Chapter 26 Gracie
Three Weeks Before the Wedding
Apparently, there’s nothing like the suggestion of getting naked with someone new to turn my voice into a dog whistle. “Right,” I squeak. “Okay.”
Jude looks at me sharply. “Not okay?”
“No, no, definitely okay. Great, even,” I insist, yanking my voice down to a reasonable octave. “It’s just…” I bite my lip and look away. “No one’s seen me naked in like, three years,” I admit in a rush, cheeks heating.
For a moment he’s silent. Like I’ve said something unbelievable. Then, “You have no idea, do you? What you do to me.”
I chance a glance at him, and the longing in his eyes almost makes me forget to be nervous. It nearly makes me forget what planet we’re on. Vaguely, I shake my head, unable to speak.
“Come here,” he instructs, taking my hands in his. “I’ll show you.”
Walking backward, he leads me toward the couch that divides the sitting area near the fireplace from the rest of the bedroom.
When he sits, he’s still tall enough to reach my chest with his mouth.
I know this because he’s kissing my Peter Pan collar like it’s the hottest lingerie he’s ever seen in his life.
He looks up at me, eyes like maple syrup in the sun, and somehow, they calm me and make my blood race all at once.
“If it’s okay with you, I’m going to undo this button,” he says, lifting one of his hands to circle it with the tip of his middle finger. I feel the touch like it’s happened between my legs, and suddenly I’m nodding, heart thumping.
“And then what?” I ask, on my way to breathless.
He tilts his head, considering. “Then, I’m going to do the next one, and the next. And when I’m done, I’m going to take this prim little shirt off of you, and those tiny fucking shorts, too, and you’re going to prove me completely wrong.”
“Wrong?” I repeat, my breath picking up speed as he deftly releases the top button.
His fingers slip into my shirt and stroke lightly down my bare chest to the next button. With a flick of his fingers, it comes undone, and he lets out a difficult breath. His eyes find mine again.
“Wrong that I couldn’t possibly think you’re more beautiful than I already do.”
I bite my lip as unexpected emotion wells in me. Soon, he’s undoing the last button and slipping my shirt from my shoulders. It falls behind me with a soft rustle of fabric, and his gaze is everywhere at once, drinking in the sight of my bare skin in the golden light.
“Fuck me,” he whispers to himself, eyes roving over my simple black bra.
“That is the intention,” I say in a nervous attempt at a joke.
“It’ll be the other way around tonight,” he informs me, tugging my hips closer.
Heart vibrating, I watch his hands pull the drawstring bow of my shorts. The waist goes loose, but instead of pulling them down, his hands just fist in the fabric. His eyes close, and his breathing is labored, like he’s been hit with vertigo.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” he says. “Tell me I’m not passed out with Taco standing over my lifeless body.”
A breathless laugh escapes me. “If you are, then don’t wake up and ruin it,” I order, hands traveling to his messy hair.
He looks up at me, eyes hopeful. “Maybe she’ll administer a medically induced coma.”
I smile. “That definitely seems well within her skillset. Could you ask if she’ll make it a double?” I say, sliding my greedy hands down his arms. I trace a linework milk carton pint. A paper airplane. I want to absorb their secrets through touch.
“I thought you hated it when I ordered for you,” he teases. There’s a tug, and then a push of fabric down my hips, and every frozen, neglected part of me starts to melt like it’s been thrust under a broiler.
I close my eyes as his hands slide over my panties, working my shorts down over the curve of my backside. “Maybe you were just ordering from the wrong menu,” I say breathlessly.
“Or maybe I’ve had a hard time believing our cravings were mutual,” he counters.
My stomach flips, and even through the haze of need fogging my mind, it’s not lost on me that Jude still somehow can’t fathom why I want him.
I’m about to recite a list with approximately 280 bullet points, but then my shorts fall to my feet.
I’m stepping out of them and toeing off my flats when his hand drops between his widespread legs.
“Fuck,” he whispers, eyes on my pale pink panties as he adjusts himself through his gray sweats. Heat spills through me, knowing he can see how wet I am. I can feel it, slick between the press of my thighs.
“I’ve dreamed of this,” he says, voice threadbare as he touches the little bow on my waistband. “Even before we met, I think.” He leans forward to press his nose to my skin. Inhales. “You were always out there, just waiting to wreck me, weren’t you? My what-if.”
My chest constricts, but it’s too dangerous to consider the possibility that Jude might want more than what I came for. Admitting it would mean facing the part of me that still secretly aches for it, too.
“I’m pretty sure you just described a natural disaster,” I say, wishing my voice weren’t so unsteady.
His hand slides up my spine to undo my bra clasp, while he presses a kiss to the center of my chest. My stupid heart presses right back.
“I could have prepared for a natural disaster, Gracie,” he murmurs, slipping one strap off my shoulder, then the other. “There was no preparing for you.”
He leans back enough for the bra to fall from my naked chest, and my stomach swoops. His words plant feelings that don’t belong within a ten-mile radius of a casual hookup, but I’m too slow to stop them from taking root.
“Tell me,” I whisper. “Tell me what else you’ve thought about.”
But he’s staring at my bare breasts, and I know he didn’t hear me. His large hands are on my waist again, tugging me forward.
“Jude—” I say, catching myself on the cotton stretched over his thick shoulders.
He told me he swims, and I feel it in the shift of heavy muscle beneath my palms. A lock of his dark hair has fallen forward, making a swooping C over his tense brows.
I’m about to touch it when his mouth brushes over my nipple.
Once, then twice before sucking me deep.
He groans into me, and my breath lodges in my throat, forgetting whether it should be coming or going.
All my thoughts are reduced to sensory flashes.
His tongue, teasing. My toes, curling. Fingers digging. Back arching.
“Jesus,” he says under his breath as he releases me, sliding his mouth to the underside of the same breast, wet and urgent. The hand that isn’t twisted in the side of my panties comes up to squeeze my other breast, and my hips spasm.
“You want to know what else I’ve thought about?” he asks, moving across my chest with hungry, sucking kisses.
Apparently, he did register my request—apparently, he registers every little thing about me, including the way I’m up on my toes when he gets a little rougher with me. I nod fretfully, so turned on I think I could lose it like this. “Yes.”
But he still doesn’t answer me. His teeth close around me, his tongue soothing the sting, and I gasp, the edges of an orgasm already fluttering just out of reach.
His grip tightens on me. “So sensitive, aren’t you?
” he says with wonder in his voice. Like he can’t believe how badly I’ve needed this.
How badly I’ve needed him. “So fucking perfect.”
“Jude,” I say, my neck going limp when his fingers dip just below the waistline of my panties.
“I know, baby,” he soothes, laying a kiss to my rapid pulse. But that sweet endearment in his deep voice only makes the ache worse. “Will you turn around for me?”
My limbs feel too loose, like I might collapse if I move too quickly, but I nod—too needy to be self-conscious anymore. Jude’s hands are on my hips, turning me, and I hear his ragged exhale at whatever he sees.
“Oh, my fucking… fuck,” he says unevenly.
Heat blooms low in my belly, and the friction of my own thighs isn’t nearly enough.
I want his hands on me—in me—but when they finally land, they’re not where I expect.
Instead, he’s tightening my loosened ponytail and fussing with the ribbon, muttering something about little goddamn bows, and I realize this is part of it for him.
Undressing me, arranging my hair just the way he wants it until I feel so precious I need him to break me.
“Gracie,” he says, my name raw as a scrape as his hands glide down my back.
He tugs my panties so they ride higher over my ass.
Tighter between my thighs. His thumbs glide along the bottom edges of the elastic, and I can’t stop arching into his touch.
“Fuck, I need you to bend over. Just—” He huffs a breath.
“Would you be a good girl and do that for me?”
His words send a spike of need through me, even as I startle at the request—I’ve never done anything so vulnerable.
Never. But I’ve also never felt so safe or so wanted.
Without any more hesitation, I drop my hands to the gilded coffee table in front of me.
Tonight, more than anything, I want to let go of my fixation on the future and give free rein to what feels good now.
And what feels good now is letting him see exactly what he does to me.
“God, just look at you,” he rasps. I whimper, rubbing my legs together in a futile attempt to ease the ache, but his hands find my ankles instead of where I need them most.
“Do you have any goddamn clue what these do to me?” he asks, brushing the delicate lines of ink I have, and who knew ankles were so fucking sensitive?
“I-I forget they’re even there sometimes,” I say, looking down to see his big hands wrap completely around each ankle. He squeezes. My vision blurs.
His laugh sounds painful. “Lucky you. They may as well be tattooed on my fucking brain.”