14. Jude
JUDE
Warm, deft fingers massage up and down my thighs, bringing me back to my senses gently. I’ve no idea how long he’s been stroking me like this, only that I could lie here all night and enjoy it.
Letting out a satiated sigh that matches the bliss washing over my body, I ease up on my elbows and look at him.
He’s standing again. His dark hair is mussed up, and his chin shines with dampness. His sinful lips that just turned me inside out with pleasure have settled into a deep scowl.
For a guy who said he liked doing what he just did, he sure doesn’t look happy about it. If anything, he looks like he hates me more than before we started.
I bolt upright, dropping my feet off the bench and bringing my legs together, the move causing his hands to fall away from their position on my thighs. Cool air hits the exposed skin where his warm fingers caressed it.
“You decided?” he says gruffly.
“Decided what?”
He breathes in deep, making his nostrils flare, and that’s when it hits me.
“Decided if I want you to be my nobody fuck while I’m staying here?”
He stares at me, but I’m getting used to the intensity in his eyes now, and it doesn’t unnerve me as much as it did to begin with.
I lean a little closer, letting my gaze wander over his face.
He really is a beautiful specimen of a man.
High cheekbones. A jaw that could cut glass.
Hypnotizing eyes that are an icy blue, as cold as his personality.
Dark hair that’s a little too long and unkempt, but he makes it work, looking rough and rugged, and like a man who knows how to fuck you until you can’t take any more.
“I don’t know,” I muse, tilting my head, toying with him, my two orgasms flooding my veins with endorphins and confidence.
What he’s proposing is interesting, especially after what he just made my body do.
My inner thighs are soaking from my release.
I was prepared to write last night off, thinking it was not knowing it was him that made it so hot.
I didn’t expect it would be like that again if I knew it was him. A man I can’t stand.
Letting him go down on me was a test.
One I expected him to fail.
But instead, he sailed through it in a luxury frigging yacht.
I goddamn squirted.
He’s proven I don’t have to like him for this to work. In fact, it makes it better. I really didn’t care if I’d yanked his hair out when I was using my grip on it to push his face between my thighs.
God, this man has a mouth on him.
I tilt my face up toward him.
“I can handle it. But maybe you’ll be the one who decides you can’t forget about me when I leave? Ever considered that?”
“Jude, I’ll put you on that damn plane back to New York myself if I have to, and I’ll have forgotten about you before they even close the door.”
He says it so softly. So easily.
The drop in my stomach at the emptiness in his voice is stupid. This is exactly what I want and need. I don’t want him thinking about me when I leave. Just like I know I won’t be thinking about him either. In fact, this is refreshing, having a guy be brutally honest with me.
If Callum had been then I wouldn’t have been wearing a thirty-thousand-dollar wedding dress and feeling like a complete and utter fool on what should have been one of the best days of my life.
I nod once.
“Say it,” he rasps.
I lick my lips. “Yes.”
His shoulders soften a fraction, and he reaches out, gripping me around the waist to lift me off the bench. My feet hit the floor and my knees buckle.
“Oh.” I grab a handful of his shirt to keep myself up, but he’s already got a thick arm banded around my waist.
“I’m fine.” I try to push out of his grip, but my legs wobble and my balance goes again.
I glance up at him in confusion. “What did you do to me?”
I swear the asshole’s eyes have a sheen of smugness in them.
“A guy never made you come so hard you can’t walk after?” he husks.
He sweeps me up into his arms bridal style, and I glare at him. I don’t want to need him afterward. I want to collect my orgasms and then leave the asshole’s company as soon as possible.
“No.” I pout sulkily. “Besides, it was the cocktails.”
He’s wise enough to stay silent as he carries me toward the door.
“Where do you live?” I ask, looking over his shoulder at the bungalow. The area of roof that’s missing would be right above where the bathroom would be. He obviously doesn’t live here, and Mel and I haven’t seen any other bungalows this far from the hotel. He must live off-site like Emmy.
“Somewhere else.”
I roll my eyes. The ‘nobody’. I get it. He doesn’t want me to know a thing about him. But there are some things he at least needs to give me.
“What’s your name?”
He halts, his eyes pinching at the corners as he looks down at me.
“Come on. I get why people call you Woody.” I roll a finger around, indicating toward the pieces of driftwood. “But what should I call you?”
“What should you call me?” he repeats.
I really could smack him in the mouth with how deliberately obtuse he’s being.
“I might want to call you something when we’re…” I wrinkle my nose.
He rolls his lips. “You want to know what name to moan out when I fuck your next orgasm out of you?”
I glare at him even though the way he says it sounds so hot.
“I’m not calling you Woody,” I state. “My mom chose Jude, saying it’s the Patron Saint of lost souls. She said she knew when I was born that I’d help people.”
I bite my tongue at my oversharing. My father wouldn’t agree that my job and the computer program I created helps people. Mom doesn’t see it like that. I know she’s proud of me.
He starts moving again, pausing beside a candle burning inside a hurricane vase.
“What does your mom call you?” I press. “Or your dad? Your family?”
He sniffs, staring at the flame dancing inside the jar like he’s entranced by it.
“Call me Cowboy. That’s the name you gave me. It’s the only one you need.”
He blows out the candle, sending us into darkness as a new emotion passes over his face.
But I still catch a flash of it, and something about it makes my skin prickle.
Remorse.
“What do you think he’s hiding?” I ask Mel.
We’re floating in the ocean and staring back at the beach. Woody’s saying something to Declan on the beach, pointing along the shoreline at the main hotel building.
“I don’t know. You’re the one who got carried back to bed by him last night. You know him better than me. At least, your pussy does.”
She snorts as I splash her. Woody carried me all the way back to our bungalow last night, walking me inside and placing me down on the bed because my legs were still as wobbly as a newborn calf’s.
I could tell by her breathing that Mel was pretending to be asleep.
So, when Woody tipped my chin up and delivered one chaste kiss to my lips before he left, I know she saw.
And she hasn’t let up grilling me about it since.
“We aren’t getting to know one another. It’s just sex.”
“Sounds so hot. I want a vacation fuck buddy.” She sighs.
“Emmy said he does all these different extreme sports, like he thrives off pushing his limits. But I just know he’s got issues. Deep ones. Anger ones. He’s hiding something,” I murmur, narrowing my eyes at his broad frame as he walks off into the trees and out of sight.
“You’re doing exactly what you said you weren’t going to,” Mel chirps, relaxing back in the water.
“Wondering what he’s lying about?”
“Getting involved.” She sighs. “It doesn’t matter who he is or why he’s here. All that matters is you find him hot, and he’s promised to fuck you into oblivion with no strings attached. I’d be all over him like a rash if I were you.”
“Mm,” I mumble, joining her on my back and staring up at the blue, cloudless sky.
We float in companionable silence for a while before Mel checks her watch.
“It’s 8 a.m. back home. I’m going to call and check in,” she announces. “You coming?”
I swallow past the lump in my throat. Callum’s been calling daily and has left multiple voicemails. But after one where he said Kelly meant nothing, yet I’d seen her shoes in our place that same day, I started deleting them without listening.
“Yeah. I’ll call Mom and Dad.”
Mel gives me a sympathetic look. “Tell them. Your dad’s got to get used to the idea. It’ll be fine.”
I blow out a breath. “This is my father we’re talking about.”
We dry off and head back to our bungalow. Mel takes her phone outside to walk along the shore and call her parents, and I stay inside, taking deep breaths as the ringtone begins.
“Please be Mom, please be Mom,” I whisper.
“Darling?” My father’s deep, commanding voice booms down the line.
“Hi Dad,” I reply, hating myself for the way I sit up straighter at the sound of his voice.
“How are you? How’s Mel?”
“We’re good. The retreat’s great. We saw dolphins this morning after breakfast.”
“Dolphins,” my father echoes, thoughtfully.
“Mm-hm.”
I don’t say anything more. I haven’t told my parents exactly where we are, only that Mel chose the place and that it’s somewhere hot and beautiful.
I know Callum will be trying to get it out of them where I am, and the thought that he could turn up here if he finds out where I am makes me want to hurl.
It’s better if they don’t know where I am. Then they won’t have to lie.
“It’s time to come home, Jude,” my father declares. “He needs to see you, the man’s going out of his mind.”
And there it is. The reason I always hope Mom will be the one who answers. She and I can talk without it always returning to the same topic of conversation.
“Callum said you haven’t returned any of his calls?” my father presses.
“He knows why that is,” I answer carefully.
It’s stupid, but I still haven’t admitted what I caught Callum doing. I’m ashamed and embarrassed. And worried about the fallout it will create, even though I know it has to come out eventually. Callum obviously hasn’t owned up to his behavior since I left.
“My first ever surgery I had nerves in the pit of my stomach,” my father says, still thinking the reason I left is as simple as pre-wedding jitters.
“Really?” My voice lifts in genuine surprise.
Nothing fazes him. My father is the definition of confidence, a man highly skilled and respected, at the pinnacle of his field of expertise.
“You thought you couldn’t do it?” I ask, trying to take in this alien version of my father.
One who feels nervous. Who questions his own abilities like a normal person.
Like me.
“Of course not. I knew I could do it.” He blows away my question.
“The guy was some Wall Street big shot. I didn’t want the surgery I performed for him being let down by the aftercare on the ward afterward.
They were understaffed. Had been for months.
He could have turned the hospital into a media circus.
Thank God he brought some of his own recovery team with him and they discharged him under their care at home fast.”
“Right,” I mumble.
Something unpleasant pulls low in my gut. This is my father. Dr. Royston Yardley never questions himself. I should have known better than to think I might be like him in some way.
“Is Mom there?” I ask, picking up a magazine Mel brought off the plane on the flight over.
I flick through the pages, stopping on a double-page spread of a heart-stoppingly handsome man in a power suit.
Exclusive Interview with Sullivan Beaufort, Beaufort Diamonds CEO.
“No. She’s already left. Early session,” my father replies.
“Oh, okay,” I reply, hiding my disappointment.
“Try her at lunch, catch her between appointments,” my father says.
My mother’s a psychiatric therapist. She’ll be in appointments until then.
“Good idea,” I murmur, my attention snagging on the young dark-haired billionaire in the article.
The earrings Callum bought me to wear on our wedding day were Beaufort Diamonds. Despite how beautiful they were, the memory of their signature blue box with buttery-soft silk ribbon springs to my mind, making sourness coat the inside of my mouth.
The man in the image—the CEO—is standing inside their flagship store on Fifth Avenue in front of a giant fish tank. One filled with oversized clam shells draped in jewels.
Above him, worked into the tank’s design, is the company logo. A letter B inside a diamond, surrounded by fancy gold filigree. Just like the one on the inside lid of the box those earrings came in.
I swallow, homing in on the man in the image.
His eyes are ice blue. And a bolt of familiarity shoots me in the gut.
“Love you, Dad,” I say quickly. “I’ll call again soon, okay?”
I hang up the second he says goodbye and toss my phone onto the bed so I can bring the magazine closer to my face.
I read the text as fast as I can, not knowing exactly what it is I’m looking for.
Sullivan Beaufort, thirty years old. Yada, yada, son of Sterling… tragic family history…
My grip on the pages tightens, making the edges crease.
I read the text again.
And again.
“No way.”
I study the man’s face. He’s classically handsome, but his expression is closed off. Like a man who keeps his business and personal lives completely separate.
His blue eyes jump off the page, and I squint at them.
No…
I’m imagining things.
I close the magazine and walk over to the doors of the bungalow.
Mel is wandering the shoreline; head tipped back in a laugh as she talks to her parents.
I’ve always envied how well she got on with them.
She and her brother are complete opposites.
He’s a hedge fund manager making billion-dollar deals, while Mel followed her love of all things beautiful and went into advertising cosmetics and beauty products.
She says she feels more empowered bringing people things that will make them feel good about themselves than she ever would making the kind of money her brother does.
And her parents are fiercely proud of both of them. They didn’t care what either of them did as long as they were happy.
I walk out onto the deck and rest back against the cool glass of the door with a sigh. It’s so peaceful here. So beautiful. But it’s only a matter of time before I have to go back to New York and face the music.
A dark head of hair breaks the surface of the ocean in the distance. Its owner proceeds to swim with broad, strong strokes back toward the shore.
“Of course he’d be a champion swimmer too,” I huff under my breath.
As the water shallows, he emerges, striding out with purpose, the sun beating down on his naked torso, making each droplet of water glitter on his muscles like diamonds.
My mouth goes dry. I’ve only ever seen him with a shirt on before. Dark ink covers one entire pec on his broad chest, and his shoulders are thick and round like boulders.
Heat blooms between my thighs as I recall digging my nails into them two nights ago.
With abs rippling like something from a fitness ad, he walks across the sand with purpose, toward the outdoor showers.
I glance back into the bungalow at the discarded magazine, a prickling sensation running over my arms.
Turning back around, I set off after him.