by Janice Lynn
He shrugged and picked up his plate. “My cousin was seen with a woman. I’m not sure how that warrants his being the topic of our Thanksgiving dinner conversation.”
“It’s obvious you haven’t seen the photo.”
Neither did he want to.
“Are you going Black Friday shopping tomorrow?” he asked, to change the subject away from Charles.
“You couldn’t pay me to fight those crowds.”
“You’ll be home tomorrow?”
She nodded. “I plan to sit home all day, catch up on my favorite shows, and veg out.”
“Sounds like a relaxing way to spend a day.”
“Want to join me?” She gave him a hopeful look. “There’s room for two on my sofa.”
He’d promised to help Roger move furniture. His friend had said they could do that anytime over the weekend, but they’d agreed on the following day.
“How about I take you to dinner tomorrow evening?”
“I’d like that.” She didn’t hesitate to agree.
“And Saturday evening? Do you have plans?”
She shook her head. “Hoping to spend as much time as possible with you.”
Her words spread warmth through him. Sarah didn’t play games, just said what she was thinking. Most of the time he liked that quality.
He liked a lot about the woman he spent most every free moment with. Roger had commented on how much time he was spending with Sarah.
Enough time that he’d gotten to know the woman behind the glasses, the glasses she’d not worn around him all week. She still wore them at the hospital, but she wasn’t hiding behind them with him. Not any more.
Which was quite telling.
“How about we stay in and I give you a cooking lesson?”
Her eyes widened with amused surprise. “You want to teach me to cook?”
“Somebody needs to,” he teased, loving the light in her sea blue-green eyes.
“Okay, but I should warn you that I make a mean burnt toast and hummus.”
“You know, lately I’ve been craving burnt toast.”
* * *
Several nights later, Jude made plans for him and Sarah to visit Times Square. He’d noted how she’d gone on when they’d driven past it on the evening he’d taken her to Phantom of the Opera. Taking her there felt like the natural thing to do.
Watching her felt natural, too.
Excitement glittering in her eyes, she took a deep breath of the cold November air. “The lights, the people, the sounds, it’s magical here. Like inside a snow globe.”
He snapped his fingers with feigned remembrance.
“I forgot to arrange the snow,” he teased, thinking everything with Sarah was exciting, new, magical. Like inside a snow globe. “Next time I’ll remember.”
“Ha.” Her lips curved in a big smile that twisted his insides. “You know what I mean,” she continued. “I know you do. I see it in your eyes when we’re sitting on your sofa, staring out at the city. There’s a life pulse to this city that is intoxicating.”
“That might be the fumes.”
“You aren’t going to deter me from my appreciation of New York.” She shook her hat-covered head. “No way.”
“I wouldn’t want to.” He kissed the tip of her nose, grateful she’d quit hiding behind her ugly glasses.
Still smiling, she glanced around Duffy Square. “Where are we going?”
“To the top of that hotel.” He pointed to one of the large skyscrapers facing Times Square.
“I bet the view is amazing.”
“Have you been?”
She shook her head. “I’ve heard the restaurant at the top spins so you have a three-sixty view of the city.”
“You heard correctly.”
Her eyes shone with excitement. “That is so cool.”
He chuckled. “You’re easily impressed.”
“You think? I’ve always considered myself picky.”
“You’re here with me,” he reminded her, holding her gloved hand within his as they went inside the hotel and headed to the elevator bank that would take them to the restaurant.
“Exactly.”
When he glanced her way, she was smiling like a kid at Christmas. Warmth spread all the way through him.
“You’re good for my ego.”
She cut her eyes upward. “As if your ego needs stroking.”
“It has been a while.”
To which she turned to him with wide, accusatory eyes. “Whose fault is that? Not mine, because I’m willing. You’re the one who’s moving at a tortoise pace.”
He laughed and bent to kiss her forehead. “It’s going to be all the sweeter when we do, Sarah.”
“For the record, sweet isn’t the adjective I want to use to describe sex. Make a note of it.”
The feeling inside Jude went from warm to inferno. “What adjective do you prefer?”
“Hot? Carnal? Sweaty? Needy? Intense? Desperate?”
Jude groaned at the images her words incited. “You make me want to forget our reservation.”
Her eyes burned. “Nothing says we can’t.”
“Except that I want to show you the city.”
“City Schmitty,” she mouthed, drawing his gaze to her lips. “Seen one skyline you’ve seen them all.”
Jude smiled, reminding himself he would have this woman, those lips on his body, his lips on her body.
Sarah’s tune changed as they ate their dinner in the revolving restaurant. She gushed over the view and talked a mile a minute as she often did in true New York style.
“I do love a good view,” she praised. “And it’s a good thing I’m cooking again tomorrow evening because otherwise I’m not going to fit into my new clothes.”
Jude sat back and listened, thinking she had a long way to go before she wouldn’t fit into her clothes, but he appreciated the thought of her not wearing any.
Sex would change everything. If they’d had sex early on, Sarah wouldn’t have known the real him, wouldn’t have recognized that she was special. Neither would she have believed him if he’d tried to tell her.
There had been too many women. None of them mattered. All had been a means to an end that hadn’t worked. Because none of them had changed the past or filled the hole in his chest. None of them had been Nina.
He took the bite of dessert Sarah offered and was struck with a truth. He didn’t want Sarah to be Nina.
He wanted her to be Sarah.
Which stunned him a little. A lot.
He didn’t need to go slow. Not anymore. Sarah knew him. The real Jude. The flawed Davenport firefighter. She liked him. Wanted him. Was smiling at him as if he was the center of her world.
Only her smile had twisted into a frown and she eyed him suspiciously. “Jude? Are you paying attention to me?”
Staring into her eyes with a clarity he hadn’t felt in years, he said, “Absolutely.”
Not convinced, she challenged, “What did I just say?”
“That you want to go home and make love to me and use lots of vivid adjectives to describe the experience when I’ve finished having you all the ways I’ve dreamed of.”
Her jaw dropped. “I didn’t say that.”
He leaned across the table, stared into her lovely eyes, and arched his brow. “Didn’t you?”
“I...” Her eyes darkened to a tumultuous sea color and, without letting her gaze break from his, she nodded. “You’re right. That’s exactly what I said.”
“There’s no going back, Sarah. You’re sure this is what you want? That I’m who you want?”
He knew the answer. Deep in his gut he knew, but he wanted to hear her say the words.
“Positive.” She stood fro
m the table and motioned to their waiter. “Check, please.”
* * *
Jude hailed a taxi and they rode in silence.
Sarah’s brain told her she should feel awkward or nervous, but all she felt was excitement. So much so she couldn’t look at Jude because she knew the moment she did she was going to gobble him up.
Literally, figuratively, emotionally, and every way.
So she kept quiet during the taxi ride, during the elevator ride to their floor, and when they stood outside their apartment doors.
“My place or yours?” he asked.
She wasn’t sure it mattered, but she immediately answered, “Mine.”
He nodded as if he’d known that’s what she’d been going to say.
She unlocked her door. They stepped inside. Sarah turned to Jude.
Not to ask him if he wanted a drink.
Not to take his coat.
Not to make polite conversation.
She turned to show him she wanted him, to lead him to her bedroom, and perhaps to keep him there forever.
Jude was way ahead of her.
The second she faced him, he pulled her to him, kissed her lips, her face, pushed her scarf away so he could trail kisses along her throat.
“I want you, Sarah.”
“Good.” She wanted him to want her. She wanted him to need her. The way she needed him.
Matching him kiss for kiss, she fumbled to get his overcoat off, managed to get the material loose and off him to where it fell to the floor. Her coat quickly followed, as did her hat and gloves.
Grateful for the skin-to-skin contact, she touched him, cradled his face as she kissed him, savored the taste of him, realized how very hungry she was. Starved.
Starved for something she hadn’t even known she needed until she’d kissed him.
She tugged at his shirt. “Show me those December abs.”
Pulling back, unbuttoning his shirt, he chuckled. “You won’t let me live that down, will you?”
“No plans to,” she breathed in a husky admission as he finished with the last button. Impatient, she pushed the material back, off his shoulders and down his arms, letting her fingers trace over the bulging muscles in his arms.
She’d touched him before, his shoulders, his arms, but always with his clothes on. Seeing him shirtless, touching his bare skin, burned her alive.
“Are you real?” she asked, her voice catching. “You can’t be.”
“Real enough that I’m going to carry you to your bedroom and kiss you all over.”
“Okay,” she agreed, shivers covering her body at his words. “Hurry.”
He laughed and scooped her up.
“Oh!” she squealed. “You didn’t really have to carry me.”
“Afraid I’ll throw my back out and not be able to make good on my promise?”
“If you throw your back out then you just have to lie there. I’ll do the work and you can just...lie there.”
He groaned. A deep growl that came from low in his chest. “Sarah.”
“Jude,” she countered, wanting to say his name, to hear it on her lips. Jude. Her Jude. Hers.
Although Jude had never been inside her bedroom, he carried her straight there, laid her gently on her bed.
Staring up at him, Sarah waited on his next move.
“This is what you want? Once we do this, there’s no going back,” he reminded her yet again.
Was he kidding?
“I don’t want to go back. I want you.” To prove her point she reached for the shirt she wore and lifted the hem upward, glad when Jude helped pull the material free from her body, exposing the underwear her new BFF at the mall, Cher, had suggested.
She didn’t boast any phenomenal curves, but beneath Jude’s hot gaze Sarah felt sexy, beautiful, feminine.
“I’m almost afraid to touch you.”
“We’re going to have a major problem if you don’t get over that,” she warned, her eyes feasting on him.
“Noted.” He undid her pants, slid the material over her hips, down her thighs. He sucked in a breath when he took in the barely there black lace that didn’t begin to cover her bottom.
“Sarah,” he groaned, tossing the material onto her bedroom floor. “No granny panties for you.”
Heat rushed into her cheeks. Yep, she’d be sending Cher tickets to that concert she’d mentioned wanting to attend for having insisted Sarah buy underwear to go with her rapidly expanding new wardrobe.
“I feel as if I’ve waited for this forever.”
“You have.” Or maybe it was her who’d been waiting for this forever.
When he undid his pants, pulled them off and, rather than crawl into the bed beside her, instead tugged her around to where her bottom was at the edge of the bed, he lowered to kiss her throat, her chest, her belly, lower, yeah, Sarah was feeling forever.
Forever and ever and ever.
Oh, my.
CHAPTER TWELVE
JUDE WASN’T SURE how sexually inexperienced Sarah was, but she’d told him she’d never been kissed the way he’d kissed her that first time. So at best she’d had a less than pleasurable sexual encounter, but he suspected she’d not even done that.
Which was why he paced himself.
Because what he really wanted was to be inside her.
Deep inside her. Surrounded by her. Lost in her.
Sarah.
Her whimpers of pleasure, her arches into his touch, her fingers curling into the quilt below her. Never had he experienced such pleasure at watching a woman, at giving pleasure.
He wanted to give Sarah everything. Every nuance of physical delight, emotional delight, everything.
When she looked back, thought of this night, he wanted only memories of perfection. He hadn’t wanted her questioning anything, not him, not other women, nothing.
He wanted to be the entire focus of her world.
He was. He felt it in her touch, her kiss, the way she looked at him.
“Sarah?”
Her eyes opened. “Please.”
Please. Such a hot word.
He trembled.
Not content to wait on him, Sarah reached for his waist, tugged on his boxers. “Now.”
“Now?” Had that hoarse crackling sound been his voice?
She nodded.
Jude shucked his boxer briefs, covered Sarah while supporting his weight so he didn’t squash her. He stared down into her lovely eyes and thought he was the luckiest man alive. Had to be. Because the way Sarah was looking at him made him so.
“Don’t forget you’re a safety guy,” she reminded him.
A condom had been the last thing on Jude’s mind.
How could he have forgotten something so crucial, something meant to protect himself and Sarah? Because she made him feel safe in ways that had nothing to do with her lack of sexual experience?
No matter the reason, he shouldn’t have forgotten. It was his job to protect her.
Always.
Even from him. Shifting his weight to one side, he reached with the other to find his pants, to maneuver the condom out of his pocket, to tear it open while praying that when he looked back into Sarah’s eyes reality hadn’t set in, that she hadn’t changed her mind about them. About him.
Because he was one hundred percent positive he didn’t deserve to be with her.
That he didn’t deserve the gift she was about to give him. Maybe that’s why he’d had to wait so long, so he could give something to her even if that something was simply the new confidence she exuded in herself, in her femininity.
When he met her gaze, relief filled him.
Her desire hadn’t waned. She. Wanted. Him.
“This
is your first time, isn’t it, Sarah?”
A brief moment of hesitation flickered on her face, then she nodded.
His heart slammed against his ribcage. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Trust shining in her eyes, she smiled. “You won’t.”
“I will,” he acknowledged, wishing there was a way he could take her pain instead. “But I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
Still smiling, she touched his face in what he could only call a caress.
“I know, Jude. That’s why you’re here.”
Making sure she was really as ready as he believed she was, he groaned at the wet heat his fingers encountered. “Sarah.”
She strained upward, cradled his face, and kissed him, deep, intense, fully. He kissed her back, catching her cry when he pushed inside with more restraint than he’d have believed he had, almost bursting from the intensity of what was happening between the two of them.
Sex had never been like this.
This giving, this taking, this explosion from the inside out. Physical explosion. Mental explosion. Emotional explosion.
Afterward, as he cradled her in his arms, he was pretty sure there was nothing he wouldn’t do for this woman, nothing he wouldn’t give her.
She raised a sleepy head to smile. “That was worth waiting for.”
Loving how she was looking at him with such happiness, he kissed her forehead. “Agreed. Get some rest because if you’re able, I’m going to want you again. Soon.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?”
“Is that your new favorite word?”
“Sex is my new favorite word,” she corrected, then shook her head. “No, not sex. Orgasm. Orgasms is my new favorite word. Orgasms because that’s what you did.”
Jude swallowed, thinking she’d better be quiet because he was starting to stir in places that should be content for some time after what they’d done not so long before.
Tilting her head, she gave him a saucy little grin. “Do you think you can do that every time or was it a one-time deal because it was my first time?”
“Only one way to know for sure.”
“That’s what I figured,” she mused, running her fingertip down his chest and into the groove along the center of his abdominal muscles, his ab muscles that had tightened into hard knots. Every muscle in him was hard. He was hard.