by Lucy Lennox
“Hmm?” I asked, knowing full well what had caused his breath to hitch.
“You dirty boy,” he said from under the sheet. “I just assumed you only slept nude when you were with me. Were you that sure I’d come to my senses or you do sleep nude on your own too?”
I let out a laugh. “Always sleep nude, but I forget that I’m naked sometimes and wander out to get a drink of water. You caught me in a hotel suite one time, actually.”
He bolted upright, removing his mouth from the skin of my abdomen and pulling the sheet off his head. “Did not. I would have remembered that, believe me.”
“You were sleepwalking. We had an entire conversation with me holding a decorative basket in front of my junk. I think we were in Portland. It wasn’t until you asked me to remember to check on the birds before I got back in the pool that I realized something was off.”
Jude was laughing too hard to stay focused on what he was supposed to be doing to my body. But a giggling Jude was the best kind of Jude, and I loved hearing him lose it. “No way. I don’t sleepwalk.”
“You definitely do. Another time you came into my room and yelled at me for getting the colors all wrong,” I told him, chuckling as I remembered how pissed he was.
“The colors for what?” he asked.
“Beats me. I begged you to explain yourself, but you’d had just about enough of me at that point and threw up your hands in disgust before returning to your own room.”
“You’re making all this up.” Jude laughed, straddling my hips and resting his hands on my chest.
“Nope. Ask your family if you sleepwalk. They’ll tell you. Simone once told me that you used to get completely dressed for school in your sleep and would wake up surprised at how diligent you’d been in prepping the night before.”
“Oh shit,” he said, losing it again. “I do remember that now. Oh my god.”
“I think it’s cute. The best part is getting to see what crazy PJ pants you’re wearing,” I said. “Which ones do you have on right now?”
“They have sandwiches on them,” Jude said. “Pete and Ginger’s girls sent them to me for my birthday, remember?”
“Yeah. Yesterday you had the ones with party chickens on them,” I remembered. “Those are my favorite.”
“Right, the chickens celebrating their day off on Thanksgiving. Mom gave them to me last year. She thought it was funny since I’m a vegetarian. I don’t think she put two and two together about how the day off for chickens isn’t so great for the turkeys. But at least they’re cute.”
“What started you on the crazy pajama thing?”
“It’s so embarrassing. When I was a teenager, my parents kept buying my clothes in the kids’ section because I was so small for my age. As the youngest of five boys, you can imagine how much shit I took about my superhero pajamas from my fucking brothers. So even when I moved up to the adult sizes, they’d pick out cartoon ones or humorous ones to make it look like I was still shopping in the kids’ section. It just became a thing.”
“You know they adore you, right?” I asked.
“Yes, I do. They’re amazing. What about you? You never talk about your brothers, so I assume you aren’t close.”
“No, but not for the reason you think. They’re twins. So they’ve always been closer to each other, which sort of leaves me as the third wheel. I followed my father’s footsteps and became a Marine, but my brothers chose the Army. Then they took the whole ‘competition between branches’ thing a little too seriously. I think the final nail in the coffin was me moving to the West Coast.” I shrugged. “I envy what you have with your family. They’re ridiculously wonderful.”
“My mom would probably be willing to adopt you if she knew you were gay,” he teased. Three of Jude’s brothers were adopted through a gay youth program.
“It’s worth considering,” I mused. “I do love her cooking.”
“Of course, then I’d be sitting on my naked brother right now,” Jude said with a shudder.
“Gross. Maybe we should stop talking about your family.”
“I think that’s a great idea,” he agreed, renewing his slither down my body.
I stopped him and pulled him up until we were lying face-to-face.
“Jude?” I asked.
“Hmm?”
“Are you okay? I mean, are we okay?”
He smiled the kind of smile that went all the way to his eyes again. “Yes, Derek. We’re very okay.”
“Good. I just want you to know you can trust me. I would never do anything to betray you or deliberately hurt you. Do you believe me?”
“I do,” he said, kissing me sweetly on the lips before moving to spread wet kisses all over my body.
20
Jude
“Jude, baby, please,” Derek begged, as I drove him crazy with my tongue.
After he came, I felt ridiculously proud of myself for bringing my gorgeous Marine to his release with my mouth. As silly as that sounded, it made me feel powerful. Derek had spent months standing quietly and calmly in the background of my life. Nothing fazed him, and nothing ruffled his feathers.
This big tough guy had been reduced to a begging, shaking, whimpering ball of need. And he’d called me baby. Fuck if that didn’t push all my goddamned buttons almost as much as it did when he called me Bluebell. There was a part of me that wanted to be Derek Wolfe’s baby more than I wanted my next hit song. But I couldn’t go there.
Derek was a quiet, private man. If the media thought I was in a relationship with him, his life would no longer be his. That wasn’t something I could do to him, and I knew he would never voluntarily put himself in that kind of position.
As he came back down from his climax, I climbed up to settle in beside him. His arm curled around me and I rested my head on his shoulder.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “Your turn.” I could hear the smile in his voice, but I could also fell his utter relaxation against my body.
“No, Derek. Sleep. I just want to lie here with you while you drift off.”
“Mmm, you sure? I don’t have the energy to argue.” He turned his head and kissed the top of mine. “Night, Bluebell.”
Shit. All the feels. If only he knew what that word really meant to me.
“Night, Wolfe.”
As he fell asleep, I lay there enjoying the feel of him against me. The warm solid shoulder under my cheek, the coarse hair of his belly under my hand, his curvy calf muscles against my toes. After several minutes, he shifted us both in one smooth motion so he ended up spooning me. His large body surrounded mine in a protective curl and I snuggled back into him, pulling his arms farther around my chest and threading my fingers with his. I brought the back of one of his hands up against my lips and kept it there.
Derek’s lips brushed the skin on my neck and I shivered. His hand came up to smooth my hair back from both of our faces. “’S like sleeping with a girl,” he mumbled.
“You complaining about my hair?” I joked.
“Hell no. Love your hair. Sexy as fuck.”
I smiled into the darkness, not wanting to fall asleep and miss the joy of lying in bed within the protective circle of this man’s arms.
“Go to sleep, Jude Marian,” he whispered into my ear. His voice was like aged bourbon going down, making everything inside me warm. And when he used my last name, it made me feel real. Like he saw the skinny awkward kid I’d been in the high school band and liked me anyway.
I came awake to the feel of someone’s morning wood nudging my ass. My mouth stretched into a grin as I remembered I was in bed with the sexiest man I knew. My ass pushed back into that glorious cock, and I heard a groan.
I did it again, but this time I wiggled too.
“Mmffhh,” he said as he reached around to palm my cock. “Pants off,” he said as he tried tugging them down.
After stripping them off, I climbed on top of his sleepy form. “Sleeping with you is like sleeping next to a fireplace,” I said. “So hot, so g
ood.”
His sleepy face split into a grin. “Until summer returns, then you’ll ride the side rail and growl at me if I even think about touching you.”
Summer. Would we still be sleeping together that many months from now?
“I’m cold year round. Especially at home here in the Bay Area. But you already knew that.” I leaned down to press my lips against a nipple and heard him hiss.
“Ah yes, the ever-present Jude hoodie for our little delicate flower. Maybe that’s why you always fall asleep against me. You’re a heat-seeking human.”
“Either that or it’s because you’re sexy as hell. One of the two,” I said, continuing to search his chest with my lips.
His hand pulled my face up to his and he began kissing me, reminding me he was in charge of this round. Derek’s hand circled my throat, his thumb pressing lightly into it, and my cock stood straight up in response. God, what was it about his hand on my neck that made me so turned on? It was like striking a match.
“Mmm, someone likes that,” he teased as he felt my erection throbbing against him. I whimpered in response. His lips moved over to my ear where his words lit the fuse. “Do you want me to manhandle you, Jude? Hold you down and fuck you like I own you? Your dick is hard enough to pound nails right now, so I think you do. And that’s hot as hell. Stop me anytime, Bluebell?”
My eyes might have rolled back in my head as I nodded my consent and awaited the explosion.
21
Derek
As if I didn’t think Jude could get any hotter. When he responded to my own desire to dominate him, it was like flipping a switch inside me. My cock went rock hard and my heart began to thunder in my chest. I gripped the back of Jude’s head and pulled him in for a blazing hot kiss, all lips and tongues and nipping teeth.
Every move my hands made was strong and decisive. I flipped him onto his back and pushed his knees over his shoulders, lowering my mouth onto his gorgeous tight hole. My mouth rimmed him while my hands caressed the backs of his thighs.
I flipped him onto his stomach and pulled his ass back toward me hard, gripping his hips and rubbing my hands over his tight ass before swatting it.
“God, you’re so fucking sweet,” I said before leaning down to bite one of his cheeks. My mouth moved back to his hole and I dove in again. By the time I was ready to don the condom, Jude was practically vibrating with need. As I slid it on, I leaned back up to Jude’s ear to ask, “Are you ready for this, Jude?”
“Oh my god Wolfe, please, please fuck me,” he whimpered, pushing his ass up in invitation.
I took him in one swift thrust. The channel gripping me was tight, hot and one hundred percent Jude. My hips pounded into him, spurred on by his cries for more. Harder, faster, deeper.
Leaning over his back I whispered into his ear, telling him how good it felt to fuck him, how tight his ass was, how much I wanted to own his pleasure and make him scream. With each word, his cries became whimpers and his breath hitched faster. My hand reached around to grasp his cock finding it hard as a rock. Precum bloomed from the tip and I used it to stroke him.
Just as swiftly as I’d entered him, I pulled out, lifting him up and rolling onto my back before lowering Jude’s ass on top of me in a straddle.
He looked dazed, but his body knew what it wanted. He moved to ride me, reaching back to guide me into his body. I gritted my teeth in an effort to keep from shoving up in one big stroke. Finally, he was seated on me fully, and it felt amazing.
He began to move, sliding up and down on my shaft, seeking his own pleasure. I grabbed both of his wrists and held them together behind his back forcing his chest to arch and his hips to buck even faster.
As his body moved in a frenzied haze of pleasure, I told him how wanton he looked, how sexy he was, how I was going to lose my shit when I came deep inside of him. I released his wrists and moved to stroke his cock with one hand while the other returned to his neck in a light hold, reminding him once more who was in charge.
It didn’t take long before his eyes rolled back in his head and a full-body shudder wracked his small frame, white ropes of come shot across my chest, and I grabbed him by the back of the neck to pull his mouth to mine in a crush.
As his orgasm continued to spill into my hand, his cries vibrated against my lips, making my insides pulse with white-hot pleasure. My own grunts of release went into Jude’s mouth as I felt the pulse of my orgasm rocket up from my groin to my chest. Eyes slammed closed, muscles contracted, and full-body shudders racked through me.
We lay together in stunned silence while the sounds of our rapid breathing seemed to bounce around the room. It was a while before either one of us could catch our breath and form a coherent thought.
I could get used to starting off my days like that.
We spent the rest of the week in our normal routine of work during the day, followed by cooking dinner together and then pretending to watch TV but really humping all night instead. When Saturday morning rolled around, so did my mandatory time off. By the time we’d taken showers and gotten dressed for the day, it was time to face the music. “I have to go back to my place.”
He looked over the kitchen island to catch my eyes. “I know. Stay for some breakfast first?”
“Okay. Mike should be here in about twenty minutes. I think Ollie’s back too.” After leaving her parents’, she’d decided to visit her sister in New York before Jude’s schedule picked up again.
“She is,” Jude said as he gathered items from the fridge. I told him I would meet him at the recording studio on Monday morning and take over from Mike then. He went over what he thought the rest of the week’s schedule was going to look like while he cooked a simple breakfast of eggs and fruit.
After we finished eating, I moved to the small couch to finish my coffee, and Jude came over to sit next to me. Not polite, daytime next to me, but naked, nighttime next to me. Practically in my lap. His head leaned against my shoulder and I felt my body relax against his touch.
He smelled like soap.
Damn it.
“Okay, can I admit that I’m going to miss your presence here when you’re gone this weekend?” Jude blurted.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Only if I can admit that I’m going to miss seeing your gorgeous face while I’m away. I’m probably going to sleep like shit too, if last night’s initial attempt was any indication.”
“Same here. I sleep way better with you next to me. Maybe it’s all that heat,” Jude said with a smirk.
“Mm, maybe. Or maybe it’s because you’re getting a regular orgasm each night that’s helping you sleep better,” I suggested, running my hand through his long hair.
“Either way, I’m pretty happy with you being around. I hope you know that.”
“Me too, Bluebell,” I said.
We sat together in comfortable quiet for a few minutes, putting off the inevitable.
“Derek?” he asked, pulling his head back from my shoulder to look at me.
“Hm?” I answered, caught in his warm brown gaze.
Jude put his hands on my cheeks. “Thanks,” he said before leaning in to kiss me softly. His lips were his voice and the tender touches of his tongue were his words. I heard how grateful he was with every move of his mouth, and I responded in kind.
Before we were ready to pull away and be professional for the day, there was a knock on the door. We jumped apart but made eye contact before I got up to answer the door.
It was Ollie, and she hit the ground running, going over the day’s social media plans and demanding to hear all the juicy gossip from Simone’s crazy wedding weekend.
I stood to leave when Mike arrived, catching Jude’s eye over Ollie’s pink hair. When I shot him a wink, he blushed deep pink, and I knew Ollie would notice and give him hell about it after I left.
All I could tell myself to stop the nerves beginning to swirl in my stomach was that I was only going to be gone for the obligatory two days off.
If only I�
��d known that a family emergency would turn those two days into two weeks.
22
Jude
Even though we weren’t physically together, we continued flirting casually during the weekend break. We’d been texting almost constantly throughout the couple of days apart, but Derek went quiet for several hours on Monday morning when he was supposed to be meeting me at the studio. Finally, just before lunch, he texted me.
Derek: My brother Aaron was in a bad accident. He’s in a hospital in Germany and I have to accompany my mom over there. Dad can’t go and my brother Kyle is in Japan. At airport now. Going thru security.
Jude: Oh shit, Derek. I’m so sorry. Is he going to be okay? What can I do to help?
Derek: I don’t know. Just forgive me for leaving on such short notice.
Jude: Don’t be ridiculous. Safe flight. Text when you land?
Derek: Will do. Go easy on Mike and stay safe.
Jude: Nah, we’re skydiving today and learning how to swallow swords after that.
Derek: Be sure to tell your mom ahead of time it was not my idea. I can’t imagine my life without her cooking.
Jude: I see where your priorities are.
Derek: If you’re not around, I’ll have to put the moves on Aunt Tilly in order to stay near your family. She’s my favorite Marian besides you.
I laughed at that. My aunt Tilly was crazy. A foul-mouthed sailor disguised as an eighty-something little old lady, and she thought Derek was a tasty treat.
Jude: Don’t make me laugh. You know she’d sex you up in a skinny minute.
Derek: After that many years on earth, she’s gotta have some killer moves.
Jude: Pls change subject. If you die in fiery crash, I can’t have our last conversation include dirty grannies.
A minute later my phone rang. I was by myself in my home gym trying to distract myself with some exercise.
“Hey, Bluebell,” he drawled in his smooth, calm voice. My heart started hammering in my chest like a traitor.
“Hey. I’m sorry about your brother. Do you have any details?”
“His unit was attacked and the truck he was in flipped over, trapping him. Has some bad burns on his body, but we won’t know more until we get there. I couldn’t let my mom go alone.”
