Page 93 of Someone Just Like You

He raised his arms.

I stood on my tippy toes and pulled the fabric over his head. The relief that I didn’t have to memorize what he looked like with his shirt off was palpable. It wasn’t over. It was only beginning. “Let me look at you.” My eyes lingered at the trail of hair disappearing under his jeans. I wet my lips.

“Take all the time you need.” His voice was strained.

I ran my hands down his torso from his shoulder blades lower, lower, and lower still, lavishing the taut muscles below my fingers, until I reached the waistband of his boxers peeking out from under his jeans. “So warm.” His skin was a furnace compared to mine. I rubbed my thumb along his nipple.

Jude groaned and pushed my hands down just long enough to help me remove my shirt. His fingers shook as he touched my breasts over my bra—my boring nude one since I was expecting a girls’ weekend—like it was his first time at second base.

I shivered as my own nipples rose to his touch.

“We never had the ‘over the bra’ groping stage. We went straight from our first kiss to our first bang in the same night,” Jude said.

“Touching over the bra is overrated,” I responded.

“In that case.” He reached behind my back, unclasped my bra, and slid it over my bare shoulders and onto the floor so we were chest to chest. Warm to cool.

He pulled my jeans down to my hips. “Don’t trip,” he teased while I awkwardly stepped out of them.

I chuckled.

He rubbed his palm over my already-wet thong.

I moaned, taking a hold of his hand and rubbing harder. “Jude,” I said a few minutes later through bated breath. “Either take me right here or carry me, because I’m not sure I can walk to the bed.”

He dropped to the floor and hitched his thumb in my panties before pulling them down my thighs.

“The couch is an option too…” My head fell back as his tongue swept right through my pleasure center. “Jude!” I writhed under his mouth and grabbed onto his hair as he took me right to the brink…and stopped. “Don’t stop.Please.”

He picked me up and carried me down a short hallway. “Not sure I feel right getting you off on someone else’s floor.”

I groaned. “Oh,nowyou have principles.”

He laughed deviously.

I vaguely noted the décor of the bedroom. More wood paneling, wood ceiling, wood dressers. But I was blinded by lust and more focused onJude’swood straining against his jeans.

He placed me on the bed and removed his pants while I watched, trying to piece together how the boy I hated had grown into the man I loved. I suspected it would take a single session for a therapist to diagnose my childhood disgust as pent-up affection, but it was a theory I’d never share with Jude.Cocky Jude. Amusement returned to want as he hovered over me in a forearm plank.

I gripped both of his biceps.Mine.

“Where were we?”

I pulled him to me. “I want you closer.”

He reached under the pillow and flashed a wrapped condom. “Abracadabra!”

I snorted. “And we didn’t even need to leave a tooth.”

“I thought I might get lucky. There’s one under a couch pillow, too.” He tore open the packaging.

“I’m the lucky one.”

The first time we made love, there was hesitation—an unvoiced question hovering in the air we breathed as to whether the unexpected electric attraction between us was a fever dream and we’d regret giving in once the fever broke. I didn’t trust Jude, and further, was holding onto a momentous secret. And Jude, well, Jude just didn’tlikeme.

Today, there were no second thoughts. We were stripped clean, both literally and figuratively, and we were good…better than good. We were loved.

There was power in that. I took possession of the condom and straddled him, stopping to kiss the beauty mark I’d discovered the first time we were together, before rolling it over him. Then I sank onto him. Almost as much as the pleasure of the act itself, I enjoyed watching Jude unravel—first he seemed to marvel at the sight of me rocking above him, but then his own bliss took over and his jaw clenched in his effort to maintain control. Finally, ecstasy made it impossible to focus on anything but finding my own release. I moved faster. My breasts rubbed against his chest hair. His hands cupped my ass. I tightened around him, shuddered, and came, crying out his name. He flipped me over and drove into me, growling mine, before collapsing on top of me.

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