Chapter 35
35
[Judd]
“ J udd.” Genie’s breathless whisper of my name causes me to look up at her. She is beautiful in that dress which accentuates her curves and emphasizes her breasts. A thousand percent better than the yellow contraption she wore at the garden party.
She leaves me breathless.
And yet the way she’s looking at me, I’m not certain she’s breathing either.
“I was a hell of a lot thinner the last time I put this on.” I smooth a hand over the silky cummerbund I found in the back of a closet years after moving out of the house. A specialty dry cleaner was able to restore it.
My comment is meant to break the crackle of anxiety around us. I’m recreating our failed prom night, and I’m suddenly nervous.
“Which was when?” Genie whispers, her voice lower than the music.
“When I was eighteen.”
“And you kept it all this time?”
“Rented the tux then. Had to purchase the set.” The cummerbund and bow tie. “Now, I own this suit.”
Genie’s face is full of surprise. “Is today . . .” She swallows hard.
“The anniversary of our prom.” A date burned into my memory like a hot branding iron to my skin, and yet, spending time with Genie today has changed everything about this date.
And I do not want to think about my father right now.
“You look absolutely gorgeous,” I say, stepping closer to her and brazenly admiring her in that dress. I twirl a finger in the air, suggesting I want her to spin in a circle so I can see every angle and curve of her.
“I’m not wearing shoes.”
“I don’t care.” She could also be wearing an ugly yellow costume, and I’d still love her.
Because I do love her. Call it too soon. Say it’s too fast. But I’ve had twenty plus years to hate what never happened between Genie and me, and I’ve only had twelve days to make it up to her.
“Your turn,” she says, once she finishes twirling. “You are stunning.”
My ears heat and my cheeks burn but I spin as well, arms out at my side. Once I finish and catch the appraising look in Genie’s eyes, I close the distance between us and pull her close.
“I know I’m twenty-four years late, but Genie Webster, will you dance with me?”
“That would be a check-yes.” Her smile is extra wide. “I’d love to dance with you, Judd Sylver.”
At first, we sway like middle schoolers. Just a little hip action side to side, but eventually I take her hand, keeping the other on the small of her back.
“I didn’t even know how to dance back then,” I admit. “I was so scared I’d mess up that night.”
Clay tried to teach me a few moves. Knox said just hold her tight.
“I’d dance with you any day, Judd. Couple goals.” The second she speaks she clamps her lips tight.
“Couple goals?” I ask, halting our dance.
“Forget I said that.”
“No, explain.”
Genie looks to the side, and I restart our dance, hoping the movement of our bodies will loosen her tongue.
“Since I’ve been . . . hanging out with you . . . I started making a mental list of couple goals. Things I’d like to do as a couple.”
Intrigued and thinking the list would be simple, I ask, “Like what?”
“Always kiss as a greeting and goodbye.”
I stop again, anticipation racing through my veins. What is she saying?
“Never lose one another.”
My heart begins to beat faster.
“Comfort in the little things. Soft touches and warm smiles.” Genie looks up at me with eyes that gleam with flecks of light. Fireflies in the night.
She runs her hand up the back of my neck and whispers, “Kiss you every day.”
Something in me shatters. This woman. A cage around my heart has been opened. I’m not a beast unleashed as much as a bird set free. A firefly myself, released from a jar.
The last secret I’ve kept from her is on my tongue. With her hand in mine, I lift it for my mouth and kiss the ring on her finger. My mother’s ring. The cause of everything.
“That night,” I exhale, finding the courage to admit the rest of the story. “The reason my father beat me up.” I blow out a breath. “I’d stolen this ring from him.”
The memory rushes back at me. His thundering voice. The sharp point of his finger.
Where the fuck is it?
“He’d accused me of taking it from him, and I lied. I told him I hadn’t.” He’d caught me admiring her ring often enough. Often picking on me for missing her so much. He even threatened to toss the ring in the trash and that’s when I took it. I didn’t doubt he might throw it away. My last memory of her.
“Why?” Genie whispers.
“I’d planned to ask you to be my girlfriend.”
Genie stops moving, staring up at me with wide, sad eyes and severely pinched brows.
“I’d been wanting you, yet never admitting my feelings. I hadn’t ever checked yes until you asked me to that dance. It gave me hope that you might want me the way I wanted you.”
“Judd,” she whispers, still holding my hand but staring at me with wonder and fear in her gaze.
“I wanted to do it right. Make a grand gesture. You wouldn’t have simply been my first girlfriend, you’d have been my first everything.”
My first and last. I knew it then as I know it now. She is the perfect woman to wear this gift, and I don’t want her to take it off. I want her to wear it for real as a bond between us, as a promise of a future.
“Baby,” she says softly, cupping my cheek.
“You were younger than me and it would have been a big ask to ask you to wait for me, me going away to college while you were still in school. I wanted the ring to be a promise. A statement of my feelings.”
Genie glances at her hand.
I swallow, almost embarrassed by how backwards my question will sound, but I ask my fake fiancée anyway, “Genie Webster, will you be my girlfriend, for real?”
I’m met with the most soulful eyes I’ve ever seen. A black so deep I could get lost in her and yet I know she’d find me.
Never lose one another. Again . Never, ever again.
“Yes,” Genie whispers, then clears her throat. “Yes, yes.” Then she tips up on her toes and kisses me, sweet and hesitant, like a first kiss might be.
“You would have been my first kiss,” she admits. “First date. First boyfriend.”
I release her hands and cup her face, kissing her with all the passion of missed kisses and all the promises of future ones.
Kiss every day . With her in Knoxville, and me here, I don’t know how I’ll make that happen, but I’ll figure something out.
Suddenly, I’m moving us, pressing Genie to walk backwards until her legs hit the edge of the velvet lounger. Our kissing has grown heavier, needier, and I’m starving for more from her. I spin her to face the chaise and pepper kisses along her shoulders and across her shoulder blades. Only two days ago I had her bent over the dining room table, my dick at the ready and so tempted to be inside her.
Tonight, I have other fantasies to act out.
“Remember how I asked you to sit on my face at my brother’s place the other day.”
Genie giggles beneath the kisses I continue to cover her skin with. “What about it?”
“I’d like to do that now. Only I want you to take me in your mouth at the same time.”
Genie spins to face me, her gaze darting all over my face and for a moment I worry I’ve asked for too much.
“Here?” she questions, her eyes puzzled like she isn’t certain how that would work.
I nod. “I’ll lay on the settee, and you climb over me.”
“I don’t want to crush you.”
“You won’t.” My voice is too sharp, my answer so quick. My heart is hammering, and I loosen my bow tie, then strip off the cummerbund.
“Unbutton my shirt?” I ask, as I shrug off my jacket next and kick off my shoes. I just want Genie’s hands on me.
When my shirt is open and untucked, she reaches awkwardly behind her back, like she intends to unzip her dress, but I gently catch her arm.
“Would it sound weird if I asked you to leave your dress on?”
“Not as weird as how turned on I am at the prospect of you burying your head beneath my skirt.”
She tugs at the side of her dress and smiles seductively.
I lay down on the chaise with my head where my feet should be. Hastily, I unlatch the tux pants and shove them down to free my heavy cock. I’m rock hard with anticipation. I don’t think I’ll last more than thirty seconds in Genie’s mouth, but I want this moment.
With my hand on her hip, I guide her to straddle my face, tucking her dress up over her back. Within seconds, Genie has her hand wrapped around my shaft.
I lick up her seam. She takes me in her mouth.
And my mind is blown.
I rim her folds and tickle her clit with my tongue and all the while she drags up and down my dick. This is a million times better than any fantasy I’ve ever had of this woman.
This woman who lets me play her body and strings out mine.
This woman who smiles at me like I light up the world. And I want to.
I’d give her everything and anything she asked of me.
I lap while she sucks.
Her hips rock, mine buck, and too soon my balls tighten and my back spasms. Dammit. I come hard and fast. My dick betraying me, jolting in the warmth of her mouth, and shooting off down her throat.
“Fuck,” I mutter pulling back from Genie. “I was too worked up. And you didn’t yet.”
“I’m okay,” she says, glancing at me over her shoulder.
“Fuck that.” Awkwardly, I assist Genie off me and sit upright, shifting my position so the top of my head is pressed against the raised arm of the chaise. “Back on my face, firefly.”
Genie chuckles anxiously, and I see her shutting down, but I won’t let that happen. Her pleasure is my pleasure, that’s on my couple goal list. With my hand at her hip, I guide her back over me, lifting her skirt and burying my head beneath it. Genie holds up the front, while her other hand catches on the raised arm of the chaise.
“My God, this is better than any romance novel.”
I smile against her slick skin. My girl has her own fantasies, and I want to bring all of them to life.
With another lick of her folds and a twirl of my tongue on that sacred nub, I add two fingers to the mix. Working in and out of her heat. Letting her essence drip over my cheeks. I want to drown in her scent and her sounds.
“Judd,” she cries out. Her hips gently rock and I feel myself growing stiff again.
As she breaks around me, I sigh with relief.
I’m so full of love for this woman I don’t know how to contain myself. And she said yes to being mine.
Fantasies are now a reality. Once dreams are now completed goals. Another wish has come true.
As Genie comes down from the high, she slowly pulls back and I scoot over, wanting her to slip in beside me. Breathless, I want to hold her a moment, and we squeeze together in the space made for one.
With her head on my chest, she draws on my skin where I’m free from ink. As if reading my thoughts, she sits up and tugs at the sides of my shirt and I slip out of it, then lay back on the chaise lounge.
Genie eyes my bicep where she’s seen the obvious mark of a unicorn with a rainbow horn covered in with faint blue lines. Then the giant words, check yes or no with the box for yes marked, and the smaller words beneath it which read: always check yes.
Her eyes scan for other signs, catching on the violet flower for my mother and a giant sunflower beside it.
“You reminded me of a sunflower when we were younger,” I admit. “So bright, the sun worshiped you.”
“I think the flowers worship the sun,” she corrects.
“Not when it comes to you.” I smile, settling an arm behind my head.
“You marked your skin with memories of me,” she whispers, tracing over other lines of ink.
The symbol for pi as a reminder of Math Club.
The small genie lamp with a drop of blood shaped like a heart near my wrist.
“You marked my soul the moment you asked me to be your friend.”
Genie meets my eyes a second before folding back into the cradle of my shoulder and we stay wrapped around one another for a long while.
The perfect end to an amazing day.