Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
W e stayed in bed for three more hours, naked and talking—well, talking sometimes…
I discovered that one of Julianna’s many talents was giving a killer blow job.
It made me want to murder anyone who’d ever touched her to know she had the practice to be that good, but unashamedly, I was more than willing to reap the benefits.
I watched her work as I pressed into her mouth, her lips stretched over most of me, her red lips smudged.
I’d feared my decreased libido over the last couple of years had been a byproduct of aging, but with Julianna, I was insatiable.
Just the sight of her sucking my cock and the feel of her fingers on my balls was enough to bring me to the edge.
I told her I was about to come in case she didn’t want to swallow my release. But she looked up at me, and the desire I saw in her eyes was intoxicating. Her hands tightened around the base of my cock. It took nothing but a suck and a slight gag from her to make me explode.
When we were both collected, I pulled her up toward me, nestling her into my shoulder again. “Do you need a drink?” I asked, and she shook her head.
“No, it went down perfectly.” She laughed. “Maybe in a bit. Hold me first.”
I did as she asked.
“I wonder who gives oral better? You or me?” she teased, resting her hand on my chest. I took her hand in my own and squeezed it.
I wished for a world where we could measure that and take bets.
I considered myself a confident, skilled lover, but Julianna was the dark horse in that race. I would bet on her every single time.
“I think we should practice until we figure it out,” I said with a smirk and a wink. She laughed.
“I think before we do that, I will have to have that drink,” she replied. “And probably a shower.”
I stroked her soft skin near her collarbone. “Is it strange that I like the thought of my cum still between your legs?”
“I didn’t know you were so possessive,” she replied, shivering with my gentle caress.
“I am when it comes to you. Is that a turn-off for you?” I’d always played a little dominant in the bedroom, but I knew I would do whatever she was comfortable with and be content.
“Quite the opposite,” she replied, a blush coloring her cheeks. She was so easily turned upside down. “I like it. I like being taken care of and wanted. Regardless, I already knew this about you anyway.”
“What? How?”
“You ooze confidence, Dracula.” She giggled.
I couldn’t keep the smile off my face at her gentle teasing.
“Has your dad contacted you again?” she asked, steering the subject toward more serious topics .
With anyone else, this would have been the point where I deflected, where I did anything to stop from exposing my true feelings. She might have hated to make herself physically vulnerable, but for me, it was the emotional vulnerability that did not come naturally.
But it was different with Julianna and slightly different with Mel. I trusted them both explicitly.
“No, he’s not contacted me, and I don’t expect him to.
I don’t want him to. The money is a done deal.
I made all the necessary phone calls. I sent in the marriage documents, and the money is set for transfer in installments.
He knew he couldn’t stop it. He just wanted to come and try to hurt me,” I replied in one breath.
“It’s what he does. Everyone always says that your kin is your kin, and no matter what they do, you have to respect your blood, but that’s bullshit.
I can’t function with my dad. It took me a long time with professional help to realize I didn’t have to put up with him, that I could separate myself, and it wasn’t shameful. ”
She seemed to mull this over. “I’m so happy you got help, Bram. It says so much about you. What about your mom?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know how to feel. I tried to get her to leave so many times, but she refused. She always said I was overreacting. She was never there for me growing up, either, with all the drinking. What do you do when someone wants to stay in that life?”
“I’m sorry it’s like this with them,” she whispered, now caressing my upper arm with her soft fingertips. “Grams never wanted you to hate them. But she wanted to make sure you were loved like you deserved.”
“And she did. She showed me what family was. You all did.”
“Too close to the sister thing…” She scrunched her face, and I chuckled.
“Believe me, the last thing I thought when looking at you was that I wanted to be your brother,” I assured her, kissing her forehead, unable to stop the frequency with which I was doing it.
“I won’t keep saying it, but it kills me how different our lives would have been if I’d been honest with everyone from the beginning, including you.
I’m sorry for all the wasted years, Jules. ” I meant it with everything I had.
She sat up and put one hand on the other side of me to steady herself, and gently stroked my trimmed beard. “They weren’t wasted,” she said, looking into my eyes, and I fell into her deep irises. “I’ve been looking at it all wrong. We were waiting. Because this, right here, is perfection.”
“There’s the romantic I knew back in high school.” I caught her hand and kissed it reverently.
She pushed some of her hair out of her face. It was wild and beautiful, and I suddenly wanted to be inside her again.
I’ll never have enough of her.
“I haven’t talked to Whit since you left the house,” I said. “It’s not unusual during the season, but he’d been checking up every day until you left. I haven’t heard from him and don’t know what happened.”
“About that,” she said sheepishly. “I talked to him. We discussed things. I confronted him about his behavior after Grams died.”
I sat up and scooted back against the headboard, unable to do anything more than pull her into me, where she snuggled.
“How did it go? What did he say?”
She became misty-eyed as she recounted their conversation.
“I love that for you, sweets,” I replied, kissing her twice. “New beginnings all around for us. I think Grams would be proud.”
“I think so, too.”
“Whit is going to hate me once I tell him about the wreck.”
As strongly as I felt about protecting the woman in my arms, Whit felt the same.
When he found out what I’d kept from him, it would be hard to get him to understand that Julianna had done it for him and that I had, too.
I had a hunch he would only hear the part about me lying to him for fifteen years.
“Even if he forgets himself in the moment, he will forgive you eventually, Bram. I’ll make sure of it. We have to get the band back together, as Grams would say, and I will make it happen.”
I pulled her down to me and kissed her deeply.
“How will we pass the time tonight, wife?” I asked in a low voice. Her breathing hitched at my words, her eyes glazed over, and she leaned toward me.
“Take me home, Bram.”
I froze.
“Shit. Melanie is staying with me. Her apartment sold, so she’s moved in for a while.”
“She told me when she called,” Jules said. “I’d forgotten. That’s okay. If you don’t want me to see her right now, it’s okay.”
“How did you talk to her anyway? How’d she have your number?”
She shrugged, but with a coy look that made me laugh.
I grabbed her, gently pulling her directly onto me until her head rested on my shoulder, where I settled my arm around her.
“I can’t think of anything better than having my three favorite girls under one roof.” I smiled, meaning it with my whole heart. “You will love Mel once you know her better. She’s opinionated, but she means well.”
“She and Whit would get along famously.” She laughed. “Do they know each other?”
“No,” I replied, thinking about it a moment. “They’ve never met.”
“Hmm. Maybe a good idea?” She smiled slyly .
I shook my head. “Whit and Mel in the same room? Not a good idea. I’m not sure the world could contain it.”
“We’ll come back for everything else later,” I said definitively, closing the front door.
“We’ll see,” Julianna replied, echoing how I treated her the last time I insisted she was coming home with me. I swatted her butt as she walked toward the truck.
The drive to the farmhouse was smooth. The weather was still lovely in the early evening, and the sun was setting right behind the mountain tops.
“We’ve seen so many sunsets together,” she remarked, and I reached over and squeezed her thigh, resting my hand across the console. I was holding onto her like I’d always wanted to, satisfaction engulfing me.
“I won’t be happy until we’ve seen as many sunsets together as we have apart.”
She didn’t reply, but I didn’t miss the smile that blossomed across her face.
“So, should I call your sister Mel or Melanie? Any topics I should avoid?”
“Just be yourself, you’re perfect. I didn’t mean to make her sound intimidating earlier. Besides, I’ve hyped you up so much. She already loves you.”
“Does she know about everything? The marriage and all that?”
I nodded. “Yeah. She knows it all, including the wreck. I’ve been pretty open with her.”
“Okay. I didn’t want to slip up and say something that would surprise anyone.”
That didn’t sit right with me. It was true that I married her for her convenience and as a form of penance, but it was so much more than that. It always was.
We were so much more than that.
“You can say and do whatever you want. Always.” I squeezed her thigh again. “Mel is not a bullshitter. I like that about her.”
“Like Grams?” Julianna asked, and I nodded.
“Mel had a hard upbringing. She was pretty much without family until she found me.”
“Does it bother you that she existed for so long and you didn’t know?”
I took a deep breath. “Yeah. I try not to feel guilty that I lived luxuriously while she was in a shack in the woods.”
Julianna’s face fell. “You shouldn’t, you didn’t know. Your life was bad enough and the only one you experienced. You’ve got to find a way to quit bearing the burdens of other people’s circumstances.”
I knew what she was saying was true, but I found it hard to accept.
“I never asked you how you got to Grams’ house the night we split. You didn’t take the Jeep.”
She blanched a little, and I narrowed my eyes, going back and forth between her expression and the road.
“I…called Hunter to come get me.”
Jealousy swept over me, my muscles stiffening in protest.
“Julianna Joy. You did not.”
She flinched a little but then cracked a wide, teasing smile.
“You could have gotten yourself fucking killed,” I grumbled, deciding to embrace the anger for a moment.
She squeezed my hand. “You’d have found my body,” she soothed, her voice as sweet as honey, shoving off my admonishment. “I’d already been out with him before. He was a perfect gentleman. I thrived under his tutelage.”
I raised my eyebrow and watched as her smile widened. She was toying with me, and I could play this game all night for the rest of my life if it kept her smiling like that.
“I feel like you might need to be punished for a decision like that, sweets.”
“Mmm. Make it a good one, please. Don’t bore me.” She flipped her long hair over her shoulder.
“Deal,” I replied.
Lakey met us in the lane leading to the house, which meant Mel was outside. I’d texted her before we left Grams’ house, letting her know we were on our way together. She said she’d make herself scarce, but I explained it was time for them to get to know each other and asked her to stay.
Lakey jumped on Julianna, and their love reunion was more heart-tugging than expected. They’d grown so close in just a few weeks.
“My girl,” Julianna cooed, scratching Lakey with vigor. Lakey soaked up every stroke, raining kisses down on Julianna at every turn.
Mel exited the garage side door, wiping her hands on a cloth, her clothes covered in spray paint.
“Hey, bro,” she said. She stepped into the floodlight from the garage so we could see each other. She looked out at Lakey and Julianna. “Looks like that discussion went well.”
I arched an eyebrow at her. “We discussed…a lot.”
“I’m sure you did,” she replied, rolling her eyes. She stepped forward, and Mel and Julianna exchanged bright greetings.
“I can’t hug you because I have paint?—”
Julianna pulled my sister into a tight embrace anyway. I stood back, watching Lakey circling them.
“I can’t wait to hear all your stories about young Bram,” Mel said, finally looking my way. “And I’ll tell you all the stories about this love-lorn fool. He’s been pining for you since I met him.”
Julianna blushed, looking back at me, and I shook my head with a smile I could not contain.
This was happiness. This was bliss. How could life ever get any better?