by Ella Fields
I’d already predicted it was long whenever I’d felt it touch me, but it was way thicker than I could’ve guessed. How these things were supposed to fit inside a woman’s body when they were this size, I had no idea, and I knew I wasn’t yet ready to find out. Solid with bulging veins and swaying a little with Jude’s every harsh breath, it was as if it wanted me to touch it.
I really wanted to touch it. “Can I—”
“Jesus fuck, yes,” he said, sounding pained. “Poke it, stroke it, just touch it before I explode from the sight of your curiosity alone like a prepubescent punk.”
That evoked a giggle I couldn’t hold back, but he didn’t seem to mind. Featherlight, I reached out and dragged my finger down his shaft. A sharp thrill shot through me when he jolted and hissed.
I pulled back.
“Wrap your hand around it,” Jude said, gruff.
Cautiously, I did.
“It won’t break, Red. Now squeeze and stroke.”
My hand moved up and down, and I squeezed gently.
He groaned, but I didn’t look at him. I was too enamored by this giant, heavy member in my hand. “It’s so warm,” I said, not meaning to say the thought out loud. I squeezed a little harder, pressing my thumb into one of the thick veins. I was rewarded with a guttural groan. It fueled my next admission. “And soft… like velvet.”
“Fuck.”
I lowered my head, shifting closer. “I can feel it throbbing.”
“Grip it harder,” he said, and I’d never heard his voice so hoarse. “Then move your hand up and down at the same time.”
Confidence blooming, I tugged and squeezed, and then I saw the wet gathering at the tip of the swollen head. I didn’t ask, and I didn’t even think about it. I just dropped my mouth over him and licked the salty flavor, moaning.
“Christ,” he said. “Yes, wrap those perfect lips around me and suck.”
There was no way I could fit all of him in my mouth, but after a minute of licking and sucking and listening to his breathing, I looked up to find I didn’t have to.
Jude’s eyes were stuck to me, his chest rising and falling in heavy bursts, and his teeth denting his lower lip. “I’m totally about to come,” he said or rather, wheezed. “Might wanna back up.”
I frowned, remembering some of the porn I had indeed watched and how a lot of the women hadn’t stopped until the dude blew his load in their mouth or sometimes on their breasts and faces. The very idea grossed me out.
But this was Jude, and the idea of backing up when he was about to expel what I’d done to him… no way.
Besides, the fact I’d only been messing around with him for a few minutes had me riding a high. A high that said I had him. Maybe he’d never admit it, but I had him coming down my throat in hot spurts and choking on his expletives with my inexperience and overbearing curiosity.
His hands tugged my hair, his body twitching and spasming.
Lying down beside him, I watched his sated green eyes as I swiped my tongue over my lips. I didn’t dare kiss him. I didn’t want him to push me away if he thought that’d be disgusting, his semen still stuck to places inside my mouth.
But then he grabbed my hip, pulling my body closer, and opened my mouth with his. “You like him?”
I swallowed his words, pressed my lips into his, and his pressed back. “I fucking love him.”
“I can tell.” He kissed me harder, held me tighter, my soft stomach against his firm, and then he stared at me for long moments.
I stared back, feeling a million miles away from reality and never wanting to return.
Within minutes, he was asleep.
Unable to move from his hold, even though I knew he might wake and ask me to go, I watched him sleep for what felt like countless minutes.
And, of course, I took the opportunity to sniff his hair—mint and cedarwood.
I glanced behind me at his phone and saw it was almost midnight.
Peeling myself away, I carefully lifted his arm and set it on the bed, my heart thrashing when he curled it into his chest, and a soft snore left his parted lips.
I bit mine when my eyes skated down his alarmingly stunning physique. His briefs were still tucked under his perfect ass.
Spying a knitted throw on the arm of the chaise near the row of French doors, I collected and draped it over him.
That was when I saw it again, and how I’d almost forgotten about its existence after spending two evenings in this very room with it upon his bare back was a testament to how thoroughly Jude Delouxe could turn my brain to sludge.
Varying shades of gray and solid black, the serpent tattoo spread from between his shoulder blades across his upper back.
Three snakes. Their eyes dollar signs, and their fangs dripping with blood that cascaded onto vines. No, not vines, I realized as I peered closer, but barbed wire. The barbs dug into their scales, manipulating their bodies into the shape of a diamond.
I grabbed his phone and risked the flash but made sure it was on silent before I snapped a picture. One of his back and another of his sleeping profile, ensuring the flash was off for the latter. I preferred to see him just how he was at this moment, half cast in shadow and feeding my hungry heart.
After sending them to myself, I deleted the evidence and silently dressed before creeping out of his room. I backtracked, grabbing the money I’d dropped, and wondered if I should turn the lamp on his nightstand off. I decided to leave it.
A cry sounded just as I reached the stairs, faint but loud enough to halt my feet.
I looked back at Jude’s room, then around the staircase to where a sliver of light crept out from his brother’s room. Another cry, this one sharper, and then I was moving toward it, unsure why but doing so anyway.
I opened the cracked door all the way, startling the young boy inside who was sitting on his bed.
“Who are you?” Henry asked, large blue eyes taking me in.
“Your neighbor, Fern.” I stepped farther into the room. “I was just leaving and heard you crying. Are you okay?”
He rubbed his eyes, lips pouting and wobbling. “Want Jude.”
I nodded. “I know, but he’s asleep. Can I get you something? Water, maybe?”
He shook his head. “Jude…” He drew in a shuddering breath. “He sings to me.”
A shocked noise left me, scrunching Henry’s eyes. I quickly schooled my features. “Well, I’m a terrible singer, so I’m afraid I can’t help you there.”
“So is Jude,” he said, smiling then, and I noticed a dimple pop in his cheek. “He sings me Mommy’s song.”
My heart sank a little. “Where is she?” I knew it was wrong of me to ask, but I couldn’t stop myself. If I knew where she’d gone, maybe the enigmatic boy in the other room might make more sense to me.
“Gone,” Henry said, followed by another wobble of his lips.
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath.
Apparently, he still heard. “Rhiannon’s swear jar is in the kitchen. You owe her a dollar.”
“Right,” I said, smiling as I walked over to his bed. “Why don’t you lie down, and we can talk a little? Quietly, so we don’t wake your brother.”
“I do wake him up a lot,” he said with a loud sigh, lying back down. “But he doesn’t seem to mind.”
No, I had a feeling he didn’t mind being there for his brother at all.
My throat swelled, my desire to know Jude in more ways than just the physical making itself painfully known. He’d never let me—I already knew that—but that didn’t mean I couldn’t help his brother back to sleep for him.
“Seems like you and I might have something in common.” Keeping my voice low, I dropped my boots to the floor while saying, “I don’t know where my dad is, either.”
Henry, who’d been rubbing his cheek, stilled. His arm dropped, lids low over his sleepy blue eyes. “You miss him?”
I twisted my lips. “Sometimes, yeah. But I used to miss him every day.”
“I mi
ss my mom every day,” he said through a yawn. “I dream about her.” I waited to see if he wanted to say anything else, and after a moment, he looked down at his hands over his navy comforter. “Every other night, she visits me when I sleep, and so when I wake up and she’s not there, I miss her.” I heard him swallow. “A lot.”
“How old are you?”
“I’ll be nine this summer,” he said, a little smugness entering his voice. Unlike his brother, and I was sure his father, he had no accent. Likely from growing up here instead of in the UK. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen,” I told him. “Though, sometimes, I feel much older and far younger at the same time.”
“Yeah?” he asked.
“Mm-hmm.”
“That’s confusing.”
I laughed but cut the sound quickly. “You’ll know what I mean one day.”
“Jude says that too,” he said, sounding annoyed.
He yawned again, and so did I. “I used to write my dad letters.”
“Did he get them? Write you back?”
“I don’t know, and no, he never did.” Old pain became brand new. Pain I thought I’d killed dead years ago. Funny how when we cracked open our souls in the dead of night, the things we told ourselves didn’t matter seemed to be the things that mattered most.
I tensed when a warm hand landed over mine on his bed. Staring down at the small fingers curling around my own, I then looked at Henry, feeling my eyes well. “What’s your middle name, Henry?”
“Dalton,” he said. “Same as my brother.”
I sniffed, nodding, and hugged his hand with mine. “Well, wanna know what I think about people like us, Henry Dalton?”
“People with no parents?”
I arched an eyebrow at that. “We have one; we’re just missing the other.”
He nodded, waiting.
“I think we’re lucky.”
His dark brows scrunched with his lips. “What? How?”
“Because,” I said, leaning forward to move his comforter up and over his chest. “To love someone so much that it makes us really sad means that we have big hearts,” I whispered. “Do you know what big hearts are capable of?”
He shook his head.
I squeezed his hand. “Big love, and with big love, all our wildest dreams can come true.”
“I wanna be an astronaut.”
I grinned and sat back. “Then an astronaut you shall be, but,” I said, looking at him pointedly, “our big hearts also need big rest to do big things.”
He seemed to think about that for a minute, and I could see the anxiety return to his eyes. “Will you stay?”
“Sure.” I crossed the room to a small red patterned chair by a large white bookshelf. “I might not be able to sing, but I can read the house down.”
Fern
That morning, I arrived home two hours before my mom got up to get ready for work.
Jude was a no-show at school on Monday and again on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The house next door was quiet. I could tell just by staring at it that there were no beating hearts inside.
I contented myself with printing the pictures I’d taken of Jude’s back and face, and also with staring at his number, of which I’d saved in my phone.
He resurfaced on Thursday, looking for all the world as if he hadn’t just missed three days of school at the busiest time of senior year.
I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to ask him where he’d been. I wanted to see if he’d thought about me at all, wherever it was he’d gone.
Instead, all I could do was watch him march through the dining hall, carrying a squashed sandwich in his hand and his tie swinging over his shoulder as he headed outside.
I was seated in the corner where I always preferred to hide, but I wasn’t sure he knew that.
“Silas?” Cory questioned, nearing the table with her lunch. She pulled the phone away from her ear, checking it and then pushing it back. “What the hell? Silas?” With a groan that sounded days old, she stabbed her thumb at the screen and slumped into the opposite leather-wrapped chair. “I could strangle him.”
“Did your Labrador run out onto the road or something?”
“I thought we agreed you’d stop calling him that months ago.”
I stabbed a piece of ranch-soaked chicken. “He totally is one, though.” Loyal to a fault, goofy in a way I was certain everyone found adorable—yes, even myself at times—the golden child and star quarterback, Silas Rydell was the perfect pet. I mean, boyfriend.
He worshipped the ground Coraline walked on, and rarely had I seen her frustrated with him and hardly ever upset. The only times I’d seen him make my best friend cry was from making her laugh so hard.
Cory rubbed her temples, looking as though she was indeed about to cry or scream. “He got so wasted on Friday that I had to call his parents.”
“Oof.” That was a last resort most wouldn’t bother with, especially if their name was Coraline Ericson. “How’d that go?”
“How do you think?” she spat, struggling to unwrap her burrito. In a crazed movement of her hands, it went flying off the table. She left it on the ground and dropped her head into her hands. “Sorry, I know you went home with Jude, and I’ve been meaning to ask about it, but he’s just been so…” She scrunched up her face rather comically. “He’s driving me fucking insane.”
“Where is he?” I asked. I remembered seeing him briefly yesterday as he talked quietly with Cory by her car, but nothing today.
“No idea,” she said. “That’s the thing, he just keeps on disappearing without any explanation, and now I’m that girl. The nagging, tell-me-where-you-are-because-you’re-acting-weird girl.”
“You’re not nagging. Your pup’s acting up.” I pushed my chicken salad across the table to her. “It’s out of character and warrants an explanation.”
She pulled the salad to her and poked at it with my fork. “There is no explanation. Just the same old song about getting caught up with stuff for his parents, and that he’s sorry, and it’ll be done with soon.”
“What will be done with?”
I knew Silas’s parents owned the Hystenya, a luxury hotel, as well as the airport, but they’d never needed him this much before.
“I wish I knew, but he won’t say anything else. And just now, he was pretending he had no service.” She rolled her eyes, lettuce and chicken entering her mouth. “As if I’m twelve and might actually believe that bullshit.”
I withheld a laugh as I imagined him doing that. Which turned out to be smart as a second later, my salad was shoved back at me, and Cory’s head dropped to her arms.
Shit.
She was crying or maybe trying not to cry. I couldn’t exactly see past all the blond hair and her arms. Glancing around, I felt grateful that everyone seemed to be focused on their own issues, namely who they were asking to prom, and who was going with who.
Dumbfounded by what to do here, and because I was just awkward as hell anyway, I blurted, “I put Jude’s dick in my mouth.”
Cory bolted upright, a lone tear sailing down her cheek. “What the fuck?”
We garnered attention then, and I shushed her before handing her a napkin. She waited until everyone resumed their own discussions and lunch eating before wiping the tear away. “Jude… you and Jude actually hooked up?”
“Don’t act so surprised. It’s not like he showed up at Gina’s to haul me out of there or anything.”
She pursed her lips at that. “I thought he was going to drop you on the side of the road. I waited for you to call.”
Aghast, I hissed at her, “Cory, I didn’t have my freaking phone.”
Wet eyes rounded. “Oh hell, that’s right.” Her mouth pinched, shoulders tilting. “Lucky he took you home then?”
I tossed a crouton at her head. “Asshole.”
“Hey, I forgot. I’m sorry.” She ate the crouton. “Too much Silas confusion and stressing over how I’m going to afford a prom dress.”
<
br /> I suppose we were even then, being that I knew she’d be worrying over that, and I’d forgotten too. “We’ll talk to Jan. She’ll fix you up.”
I could tell she had no other alternatives. Her dad would see it as a waste of money, so she didn’t refuse our help for once. “Thank you. What about you?”
“What do you mean?” I grabbed my water and drank three huge sips.
It almost flew out of my mouth when she said, “You put his junk in your mouth. Looks like you might get your prom wish after all.”
We stared at each other, then burst into laughter.
“Hurry,” Cory said, checking the time on her phone. She leaned forward with that twinkle back in her eyes. “Spill everything.”
“Denane, babe,” Kai Anders’ voice stopped me outside the library the following morning. “Heard you like to watch yourself some dick sucking. I have the real thing right here. No need to flick the bean all alone.”
Turning to face him, I felt my cheeks catch fire, the burn spreading everywhere.
The halls weren’t too congested as everyone hurried to their next destination, but they were busy enough that I knew this piece of information would be passed around before lunch.
I blinked at Kai, speechless.
He grabbed his junk and made a lewd motion, his friends laughing beside him. “What?” he said to them. “She’s actually pretty hot.”
“You know the rules,” I heard one of them say, not understanding what that meant and too embarrassed to care.
Because how dare he? How. Fucking. Dare. He.
I hadn’t even admitted it, but the asshole had still decided to use yet another truth of mine against me.
I wasn’t sure where he was, but I was determined to find him.
Walking inside the library, I heard two girls in the year below me snicker, and I glared at them. “Is there something wrong with watching porn?”
Our librarian, Mrs. Crossly, gasped. “Miss Denane, I’ll have you watch your mouth, or else you can go visit Headmaster Taurin.” She lifted her compact mirror back up, though I wasn’t sure why, as she gave me the stink eye while coloring her lips dark red with expert precision.