Page 53 of Treat

“What?” He looked up, his face spitting into a mile-wide grin when he saw the big pink heart on the screen, with him and Esme in the center. “We’re up, babe.”

“Make it good,” she ordered, grabbed his ears, and yanked him in.

Though envy curled deep, Brynn couldn’t help laughing. They made the kiss as dramatic as possible, Esme falling backward over the seats and dragging Tuck on top of her. “Jesus,” Jude muttered, but he was laughing too, and when the Kiss-Cam moved on to another, less demonstrative couple, he stood to haul Tuck off his wife.

“This is a family venue,” he scolded, still laughing, and nudged Tuck into his seat while Esme shifted upright into hers.

She pushed her hair out of her face. “My boobs didn’t fall out, did they?”

“No, you’re good,” Brynn assured her.

“Because I didn’t even grab ‘em,” Tuck said righteously. “On account of I was being family-friendly.”

Jude sat back down with a snort. “Your tongue was down your wife’s throat is family-friendly?”

“To be fair, you couldn’t see that,” Brynn pointed out, enjoying herself. “You know, since his beard is so bushy.”

“What was I supposed to do, give her some anemic little peck on the lips?” Tuck scoffed. “That wasn’t happening.”

“There’s a lot of room between a little peck and inappropriately sucking face,” Jude pointed out.

Esme leaned forward to see around Tuck. “Were we gross?” she asked Brynn.

Brynn shook her head. “Adorable.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, show us how it’s done, son,” Tuck drawled and jerked his chin at the big screen.

Brynn glanced up to see her face, and Jude’s, centered in the big pink sparkly heart.

Oh,she thought and swung around to stare at Jude.

He was staring back at her, his gaze sharp and bright and blue as the summer sky. There were nerves, and heat, and as she watched, a dawning resolve that whipped the butterflies in her belly into a frenzy.

He lifted a hand to the bill of her cap, pushing it back as his head dipped down. She kept her eyes on his until they were so close they blurred, then let hers drift close, then his mouth was on hers.

The crowd gave a roaring cheer, and Tuck let loose a big booming laugh, but she barely noticed. Every part of her was focused on the kiss.

It wasn’t like before, all desperate heat and frantic need. This was softer, deeper somehow, and all the more devastating.

His lips were firm, tasting of beer and the salt from the pretzel he’d had earlier. His mustache was a gentle abrasion, making her lips tingle, and his tongue—oh, his tongue. It was at once a soothing balm and a seductive tease. It glided along the seam of her lips, dipping inside when she parted them eagerly. The beer taste was sharper now, but she ignored it to concentrate on the good stuff. The press of lips, the scrape of teeth. The way his hand, still holding her cap, cupped the back of her head to hold her at just the right angle.

Then with a last glide of his tongue and nip at her bottom lip, he was gone, easing back, and she blinked as the world started spinning again.

“There,” he said, a soft little smile on his face as he snugged her cap back onto her head. She knew he couldn’t see her eyes through the sunglasses, but it felt like he was looking right into them anyway. “That’s how it’s done.”

“Um, that might not have been as family-friendly as you think,” Esme warned.

“Gave me a boner,” Tuck rumbled.

“You already had a boner,” Esme pointed out.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Shut up, Tuck,” Jude said mildly, his burning blue gaze still locked on Brynn. “You okay?” he murmured.

She nodded, but what came out of her mouth was, “Not really.”

“Me neither,” he said.

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