I hit SEND before I can change my mind, and then I listen to the clock on my wall tick seconds into minutes. Hours later, long after dinner and late-night TV with my dad, I’m still waiting for Joel’s reply. I turn my ringer all the way up so that I’ll wake if he texts, and then I crawl under my covers, wondering what he’s doing and who he’s doing it with. Maybe he found someone to help him stop missing me—God knows his phone is full of plenty of numbers of girls who would jump at the chance.
I’m not sure how long it takes me to fall asleep, but when I wake up later, it’s still dark. Even though the sound that wakes me is familiar, it takes me a moment to place—because I haven’t heard anyone tap on my bedroom window since I moved away from home.
Chapter Eighteen
“WHAT ARE YOU doing here?” I whisper-yell through the glass.
Joel smiles at me and points to the lock, and I quickly push it over and throw the window open.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper again. Cold night air gets sucked inside the warmth of my room, and I wrap my arms around myself to ward off the chill. I’m wearing nothing but a cami top with nothing under it and a pair of oversized pajama shorts.
“Can you lift the screen?”
I do, and Joel climbs into my bedroom, forcing me to take a step back. My brain barely has time to form another question before his arms wrap around me and his lips steal my words. Two days without him and I’d forgotten how intoxicating those kisses can be.
“I missed you,” he says against my mouth, his feet already walking me backward toward the bed, his hands already removing my clothes. My cami gets pulled over my head, his jeans fall to the floor, and we sink into the mattress. He nestles between my legs, and when I tug his shirt off, his bare chest molds against mine. With only thin layers of cotton between us where it counts, I moan against his mouth. It’s been eight hours since he texted me to tell me he missed me, and he’s making it clear he meant every single word.
Joel’s chilled lips drop to my neck, and I muster the sense to ask, “How did you get here?”
“I bought a car,” he says as he trails kisses down my stomach and pulls my pajama shorts down.
“You bought a—” my breath catches in my throat when his warm tongue envelopes me. His ice-cold lips follow, sucking my tiny bud into his molten mouth and squeezing it tight. “Joel!” I gasp, my toes curling against the mattress. He tenderly slides his lips away, and my fingernails claw at loose sheets.
“Shhh,” he whispers against me, his breath sending shivers up and down my skin, making my nipples perk and my heart race.
“My dad is home,” I warn without any conviction.
“We’ll be quiet.” His tongue strokes through my folds again, and my back arches away from the mattress. Joel rolls his tongue over me, and I moan against the lip I’m biting.
He chuckles and presses a soft, wet kiss against my thigh. He knows he’s torturing me, and he’s loving it.
“You’re a jerk,” I say, and he looks up at me from under thick black lashes. He’s on his stomach at the foot of my bed, and he shifts so that his lips are hovering above the most sensitive part of me.
“I’m a what?” Each word sends a fresh warm breath drifting over me, another wave of tingles.
“A jerk,” I maintain in a quiet, timid voice, and Joel gives me a dark smile before planting an impossibly light kiss against my tense little bud.
Another light kiss. A light nibble, a light lick, a light suck.
“Joel,” I whine.
“Is this not nice?”
“No,” I growl, but I’ve barely said the word when his eager mouth devours me and I moan far louder than I mean to.
Joel crawls over top of me a second later, shimmying out of his boxers, bracing his elbows along my sides, and then—
“Oh,” I gasp as he sinks deep inside me.
“Fuck,” he breathes with his forehead pressed against mine. His body shudders under my fingertips, and my thighs tremble around his hips. “I really, really missed you.”
I tilt my chin up and suck his bottom lip between my teeth as he sets a steady pace. I kiss him and control my breathing to keep from crying out. My fingers sink into the tight skin of his back, and my headboard knocks against the wall.
“Shit,” I hiss, breaking my lips from Joel’s so that he’ll stop moving and the wooden headboard will stop threatening to wake up my dad. It’s not the first time I’ve had a boy in my room—far from it—but that still doesn’t mean I want my dad to hear his little girl having sex under his roof while she’s home for Easter vacation.
In the moonlight filtering in through my still open window, Joel reaches one arm up to grab the top of my headboard, pulling it away from the wall. Cold air wraps itself around us, and he holds the headboard steady as he rocks back into me. The sight of him like that, with one hand braced on the mattress beside me and the other supporting his taut body above me, makes it hard to breathe, and I can’t help myself—I lift away from the warmth of my sheets to suck his cold nipple ring into my mouth, flicking my tongue inside the metal hoop and scratching my fingernails up his sides.
“Dee,” Joel pleads. His voice cracks, and I know he’s close.