Page 58 of Dirty Fighter

Rubbing at his neck, he peers out the window at the gray sky and sway of the trees beyond. “But.”

I nod. “But once my mother noticed Ed, me noticing anything about you stopped being an option.” I couldn’t let myself have feelings for him, because I couldn’t risk jeopardizing her goals.

I think he understands. At least as much as someone outside the mother-daughter dynamic between us could.

A beat passes, stretching long enough that I wonder if I shouldn’t have said anything at all. If I might have ruined this moment by explaining the one that changed everything all those years ago.

I tug at his shirt. “Jason?”

Something passes across his face, or maybe it’s just a shifting shadow, because in the next beat, the slant of his mouth is the promise of pure sin.

Wow.

“But now…” He brushes my fingers from his shirt, taking hold of the hem himself and lifting it in a slow, stacked-abs and glistening-golden-skin reveal. “You’re open to the impressing?”

Oh. My. God.

I blink, fast-nodding like some pervy weirdo.

At least I’m not chanting Take it off, take it off.

“Take it off.” I slap a hand over my mouth, squinching my eyes closed. I’m going to die.

“Not unless you’re watching, beautiful.”

I open one eye. Then at the sight of that smile, I open them both. “Jason. I like you for your mind… too.”

“Thanks for that,” he laughs. And the sound of it makes me warm in places that have startlingly little to do with the sexy strip tease and unhinged kissing escape.

But then he’s stripping his shirt off. Not all sexy slow, but like a man prioritizing a skin-to-skin exchange. Which is exponentially hotter.

He pulls it over his head, tossing it into a heap in the corner before reaching for my shirt. “May I?”

Again with the too-eager nodding, but his smile only gets wider. Warmer.

He peels off my top, folding it at the far edge of the sink instead of throwing it on the floor beside his. Then pausing, he bites his lip before turning back.

And when he does, there’s nothing playful about the way his eyes roam over me.

I’m still wearing my jeans and bra and probably a few dirt smudges, but I feel naked beneath his hungry eyes. Beautiful. Alluring.

This look is all reverence and heat and calculating desire à la where-to-start-first in one scorching head-to-toe and back-again study that from any other man might make me uncomfortable. But with Jason?

His prediction about how wet I was going to get doesn’t seem so outlandish all of a sudden.

I reach for his belt loop, hooking my finger and drawing him closer. “We’re wearing too many clothes.”

His big hands cover my knees as he dips down, catching my mouth in a languid kiss. Then he’s pushing my legs wide as I fumble with his fly, only managing to free the top button before his fingers spread and slide up the inside of my thighs. At the apex, his thumbs brush torturously slowly up the center seam of my jeans… One. Then with the barest increase in pressure and a matching curl of his tongue around mine… the other.

Pleasure, sharp and powerful, spears through my center, stealing my breath.

“Too many clothes is an easy fix.” He tugs at my jeans just so, somehow finding another means of building the pressure where I’m most sensitive under the guise of undoing the button and zip.

He steps out from between the vee of my legs, and I hop off the counter to start shimmying the stiff damp fabric down my hips. Jason’s mouth is a half grin as he watches my intended strip tease turn into yet another awkward, near-stumbling attempt to get naked for him.

“Com’ere.” Sitting on the edge of the tub, he slips his index finger into the jeans where they’re stuck just above my thighs… so the back of his knuckle rubs at the tender skin through my panties when he crooks his finger and coaxes me forward.

“You know exactly what you’re doing,” I murmur, letting him pull me between his knees.