Chapter 14 – Juliette
FOURTEEN
JULIETTE
“You want to talk about your horse?”
“Did you put olives on this?” I picked my head up at his question. “Why would I talk about my horse?”
“They’re not olives, they’re capers. They’re good.”
We were sitting at the kitchen table, his turn to cook. He’d bought a pre-made pizza crust and filled it with a bunch of good stuff that I was totally on board with, except for these weird little round things. I picked one up and studied it. “Are you sure? It’s green.”
“Don’t eat it by itself,” he grunted. “It will be too salty. It’s supposed to go with all the other stuff to add flavor.”
“Okay, pizza expert,” I grumbled, and took a bite of the front of the slice. “Fine. It’s good.”
“Told you. So you had a horse, your dad made you put it down-”
“Her,” I corrected him. “Margo.”
He nodded and was already working on his second slice, stuffing it into this mouth. “So why don’t you want another one?”
“Because you can’t just replace Margo,” I said.
I finished all the good parts of the slice, then just started pulling apart the crust. I pulled my bare foot up on the chair and tucked it against my butt.
Which he hated, but to me it made it feel less like we were sharing a meal and more like we were just two people at a table eating.
“No, you can’t. What about a dog?”
“Dogs need a lot of care and attention,” I said. Herb had no room in his psyche for feeding anything that wasn’t a contributing member of the farm. Margo had helped him to move heavy rocks out of the way of the plow when he couldn’t move them himself.
“They do. And training. What about cats?”
“What about them? There are at least four down at the barn at any given point.”
“Not the same as a pet,” he said. “Barn cat isn’t going to sleep at the end of your bed at night.”
“Oh, poor Creed, you getting a wittle wonley in wore bed now that I’m gone?”
He stopped chewing and shot me a look. It was his do not fuck around with me look. The same look he gave me any time we peripherally talked around the subject of sex, sleeping together, or anything remotely related to his bed or bedroom. Slowly, I slid my foot off the chair and back to the floor.
“I never had a cat,” I said, quickly. “Herb wouldn’t let them in the house.”
“Herb sounds like a fucking asshole. Sorry to speak ill of the dead.”
“Speak ill away,” I muttered. “So what about you?”
“What about me?”
“You must have had a horse. You obviously know what you’re doing with them.”
He leaned back against the spindle chair back and I could hear it groaning against his weight.
He eyed the two remaining slices of pizza and must have decided against it, because he leaned forward on his elbows.
“No horse that was mine. But yeah, there were always horses to be cared for on the res. That shit today with the paint, though, we’re trained up on that in the service. ”
“You’re trained on how to corral a horse?” I asked, incredulous. “Do they fucking fit that in between blowing shit up with drones and jumping out of planes?”
Creed chuckled. “Something like that. In some hostile territories horses can make for good egress. Some of us have skills with language, with weaponry… I have skills with animals.”
I pulled off another chunk of crust.
“I don’t need an animal.”
He huffed. “No one needs an animal. That’s not the point. You good to clean up?”
I nodded.
He slid his chair back. “I want to check the weather.”
“Okay, but no starting Love is Blind without me,” I told him.
He grimaced. “We’re not watching that shit.”
“It could teach us a lot about relationship building,” I teased him.
He shook his head and left the kitchen. I went about the business of cleaning up.
The pizza had been really good so I was careful to preserve the last two slices intact.
Without too much clean up, I dried and put our plates away.
Then I made my way back into the living room, where he was sprawled out on the couch that was too short for him.
Delivery of our new couch was probably only a few days away.
He was doing that guy thing where he had his hand stuffed down his pants.
“Why do guys do that?”
“Do what?” he asked, without lifting his head away from the Weather Channel. Weather apparently, was his new porn.
“Stuff your hands down your pants like a perv.”
He turned his head in my direction. “I’m creating space between the waistband of my jeans and my stomach.”
“Ohhhh. Because you ate too much pizza.”
“Because I ate too much pizza.”
“Hey. So, I was thinking, do you want to make out?”
Did it come out of left field for him? Absolutely.
Had I been thinking about it since that afternoon when I watched him throw himself onto that horse’s back like it was nothing?
Like he could do anything he wanted. Whenever he wanted to.
Maybe a little like he was Superman.
Yes, yes I had.
“I DON’T WANT TO HAVE SEX!” I shouted it really loud. Like, at the top of my lungs loud so he would get the message. “I just thought…maybe we could kiss or something.”
Any other guy, I might have expected a smirk. Or some comment like I’ve been waiting for you to say something.
He just sat up, legs spread in a relaxed V, hand out of his pants. Instead, he rested both hands on the couch cushions on either side of him.
“What?” I prompted him.
He shook his head. “Come over here.”
I shuffled a few steps in his direction. “Like I have to sit on you? You can’t just stand and do the deed?”
He shook his head and I stepped between his legs. Then he wrapped his hands around my waist and brought me forward until my knees were on the couch. He shifted them to either side of his hips, while my ass was resting against his knees and my hands were loosely resting on his shoulders.
His head turned toward the TV as they announced heavy rain expected by the end of the week. He was worried about crops getting washed out, which was a thing, but it didn’t happen too often.
“You want to watch the weather girl or you want to suck face?” I asked him.
He grimaced. “No one calls it sucking face.”
“I heard it. Once.”
“Stop,” he said, then lifted the remote to turn off the TV.
The silence was a little too loud. All I could hear was my breathing.
I was about to ask him to turn it on again, but he had his big palm wrapped around the back of my neck.
He tugged me toward him, and having zero idea what to do next, I smashed my mouth up against his.
Hard. I felt his teeth. I felt my teeth.
His hand tugged on my hair, pulling my head back.
He sighed. Like one of those disappointed sighs.
“That sucked,” I said, before he could.
“You’ve never kissed anyone.”
Untrue. I used to kiss Margo on her nose all the time. Also my pillow. Also the back of my hand.
“Do nothing,” he said. “Yeah? Just let me fucking…”
His hand on the back of my head tugged again and I was moving towards him, but under his strength, not mine.
Then he was touching his mouth to mine. Gently.
His lips over my lips, against my lips, in between my lips.
Like maybe a million times, until it was easy.
Lips pressing against lips until his lips opened.
I could feel the heat of his breath, the swipe of tongue which immediately sent this zing of heat down to my pussy.
“Open your mouth,” he said.
I did. I knew what was supposed to happen. I’d seen enough movies, even the few Herb let me watch had some kissing. He was going to put his tongue in my mouth. Which conceptually should have been a turn off, but in reality, it wasn’t.
I was straddling his hips, sitting on his knees and he was kissing me.
Like full on French style. Over and over again.
One hand in my hair, one on my back. He wasn’t pulling me against him, but those fingers that pushed against my spine, signaled he wanted to.
He backed off and let me breathe for a second, two, then he was kissing me again.
His tongue deeper inside, consuming. I pushed my tongue back against his and he groaned.
Then he was sucking on my bottom lip, my top one.
I wanted to rip my shirt off. I wanted his hands to touch me. My breasts felt so full, like I’d gone from a B cup to a D cup in seconds. I was agitated and hot and I kept going back for more of his mouth.
“Fuck,” breathed.
I found his wrist behind my back and wrapped my hand around it, trying to drag it to my breasts. To relieve that crazy ache.
“Stop,” he said, pulling away again. Only I wasn’t listening. I chased his mouth down even as he turned his head to the side. “Jules!” he barked.
That got my attention.
“We stop now,” he said, his grip in my hair tighter.
“Are you for real right now?” I could hear the sound of my voice. It was husky as hell. “We just started. I don’t want to stop.”
He closed his eyes for a second like something hurt and when he opened them his shark gaze was back.
“We don’t stop, I’m going to fuck you.”
“I DON’T WANT TO HAVE SEX!”
I must have sounded like one of those howler monkeys I’d seen on the nature shows we both liked, because he winced at the decimal level.
“I know,” he said, calmly. “That’s what you said. So we need to stop for now. Take a break.”
“So, that’s it?” I said. Annoyed entirely with the idea of making out. “What is the fucking point?”
“How do you feel right now?”
“Agitated. Urgent. Angry. Frustrated. Fucking…I don’t know.”
“That’s the point,” he said, then kissed my mouth again, then again. “That’s the point. You build that feeling up. Over and over again until you can’t stop. Then you’ll know you’re ready to fuck.”
I huffed and wanted to squeeze my thighs together, but they were pinned on either side of his hips.
“Can you do that thing again?” I asked, thrusting my hips slightly forward on his thighs. “You know…with your fingers.”
“You little seductress,” he crooned. His fingers tightened in my hair, then loosened, then tightened again. “Yeah, I’ll make you come, baby.”
Finally! Some satisfaction.