Our silent standoff ended one night when I heard him inside his room. His door was cracked as I passed by.

He moaned loudly, “Yeah, Ave. Like that, suck my balls.”


I inhaled a shaky breath before pressing the door open just an inch more. Six weeks. Six weeks I’d lived with him, trying not to fall hard only to hit the brick wall of his emotional blackout. And now he was getting off to me?


My knees felt weak.


Apparently he’d been saving up any careful consideration of me for something that sounded hypnotically raunchy, entailing things I certainly didn’t do. But I wanted to.


I wouldn’t put it past him to do a little role-playing, actually. And just like that I gave in to my voyeuristic urges. If he was going to groan my name, I should at least get a front row view.


When I peeked inside, my eyes burned and my face turned hot.


Jase’s head tilted back. The cords of his neck were rigid. He sat completely naked in the leather armchair across from me. One fist slowly pumped his cock as the fingers of his other hand slid below to cup his balls.


The door creaked. His muscles flexed. His head flew up. He caught me breathless and staring. Through the shaggy hair falling across his brow, I made out his brown eyes hooded by heavy eyelids.


“Precious. Was just thinkin’ about you.” His drawl was as thick and heavy as the cock he squeezed in his hand.


“Really? Which head were you using?” I asked in a barely steady voice.


My gaze strayed low before boring a hole into the wall above his . . . head. The one on top of his shoulders, not the one glistening as it jutted against his belly.


“Now, don’t bust my balls, gorgeous. You know we’ve been building to this, don’t you?”


Denial came swift, but it never left my tongue, the tongue that wanted to lap the stiff column of his cock.


He hooked a finger at me. “Why don’t you come over here and suck these balls instead?” He lifted the twin pink orbs in his palm.


They looked so luscious. Mouthwatering. I shook to my senses before it was too late. He wanted to turn this—us—into a lewd act. What we’d shared that day on his Harley hadn’t been dirty or indecent. He knew it. I did, too. I wasn’t going to lay a hand on him until he looked me in the eye and wanted me the same way I did him.


Dirty and raunchy was fine. Using one another was something else entirely.


I shook my head, intending to back away, determined not to become another of Jase Everly’s needy little tarts. His flavor of the day. The boy was like Baskin Robbins . . . 31 flavors, one for every day of the month.


“I don’t think so.”


“Too prissy to suck cock?”


“Too discerning to blow yours, Jase,” I hissed.


“I’m not gonna ask again. Come inside and close the damn door, Ave,” he said in a stern voice.


“Go fuck yourself,” I shot back, turning to leave.


He was there before I could escape, slamming the door shut and spinning me against it. I smelled him—spicy, a little sweaty—and it made me dizzier than I let on, glaring up at him.


Leaning to the side, he swept one hand up and down the skirt and blouse I wore. “I’m all for a little cat and mouse--Mouse—but you’re not as mousy as you make yourself out to be. And what you’re hiding underneath all this? Really turns me on, Ave.” He skimmed his nose along my jaw then nipped the sensitive skin beneath my ear. Jase whispered in a velvety voice, “Maybe you just need a little spankin’ to loosen you up.”


“Maybe you want me to hogtie your hand to your cock!”


With his warm, rough fingers sliding across my belly to my hip, he jerked me against him so I felt his hot length pressing against my thigh. “I don’t think you wanna do that. Nnh nnnh.”


When he retreated a couple steps, my body jolted with anger . . . with desire.


“No, you like this, don’t you?” He gripped himself again and made a slow show of thrusting his cock in and out of his fist, already so erect he was dark red, shiny, and swollen at the tip.


I couldn’t deny it, so I kept my mouth shut.


Jase gave me a wicked grin as he tilted his head. A throaty growl escaped him. “I’m gonna come soon. If you don’t want it in your mouth or on your body, you better go.”


Willing my eyes away and my legs to move, I scrambled for the doorknob, listening as Jase strained to say, “See you at breakfast, Ave.”


I would not let him have the last word. “I’m not going to become another one of your slutty conquests, Jase.”


“I don’t have conquests. I have fucks.”


I stumbled into the hall, his words ringing in my ears. Jase was black and white and so many shades in between I’d lost count. I wasn’t stupid. He wanted me, but he didn’t want to get attached.


Arousal hummed between my thighs.


I would not be taken for a ride by him.