Page 54 of Someone Just Like You

“We’re done.” Without taking his eyes off me, he removed his jacket from my arms and flung it onto the bench. “Molly.”

Molly. Not Mole, but Molly. “Yes?” My voice was a whisper. His lips were like a magnet, pulling me to him. I grabbed onto his shirt collar and tugged him toward me. Then I froze. Could I do this…kiss Jude? Life as I knew it would never be the same. Two versions of Jude Stark flashed before me. The one who had worn his distaste for me like a security blanket for most of my life. And the one I’d met recently, who made me laugh like no one’s business and nursed me back to health. Soft Jude. Which one was I getting?

Jude’s gaze traveled from my eyes to my lips and back again. “Molly.” He drew out my name like he was in pain.

I clenched my thighs to relieve the building pressure down there. If his desire was an act, a prelude to some sort of cruel joke, he deserved an Academy Award. It didn’t matter because I was a goner.You regret the things you don’t do.I pulled him all the way to me, closed my eyes, and braced myself for impact.

The first touch of his lips to mine was soft and tentative. We lingered in that sweet spot for a while—touching, savoring, sampling—neither of us rushing to deepen the kiss too soon. His mouth tasted like vanilla and citrus, and his eleven o’clock shadow scratched against my chin. When he finally probed my mouth open with his tongue, I welcomed it with mine and sighed contentedly. Jude Stark was a fantastic kisser. I was unreasonably envious of all the girls who knew before me just how amazing he was.

Quickly, what began as just lip-on-lip action became a free-for-all. Jude’s hands pulled and twisted my hair. I slid mine under his dress shirt and rubbed down the sinewy muscles of his back. “Jude,” I moaned into his mouth. We were still in the foyer. “Bedroom,” I whispered into his ear. I took his hand and guided him in the dark.

Once in my room, the frenzy abated. We removed our clothes slowly and with deliberation, allowing the other to notice all the small things…and the big things. Jude was no longer the little boy in bathing trunks with race cars all over them, kicking sand into my face. I made private observations about him in a way I never did with other men I hooked up with. When he sucked on my lower lip, my mind went all,I’m kissing Jude Stark.

Jude Stark had the softest earlobes, and he grunted appreciatively when I lightly tugged on them with my teeth. Jude Stark had a beauty mark right above his belly button. (I’d be sure to tease his “mole” at a later date.) Jude Stark had more than a smattering of dark chest hair, but wasn’t too hairy.Jude Stark. Jude Stark. Jude Stark.

He lowered me onto the bed and slid his hands slowly from my neck, circling my breasts, which hardened against his palm, across my belly, making me shiver, and stopped at the seam of my panties before sliding them down my hips.

I ached for him and spread to give him full access.

His fingers worked me so hard and so well.

I bucked against his hand. “Jude Stark is making me come!”

He paused his work and hovered over me. “Did you just call me by my full name?”

“Argh! I wasn’t supposed to say that out loud!” I hid my face with the pillow.

He barked out a laugh. “You can’t hide from me, Mole.”

I peeked over the pillow. “Are you really going to call me Mole while fucking me?”

“Hard habit to break.”

“Noted.” I wiggled my bottom half, anxious to get back to it.

“Molly Girl?”

“Yes, Jude.” What would Jude Stark look like post-coital and sated?

“I like your face.”

It took me a moment to get the Beatles reference, but then I grinned. “Are we really going to do this?”

“Fuck yeah.” His brow furrowed. “With your consent, of course.”

Jude Stark is asking for my consent.I tapped the wrinkle between his eyes with my finger. “Consent provided. Do you have a condom?”

“Never leave home without one.”

I snorted.Jude Stark is so cocky.

After grabbing it from his wallet, he flopped back onto the bed and slid back under the covers. “Molly and Jude, getting it done!”

I giggled. “Our siblings would be so proud.”

And then the joking ceased because Jude Stark was moving inside me, and it was serious business. I lifted my legs on either side of him and we rocked together over and over again. The sounds we made blended with the squeaking mattress to create a blissful melody. Jude Stark, the boy who cried when I stole all the candles from his eighth birthday cake, was moaning, “So good. So fucking good” in my ear while beads of sweat formed on his hairline. Jude Stark, who’d avenged my thievery by smooshing a handful of chocolate buttercream against the back of my tiny True Religion jeans to look like I’d crapped myself, was hitting all the right spots and about to make me come harder than I ever had before.

Was this fated? When our mothers set our bassinets side-by-side while they drooled over George Clooney inER, did they predict their two youngest children wouldget it donesomeday? As for me, I never saw it coming. Yet in the moments before I shattered around him, crying out his name, I wished on every errant eyelash, all my future 11:11s, and the elusive shooting star that this would be the first time of many.

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