CHAPTER FIVE The Water Between Them #4
Gideon’s head lowered farther until his chin nearly touched his chest.
Jude’s fingers moved along the old lance scar crossing his shoulder.
“May I touch it?” he asked.
“You already are.”
“With my hand.”
Gideon understood.
The cloth was protection. Jude was asking to remove it.
“Yes.”
Jude set the cloth aside.
His bare palm settled against Gideon’s shoulder.
Heat entered where the water had left him cold. Jude traced the scar with two fingers, then moved across the unmarked skin beside it. His touch descended slowly toward the center of Gideon’s back.
Gideon’s muscles tightened.
Jude stopped.
“Continue,” Gideon said.
“That was not the rule.”
Gideon opened his eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “I want you to continue.”
Jude’s palm resumed its path.
He moved down Gideon’s back with quiet deliberation, over muscle and scar, stopping before the fresh bandage. His other hand remained at Gideon’s neck.
Gideon breathed.
In.
Out.
As Jude had taught him during the nightmare.
“Turn,” Jude said.
Gideon looked over his shoulder.
“I need to clean your wound.”
He turned.
The movement placed them face-to-face at the spring’s edge.
Jude knelt in the shallow water between Gideon’s knees. Gideon sat on a low shelf of stone with his trousers soaked to the thighs and his chest bare. Their cuffed wrists rested together beside Gideon’s hip.
Jude reached for the bloodstained bandage.
“May I?”
“Yes.”
He unwound it.
Gideon watched his face as the stitched furrow appeared.
Jude examined the injury with complete concentration. One end had pulled loose during their escape, but the wound remained mostly closed.
“This stitch tore.”
“I felt it.”
“When?”
“The window.”
“And you neglected to mention it.”
“We were occupied.”
Jude glanced up. “You’ve been listening to me.”
“Against my judgment.”
Jude washed the wound.
His touch was careful, but pain still tightened Gideon’s body. Jude placed one hand against Gideon’s bare waist to steady him.
The position mirrored the cave.
Jude between his knees.
One palm against his body.
Faces inches apart.
But daylight changed everything.
There was nowhere for Gideon’s desire to hide.
Jude saw it arrive.
Gideon felt it in the deepening of his breath, the tension in his thighs, and the way his hand settled instinctively on Jude’s shoulder. Jude’s gaze moved to Gideon’s mouth.
Water shone on Jude’s face. His hair remained wet, pushed away from his forehead. The bruising around his eye had faded enough to reveal the gray of his irises clearly.
Jude tied the fresh bandage.
His hands remained around Gideon’s waist.
Gideon’s stayed on Jude’s shoulder.
The spring chamber went still.
They had been closer.
Naked beneath a blanket.
Pressed together on one horse.
Jude holding Gideon’s shaking body through the remnants of a nightmare.
None of those moments had carried this choice.
Gideon lifted his free hand.
He touched Jude’s cheek.
Jude stopped breathing.
Gideon’s thumb moved beneath the new cut along his cheekbone, wiping away a remaining streak of blood. Jude leaned into the contact so slightly that Gideon might have missed it if he had not already learned to notice every change in the man’s body.
“Does that hurt?” Gideon asked.
“No.”
His voice was barely audible.
Gideon’s hand remained against his face.
Jude turned his head until his mouth hovered near the center of Gideon’s palm.
He did not kiss it.
The absence felt more intimate than if he had.
Gideon drew him closer.
Jude came willingly.
Their knees met. Their connected wrists shifted between their bodies. Gideon’s hand moved from Jude’s cheek to the back of his neck.
Jude’s free hand spread across Gideon’s bare chest.
Their mouths approached.
An inch.
Less.
Gideon felt Jude’s breath against his lips.
He could see every detail of the mouth he had watched since Red Mesa: the healing split in the lower lip, the faint roughness where stubble met skin, the slight opening as Jude inhaled.
Gideon wanted it.
Not abstractly.
Not with the distant hunger he had learned to bury.
He wanted Jude’s mouth beneath his. Wanted to feel whether the outlaw kissed with the same audacity with which he spoke. Wanted to pull him between his thighs and forget the badge, the charges, the courthouse, and the steel connecting them.
His fingers tightened at Jude’s neck.
Jude’s eyes closed.
Gideon stopped.
The restraint nearly tore something inside him.
He pulled back so sharply that his wounded side struck the stone.
Pain crossed his face.
Jude opened his eyes.
Gideon released him.
Shame arrived hot and immediate.
“I’m sorry.”
Jude remained kneeling between his legs. “For what?”
“You are my prisoner.”
“I’m aware.”
“I nearly—”
“But you didn’t.”
“That does not change what I wanted.”
Jude looked at him for a long moment.
“Wanting isn’t the sin, Marshal.”
Gideon’s jaw tightened.
Jude continued quietly.
“Taking what was never offered would be.”
The words entered the space Gideon had opened between them.
“You didn’t offer,” Gideon said.
“No.”
“Then I had no right to come that close.”
“You stopped.”
“At the last possible moment.”
“But you stopped.”
Gideon looked away.
The open chamber suddenly felt too small.
“I should not want you.”
Jude sat back on his heels. “Because I’m a man?”
Gideon’s silence answered too much.
“Or because I’m a prisoner?” Jude asked.
“Both.”
“Which troubles you more?”