Sophie whimpers in encouragement. His fingers circle and tease. Then—praise Jesus—they dip between her ass cheeks and slide forward into the slickness that’s waiting there. She’s ridiculously, embarrassingly wet for him, and Jude makes a sound she’s never heard before—a moan so deep and low that her whole body shivers in tune with it.
Jude growls, pulling her body closer to his, rearranging his grip so he can touch her more easily. She’s trembling in his arms as his fingers begin to explore all her softest places. She grips his shoulders and pants into his mouth, too turned on to be embarrassed.
His fingertip circles lower and she thrusts her tongue into his mouth to show him how much she likes it. Her entire existence is reduced to bottomless kisses and his questing hand. It’s exquisite. With shaking hands she reaches for the button on his jeans and pops it open. Mr. Restraint seems to lose his tight grip on the situation for a moment. His kisses grow wild and clumsy as she lowers his zipper and slides her fingers down the hard length in his underwear.
The wildness of the moment makes her feel crazy. She whimpers into his mouth then breaks their kiss, bringing her lips to Jude’s ear and whispering, because some things are easier to say quietly. “Just do it,” she begs. “I want to feel you inside me.”
Jude groans, biting his lip until she’s sure he tastes blood. “We can’t yet. You know I want to.”
“Nobody has to know.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he rasps. “The chief already assumes the worst. I need to be able to look that fucker in the eye and know I didn’t have sex with his baby girl before she turned eighteen.” He pushes her hands away from his erection and sighs.
Sophie is disappointed, and more than a little embarrassed to be turned down. She’s never asked for it before, not in words, anyway. “I’m counting the days until my birthday,” she grumbles.
“I know.” He kisses her then sweeps his thumb between her legs in a slow, torturous circle. She forgets to be embarrassed. “I’m giving you my dick for a present. Gonna tie a bow around it.”
She’s too turned on to laugh. “Tell me what else you’re going to do.”
Thinking it over, he rubs his lips over hers until she stops him with a nip to his lower lip. “I’m gonna start by laying you out in the moonlight and kissing you everywhere.”
She gasps because she’s imagined this very thing too many times to count.
The naughty whisper continues. “I’m going to get you all heated up with my tongue. Then I’m going to slide slowly inside…” Now he pushes a fingertip right where she wants him. “Then I’m going to tell you over and over again how much I love you until you come.” Jude’s mouth crashes down over hers, and she moans into his mouth.
His kisses are wild and hungry, and his fingers are shameless. She loses herself in his touch, moving her hips in time with his heartbeat until she’s shuddering and sobbing his name.
Chapter Eleven
Sophie
Internal DJ stuck on: “Helpless” from Hamilton
After tossing and turning for hours, I finally fell asleep and stayed that way until almost eleven.
When I went downstairs, I was dismayed to find that nobody had put away any of the food. So the day began with me throwing away a dried-out turkey and all the fixings. Fun times for someone who ran a community dinner once a week where every resource was precious.
It took me hours to clean the kitchen after that. I could hear my mother’s TV shows in the other room, but I was too angry to go in and make nice with her. As I scrubbed hardened mashed potatoes off the serving bowl, I felt as hopeless as I’d been since the first ugly days after Gavin’s death.
Three years later, and my family was still a disaster. No—three and a half. Jude’s sudden reappearance had made me stop and calculate just how bad things really were.
With the kitchen cleaned, I went into the dining room to consider the gravy splatters on the wall and the rug and the broken crockery by the baseboard. My blood boiled as I knelt on the carpet, picking greasy shards of my mother’s gravy boat out of the muck. I threw them away in the kitchen trash.
Then I rested on my knees, wondering how to get gravy out of the rug and off the painted wall. When a voice behind me fired off a question, I was so startled that I jumped.
“Where were you last night?” my father demanded.
“Jesus.” I whirled on him. He was leaning against the doorframe, a tumbler of whiskey in his hand. My father almost never drank. But now he looked trashed. His eyes were unfocused, and his shoulders swayed.
“Asked you a question,” he slurred. “Where were you?”
“Out. With a friend.”
“Who?”
I got to my feet, wary. “My friend Denny,” I lied.
“You seeing him?”
“None of your business.” One lie, one truth. That was fifty percent more honesty than I used to give my father. I was so tired of ducking his wrath. My father’s rage seemed really pathetic all of a sudden. Broken dishes and whiskey. “Why don’t you clean this up?” I heard myself ask. Both my mother and I avoided making demands of him. Right at this second, I couldn’t remember why.