12. Jude
JUDE
“That man has issues. Deep anger ones,” I say as we climb out of our taxi.
After Woody’s dick-measuring display at the bar, the mood fell flat. Mel and I thanked the guys we met for the chat, then caught a taxi back to the hotel with Declan. I thought he might have gone after the moody hulk, but he said it’s better to leave him alone when he’s like this.
His angry outbursts must be a regular occurrence.
“It just gets his back up if he sees a guy being a bit much, you know?” Declan attempts to defend him.
“You didn’t march over to us like a tank and tell someone you’ve never met to fuck off,” I reply.
“True,” Mel agrees, looking at Declan as the taxi drives off.
“I didn’t see what he’d done to start with.”
“And what had he done?”
“You know, staring at you like that when your dress was see-through.”
My mouth drops open. “What?”
“Nice tits by the way.” Declan winks, and I whack him with my purse.
“Seriously?” I look at Mel for support, and she winces.
“Totally see-through, Jude. Like—the entire bar now knows the exact shade of your nipples and could color chart them—see-through.”
I glance down at my dress in horror, but apart from a faint stain from the vodka tonic, it’s dry and opaque once again.
“Shit,” I murmur.
“Hey, if you’re worried about Woody, don’t be. He’s been through a lot worse than having some guy try and start a fight with him before. A lot worse.”
Something in Declan’s words makes me lift my eyes to study his face. He runs a hand around the back of his neck like he’s said too much.
“But look, if you want to go and tell him you appreciate him looking out for you, then he’ll probably be at the old bungalow at the far end of the beach checking it’s all locked up for the night. I can show you where it is if you like?”
Mel meets my eyes, and I know she’s dying to ask me what I meant in the bar when I snapped at Woody about how he’s twenty hours too late. But Declan’s been with us ever since, and she’s too good of a friend to ask me what I meant in front of him.
“No, thanks. I know where it is. I’ll be fine from here,” I tell Declan.
Mel’s brows shoot up as she takes my admission as a confession about last night. I give her a subtle nod and she presses her lips together hard like she’s having to physically restrain herself from jumping at me with a barrage of questions.
“I’ll walk you back,” Declan tells Mel.
“Okay, thanks.”
She looks at me for clarification.
“Go, I’ll be fine,” I assure her.
The two of them head in the opposite direction, but she swivels her head back toward me.
Pierced? she mouths.
I nod.
She raises her brows, mouthing her next question. Big?
I sigh.
Huge, I mouth back, shaking my head at the way her face splits in half with a grin.
Declan was right. This must be where he is. There’s a faint glow coming from the old bungalow, like a small lamp is on inside. It’s only when I inch open the door and peer inside that I see it’s a single candle in a glass hurricane jar.
“Isn’t that a fire hazard with all the wood?”
He turns as soon as he hears my voice.
“What’s the worst that can happen? I get burned alive?”
I step inside and push the door closed behind me.
“Such a weird response. I shouldn’t expect anything else from you though, should I?” I fold my arms and lean back against the inside of the door.
“Thought you’d be with your new friend.” He sniffs, picking up some wood and tossing it gently into a pile.
“The atmosphere went south after you came over,” I reply, choosing to look more closely around the space than at him.
The light’s too low to see much further past what would have been the bungalow’s main bedroom area.
But what I can see is still pretty impressive.
Piles of driftwood, some part worked on, others not.
A myriad of ocean animals filling some thick wooden shelves on the wall.
And a giant sheet of glass propped up against one wall.
“What’s that for?” I tip my head toward it.
“A table.” He grunts.
“You make furniture too?”
He doesn’t answer me, instead he keeps tidying the space, the veins in his forearms popping beneath his skin where he’s rolled his shirt sleeves up.
I haven’t seen him wear anything other than T-shirts.
But he’s wearing a shirt and jeans tonight.
And something about the sight has me imagining what he’d look like in a suit.
He looks like he was born to wear one, which is weird considering we’re at the beach.
“Look. I’ll go and leave you to whatever you’re doing. I just came to say thanks. I didn’t know about my dress.”
I turn to leave, and his words hit my back.
“I didn’t look.”
“What?” I turn back and he’s staring at me with his hands on his hips and his chest expanding slowly with measured breaths.
“I saw. But I didn’t look,” he says.
“Um, thanks.” I frown.
I turn around.
“I remember, though.”
My stomach leaps to my throat and I spin back.
Remembers what? My nipples? The way he sucked and bit them last night? The way I moaned and turned into putty in his arms?
He stares at me with a darkened gaze that makes me shiver. Something about him is different, but I can’t work out what.
“I’ve seen that guy pull that same move in that same bar before. Thought I recognized him.”
My mouth goes dry and my stomach sinks. It shouldn’t bother me that he’s not talking about remembering last night, but it does.
“So you’ve interrupted a conversation you’re not a part of and told him to fuck off before?”
“No. First time.”
“Why start tonight?” I shrug like I couldn’t care less what answer he’s about to give me, at the same time hating how my voice lifts with a hint of desperate hope.
A tiny clue about how much I want to hear a man say that he’s done something reckless because of me.
Because after Callum, God, I want someone to be acting reckless over me.
“You’re the first woman whose dress it worked on,” he replies.
I let out a scoff of irritation, masking the unwelcome disappointment that’s like a sinking balloon in my stomach.
“Yeah, well. Like I said. Thanks, I guess.”
I yank the door open, but a giant hand slams against it above my head, sealing it shut.
He was meters away a split second ago. The guy moves like Superman.
I incline my head and look at him over my shoulder as he speaks.
“Would you have fucked him?”
“What?”
“Tonight, if I hadn’t come over.”
“I don’t know.” I turn back to the door, readying myself to wrench it open before he can stop me again. But then rage bubbles inside me like molten lava.
I spin to face him.
“Yeah, actually. Maybe I would have. Seeing as my last attempt to forget about my ex got hijacked.”
He leans closer, his jaw rigid.
“You told me not to fucking speak.”
I narrow my eyes at him, pissed that he’s playing the ‘I didn’t know’ card again. But as much as I’d like to, I can’t lay all the blame on him. He was doing what I wanted. And the sex was…
“You’re so… ugh,” I grunt in frustration, hating that my nipples have hardened like arrow tips and are happily pointing at him like he’s the target.
His hand is still firmly planted against the door above my head, so when he leans closer, his scent surrounds me.
I clamp my mouth shut so I don’t taste it. But all it does is send the seductive scent of warm, masculine skin, laced with a hint of sea salt up my nostrils.
“What is it you’re trying to achieve?”
The deep gruffness of his voice should be a warning to me. I don’t like him. And I certainly don’t want to confide in him. But my body and my tongue are traitors, and the words come without me even thinking about them.
“I don’t want to feel like the girl who gets cheated on, okay?
I want to be the girl a guy goes wild for.
The girl he’s desperate to get his hands on.
The one who consumes his every thought in that moment.
” I swallow, taking in a shaky breath. “I want to know I won’t be humiliated after.
And most of all, I just want to have sex so good that if I ever think about what my ex did, all I’ll feel is relief that I’m not spending the rest of my life with a man who hated going down on me. ”
“He hated...? What the fuck’s wrong with him?” Woody’s scowl is deeper than any of the ones he’s ever sent in my direction before.
I shrug, my cheeks heating from my admission.
He exhales, his eyes still pinned on my face.
“So you want to fuck him out of your system? You want to fuck until you forget?”
“I guess. We all have something we want to forget, don’t we?”
A muscle flexes in his cheek and his bicep bulges like he’s scrunched the hand above my head into a fist.
“You don’t know how true that is,” he mutters.
“I should go.”
I wait for him to move back and release me from where he has me pinned against the door. But he stays rooted to the spot like a huge, brooding statue.
“Were you wet for him?”
“What?” I jerk my head back in shock, ignoring the contact my skull makes against the door.
“You heard.” Woody licks his lips slowly, like he’s considering his words carefully. “Were you wet for him? For this stranger you wanted to fuck until he made you forget?”
“No,” I snap.
My voice comes out breathy, and I hate that it’s joined by a flicker of energy in my core that makes me need to press my thighs together.
Blue eyes burn into mine.
“So, if I put my hand inside your panties right now, I wouldn’t find you’re lying to me?”
My chest jolts with a sharp inhale. “Not exactly a fair scientific test when he’s no longer the one here and you are, is it?”
“You telling me if you’re wet now, it’s because of me?”
It takes everything in me to school my expression and not react. How can he look so calm and ask that?
The piercing blue of his irises holds me captive, and I shake my head, unable to speak. His bicep is straining inside his shirt like he’s struggling to rein something in.
I can’t tell whether it’s anger or desire.
Maybe both.
The remnants of this evening’s cocktails in my bloodstream must be why my hands drop to the hem of my dress.