19. Jacinthe
Jacinthe
“ D o you want to go inside or something?”
I don’t know how I manage to talk with my hands under Tess’s shirt and her mouth locked on my neck, but somehow, I ask her the question.
We’re up against the side of the barn, Tess with her back to the wall and me pressed against her. I’m not sure how we got over here. I’m not sure what’s happening at all, but I sure as hell don’t plan on stopping.
“No,” Tess grunts before scraping me with her teeth.
I sigh—both from the teeth-scraping and the relief of not having to move.
If we leave this spot, one of us might come to our senses, and right now, I’d do anything to stay in this moment where sense doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
All that matters is the way she feels.
The way she tastes.
The way her hips buck against mine as her body begs for more.
She’s already chucked her jacket somewhere on the ground. I start sliding her Henley shirt up her stomach until my thumbs brush the band of her sports bra.
“This okay?” I ask, glancing up at her until she nods.
Her lips are a little swollen from when I sucked the bottom one between my teeth a few minutes ago. Her eyes are just hazy slits. I keep watching them as I lift her shirt up.
The cold air has her nipples hard enough that I can see them even through the thick material of her sports bra.
“ Tu aimes ?a ?” I ask, hesitating instead of cupping her chest. “You like to be touched here?”
She nods again, and the desperate little bobs of her chin make me want to rip every piece of clothing off her right here in the yard, frigid air and potential peeping Toms in the forest be damned.
Instead, I take one of her hands and guide her to hold her shirt up for me so I can flick my thumbs over her nipples.
She moans, and I want to capture the sound in my mouth. I want to swallow her. I want every piece of herself she’ll give me, and I want it all dripping down my throat.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “You do not know what you do to me, ma chère .”
I’ve never called her ‘my dear’ before. It’s not like it’s all that weird. In French, we say it all the time, but my cheeks still heat up as I wonder if she’ll think the words are too sweet for what this is.
Just this.
Tess’s eyes are completely shut now, her mouth hanging open. She looks too far gone to give a single flying fuck what I call her, and that makes a thrill of satisfaction shoot through me, burning away the doubt so I can focus on what’s important again.
What’s important is figuring out exactly what makes Tess Tully melt in my hands.
I keep teasing her nipples, stroking and swirling my thumbs over her sports bra while my lips find their way to her collarbones. As annoying as it is to be so much shorter than her, we do have the perfect height difference for me to put her tits in my mouth.
“May I?” I ask, hooking my finger under the band of the bra.
She lets out a throaty chuckle, her eyes still squeezed shut.
“So polite,” she rasps. “You can do whatever you want as long as you keep touching me.”
Another thrill skitters across my skin. If it weren’t for the clear blue sky above us, I’d swear there was lightning on the way.
I shove the bra up her chest until her tits spring free.
I can’t stop myself from gasping. I must look like a teenager who’s never seen boobs before, but she’s so damn perfect all I can do is gawk at her with my jaw hanging slack.
Her nipples are a dusky rose colour, the hard peaks stiffening even more as goose bumps break out along her skin. Pale, silvery stretch marks along the sides of her breasts flash in the sun like the wavy lines in a polished piece of quartz.
“They’re, uh, not as perky as they used to be.”
I manage to tear my gaze away and find Tess giving me an embarrassed look.
“Having a kid will do that to you, but saggy or not, they?—”
“ Tais-toi .”
I nearly snap at her as I tell her to shut up. I could probably be more polite, but I can’t stand another second of anything but praise to the heavens for gifting this earth with her body.
“They are perfect,” I say, tracing a fingertip up her sternum. “You are perfect.”
I wince as the words slip out.
‘ Ma chère ’ might have been toeing the line, but calling her perfect is definitely crossing it.
“Your body is perfect,” I rush to add. “These are the best tits I have ever seen. Eleven out of ten, you know?”
She gives me a nervous laugh. “Wow. High praise.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I’ll show you high praise.”
Then I bend my head and drag my lips down the top of her breast until I’m closing them around her nipple.
She gasps. I palm her other breast at the same time as I start sucking, and I smile against her skin when I hear the satisfying thunk of her head dropping back against the wall.
“So good,” she pants.
I give her a few flicks with my tongue, and she uses the hand that’s not busy holding up her shirt to thread her fingers into my hair. She tugs hard when I go back to sucking, muttering curses under her breath.
“Harder,” she moans. “I need to stop thinking. I need you to go as hard as you can.”
She doesn’t have to tell me twice.
I pinch her other nipple between my fingers and suck so hard my cheeks hollow out. She yelps and squirms, but when I try to ease off, she growls at me to keep going.
Her hips are rocking in a steady pace. I slide one of my thighs between them and lean into her.
“God, yes,” she gasps.
She starts riding my leg, bucking and jerking against me in a frenzy. Part of me wants to straighten up so I can watch her. I’m sure she looks fucking beautiful, but she’s chanting for more from my mouth. I stay bent over her chest, switching sides with my mouth and hand.
Her nipple is still wet from my tongue. I circle it with my finger, just long enough to get her mewling with desperation before I pinch her hard again.
“ Comme ?a ?” I ask. “You like it rough?”
“Yes,” she moans. “Give it to me. Fuck, Jacinthe.”
I slide my knee farther up the wall, shifting the pressure of my leg until I hit an angle that makes her yank on my hair and pull my face so tight against her it’s a struggle to keep breathing.
Not that I care. Everyone dies someday, and in this moment, I can’t think of a better way to leave this world than face-first in Tess Tully’s tits.
She shifts her thrusts to a circular motion, grinding herself on me. Using me. Taking everything I give her.
“Don’t stop,” she moans.
Her breathing gets heavier, her chest heaving underneath me. Her movements get more and more erratic.
“That’s it,” I urge. “Just like that.”
I keep going for a few more minutes, easing the pressure of my leg on and off while she grinds, until I feel her muscles begin to clench.
“I’m. So. Close,” she pants.
“Come for me,” I order. “Come right here. Right now. Where anyone could see you. Show me how fucking bad you need it.”
I realize I’ve switched to speaking French, but it doesn’t seem to matter. If anything, my encouragement works even better like that.
Tess mumbles something about how sexy I sound, her words slurring together. I keep urging her on.
“I need you to fucking come, Tess. I need to feel how you squeeze my leg when you let go for me. Use me. Take what you need and come.”
She cries out, her sharp yelp echoing through the yard. Her body tenses, squeezes, and then she’s coming for me. She shakes and gasps and nearly sobs from the force of the release.
I hold her steady, keeping her pinned against the wall. I slow my work with my mouth to gentle licks and then kisses I trail up from her chest to her neck to the soft skin just below her ear.
“ ?a va ,” I murmur. “ Tout va bien . I’ve got you.”
She lets out a long, shaky breath. Her head droops onto my shoulder.
She starts trembling, and my pulse races as I wonder if she’s crying, but then she makes a choked sound that’s way closer to a guffaw than a sob.
“Are you…laughing?”
She tries to speak, but all that comes out is a squeak that’s followed by a few frantic giggles.
I’d think it was cute if I weren’t so confused.
“You just…just…” she chokes out. “You just made me come without even taking my pants off. How the fuck does that happen?”
I slump with relief but keep pressing her to the wall, just in case she can’t hold herself up yet.
It was a pretty damn powerful orgasm, if I do say so myself.
“It’s my knees,” I say, wriggling between her thighs. “I have the sexiest knees in Québec. No woman can resist them.”
“You’re ridiculous,” she tells me.
That doesn’t stop her from sighing as she grinds down on my leg one last time.
We both freeze at the sound of a car out on the highway. We whip our heads around like we’ve been caught in a searchlight, watching as the car keeps moving instead of turning into the driveway.
“ Merde ,” I say. “I thought it was my mom or something.”
Tess’s mouth presses into a thin line. “Right. Yeah. We’re kind of, uh, exposed, aren’t we?”
We break apart so Tess can pull her clothes back into place.
“So, uh, what do we do now?” she asks.
For a second, all I can think about is pushing her back up against the barn and showing her exactly what we can do now. I’m still aching for her, even more now that I know what she sounds like when she lets go. My whole body is burning with the need to make her do it again.
“ Maman probably will be home any minute,” I admit, “so maybe we should, ah, be not outside?”
Tess’s grim expression cracks into a slight smile.
“Not outside. Got it.”
She leads the way inside the barn, and we end up in the tack room, leaning up against some saddle racks while we stare at one another.
Tess’s face is still flushed, and her shirt is a little crooked under her jacket. I can’t tell if I want to lean over and straighten it out for her or just rip the whole damn thing off and see if she’d let me bend her over the saddle and slip my hand between her legs.
I clear my throat.
“Was that, uh, okay with you?”
“I think you saw just how okay it was,” she answers. “I’m only slightly mortified that I got off like that. As you know, it’s been…a while…since I’ve been with anyone. I forgot…”
She trails off, her eyes taking on a hazy sheen. She runs one of her hands along the edge of the saddle, tracing the lines of the stitching.
“I forgot how good it feels to just let go like that,” she says. “I forgot what it’s like to stop worrying about everything for five damn minutes and just be…me.”
My chest tightens like her words are wrapping around my ribs.
“That’s how it felt for me too,” I admit.
I hear her breath catch. “It did?”
“Yeah. I don’t get to just…be me very often.”
We stare each other down, and it feels like something silent passes between us, like we’re an open telephone line even when we aren’t speaking into the receiver.
“Maybe this could be good for us,” Tess says slowly, like she’s trying to convince herself as much as me. “Maybe we just need to blow off some steam. I mean, it makes sense, right? We understand each other’s situations, and we’re attracted to each other, so maybe we could just…hook up?”
She grimaces and shakes her head before I get a chance to answer.
“It sounds na?ve, doesn’t it?” she asks. “You’re still my landlord, and?—”
“I am not your landlord,” I cut in. My stomach drops at the thought of her believing I might play that card. “It’s not my name on the lease, and I can’t make you?—”
“Okay, well, your mom is,” she interrupts, “and I still live in your house. This could still mess my whole life up.”
I wish I could tell her where she lives doesn’t matter, but I know how this looks for her. I know what she’s scared of. I just wish I could make her understand she doesn’t have to be.
“Tess, you are not getting kicked out of the house for something as ridiculous as hooking up with me.”
Even saying it out loud feels ridiculous. I try to picture what it would take to make me dump her and Shel on the street, and I can’t come up with a single thing.
“Or even not wanting to hook up with me,” I add. “If you told me right now that was the worst sex of your life and you think I have BO so bad you need to go barf in the muck pile, you still would not get kicked out of the house. Whatever happens with…with this…”
I pause and gesture between us.
“It’s not going to affect that,” I tell her. “Yeah, I think you’re hot as fuck, and I would really love to see you naked sometime, but I still respect you, d’accord ? I respect you a lot. What you do or do not want with me doesn’t change that. I promise.”
I step around the saddle I’ve been leaning on and move close enough to focus on the green of her eyes.
I don’t say anything else, but every inch of me is screaming into that open line between us, begging her to believe me.
“Thank you,” she murmurs. “I…I want to trust that.”
We stand like that for another few seconds before she adds, “And I want to see you naked too.”
A rush of heat sweeps through me. I swallow, and I watch Tess’s gaze drop to my throat.
She raises her hands to press her fingertips to her temples.
“God, what’s wrong with me?” Her voice is hoarse. “I just can’t stop with you. I really can’t, Jacinthe. I don’t think it matters whether this is stupid or not. I think I just have to have you again.”
It hits me then: how her anglo pronunciation of my name annoyed me the first time I heard it, and now I think it might be one of the sexiest sounds in the world.
“You can have me.”
I take a step towards her, and then another, until I can plant my hands on the saddle she’s standing behind.
We’re close enough to kiss. She sucks her bottom lip between her teeth and then releases it, leaving the pink skin shiny with spit.
“ Calice , Tess,” I hiss. “You can have me whenever you fucking want.”
That’s when the sound of a car door slamming up at the house echoes through the yard.
We spring away from each other like a SWAT team just repelled down into the barn. Tess lets out a shaky breath.
“This is honestly…overwhelming,” she says.
My hands flex as I try to figure out if I should reach for her or not.
She needs someone to steady her.
I don’t know if that’s supposed to be me.
“Look,” she says. “Shel is staying late at school on Tuesday. They’re doing some kind of volunteer project with the kids. I don’t pick her up until seven. What if we just…went somewhere? To talk this over?”
She begins to shiver. I watch as she crosses her arms over her chest to clutch her upper arms.
I step up beside her, hovering my hands just over her shoulders.
She closes the gap and leans into my touch.
“I know a place,” I tell her.