24. Jude
JUDE
“It’s so quiet here,” I muse, lifting my head from Slade’s bare chest where we’re lying on a blanket underneath the night sky.
“Like I said, only the locals come here. And usually only during the day.”
I sit up so I can look around. Dark, calm water, illuminated by the moonlight surrounds us.
“I can’t believe you live here.”
He places his hands behind his head and stretches his arms. His biceps bulge and my recently pounded pussy throbs at the sight.
I didn’t know what to expect coming to Slade’s place for the first time. But it wasn’t this.
His house isn’t a house. It’s a boat. With a deck upstairs and a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom down some steps in the center.
It isn’t fancy, but it’s tidy, devoid of any personal items except a couple of small driftwood carvings.
There aren’t any photographs anywhere. Nothing to signify the man who lives here or where he came from.
He really is a shadow like he says.
I gaze over the eerily calm water of the small marina. Only a few small fishing boats share the space. None have lower decks like Slade’s boat, so it’s easy to see they’re all deserted. There’s no one else nearby at all.
My gaze tracks back to our devoured picnic and drinks he’d prepared for us on the deck. Champagne. That’s what he gave me to drink. Like we’re celebrating something. But the bubbles tasted sour when they burst on my tongue. Just like this vacation bubble I’m in is about to pop.
There’s nothing special about what’s about to happen.
I’m leaving.
“Don’t you find it creepy being here alone at night?” I ask.
“No. I find it calming.”
“So weird, Cowboy.”
He huffs out an amused breath. “Us unsocialized pigs are better off living solitary lives.”
I smile, but inside I feel like crying. He says it so easily, like he’s accepted being alone for the rest of his life.
“They don’t have to.”
His expression tightens, so I lie on his chest and press a kiss against his bare skin.
“You could come visit me in New York… or…” I pause and wait for him to turn to me.
Once his blue eyes meet mine, I search them, hoping to see the answer I want. Or, at the very least, a tiny shift in his otherwise impenetrable defenses.
“Or?” he rumbles, low and deep.
“Or you could come back with me. We could…” I shrug, unsure which words could accurately describe what I’m thinking of when I picture him in New York with me.
Me and him.
Him and me.
Us.
“We could be a regular couple? Live together? Go out with friends? Meet each other’s family?” He reaches up to brush my hair back from my cheek.
I hold my breath.
“It’ll never happen, Jude,” he says, achingly softly.
“Why?” I whisper. “Why do they think you’re dead? What did you do? I know it’s nothing bad.”
“You don’t know that. You just hope it, because you want to see the good in me.”
“You’re wrong.”
My stomach knots as I look at him. A man who has a golden soul, just like Nandi told me. I can see it so easily. Which is why this is impossible to get my head around.
I trace the tattoo over his heart with my pointer finger, concentrating on the camouflaged B at its center. “You couldn’t cover it, could you?”
His throat contracts with a thick swallow. “No.”
That one word, that single syllable has hope blooming in my chest. I continue tracing the B and look up into his eyes—his utterly captivating piercing blue eyes.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been anchored in place by them as I’ve come apart with blissful pleasure from his touch.
And the times I’ve just talked about both everything and nothing and he’s listened.
“If you want people to think they’re brown, how come you let me see them that night in your workshop?”
“It was unintentional. I got sawdust in my eyes before you arrived and had to take my contacts out.” He wipes at my frown with a gentle sweep of his thumb. “Then after I saw you fall off the cliff, I wanted to show you.”
“You wanted me to see the real you,” I whisper. “But I jumped, not fell.”
“You were in danger. That’s all I saw.” His jaw tenses.
I slide my hand from his tattoo up over his neck, and to his jaw, curling my fingers around it so I can bring his mouth to mine.
“I do see you,” I say against his lips before pressing a soft kiss to them. “And you’ll never convince me you’re a bad person. I just don’t believe it.”
“Jude,” he argues.
But I kiss it away, slanting my mouth over his and maneuvering my thighs either side of his hips. I hold his face and lie over him, kissing him with the passion he deserves, and that I so desperately need to let out before it bursts from me like a cannon.
“Ssh, don’t say anything,” I whisper, bringing memories of our first time together in the dark to the forefront of my mind.
He wraps his arms around me in understanding, pulling us both up into a sitting position. I’m wearing one of his T-shirts and no panties because we’ve been unable to keep our hands off one another since I stepped onto his boat. We’ve had sex multiple times already tonight.
But not like this.
I sink my hands into his hair and kiss him deeply, keeping everything slow and gentle. He doesn’t try to rush, either. He just kisses me with a slow, intense passion that makes my entire body buzz with warm energy.
“Slade, I—”
He kisses the confession from my lips before I take us to a place we can never come back from.
“I know, baby. Believe me, I know.”
My throat aches with the threat of tears, so I kiss him harder, trying to ease it. Trying to pretend this isn’t one of the last times we’ll ever do this.
I reach down and tug at the waistband of his sweatpants. Without words, he holds me up with one arm banded around my waist and pulls them down his thighs.
When he brings me back down, it’s inch by inch onto his waiting cock.
I hold his face between my hands as my body accepts him, stretching around him until I can’t hold back any longer and a whimper passes through my lips.
His eyes glitter and he holds my gaze, slowly rolling my hips with a firm, but careful grip.
The only sound is our breathing and the waves lapping at the base of the boat as we hold onto one another, and he slides in and out of me in delicious deep strokes.
I knew after that first night that I’d never been fucked before until him. And now I realize—I’ve never been made love to before him either.
I’ve never had any of this.
Before him.
“Slade…”
He covers my mouth with his own, once again preventing me from saying any more.
“Jude,” he breathes into a kiss so full of emotion that it says everything we can’t.
I kiss him back for as long as I possibly can, and we pick up the pace until I have to break away with a gasp.
“Do it,” he urges.
I rest my forehead against his as I come in deep waves around him. Ones that tether me to him like we’ll be joined for eternity. Ones that will leave ripples on my heart forever. The only evidence of what lies inside. Because I can’t say it. He won’t let me say it.
“Good girl,” he whispers.
He swells inside me, and I whimper as he comes with a rich groan, his fingers tightening on my hips. He guides me up and down, emptying all he has in slow, deliberate strokes, his eyes never leaving mine.
I part my lips again, but his soft words halt me.
“Don’t say anything, Jude. Not a word.”
This time, it’s me who has to keep silent. Just like he didn’t tell me it was him that first night together in the dark—here on our last night, beneath a blanket of stars, I don’t tell him that I’m glad it was him.
Or that it will only ever be him from now on.
Afterward, we lie on the deck, staring at the night sky in an easy silence—my head on his chest, his arm around me and his lips pressed against my hair as if in one gentle never-ending kiss.
There’s nowhere else in the world I would rather be right now.
“This is perfect,” I breathe, sinking deeper into his embrace and spotting one star brighter than all the rest. “So beautiful and peaceful.”
He kisses my hair. “You bring me peace, Saint Jude,” he says softly.
I smile at the way he remembers the story I told him about why my mom chose my name.
“That must mean you’re a lost soul.”
“Yeah, maybe I am.”
The aching honesty in his words has me turning my head to see his face.
“Everyone who’s lost can be found.”
He’s silent for a beat, then says, “Not if they don’t want to be.”
I frown, easing up to a sitting position so I can look at him properly.
“Come back to New York with me.”
He sits up beside me. “Jude—”
“Please,” I beg, despite knowing I shouldn’t.
You can’t force a person to do something they don’t want to and expect them to be happy.
It’s like my father trying to force me into med school and a career as a surgeon.
Yet the words pour from me anyway, fueled by the hope that if there’s a tiny chance, no matter how small, I have to try.
I can’t not try.
“Please think about it.”
“I’m dead.” His sharp words cut through the air like a blade. “And there’s a reason the world thinks it.”
“Then tell me the reason, because I don’t get it.”
“What’s not to get? I’m not coming back with you. Not now. Not ever.”
“Slade…”
He winces at his name this time and my heart cracks.
“Isn’t what’s between us worth fighting for? Finding a way?”
“You were never meant to meet me.” He stares out across the water.
“But I did. And I’m glad I did. You’ve made me feel…
not even like myself again, but different…
better. I came here thinking breaking up with Callum was the worst I could feel.
But that was nothing compared to the way I feel knowing I’m about to leave.
You’re the guy I fight best with, you know that?
Not that I want us to fight, that doesn’t sound right. But…” I blow out a breath.
He's the guy I care about enough to react, to want to solve things, to never give up and walk away from because things get too hard. That means something.
“What does the E on your carvings stand for?” I ask. Surely, he can at least give me that.
“Elaina,” he whispers.
“Your mom.”
He nods.