Chapter 49
NADIA
The sound of my phone drags me out of sleep. A harsh, shrill ringtone tearing through the fog in my head.
I groan, roll over - and pain detonates behind my eyes. My skull feels like it’s been split open, sledgehammered into submission. I try to move, but my body won’t obey. I’m pinned.
That’s when I realize - he’s holding me.
Jude Mercer’s arm, heavy and warm, is draped across my waist like a steel bar. My back is pressed to his chest, the weight of him a living cage. His breath brushes the back of my neck - slow, steady, sinful.
I blink at the dim light filtering through the blinds, trying to piece together the night before. The room smells like us - sweat, skin, sex. So much sex.
God.
He’s still here.
I reach for my phone on the nightstand, and Jude grumbles low in his throat, a sound that vibrates against my spine. His arm tightens reflexively, pulling me closer, tucking me back into his chest like I belong there.
A shiver runs through me.
I sigh when I see the time on the glowing screen. It’s too early. My head throbs in rhythm with my pulse. The phone keeps ringing, the sound slicing through the quiet, and I glance at the caller ID.
The senator.
Of course.
My stomach twists. I silence the call without answering. I don’t even have the energy to deal with that particular brand of poison this morning.
When I try to slip out of bed, Jude doesn’t loosen his hold. He just murmurs something unintelligible and buries his face against my hair, the rough stubble of his jaw grazing my neck. His breath is warm against my skin.
And that’s when it really hits me.
He spent the night.
Jude Mercer - this man who came into my life like a collision, who feels both familiar and impossible - slept in my bed.
After we had sex.
Again.
And again.
And again.
I swallow hard. The memories come in flashes - his body over mine, the weight of him, the way he made me forget how to breathe.
There was nothing gentle about him last night.
He took me like a man possessed, a man starved for something only I could give.
And I gave it willingly, over and over, until my body forgot its name.
I thought he’d leave after, because that’s what most men do.
But he didn’t leave. He stayed. And now here he is, wrapped firmly around me, looking like he has no intention of going anywhere.
For a moment, I’m convinced he’s still asleep - his breaths slow, deep, vibrating subtly across the mattress and into my skin.
My gaze drifts over him, greedy and unhurried, drinking him in like I didn’t spend the whole night tangled around that body.
He’s massive. Not bulky - cut. Defined in all the ways that make a woman second-guess her life choices.
Shadows spill over him, carving out the hard lines of muscle across his chest, the ridges of his stomach, the deep grooves where his hips dip down beneath the sheet.
And God… the tattoos. They’re everywhere - ink wrapping his shoulders, banded around his biceps, crawling up his ribs, disappearing over his back like a dark language I can’t translate.
I can’t make out the designs in the low light, just the impression of them: black, bold, a story etched directly into skin.
I squint, narrowing my eyes, trying to trace a line of ink across his collarbone. It vanishes into the shadows and reappears lower, curling around the swell of his pec. I shift to follow it, and -
His eyelids flicker. Flutter once. Twice. Then they open, and he catches me staring.
Heat floods my cheeks instantly, stupidly. I feel like I’ve been spying on something sacred, something private, like he’s just busted me for staring too long at something I shouldn’t want as much as I do.
He watches me with a quiet, unreadable mask, like he’s trying to figure out what exactly I was searching for on his skin.
There’s something about him. Something magnetic and familiar in a way that makes my heart do a strange, traitorous skip. Maybe it’s the way he looks at me, like he already knows things I haven’t said out loud. Maybe it’s the way his body feels pressed against mine. Or maybe it’s simpler than that.
Maybe it’s that he ticks every damn box a girl shouldn’t admit she has.
The kind of body you want to touch just to see if he flexes under your hand. Lean muscle layered over solid strength. Tattoos like poetry and violence. The kind of thick, heavy dick that’s still half-hard under the sheets and already making my breath catch.
And then there’s the way he touched me last night - tender one second, rough the next, as if he couldn’t decide whether to worship me or ruin me. As if being inside me lit some fuse in him he couldn’t put out.
He watches me now with that same quiet intensity.
And for a heartbeat, I swear I feel it again - the sense that he’s drowning in me, and I’m not entirely sure I want him to come up for air.
“I need to use the bathroom,” I whisper, barely more than a breath.
He makes a low sound of protest but eventually loosens his grip enough for me to slip free. My legs feel unsteady as I stand and throw my nightshirt over my head. It hangs loose and wrinkled around my thighs as I leave the room.
The bathroom feels too bright. I lean against the sink and stare at my reflection.
I don’t recognize the woman in the mirror.
My hair is tangled, my lips swollen, a faint mark blooms just beneath my collarbone where his mouth had lingered.
There’s a flush to my skin that no amount of scrubbing could hide.
And beneath that - the faint trace of something else. Something raw.
Ten years. Ten years of living in limbo, a life held hostage by a ghost.
Lucian Cross.
The name alone still stirs something in me that I can’t control. He’s been gone for years, but I still feel him everywhere - in the spaces between my ribs, in the corners of my mind where light can’t reach. Every man I’ve been with since has been a placeholder. Every job, every day, a performance.
Because part of me died with him.
And maybe that’s why I let Jude in last night. Maybe that’s why I didn’t stop him. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t.
Because for the first time in more than a decade, someone made me feel alive again.
There’s a knock on the door. I jump, startled.
“Nadia?”
His voice is low, muffled through the wood, but it slides right down my spine. It’s rough, careful. Almost tender.
I don’t answer right away. I just stare at the door, at the faint shadow of him waiting on the other side.
He knocks again, softer this time. “You okay?”
That voice - it shouldn’t sound like safety. But it does. It wraps around me like a blanket I didn’t know I needed.
I open the door.
He’s standing there barefoot, shirtless, wearing nothing but his jeans slung low on his hips. His hair is a tousled mess, his jaw rough with stubble.
We just look at each other. Neither of us speaks, but the silence between us hums with something alive.
“You’re still here,” I say finally.
He tilts his head slightly, studying me like I’m something delicate he’s afraid to touch. “Do you want me to leave?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know what I want.”
He nods once, like he understands that more than I wish he did.
“I’m just… surprised,” I admit. “Most guys would have left after…” I trail off, heat crawling up my neck.
His jaw tightens. The muscle there flickers, a small, dangerous tell. “I’m not most guys.”
No. No, he’s not.
Something about him - the steadiness in his eyes, the quiet intensity, the way he looks at me like he already knows all my secrets - it’s both terrifying and intoxicating.
And as I stand there, barefoot in my bathroom doorway with his scent still on my skin, I realize something I don’t want to admit out loud.
I don’t just want him to stay. I need him to. And that might be the most dangerous thing of all.