"Too afraid of this one?" he said, lifting up the Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. "Probably a good idea. It's worth a quarter of a million easily."
I gulped. I wanted to cry all of a sudden, for no good reason. I'd done this on purpose, intended on doing this, but now I really didn't know why.
Asher left the table and came towards me. He tossed the bookmarks in my lap and stared at me, hard. "Do you think this is a game?" he asked.
I somehow managed to shake my head, no.
"Why did you do this?"
I lifted my shoulders in the barest hint of a shrug.
"I wanted you to leave," he said, talking to himself more than me. He began pacing in the library, fretting, rubbing at the sides of his eyes with his index finger and thumb. "I didn't want this to happen. Do you know how difficult this is for me? Do you know what I have to do? I have to tell Beatrice about all of this, and then what? Besides that, I have to deal with you now, too. I don't even know what you're doing. Why did you throw a tissue in the trash in one of the bedrooms upstairs?"
"I don't know," I squeaked. My voice cracked as I tried to speak normally.
"I don't know, either! I do know one thing, though." His eyes glimmered and he stared at me with vicious passion. "You're going to clean it all up. Now."
I stood immediately, hurried to the stairs. My God, Asher was scary like this. Scary and... I thought back to my episode in the bathtub. Probably a bad thing to think about right now. I ran to move past him, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me to him. He squeezed me hard around my waist, his fingers tickling and digging into my sides. I started to laugh, but then a prick of pain sunk in and I opened my mouth, gasping.
He kissed me hard. His mouth covered mine, some voracious, wild thing, and he kissed me. His arms wrapped around me, pulling me close, and he eased his tongue into my mouth and toyed with mine. I paused, confused, but only for a moment before I engaged him in this wild, unforeseen passion. I kissed him, licked him, wanted to press my lips against every part of his face. My hands clung to his body and his coat and his belt. Before I knew it, he pulled me up against him, grabbed my thighs, lifted me up, and coaxed me into wrapping my legs around his waist.
He carried me to the ottoman as he kissed and touched and teased me with reckless abandon. Without a care or a thought in the world, he dropped to his knees and tossed me onto the ottoman. My back hit the leather cushions with a thud while my head landed on the seat of the chair behind me. I gasped, surprised, and Asher used my momentary shock to loosen himself from me.
He pulled and tugged on the buttons of my chemise blouse, undoing all of them. Moving the fabric to the side, he licked and caressed my stomach with his tongue and lips. His hands grabbed, greedy, at my skirt and he ripped down the zipper in the back then wrenched the skirt off with one hasty tug. Sliding one hand beneath my bra, he groped and squeezed at my breast. I squirmed on the ottoman, wriggling in his grasp, reluctant and trying to get free.
Or, my body acted reluctant, but I didn't want to go anywhere. I whispered shy encouragement to him, over and over. "Yes. Asher. I'm so sorry. Please."
He pulled aside my panties and licked a ragged line down my stomach towards my belly button, lower to my hips. His tongue left a wet trail across the fabric of my underwear as he bit and nibbled at the cloth. Then lower still, until he pressed his mouth against my slick folds. He sucked and licked at the lips between my legs, kissing them with the same fervid passion he'd used on my mouth. My feet pressed against the library floor and I pushed up and towards him with my hips. I placed my fingers in his hair, holding onto him, but he moved my hands away and made me grab onto the sides of the ottoman instead.
"You dirty slut," he said, his voice a growl. I looked down at him and he watched my expression with heated awareness. "Why do you keep getting distracted when I order you to do something? First in my office, and now in my home?"
"Asher," I whimpered. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to. I can't help it. I..."
"What?" he asked. "Say it." He lowered his face and licked around my clit, then stuffed two fingers inside me while somehow expecting me to speak.
"I..."
He pushed harder into me, frantically licked me into a frenzy. "Say it!" he roared into my p**sy.
"I masturbated in your bathtub," I yelped.
He paused, completely caught off guard. His finger stopped moving, buried deep inside me, and his tongue lay still on top of the sensitive flesh of my clit. I whimpered and writhed, wanting him so desperately to give me more.
"You masturbated in my bathtub?" he asked.
"Yes," I whispered. "The jets and I was and... Asher, please?"
He grinned and added another finger next to the other two pressed hard inside me. His tongue explored every inch of space between my legs. I screamed out his name and tried to press my knees hard together, but he held one of my legs against the ottoman to stop me. My other leg twitched and spasmed, unsure what to do, and then I lost all control of anything. My body quivered, moving up and down, trapped between Asher's strength and the chair and the ottoman, trembling under his touch.
He never stopped, merely watched me cli**x. I clamped my eyes shut and squeezed my fingers into the sides of the ottoman, holding on for dear life. His tongue, my God! Inside me, his fingers curled up, pressing against me, finding my g-spot and delivering me into exquisite pleasure. I wanted him so very badly, wanted to grab him and pull him up and undo his pants and wrap my legs around him, squeeze him forward and into me, but I couldn't think well enough to manage anything like that. Asher plied my body, pulling my orgasm out of me, never relenting.
My breathing stopped and a rush of ecstasy soared through me. I clenched against his fingers inside me and soaked the leather cushions beneath me with my arousal. Too much, so much, I let out a heavy sigh and collapsed on the chair and ottoman while Asher slowed his pace and let me relax.
When I thought I was done, when I thought everything was over, he picked me up and put me on my feet. I stood, knees shaking. Asher stepped away and inspected me once I had some semblance of a proper standing position. The front of my panties were still pushed to the side, wet from his tongue and my cli**x, and the right side of my bra was out of place from when he'd shoved his hand under it to snatch at my breast.
"Go," he said.
"What?" I asked.
"Go! Go clean. Pick up the mess you left upstairs. The crust of bread on the basement stairs, too. And fold the blankets and put them back where you found them."
I went. I ran. I could barely feel my legs, but I managed my way up the stairs, nearly nak*d in only my bra and panties. I took the tissue from the trash in the bedroom and tucked it into the waistband of my underwear, then picked up the towel from the bathroom floor and hung it on one of the shower doors to dry. I smoothed out the corner of the sheets and fixed them back into place. Back downstairs, on the first floor, I tossed the tissue from my panties into the trash barrel in the kitchenette, then stumbled down the basement stairs and grabbed the crust from the steps, then back up the stairs to put it with the tissue.
To the library again, where I folded the blankets and put them on the chair. Asher lay on the couch now, reclining and reading The Time Traveler's Wife. He tossed a cursory glance towards me before sitting up and staring my way.
"Are you done?" he asked.
I shook my head, no. Rushing towards my discarded clothes, I searched through them until I found the piece of paper with the pages he'd bookmarked. He laughed as I pulled the paper from the sleeve of my chemise blouse and handed it to him without a word.
"You wrote down all the pages?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, unsure and shy all of a sudden. "I didn't want to lose your place. I..."
"Jessika," he said. "We can't do this."
"I know, but..."
He looped his fingers into my panties and pulled me towards him. Dropping his book onto the floor, careless, with no regard to where he'd left off, he shoved his other hand between my legs. Two fingers inside me, as easily as that, with his thumb curved up towards my stomach. I shrieked, surprised, almost folding my knees and falling to the floor, but he held me up and pulled me onto the couch with him. Laying me down, fingers still in me, he stared at me as I squirmed against him. My body, his touch, it all felt so wonderfully perfect.
I wanted him to take me again, to bring me to cli**x, but he slipped his fingers out of me as easily as he'd slid them in and left me in a needy mess on the couch.
"Jessika, no more," he said, smiling.
"I'm... I'm sorry," I said. I lifted myself off the couch and sat alongside him.
"I can't cheat on my wife," he said. "We have, and I did, but it's not as simple as that anymore. We can't do this again. Do you have a boyfriend?"
"No," I answered. "I understand, though. I do, it's just..."
"You're curious," Asher said. "Curiouser and curiouser," he recited a line from the Wonderland book on his library table. "Do you think that's cliché? I find myself falling deeper down the rabbit hole, wanting to know more about you, but I'm afraid it's going to be the death of me. Off with my head."
"We can paint the roses red?" I offered.
Asher stared at me, blinking. All of a sudden he laughed and kissed my forehead. "I'm sure it's not that easy."
"I just... I'd like to be close to you, Asher," I said, candidly.
He nodded. "I think it's alright to be close," he said.
"But, your wife?"
"Yes, I have a wife, Jessika, and I have obligations towards her."
"I won't tell her," I said.
"It's not about telling her. It's about trust. If I don't tell her, then what do I do? She might never find out, but I'll always know, and..."
"I know," I said. "I'm sorry."
"Will you do it, still?" he asked, looking at me softly. "The surrogacy and everything we talked about?"
"Your wife and... I don't think she'll agree to that."
"She's returning from her trip tomorrow. We have plans for dinner tomorrow night. I think it's best if you join us, too. We can discuss everything and..."
I frowned. "Asher..."
"Jessika," he said firmly. "I know what happened and we both know we can't go any further, but that doesn't mean..."
"I think it does actually mean quite a lot," I interrupted.
"I'm ordering you to attend dinner with me and my wife," he said. He attempted to sound firm and confident, but I thought I heard a faint trace of uncertainty.
It slipped out of my mouth. I never meant to say it. "What if I get distracted beforehand?"
He stared at me, silent, and then he burst into laughter. "How distracted?"
"Asher, I'm really distracted right now," I said, teasing.
"Go," he said. "Put on your clothes. Get dressed. I'm going to yell at Jeremy, but then I'll come back. We can talk about things."
I nodded.
"Talk," he repeated, his tone solid and firm. "Talk and nothing more. What kind of pizza do you like?"