Pure Sin (Privilege 5)

“Sushi,” Jasper said. “Do you like sushi?”

Ariana forced herself not to turn around and follow the scary guy with her eyes as he passed behind her. She forced herself to train her eyes on the road. If he saw that his presence was making her tense, he might see that as an opening. A vulnerability.

“I went to your room to give you the Valium—it came, by the way—and to ask you if you felt like sushi, but you weren’t there,” Jasper was saying.

Scary Dude passed her by but turned around to walk backward, keeping his gaze on her as he made it to the end of the block.

“Fine. Pick me up in the next ten minutes,” she said.

“Ana . . . where are you, exactly?” Jasper asked, suddenly sounding concerned.

Ariana’s heart warmed, surprised and pleased that he’d picked up on her tone. She looked around for someplace, anyplace she could wait inside without fearing for her life at every second. She swallowed back bile when her eyes fell on the golden arches two streets down. “I’m at a McDonald’s downtown,” she told him. “I’ll text you the cross streets.”

Jasper laughed. “Never figured you for a junk food junkie.”

“I’m not,” Ariana snapped. “I just took a wrong turn.” She looked over her shoulder at the bail bonds place, where Mr. Blaze and his two buddies were watching her, laughing.

A very wrong turn, she added to herself. She could only imagine what Noelle Lange and her other friends back at Easton would say if they knew the types of places she’d been forced to spend time in—the types of things she’d been forced to do.

“Just come get me,” she said.

Then she snapped the phone closed and jogged across the street to the fast-food joint, resolving to never again get herself into a position that would land her back in this part of town.

“You need to try the spicy tuna,” Jasper said, leaning across the table with a piece of sushi suspended between two chopsticks. He was wearing a black sweater that made his hair look even blonder and his blue eyes brighter.

“I’m not really a spicy person,” she replied, pushing her rice around with her own chopsticks.

“Oh, I think you are. You just don’t know it yet,” Jasper told her. He popped the piece of sushi into his own mouth and raised his eyebrows as he chewed.

Ariana laughed, shaking her head. “Do you stay up nights coming up with these lines?”

Jasper grinned. “Not at all. You just bring them out of me.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” Ariana replied.

“Neither am I.” Jasper took a sip of his sparkling water. “But I know you being here with me is a good thing.”

Ariana looked down at her square white plate, her two sushi rolls arrayed beautifully across the surface. She and Jasper were, once again, seated on the floor, but this time she had the benefit of comfy suede pillows beneath her butt and soothing Japanese music playing through hidden speakers. Jasper had somehow scored them a private room at Kumo, one of the most exclusive sushi restaurants in DC, so they were completely closed off from the rest of the clientele by a set of sliding, opaque paper doors. The setting was secluded and completely relaxing—doubly so since the Valium prescription he’d brought her was nestled safely in her handbag. Plans A and B were progressing nicely.

“I don’t know how I feel about being the inspiration for such behavior,” Ariana said, hazarding a glance in his direction.

“Well, I would stop, if you would just let me kiss you already,” Jasper said lightly.

“Why? Do you think that if you kissed me you’d stop feeling the need to pursue me?” she challenged, her heart fluttering.

“On the contrary,” Jasper said, placing his chopsticks down. “If I kissed you, you’d be mine for life. And then I wouldn’t have to pursue you anymore. I’d just have you.”

Ariana’s jaw dropped slightly. Every inch of her skin tingled as he stared directly into her eyes. She wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or offended, intrigued or disgusted.

“You’re staring at my lips again,” Jasper said matter-of-factly.

Ariana started to protest, but stopped. “I know.”

His eyebrows cocked. “Are your eyes trying to tell me something, Miss Covington?”

Ariana slowly smirked. “Just that you have a piece of rice stuck there,” she said, blithely returning to her food.

Jasper flinched and wiped his face with his napkin, the moment effectively obliterated. Unable to hold it in, Ariana started to laugh. Then Jasper dropped hi