Page 40 of Blueline Baby

“Obviously I’ll come. You built me a fort.” She settles back over me and reaches for the ice cream again. “A structurally unsound fort, but a fort. Although, you really got me for a second.”

20

CHLOE

WE ARE NEVER TELLING THEM ABOUT THIS

Jack finally got the one thing he’s been campaigning for since the blanket fort he built back in May: a vacation. We flew into New York and drove a few hours to his parents’ lake house. We have three days alone here before his family shows up, and that’s the part I’m the most terrified about.

“You’re overthinking it,” he says, an hour into the drive, when I’ve gone quiet in the passenger seat. “They’re going to love you.”

“You have to say that.”

“I really don’t, because I know you’re going to be amazing.” He lifts my hand off my lap and laces our fingers together. “Plus it’s just us before they even get here. Nobody’s meeting anybody today.”

The house isn’t the little rustic cabin I pictured. It’s a sprawling summer home built into the side of the hill, with a towering wall of glass facing the lake behind it. I stand in the driveway holding my bag and counting windows, feeling a very, very long way from my notebook of tiny, depressing apartment listings.

Then Jack comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist. “I only have one rule.”

I lean against him, tipping my head back on his shoulder to look at him, which barely works since he’s got almost a foot on me. He kisses the tip of my nose. “No clothes. For the next three days.”

I let out a nervous laugh, aware all at once of how out of my depth I am here. He kisses me before I can overthink it, turning me around in his arms, and my hesitation melts into him.

“Yeah.” He grins against my mouth, insufferable as always. “Thought you’d like that.”

It turns out the no-clothes rule was not a joke.

We’re barely through the front door before he’s pulling my shirt off over my head and dropping it on the floor, followed by his. I don’t put up much of a fight. The version of me that wanted a house tour and a hot shower has been vetoed by the version of me that’s been simmering since we landed, when he leaned over and whispered, “I think about the way you taste constantly.”

He walks me backward through a house I register only as beams, windows, and lake. He lifts me onto the heavy wooden kitchen table like I weigh nothing and drops to his knees in front of me. The sudden exposure of it catches up quickly.

“Jack, this is your parents’ kitchen,” I whisper, my face burning as I try to cross my legs.

He laughs, his hands easing my thighs back open. “Yeah, and I was raised to always finish my meals. So that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

He leans in, and whatever I was going to say about whose kitchen this is evaporates. He lifts his head only long enough to look up at me, far too pleased with himself.

“God, you’re perfect,” he says. “I thought about this the entire drive.”

Then he stops talking, which for Jack is its own small miracle. He slides one finger into me, then a second, curling them in a way that makes my heels press hard into his back. His mouth never leaves me. When I gasp, he hums against my skin like he just scored a goal. He sucks, he teases, he drags his teeth over my clit so lightly that my hips come up off the table on their own, and he flattens a forearm across my bare stomach and pins me right back down to the wood. I’m not going anywhere until he’s done with me.

“Jack.” His name is the only thing I can say.

“I know, baby.” His voice is rough against my skin. “You’re going to give me one right here on this table. And then if I don’t get my cock inside you in the next thirty seconds, I’m literally going to finish in my shorts.”

It’s the absurdity of it that finally sends me over the edge, Jack on his knees, coming in his underwear in this pristine kitchen. I grip a fistful of his hair, every muscle in my body pulling tight, and he works me through it until all I can do is gasp and stare at the ceiling, my earlier hesitation gone.

He stands up, hauling me by the hips to the very edge of the table.

“Flip over for me.”

I go up onto my forearms, my cheek pressed flat to the cool wood. Behind me I hear the rustle of him stripping, and a wave of nerves hits me. The good kind. The kind that makes me feel reckless. I turn my head back over my shoulder.

“Condom,” I remind him.

“Always, baby.” He presses a hot kiss to my bare shoulder. I hear the foil tear. Then his hands grip my hips, and he pushes into me.

The sound he makes when he’s all the way in is one I feel everywhere. “Christ, Chloe.” He goes still, just breathing against me. “Every single time.”