So heading to my room it is. Staying there until morning when we can pretend this slip in our roommate situation didn’t happen.
Then why my feet are disobeying my brain’s decision, I have no clue. Why I don’t order those motherfuckers to get with the marching orders, I have no idea. Why I’m striding across the floor whenno, no, no!is screaming inside my head…
Because my heart is a traitorous bitch that is connected to my equally disloyal pussy, and those two are doing all the thinking.
A rising lust and desperation beat away the exhaustion with swinging fists, and adrenaline-fueled energy crackles through me, courses along my veins. I’m on auto-pilot, driven by the knowledge that this’ll be the last time I’ll allow myself to touch him. Even now, as I cross the living room and halt in front of Jude, I have enough sense left to acknowledge letting him in my body again is only granting him access to more of me. The emotional more that has nothing to do with how his cock stretches me, how deep he buries himself inside me. The more he entrenches himself inside me is dangerous.
Dangerous because the higher the risk is of me becoming who I’ve always sworn I would never be, once he leaves for London and I stay behind. My mother. Dependent. A shell. Shattered.
Yet I place my palms against his shirt-covered chest, slide them down his abs until the heels of my palms bump the top of his low-riding jeans. Even with the fabric between my skin and his, the heat radiating from his body like an internal furnace warms my palms. Sends waves of it up my arms, across my chest, settles in my breasts. My nipples bead, my flesh seems to become heavier as desire flares likes a struck match, the flame flickering, dancing, growing brighter, hotter, bigger.
I close my eyes, inhale his rich scent of sandalwood and the darker, spicier musk of him.
“What are you doing?” His voice rumbles underneath my hands, and my fingers curl into his skin in involuntary reaction.
“Don’t turn me away. Please,” I whisper. “One more time.” I swallow, try to incarcerate the admission shoving at me, battling to get loose. I lose. “I need you.”
My gaze remains trained on his abs as I make my selfish request. From his utter stillness, he probably believes I’m using him. The truth—that I’m urgently, desperately grabbing on to this one last opportunity to touch him, be touched by him for when he’s no longer there, for when I’m no longer there—remains stuck in my throat. Because the truth, good or bad, always reveals too much. And I’ve given him too much tonight. In bed earlier. In Mom’s apartment. Out on that street. Any more, and I’ll only have pieces of myself.
Pieces I can’t afford. Not if I want to recognize myself when he leaves.
“Look at me,” he orders. It’s soft, low, but veined with a thread of steel. I lift my head, meet the green fire in his eyes. A fire that singes me, and he hasn’t even put those beautiful hands on me yet. “Now tell me what you need from me.”
“To hit rewind.” I run my palms up his sides. Slide them around his lower back and up his spine. Shiver at the memory of this big, hard body pressing into mine. In anticipation of having him once more in any way I could. “To go back to Jay and Ro. I need you to give me my one night again.”
“You’re running scared,” he murmurs, the accusation at odds with the soft tone and the tender rub of his thumb over my cheekbone. My lashes flutter, almost closing before I remember his command. And that I don’t want soft or tender. “You’re afraid and embarrassed because of what I saw tonight. And now you want to try and pretend it didn’t happen by drowning it, drowning me, in sex. Use sex to push me back behind that wall that you’re regretting letting me take a step through.”
“Yes.”
A corner of his mouth lifts in a slight half smile. Then he lowers his head until our lips are less than a breath apart. “Give it your best shot…Cypress.”
He stresses my real name, and I catch the meaning like a Cub scooping up a drive down centerfield. He refuses to pretend, to be Jay to my Ro.
He’s Jude. And he’s daring me to take him as the man who held me while I cried.
Damn him.
And damn me for not being able to spin around and walk away.
Rising on my toes, I open my mouth over the base of his throat and suck his skin between my teeth, swirling my tongue over the captured flesh. I moan as his taste—part cologne, part him—hits my tongue, my senses. He’s like a shot of pure whiskey, setting off a trail of fire that blooms in a mushroom cloud of warmth inside me. Strong. Heady. And I’m in immediate need of more.
His rumble vibrates against my chest and under my lips. A gentle but demanding hand slides up my back, up the nape of my neck, and burrows into my hair, tangling in the strands. He tips his head back and holds me to him, silently encouraging me to suck harder, to not stop. And I don’t. Because the primal creature inside me wants to mark him, no matter how temporary. With that thought, that need, reverberating through me, I bite down on the tendon stretching out in stark relief under his skin.
A growl rips from him, and he jerks my head back, crushing his mouth to mine. We clash, war, tongues dueling, twisting, not for dominance but for more. Alwaysmorewith us.
Raw, wild, wet, hot. This kiss is…sex. Each thrust of his tongue against mine echoes deep inside me, has my body clenching and pulsing to be filled, stretched, branded. Has my nipples hardening into even tighter peaks, and each brush of his chest to mine is both a stinging pleasure and cruel torture. And that quick, this carnal mating of mouths isn’t enough. Not anymore.
Maybe he senses the slight shift in me. Or maybe he’s as impatient and hungry as I am. Bending a little, Jude cups the backs of my thighs and hikes me in the air. Instinctively, I lock my legs around his waist and my arms circle his neck, holding on. Mouths still going at each other, he carries me to the couch. He lowers, sitting, and I straddle him, his big hands cradling my ass, pressing me to his dick.
I don’t need encouragement to ride him. Not when I’m damn near soaking my panties. Not when I’m aching for just a little relief from this gnawing, insatiable lust that only he can stir in me. Widening my stance, I clutch the back of the couch and roll my hips, stroking my sex over that wide, thick length. I don’t even try to hold back the whimper that escapes me. Pleasure. Pure and dirty pleasure. Even through my jeans and his, and even though it’s sheer fantasy, I swear I can feel every ridge along his thick shaft, every vein that pumps blood to him. Another grind, another muted cry. Another shock of desire.
And it only deepens, sharpens when he leans forward and captures my nipple between his lips, over my shirt. My back arches so hard, it twinges. Moving my hands from the couch to his head, I grasp him, hold him to me. That mouth—that gorgeous, sinful mouth—draws on me, curling around the peak, tugging, teasing. My head falls back on my shoulders, and I work my hips harder, my zipper pressing against my clit. His teeth graze over me, and I cry out, so close to that edge, it’s shimmering before me, crackling down my back, settling at the base of my spine.
But not yet. As much as I crave that plummeting dive into ecstasy, not yet.
Because I’m hungry.
Pushing his head away, I shimmy off his lap, ignoring his growl that smacks ofwhat the hell?and kneel on the floor between his legs. With trembling fingers, I yank at his belt, undo the buckle, and pull down his zipper. Anticipation and desire race through me, press against my chest bone as I wrap my fingers around his long cock. He’s heavy against my palm, and my sex throbs as if recalling the weight and drag of it driving high and deep inside me. A whimper nearly escapes me. God, I just had him hours ago, and it means nothing. The desire is as hot—hotter maybe because of my desperation. Because this will be the end.
