27. Griffin
Griffin
"Some of the best moments in life are the ones you can't tell anyone about." – Sarah Nader
“ W hat is he doing?” Grace asks in hushed tone.
“I have no idea. Caressing her?” Hope whispers back. “No, it looks…like he’s counting her freckles?” My lips tilt up at their cute confusion.
“But it’s dark out. How can he see?”
“I don’t need to,” I tell them, not taking my eyes off my girl. “I know where each one is by heart.”
Julie looks up at me, her bottom lip in between her teeth. “And how much are there?”
“Right now?” I trace her cheek. “There are fifteen prominent ones and twenty-seven of the fainter ones.”
Julie’s lip pops free from her teeth as she gapes at me. “Did you really count them?” she asks, her voice soft.
“Of course.” I kiss the tip of her nose as she blinks at me.
“Fifteen? Really?”
“Mm-hmm. On the days you’re not out in your garden, it’s always around fifteen to twenty. Sometimes less. But on those sunny days there’s usually double or triple the amount. Yesterday, I counted forty-three!”
“Forty-three…” Julie whispers, tracing the tiny reddish speckles on her cheeks and nose with her dainty fingers.
“Sigh,” Grace says with an actual sigh and Julie burrows her face into the crook of my neck, blushing, no doubt.
It’s been a little over two weeks since we started dating and there’s not a day that I don’t still wonder if this is some kind of a dream. Because everything’s been utterly perfect.
Julie and I spend every moment possible together. When I’m working, she drops by so we can have lunch and dinner together and I’ll be there for my morning coffee every time.
When I’m off, I go in to help out at Sip of Love until she’s done, taking up my now honorable position of dishwasher.
We then spend evenings either with our friends around the bonfire, like tonight, or just at home, cozied up by the huge window in her kitchen after making dinner together.
There are moments when I catch myself waiting for the floor to drop from underneath me. I’ll look at her and think, since when do my dreams just come true like that?
Julie always senses when I got into one of those moods and the next thing I know she’s climbing into my lap, curling around me like a little kitten and just sits there. In my arms. Reminding me how real it all is.
She knows I need to take it one day at a time. Knows that my head is still fucked up from before but day by day, she’s helping me build that steady ground underneath my feet.
She’s my safe place. Someone I can talk to about Caleb, about the mission that ended his life. Obviously, not the specifics, but the feelings. The memories, the good and the bad.
“How many freckles do I have?” Grace demands to know, and I don’t have to look his way to know Luke is scowling at me right now.
“Wild one, do you even have any at all?”
“Well, I don’t know, do I?” Her voice pitches. “You never checked!”
My shoulders shake silently as he lets a few curses fly underneath his breath and I just burrow my face deeper into Julie’s hair.
“I don’t know about freckles but you do have that one beauty mark right above your p—” Luke’s voice gets cut off when Grace slaps her hand over his mouth.
“Okay, okay, you pass,” she quickly tells him.
“Is it in the shape of a heart?” Alec asks out of nowhere, and everyone, including Julie and I, look up at him as Luke growls threateningly, but his younger brother either doesn’t hear it or doesn’t care.
Probably the latter because he continues. “Hope has one too, don’t you, Lovebug?” He smirks at her blushing cheeks, visible even in the dark.
“Hey, Joy’s got one too!” Jacob jumps in, excitedly.
“Okay, that’s way more information that I wanted to have about my sisters-in-law,” Luke grumbles.
“It’s like tell me you’re sisters without telling me.” Jacob grins, and Joy is never too late with a comeback.
“A hell of a lot better than having the same butt tattoo. It’s like tell me you two are idiots without telling me.” She tsks.
“We don’t have the same one,” Alec protests.
“Don’t remind me, please,” Hope groans. “I’m still not over you having Jacob’s name inked on your butt!”
“Hey, I know what we should do!” Jacob jumps up.
“Oh boy,” his fiancée mutters.
“We should all get our dicks pierced like Luke. That way we’ll match.”
My poor Birdy just took a sip of her iced tea when Jacob graced us with his super idea, and it ends up coming right out.
“Luke has his…his”—she motions down—“pierced?” The last part is a squeak.
Luke groans, shooting a death glare at Jacob.
“You didn’t know?” Alec asks, shoving some mint chocolate chip ice cream into his mouth while Julie blinks a few times.
“No! Why would I know that? Does it hurt? Does it get in a way…you know…?”
It’s Grace who giggles. “It gets in a way in the best way ,” she says with a wink.
“Oh.” Julie’s eyes widen and then slowly slide over me. Down, down, down.
“Birdy,” I say, cautiously. “Do not get any ideas right now.”
“But I already have them,” she whisper-hisses. A curious gleam dancing in her green eyes.
“Yessss!” Jacob calls out. “Peen jewels for all!”
Luke groans. Again. And I’m very tempted to join in. “I can’t even begin to stress how much help you need,” he tells him.
“What is it that you just called Julie, Griff?” Grace asks, ignoring her boyfriend’s antics.
“You mean Birdy?”
“Yeah, that. It’s so cute, I’ve never heard that one before!”
I frown. It is cute but doesn’t everyone call her Birdy? It is her middle name after all.
“That’s true.” Luke matches my frown. “I’ve never heard anyone else call you by your middle name,” he says to Julie who shifts slightly, her cheeks warming up and not from the fire in front of us.
“That’s because I wouldn’t let anyone else call me that.” She steals a glance at me.
“What do you mean?”
“Only you call me Birdy.” She shrugs.
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
“Why?”
“Because it feels wrong coming from everyone else.”
“But…God, I can’t even remember when I started calling you that. First grade? Second?”
“Mm-hmm, something like that. It was yours all along and no one could touch it.” Her eyes lock on mine.
“Birdy…” I whisper, the name carrying a whole other meaning now. I’ve always loved it. Always thought it fit her so much better than Julie. But now? Now I know it’s mine. Just mine.
Like she is.
I lean in, cradling her face and take her lips in a kiss, gently wrapping mine around hers. Tasting her instead of devouring. Julie’s hand covers mine as she holds onto me and deepens the kiss.
It’s still soft but also heavy. Raw for a whole different meaning than lust.
“Aww, that’s so romantic,” Hope coos quietly from the side, and Julie pulls away from me. Her eyes slowly opening.
The conversation around us returns to whatever shenanigans Alec and Jacob take it, humming with laughter, sarcastic remarks, and all the rest of the usual but over here, in our small bubble we are brimming with tension.
With unresolved heat.
Julie brushes her lips against my jaw. “You wanna go take a swim with me?”
“Swim?” I scan the beach around us, it was well after sundown that we watched while eating our dinner here. The water lying still like a blanket of darkness.
“Mm-hmm, I think we need to cool down.” And before I can protest, she jumps up, the blanket around us dropping to the sand as she tugs me along.
“Julie,” I growl. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?” She looks over her shoulder, mischief dancing across her every delicate feature and freckle.
We make it quite a few feet away from the bonfire.
Far enough that I doubt any of them can see us and she knows it too.
Julie stops, locks her eyes with me, and like the evil little fairy she is, starts removing her clothes tantalizingly slowly, torturing me by slipping one strap off her dress and then the other, but not hard enough for it to fall off right away.
No, she knows what she’s doing, and it’s working too, because with each second my cock hardened more and more.
Still, I am not going to have another public display of our sex life.
“Birdy, please put your clothes back on.”
“How will I swim then?”
“Litte J, if you keep that up”—I motion to her undressing game—“I won’t be liable for what happens next and just to be clear it would not involve swimming, and I don’t think we should be doing it out here. Anyone can see us.”
Julie shrugs, rolling her lips that were hiding a smirk. “They all think we are exhibitionists anyway. What’s the harm now?” And with that, her dress drops to the sand, pooling around her feet.
“Fucking hell…” I let out a pained groan, my teeth sinking into my closed fist as I’m trying really hard to stop my thoughts from flying wayward all too soon. But that was such a futile mission.
One of the worst I’ve ever planned because as soon as her dainty fingers skimmed along her tiny thong, my T-shirt is off. Along with my shorts and she’s in my arms the next second as I charge us into the water.
Julie’s laughing and squealing with excitement and then she’s crying out for a whole other reason.