Page 37

I wake in the warmth of a bed that isn’t mine. I hardly remember how I got here.
“Declan?” Jude’s voice caresses my name, but I’m too tired to answer.It comes back as a whisper of memory, followed by more, and more, of the recollection.
“Little D?”
“Hmm?”
Quiet laughter that barely registers. A soft, cool blanket sliding over my skin. The lights going out.
My mind is instantly more alert, though I’m still slipping away into sleep.
The bed shifts beneath me as Jude moves around to get more comfortable, his strong, tattooed fingers sliding through my hair, and a soft kiss is pressed to my forehead.
And then I’m out like a light.
I run a hand over the warm fabric of Jude’s sheets in the here and now, the scent of him beneath me as I sink my head deeper into his pillow.Fresh linen, spice, and thunderstorms.
I can’t remember the last time I slept so peacefully, the last time I woke from sleep and my heart wasn’t already racing, already beating faster with the anxiety living inside my bones.
The absence of it now is so startling that it screams at me in the silence. I’m not sure how silence can be loud, but it feels that way. A quiet I’m not used to feeling when I’m all by myself.
When I finally part my eyelids, sunlight washing into my line of sight, I realize Iamall alone. In Jude’s bed. His side isrumpled, still warm from where his body was pressed into it all night.
I half expected us to wake up accidentally entangled in each other, our limbs intertwined, my face smooshed against his hard chest, his hand halfway down my pants like all the best romances have sold. But unfortunately, orfortunately,it isn’t the case.
Confusion swims through my mind.
Where is he?
My question is immediately answered as his bathroom door creaks open, and warmth and hardness crash into me like the world’s most awkwardly comfortable blanket.
I want to pull it around me and inhale its warmth.
“Jude!” I laugh. It’s a tired, light sound that falls from my lips, and the vibration of his chuckle dances along the surface of my skin as it mingles with my own.
“Morning, Little D,” he says, the minty smell of his breath raining over me, causing goosebumps to race up my arms.
Butterflies erupt in my stomach, even though nothing happened last night. And nothing is happeningnow,not technically. Which doesn’t explain why itfeelslike something is. Like something between us is shifting.
A needling thought wonders if it already has.
The weight of Jude’s body dips me into the mattress farther, and I force myself to let the thoughts go, quickly deciding that shift or not, I don’t mind the feel of his body on top of me.
I don’t mind it at all.
A blush works its way through me, reaching all the way down to the tips of my toes tucked beneath the blanket.
Beneath Jude.
A warm flush follows in its path, settling low in my stomach. I have to remind myself to take a breath. Tobreathe,with him lying heavy against me. Like it’s something we do when we’venever treaded over this line before—me, waking up in his bed; the fact that his body is so perfectly in line with mine, pushing into me, andintome.
“Good morning, Jude,” I finally manage, pushing against him in a halfhearted effort. I don’t want to face the thoughts racing through my mind right now. Thoughts I’mthisclose to saying“Fuck it”to and acting on, much to what I’m sure would be Jude’s annoyance.
I’m not willing to step over that line,his firm statement rings through my mind.No matter how much I’d like to.Fair enough. And no problem, really—until a few weeks ago. When I spotted him at Boss’s party, entertaining a conversation with a beautiful girl, and I felt my insides curl with jealousy.
I was angry, I realized, staring at them from across the party.Angry,as I stalked across the floor to do only God knows what. And ever since then—well, the feelings have lingered. I’ve fought hard to bury them, focusing instead on the things Icanmentally handle.
“Jude,” I say, my words so breathless a wave of embarrassment washes through me. But he’s still on top of me, weighing me down, and… “You—you’re crushing me,” I go with. Instead of the hundred other thoughts sitting truthful in my mind.You feel so good, on top of me. You’re making it hard to think, Jude. Hard to breathe. And my heart is racing, my limbs trembling, and the only thought I can find, the only one I can seem to latch onto right now, is the one begging me to pull you closer. To relieve this throbbing ache between my legs and—