Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Jess
H is mouth was surprisingly soft, and he’d trimmed his beard since last weekend, but he didn’t respond to the kiss—I’d stunned him with the contact. His hands fell away from my face, and he pulled back.
His eyes were wild, and my breath came rapidly.
Hadn’t planned on that.
Did I foresee kissing Jude Rawlins today?
No.
But had his repeated claims that he’d loved me somehow driven me so insane I was compelled to?
Evidently yes.
The confusion and fire in his eyes were torches in the dim light of the hallway. I scrambled for something to say—would whoopsie daisy cover it?
But then, the torch flickered and brightened, and his hands found my waist. Gaze glued to mine, he paced me backward into an even darker corner and pressed me against the wall, anchoring my hips with his giant hands.
My heart beat so fast I could hardly breathe. “I’m?—”
“Sorry?”
The gravelly texture to the word and the way his hands warmed through the fabric of my clothes at my waist made me say, “No.”
I wasn’t sorry for kissing him. I was mostly sorry he hadn’t kissed me back. But this… situation he’d placed us in certainly didn’t feel like a rejection.
He waited a beat, staring at me with the intensity of an entire universe of suns before one of those deliciously large hands abandoned my waist and came to cup the back of my neck as he lowered his face to mine and took my mouth with his.
This time, there was no question he was engaged in the process—not only initiating the contact, but driving it, urging me to open for him, tasting me in a way that made me feel not just desired, but needed. Like I might be water in a desert place.
Like he’d always known I’d quench something in him, or douse a burning thing, and now he was collecting his proof.
My hands found their place at his shoulders, and I pulled him closer, urging him to glue me to the wall with his massive form. I’d never let myself think about a moment like this with him—at least not consciously. I’d had little fantasies shoot across my mind like stars when we’d first met, but since then, no.
In the last ten minutes, the cold, bruised thing known as my heart had warmed—unfurled, somehow. And hearing him insist he’d loved me… I’d had to test it. Had he really felt something for me? Was it all just talk? I’d had to push an d words hadn’t worked, so in the moment, a kiss had come to mind.
Now, the kiss unraveled me thread by thread, and his thumb slipping under the hem of my top to feel the soft skin of my belly stitched me back into a woman who knew exactly what she wanted.
He stepped closer, and something told me if we were truly alone, he’d hitch me up so he didn’t have to bend to meet me quite so far down. He’d pin me against the wall with my legs wrapped around his hips and—I gasped as he did just that in one swift movement. His hands slipped down my hips and around to my hamstrings and we played out my vision in the most cinematic move of my life.
He groaned as he pressed me into the wall, one palm returning to cup my jaw and position my head just so. Then he utterly devoured me with kisses both generous and demanding, a give and take that nipped at my bottom lip to say this is mine now and followed with a soft slide saying take whatever you want.
I’d never felt dizzy from a kiss. I’d never had one so commanding and generous at the same time.
Because I’ve never kissed him.
I didn’t want it to end. I’d gladly take up residence in this hallway. Julian Grenier owned some part of the resort, and he was also part investor in Saint Security—there had to be some way we could get a cooperative rental agreement so Jude and I could stay here and make out until the world burned to ash.
Far sooner than the crumbling of the planet, Jude pulled back and gave me another searing look.
We breathed together for a moment, the absolutely paradigm-shattering kiss effectively rattling us both based on the way we practically heaved in breath. He lowered me to standing, stepped back, hands settling firmly on my waist like he wasn’t quite done with me.
What does one say after one’s former enemy kisses one into oblivion?
I cleared my throat, searching for words, but he beat me to it.
“That should’ve happened a long time ago.”
The low rumble made my toes curl in my shoes and I exhaled a, “Yeah. Probably so.”
He released me then, those dark eyes holding me in place just as well as his hands had.
Well, no. Because there was nothing quite as delectable as Jude Rawlins’ giant bear paw hands spanning my waist. I might be addicted to the feeling.
His eyes sent my stomach swooping around like a drunk eagle, and I waited for something more. He notched his head to the side and turned. “We both have the early shift.”
So… that was why we’d stopped. Well, and because if we’d kept going, we might’ve been charged with public indecency. I couldn’t argue the logic of the point or action.
The urge to slip my palm against his and lace our fingers flashed through me, but I resisted, mind racing with what would happen next as I followed him out.
But then we reached the parking lot and he stood by my car while I got in. He shut the door and waited, like he’d stand there and grow roots in the ground if I didn’t start up the vehicle, so I did. Moonlight lit one side of his face and left the other in shadow as he waited.
No more words tonight, then. I guess I’d gotten all I would get during our conversation, which certainly left me more than enough to mull over.
So I eased out of the lot and left him behind, standing there following my progress with his impenetrable mask of a face.
As the distance between us stretched, I heard his words echoing in my head. That should’ve happened a long time ago.
I’d agreed because… well, I had. Maybe if we’d kissed—if he’d told me he’d had feelings and we’d gotten through all of this nonsense, we would’ve gotten past the anger and hurt and gotten to… whatever this was.
But there lay the real question. What was this? What did that kiss mean?
And did his statement mean what I’d thought it did and agreed to, or did it mean…
I swallowed hard as I pulled into my driveway and stopped my car in the garage.
Did it mean it should’ve happened a long time ago and not now? That it happening now came too late?
Did it mean that our first kiss had also been our last?