Chapter 9
chapter
nine
Emory
I’ll take care of you.
I’ve got you.
Baby, please be okay.
Your skin is warming up now, thank God.
My brain is fuzzy. My thoughts are sluggish and flit around like butterflies I’m trying to catch.
Periodically, I hear a voice. A deep, husky voice that feels familiar.He murmurs sweet promises against my hair. So I know I must be dreaming.
Those types of sentiments aren’t meant for me. They never have been.
My brain fog clears a bit so that I can recognize a few things and they all hit at once. First, I’m extremely warm. Second, I don’t know where I am. And third, I’m completely naked. I think back to earlier to try and figure out what happened, but that part of my brain isn’t cooperating.
I shift my position and feel other body parts that I know don’t belong to me. Hairy legs, heavy arms, and a sizable erection pressed to my belly.
Where the hell am I?
Did I get drunk last night?
I try to move away.
Wait, is this another sex dream? Maybe I should invest in a new vibrator.
“Relax, Peaches.” The heavy arm wrapped around my body pulls me closer. “This is the best sleep I’ve ever had.”
Peaches. The sound of his voice now resonates. This is Jude. Stupidly hot and sexy Jude with the pierced eyebrow and possibly pierced tongue. It’s hard to tell when he talks, and I’ve tried to not stare at his mouth.
But none of that matters at the moment. Focus, Emory.
“Why are we naked? What happened last night? Did you drug me?” I try to move away from him but his arms are a prison of muscle and sinew.
“Don’t you remember? It snowed last night; we lost power,” he explains.
“Rosie!” I say, trying to sit up.
“Is snuggled up in front of the fire. She’s fine.”
Relief washes over me. “How did we get here?”
One of his eyes pops open. “You’re not going to let me just snuggle back to sleep, are you?”
“Nope.”
He sighs. “Okay, fair enough.” His hand rubs down my back, getting dangerously close to my bottom. “I carried you. I woke up to find we’d lost power. I turned on the generator for the big house then ran to get you.”
“The last thing I remember was feeling cold. I doubled up on some clothes, but everything after that is a blur.”
“You were either already getting hypothermic or rapidly approaching. I got to you as soon as I could. But fuck, baby, your skin was so cold to the touch.”
Baby?
“That’s why we’re naked. Best way to restore regular body temperature is skin to skin.”
“So we didn’t?” I shake my head unable to ask the questions.
He leans towards me putting his forehead to mine. “I would never. Not without your permission and enthusiastic participation.” He lays back down but never breaks eye contact. “Has someone ever, I mean… did that happen to you?”
His question comes out in broken chunks as if he’s struggling with the words.
“No. Nothing like that,” I say.
Relief visibly washes over him, and he hugs me closer.
“Thank you for saving me last night. And Rosie.”
“My pleasure, Peaches. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I squirm in his arms to get more comfortable and again, I feel the hard press of his dick against me. My core dampens and my nipples harden against his chest.
“Um, can I ask another question?”
“Like I told you last night. You can ask me absolutely anything.”
“Why exactly are you hard right now? Is that a morning thing?”
He chuckles. “No, baby, that’s an Emory thing.”
“I’m not trying to be dumb, but what exactly does that mean?”
“It means that now that we’re not freezing our asses off, my cock is recognizing that we’re pressed up against the sexiest fucking woman we’ve ever seen.”
I wait a beat to see what the punchline is. Don’t get me wrong, I acknowledge that I’m beautiful. It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve grown to love my ample curves. I’m soft and womanly like those women in the old paintings that had fleshy thighs and bellies. But I have also lived in my skin long enough to know that men who look like Jude do not find me sexy.
“You’ve gone all quiet on me,” he says. “I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable.”
“I’m not uncomfortable. I guess I’m just thinking that you probably always say things like that. I mean not that you routinely rescue women from freezing in their vans and have to use your hot body to keep them warm.”
He playfully swats my bottom. “So you do admit you find me hot.”
I level him with a look. “Jude, don’t play stupid. You are objectively gorgeous and anyone would say the same. Except maybe your sisters. So my saying it should not be some great compliment. I’m sure you have women all over this town.”
“I don’t actually give a fuck what other people think.” His eyes bore into mine, searing into me his sincerity. “I just want to know what you think. And to be perfectly honest, I haven’t had a woman in a long damn time. I’ve practically been a single father for the last decade. And then there’s the garage that me and a couple of our cousins opened.”
“What exactly are you saying? You never brought a girlfriend home to your sisters?”
“Fuck no. I never brought a woman home. No girlfriends. No hookups. No one.”
“I’m sorry: are you saying that you’ve been celibate since you became the guardian of your sisters?”
He nods. “My priority has been them. Physical needs are empty without connection and I knew I couldn’t create anything like that with a woman while I was raising the girls. They needed me too much. Ear infections, braces, periods, and teacher conferences, there was something nearly every week. Not to mention that before the guardianship was completely legal, we had some social workers in and out of the house observing our interactions.”
Again, the depth of his commitment to his sisters astounds me. I’ve never known anyone like him. Ever. “That had to have been stressful,” I offer lamely.
“Very. And we were all grieving.”
“Right, your parents. I’m sorry you lost them.” I don’t remember anyone from my birth family. I went into the system when I was around three, I think, but I have no memories from before that.
“So to get back to my earlier statement, I want to make a few things crystal clear. I’m not attracted to you because we’re in bed, naked together. I’m not attracted to you because I have a misguided sense of myself and my ‘saving’ you last night. I’m not attracted to you because I haven’t been with a woman since I was twenty years old.”
I swallow thickly. This man is going to destroy me. He’s as beautiful on the inside as he is on the outside.
“I’m attracted to you, Emory Travis, because of you. Because you’re goddamn gorgeous. You have perfect, thick curves that make my mouth water. You have a sassy mouth that lets men know you don’t take shit from anyone. You’re smart and resourceful and brave and fucking good with a wrench.”
That pulls a smile from me.
“Do you have any idea how fucking sexy it is that you can get yourself beneath the hood of a 1974 Plymouth Barracuda and you know what you’re actually doing? I admittedly watched that video multiple times.”
That makes me laugh.
“Surely you feel this connection between us the way that I do. It’s too fucking strong to be just one-sided.”
Do I feel it?
Yes, I felt it the first time we touched. Felt it even stronger, the first time we locked eyes. But I’m not sure I’m willing to admit that yet. So I don’t say anything.
After a few breaths, he severs our eye contact, rolls away and stands.
The sight of his bare, perfect ass jars me.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He moves closer to the fire, where I can see he laid out our clothes from the night before to dry. Rosie has already made herself comfortable on my sweatpants.
“I’m sorry, Emory.” He rakes his fingers through his hair, then picks up his sweatpants and steps into them. His dick isn’t really much smaller than it felt pressed against me, but he’s no longer hard.
Leave it to me to ruin the moment.
“I’m obviously out of practice and I misread you. I thought you were interested in me the way I am to you.”
It’s almost like I hear tires squeal on the road as his words penetrate my brain. “What?” I stand, completely ignoring the fact that I’m naked, and walk over to him.
“You think I don’t want you?” I ask.
He says nothing, just searches my face. I grab one of his hands and put it between my thighs. I make sure he can feel how wet my folds are. “Does that feel uninterested to you?”
His nostrils flair and his jaw ticks.
And that’s when I realize what I’ve just done. What am I doing? “Okay, I feel like I made things really awkward. I’ve read that scenario in hundreds of romance novels, but only in reverse. Where the hero presses the heroine’s hand to his erection. I don’t think it works this way.”
I start to walk away, but he grabs my arm with his free hand. His hand between my thighs explores and I release a heavy breath.
“Baby, there is nothing awkward about you putting my hand on your pussy.”