To Love Jason Thorn (Page 56)

Taking another step, I closed the space between us. Prying the mic out of her hands, I laid it on the barstool. My hand curled around her neck and I asked, “Do you see me, Olive?”

The question was important to me, her answer even more so. It wouldn’t be the movie star Jason Thorn kissing her into oblivion in a few seconds. It would be me. Jason. Her friend. The man who wanted to make her his.

A shiver went through her body as she lifted a shaky hand to put on my cheek. Her voice was nothing more than a whisper when she answered me. “I’ve always seen just you, Jason.”

Then my lips were on hers, and her lips were on mine. We kissed long enough to cover years. In front of everyone, her lips became mine and I took her breath for myself, because I needed it more than she did.

I was aware of the whistles and all the applause, but I couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel anything beyond the woman in my arms. In my mind, it was just the two of us. Standing in the middle of a dark room, we were in each other’s arms, where we had locked ourselves in and tossed away the key without a second thought. She tilted her head and my tongue slid deeper into her mouth.

It wasn’t enough.

Burning with the need to consume her, I gripped her waist and leaned my body over hers, forcing her to arch her back, and kissed her more desperately.

Harder.

Deeper.

I put everything I’d started to feel for her in those past few weeks into the kiss and offered it back to her.

Our first kiss.

I wanted it to be good for her, change her world in some way. I wanted it to be her best first kiss of all the first kisses she had experienced.

It was my first time touching her heart after all; she needed to remember every second of it.

Her arms went around my neck and her fingers slid into my hair.

I groaned.

She whimpered into me, her body shaking with fine tremors.

She would remember it all.

When I wanted more from her, I slid my hand up and reached for her ponytail to pull her head back, just enough so she could catch her breath while I kissed the edges of her mouth where she hid those secret smiles, the ones she saved for when she was writing on her laptop, lost in a different world she was creating from the start, brick by brick. I wanted to own those secret smiles just as much I wanted to own her beautiful heart. I wanted to be the reason for their existence.

When she ignored everyone and captured my mouth for herself, I went willingly, giving her more of my tongue and taking just as much from her.

Then I kissed her again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

I kept one of my hands on the back of her head and let the other one slowly cup her ass so I could pull her more firmly against my rapidly lengthening and throbbing cock.

If we hadn’t been clinging to each other, the hunger I felt for her, the way my world was spinning…it would have brought me down to my knees.

My heart was ready to be hers if she wanted to take it for herself and keep it for an eternity.

I couldn’t stop.

Not when my body was aching to feel her hands on me.

Not when her mouth was giving me something I was desperate to have from her and only her, even though I hadn’t realized I needed it.

Especially not when she was clinging to me as if I was breathing life into her.

Then she was pulling away and looking at me with lust and a little bit of surprise in her eyes.

“Hello,” she whispered hoarsely. I nipped at her lips and she gave me one of her secret smiles.

My first one.

“You sure took your time,” she said, hiding her face against my neck as soon as the words left her delectable mouth. Her warm breath was whispering her longing against my skin.

Ignoring the room full of people around us, I asked, “You’ve been waiting for me to kiss you?”

She came out from hiding and looked into my eyes with the sweetest grin on her face. “Ever since I was a little girl.” Kissing me on the cheek, she added, “Thank you for making my dream come true.”

My heart ached with love for a little girl who in some ways had always belonged to me. “Was it worth the wait?” I asked, my voice gruff, my heart thundering in my chest.

She scrunched up her nose, her eyes focused on my lips. “The jury is still out. You think we can try again, maybe?”

“Guys?” Lucy whispered urgently, just below the stage.

Olive stiffened in my arms for a moment as if she’d just remembered the bar full of people we were giving a show, but I caressed her back and she melted against me. Then we both glanced at Lucy.

“I’m fucking loving what is going on here”—she motioned between Olive and me—“but people have been filming the whole thing. Since you look like you’re ready to go at each other on stage, I thought maybe you’d want to know before you start losing your clothes.”

Shit!

“We should leave,” I said to Olive and quickly got her down off the stage. No matter how quickly we left, I knew we would be the talk of the night. With the videos and the news of our marriage, maybe even more so in the coming days.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Olive

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.