24. Jude #2
I suspected as much. I’ve tried to stay off Google. Tried to stop reading about his family and the awful accident. It was an unexplained fire on his father’s yacht. One that killed his mother, and according to the news, Slade as well.
“It’s why I live on a boat. She died on the water near here. It makes me feel closer to her.”
I nod, my throat aching and holding back words about how he’s not only remembering her but also torturing himself by staying here. It’s in his voice. The pain. The grief.
“My father loved being on the water too.”
“You miss him,” I state.
“I miss all of them. My brother, sister, uncle, aunt. All of them.”
“I don’t understand. Why don’t you speak? Why do they think you’re dead? I—”
“They don’t.”
“What?” I snap my eyes to his face but he’s still staring out at the ocean. “Do they know you’re alive? That you’re here? How? Why?”
“Jude…” He shakes his head, his eyes pinching at the corners.
“You can’t say that and then not explain.”
“Just…” He clenches a fist in front of his face, his nostrils flaring. “Just stop talking for a minute, please. I can’t think.”
“But—”
He turns and captures my lips with his, kissing me hard so I can’t speak.
“Sla—”
“Stop. Talking,” he groans against my mouth.
I kiss him back, wanting to show him I’m here for him, that he can trust me. He just needs to let me in.
He pushes me onto the blanket and shoves his T-shirt I’m wearing up roughly so it’s around my ribs.
“What are you—?”
“Shut up, please,” he snaps, his eyes burning with dark intensity as he positions himself between my thighs and hooks them over his biceps.
He yanks me to him with one harsh move, then sinks his face between my thighs.
My back arches and I cry out as he eats me out fiercely, groaning into my flesh.
“This is how you think?” I pant, pleasure winding through my muscles, ignoring the fact that my brain is somewhere else. All he has to do is touch me and I react physically. I can’t control it.
“Just let me be,” he growls, rubbing his face side to side to get my wetness all over him. “So fucking sweet,” he grunts, picking up the pace until I corkscrew my hands into his hair and pull at the roots.
He curses and his pace increases. I glance down but his eyes are screwed shut, closing me out. He always keeps intense eye contact when he goes down on me, and the lack of blue gazing up at me makes a sob catch in my throat.
I tug at his hair, but he sucks my clit harder.
I throw my head back with a moan as the familiar building takes over my body. I can’t stop it even if I want to. So I stare at the stars instead, and as spectacular as they are, they’re a poor substitute for the eyes of the man between my thighs.
“Slade,” I whimper.
“Come for me,” he instructs.
He won’t stop until I do. So I succumb, separating my mind from my body and letting him take control.
He sucks my clit, and I fall apart with a cry, staring at the world while he keeps his eyes glued shut, closing himself off inside his own private one.
The intensity of his mouth against me eases as my orgasm crests and falls away. I focus on the one brightest star until his sucks and licks turn into soft kisses of adoration.
“Jude,” he murmurs.
I hold my breath, my grasp on his hair loosening until I’m lovingly toying with the strands, letting them slip between my fingers like silk.
“They… it…” He curses, kissing me between the thighs. “What happened here three years ago… my family covered it up.”
I keep stroking his hair, too afraid to move an inch or do anything that might cause him to stop talking when he’s finally, finally begun.
He presses more soft kisses to my thighs, then my lower stomach, bringing a hand to rest on it. He keeps his eyes fixed on his thumb as he circles it slowly around my navel.
“I woke up on another boat after the fire on Dad’s yacht.
The woman on it said I climbed on board covered in cuts and bleeding.
But I don’t remember any of that. All I remember was the TV playing behind her.
My family held a press conference announcing mine and my mother’s deaths.
My brother spoke first, then my father. The moment he opened his mouth, I understood what they were doing.
To the world, they sounded like a grieving family supporting one another, but to me… I knew exactly what they meant.”
“What did they say?” I breathe.
He finally lifts his eyes to mine, and I suck in a breath at the tears swimming in the icy blue.
“They said Beauforts stick together.”
The devastation in his eyes has pain ripping down the center of my chest.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s what my father always said to us growing up.
If me or my brother or sister ever snitched on the others as kids, he’d tell us ‘Beauforts stick together’.
It became our mantra. Whenever one of us needed something doing or needed covering for getting in late or sneaking out after curfew, it’s what we said.
When I broke my arm zip lining with the clothes hanger, I also wrecked the TV and left a dent in the wall.
My father said those exact words to me, knowing my mother would be angry.
He told me my trip to the emergency room was lesson enough in his book.
He took the heat off me with Mom saying he’d wanted to reposition the TV and had dropped it into the wall, breaking both. She was mad at him for days about it.