I whimper, squeezing my legs around what feels like a tree trunk, but the words won’t come out. I can’t tell him what I think about when I slip the cake shop Polaroid out from my bedside table every night—I can’t. I shake my head.
He makes a soft sound with his tongue like a tut. “I like how shy you are. But I need to know you really want this.”
My breathing comes in staccato gulps, my hips struggling to move against his iron grip. “I do,” I promise him, voice thready.
He makes a sound like he doubts it. “Do you want to show me instead? Can I lift this skirt and see what kind of mess you’ve made all over my pants?”
I clench so hard, I know he feels it. The blush staining my cheeks could heat a house in the dead of winter. But I’m nodding anyway, sucking on my bottom lip since I can’t have his.
His dark lashes flutter at my consent as his hands slide to the hem of my bunched and pleated skirt. For a moment, all he does is run his fingers over the edge, and I can feel my pulse in my stomach. But then he slides it up the rest of the way and whispers a harsh, “Fuck.”
I look down, and my simple white panties have been displaced, only half covering me. They’re so wet, they’re transparent. His charcoal joggers are slick and dark beneath me, and his hands are hastily tucking the hem of my skirt into my waistband. Self-consciousness curls in my stomach, but then he starts moving me again, and the back of my head hits his door.
“Fuck, you’re so pretty like this,” he says, yanking my hips forward.
His thumb finds my clit, still caught under my panties. When he taps it three times, I jerk against him. When he moves the fabric aside and starts stroking me in earnest, I come for the first time, keening through my teeth. When I can remember my own name again, I want to make embarrassed excuses. Tell him I’ve never been this way before. That I’ve always been—
“Made for me,” he whispers, eyes glazing over. “It’s like you were made for me.”
His rock-solid cock nudges against my thigh, and every late-night wish I’ve made while gasping into my pillow comes back to me in a hot rush.
“I want to see you, too,” I pant, hands going to his flexing biceps, my eyes drinking in every line of ink that disappears under his taut black sleeves. “All of you.”
His gaze stutters up to mine, like it’s the last request he expected. Like he couldn’t possibly imagine me wantingthat, in the whole realm of what he’s willing to give me.
“Please,” I say breathlessly, and it really is the magic word. Something shifts in his eyes, and then he’s picking me up, throwing me over his shoulder.
“Jude!” I gasp. But then I see the flex of his muscular ass as he walks us deeper into his condo, and I shut all the way up.
Based on the shift from wooden floors to creamy stone tiles, I take it we’ve entered a bathroom. A low, warm light goes on before he sets me on my unsteady feet.
“Wait here,” he tells me.
No problem, I think. I’m too horny to walk in a straight line anyway.
He moves toward an obnoxiously large shower with a built-in bench. As he does, he grips behind the neck of his shirt and pulls. In one fluid, panty-scorching movement, it comes off, dropping to the floor in time with my jaw.
He’s opening the glass door of the shower and turning it on, but all my attention has been stolen by the thick shift of muscle beneathsmooth skin. Vaguely, I notice he doesn’t have any tattoos on his back, and feel I should be applauded for stringing a single thought together.
Until he turns around.
Until he casually shoves down the waistband of his pants and boxer briefs in one artless movement before stepping out of them. As he removes his socks, something hot starts dripping into my stomach. It might be my brain.
I swim a little, he’d said. Like he enjoys the occasional dip. Not like he could qualify for the Olympics just from the wingspan of his lats alone. But his almost aggressive beauty becomes peripheral when my gaze drops below the sporadic gallery of tattoos spanning him from chest to hips.
My mouth goes dry. I’m doing calculations. Equations so improbable and worrisome that my gaze jerks back up, almost wishing I hadn’t seen. Because we’re not going to fit together, and suddenly, I’m light-headed. I need to sit. To lie down. Possibly in a coffin. I need—
“Come here.”
His voice is low. I barely hear it over the shower, but it’s like he’s tugged on a rope wrapped around my waist as I stumble forward.
“I thought you said you wanted to see me,” he says with a quiet chuckle when I reach him.
“I did,” I say. “I do.”
“And how’s that going with your eyes closed?”
I take an unsteady breath. “I’ll look. Just give me a mi—”
