by Cynthia Dane
Well, there was no arguing that. Between how he acted now and what he had done to her a while ago… how could she not be prepared to take whatever he had to give?
Jasmine held on tight as Ethan hooked his hands beneath her knees, spreading her legs wide. She slid down the wall a little, balancing against a skinny ridge big and strong enough to support her at that angle. This is seriously happening. Ethan’s going to devour me at our engagement party. All over a game of croquet!
“All of this,” Ethan declared, hands touching whatever they could – which included her hips and ass – and breath so hot against her chest that she almost came right there. “This is mine. I wouldn’t marry a woman who wasn’t all mine, heart and body.”
“Yes, sir.” Jasmine wanted it. She wanted him inside her, now, proving how much she belonged to him. “It’s all yours.”
“I can take what I want, right?”
“Yes!”
He teased her, pushing his cock into her enough to show her what kind of power he had. Then he pulled back out, sneering against her throat. “Tell me you want it. Beg for it.”
Not a hard command to obey.
“Please!” Jasmine squirmed against him, almost losing purchase on the wall and falling straight to the floor. “Please, do it. Make me yours, over and over. I need you inside me, sir.”
“Can’t you do better than that?”
Jasmine squeezed her eyes shut and imagined them at home, Ethan slamming her against their bed, his raw power so all-encompassing that she blacked out in the best ways. Pulling her hair. Spanking her. Speaking the filthiest language he ever unleashed on her. There it goes… If Jasmine didn’t believe him about being wet before, she definitely did now, since every inch of her skin down there craved his attention.
She let whatever words flow from her lips.
“Fuck me, Master.”
As usual, she got more than she expected.
One second she was full of great need, a longing that tested her ability to stand her mere existence. Then the next? She had exactly what she wanted – the man she belonged to, the man she adored, and the man she craved filling her.
There was nothing romantic about what he did to her, but they didn’t need romance. They needed the heavy passion culminating between them – the sheer force they both possessed and were willing to give one another at any moment. Ethan wanted to lay his claim to her one more time; Jasmine wanted the reminder that he was the ultimate man for her. No other man could fuck her like this. Every thrust told her what she was. Who she was. She wasn’t just a convenient woman for Ethan to use whenever he felt like… a feeling she often had early on in their relationship. No, she was the love of his life. His woman. His fiancée. Someday soon she would be his wife, and these sorts of days would continue with new fervor. Even Jasmine sensed it now. This is what it means to give myself to him. She wanted to be used like this. She wanted to feel her legs go numb and her core cry out in sweet agony. Heaven forbid Ethan be gentle with it. Not that she wanted him to be.
“Fuck me,” she whined, tugging on his hair as she gazed up at the ceiling. The frenzy going on below could only be supplemented with the tranquility of a plain white ceiling above. “Shit!”
She didn’t realize how loud she was being until Ethan calmed down long enough to pull out and let her land on her feet. Why are we stopping? She barely had time to wonder that before being pulled to the billiard table and shoved against it. Jasmine didn’t wait to be told what to do or have Ethan do it for her. She took initiative, pulling herself against the table until her ass was high enough in the air for him to spread her legs and resume their former activity. Only now it really felt primal.
“In case there were any doubts,” Ethan hissed, grabbing her hair and forcing her head up with a grimace. “This is still mine.” His cock slammed into her, hips slapping against her ass as Jasmine clutched the felt of the pool table and cried out in desperation.
“Fuck, yes!” She couldn’t open her eyes even if Ethan threatened to cut her off from sex. “It’s all yours!” She reaped the benefits of him taking it, after all. “Come inside me!”
His hands went from her hair to her shoulders. Even though they played out this position a million times before, Jasmine still smiled to feel him throw his strength through her body, not just fucking her, but touching her all over and calling her the sweetest, most foul-mouthed things to be written in the back of her mind. She agreed with all of it. The crazed part of her hoped that all the party guests could hear these words. You think I don’t deserve to marry a man like him? Think again. Only I could make him feel this way. Nobody cared about how he made her feel. That didn’t matter. To anyone but Jasmine, anyway.
She knew he was close when he dug his fingers into her flesh, burying himself so deep that her inner walls had no choice but to hold him tight. I’m going to do it, sir. I’m going to do the one thing I can. Drain your vitality. Jasmine threw herself into orgasm, writhing against the table as her voice reached new, impossible heights. She was bringing Ethan down with her. She was exerting the one piece of power she had, and he was going to enjoy the fuck out of it.
He shouted her name, the first wave of his climax hitting her core with such an intense heat that she gasped to feel it. When he was like this, Ethan could go on forever, spending himself for as long as a minute… as long as he was inside of her.
While they may be in a sex-crazed haze, they still had some manners. This was the country club, after all. As long as they were on someone else’s property, Ethan would stay inside her, making sure she took every bit of his orgasm and kept it where it belonged.
“Shit,” she said again, collapsing against the table. Ethan wasn’t faring much better, but he managed to stay standing, one hand on her ass. His breath, however, hung heavy in his chest. All that working out in the office gym and he’s panting after sex. Jasmine was that good. “That’s all I have to say.” She pressed her face against the felt beneath her.
“I think we should use this color for our wedding,” Ethan said, rubbing the dress against Jasmine’s back. “It’s beautiful on you, and I want to see you surrounded by it at our wedding.”
Jasmine glanced over her shoulder. “Didn’t know you were a purple guy.”
“When it’s this dark, I can get into it. Ahem.”
It took them more than a few minutes to gather their bearings and return to reality. Not that they wanted to. Ethan now doted on his fiancé, kissing her every chance he had while she fixed her dress and hair in a nearby mirror. He made sure there was no evidence of their time together while Jasmine excused herself to an adjacent room. By the time she returned from the restroom, she found her fiancé composed and ready to rejoin the party.
Someone waited on the other side of the door.
“That was entertaining,” Adrienne said, smoking a cigarette through a silver holder. “You need this?” She extended the cigarette holder to them. Neither moved. Oh my… Had she been listening? The entire time? Who else? Jasmine looked around the hall. She didn’t see anyone else, but that didn’t mean a damn thing. “Never mind, then. You two should get back to this party I strained so hard to put together. Don’t mind me. Just needed a nicotine break.”
She stepped away, body moving in ways Jasmine could only dream of for herself. Does she naturally walk like a sexpot? Or does she do that on purpose? It couldn’t be good for her hips. “She was…” Jasmine began.
“I know.”
“Do you think she…”
“No.” Ethan put his hand on Jasmine’s shoulder and directed her toward the party. “Let’s go relax.” He stopped to whisper in her ear. “I’m not really mad, but you should watch yourself. People will look for a scandal, especially if it’s between either of us and someone of affluence.”
“Surely a man like him knows that.”
“He doesn’t have to care if he doesn’t want to. He was born with everything. He’s not going to lose everything like…”
Jasmine gulped. “Like y
ou could.”
Ethan remained unfazed. “The Lord giveth, as they say.”
A guest appeared, extending his hand to Ethan and apologizing to Jasmine for asking him away. They went to a corner to talk shop for a few minutes. Jasmine resumed her path down the hall, happening to look around a corner before she stepped back out onto the balcony.
She saw Adrienne standing by herself in front of a window, looking wistfully out at the golf course while her cigarette smoke curled around her perfectly pretty head. I feel sorry for her. Jasmine wasn’t sure why she thought that. It didn’t really have anything to do with Ethan – she didn’t worry about that. But Jasmine also knew that, even if a relationship was over for a long time, memories could still creep up when one least expected.
Amber appeared, catching Adrienne’s attention for a fleeting moment. The two of them exchanged some quiet words before Adrienne caught sight of Jasmine and turned away, footsteps echoing in the hall. Jasmine returned to the party, resolved to clear some air – and not just from cigarette smoke.
She found Ian and Kathryn sitting at their table, the man’s arm curled around the back of his girlfriend’s seat. Yet Kathryn remained sullen, and her forced happiness as she saw Jasmine approach did not do much to make her look more comfortable. Ian flicked a lock of her hair and avoided making eye contact with Jasmine.
Before the bride could say anything, Kathryn spoke.
“Sorry my incompetent boytoy couldn’t help you win your match on one of your biggest days.” She leaned back with a mimosa in her hand. “I’ll kick his ass for you later. He sorely needs it for… other reasons.”
“I was going to talk to you about that…”
Kathryn was too poised to harrumph in front of present company, but she managed to soften her visage in a way that Jasmine at least found believable. “Don’t worry about it. He did it to get a rise out of me.”
“And it worked! I mean, maybe I’m a nice guy helping a lovely lady out?”
Both women ignored him. “Thank you for coming to my party.” Jasmine turned, and only then did she let out the breath building up in her body.
Chapter 6
Trapped beneath a pile of soft quilts, surrounded by bags of chips and bottles of sparkling water, and enclosed between two silky couch pillows, Jasmine Bliss stared at the flatscreen TV in the den and gave herself carpal tunnel by playing a first person shooter for five hours straight.
I couldn’t sleep last night. It was nine in the morning by now. Ethan had only begun to stir in the nearby bedroom, Belinda walking up and down the hallway with mail and running whatever errands he asked her to do the moment he woke up, probably around eight. Did he miss me last night? Probably not. Ethan slept like a comatose patient most nights. Ever since his workload lifted – thanks in part to his occasionally flaky business partner – he was finally sleeping more and taking days off. He even slept in one day, and that was crazy.
Not Jasmine. Ever since the engagement party, she found it harder to sleep, whether Ethan spooned her or flopped onto the far side of the bed. Last night was brutal. After sleeping three hours, Jasmine woke up for two. She played on her phone. She tried to read a book. Finally, she got up and came into the den to watch TV. When she didn’t find anything on, she turned on her game, content to play for an hour or until she was too sleepy to continue.
Now, five hours later, she was still in the den. Mostly because two hours ago someone spotted her online and demanded a co-op play.
“Where the hell is your head?” Nala said into Jasmine’s headset. “That’s the fifth guy who’s blasted you these past ten minutes.”
“Sorry,” Jasmine mumbled. “Screwed up.” The game over screen was not her best friend right now. Yet every time she saw it, she found her chance to stretch and eat some chips. Breakfast of champions. “I’m not really awake right now.” Neither was Nala. It was six where she lived on the west coast. Yet when someone said, “I’m on break after some brutal midterms, so I demand some co-op until my thumbs go numb and I can’t see anymore,” Jasmine felt compelled to oblige. She was becoming more of a people pleaser as time went by.
“You okay over there?”
Sighing, Jasmine pulled her wireless controller over her head so she could experience the greatest stretch on Earth. Belinda passed by the archway again, peeking in and shaking her head. She probably thought Jasmine was no better than a teenager right now. Hormones are dicks. Yeah, she would blame everything on that. Even so, that’s not what came out of her mouth.
“It’s all this wedding planning. It’s got me staying up way past my bedtime with too many stressful thoughts.”
Jasmine still had yet to click through the menu taking her to the next loading screen. It told her that Nala was ready to go, so when Jasmine didn’t uphold her end of the gaming bargain, a testy voice popped in over the line.
“I don’t envy you having to plan a wedding. Fuck weddings. I don’t like going to them.”
“I don’t really like going to them either. I just got done being the maid of honor at a huge wedding in February.”
“Oh, no, did you catch the bouquet?”
“Yeah, how did you know?”
“That’s my nightmare.”
Jasmine laughed, flinging her body across the couch and pulling the covers around her head. Might be time to go back to bed for a few hours. Ethan said something about phone conferences before lunch, and for him, lunch usually meant one, at the earliest. Then I want him to cuddle me for the rest of the day. Not that she would get to experience that sort of bliss. They had wedding plans to go over. Ugh. More wedding shit. Forget it!
“You’re not planning on getting married anytime soon, are you?”
Nala made a sound that was akin to a cow dying.
“I take that as a no.”
“Give me a break. I just started school. I’m also like... twenty-two. If I’m ever getting married, it’s at least a few years from now. Besides, maybe I’ll dump my man and move on to a better model.” She said that loud enough to alert any men in her vicinity.
“I didn’t think I would be getting married for a while either.”
“So don’t curse me. I like my boyfriend staying that. I ain’t going to be no Mrs. Lane anytime soon.” Was it possible to hear someone shudder? Because it sounded like Nala was shuddering.
“Fine line between love and engagements.”
“You’re telling me. I love the big bastard… and he’s big, if you know what I mean.”
Jasmine cleared her throat. “Go on.”
“Ooh, you’re naughty. Let’s say I left him passed out in bed with his cute butt hanging out of the covers. Looked like a cheeky magazine model. You know, the kind who advertises underwear without even wearing them.”
“I like where this is going.”
“Me too, and I’m the one who screwed his brains out before going to sleep at like eight. Which is why I’m up at this ungodly hour.”
“I heard that,” someone said in the background. “Who are you talking to? If you’re going to talk about my cheeky butt…”
Jasmine checked out at, “Who cares. Make me some breakfast.” I left Ethan wearing all his clothes. Pajama clothes, but clothes nonetheless. He had taken to sleeping in a sweatshirt recently, even though it was an easy seventy degrees in their room and Jasmine often had episodes of sweating when she was hormonal. The man was a furnace. Ah, that was probably why she couldn’t sleep.
When things quieted down on the other line, Jasmine asked, “You’re coming to the wedding anyway, right?”
“I mean, if I can. It will be right after my semester is over, so we might be able to make it. I know Vincent wants to go out there again anyway.”
“All right…” Jasmine had half a mind to embarrass herself and ask this woman she was still barely friends with if she would be a bridesmaid. She was sorely lacking them, and Jenny was constantly on her ass about it. Nothing was more important than having a dozen women flanking her at her wedding.
“I promise I won’t throw the bouquet to you.”
“Oh, well, if you promise.”
“I wouldn’t lie about something like that.”
As a blast of sunlight came through the window and shielded the TV, Ethan walked into the room, still dressed in his sweatshirt and pants. His hair didn’t look much better, either. “How long have you been out here?” he asked. “I woke up over an hour ago and you weren’t there. Thought you were in the bathroom.”
Jasmine slowly turned to look at him again. “For an hour?”
Ethan shrugged. “I don’t ask questions regarding that.”
“I couldn’t sleep, so I’ve been out here.”
Between both boyfriends making their appearances, Jasmine and Nala decided to disconnect and get back to their relationships. Jasmine pulled off her headset and turned off the TV with the remote. Ethan picked up a binder he left on a nearby chair and flipped it open, frowning. “Anything you wanna talk about?”
Jasmine pulled herself off the couch, quilt still wrapped around her shoulders. She went to Ethan, resting her head against his arm. “We need to go over wedding stuff later. We still need to pick a venue.”
“If we don’t pick one soon, Jenny is going to kill us both.”
“Something like that.”
Ethan wrapped his arm around her. “I should be home all day, but I need to sequester myself in my office right after breakfast to do the phone conference. Then you can have me.”
“I’m going back to bed.”
“I was about to suggest that.”
“Uh huh.” Jasmine dumped the quilt on the couch and wandered into the hallway. “See you later.”
She slammed onto the bed, having enough time to crawl beneath the covers before her eyelids grew too heavy to bear. While she never entered the heavy sleep her body ultimately craved, she did doze for a good while, soaking up the sunshine as it came through the bedroom window and taking solace in the fact a lazy day lay ahead.
No account for how many hours had passed when Ethan wandered back into the bedroom, kissed her forehead, and dressed in slacks and a loose cotton shirt. For him, that was casual daywear. It’s amazing he’s not wearing a suit to stay home. Ethan would never spend a day at home wearing jeans and a T-shirt. The only times those pigs flew was when they were staying at the penthouse and it was unlikely they would have guests who cared about how he was dressed. Luckily for Ethan, he loved his Italian clothes.