32. Jude
JUDE
The front door rings with incessant urgency as if someone’s pressing down on the buzzer without letting up. I race to the intercom.
Slade put me in a cab last night, listened to the address I gave to the driver, and promised he’d come to me. I spent all night and the day at work thinking about him, wondering if that was the last time I was ever going to see him.
“Slade!” I cry in relief as the tense set of his jawline comes into view on the screen.
“It’s me, New York City,” he replies, looking into the camera, the tautness in his face easing a little. “Can I come up?”
“I’m giving you five seconds, then you better damn well be up here.” I slam the button to let him in.
I’m opening the front door, my heart hammering as he races up the final stairs and storms over to me.
He slams the door behind him, backing me up against the wall, an animalistic hunger in his eyes that has heat firing through my body.
“Five,” I taunt.
He rests one forearm on the wall beside my head, his bicep bulging as he drinks me in.
“I fucking missed you last night. And today. And every damn second before this.”
I tilt my head back so I can meet his eyes that are filled with a primal longing. They’re blue, and the sight makes me shiver.
“You did?”
He reaches up, stalling before the backs of his fingers meet my cheek, and his voice drops to a low rasp. “Can I touch you?”
My body sings in response, practically begging me to tear my clothes off and throw myself at him. This explosive charge between us that’s always been there hasn’t lessened. It’s only embedded itself deeper into me.
“You’re asking permission?”
“I am. Because there’s no guarantee I’ll ever stop if you say yes.”
I hoped he’d touch me last night. Really touch me. I’ve needed him to touch me for weeks. Ever since that last time.
I’ve needed it more than air.
“Do it,” I say.
His pupils flare. Then he’s on me. Kissing me, sinking his hand into my hair and fisting it, shoving my pencil skirt up around my waist so he can hook my legs behind the knee and wrap them around his hips—pushing the solid, thick length of himself against my rapidly dampening panties.
We need to talk. I know we do. He knows we do. There’s so much to say. Yet right now, nothing is as urgent as being together again. It’s been weeks since he pushed inside me, forcing me to stretch around his delicious thickness. Weeks since I looked into his eyes as he made me come undone.
The talking can wait.
We both need this.
“Jude,” Slade groans into our kiss as I whimper, digging my nails into his shoulders to pin myself to him. “Fuck, Baby. I need to be inside you. Please.”
The begging almost makes me come on the spot. I yank his zipper down so I can run my hand up his shaft. His piercings slip beneath my fingers in glorious cool metal ridges. He groans, kissing me harder, and our teeth clash as he yanks my panties to one side.
He drives into me with one brutal thrust.
“Fuck!”
“Yes!”
I rest my head against the wall as we pause and stare at one another, panting.
“You good?” he asks.
“It feels… okay,” I tease.
His eyes glint as he starts to move. There’s no slow build-up, he goes straight into riding me hard against the wall.
“Harder!” I mewl, sinking my nails into his skin.
He burrows his head into the crook of my neck and bites my skin, leaving a delicious sting that he sucks on and kisses to soothe.
The wall vibrates as he fucks me so deep that I gasp each time he bottoms out inside me. The giant potted plant crashes to the floor with a bang, spilling dirt all over.
“Fuck, Jude. Fuck, Baby.”
Slade’s hips have a life of their own, drilling into me with determination as my body clenches around him. I can’t be about to come already, it’s too fast. But my body remembers his, and is wound as tight as a coil, ready to spring into a toe-curling orgasm any second.
“Slade,” I cry, digging my heels into his ass.
“You’re so wet, Baby. And you’re strangling my cock. Look.”
I glance down as he pulls back. The emerging inches of his dick are covered in glistening arousal as it eases out of my body. Each of the silver bars glint as they slide out from inside me, one by one. I’m stretched around him obscenely, only just managing to fit him inside.
“Fucking beautiful,” he rasps, slamming back in.
“Oh God,” I squeal as my body ripples around each piercing as they’re pushed back inside me.
He kisses me hard as I fall apart with a deep shudder. My pussy squeezes and clenches his cock like my life depends on it.
“Good girl, come on my cock. Just like that.”
“Slade,” I whine, struggling to kiss him back as it all becomes too much, and I come. My orgasm wrings me out, stealing my breath and blurring my vision.
He holds my head still against the wall with a gentle but firm grip on my throat as he looks at me.
“Mine,” he growls in a rough whisper. “You’re mine.”
I stare into bright blue eyes.
The sight of them, of knowing I’m seeing the real him again, pulls me under, and I tremble into another orgasm, crying his name.
“Again? Fuck, Baby,” he rasps, screwing his face up and bringing our foreheads together. “You’re going to make me come.”
I clench hard around him, desperate to make him lose control.
His chest expands, and his cock thickens inside me, giving my still pulsating pussy more to clamp onto. My eyes roll in my head, and I moan, my throat meeting the resistance of his hand.
“So fucking beautiful,” Slade growls, grabbing a handful of my ass and thrusting inside me a couple more times before going still. “Fuck yes. Jesus.”
Warm heat spills inside me from his swollen dick, and he pushes his forehead against mine, pinning me with an intense gaze.
He grunts, driving himself a little deeper, even though I didn’t think it was possible for him to be any further inside me.
I gasp against his lips as he swoops on me, his kisses morphing into achingly tender ones as he rolls his hips, fucking me slowly through the remnants of his orgasm, making sure I take every drop.
“I can’t lose you, Jude. Not you too.”
His words are so quiet, so full of fear, disguised between insistent kisses full of longing and hope, that I almost don’t hear them. But I know it’s one of the most truthful things he’s ever said to me.
My heart clenches so hard that breathing is impossible for a moment.
“You won’t,” I whisper, cradling his face and looking into his troubled eyes.
He doesn’t know where he belongs anymore. He has no one right now.
Except me.
“You won’t,” I repeat. “I promise.”
We’re lying naked in my new bed twenty minutes and one round of shower sex later, me inside Slade’s arms as he spoons me from behind.
I inhale slowly, savoring the feeling of being back together like this again.
“Where are you staying?”
“A place nearby,” Slade answers evasively.
I turn inside his arms to look at him. “A place? Does it have a roof?”
“Of course it does.”
I study him, not convinced. “Is it a hotel?”
He sighs, wrapping an arm around my waist and pulling me against him so our bodies are flush. The heat of his skin spills into mine and I shiver happily at the contact.
“It’s a hostel. It’s fine. I have a bed.”
“In your own room? What about a bathroom, do—?”
“I’m fine, Jude,” he scolds. “You don’t need to worry. I’ve shared plenty of rooms and bathrooms before.”
“What was your place like when you lived here before?”
His expression shutters closed like he’s assaulted with a painful memory, and I curse myself for being so insensitive.
“I’m sorry—”
“I had a penthouse near my brother’s. Five bedrooms. Home gym and sauna. Private elevator.”
“Wow,” I say, studying him.
“Yeah. It was pretty sweet.”
“And what did you do? For work, I mean?”
“I was training to take over as head of international marketing.”
“For Beaufort Diamonds?”
“Yeah. Keeping all the business in the family,” he murmurs.
“Did you… were you seeing anyone before it happened?”
He looks at me, his lips twitching. “You getting jealous, New York City?”
“As if, Cowboy.” I snort. “But I’d like to know if a heartbroken ex could show up at my door looking for you.”
His voice rumbles in amusement before he speaks. “There’s no one. The last girl I slept with was the one-night thing I told you about.”
The girl in Miami. I remember. Because stupidly, I was jealous when I heard that. That she knew him before all of this happened. That she got to witness the carefree Slade who didn’t have pain hidden in his eyes.
I would have loved to have known him then.
“Can’t even remember her name. Nicola, maybe?” Slade says.
“So, a hostel with a shared bathroom?” I say, shifting the subject from other women, because the thought of him with anyone else—even before we met—makes my stomach tighten.
Slade pushes at my lower lip where I’m sticking it out in a pout. I don’t like the idea of him being in a room with strangers when just being back in New York must be indescribably hard for him.
“Stay here. Until you figure things out.”
I don’t know exactly what that entails, or what’s going to happen next. But I don’t want him facing it alone. And I have selfish reasons for wanting him to stay with me too. I like him here with me. I love him here. Just like this, lying in bed like a regular couple.
Seeing him back in New York has gotten my brain running at a billion kilometers a minute. Could this be us one day? A real couple with a real life together? No hiding, no false identities? The idea makes my throat burn with how much I want it to be a reality.
“You want me to stay with you?”
“Don’t you want to?” I try to disguise my disappointment, but he sees right through it.
He slides a hand up to cup my neck gently, his thumb massaging over my fluttering pulse.
“Don’t I want to? I can’t believe you even have to ask…” His blue eyes shine as he gazes at me. “Fuck, Jude, you have no idea how much I want that. To spend all night beside you and wake up together.”