“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.
“Shit.” Jasmine walked in a circle. “Shit.”
She took a bracing breath. This was no big deal. She’d just walk inside, grab the purse, and mosey on out. Ignoring the startlingly magnetic rock star in her bed might be difficult, but she worked an assembly line for eight grueling hours a day. This would be gravy.
“You got this, girl,” she murmured, walking on the balls of her feet toward the guest room. Not wanting to chance the door creaking, she slipped in sideways through the opening, attempting to keep her eyes on the prize, also known as the purse on the bedside table. One step, two—
Sarge muttered something in his sleep and turned over on the bed. Everything south of Jasmine’s breastbone tugged. Don’t look…don’t look…
She looked. And her chin fell.
Sarge took up the entire queen-size bed, one foot dangling off the end, the other raised higher, thanks to his bent right leg having fallen open, pointing away from Jasmine. Oh no. He was…completely and dangerously naked, nary a sheet to cover him as they’d all been kicked to the farthest reaches of the bed. Just all of him out there for the world to see, if the world were capable of sitting inside her tiny apartment. And sweet mother of heaven, he was a revelation. It wasn’t just his overall big, rugged, sleeping-bear vibe that turned her ovaries into a funnel cloud. It wasn’t his sturdy, muscular thighs, his tattoo-wrapped biceps, or his egg carton stomach, either. That would have been quite enough to keep her in fantasy material for years.
It was his…manhood. There really wasn’t a more accurate term to describe it. Jasmine had seen dicks in her lifetime. In real life and on her laptop screen. What Sarge had going on was so very much more. It sprouted from a dark patch of hair at the top of his spread thighs and it…lounged against his abdomen like a brawny ruler, looking down on his subjects. He was aroused. Very much so. In a way that she could relate to after the fevered dreams she’d only so recently woken from. It had to be a trick of her overwrought imagination, but she swore she could see the thick vein pulsing along the underside of his distended flesh, swore it beat in time with her pulse.
Dampness spread between her legs, more noticeable and swift than she’d ever encountered before. The need to touch herself and find relief became tantamount. Choppy breathing was a disjointed echo in her ears, telling her it needed to be now. Now. Now.
But not here. No way. Not where Sarge would see her and know how she’d been affected. Although “affected” was such a silly term for the pressing need to use her fingers on the rapidly dampening flesh inside her underwear.
The car. It would have to be her car.
More than a little irritated that she’d been reduced to auto-masturbation, but too turned on to talk herself off the ledge, Jasmine took a few hurried steps, snatched up the keys and spun toward the door—