Especially if it turned out they were right. Less than a week until her thirtieth birthday, she could be having a one-third-of-life crisis. There was simply no other way to explain why she felt like she might suffocate if a certain honor-defending, potty-mouthed musician didn’t follow through on his threats.
She sighed. Tomorrow, he would find another place to crash and she could put the embarrassing crisis behind her, never telling another soul as long as she lived. Poof. It would be gone. Never happen—
“You awake in there, too, Jas?”
Jasmine’s back arched on the bed as Sarge’s voice shimmered along her spine, down the small of her back. God, had she been breathing heavily? Had she voiced her inexcusable thoughts out loud?
“I know you are,” he continued, his tone dark and teasing.
“How?” Jasmine answered, before her brain could intercede.
Sarge was silent a moment, but when he spoke, he sounded different. More… aware. Heated. “I can hear your legs moving in the sheets.”
Jasmine turned her face into the pillow to release an unsteady breath. “You shouldn’t be listening that closely.”
Another heavy beat passed. “Who’s to decide what we shouldn’t do?”
Lord save me from this guy. Had this seductively masculine man been hiding under the surface the entire time she’d known him, just waiting for an almighty growth spurt to make the results known? Because goddamn, someone needed to alert Guinness to make Sarge’s changes a matter of public record. Her eighteen-year-old self would have called him “diesel” and sucked her teeth when he walked by. “Do you always have trouble sleeping?” Jasmine asked weakly.
“No,” came his voice. “The trouble usually comes when I’m awake.”
Crazy enough, she knew exactly what he meant. Sleep was the time to block everything out. Forget all the self-doubt and fear of the future and just…drop off for a while. But why would Sarge have a need to block out anything? He was internationally renowned, loved, and emulated for his work. If she’d reached his heights, she would never want to sleep again. “Maybe it’ll help if you play your guitar.” No answer for long minutes. “Sarge?”
“I can play you something, but I can’t sing.”
She arched an eyebrow toward the ceiling. “Why not?”
His laugh sent her right hand fluttering to her belly, where it flattened and rubbed in a needy circle. “You banned me from using my gutter mouth around you.”
Her hand stilled. “All your songs require gutter mouth?”
“All of them,” Sarge said huskily, making the darkness pulse around her.
Before she could stop herself, Jasmine trailed her fingertips up her stomach, to the valley between her breasts. No one could see her. It was fine. The shame was hers alone to bear. “Fine. Just play something slow.”
For the next few minutes, she could hear Sarge getting out of bed and padding over to his luggage before flipping open the locks on his guitar case. The guest bed creaked as he sat back down and plucked a few strings. A trail of cohesive notes danced in the air, accompanied by his steady breathing, the gentle tap of his hand against the wooden instrument, as he kept time. The melody was so bold and full—almost tangible—she could feel every pluck of the strings in her middle, deep, deep, deep down. She tried to keep her legs still in the sheets, but they wouldn’t stop moving with the beats and pauses. Her eyes drifted shut, heightening her sense of hearing…and swore his intakes of air grew shorter as the music swelled.
Ay Dios. The music wasn’t the only thing swelling. The seams of her underwear felt abrasive against her sensitive areas, so close to the epicenter of need at the juncture of her thighs. When it occurred to Jasmine that a whispered plea into the darkness could bring Sarge into her bedroom, where he would weigh her down with his aggressively hot body, she almost gave in and used restless fingers to stroke at the thrumming ache. But the music cut out suddenly, the abrupt silence having the effect of a fluorescent light being flipped on.
“Why did you stop?” Jasmine called, when she’d regained her relative composure. “I liked that one.”
She thought she heard Sarge say something in the neighborhood of you should, but couldn’t be positive. Her eyelids were beginning to droop, even as the sounds of Sarge replacing his guitar in its case filled the small apartment. How odd that the song had relaxed her, even as it excited her body. But the oddity of the situation lay in the fact that it didn’t feel odd at all. A mixture of comfort and confusion seemed to fit perfectly with her new perception of Sarge.
Jasmine reached for the forever-unused pillow propped beside her on the bed, wedging it between her thighs in an attempt to cull the rush of sensation. Just before she drifted off, she heard Sarge say, “That was the last censored version you’re getting, Jas.”
Her pulse skittered in her veins, sending her into tumultuous, heated, and forbidden dreams. They were full of disjointed groans and grabbing hands. Gratified grunts and straining bodies. A man was there, grappling for the upper hand, but her dream self continued to close her eyes—attempting to block him out—while luring him closer with her body. Until…oh God, until he grew tired of her mixed signals and struggled her into submission. Pinning her wrists at her sides, his hair dragging a trail over her belly button as he licked down to a core that had never felt so empty.
“Fill me,” Jasmine breathed, waking herself as the words echoed like a shout in a tunnel. Sweat was still warm on her skin, shock working its way into her conscious to find the room illuminated by daylight. A quick check of her clock told her she’d woken before her alarm, something she never did.
Thank God. A fluttering hand found her damp chest. The last thing she needed when she felt so primed for pleasure, so rattled with the ferocity of her dreams, was to come face-to-face with the newly minted man who she feared had somehow inspired them, although she’d be damned before saying it out loud.
Jasmine’s toes were still curled when they met the cool hardwood floor. Her knees shook a little as she stood, slipped from the room, and beelined for the bathroom, refusing to spare so much as a glance into the guest room. A quick shower had her feeling somewhat refreshed, but pulling on her soft, worn-in jeans was a separate issue altogether. They slid up freshly shaven legs like a caress, folding her around her hips and backside like a squeeze from two hands. Putting on her basic cotton bra chafed her sensitive nipples, sending her teeth burrowing into an already-chewed-on bottom lip to hold in the resulting whimper.
Across the hallway, the partially open guest room was an eight-hundred-pound gorilla, taunting her, tempting her to take just a quick look at the six-foot-two man inhabiting her Ikea spare bed, but she somehow resisted. God, she really needed to get out of the apartment before Sarge woke up. For whatever reason, he seemed determined to throw her off-balance, and her game was already knocked askew this morning.
Jasmine tiptoed to the apartment’s front door and made an absent grab for her keys on the console table—and came up empty. The lining of her stomach burned hot when she remembered where she’d left them. Yesterday, while getting ready for her date, she’d swapped her regular purse for the clutch she stored in the guest room closet. Her car keys—along with the multitude of spare keys to her parents’ house and River’s—were still inside, as they hadn’t fit inside the tiny clutch. If she wanted to make it to work on time—and there was no choice if she didn’t want her pay docked—she’d have to venture into the spare room to retrieve the damn keys.