To Love Jason Thorn (29 page)

I let Jason pull me behind him as we exited
the bar and came face to face with a handful of paparazzi swarming us. The
biggest grin I’d ever sported in my life fell off my face and I reached for
Lucy’s hand so she wouldn’t fall behind as the flashes started to go off inches
away from our faces. Jason’s hand tightened on mine and he slowed his pace,
falling a step behind us to herd us toward the private parking lot. I glanced
at Lucy and saw that she was keeping her eyes down and trying to keep up with
our almost running pace in her spiked high heels.

The paps kept asking me questions instead
of Jason, and I felt my panic spike when they started to close in on us. When
one of them—a blond guy with the complete surfer look—got a little too close
for my comfort and caused me to almost knock Lucy down in my haste to get away
from him, Jason let go of my hand and shoved the paparazzo with a not-so-gentle
push on his shoulder. I let Lucy pull me closer, but Jason had stopped walking
to face the man, so we had to stop, too.

“Don’t put your hands on me, man,” the guy
said with a half growl as he lowered his camera. “Just doing my job here and
taking a few pics of the pretty ladies.”

Was he
goading
Jason?

“I don’t care what the fuck your job is. I
don’t want you getting in her face.”

I curled my hand around Jason’s arm and
tried to force him to keep walking before things escalated between them.

The jerk smirked and said, “Ease up man,
maybe she
needs
someone to get in her face. I hear you’re not quite
doing it for her.”

A few of the others let out low chuckles
and kept taping the whole thing. They were eating it all up. Jason took a step
forward, and then another as his muscles kept tensing underneath my hand where
I was trying not so successfully to hold him back.

“Olive, do something or he’s going to lose
it,” Lucy murmured urgently in my ear.

“Jason,” I said sharply when I saw his
hands had balled into fists. “We need to go.”

His eyes still on the smirking idiot and
his jaw set, he gave me a sharp nod and started forward again. The paps kept
following us and even though they were keeping their distance this time around,
the questions kept circling around my reaction to his lackluster kiss at the
premiere.

I was half tempted to stop walking and just
fling myself in his arms so we could have a repeat of our first kiss—obviously
the one we’d just had that night, because there was no way I was accepting the
premiere kiss as my first from him—and shut them the hell up, but getting out
of there as fast as possible seemed like a better idea.

Maybe I’d have a chance to maul him in
public some other time?

Reaching the car and driving away from the
small crowd didn’t help Jason loosen up at all. As much as Lucy did her best to
lighten our moods, Jason didn’t utter more than a few words.

As soon as we dropped Lucy off, Jason
reached for his phone and called his publicist without speaking a word to me.

“Megan. Yeah. Sorry for interrupting. I’m calling
to give you a heads up. A few people from the crew took videos of Olive and me
kissing on stage. Yeah, we were at the crew party. Fine.”

I quickly realized that I didn’t like them
doing damage control about something that was so damn near magical to me.
Rubbing my hands on my thighs, I turned my head and watched the cars passing by
us.

I wondered where they were going, who they
were going to reach at the end of their journey. Maybe they weren’t going
anywhere, just sailing through life.

You’re not even making any sense, Olive.
Shut up your babbling mind.

“Yeah, I know,” Jason clipped. “We didn’t
promise exclusivity to the magazine with the marriage thing. Sure. Go ahead and
make a comment on the videos then. No. That’s not all.”

He paused before letting out a big sigh. I
felt like an intruder listening in on their conversation, but it wasn’t like I
could get away to give them privacy either.

The best day of my life was slowly being ruined
by damage control.

“Someone must have tipped off the paps
because a small group of them was waiting for us when we left early. One of
them got a little too close to Olive so I gave him a shove.”

I closed my eyes and rested my head on the
window.

“No. He damn near tripped her,” Jason shouted
suddenly. Despite being right next to him, I couldn’t hear what Megan was
saying. I could hear her rising voice all right, but I couldn’t make out her
words.

“I’m not apologizing,” Jason growled at
her. “I won’t have anyone crowd her just because she is too polite to tell them
to back off. I called to give you a heads up. Now you know. Do whatever you
want with it.”

With those last words, he hung up on her.

For the rest of the ride, he didn’t speak
to me, so I didn’t think it would be a good idea to force a conversation on
him. Maybe he was already regretting kissing me? Or maybe he had been playing
and I was too dense to notice we were acting? Could he be that cruel? Or maybe
he was angry about the paps mentioning the photo from the premiere that made so
many headlines…

If he was angry about that, I didn’t know
how to fix it. I’d waited for him to say something about it the day the picture
had gone online, but I was too chicken shit to mention it on my own. When he
didn’t bring it up and chose to act like nothing was wrong…well, why poke the
bear right? However, maybe if I apologized, he would soften at least enough to
speak again.

Gaah…
He was
making both my heart and my head hurt with his loud silence.

We spotted the paparazzi lying in wait in
front of his house the moment he turned the corner onto his street.

“Damn it!” Jason growled, speeding up
toward the gate before they could get between the car and the gate and block
our entrance.

I shielded my face with my hand as they
started to light up their flashes to get a glimpse into the car. I had no idea
if they could see through the black windows or not, but in any case I wasn’t in
the mood to force a smile.

Jason managed to get us in without any
problems.

“Either there is something new going on
that we don’t know about, or they know we’re married,” Jason said as he drove
the car up the driveway.

Soundlessly, I nodded in agreement.

After the short ride up, when we were
safely tucked away from unwanted eyes, I jumped out as soon as the car was
parked.

Jason had given me my own key to the house,
but I still waited for him to let us in. No matter what he said, this little
palace was his, not mine. I was more like a glorified roommate than a wife.

When Jason came up next to me, I avoided
eye contact and waited for him to unlock the door.

Truth be told, I had planned to run to my
room and hide there for a few months, but as soon as we walked in and Jason
closed the door behind us, he grabbed my hand and pinned me to the wall.

My breath came out in a whoosh as my back
hit the wall, hard.

“Jason,” I gasped, shocked.

He captured my face in his hands and my
heart skyrocketed when I saw the look on his face.

“Do it again,” he growled.

My eyes on his, my breathing hard, I quietly
asked, “Do what, Jason?”

“Kiss me like that. Again.” It almost
sounded like a threat.

I swallowed and looked down at his lips.
“That wasn’t me,” I whispered, my voice barely functioning. “You kissed
me
.”
I fisted my hands and pressed them against the wall. My body was shaking with years
of want and need for him.

God, I’d wanted this boy to look at me like
he was looking at me at that moment ever since I’d learned about how a boy
should kiss a girl. He was my perfect guy.

“Oh, no, sweetheart,” he said as he ran his
nose against my neck, breathing me in.
He
was breathing
me
in!
“That was all you.”

His lips ghosted over mine and I took a
quick, sharp breath. When he backed off an inch or two, taking his warmth away,
I found myself going after him like a puppet being played.

He tilted his head. “Kiss me, Olive,” he
repeated again, his eyes locked on mine.

Starved for him, I launched myself into his
arms. My arms went around his neck and I roughly pulled him down to my lips.
That was all the invitation he needed. He pushed me back against the wall and
let me take what I wanted.

When I tilted my head to deepen the kiss
and tasted his tongue on mine, he groaned. Bending down, his hand reached under
my skirt for the curve of my ass and he hoisted me up against the wall.

I squealed into his mouth, but he didn’t
break our kiss. That was the point where he took over and gave me something I’d
never had with any other guy.

I wrapped my legs around his waist and held
on tighter, threading my fingers into his hair and pulling on them slightly.

He groaned, a sound that was so rough and
delicious that it vibrated through me and caused even more heat to pool between
my legs, an area that was now in close contact with his jean-clad cock. I
tightened my legs around him, dying to get a little more friction against his
hardness. As if he knew what I needed, his hands tightened on my ass and he
thrust his hips right where I needed him.
Pronto!

He broke our kiss and I took a big gulp of
air as he grazed my jawline with his teeth and then moved down over my throat.
His breathing was just as erratic as mine was. When he gave me another thrust,
hitting the—perfect—spot, I gasped and threw my head back, hitting the wall
with a thud that probably caused me to lose more than a few brain cells.

Being kissed by him was worth every one.

Then his lips were on mine and suddenly we
were moving. I held his face in my hands and took as much as I could from his
lips. I didn’t even care where he was taking me as long as he kept kissing me
like that.

When my ass hit something solid, I opened
my eyes and looked around while Jason’s hands were working to get off my
panties under my skirt. We were in the kitchen area and I was sitting on the
kitchen island.

Hot!

I was about to score big time!

The panties got caught up in my shoes and
he practically snapped them off, startling another gasp from me. The lights
coming from his backyard were enough for me to see his dark eyes burning with
heat. Heat for me. His big hands kept caressing my thighs, but otherwise he let
me have my look as we panted, out of breath.

His eyes still on me, he licked his lips,
slipped his hands in between my thighs, and spread them wide open, making space
for his body.

I leaned forward and rested my forehead
against his. Our eyes were open and I was falling so deep with him—no turning
back, done for life deep.

“Will you be wet for me when I touch you?”
he whispered against my mouth. His fingers were toying with me, caressing an
imaginary trail from my knee up toward my pussy, never quite touching, but
getting too damn close for me to sit absolutely still.

My heart beating out of my chest, I nodded.
“
So
wet,” I whispered.

“Good,” he muttered in a thick voice, and
finally,
finally
his fingertips touched me right
there
.

My eyes closed. I moaned and threw my head
back.

His hand left me and he cupped my neck,
bringing my forehead back to rest against his.

“No, baby. I want you to look into my eyes
when I make you come. I want you to remember.”

As if I could ever forget him touching
me
…

He gave me his finger again, but this time,
he didn’t caress or play. He pushed two of his fingers inside me, literally
taking my breath away, and pressed his thumb firmly against my clit.

My legs shaking, I closed my eyes and took
a deep breath. He wasn’t moving and I needed him to move really bad. It wasn’t
going to take more than a few seconds for me to come. A few thrusts and I was
going to lose it.

“Please,” I whispered and cupped his face, staring
into his eyes like he wanted me to do.

“You want me?” he asked, his voice
unrecognizable.

“Yes,” I sighed. I’d wanted him for years.
I’d longed for him when he was sleeping in my brother’s room, so close but
still far away. Then when years had passed, I’d longed for him secretly, watching
his movies, holding him close to my heart even when he was impossible for me to
have. “Yes,” I repeated with more feeling.

“Then kiss me, Olive.”

This time, I didn’t hesitate. Holding his
face to my lips, I kissed him softly. His fingers gave me a small thrust and
his thumb rubbed my clit, just as softly as my kiss. I hooked my legs around
his waist and pulled him closer to me. Tilting his head with my hands, I kissed
him deeper. It was still soft, but I thrust my tongue deeper into his mouth to
taste all of him, to play with his tongue.