It’s only been months, but Jude has returned to me some of what I’d believed forever gone. How that’s possible, I have no clue. I don’t even know when it happened, but he accomplished a miracle. Took my disillusionment and restored a bit of my faith.
The longer I stare at him, the more this longing and hunger stretching inside of me deepens. The fiercer it grows.
As does the fear.
Oh God, he could crush me.
The whispered thought is low, soft, but the echo of it screams like a banshee heralding the coming of a death. This man… I know he wouldn’t hurt me physically, but… Without even the slightest pull on my imagination, I can too easily see myself waiting in an empty, lonely apartment, waiting for him to show. To offer me the slightest scrap of affection and attention.
Can imagine myself broken, a shell when he leaves me.
Can envision myself as my mother.
Because he will leave. They all do.
But not if you leave them first.
“My father had this saying he would spout every time we lost a football game, failed a test, or somehow fell short of our own expectations,” Jude continues, gently rocking me side to side as if I’m a child. “‘It’s not the failure that defines you but what you do after.’ I don’t look at what happened to you—though that wasn’t a failure by any means. I look at what you did after. You rushed to your mother’s side. Packed up your life and started it over. Refused to be broken by assholes who think they can do whatever they want because they have money and so-called power. You didn’t roll over, lay down, and die. You said ‘fuck you’ and survived. Sweetheart, that’s not quitting or being victimized. That’s being a fighter. And you fucking humble me.”
Tears that I haven’t shed in so damn long—that I refused to let fall—clog my throat, sting my eyes. I squeeze them shut, unable to strip away that last protective shield in place. Not even for Jude. Maybe especially because of Jude. I’ve given him more of me than I’ve ever offered someone else—friend or lover. This bit I need to reserve for myself. It’s not a lot, but it’s something. Something…
“Your turn,” I remind him, voice hoarse with the sob I won’t allow. “London. What’s the other reason?”
He rubs his cheek against mine, and I should ask him to let me go. Tell him I’m good, and I no longer need his comfort. Instead, I relax farther against him, savoring this moment. The feel of his body cradling mine. The strength of arms and thighs surrounding me. The musky Jude-and-sex scent that teases my nose. I inhale, attempting to trap that particular scent in my sensory memory, keep it locked tight for those moments when all I’ll have is just that…a memory.
“Ever since I’ve been able to pick up a pencil, I’ve been drawing. It’s my first love, my passion,” he begins.
Automatically, my gaze goes to the art on his wall. Now I know most of the framed pieces are his, and since moving in, I’ve snuck into his room and studied them. Pencil-drawn portraits, some in ink, others painted with what appears to my untrained eye as oil. They’re all beautiful, lifelike, even the abstract renderings of the Chicago skyline. Even if Jude hadn’t confessed art is his passion, I’d already guessed it from the care, attention to detail, and beauty poured onto paper, parchment, and canvas.
“When Knox started apprenticing for Gino, the guy who owned the shop before Knox bought him out, it all clicked for me. I was meant to tattoo. True, I loved working on paper or canvas, but a living, breathing canvas? Paintings could be destroyed, lost, or defaced. But with a tattoo, my work would be immortalized—Iwould be immortalized. Gino allowed me to start apprenticing at sixteen, and even when Knox focused more on fighting, I remained there, learning, perfecting. Even with everything that’s gone down in my life—Connor’s death, the division in the family, Ana—in that chair with my machine in my hand is the one place I’m at peace. Nothing can touch me there.”
I twist in his arms, studying him, picking up the sadness in his eyes even as he speaks about his purpose, his one love. Shifting, I straddle his thighs, my pussy aligning with his cock, my breasts pressing against his chest. But in spite of the position, this isn’t about sex; it’s about connection. It’s about letting him know he’s not alone, that he has me in any way he needs.
“But I’m twenty-seven, about to be twenty-eight in another month. And I’ve never had anything of my own. Not my reputation, not my shop, not even my damn name. I’m not Jude Gordon, tattoo artist. I’m Jude, little brother to “Hard Knox” Gordon. Who works in Knox’s shop.” He releases a hard, jagged laugh that scrapes over my skin like churned-up gravel. “Fuck, I know how I sound. Ungrateful. Spoiled. Childish.”
“No,” I say quietly, stroking a hand down his arm and tangling my fingers with his. “You don’t.” I know about wanting to do something on your own, being recognized on your own merit. It’s why I refused to accept Dan’s money so long ago. I wanted to win a scholarship, succeed in college and life on my own so it could be mine—no one else’s. Just mine. No, I get it.
“A part of me has always wrestled with whether I’m respected as an artist for myself or because of who my brother is. I think London will answer that for me. MMA is popular there, but not like it is here. I’ll have the chance to prove myself to not just the customers there, but to me. I need those four months to find out who I am as an artist, and I know Knox doesn’t understand, but…”
“But sometimes another person’s belief in you isn’t enough,” I finish for him, even as a pit yawns wide in my stomach, in my chest. And steadily filling it is grief. Loneliness. Resentment. Because while I comprehend what he’s saying, what he needs, in spite of every warning, every lesson from the past, I’ve become attached. Pain strikes at my chest like a hissing snake, and I force myself not to flinch, not to betray what’s swirling and coalescing like an ominous storm. There’s no point in allowing him a peek inside, into admitting to him the emotions flying and slamming into me like debris caught up in a tornado’s winds.
Because nothing can come of this temporary moment in time for us. My father’s threats still hang over my head. Jude is leaving, and he can claim he’ll only be gone for four months, but no one can predict the future. He might find his place, his purpose, his home there.
Then there’s me. Jude isn’t mine, because I’m still me. I’m still emotionally stunted, commitment-phobic, future-challenged me. And I can’t pretend that fear isn’t lurking beneath the chaos. Fear of him.
Fear of who I could become because of him.
Weak. Dependent. A shell. Broken.
And yet… Yet my heart thuds against my rib cage like a wild, panicky bird, desperate to bust free—or return to its owner. The words I can never utter and remain whole shove at my throat, trample on my tongue, frantic to be spoken…
The ring of my cellphone shatters the silence that’s fallen between us. Part of me is grateful for the interruption, because I was on the verge of doing something irrevocable. And damaging.
Scrambling off his lap, I cross his bedroom, his scrutiny on my naked body a visual caress that strokes a sensuous warmth over my skin. With just a look, he rekindles the lust between us that’s never fully dormant to flickering, burning life. My nipples draw to tight points, and there’s that sweet ache of a pull high inside my sex that sets my clit tingling.
My body’s response to him is a red, waving flag cautioning me to pump the brakes of this already screeching, out-of-control car. But how do you stop a race car that’s hit one-hundred-and-twenty around a curving bend without spinning out and crashing?
Not possible.
