Promise Me This (Between Breaths 4)

“She was my high school girlfriend. And I guess we just drifted apart.” After she thought I’d lost my mind and had turned into a sexual deviant.

It was time for me to get off the hot seat. To turn the tables on her. “What about you?”

She took a sip of the new beer the bartender had placed in front of her. “What about me?”

“Didn’t you say you’ve used some handcuffs?”

“I’m not sure you want to know, Square,” she said, a smirk hanging from her lips. “Might be too wild for you. When I used them it wasn’t just some exuberant idea.”

I tried to control my breathing because I sure as hell couldn’t control the blood rushing straight to my dick. “I’m ready. Lay it on me.”

Her eyes flared for a brief moment and then she sighed, hunching over in her seat.

“What exactly do you want to know?”

What the hell kind of question was that? Was there more than one handcuff incident? Fuck, did I even want to know? It might only serve to fuel my fantasies. “Um,” I said, my throat suddenly dry. “So you’ve done that before?”

“What, been handcuffed?” she said. “Sure, why not? I’ve tried lots of things.”

Fuck me. My pants tightened uncomfortably.

“So only that one time for you, huh, Square?”

My heart was battering up against my ribcage, my foot rattling the barstool. I needed to squash this conversation right now.

“Yep,” I said, not meeting her eyes. “It’s really not my thing.”

At least I was being truthful about that first part.

“You’re living up to your nickname,” she said with a wink. And quite possibly just then, I might have seen a flash of disappointment in her eyes. “Too bad for that monster you say lives in your pants.”

Holy fuck, now I was hard as a fucking steel rod. I turned away and adjusted myself in my seat.

Here was a girl who’d actually admitted to being adventurous and I was staying overnight in a motel with her. Ah hell. I needed rein in all of my dirty thoughts to get through this weekend because this girl was one huge turn-on after another.

The difference was: she may have tried things with her rough-and-tumble men, but she’d never been with someone like me—someone who was terrified of unleashing it all. Of not being able to stop once it was out there. Of looking at myself in the mirror and seeing that I’d become my father and my brother all rolled together.

“Okay to ask another query?” she said, her mouth suddenly by my cheek. Goddamn this girl would be the death of me.

My heart prickled in my chest anticipating her next question. “Go for it.”

“So . . . according to some stuff I heard about you,” she said, swallowing roughly. “You’re not big on making out with anybody.”

My eyes snapped to hers. “Huh?”

A wash of pink swept across her cheeks and it was so cute how she could readily ask me about handcuffs but not about whatever it was she was trying to say now.

“You know, Square,” she said. “You don’t give good tongue.”

Now the slash of pink deepened to red and it was sure to match the band of heat I felt tightening like a noose around my collar. Fuck, did chicks really talk about this shit?

“It’s not that I don’t give good tongue,” I said, leaning forward. “It’s that I don’t want to give good tongue.”

A deep groove formed between her eyebrows. “How come?”

“Well, Blue . . .” My fingers reached for the end of her hair and I twirled the cobalt tip with my fingers. This was a point I felt I wanted—no, needed—to make. And fuck, I almost wanted to demonstrate my argument, that’s how determined I was right now.

“Kissing is intimate,” I said. “And I don’t want to be intimate with just anybody.”

Her lips parted and I scooted even nearer to her, pinning her knees between my thighs on the stool.

Everyone around us in the bar became a blurred image in the background. All I saw, all I wanted to see, was Jessie. Her hazel eyes, her pink lips, the small beauty mark on the corner of her lip.

I moved my face close enough to breathe the same air. Her eyes blinked lazily with what was certainly desire, and her fingers fisted my forearm in anticipation.

My nose slid along her cheekbone until my lips were flush with her ear. “Don’t be fooled, Jess. I know how to use my tongue.”

Her breath hitched in the back of her throat.

The tip of my tongue traced her earlobe. “I know how to use it when I want to.” I lightly skimmed the inside of the fold and a moan elicited from her lips. I liked hearing it.

And now I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted her to feel me, taste me, as badly as I wanted to taste her. It was true that I didn’t give that part of myself to many girls, but fuck, I wanted to give it to her.

My mouth moved down her neck as I licked my way to her throat. Her skin was soft and smooth and pebbled at my touch. Her fingers were gripping my biceps and I slid my hands to her waist. She was lean and warm beneath my fingers.

I tore my mouth away from her neck to gaze at her. I needed to make sure that Jessie wanted me to touch her, and I figured she’d let me know in no uncertain terms. Her eyes glazed over as her bottom lip trembled and she released broken breaths.

My hand slid up her ribcage, along the side of her breast to her shoulder and her nipples hardened through the thin material of her T-shirt. I moved my lips just a whisper away from hers.