Private School Playboys novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Calder House

The something was a telescope.

It stood on his balcony under a canvas cover, brass and old, with a tripod bolted to the stone.

Jude pulled the cover off and bent to the eyepiece.

"Saturn's low tonight," he said. "Look."

I stood next to him, and I looked.

A tiny pale ring hung in the black, sharp as a coin.

"Oh," I said.

"My mother's," he said. "She bought it for me when I was nine. She thought I'd be an astronomer."

"What happened?"

"I got thrown out of school instead."

I laughed, and the breath fogged between us.

Then I turned my head and found his face an inch from mine.

His eyes were on my mouth.

Not on the telescope.

I remembered rule one.

I thought about it for about a second.

"Jude."

"Yeah."

"I say when."

"I know."

"Now."

He didn't move.

"Say what you want, Whittredge."

My pulse was in my throat.

"I want you to kiss me like you did this morning. Except I want it to count."

He took my face in both hands.

The kiss was not slow this time.

It was hungry, his mouth hot and open on mine, his tongue sliding against mine until my knees went loose.

He pushed me back against the stone railing, and the cold bit my spine, and I did not care.

I pulled his coat open and slid my hands up under his shirt.

His stomach was hard and warm, ridged under my palms.

He groaned into my mouth.

"Inside," he said.

"Yes."

He lifted me by the thighs.

My legs locked around his waist, and he kicked the balcony door shut behind us.

His room was dark and smelled like cedar and soap.

He set me on the edge of the big bed and stood between my knees.

I tugged his shirt over his head.

A tattoo of a small black star sat under his collarbone.

There was a scar along his ribs, long and pale.

I touched it.

"Fight?"

"Fall," he said. "Off a roof. Different school."

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