The house is silent later that night when we step outside onto the back deck of Asher’s house. Dressed in board shorts riding low on his hips and no shirt, Asher pulls the cover off the hot tub built into the corner of the deck and the steam billows out into the frigid air. I untie the belt on my robe and drop it to the deck just as he turns around. When he sees the tiny red bikini with criss-crossing straps I discovered in my suitcase, he says nothing, just swallows hard, a muscle ticking in his jaw. I hum with a deep, dark satisfaction as his eyes travel down my body and back up again.
When our eyes meet, it activates him, and he is in front of me in two strides. One hand goes to my waist, arm wrapping around my back, and the other tangles in my hair as Asher crashes our mouths together. The kiss is hungry and deep, and when his tongue licks into my mouth and dances with mine, desire arrows straight though me, and I grip his hips to steady myself. I have never needed someone the way I need him. The way I feel about Asher is huge and heady and overwhelming in a way that makes me want to wrap myself around him and never let go.
As he assaults my mouth with his, his thumb strokes the bare skin at my waist, and I’m rocked by a full body shiver. Whether it’s from pleasure or the cold air I’m not sure, butAsher reaches down and grabs my thighs, boosting me up and wrapping my legs around him without ever breaking the kiss. In a feat of athleticism that has me melting into a puddle of lust, he climbs up and steps straight into the steaming water. He sits down on the bench with me in his lap, my legs wound around his waist, still never removing his lips from mine.
When he finally does break the kiss, his eyes are deep, dark pools of blue. Both our chests are rising and falling rapidly. Almost involuntarily, I rock against him where he is settled, hot and hard, between my legs. He hisses out a breath and his hands grip my waist, pulling me down even harder on top of him, helping me glide over him. Every time he moves me, his cock hits my clit, sending waves of pleasure through me. He tightens his hands on my hips, grinding me harder against him, and when a moan drops from my lips, Asher speaks for the first time since we walked outside. His voice is low and deep and pure, unfiltered sex.
“Can you feel what you do to me, Juliette? Do you feel how hard I am for you? How badly I want you? I want you every minute of every day. Sometimes I can’t breathe for how badly I want you. You’re all I think about. All I see.”
Asher brings his mouth back to mine, and I’m expecting a wild frenzy of a kiss, but that’s not what he gives me. His mouth moves against mine slowly, thoroughly, lips and tongue exploring every inch of me, teeth grazing my bottom lip and then nipping at it before he takes my mouth again. My head spins, and the air around us is electric, the desire and sheer need between us too big for just our bodies to contain. He is holding me so close I don’t know where I end and he begins, and suddenly this doesn’t feel like a kiss at all. It feels like worship.
Asher breaks the kiss and leans his forehead against mine,his hands coming up to rest on my face, thumbs stroking my cheekbones and eyes locked on mine.
“Juliette,” he whispers, his voice soaked in reverence, his eyes swirling with something I can’t name but that makes my heart do a long, slow roll in my chest. Feelings pummel me so hard I can’t separate one from the other; I am a tangle of emotion and need. And then there is something else.
It could be the clear night sky above us and the blanket of stars or the swirls of steam rising into the frosty dark or the end of this uncommon, unexpected trip or the gorgeous man looking at me like I am the sun around which he orbits, but everything feels like magic. I pause for a second, not out of fear, but to memorize this moment that I know I will take out and examine again and again for a long time to come. As the words rise up from the deepest depths of me, it feels perfectly right, somehow, that I be the first one to speak them. To give them first to the man who has given so much to me.
“I love you, Ash.”
Asher’s thumbs stop their stroking, and we are so close I feel the hitch in his breath, the tremble of his body. See his face as he absorbs the words that draw the line between what came before and what comes after. I’ve never understood why those three words hold so much power, but as I watch Asher’s face turn soft with wonder and awe and the tiniest bit of disbelief, as if he can’t process the enormity of what is happening, I get it. And I make a silent vow to give him the words, over and over again, for the rest of our days. I tighten my arms around his waist to anchor him to this moment with me. This moment where nothing exists except for the two of us wrapped together, hearts wide open, under the dark night sky.
“I love you too, Juliette. I love you so fucking much. I…” He breaks off, his voice cracking with emotion. I bring one of my hands up to cup his cheek and he leans into my touch, taking a deep breath before speaking again. “I think I started falling for you before I even saw your face. I only had to hear your voice and I was done for. You are the girl of my dreams. Everything is better with you by my side. I never want to spend another day without you. This is always. Forever.”
“Forever,” I say, before sealing my mouth over his. And this kiss has all the passion and frenzy I was expecting before. Our mouths move together with urgency, Asher angling my head to take the kiss deeper, to swipe his tongue inside my mouth, to tease and taste, and need rises up in me like a tidal wave.
“I need you,” Asher says against my lips. His voice a hoarse rasp.
“I’m yours.”
Asher slides his hands from my face, reaching around to the tie holding my bathing suit at the back of my neck. With one pull, it comes loose and drops down. While his lips slide down my jaw and his tongue teases the sensitive skin behind my ear, his hands come up to cup my breasts, rubbing his thumbs over my nipples before rolling them between his fingers. I breathe in sharply, the feeling so intense I rock myself over him again.
“You like that, Juliette? You like my hands on you? Tonight, I am going to have my hands on every single inch of you. You’re mine, and I can’t wait to have you screaming my name.”
“Fuck,” I gasp as his fingers tighten on my nipples, holding me on the most delicious razor’s edge of pleasure and pain. I lift up slightly and slide the hand on his waist around to his stomach, right under the waistband of his board shorts. He is velvet covered steel when I wrap my hand around him, and his stomach muscles tighten, his breath quickening, as I move my hand slowly up and down.
“You think you’re the only one who wants to touch what’s theirs, Hot Shot? Don’t forget you’re mine too. Maybe I’ll have you screaming my name instead.”
He grins at me. “I’m all for equality, baby. But you first.”
In one quick move, Asher turns me around on his lap and pulls my back against him, one arm banding around my chest and the other hand sliding down under my bathing suit bottoms. He uses his knees to push my legs farther apart, and his finger finds my clit, slowly circling before dipping down to slide inside me.
I lean my head back against his shoulder, moaning up to the stars and shifting my hips, needing more. Asher’s tongue licks a path up my neck to my ear. “You like that, baby? I can feel how wet you are. So tight around my finger and already dripping for me. I can’t wait to feel you wrapped around my cock.”
He curls his finger up and grinds the heel of his hand against my clit. My hips rise up to meet his hand, and when he pulls away, I let out a noise that sounds perilously close to a whine, but I’m too wound up and needy to care.
Asher chuckles in my ear. “Don’t worry, baby. I won’t leave you hanging.”
“Then fucking touch me,” I grind out.
With one arm still holding me against his chest, he unties my bottoms and pulls them off, tossing them onto the deck.
“Oh, I think I can do better than that.”
Before I have a chance to work out what he means, he slaps his free hand down on the hot tub controller. In a lightning-fast move, Asher wraps a hand under each of my thighs, and turns us both around, holding my legs open as the warm water gushes out of the jets and straight onto my clit.
“Holy fuck,” I gasp out. My first instinct to move away from the all-out assault on my senses is thwarted by Asher’s hard chest at my back and his voice in my ear.
“Let it happen, baby. Make all the noise you want. No one can hear you but me.”
