“Liar,” I breathe, rocking him deeper as pleasure begins eclipsing discomfort.
He shakes his head with a half-smile, chest muscles bunching with every labored breath. “You can take a little more,” he promises, and somehow, he’s right. With a needy roll of my hips, he slips deeper with a whispered curse. When he lightly smacks my clit, soothing itwith his thumb and soft words of encouragement, the building pleasure landslides into desperation.
“That’s—Yes,” he groans. “So proud of you, baby. Keep taking it.”
I gulp down his praise like water, unable to stop moving on him. Rising and falling until my thighs are burning. I’m not going to last, and he knows it.
“I can’t,” I cry, tears mingling with the water on my flushed face. But his hands are so steady, so adoring, I know he has me. If he makes me shatter, it’s only because he wants to put me back together again, and again, and again.
“You can,” he rumbles, mouth dragging down my neck. “You take me better than anyone else, Gracie. All my bullshit. All my walls. You knock them down faster than I can build them.”
My eyes squeeze shut as the ache for him reaches a peak that’s almost violent in its intensity. Not just for his body, but for everything he keeps from me. Until I wish I could crack open his chest and force myself inside. “It’s not enough. You never give me enough,” I hiccup, gulping down my cries as my whole body begins to shake. “I want everything, Jude.”
The curse he aims at the ceiling is guttural. “Lean back for me.”
He guides my hands to his knees, and the change in angle is devastating. I feel him flex hard behind my belly button, so deep and thick I can’t breathe. Can’t move. But then his hips lift into me as his fingers finally give my clit the pressure it needs, and I’ve exited my body. When I’m finally able to swallow enough air to make a sound, it’s his name—long, desperate, and punctuated by the thrust of his hips.
“F-fuck, I’m losing it, Gracie,” he warns me, lashes trembling as his thighs flex hard and fast below me.
“Please,” I beg him. “Please.”
He scoops me forward, till I’m crushed against him. I burrow my face into his straining neck as he cries out, his powerful hips unrelenting beneath me. We’re so tangled up, dripping with water, sweat, and our own need for each other, it’s hard to tell where one of us begins and the other ends. And it’s fine. More than fine. Because I never want to be untangled from him again. Never want to live a life thatdoesn’t include the salt of his skin in my mouth, or the bruising grip of his hands again. I never want to live without him at all, and if he doesn’t already know it, then he will soon enough. Because he might not want to keep me as a secret, but the truth is that I’d let him keep me any way at all.
31GRACIE
Two Weeks Before the Wedding
I survive the shower, but barely. Jude is padding toward the kitchen, looking a little too pleased with himself. Meanwhile, I sit on an ice pack.
It’s not the only thing he insisted on. After cleaning us both up and wrapping me in a towel, he convinced me to raid his perfectly curated walk-in closet. He didn’t have to twist my arm. In my nosey perusal, I found a soft and faded Yale Swim sweatshirt next to a Yale Law shirt and gave him approximately ten solid minutes of shit for it. (An outraged “You ‘swim a little’?” followed by “I bet breaststroke was your specialty,” and “Do you have a ‘Yale Breathing’ shirt, too?”)
Eventually, he’d shut me up by whipping my towel off and pulling the hooded sweatshirt in question over my head backward. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me through the hood until I was laughing so hard I threatened to pee in his closet.
But now that we’ve reached a truce, I’ve agreed to trim Taco’s nails if he’ll watch a zombie movie with me.
“Do you want a drink?” he asks, opening a cupboard. “Snacks?”
“Tea sounds great,” I say. Being agreeable comes with the bonus of watching him move around the kitchen shirtless in his gray sweatpants.
He lifts an eyebrow. “Sure you don’t want something stronger for the job ahead? I have some straight vodka around here somewhere.”
I hop off his counter and wander over to where a collection of Judge Judy bobbleheads lines one of the big windowsills.
“Tempting. But I think it’s probably best to keep all my faculties intact, thanks,” I say, picking up one of the figurines. This one is wearing Judge Judy’s signature robe, but instead of a gavel, she’s holding a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Guilt flickers through me. “A gift from Henry?” I ask as Jude puts on a kettle.
His hand pauses midreach toward a neatly arranged caddy of tea options, before he finishes the movement.
“He gets one made for me every Christmas,” he says without looking at me. After a moment, he adds, “That, and the most surprising sex toy he can find.”
I can’t help my laugh. “Too bad you don’t display those.”
“You’re more than welcome to my silicone tentacle collection if that’s what you’re into.”
My smile doesn’t last as worry settles in my stomach.
“How do you think he’ll take it?” I ask, carefully placing PB and J Judy back on the sill. “When you tell him about us, I mean.”
“Badly,” he says in a quiet voice, leaning his head back against the cabinets and closing his eyes.
