“Could fall into those pools, Sarge,” he muttered. “Blue skies, ocean waves”—he paused to suck in a satisfied breath when she clenched around him—“irises in the spring. Windows to your soul.”
Sweetness oozed from each word he spoke. She hadn’t experienced many men being sweet to her in the past. But she had with Asher. His sweetness had a tang to it—a flavor she could taste on the back of her tongue.
“God, I missed you.” His humor vanished as quickly as it came.
Her heart seized. She’d opened up for him when she’d given him her eyes. It was the tiniest crack, but he’d widened the gap. This was a bad idea.
A bad, bad, bad-boy idea.
“That’s a song, baby.” He grinned.
No way.
“Well, you’re not stopping to write it down,” she informed him between erratic breaths, trying her damnedest to regain footing even as she fell apart beneath him. This was sex for sex’s sake. She needed to remember that.
“Fuck, no, I’m not,” he said. “But you can help me remember.”
Help him remember to write a song about her? No, she did not think so. It was one thing to be in his bed, to extract pleasure from him—to give him pleasure, to be on the receiving end of his teasing. It was another to have Asher pen a song about her.
No, thank you very much.
“My turn. On your back.” She pushed against his shoulders, desperate to regain some control.
“Forget it.” His eyes sparkled in that playful way she’d always admired. “I’m going to hold you down and make you come and you’re going to look at me when I do it.”
She lost the will to argue whenever he watched her this intently. This single-mindedly. And wasn’t that what it had been like to be with Asher from the start? When she was with him, he was thinking only of her. She’d never been with a guy who was so undeniably present. Fleeting though it was…
Their gazes locked, and all of her softened. From her fingernails raking over his pectoral muscles to her heels resting on his ass. His playful spark shifted into something much more intense. He slowed his movements, lowering over her, and she realized there was no escaping the shared intimacy between them. It was there, carving a path into her very soul.
And she wasn’t the only one feeling it.
Reverence was written on Asher’s expression. He was in control, moving in and out of her, thumbing her nipple the way he knew she liked, kissing her while he plunged deeper and deeper still. Gloria, her legs wound around him, tilted her hips to accept every last inch of him.
She never looked away. She watched him. Up until the very moment her orgasm hit her with the intensity of a battering ram, rocketing through her as he came into the condom, his hips frantically pumping as he said her name. Not “Sarge” but…
“Gloria.”
Over and over, he said her name until his voice was hoarse and scratchy. Until he dropped his forehead onto hers. He pulled out and fell to his side, his breaths shallow and labored.
“God. That was incredible.” He wrapped a tattooed arm around her waist and tugged her close. She went, even as tears pricked the backs of her eyes—blue eyes he’d said he wanted to write a ballad about. Eyes she’d given him as requested while he’d literally rocked her world.
Eye contact during sex was a line they’d never crossed before, and now that they had, it was like a little piece of her had torn wide open. Her heart, if she had to guess. And Asher had taken advantage, reaching inside and extracting part of her.
Shit.
Chapter 1
Present day
The envelope in Gloria’s hand was damp. Her palms were sweating, which was not attractive, but what was she supposed to do? July heat combined with walking toward Asher Knight’s new Evergreen Cove vacation home had given her nothing but jittery nerves.
And not for any reason one might think. Yes, seeing him was hard and talking to him difficult after they’d “done the deed” last Christmas. Not helping matters, she’d since learned the reason why he’d settled on a second home here in the Cove.
He wanted to be closer to his son.
He’d purchased his house back in May, and then had deliveries made: equipment for the recording studio he was setting up. Furniture trucks from Cozy Home. His vacation home was beginning to look a little permanent, and Gloria wasn’t sure how she felt about that. On the one hand, she got it…Asher wanted to be close to his son, and his son lived in the Cove. Which she couldn’t think about without admiring the hell out of him.
He also wanted to be closer to his buddies, and one by one, Evan, Donovan, and Connor had settled here for the long haul. Hell, even Gloria had relocated from Chicago at the beginning of the year. The Cove had a way of doing that. Vacuuming you in and not letting go. It had the wealthy air of a vacation hot spot, and the laid-back small-town vibe without feeling like Mayberry. In a word, it was perfect.