Page 89 of Ruthless Protector

The silence stretched out and I felt…guilty. I was pretty sure my silence was hurting him somehow, but I didn’t know how, what it meant, what he wanted from me.

I had a sinking feeling I’d just failed some test.

We stayed up there for a while longer. I had another beer. We made small talk, but there was something missing, and that heaviness I felt coming off him when we first came up here was more intense. And worse, he looked…disappointed…in me.

I wrapped myself around him when we got back on the bike, needing to feel close to him, to try and make this better somehow, to stop him from looking at me like he had back up on that roof.

His abs were tight under my fingers, and this time, he didn’t reach down and rub his hand over mine, like he had several times on the ride over. There was a distance between us.

By the time we reached the brownstone, my heart was pounding and my stomach churned. I wanted to climb his big body, cup his face, and make him look at me like he had before we hopped on his bike earlier. The desperation clawing behind my rips to do just that had me reaching for his hand when he climbed off the bike after me.

It was selfish. I was leaving, but I couldn’t leave it like this between us.

He stopped, his body kind of rigid as I leaned into him, pressing my forehead to his chest, breathing him in, craving his touch, like a stray cat desperate for affection, to be petted. I needed this, his touch, one more time. The memory of him, to last me a lifetime alone.

“Please,” I whispered, not sure how to put my feelings into words, not sure how to make him understand what I wanted, what I needed from him, when I barely knew myself.

He stayed ridged for several long agonizing seconds, then his chest rose sharply and he released a harsh breath. His palm slid up my back until his fingers were buried in my hair, fisting lightly. I tilted my had back, and he looked down at me, eyes blazing.

“Christ. Yeah, Willa, I need you too.” He released my hair and wrapped his arm around my waist, keeping me tight against his side as we walked to his apartment door and he let us in.

We both moved to his bedroom without a word. At the foot of his bed, we started stripping each other, unhurried, gazes moving over the other. His searching, searching for the answers he desperately wanted from me. And mine, taking in every perfect inch of him, desperate not to forget one thing. Not his body, or his mouth, or the way his beard felt against my skin. But most of all, I didn’t want to forget those eyes of his.

I had a feeling they’d be haunting my dreams for the rest of my life.

Then we were naked, both shaking with need, panted breaths the only sound inside his bedroom. Jude scooped me up and I wrapped myself around him like I loved doing, and let him lower me to the mattress.

His mouth came down on mine and he kissed me rough and deep, then he lifted his head. “You’re so damn stubborn, and confusing, and fucking sexy. Christ, Willa, you make me crazy.”

I don’t want to lose you. Don’t leave. Don’t leave me.

My mind screamed it so loud, for a moment I thought the words had passed my lips. But it was my mind playing tricks on me. And for once, I wasn’t the one being left behind; it was me who was doing the leaving.

I couldn’t talk right then, not with the way I was feeling, so I chased his mouth, nipping then sucking his lower lip, stopping him from saying whatever it was I saw in his eyes, and kissed him with everything I had.

A noise vibrated through him, through me, and then he was kissing me back, just as hard, just as fiercely. For once, he wasn’t in control. He was taking what he needed from me, like I was from him. He was stripped back, stripped bare after going to that building, and there was no masking it.

I spread my thighs wider, rubbing against the hard length of his cock. I wanted him inside me now. Right now.

“You wet enough to take me?” he asked, voice hoarse.

“Yes,” I said, sounding slurred, God, drunk on him, on my need for the big man covering me, positive I would never, ever, get enough of him, but knowing tonight was all I had left.

One of my hands slid to his nape, thrusting my fingers into his hair, the other, down to his muscular ass, fingers digging in as my mouth went to his ear. “Make love to me, Jude.”

I’d never used those words in my life. I’d never done that with any man, not even Evan. We’d never come close to making love. But I knew that’s what we were doing, what we both needed right then, and I didn’t have it in me to fight it. To pretend this was something else. There was no reason to fight it anymore.

The head of his cock found my opening, and Jude’s ass flexed under my hand as he slid into me, slow, so slow and deep. My mouth dropped open on a helpless moan as he stretched me, at the way the ridge of his wide cock slid over that spot inside me that made me gasp for breath. He groaned, keeping up his slow torture until he was fully seated. I was surrounded by him, by his scent, by the sexy grunts and growls he made. I couldn’t think anymore. All I could do was feel. I had no control over my actions at this point, or what came out of my mouth.

“God, you fill me up so good.” I shuddered as he slid out and pushed back in, just as slow and torturous.

He lifted his head, eyes blazing down at me. “Where do you feel me, beautiful? Where am I?”

I bit my lip when the next maddening retreat and thrust came. I arched back as the head of his cock worked me just right. I was shaking harder now, mindless. “E-everywhere.” He went deeper than before and I clawed at his shoulders, my pussy starting to flutter around him.

His eyes flared at that.

“I feel you everywhere,” I said again, unable to hold it in. “You’re inside me, all around me, all the time.”