by Unknown
“What are do you doing?” he asked stiffly.
“You just asked me to fuck you,” she reminded him. She shoved her hand beneath his low-riding jeans and the waistband of his boxer brief. She fisted the firm, swollen crown of his cock. Her arousal stormed back at full force. He felt warm and steely hard in her palm. His throat vibrated with an arousing low, rough hum as she pushed her hand deeper into his pants.
“I was cussing because I can’t, not without a condom,” he muttered tightly. She flicked the defined cap of the cockhead with her fingers. He tensed like she’d kicked him and groaned.
“Why? Are you diseased or something?”
“No.”
“Neither am I,” she said, suddenly frantic. She sat up slightly and attempted to lower his pants and underwear further. He grabbed one of her wrists. She looked up at his face. He looked angry with her, but she recognized his expression for what it was: chained savagery. She loved seeing that.
“I’m on the pill, Jude.”
He jerked his clothing down to his knees. The next thing she knew, she was on her back and he was coming down over her. She blinked in amazement at his admirable speed.
His cockhead prodded gently at her entry.
“Open for me, Es,” he demanded tensely. She spread her thighs farther, feeling the give in her flesh. He guided himself into her with one hand.
Technically speaking, he was too big for her. But somehow, her flesh knew how to submit. She melted around him. She saw that brief flash of triumph on his fierce face as he penetrated her completely. It overwhelmed her, how good it felt. How right. Like he was coming home.
His other hand fell to the mattress, bracing his upper body.
A convulsion wracked his lean, muscular body when he began to move.
“Jesus,” he mumbled, wincing. “This feels incredible. You do.”
Her mind screamed that she felt the same way about him. It was just sex, after all, not some cosmic connection. But she couldn’t have spoken if she wanted. The physical sensation of him inside of her crowded out speech. She bit her lower lip and whimpered. His hips moved in a firm, fluid counter rhythm. She cupped his ass, desperate to feel the source of all that power. Pure excitement shot through her at the feeling of his hard, curving muscles flexing into her squeezing hands. She arched against him, groaning. He looked down at her with that blazing expression.
“You’re not going to tell me this is wrong, Es. No fucking way,” he grated out.
He’d done it officially. He’d silenced her. Probably sensing his triumph, he hooked his arms beneath her knees and braced himself again on the mattress. She was spread wide to him now, her feet dangling in the air. He increased his pace. An anguished cry flew past her lips. He nipped at her opened mouth hungrily, and then started to move back. Tempted, she lifted her head off the pillow and used her teeth on his lower lip to keep him close. He hissed at the feeling of her teeth and plunged into her faster. Harder. She clutched at a rock-hard bicep and buttock, steadying herself for the rough ride. The white wooden headboard on the bed she’d slept in since her twelfth birthday began to clack against the wall, the rhythmic sound beating in her ears.
He crowded everything else out of her. There was only Jude. He wavered and radiated and filled her to the brim, the flaming center of her whole world.
“You’re going to kill me, Es.”
“You are killing me,” she counter-accused shakily.
She closed her eyes, overcome by the vision of him. Of the feelings swamping her. His angle altered, and she realized he’d come up on the balls of his feet. Their skin slapped together lewdly. She lifted her hips to meet his forceful possession, compelled despite the overwhelming pressure building in her.
“Look at me.”
She heard his low growl like a gunshot going off directly in her brain. Her eyelids snapped open. His eyes were slits of volcanic blue light. He plunged into her to the hilt and paused, grinding his balls against her outer sex. He circled his hips firmly, but subtly, giving her direct pressure on her clit. Her eyes sprang wide. She gasped and tensed, her body on the verge of ignition. Suddenly, his features tightened into an expression that confused her. He froze.
“Wha—”
But then it hit her, what he must have heard just a second before she had. A series of soft knocks on her bedroom door.
“Es? Are you still awake?”
Her alarmed gaze snapped to meet Jude’s. He didn’t move a fraction of an inch, but he felt enormous inside her. He was on the verge, too.
“Ursa,” she mouthed desperately.
“Just get rid of her,” Jude whispered through a rigid jaw.
Esme swallowed with effort. Her body shouted for release. Damn you Ursa.
“What is it?” she called loudly, damning her breathlessness and the tremor in her voice. “I just got out of the shower. I…I’m not decent.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ursa’s soft, steady voice penetrated the door. “I just wanted to remind you about the hospital Christmas thrift sale tomorrow. Do you still want to volunteer?”
“Yeah. Of course,” Esme shouted. She stared up at Jude. He looked desperate. She realized belatedly that she was clutching onto his ass and arm so tightly, she was probably bruising him.
“I’m sorry,” she mouthed at him, forcing her hands and fingers to unclamp some.
“Okay. We’re all meeting in the kitchen for breakfast at six thirty. I have to leave by seven fifteen to get there in time to set up. We’re all going together,” Ursa said through the door.
She felt Jude’s cock lurch inside her. She bit off a gasp.
“I’ll set my alarm. See you bright and early,” Esme called, teetering on the edge of insanity. Jude grimaced like he was in the worst sort of pain.
She thought maybe Ursa said good night. She couldn’t be sure. All she knew was that after that unbearable stillness, Jude moved in one forceful thrust. The headboard smacked resoundingly against the wall.
A few seconds later, she felt him pouring into her, warm, furious…sweet. A stifled, feral growl rattled in his throat.
Esme gave up all semblance of control. She joined him in climax, falling deliciously into this wild, miraculous mistake.
Chapter Twelve
She awoke lazily, bathing in a sense of warmth, fullness…utter contentment. It was unlike anything she’d experienced before, totally unattached to the everyday world. Why did she feel so ridiculously happy?
Best not go there.
“I had to idea you were so ravishing in the morning. The things you learn.”
Her eyelids snapped open at the sound of the deep voice. For a few stunned seconds, she stared at the outline of Jude Beckett as sunlight flooded around him. A ridiculously sexy grin pulled at his lips. This must be a dream.
“Jude?” she mouthed wordlessly.
His smile widened. He moved, blocking some of the sunlight pouring through her bedroom window—the very window he’d climbed through last night…and not as a mischievous kid, either.
As a full grown, dead-sexy man.
Memories collided onto the center stage of her attention. She jerked up the sheet and comforter and peered beneath it. She groaned.
Naked as the day I was born, and still humming from being in his arms.
One glance at Jude told her he was fully dressed and sitting casually at the edge of her bed.
“I was about to wake you,” he said. She was disoriented, but not too discombobulated to notice how sleep-roughened and sexy his voice sounded. Or how appealing he looked with a morning shadow of whiskers on his jaw and his thick, dark hair barely tamed by a careless finger combing. “It’s six twenty-five,” he said, nodding at her bedside table and clock. “You forgot to set the alarm. Ursa’s going to be up looking for you any minute.”
“Shit,” Esme hissed. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Ah, here’s the Esme I know,” Jude said, his humor and warmth completely incomprehensible to her under the circumstances. S
he sat up in bed, clutching the comforter to her breasts and searching the area wildly. Jude bent down to the carpet.
“I should have known that angel-smile couldn’t last long,” he said as he draped her discarded nightgown over her knees.
For a second, she just stared at the slip of silk as it all came back to her. Jude’s mouth on her, his hand sliding up the fabric onto her naked hip, and then between her thighs, his touch igniting her like she was some flesh and blood explosive device…falling asleep to the sensation of his arms surrounding her and his lips running softly against her ear and neck.
Something between a squeak and a whimper popped out of her throat. She met his alert blue eyes. He looked downright chipper, damn him.
“How can you sit there looking so…so nonchalant?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” He shrugged. “I’m on vacation. It’s a beautiful morning. I woke up holding a gorgeous, sweet, soft woman.” He lifted up a corner of the comforter and peered under it inquiringly. “Any idea where she went?”
Esme slapped at this hand before she shoved the nightgown over her head. She struggled to hold up the comforter over her breasts while she worked her hand through an armhole.
“We did it again,” she accused.
“Yeah. I remember. Every bit. Trust me,” he replied, blue eyes gleaming, a grin begging to break free on his full mouth.
“Damn it, Jude.” She paused, surprised by the way her voice shook. It was panic she was experiencing, Esme realized with dread. Pure, powerful panic. She was losing control of everything.
The hint of a devilish grin melted off Jude’s lips.
“Jesus, Es, I was just—”
“Don’t touch me,” she whispered heatedly when he reached for her bare shoulder. His hand paused in midair, then fell heavily to the mattress.
“I don’t get you,” he said, and this time there was anger in his tone. “We’re not teenagers anymore. So we slept together. So we’re attracted to each other. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is, it’ll ruin everything. You are thinking like a teenager if you think we can still be friends while we’re fucking, Jude.”
He flinched slightly. She resisted a wild urge to curl up in a ball and cry like a baby.
“I’m sorry for saying it so…crudely,” she managed more evenly, silently lecturing herself into calm. She swallowed the knot in her throat and pulled her gown down to her waist. She met his eyes, and saw the familiar Beckett fire there. She’d pissed him off for sure.
Well, maybe that was for the best.
“Friends with benefits never works. Surely you realize that. We’ll just end up hurting each other. And I…” She inhaled slowly, struggling for composure. “I, for one, couldn’t survive that.”
A horrible pause ensued.
“Oh. I get it,” he finally said slowly. She didn’t like the misleading softness of his tone or the sudden hardness of his expression.
“Get what?”
“You can’t stay friends with me and sleep with me because that goes against the Esme code, right?” He stood up so fast; it made Esme a little dizzy following his movements. He snatched up his coat at the end of the bed, his face like a barely contained blaze. “You dump all the dudes you sleep with after the shine wears off. So if we have sex, you’ll eventually have to bale on everything. Our friendship included. That’s why you’re so worried about ruining things. I don’t know why I didn’t get what you were saying before.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Esme insisted, starting to get out of bed, and pausing in irritated exasperation when she realized the nightgown wasn’t covering her lower half. She looked up at him imploringly. “I swear, that’s not how I meant it at all.”
He donned his coat with a sweeping gesture. He seemed suddenly aloof to her, that untouchable, self-contained Jude she knew all too well from her childhood. They both glanced in the direction of the hallway at the sound of footsteps on the back stairs.
“That’ll be Ursa,” he said quietly, turning toward the window.
“Jude—“
He glanced back quickly.
“Don’t worry about it, Es. Maybe we’ll talk it out. Maybe we won’t. That’s the way things usually work with you, right?”
She just sat there in physical and mental disarray, watching mutely as he ducked out her window, his comments replaying like a bitter, caustic lyric in her head.
This was the second Christmas in a row that Esme, Sadie and their mother had volunteered at the Reno North Hospital Christmas Thrift Store Fundraiser, ever since Ursa had joined the Social Services Department there. This year, Ursa was supervising. She’d put Esme and Sadie in a back room, unpacking and pricing donations. Ilsa was out front, assisting at checkout.
“So were you serious?” Esme asked her sister as she unpacked yet another ski jacket and added it to the mounting pile. “This morning at breakfast,” Esme clarified when Sadie gave her a blank look. “About being okay about Stephen and Mom?”
Sadie pulled an obnoxious Hawaiian shirt out of a box and frowned distractedly. “Were you serious, when you said you were fine with it?”
“Kind of. I imagine we’ll get used to the idea, won’t we? It’s not like Stephen is a stranger or something. I mean, we all love him already.”
“Maybe that’s what makes it all even weirder,” Sadie said quietly. She wisely marked the Hawaiian shirt at ten cents and sorted it in the pile marked Costumes and Dress-Up. She cleared her throat. “You don’t think Mom and Dad…and Stephen were ever,” Sadie waved her hand and gave a significant glance, but Esme just stared at her in confusion. “You don’t think the three of them ever…you know…together.”
It took a second for her sister’s meaning to soak in.
“What? Are you kidding me?” Esme shrieked, throwing down a coat. A roar started up in her ears. “You think Mom and Dad and Stephen were some kind of…threesome?”
“Be quiet, Es,” Sadie hissed, glancing uneasily around the empty storeroom. “No, I didn’t mean that. Not exactly.”
“It sure sounded like you were insinuating it.”
“I didn’t mean they were sleeping together, or anything. I just meant…well, Stephen was around them a lot.”
“As a friend,” Esme insisted.
Sadie nodded once firmly. “Yeah. You’re right.” She noticed Esme’s continued disbelieving, accusing expression. “Sorry. I’ve spent too much time with the Hollywood crowd.”
“Damn straight. That’s just gross. How could you think that?”
Sadie shrugged, looking miserable.
“This isn’t Hollywood. It’s Tahoe Shores. And this is Mom we’re talking about,” Esme scolded.
Sadie nodded. “Fine. Good. I’m glad you didn’t pick up on anything like that. Relationships like that are…poisonous.”
“How do you know?” Esme demanded bluntly. “Don’t tell me you’ve been involved in some Hollywood ménage.”
“Do you always have to be so judgmental?” Sadie accused, flushing. She exhaled when Esme just raised her eyebrows, waiting for an answer. “No, of course I’ve never been involved in some Hollywood ménage. I don’t have time to handle one guy, let alone two,” Sadie said disgustedly. “Just drop it. I don’t know why I ever brought it up.”
Esme wanted to say she couldn’t agree more, but she just sighed instead. Things were weird enough as it was, without having to consider something even more bizarre.
“The hardest part is, Mom wants us to be happy about it,” Esme said after a pause, thinking of her mother’s anxious face this morning at breakfast. “I hope this doesn’t sound too selfish,” Sadie paused in what she was doing and looked over at her, “but…I can’t believe she didn’t get how difficult this might be for us.”
“She can’t imagine that we wouldn’t be happy because she’s happy. We love her, so why wouldn’t we be happy for her?”
“Unless we’re selfish little shits, which she mistakenly doesn’t see us as, apparently,” E
sme muttered darkly.
Sadie frowned. Her sister didn’t have to agree out loud. Esme knew she Sadie was as torn as she was.
“We have to put on a good face, no matter what,” Esme said bracingly, marking a price on a sticker. “We have a wedding to plan for, and only four days to do it.”
“Mom wants it to be small, just family and Father Mike. But we’ll make it special for them,” Sadie said determinedly.
“Absolutely. And we’ll eventually get used to it. Mom and Stephen, I mean. We just have to pretend we’re fine with it all until we are fine with it.”
“Exactly,” Sadie agreed.
A thought struck her, and she dropped her pen on the table.
“Where do you think they’ll live? The Lodge?” Esme asked hollowly. “Our house?”
“They’ll have to live where Grandpa Joe lives, won’t they? He still needs looking after. Of course, they could do that at our house as well as The Lodge. Not that it is our house,” Sadie reminded Esme, her gaze lowered. “Its Mom’s, to do whatever with that she wants.”
“Right,” Esme said, straining to sound convinced. She tossed some ski pants and two wool sweaters on the table.
“It’s twice as weird for the boys,” Sadie said. “Z might have acted like a jerk last night, but he and Jude were grappling with the fact that Stephen is their uncle on top of everything else.”
“And that nobody ever told them. For all those years,” Esme said slowly, feeling like a cup of ice water had been poured slowly over her head and trickled down her spine. She shivered with abrupt regret.
God, you are a selfish little shit, Esme Esterbrook.
She’d been so focused on herself last night—on the fact that her mother was marrying a family friend after their father had only been gone for two years, not to mention the reality of finally being alone with Jude after what’d happened in Beverly Hills—she hadn’t been shown any compassion toward Jude in regard to how he was feeling about having the truth about Stephen’s parentage kept from him for most of his life.
Sadie ripped the tape off a new box and drew out the first item.
