“How many have you had?” Her voice was small, and when I glanced her way, she looked worried.
“Does it matter?” I asked, suddenly exhausted and defeated. When the bartender set the next one in front of me, I stared at it. Then I lifted it to my lips and drank. Once it was empty, I set the glass down, pulled cash from my wallet, and dropped it on the bar.
Proud that I barely wobbled when I stood up, I looked down at her. “You broke my fucking heart.”
Slightly unsteady, I walked away and out the door. As I crossed the still wet road, a car honked at me as it flew by, and I flipped it off.
“Jesus, Jude!” She latched onto my arm and dragged me across the street. “You damn near got hit! Which room is yours?”
We went into the hotel, and I handed her my card key. Mumbling the room number, I tried to clear my vision. She led the way, and I let her.
The lock beeped and clicked, then she turned the handle I half fell through the doorway and leaned against the wall to get my balance. The door had barely closed when she cradled my cheek in her soft hand. “I loved you more than was wise,” I thought I heard her whisper.
I stared into her green and brown eyes, shimmering with tears. With a catch in my heart and my words, I replied, “And I loved you more than was safe.”
She took a shuddering breath and reached up to press her lips to mine.
That’s all it took, and I was lost.
Whatever the reason, be it the grief, nostalgia, the love that still resided in the back corners of my heart, I dove into her. My fingers tangled in her molten hair, and I pushed her against the opposite wall. Her breath left her in a huff.
“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Slightly sobered, I whispered against her skin as I trailed kisses down her jaw and scraped my teeth on her skin.
“Yes,” she said on a soft exhale.
“I have to leave in the morning. I won’t be back for a long time. If ever.” I gave her another out.
“I don’t care,” she insisted.
With a growl, I clutched her ass and lifted her. I carried her to the bed as my heart nearly burst from my chest. Between the alcohol and her, I was floating on a river of blind need.
Our clothes drifted to the floor, and my mouth tasted her everywhere.
It was as if time had fallen away and we were those two lovesick teenagers sneaking to the treehouse to do things we were too young to really understand. Lost in each other, we clung to the past.
“Jude,” she groaned as I sucked first one nipple, then the other. Two fingers found their way in her slick, wet heat and she arched into me. My thumb circled her clit, and she whimpered.
Her body was beautifully the same, yet better. Where before she’d been a teenager, barely blossoming, now she was a woman. Lush and firm in all the right places. I couldn’t get enough of her. I worshipped her. I drowned in her taste, her touch, her sighs.
When I lined up to enter her, I paused. Locking onto her gaze in the dimly lit room, I admitted something I hadn’t told a soul. “There’s been no one since you.”
Shock mixed with disbelief preceded the tear that trickled from the corner of her eye and into her hair. “Me either,” she whispered.
“You still on the pill?” We’d snuck down to the free clinic the morning after our first time and she’d gotten on birth control. We thought we were so grown-up.
She nodded, and I groaned, “Thank fuck.”
When I sank into her, it was like dying and going to heaven.
“ThisGoesOutToYou”—Adelita’sWay
The second he filled me, I was transported back to a simpler time when nothing was more important than being together. A time when I’d loved him with every fiber of my young being. A time when it had only been us.
“Jude, oh God, Jude,” I chanted as I wrapped my legs around him and he pounded in me. My nails dug into his ass as I met him thrust for thrust. Uncaring that it was likely a hate fuck, I pretended we were still in love. That the years and lies hadn’t ripped us apart.
Without missing a beat, he dropped to his elbows and buried his face in the crook of my neck. The whispers against my skin were merely breaths of air. I had no idea if he was cursing me or reliving memories.
Each stroke brought me closer and closer until I hovered on the brink of ecstasy. “I’m almost there,” I gasped. He seemed to know what I needed, as he doubled his efforts. In the back of my mind, I was aware of the bed banging on the wall.