entering her apartment. It released against the top of her head like feedback from a hot microphone. He could practically feel the facade he’d been attempting tumble to the floor in a heap…but that wasn’t all he felt. Jasmine’s petite curves shivered against him, almost violently, a call his body answered by pressing her back against the counter, his fists lifting to bash against the overhead cabinets.
He heard her gulp, followed by wavering but determined words. “Whatever this is, it’s not happening. I won’t let it.” She shifted against him, her shuddering exhale fanning his collarbone when he only pressed closer to keep her from rubbing against his cock, which would cause all hell to break loose in his jeans. “Sarge. W-what is this? You’re my…best friend’s kid brother.”
Finally, he found the power to speak around the arousal clawing along his spine. His mouth was a centimeter from hers now, but he had no memory of when he’d moved. Both sets of their lips were parted, hot, hurried breaths clashing between them. “I haven’t been a kid for a damn long while, Jasmine. You want to feel it again and make sure?”
Her lips parted in shock, pink appearing on her cheeks. “Sarge.”
He recognized that tone as her stern, no-nonsense, I’ll-tell-your-parents-about-this-behavior tone, and it propelled him to take his warning a little further, even though something told him she was working hard to pull off her disapproving attitude. “No more fixing me sandwiches. No more ruffling my goddamn hair.” He reached down and grasped her hand, bringing it to the back of his head, moving it in a messy circle. “If I ever feel your fingers in my hair again, they’d better be pulling my face closer to whatever I’m licking.”
The sound that tumbled from her lips was part sob, part hiccup, hands scrabbling against his shoulders to push him away. He let her go, because she needed to know he would always stop when she indicated he should. Always. No matter how much it ached to stop touching her.
The hand Jasmine shoved through her dark hair shook, but her voice was steel. “You can’t just talk to me like that.”
Honestly, he wanted to laugh up at the cracked ceiling. She obviously hadn’t been paying close attention to his song lyrics. “Look, I say what I’m thinking now. Keeping it to myself never did me much good.”
“Oh yeah?” She kicked off her high heels in the direction of the tiny dining alcove, near the kitchen’s entrance. “Well, it’ll do me some good.”
Sarge crossed his arms, smiling inwardly as an idea presented itself. “Fine. You’ll get no more gutter mouth from me as long as I’m in town.”