Chapter 25 Gracie #2
It’s such a simple thing, being held. Simple, but magnificent in its power to transmute our pain from a burden to bear alone to a bond of kindness shared.
It feels like a millennium since the last time I was in his arms, and I can’t keep it together anymore.
I lost something precious tonight, and it feels like the North Star has fallen out of the sky.
I shake against him, hot tears squeezing from the corners of my scrunched eyes.
He absorbs it all into his solid warmth, soothing me with gentle hands and whispered assurances that I’m not alone. That he has me.
When I finally lift my heavy head from his wet, mascara-smeared shirt, I know one thing: I don’t want to stop touching him. I don’t want his hands off me for a single second tonight.
“I want you.” The words gust out of me, blunt and far too simple for everything he makes me feel. His eyes flicker with a warning look, and I hurry to reassure him.
“I swear I’m not looking for promises or forever,” I say, before he can remind me that while he might be craving a physical connection, too, he doesn’t do relationships.
I know it all too well, and it’s exactly why I’m here.
“I just want something that won’t break my heart for once,” I explain. “Something simple.”
Because I have to know how he does it. I need him to show me how he stems the loneliness without ever risking his heart.
He shakes his head, eyes hectic over my face. “I don’t think I can do simple, Gracie. Not with you.”
“I-I know it’s complicated with Larkwood,” I begin to argue. “I swear I won’t expect you to keep the estate just because we—”
“That’s not what I mean,” he interrupts, seemingly unaware that he’s pulling me tighter against him. “I don’t think we want the same things.”
“I told you—I won’t ask for more than you can give. I want this to be simple,” I plead. “No strings.”
He looks at me like I’ve completely missed his point.
“You deserve better than this. I’ll only hurt you.
” It’s a last-ditch attempt to scare me away from everything he keeps locked up, but I don’t believe him.
Even pitted against each other over Larkwood, he’s never been anything but caring and concerned for me, and tonight, I need him more than ever.
“Please, Jude,” I whisper, staring up at him. “Just for tonight.”
His eyes drift shut. “Tonight,” he repeats, sounding drugged.
His fingers are toying with the ribbon ends dangling from my ponytail, and against my stomach, his body begins to betray how badly he wants this, too.
But the soft grazes against my skin stop when he opens his heavy-lidded eyes to look at me.
“But Henry. I can’t do this to him. I can’t do this to you. You two deserve to be happy together.”
He lets go of me, jaw tight and resigned. Taking his glasses off, he tosses them carelessly on the chair behind us before rubbing his eyes. According to my vagina, it’s just been treated to a striptease.
“Wait,” I say, my hands desperate on his shirt. “You’re right—Henry deserves to be with someone who can return all the love he has to give,” I tell him, as remorse fans through me. “He’s wonderful. Considerate. Everything I always thought I wanted.”
I swallow, letting the truth leap from me. “But right now, I don’t want perfect on paper. Right now, all I want is a box of matches.”
Something deeper than hunger passes like a shadow across Jude’s face as he tugs me close again. Sensation ripples outward from his grip and lights up every erogenous zone I have.
“You want to burn it all down with me, Gracie?” he asks, voice darker than any arsonist’s. I press myself to what feels like an iron bar between us, lifting onto my toes to get closer to his mouth and every bad decision I’m dying to make.
“Please,” I whimper. Something hot and desperate flares behind his eyes, and his erection flexes heavily against me.
Heat pools between my legs as the shell of the woman I’ve been for the last three years burns away like a papery husk.
“You like it when I say please?” I ask, and his exhale sounds punched out of him.
Still holding me to him, his hand comes up to trace my bottom lip with his thumb. Before I can so much as kiss it, it’s skating downward, grazing the centerline of my chin. My neck.
“I like it when you say please,” he says, voice low and grainy, “because it means you want me to take care of you.”
His fingertips linger on the collar of my shirt and graze where it meets my skin, summoning goose bumps. My hands slide up, into the dense, soft hair at the back of his head, and I think of all the times I teased him for having a kink.
“Is that it, then?” I whisper, with a single, sharp thump of my heart. “You want to take care of my needs?”
At this, his lashes drop as his head tilts back, exposing the sculpted underside of his jaw. He nods at the ceiling. Takes a rough breath. “Every conceivable need, Gracie.”
There’s a surging ache low in my belly at his rasping words.
At his confirmation, every time he’s fussed over me comes back like the filter’s been ripped off.
His eager hands on my wet ankles in the rain.
His insistence on feeding me. His chronic worry over my tires.
Quietly finding venues for all my ex-clients, and even the expert way he unpinned my hair the first time I met him.
My chest squeezes—it’s so perfectly, essentially him, I wonder how I didn’t guess before.
When he looks back down at me, there’s embarrassment painted across his features, but all I can think is how desperately I want this part of him. To let go of my crumbling life for a night and accept all the care he wants to give me. I pull him down, gliding my nose against his, and I’m breathless.
“Then kiss me,” I urge him. “Take care of me, Jude.”
The short groan he makes sounds involuntary.
When he finally gives in, every moment from this kiss to the last one feels like dead space between two pins on a map.
Not worth the visit. He kisses me like it’s all he’s thought about—like it’s all he’ll ever think about again.
When his tongue finds mine, he’s impatient but thorough, dirty but adoring, and I can’t stop the muffled whimper it drags out of me.
I want to climb him. Be fused with him at every point of contact.
But just as abruptly as it starts, he’s pulling away, leaving me openmouthed and panting.
“We can stop,” he says, breathless. “If you change your mind—”
“I won’t change my mind,” I say quickly, already knowing the real issue will be pretending I don’t want this every night into eternity.
“But in case you do—”
“I’ll tell you,” I promise.
Whatever he finds in my gaze must reassure him because he nods, exhales, and says five words that hit my bloodstream like pure adrenaline.
“Then let’s get you undressed.”