Page 75 of Infamous

It’s intoxicating. And terrifying.

“I don’t want you to leave,” I whisper.

The words are out before I can stop them.

And instantly, my rational mind revolts.Are you out of your goddamn mind, Nadia? You barely know this man! You invited a stranger into your home, and now you’re asking him to stay? What are youdoing?

“You don’t know what you want,” he says, his voice quiet but threaded with warning. Like he’s daring me to take it back.

“Usually,” I admit, my lips twitching at the honesty of it. “But right now, I don’t want you to go.”

His jaw flexes. “You want me to stay.”

It’s not a question - it’s a test. Like he needs to hear me say it twice, maybe three times, to make sure I mean it.

“I want you to stay,” I say again, steady this time.

He watches me for a long, long moment. “Can you tell me why?”

I shake my head, eyes on his. “I can’t. It just… is.”

And that’s the truth. There’s no logic to it. No reason I can articulate. Only the certainty that if he walks out that door, something vital will go with him.

He exhales slowly, his shoulders still taut beneath his shirt, like every muscle in him is bracing for something he doesn’t want to face.

So I do the unthinkable.

I move first.

It’s not like me - I’ve never been the one to close the gap, to reach for a man, to take the lead. Men have always come to me, circled me, pursued me. And I’ve always let them.

But this time it’s different.

Jude Mercer sits frozen beside me, too controlled, too careful, like he’s afraid to breathe wrong. So I lean toward him - slowly, testing the air between us, my pulse loud in my ears.

He doesn’t stop me or pull away.

His gaze tracks my every move, unblinking, intense. There’s restraint there, yes - but underneath it, I see something far more dangerous. Hunger.

And it mirrors my own.

I stop just shy of touching him, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body. Close enough that my breath mingles with his.

For a long, breathless second, we just sit there - two strangers, two ghosts, two souls pretending not to recognize each other.

Then I whisper, barely audible:

“Stay.”

And the air between us ignites.

Jude Mercer kisseslike a man possessed.

There’s no hesitation in him. No holding back.

One moment we’re sitting too close, our words tangled somewhere between sanity and surrender - and the next, his mouth is on mine.

It’s not gentle. It’s not sweet. It’s devastation, redefined.