Page 60 of When the Stars Fall
Maybe he was so drunk he wouldn’t remember this tomorrow. Maybe our words meant nothing at all. But to me, they meant everything. We sealed them with a kiss that robbed the air from my lungs and made me wonder where he left off and I began. It felt dangerous, loving someone the way I loved him. I knew how cruel life could be. The person you loved could be ripped away from you in the blink of an eye. But I did it anyway.
I fell for Jude, and I was in so deep, there was no going back now.
Chapter Nineteen
Jude
We lostthe state championship game. Correction. We didn’t just lose. We got our asses handed to us in front of 40,000 fans. I ended my high school football career by limping off the field with a sprained ankle during the third quarter. Gideon, the little shit, smirked while I sat out the rest of the game on the bench, icing my ankle. As predicted, he’d spent the season warming the bench and half-assing his way through practices.
Thanks to our dad, my brother hated my guts to the point where he reveled in my defeat. The last game of my high school career was not one of my better nights.
I’d gotten sacked four times which had pissed off my dad to the point where he was shouting at the coaches after the game in the parking lot while the players were getting on the team bus. He was so red in the face that his blood pressure must have been through the roof. I was seriously worried he’d have a heart attack.
It took me a few days to put the loss behind me and move on. At the end of the day, there was no point dwelling on what could have been done differently. It was over, we’d played like shit and the better team won. That’s how it goes. You win some, you lose some.
Now, it was Christmas Eve, the football season was behind me and I was in my favorite place on the planet. My girlfriend’s bed.
Pillow-soft lips met mine and she kissed me like she always did. Like I was her oxygen and she couldn’t breathe without me. Her kisses were my drug of choice and I chased the high that only she could give me. Her knees dug into my sides, thighs clenched around my waist as she grinded against my throbbing dick. Two thin layers of cotton were the only barriers preventing me from being buried deep inside her.
She pulled away from the kiss and sat up, straddling me, her palms flattened on my bare chest and threw back her head. Moonlight painted her silver, the column of her neck exposed. My fingers dug into her hips, her chest heaving under one of my old T-shirts she always slept in.
I tugged at the hem of the T-shirt. “Take it off.” When we were together in her room we spoke in whispers, our voices so hushed that we had to be close to hear the words. “Let me see you.”
Reaching down with both hands, she lifted the T-shirt over her head and tossed it on the floor, bared to me now except for her lacy underwear. My hands coasted up her stomach, over silky soft skin, and cupped her breasts, my thumbs brushing and squeezing pebbled nipples. The stars on her ceiling glowed above us and in the silence of her room, all I could hear was our ragged breaths and the whisper-soft moans coming from her lips.
Gripping her waist, I flipped her onto her back and knelt between her legs, pressing her thighs apart.
A sly smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “Do it,” she whispered, and even though her voice was hushed, I heard the challenge in it.
“Do what?” I knew what she wanted. The one thing I hadn’t given her yet. Pulling cotton aside, I stroked her with my fingers, circling and sliding, coating them with the wet heat of her arousal.
“I don’t want your fingers.” Impatient, she pushed my hand away. “I want you.”
“It’s going to hurt. I’m going to hurt you.”
“I don’t care.” She slid her underwear down her legs and flung them across the room. I followed suit and knelt over her. Gripping her hips, I lined her up directly beneath me and rocked against her.
“Are you sure?” In response, she lifted her hips, her back arching off the mattress and I glided between her slick folds. It felt so fucking good, skin against skin, every cell in my body igniting, and I wasn’t even inside her yet.
“I’m on the pill,” she said, giving me further incentive to breach her tight walls.
I had never taken a girl’s virginity before and I had never gone bare. But even more daunting than being someone’s first was that this was Lila, the girl I loved. My heart was ricocheting off the walls of my chest as I dipped my head and kissed her hard, nudging her entrance with my tip.
She wrapped her legs around my waist and gripped my shoulders tightly. I lifted my head, looking down at her face as I pushed into her just a little bit more. Squeezing her eyes shut, she winced and inhaled a sharp breath. I was barely hanging on. But I stayed where I was and I waited for her to adjust to the pressure.
“Baby. Open your eyes.” Her eyes opened and I kissed the corner of her mouth, my lips ghosting over hers. “Now breathe.”
She nodded a little and squeezed my shoulders. “Okay. I’m good.”
Watching her face, I inched my way inside her, more slowly than I thought myself capable of. Her muscles clenched around me tight as a fist and she clung to me. My arms braced on either side of her head trembled under the strain of using every ounce of my self-restraint.
This was a taste of heaven and of hell all rolled into one.
Tears streamed down her face and she whispered, “Don’t stop.” Her hands slid from my shoulders to my neck and into my hair as she lifted her hips and tugged my head down to hers. “Do it.”
I dragged my lips down her cheek, kissing away her tears. I drank her pain and then I pushed all the way into her, going where no one had gone before me. With privilege came a greater responsibility and it both terrified and thrilled me knowing that she trusted me to make this good for her. I felt like I was splitting her right down the middle, cracking her wide open to create a space just for me. Buried to the hilt, I silenced her pants and moans with soft kisses. Her fingers dug into my scalp and her brows pinched together. “Shh.” I kissed her on the lips and her jaw and the side of her neck. Moving my mouth to the shell of her ear I murmured. “Shh.”
I don’t know if I was trying to comfort her or myself but I could feel my control slipping. The effort it took not to fuck her into oblivion, not to lose myself in this moment and ride out the pleasure, was too great. My sweat dripped onto her forehead and made our bodies slick in all the places our skin touched.
