Page 18 of Thick & Thin

He was everything.

I reached across the bench seat, ready to run my fingers over the facial hair he hadn’t shaved. It wasn’t very thick, but Josh wasn’t a hairy guy like a lot of the guys in our class. My fingers lingered over his lips, his hot breath tickling my fingertips, but just before I touched his skin, a loud honk sounded behind us, and I jerked my hand away.

When I looked through the rearview mirror, a set of headlights blazed into my eyes. Checking both ways, I pulled away from the stop sign and continued to Josh’s house, feeling foolish.

What if he had woken up to find me almost caressing his face?

I couldn’t allow myself a moment of weakness like that again.

Soon, I was pulling into Josh’s horseshoe driveway. Half wagon wheels separated the beginning of the drive from the two ditches on each side. The one-story farmhouse Josh grew up in wasn’t as run-down as our place. While my father was a bit of an alcoholic, spending most of his days beneath the hood of a car in the garage and more worried about an afternoon fishing after work, Mr. and Mrs. Black put everything into their farm. The grounds were clean and organized, fences never broken, the barn always painted.

The inside of the house was just as clean and organized. How Mrs. Black managed it while working alongside her husband on the farm, I would never know, but you could see the woman’s touch to their home.

Meanwhile, the only woman living in my house was me, and even I could admit I didn’t have any homemaker skills. Maybe if I had been raised by a woman?

The lights inside were out, but they always left the porch light on for Josh. Pulling up to the house, I put his truck in park and cut the engine. If his mom hadn’t made him promise he would come home, I would have just taken him to my place to crash on our couch, but promises were promises, and I wasn’t about to make him break one to his momma.

“Josh, wake up,” I said, pushing his shoulder to shake him. “We’re here.”

He didn’t wake, but he turned his head against the back of the seat as if it were a pillow and he was trying to get comfortable.

“Hey.” I smacked his arm. “Wake up, dipshit. We’re at your house.”

“Chill,” he muttered, his voice slurring.

He turned away from me, snuggling into the passenger’s side door like he was in his bed.

I sighed.

There was no way I was going to be able to carry his heavy ass into the house, and I wasn’t about to wake his daddy.

Unbuckling my seat belt, I moved across the bench seat until I was right beside him.

“Josh, you need to wake up and go inside. I need to get home, and you promised your momma you were coming home tonight.”

Again, he flipped sides, turning my way. Except this time, I was close, and he pulled me into his arms and snuggled into the side of my neck.

“Shhh, just sleep,” he mumbled.

He was drunk and mostly passed out.

No way did he know what he was doing.

Still, I paused, enjoying a second or two of being in his arms.

He breathed into my neck, rustling the hairs that had fallen out of my ponytail and making them tickle the side of my face. I closed my eyes and swallowed a moan. He needed to let me go, and I needed to go home before I embarrassed myself.

“Josh,” I said, my voice cracked.

“Jenny,” he mumbled against the side of my neck. “My sweet Jenny.”

My body went stiff, a tightness forming in the bottom of my stomach making me feel a spark between my thighs. A wave of chills went across my body, leaving goose bumps behind.

I was seconds away from combusting, and the second his soft lips skimmed the skin just beneath my ear, I did.

I gasped, and a moan rumbled from the back of my throat that seemed to echo into the quiet cab of his truck. He didn’t stop, his hot mouth opening and closing against my flesh as he sucked it between his lips and kissed my neck.

“I love the way you smell,” he whispered. “The way you taste.” He trailed his lips along my jawline until he nipped my chin.

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