Chapter Twelve Tighter than Barbed Wire #2
It was stupid. Dangerous. The air charged.
Jude looked into Warren’s eyes. Dark in the low light, but unwavering.
Curious. Waiting. The dip in the mattress between them felt too narrow.
Jude was too aware of everything. Warren’s heat beneath the duvet, the faint scent of skin and soap, the stretch of muscle under fabric. The safety of him.
It terrified him.
Because he hadn’t felt safe in so long, it felt like a setup.
The calm before the crash.
“That tells me your history taught you something.” Jude pulled his hand back. Into the safe zone of his side of the bed.
“Yeah. Don’t get on the wrong side of my mum.”
Warren bit down on his bottom lip, thoughtful, then released it, flicking out his tongue to soothe the spot. Fuck. Even that made Jude’s stomach pull tight.
“And what does your history say about you, Mr Ellison?” Warren’s voice was smooth. Curious. And laced with something else Jude couldn’t place over his hammering heart.
Jude swallowed. “That I should learn from it, too.”
“And have you?”
“I thought I had.” Jude waited a beat. “Until now.”
Warren tilted his head. “Why now?”
“Cause I’m sharing a bed with a stranger.”
Warren’s smile was quiet. Confident. “I’m not a stranger.”
Jude didn’t smile back. “I don’t know anything about you.”
“Then ask.”
There was a beat. A longer pause this time, because Jude didn’t know what answer he was hoping for. So he said, “Who are you?”
Warren looked at him for a moment. A long, unreadable moment.
Then, “Warren.”
Just Warren.
No last name. No job title or past inventory.
Enough truth to feel honest but enough omission to feel as if it was anything but.
And Jude, heart already traitorous in his chest, let it go.
Because in the dark, beside this man who hadn’t pulled away, hadn’t pushed, who’d seen the worst scar on his body and hadn’t flinched, Warren felt like enough.
“I like the tattoo,” Warren said, finally breaking the silence.
Jude kept his gaze on the ceiling. “You admire amateur artwork?”
“No.” Warren exhaled, quiet but sure. “I don’t know shit about art. I just know that when I saw that on you… something happened in me.”
That made Jude turn his head. Warren’s eyes found his, even in the dark.
“Then you looked embarrassed about it.” Warren tilted his head. “Hurt, maybe. Is it about your ex?”
Jude couldn’t look at him while he thought about Callum. “I don’t want to talk about my ex,” he said in an almost pleading hushed whisper.
“Right. Yeah. Sure.” Warren shifted beside him. “Didn’t mean to pry.”
Jude snorted. “Yes, you did.”
Warren winced. “Yeah, alright, I did. But it’s because I want to know more about you. I want to know what made you flinch the other day. When I touched you. What happened in your past to make you feel…unsafe.”
“Like much of the stuff I teach, my history is just as ugly.”
“Whose isn’t?”
“I imagine there are plenty of people who have fond memories. Ones they can sit in without choking on them.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Why do you think I bury myself in other people’s history? It stops me thinking about my own.”
Warren let that sit for a while. Then, “Okay…Do you want me to give you something else to think about?”
Jude froze.
The words landed like a match dropped on dry leaves and he turned to face Warren, heart pounding so hard, it could crack his ribs. “Do you mean that?”
Warren didn’t answer.
But he didn’t look away either.
And that was enough for Jude’s empty, lonely heart.
He moved before he could think. Before the voice of reason could drag him back. And he closed the space between them, slow enough to give Warren the chance to stop him, to pull away, to shut the door before it opened.
But Warren didn’t.
So Jude kissed him.
It was meant to be tentative. Testing. He knew the risk.
The betrayal of self, the threat to his carefully built walls.
But the second their lips met and Warren let out a low, rough rumble from deep in his chest, it tore straight through Jude and made his guarded heart pounce.
He wanted to hear more of it. Wanted to chase that moan, draw it out of Warren until he broke, raw and unguarded.
He didn’t want to flinch. Didn’t want to hide.
Nor run away. He didn’t want this to end.
He just wanted him.
Warren.
And he wanted to stay there, in that fragile moment between fear and surrender.
Then Warren tilted his head, catching Jude’s lower lip, not just returning his kiss but deepening it enough to burn. And he slid his hand to the back of Jude’s head, threading his fingers through his hair and pulling him in, closing the last inches between them to push his tongue into Jude’s mouth.
Jude let himself fall then.
All in.
Drowning.
No escape.
The solid bulk of Warren’s chest against his own, the friction between them climbing fast and sharp, was somehow too much and still nowhere near enough.
So he shifted, half-straddling Warren’s thigh, needing more.
Needing everything. The hard muscle under him.
The heat. The way his whole body thrummed.
He couldn’t stop the gasp when he ground down, couldn’t hide how hard he was, and he knew Warren could feel it.
“Jesus, fuck…” Warren rasped into his mouth, and it was so deep, so feral, so gravelly, Jude could have come on that alone.
It fed him. Fuelled him.
He kissed harder, hungrier, every part of him pressed into Warren, his body greedy for the heat burning without leaving bruises.
Warren shifted under him and Jude rolled against his thigh, the friction sending a shiver all the way up his spine.
His pulse was frantic, his skin prickling, the air between them thick with sweat and breath and need.
Then—Warren’s hands changed.
One second they were holding him there, keeping him close; the next, they were on his shoulders. Still warm, still gentle, but easing him back.
“Jude…” Warren’s voice was hoarse, breath ragged. “God, I’m so sorry. We can’t. We shouldn’t…”
The words didn’t feel like a no.
But they still landed like a drop through ice.
Jude froze. His brain stuttered, caught between the rush of everything he’d just felt and the cold reality bleeding in at the edges.
He eased back a fraction, enough to see Warren’s face in the dark.
Lips swollen, eyes dark and wanting, yet not moving towards him anymore.
And the shame came quick. Violent. Cold in his chest, in his stomach.
He rolled off Warren and onto his back, staring hard at the ceiling, willing his breathing to slow.
“Right. Yeah. No, of course.” His voice was thinner than he wanted. “That was… fuck, sorry. I shouldn’t…that was stupid.”
“No.” Warren pushed up on one elbow, close enough for Jude to feel the heat of him. “That’s not what I meant.”
Jude shut his eyes, wanting to vanish into the mattress.
“It’s not that I don’t want to.” Warren coaxed him back, tilting his face up until their eyes met. “And this won’t make any sense but…it’s because I do.”
Jude swallowed, hard.
Warren looked wrecked. Wanting. As if holding himself back with a single frayed thread that could snap if either of them breathed wrong.
But Jude didn’t trust himself to speak. Couldn’t trust what would come out if he did.
So he stayed still. The way he’d learned to.
Every inch of his skin alive, lips tingling, chest tight enough to ache.
“God, Jude.” Warren dipped forward, resting his forehead to Jude’s. “I need to tell you something—”
“No, don’t. Please don’t.” Jude closed his eyes. “I don’t need to hear whatever it is.”
Whatever Warren was about to confess. Be it a girlfriend, a wife, or something far worse than rejection, Jude couldn’t handle the fall-out.
Because he’d been around long enough to recognise the pattern.
The kiss had been an accident...Jude had read too much into a look, a question.
And he’d pounced while Warren was… what?
Being kind? Reading him like an open book because he was intuitive, not interested. And too polite to push him away.
The humiliation burned.
“No, Jude, I—”
“Don’t. Please.” Jude rolled onto his side, putting his back as a shield. “Forget it ever happened.”
Warren didn’t say he would. He didn’t lie.
He went quiet. And somehow that hurt more than any denial could have.
Jude almost hated how he obeyed him. Hated it almost as much as he needed it.
After years of being forced, pushed, cornered into what he didn’t want, Warren’s restraint was its own kind of mercy.
Maybe that was why it terrified him. Why he pushed him away.
So he lay there listening to the silence stretch between them until it filled the bed, thick and aching, and pretended to sleep, though his pulse still tripped beneath his skin. The heat of Warren’s body stayed at his back.
But heartbreakingly out of reach.