Her eyebrows bent in over her eyes. “Of course.” Gently, she took my hand and laid it on top of the small bump under her black and red Wolves shirt. “This … this makes us a family, Jude. We’ll always have your back.”
What was she doing to me?
Why did the fabric of my carefully constructed world feel like it’d been ripped in two?
Lia’s beautiful face softened at whatever she saw in mine, and instead of commenting on it, she turned, muting the game. She cupped my face with her hand and slowly leaned forward, placing a soft, heartbreaking kiss on my lips.
“No rules,” she whispered. “Just … whatever we want this to be.”
My body caught up before my brain did. My hands slid up her arms and into her silky hair, where I could tilt her head and take our kiss into a different depth. Somewhere darker, somewhere delicious.
She sighed into my mouth, and I pushed her backward onto the couch, prowling over her and caging her head with my arms while we kissed.
I pulled back, and she blinked slowly.
“
My bed,” I said. “No couch, no bloody single bed, no worrying about anything except what I’m about to make you feel.”
Lia smiled. “An excellent idea.”
I stood off the couch and held my hand out to her. “Shall we?”
LIA
When the strength of his fingers curled around mine as I took his hand, I almost stopped.
Not because I wasn’t sure about crossing this particular barrier—my hormones were screaming at me to bang the bejeezus out of him—but because I was afraid that ascending that staircase would kill the electric mood.
Weeks ago, I’d stopped trying to figure out what shifted things between us. Sometimes it was a look that lasted just a fraction of a moment longer than was polite. Sometimes, he slid his hand up my back, and I wanted to shove my hand down the front of his pants. Sometimes he breathed, and I wanted to shove his hand down the front of mine.
It was easy, was what I was trying to say. And when those moments happened, we acted on them. We rarely took the time to relocate.
But I was so, so wrong. Because instead of trailing him like a horny lil puppy on a leash, Jude tugged on my hand so that I preceded him up the steps to his bedroom.
“Did you know,” he asked lightly, hands curling around my hips as I took the first step, “your arse is abso-bloody-lutely perfect?”
I almost tripped on the second step. “Is it?”
He exhaled a laugh, and I found myself smiling. Yes, I knew I had a good ass. Genetics were strong in the Ward family, and we might have gotten a healthy share of family dysfunction, but we’d also gotten high cheekbones, big blue eyes, long legs, and a great frickin’ ass.
After my breathy question, he crowded behind me, burying his nose into my hair and inhaling greedily.
“I could fucking inhale you,” he murmured.
“Sounds painful.” Was my voice shaking? I think it was. My hands were. My heart was. Every inch of me had a slight vibration that spoke to his potency. My legs could hardly hold me up when I felt him behind me, big, so, so big and so ready.
Yes, we’d touched each other and yes, we’d perfected the art of non-sex sex over the past couple of months, but I was also so, so ready to feel him again.
Jude slid his hands up, gripping the hem of my shirt and tugging. I paused, because I was not trying to fall on any stairs right before the big show. He tossed the shirt behind us and fastened his mouth on the base of my neck and sucked.
“Holy shit,” I groaned, my hand tightening on the banister when he deftly unfastened my bra as I neared the landing on the second floor. His tongue, wet and hot, dragged down the line of my neck, and his clever hands cupped my breasts underneath the loosened cups. They were so sensitive that I hissed slowly, each gentle swipe of his thumb directly tied to the apex between my legs that was lighting up like a friggin’ neon sign.
“Are you ready? Just like this?”
Oh please, if he thought I couldn’t orgasm from his voice alone, he was kidding himself. I cleared the top step and whirled, snaking my arms around his neck and attacking his mouth.
The kiss was a strange thing, if you thought about it.
Some were sweet and short and dry, the established motion of lips as a point of connection between two people who knew each other well. And some were in an entirely different category. They transcended the kindling of passion. They transcended the fueling of lust.
This kiss, as he pushed me against the wall and ground himself against me, was one of those transcendent kisses.
This kiss was Jude fucking me.
This kiss was Jude making love to me.
The lines blurred entirely between the two.
I felt his heart in that kiss just like I felt my own. It was in the slick slide of our tongues, the serpentine motion he’d established, rolling his hips as my leg hitched up along his skin. And it was in the strange anticipation I felt to fall backward on his bed, in his home, with his arms wrapped tight around me.
We stumbled from the hallway through the open doorway, and he bent at the knees to boost me up into his arms. I leaned my head back, and he licked across the tops of my breasts, still partially covered by the bra we hadn’t quite freed me of.
The moment before he laid me on the bed, everything slowed. He lifted his head and speared me with a look so full of the things he normally managed to hide.
He wanted so much more from this, maybe more than I’d ever realized.
I thought of his expression down on the couch, when I’d told him we were a family now, and I felt only the briefest moment questioning whether this was a good idea or even smart.
Jude was so deep under my skin, and that brief flash of vulnerability buried him even deeper. I wasn’t sure I could pull him out, even if I wanted to.
His knee braced on the bed, and with the utmost care, he lowered us until my back hit the mattress. That he’d managed it so gently was a testament to his unbelievable strength. Again, he kissed me, and my back arched up because I missed that slide of his skin against mine. Quickly, he broke the kiss to tug his shirt off, and when his chest and stomach were bared to me, I couldn’t help the happy sigh.
Jude grinned, and if I’d been standing, that grin would’ve made me weak in the knees.
While he worked on his pants, I pushed mine down, only leaving my black lace underwear when he raised an imperious eyebrow. “Let me, love.”
I held my hands up. “Bossy.”
Before me, he stood completely naked, and why wouldn’t he? He looked like a Greek god, carved to perfection. With one finger crooked behind the center bow on my bra, he slowly pulled it down, watching the skin uncovered inch by slow, torturous inch until I laid there in only a small scrap of black lace. That came off next—again, with only two calloused fingers pulling it down my legs.
“Beautiful,” he whispered. Jude planted his fists on the bed and prowled up over me like a great big cat, stopping only to drop a gentle kiss on the curve of my belly.
Inexplicably, tears pricked hot in my eyes at that kiss.
No, whatever this moment was between us, it wasn’t stupid, and it wasn’t a bad idea.
I’d go to my grave remembering him like this. That was the thought in my head when he took my mouth in another searing kiss.
That was the thought in my heart when he brought me up over the crest for the first time with his hand. Then he whispered into my ear that my pleasure was perfect, that I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life, and he couldn’t wait to feel me again. How he’d dreamed of it night after night.
Part of me wanted to reverse our positions, so I could sit up over him and watch as he got his pleasure. Where I could—eyes wide open—see the moment on his face when he let go of all control.
But when he gripped my thigh tight in one strong hand and pushed inside, I lost my breath. I lost any idea that wasn’t this one.
Jude moved so slowly at first that I almost screamed at him, almost raked my nails down his back, almost exploded again from unspent frustration.
He whispered things into my skin that weren’t clear, things I couldn’t make out behind the rushing and roaring in my ears. I arched up, my hands stretching up over my head until I’d braced my palms flat against the headboard. He lifted his head and stared down into my face for one breathless beat.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.