Chapter 21
21
[Judd]
T hat night, I’m seated in the library when Genie enters. I’d decided to read after dinner, needing space with my thoughts about Genie. Only, I’ve read the same page twice and still don’t know what it says.
“Mind if I join you?” she asks, taking her time to wander amid the shelves in the dimly lit room.
“Sure.” While I keep my eyes aimed at the page, I sense Genie’s movement along the shelves. The curve of her hips. The reach of her arm. The soft hum as she peruses the back of a book.
Suddenly, she’s rounding the chaise where I sit tucked into the corner. The only other seat option in the room is the desk chair which is not comfortable for casual reading.
Genie pauses beside me. Her knee almost brushing mine. “May I sit?”
I nod, acknowledging her question but unable to find my voice.
She sort of falls onto the cushion instead of folding down to it. She also sits very close to me as the back of the chaise does not run the full length of the cushioned seat.
Time moves in slow motion as Genie opens her selected book and flips to pages in the middle instead of starting at the beginning.
My legs spread a little wider than necessary. Her thigh presses against my mine.
Sensing her close proximity might be on purpose, I’m not certain I’m breathing. She teased me last night about wanting to know the ticklish places on her body. And I certainly would like to know every dip and corner that responds to a tickle. Every swell and curve that molds against my hand.
Eventually, Genie shifts, but her thigh only presses tighter to mine. A quick side-eye toward her shows a deep blush on her cheeks.
“You okay over there?” My voice is caught in my throat.
“I’m good.” Her voice is almost as strained as mine.
I realize I haven’t turned a page in my book, so I flip the paper, not certain what’s happening on the page. Hell, I can hardly remember the title of the book at this point.
Genie suddenly fans her face once with her open book and then glances back at the page.
“Whatcha readin’?” I tip my head to catch a look at the back cover, but I can’t seem to place the title of her book either.
“It’s a romance novel.” She flips the book to the front cover, keeping her finger in place to mark her spot. “You have quite the eclectic selection of books.”
“I like to read a variety of things.”
“Ever read this one?” Still holding the book cover upward, finger as a bookmark, I glance at the title.
“I don’t recall,” I lie, having vivid memories of reading the erotic romance. “Maybe you should read me a section. See if it jars my memory.”
“Hmm,” Genie hums. “Okay.”
What? Dear God, no . I hold my breath again, hoping to stop my heart from racing, because as Genie begins reading, I remember exactly which passage she’s stuck on.
“ . . . and then he spreads her thighs, running his hands up the insides. Her flesh is soft, but his destination is fire, calling to him. Blazing with heat and want and a musky scent that?—”
I abruptly stand, slamming my own book shut. I scrub a hand down my face and risk a brief glance at Genie before averting my eyes. “Yeah, I don’t think I remember that one.”
“You sure?” Her eyes dip down my body and if it weren’t for the precarious position of the book I’m holding, dangling it in front of my zipper, Genie would know just how familiar I am with that passage, and just how much her reading it in that smokey voice has turned me on.
Friends. Not really my fiancée. We are friends. I remind myself on repeat, but I’ve never wanted to be only friends with Genie.
I’ve always wanted more.
Quickly, I excuse myself but not before leaning forward and pressing a lingering kiss to her forehead. Closing my eyes, I inhale her scent, drawing it into my nose and holding the fragrance, knowing she’s going to play out in my mind in the exact fantasy she was reading.
Only I don’t want the fantasy. I want the reality of Genie.
Touching her flesh. Inhaling her heat. Breathing her in every night beside me.
“Well, well, well,” Clay sings the following day, as he enters my designated office at Sylver Seed & Soil which I hardly ever visit. “First you take a day off on Monday. Then you enter the office on a Wednesday. Who are you and what have you done with my brother?”
He’s all tease but I don’t appreciate the humor. “Funny.”
Clay’s eyes are kind. His face lined with age, reminding me just how long and hard he has worked to save the sinking ship of our parents’ dream and turn it into a legacy for all of us.
With my head bowed, attempting to focus on my laptop and projections for the third quarter which begins in July, I don’t look up at my brother. His official title is Chief Executive Officer and Manager, which essentially makes him my boss, but I don’t give a shit.
“What’s going on?” His tone turns more serious when I don’t respond, and he helps himself to a spare office chair on wheels that has no purpose in this office. However, the addition of a desk pad calendar and a plant near the window shows someone has been working in here.
Clay parks himself on the opposite side of the desk, leans forward and taps his fingers to the surface. “Judd. Talk to me.” He pauses a beat. “Are you hiding out here?”
I quickly glance at my brother then look away, as if the spread sheet on the screen holds my interest when I’ve been staring at it for twenty minutes without reading a single number.
The same thing is happening in my home office.
“I’m not hiding out. I just can’t seem to concentrate at home.”
With Genie in another room, her presence haunts me in the most tempting way. I want to be near her. I want to talk to her. I want to hear her laughter.
And I don’t want to get into a discussion with Clay. He has always been good at reading me. Staring a little too long. Digging a little too deep. Out of us older three Sylver siblings, he’s the jovial one. The one with a joke, a smile, or a laugh. I long to be that easygoing when I know for a fact his life hasn’t been easy in the least.
“I see you,” Clay states, reminding me he’s watching out for me. I am not alone.
I hadn’t needed looking after like Knox, Ford, Sebastian, and Vale had when they were younger. I was more independent and aloof, trying to keep a low profile and be invisible to our father. Clay hadn’t always been present when altercations with Dad happened. When physical fights occurred with either Knox or Sebastian. Or insulting words were tossed at Ford and me. Still, Clay didn’t miss how bad things had gotten before I left for college. I’ll always be grateful that he took me in for a few weeks before I left for Tennessee.
“I’m not hiding,” I snap, a little too aggressively.
Clay is taken aback, and I brace my elbows on the desk, pressing my fingertips against my closed eyes.
“Fucking Genie,” I mutter with more desperation than bite.
Clay chuckles. “You’re fucking Genie? Well, that doesn’t sound so bad.”
“I’m not fucking Genie.” I drop my arms to the desktop. “I’m fucking up with her.” I must be doing something wrong because there’s this wall between us and I can’t climb over it. I just want her to curl up in my lap like she did the night I explained about prom. I want to hold her to my chest and breathe her in, and I feel like a fucking creep.
I’ve been turned on since seeing her again and nothing I do relieves the pressure. Despite jacking off in the shower like a randy teen, I’m hard as a stone even after the relief.
“Well,” Clay clears his throat, fighting another round of laughter. “If you were fucking her, that would be okay. She is your fiancée.”
“She’s not,” I mumble.
Clay’s brows arch. “Excuse me.”
I hang my head and tuck my hands behind it, squeezing the back of my neck. I suck at lying. And I quickly glance back up at my brother. “She’s not my fiancée.”
“But—”
“I attended that fucking garden party like you asked.”
Clay twists his mouth, and I instantly feel bad. He so rarely asks me for anything, and now that he has a sweet family of his own, he deserves time off to be with them. He deserves them. I am so happy for my brother that he’s found someone like Mavis, and her son, Dutton, to teach him how to slow down and enjoy the simpler things in life.
I’m envious.
And I attended that party for Genie.
“Anyway, there was a little bit of a misunderstanding. Genie wanted a date. I said I was her fiancé. Heather saw me holding Mom’s ring . . .” The rest is history.
“Did you ask Genie to marry you?”
“No.” That question never crossed my lips, and I hate myself a little more.
“But . . . you’re introducing her as your fiancée.” Clay’s voice is all question.
“I know.” I blow out a breath and cover my eyes again as if the position will actually hide me.
“Judd,” Clay’s voice softens. He knows that tone gets me every time. “Do you want to marry Genie?”
Yes . It’s hardly been four days, but I want all the specialty dates and official holidays and all the days in between. I’ve known since I was ten how I felt about her, and at fourteen I knew I wanted only her, and when I was eighteen that I needed to make her mine.
She’s wearing the ring I always intended to give her.
“It’s too fast, right?” I argue even though I’ve answered in my head. “It’s wrong to want her so much.”
Clay’s brows lift and he blinks once. “Wrong? I don’t think it’s ever wrong to love someone.”
Are we discussing love? Marriage and love should go hand in hand. They do. I’m clearly ahead of myself.
“I just can’t concentrate at home,” I circle back to how this conversation started.
Clay chuckles again. “Good to see you opening up.”
“About my feelings?”
“Well, that too. But I just meant to me.” The gaze in my brother’s eyes is full of adoration and pride. He’s happy for me, even if I’m befuddled. “Now, get to work.”
He’s kidding. I work almost as hard as he does.
Clay stands and moves the mystery chair back to the corner of the office. “But don’t work here too long. Your fiancée awaits you at home.”
“I told you she’s not?—”
“Not yet,” Clay interjects, holding up a hand. “But if you want her to be, that’s a different kind of work. One more important than this place.” He waves around, meaning the Seed & Soil.
I could argue, how can he say that , but I know his reasons for changing his outlook.
I want those same kinds of reasons to change mine.
To avoid the couch and the chaise lounge, I suggest Genie and I play a game. We can sit perpendicular to one another at the dining room table. No close proximity. No tickling feet. No touching thighs and no torturous reading passages.
Only with just a chess board between us, my concentration is shot as Genie’s foot continues to meet mine beneath the table. Once by accident. But when it happened a second time, I wondered if the move was intentional.
Suddenly, it’s a battle of toes more than pawns on the chess board. Her delicate ones brushing over the top of my foot. My stronger ones capturing hers and pinning them to the floor. Every swipe is like a current up my leg and straight to my dick, straining beneath the table like a schoolboy trying to contain his erection behind a desk.
Genie has me so wound up I can’t think straight.
Eventually, Genie sets a piece in line to take my queen and calls out, “Checkmate, baby.”
My head shoots upward at the softness in her tone. She didn’t say the endearment in any other way than to claim her victory and yet it sounds like a win to my ears.
The coo of her voice. The glee in it. And the spark in her eyes as she looks at me. As seconds tick by, I’m holding my breath again, desperate for Genie to make a move. To give me a sign that she wants more from me.
For three nights in a row, we’ve danced around one another. Fumbled touches. Purposeful caresses. Fingers and toes. Thighs and hands.
Tonight, Genie is the one to pull back, though not as abruptly as I did last night. With her eyes still on mine, she says, “I think I’ll read again.”
If only it were an invitation to join her, or better yet, act out that scene she read to me last night.
Instead, I say, “Good night, firefly,” hoping to hide the disappointment in my throat.
“Good night,” she says, standing up while keeping her eyes on me like she has something more she wants to say.
When she doesn’t speak, I drag out the moment. “Sweet dreams, firefly.”
Her smile is gentle, like she might like the nickname. She is the brightest thing in this room, and the brightest thing in my life.
And I watch as she takes that light with her, out of the dining nook, and across the living room until I can’t see her anymore.
Suddenly, the need to expel energy hits me hard.
Quickly, I’m in workout shorts, gloves on, and at the punching bag in my home gym, running through a routine I’ve already practiced this morning.
Right. Right. Left.
Left. Left. Right.
Hooks and jabs. Upper cuts.
Time passes as I dance around the heavy bag.
On and on and on, I go through the rhythm, stretching my muscles, sweat beading on my skin, as I work to numb my mind.
To rid myself of the dangerous dream of love and marriage and children with Genie.
To quell the desire to kiss her and hold her and learn every part of her that’s ticklish or sensitive.
To taste her and breathe her in and hear her sounds when my hands cover her skin.
Having her in my house is too much. Calling her my fiancée is too close to what I want from her. All these things feel like wishes I shouldn’t be making.
Then I hear a scream.