Page 132 of Chasing Your Ghost

“So you’ll keep the lavender?”

The corners of Riley’s lips twitched with the beginnings of a smile. “I’ll keep the lavender.”

Asher’s responding lopsided grin sent the butterflies in her stomach into a tizzy. “Excellent. Now, what do you say we get out of here? We don’t want to be late.”

They had planned to meet up with Ella, Noah, and Chris at Pohick Bay Regional Park for paddle boarding—Riley had suggested it because she remembered Asher mentioning it was one of his favorite things to do in summer—but before they left, Riley needed to shower, change out of her leotard and tights, and put on about a hundred pounds of sunblock.

So, she and Asher stopped at her place first for what was intended to be a short pitstop.

Asher wasn’t supposed to march up to her and crush his mouth against hers as soon as she’d walked out of her bathroom, showered and dressed in fresh clothing. She wasn’t supposed to moan and wrap her hands around the back of his neck. He wasn’t supposed to lift her and carry her to the bed. She wasn’t supposed to wrap her legs around him and dig her heels into his back so that he was pressed against her right where she wanted him. They weren’t supposed to do any of that. But they did.

Riley started tugging Asher’s shirt up, and he ended their kiss to help her finish the job, pulling it over his head to reveal a chest that had three pink slashes across it, but that was by no means ruined by the marks. As she’d suspected, his chest was toned, and the shadows on his stomach hinted at a six-pack that would probably be very impressive when he flexed.

The time he spent in the gym with Noah and Chris had clearly paid off, and she found herself relieved that she’d kept her stomach flat and her arms and legs toned by dancing regularly. It meant that she wasn’t self-conscious when the carved-from-marble man above her pulled her AC/DC shirt over her head and untied the bikini top she’d been wearing underneath it in case she fell into the water when they were paddle boarding.

“You’re gorgeous,” he murmured appreciatively, his eyes roaming over her naked flesh.

Her breasts were smaller than average, but she wasn’t flat-chested like most ballerinas. She was very glad of that fact when Asher’s fingers brushed up her stomach, and he palmed one of her breasts, his head lowering so he could flick his tongue over the peak of the other one.

It was the most erotic thing that Riley had ever experienced. She gasped, and her hands moved to stroke through his hair. She gripped the back of his head so she could keep him right where he was.

He chuckled against her pebbled skin and kissed her there again before his mouth trailed lower, moving down her stomach and stopping at the edge of her shorts. Then, torturously slowly, he began making his way up again. He kissed his way up to her neck, and then his lips were on hers, urgent and firm.

Riley returned his fervor with her own, biting his lower lip and making him growl in approval. The low rumble came from the back of his throat, and the sound did strange things to Riley, sending a shudder of pleasure down her spine and making her toes curl in anticipation.

Her hands moved between them, her fingers grazing over his firm chest and stomach and trailing lower, teasing at the waistband of his pants. With confidence she didn’t know she possessed, Riley reached down and gently glided her palm over the hardness pressing against his jeans, smiling against Asher’s mouth when he groaned.

She moved her hand over him again, and she could only credit the vast knowledge she’d gained from her romance novels for the way she didn’t hesitate to unbutton and unzip his jeans and slide her hand under his boxers to grip him without any barriers.

“Is this okay?” she asked, a hint of self-consciousness easing its way past her defenses when the fingers she’d curled around him slid up.

He’d stopped kissing her and had gone unnaturally still, his body tense in a way that reminded her of a rubber band stretched to the point where it was about to snap.

“Yes,” he got out through gritted teeth. “God, please don’t stop.”

Riley grinned at that. “I won’t.”

“Wait, stop,” he corrected himself, his body shuddering after she’d moved her hand again. Still keeping himself lifted above her, he gently eased her hand out of his boxers, twining his fingers through hers and pressing her hand to the mattress.

“You first,” he said, answering the questioning look she was giving him.

His mouth returned to her stomach, and this time he didn’t stop at where the material of her shorts met her bare skin. He kept going, unbuttoning, unzipping, and tugging her shorts down as he went.

“Is this okay?” he asked when both her shorts and bikini bottoms had been discarded and his head was between her thighs.

Riley had never been able to imagine letting someone do something that required such vulnerability on her part, but that was before Asher. She trusted him completely. There was no fear or nervousness on her part. Only anticipation and growing need as his warm breath teased her with its too-soft touch.

“Yes,” she replied, feeling breathless already.

Her next breath got caught in her throat when Asher’s mouth met her sensitive flesh, and she stopped breathing altogether when his tongue began stroking her. Riley had read about this and had found her own pleasure with her fingers, but nothing could have prepared her for the way Asher annihilated and shattered her, tasting her with gentle flicks and strokes of his tongue.

She hadn’t considered herself innocent before then—not with the kind of books she’d started reading in the last year—but the warm feeling that was building in her core, more intense than anything Riley had ever felt before, made her feel like she’d been a naïve and inexperienced fool to ever think that the climaxes she wrung from her own body were as good as it could get.

“Don’t stop,” she begged him when the feeling in her belly tightened, coiling and building towards a release that she knew would be the best she’d ever had. And god bless him, Asher didn’t.

Her hands were in his hair, her fingers gripping the raven locks, and her legs were over his shoulders, wrapped around his upper back. If she wasn’t so far gone, lost in the sensations he was wringing out of her body, Riley might have been embarrassed about the way her thighs tightened around his head as though she were locking him in place.

But, as it was, there was no room for embarrassment, not even when she began moving her hips in time with his tongue, seeking out the release she could feel was only seconds away.

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