21. Jules
Jules
T he room falls silent as Cal leaves. Though he’s trying to be quiet, his footfalls throughout the apartment might as well be grenades for the effect they are having on my anxiety.
Knowing him, he’s probably double-checking the doors, checking in on Charlie.
I burrow into the blanket he covered me with while I was pretending to be knocked out, equal parts ashamed and mad at myself.
The buzz I had at the bar is long gone. Evaporated on a haze of hormonal overload and poor decisions.
He deserves so much better than this. So much better than an overly emotional middle-aged woman who freaked right the fuck out at the thought of getting naked with a younger man.
I hold my breath as he passes through the bedroom into the bath. Even as the water in the shower turns on, I’m still shallow breathing.
Shallow. That’s exactly it.
I’m shallow. What happened to the woman who was in charge enough to climb into his lap—to grope him on that motorcycle ride .
The sounds of him disrobing shouldn’t be so incredibly loud, but I can almost imagine his shirt whipping over his head, the clink of his belt as his jeans hit the floor, and then a fainter, barely audible swish of fabric, like maybe his underwear sliding down his legs.
I’m an idiot.
I’m like one of those too-stupid-to-live heroines in a romance novel. The sound of the shower door opening quietly and the snick of it closing is a punctuation mark on the level of fucked up I feel right now.
I flop to my back in his huge bed, covering my face with my hands. This is not me being the smart, in-control woman I’ve made of myself.
This is postdivorce, barely-has-her-shit-together Jules. I fought damn hard to leave her behind, but maybe I didn’t concentrate hard enough on healing all the parts of me that needed healing.
In the silence of the room, I hear water sluicing, the spattering of it against the wall an erotic tease.
I could get up, walk in there, and join him.
He was all in when we were on the bike. And that kiss. Holy shit , that kiss made my toes curl. I slide a hand over my breasts, imagining it’s his touch.
Foolish.
Selfish.
Ridiculous thoughts.
Just get up, you idiot. Go to him .
I whip the blanket off, and I’m striding to the bathroom before I can talk myself out of what my body calls me to do.
He looks over his shoulder at me as the door opens, and I’m frozen in place, all my bravado fleeing the moment I lay eyes on him.
All I can see is his excellent ass and his hands lowered in front of him. “You have a good nap?”
I open my mouth, but I can’t speak. Instead, I shake my head.
“See something you like?” His low voice slithers around me, drawing me closer. His arm moves, and his head falls back. “Did you come to see what you do to me?” A low moan escapes as he shifts. I take a step closer, trying to see all of him. He lifts his head and pins me with his gaze.
“How I have to stroke myself every night because I can’t get the thought of you out of my head? Can’t stop imagining the taste of you. Wondering what sounds you’ll make when you explode for me.”
My mouth goes dry, yet I move further into the room. His big hand grips his shaft, sliding over the length, circling the tip, before returning to the dark thatch of curls at his base.
“Jules…” It’s a low, reverent utterance that floats away with the spray of the water.
My eyes shoot to his face. His head is thrown back, eyes closed, and he’s whispering my name as he pumps himself harder.
With shaking hands, I disrobe quickly. He’s still pumping as I step into the shower. I flinch as his hands brush my abdomen, but then he’s pulling me closer, so close that he loses his grip as he presses himself into my stomach, arching and grinding… still saying my name.
He is mesmerizing.
My hands land on his chest, and I trace down over the ripples of his torso until I replace his hands with mine. He cups my jaw, tilting my face up to receive his kiss.
“Fuck,” he moans, then it’s all tongues and teeth and him drinking me in as I stroke him under the steaming water.
He comes with a low growl, releasing all over my belly.
Then his hands are on me, smearing the evidence of his desire on me, over me.
My arms snake around his neck as he dips his knees, his gaze devouring me.
“Fuck, but you look good covered in my come.” His strong hands run over the curve of my hips and down the length of my thighs as he bends, placing a tender kiss on the soft flesh below my belly button.
“Cal,” I gasp as he stands, taking me with him.
Gripping me under my thighs, he presses me against the cold shower tile and devours my mouth.
The sensual slide of our bodies, the heat of him in contrast to the cold tile at my back. I’m lost in a haze of sensation, and he hasn’t even touched me yet.
I close my eyes against the spray of the water, but he’s towering over me, blocking me from being pummeled in the face.
Goosebumps skitter across my skin as his fingers slide up the underside of my thighs, and heat pools between my thighs as the sensual slide changes.
He’s gripping me like he’s holding on for dear life.
I arch, needing his fingers to be closer, needing his touch.
In a flash, he breaks the kiss, his chest heaving against mine.
“Jules, baby. Open your eyes.”
I pry them open and am rewarded with the barest brush where I need him most.
A moan escapes as he slides his fingers through my folds, testing, teasing. My body is a string that he’s playing, my hips grinding, seeking more of his touch.
“Are you wet for me?”
I’m a puddle. A complete mess for him .
“Cal, I need…” I drift off as his fingers enter me in a long, slow glide.
Lips trace the shell of my ear. “I know what you need. I’m going to give you everything and more.
” His lips trail down the column of my neck as he pumps his fingers into me.
“I’m going to watch you explode on my hand first, then my tongue, and then I’m going to sink my cock so far into you, you’ll feel me for days, and I’m going to keep watching, Jules. ”
It’s too much. He’s owning my body like he knows all of its secrets. Holding me safe, seeing me, taking care of me. Pleasure builds low in my belly as he pumps into me, using his body to hold me, hips grinding in rhythm to mine.
“Fuck, I can’t wait to sink into you.” His mouth blazes a trail up my neck, tongue tracing the curve of my ear, the line of my jaw. My legs are wrapped around his waist, and I feel each flex of his ass as he thrusts against me, and I wish it were more than just his fingers sliding in and out of me.
“Let go, Jules. I’ve got you,” he says against my lips.
Like he’s commanded it, my orgasm crashes over me like a wave.
The water screeches off, and I’m floating, then landing on my back on the bed, and then his mouth is on me, blazing a path across my damp skin, hot on my nipples, then cool as he blows across each tip, murmuring his approval as if he’s watching for my every reaction.
“We’re gonna get the sheets wet,” I complain, realizing that neither of us bothered with a towel.
“I’ve got clean ones in the closet,” he says, lowering himself further down my body.
I lift my head, raking my gaze down the length of my torso, sliding my fingers into his wet hair.
He sits up on his knees, dislodging my grip.
With a hand under my knee, he raises it up, settling my ankle at his shoulder.
“Look at you, laid out like a feast before me.”
In the shower, I could keep my eyes closed. Pretend he had his closed. But laid out like this, I can’t bear to let him see how much I hate my own body. I’m nothing like the younger women I’m sure he’s been with.
He’s all hard muscle, and I’m… not. My breasts have lost some of their perk, and my belly is rounder than it was a decade ago. I’m not fat, but I’m no slender, taut twenty-something either.
I try to cover myself under the guise of playing with my breasts.
“Don’t do that.”
“What?” I whisper in response.
He nudges my hands away. “Don’t cover yourself. You’re in your head, so I must not be doing the job. Let’s see if I can change that and bring you back to the here and now.”
Securing my thigh by his ear, he sinks low. His tongue is a heated stroke, once, twice. Then he open-mouth kisses me, sucking my clit into his mouth, fluttering his tongue causing my eyes to roll back into my head as he devours me with his talented mouth.
Desire shimmers low in my belly again, coiling, ready to spring. My fingers find his hair again, and this time, I’m meeting him, grinding into his face.
“Oh god, don’t stop,” I cry.
He doesn’t. He sucks harder and adds a finger, maybe two, and still, I need more.
Lifting my other leg, opening me further to him, he changes the angle so that he hits the exact right spot inside and out, and I explode .
“Fuck yeah,” he growls.
He straightens, gripping my legs and pulling me down the bed, and then he slams into me in one slick thrust.
I cry out as he groans. “Fuck, I knew it would be good with us.”
He’s so deep inside me, I know I’ll feel him long after this is over.
“I’m so close, Jules. I can’t hold back.”
“Let go. I’ve got you.” I repeat the words he said to me earlier.
He fucks into me, his thrusts so powerful, he slides me up the bed. My hands seek purchase against the headboard, bracing myself against the onslaught of his hips hammering into mine. Then he rolls his hips, and I gasp, coming undone around him.
Two rolling thrusts later, he follows me into oblivion. We are a gasping, heaving pile of limp muscles. He drops to an elbow and kisses me.
Softly, sweetly. Reverently.
He ends the kiss, pressing his forehead to mine as he catches his breath.
Too soon, he’s withdrawing from my body, and disappearing to the bathroom.
I hear water running, and then he’s back with a warm cloth and a dry towel.
He makes quick work of cleaning me up, then pulls me out of the bed and wraps me in the towel, shuffling me off to the side, refusing to let me help as he changes the linens.
In no time at all, the towel is stripped away, and I’m wrapped in his arms, head on his shoulder, legs intertwined.
There’s so much that we need to say. So much that just changed between us. Instead, I close my eyes, focus on his steady breathing, and drift away.
Fingers trail up my spine, dragging me from the bliss of a dream. I shift in his arms and snake my arm around his waist.
“It feels so right.” Though I barely make a sound, his fingers cease their exploration, and his arms band around me.
“It does.”
In the warm cocoon of his arms, I can fully explore the puckered scar that mars his shoulder.
“Tell me about this,” I whisper against his chest.
He gives me a squeeze and then releases me, rolling to his back, hand diving into his hair.
“Last fall, I was on a fire scene. You remember when the courthouse caught fire in Newman?” At my nod, he continues, “There was a really bad guy there, firing at us when we approached the scene.”
I’m confused. I think I know what he means, but it doesn’t make sense. “What does that mean?”
“The building was rolling when we got there. We were in a rush to get in and knock it down before we lost any more of it. That courthouse is on the historical registry. It’s a town landmark.
We couldn’t lose it on our watch. But as we pulled line and made our initial attack, the guy who’d started the fire opened fire on us.
I was on the initial crew and was a sitting duck.
His first bullet ripped through my shoulder, and everyone else had to back off until the scene was secure. ”
“I remember that. I was working at Daily Brew that day. And Chief Hawkins was the one who took down the arsonist, right?” Melancholy sits like a heavy weight on my chest. I trace the outline of the scar, marveling that we’d been in each other’s orbit for a while, it seemed.
I press a kiss to the place where the bullet ripped into him.
I could’ve lost him before we ever found each other.
We need to get off this topic before I start getting sappy.
“Were you working the night of the tornado?” I ask.
“Yeah. It was pretty much all hands on deck.”
“I’m sure. It was awful. I was in my starting-over phase after my divorce. Learning to live on my own. You know that’s how Jordan and Nate met, right?”
He’s idly stroking my side and presses a kiss to my hair. “Yeah, I was working with Nate and Thoren that night. Her house was trashed.”
That means… I raise up on an elbow and peer down at his handsome face.
“Another way we were orbiting each other. I rode to the hospital with Jordan. I don’t remember seeing you there, though.”
His finger traces between my eyebrows, soothing where they’re pinched.
“I hate that we missed that time. But honestly, you wouldn’t have liked me back then.
Confession? I wanted to ask you out before this deal happened between us.
I was trying to muster up the courage that day Dani dumped Charlie off, but my card failed, and I was fucking embarrassed.
” He traces my hairline, his eyes following the movement, but he’s deep in thought.
When he speaks again, his voice is soft, like he’s a million miles away.
“It’d been a shitty night, and I was reminded of all the ways you were too good for me.
I couldn’t have handled your rejection then. ”
“How do you know it would’ve been a rejection?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, his fingers slip into my hair, and he pulls me into a kiss, gathering me close. I sink into his strong chest and meet him there at the edge of oblivion and lust, knowing that on the other side will be a soft place to land.