“Every minute of every day since I met you, Charley.”
She doesn’t look away from the ocean. Her teeth tug on her bottom lip and she wrings her hands nervously. “You drive me insane, Jude.”
I inch closer, willing her to open up for me. “I like driving you, Charley. I don’t care if we both go insane, as long as you stop fighting me. Let me in.”
“Don’t you understand?” she storms. “For the past two weeks I haven’t been letting you in.” She sweeps a hand angrily across the blanket for emphasis. “You’ve been bulldozing through every wall I’ve subconsciously built around my life. And I hate it. It makes me feel, it makes me uncomfortable and even sad at times. But then it feels f**king amazing. Like I’m not numb,” she says, reaching for my hand and tugging it against her heart. It’s beating so fast, like a hummingbird’s, and I sit frozen waiting for her to finish. “You deliver a shock of energy to my heart every time you’re around.”
I watch a tear slip down her cheek to rest on her pretty pink lips.
“I hate it. I hate it,” she repeats until my lips are on hers and I’m muffling her passion with my own. Our kiss is different than anything I’ve experienced; it’s alive and greedy as we attack one another, trying to express conflicting emotions: love and hate. She’s trying to use her nails, her biting teeth, and the hard yanks of my hair to prove her hate, but she doesn’t realize how transparent her actions are. Because that’s the thing. Charley wants me to run; it’ll be easier for her that way. But I’m not giving up. I’ll never let her feel numb again.
With quick movements, I tug off my shirt and her clothes, pick her up, and carry her toward the water. All the while keeping our mouths sealed together.
Charley
His words wreck me. Brutal honestly is not something I’m used to dealing with, and he says everything like it’s so cut and dried. I can’t just accept him into my life; I don’t even think that’s possible anymore. But he doesn’t shy away from the challenge. He’s carrying us into the water as I wrap my legs around his firm waist. Even if words aren’t feasible at the moment, I’m pouring my emotions into each tug of hair, each nip of my teeth on his lips, and he’s responding like a hunter: quick and feral and hungry.
He carries me like I’m a rag doll, barely exerting any effort as he drags us deeper into the water. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know the sun’s going down and that we shouldn’t go out too far, but I trust Jude.
Water laps around us as we go deeper and deeper. It inches up my calves and thighs, finally coming to rest at my waist so that both of our lower bodies are concealed by glassy water. It seals our bodies tighter, wrapping us in serene layers of salt, sand, and lust. My mind doesn’t even register the temperature, not when I have Jude’s warm body pressed against my thighs, overwhelming my equilibrium. Oh God. My hands run down his chest, trying to commit each sinewy line of muscle to memory. It’s impossible though. His body is a work of art; one that would take years to memorize.
I tilt my head back, breaking our kiss and capturing a sliver of my sanity again. My eyes scour over him, adding another sense to my exploration of his body. Even his torso is a shade darker than when I saw him playing soccer the other day. I wonder if he took his shirt off after I left the photo shoot.
“What are you doing?” he asks, tightening his hold on the back of my thighs. His fingers are just close enough to the edge of my bikini bottom that my toes curl in response.
“Looking at you,” I explain simply, tracing down his broad shoulders to wrap my hands around his hard, muscled arms. My fingers don’t even come close to wrapping around his bicep, and I can see his amusement out of the corner of my eye.
“I want to keep you in this moment forever,” I smile dreamily, letting my hands caress down his chiseled abs. He’s being so patient, letting me touch him like this, though I know it won’t last. He’ll regain control soon, but for now it feels like he’s my own personal paradise and I revel in the thought.
“Your hands are torture, Charley,” he breathes huskily, spurring me on even more. The pads of my fingers drag along the sharp v-cut under his abs. I’m barely an inch above his board shorts and I can feel his body reacting to my touch as he subtly grinds against me, separated only by flimsy swimsuits.
Suddenly, his hand reaches down to capture my wrist so that he can pull my hand up to his lips. I stare up at him in shock, as he slowly, deliberately dips my fingers into his mouth and sucks each one until I’m puddy in his hands.
“I want to taste every inch of you, Charley, and tomorrow I will. But for right now, your pretty little fingers will have to do.” Fucking hell. I’ve never had a man say things like that to me before. I realize why he does it though; hearing him declare the yearning to deliver sexy deeds turns me on almost as much as if he were actually performing them.
With predatory movements, he takes my hand from his enticing mouth and drags it down my own body. It’s his hand forcing mine, but the combination bewitches my senses as if I’m touching myself while he watches me, commands me. He skips over my bikini top, skimming down my stomach and creating a surge of butterflies in his wake. I know where he’s leading our hands but I can’t process it, it’s too raw, too exposed and it sends my mind into overdrive. Our hands sink below the water and he presses my fingers along the tiny piece of triangular fabric of my bikini. Oh. My. God. Can I do this? Do I want to stop this? No. Hell no.
In the next moment, every thought dissolves from my mind because our hands pull my bikini aside, exposing my sensitive flesh to all of Jude’s mischievous deeds.
He drags our fingers lightly over my folds and my head falls back in ecstasy.
“God, you’re so soft, so silky. Do you feel that, Charley?”
His words ricochet through me, dripping with every titillating promise of what he’ll do to my body. His hand presses against me— feeling me, marking me, owning me. I’m unraveling beneath him and attempting to keep up is hopeless. I yank my hand away from his and pull him toward me so I can show him what he’s doing to me the only way I know how: with my lips. I tug his hair, hard, and press our bodies together. He responds with greedy pets and long, delicious strokes before he finally slides a finger into me, and I’m lost. I’m no longer rooted down to earth.
This is pure bliss.
His finger drives possessively into me as his other hand grips my ass. He’s not letting me go anywhere. His hands hold me tightly against him so that I have no reprieve from his overwhelming touch. As gravity and the ocean’s current push me down, he slides another finger in to join the first. He knows exactly where to stroke, how to curl his fingers and find the spot that seems to be the center of my universe.
“Ju…de…” I moan, keeping my head titled back as he continues his relentless pursuit of my pleasure with his deft fingers.
He kisses down my neck, nipping and licking a trail down to my collarbone. “My sweet girl, you’re so tight around my fingers. I want to sink into you right here. I’d let you ride me and milk out your orgasm again and again.”
His words rip me apart until I’m completely exposed to him.
“I… Jude. Don’t stop.” My voice sounds feral and wild as I fall closer and closer to the edge.
“Come for me, Charley,” he demands, sinking his teeth into the delicate skin between my neck and shoulder.
“Come,” he demands again, and my body explodes obediently.
Delicious tingles spread through each limb as my world teeters off axis. Crashing waves of pleasure roll through me again and again, combining with the ocean’s gentle tide to coax out every last morsel of my ecstasy.
As the world around me slowly begins to filter through the fog of my waning pleasure, I realize there’s a voice shouting at us from shore. I open my eyes to see Jude squinting past me and when I twist my head, I can see a figure standing up on the beach. A man waving his hands, trying to get us to come back to shore.
“What in the world?” Jude asks, letting my legs slide down to the ocean floor. Thankfully my lower body is weightless in the water or my knees would have buckled under the weight of the last few minutes. I reach down to adjust my bikini bottom, realizing how sensitive my flesh still is. Ugh. If this man hadn’t interrupted us, I would have, no doubt, been well on my way to another orgasm.
“Get up here, you two!” The man yells again, shaking his head admonishingly. Jude takes my hand in his and starts walking us back to shore. But then he pauses.
“Oh, shit,” Jude whispers under his breath, drawing my attention.
What?
“Are we in trouble?”
“No, but we’re probably on his private property. This isn’t where I meant to take you, remember? We just stopped here to eat.”
Clarity sinks in and a wave of embarrassment crashes over me. Surely the man couldn’t see anything and how could we have known? It’s not like there’s red tape or a fence along the beach. My question is answered, however, as we step closer to shore.
Three sighs are stuck into the sand along the beach with bold, bright letters: “Private beach— No Trespassing”. How did we miss those earlier?
“You stinking kids think you can just go wherever you want! This is my property and I pay a hell of a lot of money to keep people like you out!”
Jude’s hand tightens around mine and for a moment I wonder if he’ll say something to make the situation worse. The distinguished-looking man has every right to be frustrated, but he’s clearly overreacting. We should just grab our stuff and leave.
Except, he’s standing on our blanket and clearly isn’t going to budge. The closer we get to our stuff, the angrier the man becomes, waving his hands and huffing dramatically like he’s trying to flag down a helicopter. Jude let’s go of my hand without a word and starts to gather my bag and his backpack, leaving the blanket where it is.
“I’ve already called the police,” the man slurs, and points his shaky finger in Jude’s face. That’s when it clicks: he’s completely wasted. What the hell? Jude slides his steely gaze toward me for reassurance and then turns to face the man.
“I understand you’re angry, but we honestly didn’t know this was a private beach,” he answers with a respectful but hard tone. “We’re leaving and we’ll be sure to check next time.”
“Like hell you are!” The man rears back in anger and grabs my arm, jerking me toward him with an angry tug. I stumble over the sand trying to regain my footing, but in a flash, my arm is free and Jude has the man by the throat.
I’m thrown back by my own resistance to the forces no longer holding me. My awkward seat in the sand offers me an oblique view of the tense scene unfurling before me. Damnit, that guy grabbed me! How did this escalate so quickly?
“If you ever touch her again, you’ll be enjoying your private beach only after they release you from the hospital,” Jude growls, picking the man up off the ground and clutching his neck even tighter. I watch his fingers dig into the man’s flesh unrelentingly as we all teeter in the moment. Jude’s a dominant force, ready to enact his will as if the inebriated man were nothing more than a dry leaf to be crushed in the palm of his hand. My stomach rolls as I call out for Jude to stop, and somehow my plea makes it through his angry haze because a moment later he’s tossing the man down onto the sand. The coward crawls backward like a scared crab. Despite his weary appearance, he still feels to need to yell about the police arriving soon, as if Jude isn’t a wild hair away from pounding his flesh into the sand despite my pleas otherwise.