Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Julie
Hallie
JULES. I wish I was seeing you tomorrow at your parents’ house. Seriously, only Steven Parker would bbq in the middle of the winter. I’ll be out of town for a case and won’t be back until late tomorrow night. But you better be at the office Tuesday morning.
Me
It’s like you haven’t even met me. Of course I’ll be in the office Tuesday morning.
Hallie
idk, you seem to have turned into a completely different person since you’ve been away. The kind of person who has lots of sex with a smoking hot athlete and DOESN’T TELL HER FRIENDS ABOUT IT.
Molly
I’m bringing the donuts on Tuesday. It’s been two weeks Jules, and your girls need DETAILS. You better be prepared to tell us a sexy breakfast story.
Emma
I need to know all about his sisters. Is four sisters awesome or insane?
Me
So awesome. You guys would love them. They take fierce girl gang to a whole new level.
Hallie
So what are you doing for your last night in Boulder?
Me
Back deck. Hot tub.
Emma
We’ll be needing those details too.
Molly
Fucking right we will. Did you ever check the front pocket of your suitcase?
Me
I thought we established that sexy underwear wasn’t necessary. In the way, remember?
Molly
I hooked you up with a swim situation too.
Me
“Situation?”
Molly
I’m not sure it could accurately be described as a bathing suit.
Me
I packed my own bathing suit.
Molly
Not like this one.
Hallie
JUST FIND THE BATHING SUIT JULES. Put it on your body.
Emma
And when you get back tomorrow, tell us all about it.
Me
Why do I like you all again?
Emma
Even if you don’t like us, you’re still stuck with us.
Hallie
Let’s put that on a t-shirt.
Molly
Just do it, Jules. Asher’s eyes will fall out of his head and there’s an 80% chance you won’t be able to walk tomorrow. But, like, in the good way.
Me
Okay I just found it. Mol, this looks like it was made for a teenager.
Molly
It’s stretchy. Kind of.
Me
Holy hell. It fits but it’s…I’m not sure I even have the words.
Hallie
Pictures or it didn’t happen.
Me
[pic attached]
Emma
Holy shit Jules.
Me
It’s pretty uncomfortable.
Hallie
I doubt you’ll be wearing it for that long.
Molly
My work here is done *dusts off shoulder*
T he house is silent later that night when we step outside onto the back deck of Asher’s house. Dressed in board shorts riding low on his hips and no shirt, Asher pulls the cover off the hot tub built into the corner of the deck and the steam billows out into the frigid air. I untie the belt on my robe and drop it to the deck just as he turns around. When he sees the tiny red bikini with criss-crossing straps I discovered in my suitcase, he says nothing, just swallows hard, a muscle ticking in his jaw. I hum with a deep, dark satisfaction as his eyes travel down my body and back up again.
When our eyes meet, it activates him, and he is in front of me in two strides. One hand goes to my waist, arm wrapping around my back, and the other tangles in my hair as Asher crashes our mouths together. The kiss is hungry and deep, and when his tongue licks into my mouth and dances with mine, desire arrows straight though me, and I grip his hips to steady myself. I have never needed someone the way I need him. The way I feel about Asher is huge and heady and overwhelming in a way that makes me want to wrap myself around him and never let go.
As he assaults my mouth with his, his thumb strokes the bare skin at my waist, and I’m rocked by a full body shiver. Whether it’s from pleasure or the cold air I’m not sure, but Asher reaches down and grabs my thighs, boosting me up and wrapping my legs around him without ever breaking the kiss. In a feat of athleticism that has me melting into a puddle of lust, he climbs up and steps straight into the steaming water. He sits down on the bench with me in his lap, my legs wound around his waist, still never removing his lips from mine.
When he finally does break the kiss, his eyes are deep, dark pools of blue. Both our chests are rising and falling rapidly. Almost involuntarily, I rock against him where he is settled, hot and hard, between my legs. He hisses out a breath and his hands grip my waist, pulling me down even harder on top of him, helping me glide over him. Every time he moves me, his cock hits my clit, sending waves of pleasure through me. He tightens his hands on my hips, grinding me harder against him, and when a moan drops from my lips, Asher speaks for the first time since we walked outside. His voice is low and deep and pure, unfiltered sex.
“Can you feel what you do to me, Juliette? Do you feel how hard I am for you? How badly I want you? I want you every minute of every day. Sometimes I can’t breathe for how badly I want you. You’re all I think about. All I see.”
Asher brings his mouth back to mine, and I’m expecting a wild frenzy of a kiss, but that’s not what he gives me. His mouth moves against mine slowly, thoroughly, lips and tongue exploring every inch of me, teeth grazing my bottom lip and then nipping at it before he takes my mouth again. My head spins, and the air around us is electric, the desire and sheer need between us too big for just our bodies to contain. He is holding me so close I don’t know where I end and he begins, and suddenly this doesn’t feel like a kiss at all. It feels like worship.
Asher breaks the kiss and leans his forehead against mine, his hands coming up to rest on my face, thumbs stroking my cheekbones and eyes locked on mine.
“Juliette,” he whispers, his voice soaked in reverence, his eyes swirling with something I can’t name but that makes my heart do a long, slow roll in my chest. Feelings pummel me so hard I can’t separate one from the other; I am a tangle of emotion and need. And then there is something else.
It could be the clear night sky above us and the blanket of stars or the swirls of steam rising into the frosty dark or the end of this uncommon, unexpected trip or the gorgeous man looking at me like I am the sun around which he orbits, but everything feels like magic. I pause for a second, not out of fear, but to memorize this moment that I know I will take out and examine again and again for a long time to come. As the words rise up from the deepest depths of me, it feels perfectly right, somehow, that I be the first one to speak them. To give them first to the man who has given so much to me.
“I love you, Ash.”
Asher’s thumbs stop their stroking, and we are so close I feel the hitch in his breath, the tremble of his body. See his face as he absorbs the words that draw the line between what came before and what comes after. I’ve never understood why those three words hold so much power, but as I watch Asher’s face turn soft with wonder and awe and the tiniest bit of disbelief, as if he can’t process the enormity of what is happening, I get it. And I make a silent vow to give him the words, over and over again, for the rest of our days. I tighten my arms around his waist to anchor him to this moment with me. This moment where nothing exists except for the two of us wrapped together, hearts wide open, under the dark night sky.
“I love you too, Juliette. I love you so fucking much. I…” He breaks off, his voice cracking with emotion. I bring one of my hands up to cup his cheek and he leans into my touch, taking a de ep breath before speaking again. “I think I started falling for you before I even saw your face. I only had to hear your voice and I was done for. You are the girl of my dreams. Everything is better with you by my side. I never want to spend another day without you. This is always. Forever.”
“Forever,” I say, before sealing my mouth over his. And this kiss has all the passion and frenzy I was expecting before. Our mouths move together with urgency, Asher angling my head to take the kiss deeper, to swipe his tongue inside my mouth, to tease and taste, and need rises up in me like a tidal wave.
“I need you,” Asher says against my lips. His voice a hoarse rasp.
“I’m yours.”
Asher slides his hands from my face, reaching around to the tie holding my bathing suit at the back of my neck. With one pull, it comes loose and drops down. While his lips slide down my jaw and his tongue teases the sensitive skin behind my ear, his hands come up to cup my breasts, rubbing his thumbs over my nipples before rolling them between his fingers. I breathe in sharply, the feeling so intense I rock myself over him again.
“You like that, Juliette? You like my hands on you? Tonight, I am going to have my hands on every single inch of you. You’re mine, and I can’t wait to have you screaming my name.”
“Fuck,” I gasp as his fingers tighten on my nipples, holding me on the most delicious razor’s edge of pleasure and pain. I lift up slightly and slide the hand on his waist around to his stomach, right under the waistband of his board shorts. He is velvet covered steel when I wrap my hand around him, and his stomach muscles tighten, his breath quickening, as I move my hand slowly up and down.
“You think you’re the only one who wants to touch what’s theirs, Hot Shot? Don’t forget you’re mine too. Maybe I’ll have you screaming my name instead. ”
He grins at me. “I’m all for equality, baby. But you first.”
In one quick move, Asher turns me around on his lap and pulls my back against him, one arm banding around my chest and the other hand sliding down under my bathing suit bottoms. He uses his knees to push my legs farther apart, and his finger finds my clit, slowly circling before dipping down to slide inside me.
I lean my head back against his shoulder, moaning up to the stars and shifting my hips, needing more. Asher’s tongue licks a path up my neck to my ear. “You like that, baby? I can feel how wet you are. So tight around my finger and already dripping for me. I can’t wait to feel you wrapped around my cock.”
He curls his finger up and grinds the heel of his hand against my clit. My hips rise up to meet his hand, and when he pulls away, I let out a noise that sounds perilously close to a whine, but I’m too wound up and needy to care.
Asher chuckles in my ear. “Don’t worry, baby. I won’t leave you hanging.”
“Then fucking touch me,” I grind out.
With one arm still holding me against his chest, he unties my bottoms and pulls them off, tossing them onto the deck.
“Oh, I think I can do better than that.”
Before I have a chance to work out what he means, he slaps his free hand down on the hot tub controller. In a lightning-fast move, Asher wraps a hand under each of my thighs, and turns us both around, holding my legs open as the warm water gushes out of the jets and straight onto my clit.
“Holy fuck,” I gasp out. My first instinct to move away from the all-out assault on my senses is thwarted by Asher’s hard chest at my back and his voice in my ear.
“Let it happen, baby. Make all the noise you want. No one can hear you but me.”
While the jets pummel my clit, Asher reaches around and slides two fingers inside me, thrusting them in and out, curling them every time to hit that spot inside me that makes me whimper and clench around him. I am all need and sensation as I hurtle towards the edge.
“Fuck, I’m so close.”
“I know you are, baby, I can feel you squeezing my fingers. I can’t wait to get inside you.”
Asher pushes his fingers deep inside me and curls them up over and over again, and when he moves just a little closer to the jet to increase the pressure on my clit, I fall right over the edge, the pleasure and the heat of the hot tub combining to turn my whole body into a raging inferno.
“Asher, fuck,” I moan out as he keeps me angled towards the jets, holding my legs open and milking every last drop of pleasure from my body. When it finally wanes, Asher lets my legs go and I drop my head back onto his shoulder, my chest heaving.
“That was…unexpected,” I manage, sucking in oxygen.
“Hot as shit is what that was,” Asher says, turning me back around to face him and kissing me, hard and quick. His wet torso shines in the moonlight and desire thunders through me all over again. “I love watching you come apart for me, Juliette. I can’t wait to see it again.”
He turns and sits us back down on the bench, and I straddle his lap, grinding down on his thick cock. Even though I just came, the move has pleasure licking through me, so I do it again, and then again. Asher sucks in a breath and grips my hips to hold me in place. “If you keep doing that, I won’t be able to do what I really want to do, which is to slide inside you and come in that gorgeous pussy of yours.”
“Shit,” I mutter. The sweetest man in the world with the world’s filthiest mouth is the most intoxicating combination. “Do it. Please. Get inside me now. ”
“Juliette, it would be my fucking pleasure.”
I slide my hands down his sides and hook them in the waistband of his board shorts. He lifts his hips and I pull the shorts down and off, throwing them next to my discarded bathing suit, before reaching down and rubbing my thumb over his tip. His cock jerks in my hand, and the way he responds has me feeling a rush of power.
With him in my hand, I rise up on my knees, ready to take him inside me when he stops me with hands on my hips.
“Condom. Fuck. I don’t have one out here. We can go inside. We need to go inside. Right now.” Arousal has his words jerky, and he starts to rise to his feet when I stop him with a hand on his chest.
“I have an IUD.”
The look in his eyes can only be described as feral, but when he speaks, his voice is gentle, his thumbs drawing circles on my hips.
“Are you sure?”
“I am so sure.”
“I was serious when I said I haven’t looked at a single other woman since the gala. And we get tested before every season, so…”
I cut him off with my mouth on his. “Ash,” I say, against his lips. “I trust you.”
“I love you,” he says, kissing me again, “You are my everything.”
My heart turns over in my chest. “I love you, too, Hot Shot. Now get inside me.”
“I would love nothing more.”
I rise up on my knees again and, with my hands on Asher’s shoulder and my eyes locked on his, I sink down slowly. Our moans mingle as he fills every inch of me, hitting spots I didn’t even know I had. When I’m fully seated on him, I close my eyes, savoring the feeling of being so full, letting my body adjust to him. Then I rock slowly on his lap, his hands gripping my hips to help guide my movements.
“Look at me, Juliette.”
I open my eyes to meet Asher’s, and his gaze is dark and intense and full of need, his wet hair falling across his forehead. “When you’re riding my dick, your eyes stay on me.”
The look in his eyes has me lifting up on my knees and sinking back down on him, rolling my hips so my clit hits his pelvis, and the feeling is so intense that I do it again, grinding down onto his lap and groaning at the building pleasure.
“Juliette. Yes. Fuck. Don’t fucking stop,” Asher grinds out, his hands leaving my waist and traveling over my body. As I rise and fall over him, Asher covers my breasts with his hands and rolls my nipples, sending a shock straight to my clit. I gasp, lifting up and slamming back down over him. My entire body lights up as Asher lets out a deep moan and starts lifting his hips to meet mine, droplets of water rolling down his torso as he fucks up into me.
“God,” I moan out. “You feel so good.”
Asher shoots me a grin and snakes a hand between our bodies, his thumb funding my clit and moving in tight little circles as his hips rise, meeting each of my thrusts with his own.
“Give it to me, Juliette. Come for me. Mark me. Come all over my cock and make me yours.”
My orgasm builds and builds on itself, and the pleasure is so intense that I’m almost afraid of it. It winds tighter and tighter as Asher moves faster and increases the pressure of his thumb. Then he pinches my clit and angles his hips in just the right way, and I explode around him, crying out his name, my eyes never leaving his.
“Fuck, baby, you are so gorgeous when you come,” Asher grinds out, as his hands come back to my hips. Pleasure rolls through me as Asher grips my body, fucking me from below, his thrusts speeding up until they lose their rhythm, his hips jerking as he groans out his orgasm. I feel a rush of warmth as he spills inside me, and I roll my hips against his, riding us both through our releases.
When the pleasure wanes, I melt against him, dropping my head to his shoulder. Asher kisses my temple and runs a hand up and down my back as the water swirls around us.
“Juliette that was…you are…” He huffs out a laugh and seems to give up, leaning his head against mine as our heartrates slow against each other. When our breathing returns to normal, he cups my cheek and guides my head up so our eyes meet. Then he drops his mouth to mine in a long, slow kiss that has my brain fuzzing and sparks lighting behind my eyes.
“Thank you for loving me,” he whispers when we break apart. “The best thing that ever happened to me is being loved by you.”
Jesus fuck. This man is probably going to kill me with sweetness. In the face of that truth, I give him one of my own.
“You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me. I can’t do anything but love you.”
“Juliette.” His voice is thick, and the emotion in his eyes is the twin to what I feel inside of me. No more words are necessary between us. Instead, Asher wraps his arms back around me, and we hold each other close under the night sky.