by Unknown
“It was always you, Jude.”
Her heart surged against her breastbone. He was staring at her with a slain expression. It was too much. She’d never felt so brittle. So breakable.
She turned on her hip and started to roll away from him. But he caught her with a hand at her waist and rolled her back to face him. He speared her with his stare.
“You amaze me,” he said.
She peered up at him from beneath tear-soaked lashes.
“You think it’s pitiful. Don’t you?” she whispered. When she saw his brows furrow in puzzlement, she clarified. “In the car earlier. At the lookout. You made it seem like someone would have to be an idiot to hang onto a teenage infatuation for all these years. But that’s what I’ve done.”
His expression hardened. He cupped her face with one hand. “What you’ve done is not only to love me all these years, something I’m sure I didn’t begin to deserve, but you’ve told me about it. You don’t think I know how hard this is for you? I just wish I’d known before. All these years,” he said.
“If you understand how hard this has been for me, even a little, then you’ll understand why I didn’t say anything. I made it a mission to hide it, when I was with you.”
“That’s one hell of an exhausting mission,” he told her wryly. “But I get it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I always had my guard up against you, too. You were my friend and my neighbor, and…I needed you, Es.” His face screwed up in momentary frustration.
“Jude? What’s wrong?”
“It’s hard for me talk about it. I never have before.”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to,” she assured, concerned.
“No, I want to. You told me, when it was hard for you. My life was turned upside-down when I first came to Tahoe Shores. You became my stability. You were what had gone missing in my life: the fun, carefree part of being a kid…goofing off, making up stories and acting them out. Every morning when I’d wake up, I’d…I don’t know… I’d feel you and your family over there at your house. Even when I couldn’t see you, you were there somehow. It was like,” he frowned fiercely, trying to find the words, “the air I breathed, or knowing the sun was going to come up in the morning, and set at night. I knew things would probably get messed up if we started screwing around when we were teenagers. Even back in that hotel room in Beverly Hills, I fought it. But now…I’m happy I lost the fight,” he said gruffly, stroking her cheek with his thumb.
She smiled shakily. “I guess with the emotion of Dad passing, and the unexpected happiness of seeing you in that hotel—not to mention a few Scotches too many—it all just…” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Bubbled up to the surface.”
“Like I said. I’m glad it did,” he said, giving her a pointed glance. He leaned forward and brushed his lips along her cheek, wetting himself with her tears.
“Do you want to know something?” he asked.
“What?”
“I’ve always thought you were beautiful. And even though I considered you my regular, you were the opposite of ordinary. You were wild. Defiant. Proud and stubborn as hell,” he whispered, his mouth touching hers.
“You just described yourself,” Esme exclaimed, her eyes going wide.
“Shush, I’m trying to tell you something.” Esme swallowed back a retort that he was proving her point perfectly because he looked so serious.
“What I’m trying to say,” he continued with a pointed glance that warned against future interruptions. “Is I’ve never seen you as beautiful as you are right now. Open. So honest. Far more courageous than when you were taking on the hardest jump on your board or doing some idiotic cliff-dive.”
She sighed shakily.
“Thanks. I feel the same way about you, for opening up to me. I know it’s not easy, for you to talk about what it was like, especially those first few years after you lost your mom and dad.” He leaned down and brushed his lips against hers. “I’ve been so scared,” she admitted tremulously against his mouth. “Of telling you the truth. I didn’t want you to think I was stupid. Childish.” Her fingers tightened in his hair. She grimaced. “And you still might. When you see the tattoo.”
His gaze narrowed on her. “Show me,” he said. He placed his hand on her right thigh. “Show me, Es.”
Still feeling reluctant, but ruled by his eyes, she slowly opened her legs.
He straightened to a sitting position next to her. She watched him, her pulse leaping at her throat, as he stared between her thighs. He scowled, seeming to find his position difficult for seeing. He stood and went to the foot of the bed, and then crawled up between her opened thighs.
“Jesus, Jude,” she muttered in a strangled voice when he went down on his stomach and used his hands to spread her thighs even wider. His dark head hovered over her, his face just inches above the little tattoo. She shifted her hips, made desperate beneath his focused attention. “Do you want a magnifying glass, or what?” she asked frantically, her anxiety mounting by the second. He tightened his hands on her thighs, keeping her in place.
“Jude?” she demanded helplessly.
He looked up at her. Her struggling stopped abruptly. A soughing sound of wonder left her throat at what she saw on his rigid, handsome face.
Holding her stare, he leaned down and pressed his mouth to the message it revealed: Jude Beckett forever.
She’d always imagined that stupid, impulsive tattoo had branded her for life, like it had somehow been burned into her very spirit. Now she knew her imaginings had been true. It had been stamped onto her soul.
Because that’s precisely where Jude kissed her at that moment.
Chapter Twenty-Three
His firm, warm lips moved, ever so subtly stroking that tattooed message, erasing her shame, sanctifying a truth she’d desperately hidden. She reached, holding his head in her hands. He tongue flickered out, stroking the tattoo.
“How old were you? When you got it?” he asked before pressing his lips to her skin again, sending tendrils of excitement through her.
“Sixteen. I got it that summer I went to art camp in San Francisco.”
“I remember when you went to that camp.”
A tremor of emotion went through her.
“Your Dad would have gone ballistic if he’d known you’d gotten a tattoo,” Jude said. His lips skimmed higher on her thigh, brushing her pelvic bone. Her sex tingled in response.
“But he never did know. No one in my family did. No one ever knew the story behind it,” she said, going breathless at the vision of his dark head between her spread thighs. His head dipped. Her heart lodged in her throat. He landed a single, electric kiss on top of her labia, and looked up at her.
“I know,” he replied gruffly.
“Yeah.”
A small smile tugged at his gorgeous mouth. “It’ll be our little secret. Okay?”
She nodded in wholesale agreement, but couldn’t resist asking: “You don’t think it’s idiotic of me? Immature?” she wondered, her head coming off the pillow so that she could study him closer.
“I think it’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said without a trace of hesitation. “Thanks, Es.”
His obvious sincerity made her tremble again with barely contained emotion. His head lowered. His tongue slid between her labia and gave her clitoris a firm rubbing. Her shudder of emotion segued into one of pure need. She fell back on the pillows, gasping as he loved her so precisely.
So perfectly.
When she climaxed a few minutes later, it was with more than a rush of pleasure. He’d burned her shame to ashes. She clutched onto his head, chanting his name over and over like a prayer.
He came over her, his eyes fierce. He entered her slowly, planting himself deep.
“No more secrets between us,” he said.
He started to move, and Esme forgot any reason that she would take issue with his stark demand.
They ordered room service the ne
xt morning and ate their breakfast in bed, talking and laughing and touching. Esme didn’t think she’d ever felt so happy, or so liberated. By the time their meals were barely half finished, they’d set aside their trays and made love again on the mussed, warm bed.
“I’d rather have you for breakfast than eggs Florentine any day,” Jude said after they’d finished. They were still joined. His whiskers tickled her as he mouthed her neck. His lips lowered to the top of a breast. She shifted her hips and moaned, her body tightening around his still embedded cock.
“You’re insatiable,” she said, smiling smugly at that fact, and stroking the long, lean muscles of his back. An erotic sheen of perspiration from their previous energetic lovemaking made her fingers glide along his smooth skin.
He groaned and lifted his mouth off her breast. Bracing his arms on the mattress, he reared up over her yet again and flexed his hips. He stroked her deep. “You are. You’re pulling at me,” he accused, frowning down at her, and she knew he’d felt her vaginal muscles contracting around him. She smiled, sublimely unaffected by his scowl.
“Why do you think Ursa and Z have been arguing so much?” she asked, idly running her fingernails along the small of his back. She felt him shiver at her touch. He withdrew and thrust deep again, groaning.
“Huh?”
“Ursa and Z,” she repeated. He continued to stare at her uncomprehendingly. She swatted his firm ass briskly. “My sister and your brother, Ursa and Z?” she said slowly, like she was communicating with a distracted child. “Why do you think they’ve been arguing so much?”
His scowl deepened. “Z irritates everyone.”
“Z irritates you. Sometimes. Most people adore Z. I do. He’s very charming, when he wants to be. Just because you two have an epic sibling rivalry doesn’t mean he irritates everyone,” Esme scolded him without any heat. Her hand had lingered on his ass after she’d spanked him. She massaged the curved, tight muscle in her palm. “They used to get along great. Z always spoiled Ursa, and she was always mother-henning him.”
Jude grunted, clearly irritated they were having this conversation, but resigning himself to it.
“He used to worry about Ursa. When she was little and sick, and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. Everyone did. But I remember thinking a time or too that Ursa’s illness especially scared Z.”
“Scared him?” Esme repeated, finding it hard to imagine Z Beckett being scared of anything.
Jude shrugged. He was staring at her breasts again. Esme tried to ignore the hungry gleam in his eyes and the feeling of his cock growing firmer inside her, but it was difficult. He really was insatiable.
“What makes you think Ursa being sick scared Z?” She swatted his ass again gently when he didn’t respond. He groaned.
“I don’t know. I could just tell.”
“Brotherly intuition?” She massaged his bunched shoulder muscle. “Makes sense, I guess. You and Z were always close, despite the fact that you had some marathon fights.”
“He’s the only other person on earth who gets a big chunk of my life.”
She touched his face gently. “Yeah. He’s been a fellow traveler, hasn’t he?” She ran her fingertip over his dark eyebrow. “So if Z’s always been so worried and protective of Ursa, why are they fighting all the time now?”
“Hell if I know,” Jude muttered. He bent his tensed arms, lowering, and she could tell by his thrilling focus he was aiming for her breasts again. They were still flushed and sensitive from their former lovemaking. Nevertheless, she felt her nipples tighten in anticipation at his hungry look. He was proving to be thrillingly obsessed with her breasts.
“Now. Can we change the topic?” he asked, poised just inches from her erect nipples. “Because I have better things to think about then Z or Ursa. Much better.” His cock surged inside her again, making her gasp.
“We are here because of Z,” she reminded him, grinning. “Besides. You just came a minute ago, Jude. You can’t be serious.”
He began to fuck her with small, very firm strokes, making the headboard begin to tap erotically against the wall behind them. Just minutes ago, they’d had it banging against the wall hard enough to send plaster dust into the air. It was going to be happening again. Soon. Esme groaned in disbelieving excitement.
“Does that feel serious enough to you?” Jude challenged, before he sucked one of her nipples between his lips. Heat rushed into her cheeks, and she instinctively shifted her hips around his piercing cock. A moment later, he lifted his head and began to pump with longer, more forceful strokes. Esme tightened her hold on his shoulder and muscular, flexing ass. She lifted her legs to his waist, granting him full access to her. He lifted his head and thrust high inside her, groaning savagely.
“Oh, yeah,” Esme gasped, her eyes springing wide.
This was about as serious as it came.
After they finally managed to pry themselves out of bed and into the shower, they went into the inn together and arranged to stay another night.
“We might not need an extra night if we find Z and convince him to come back to Tahoe Shores today,” Esme said when they were on the road back to Xtreme Cycle to talk to the mechanics. She noticed Jude’s sharp sidelong glance at her from where he sat behind the wheel. She laughed. “You’re right. Let’s stay another night, no matter what. I’m becoming attached to our little cabin.”
Xtreme Cycle, the Moto Café and Biker Rags, the clothing store, looked different in the brilliant sun of mid-morning.
“It’s really a cool place,” Esme observed as they walked side by side toward the garage at the back of the building. “It looks like the exterior has been recently renovated. Far cry from your typical greaser biker dive. Oh…look!”
Jude came to a halt next to her and peered into the Biker Rags shop window. “Those are EsmeEs T-shirts. And look there…an EsmeEs vest,” she exclaimed, pointing at one of her favorite designs from last year’s line, a figure hugging women’s suede and shearling halter vest.
“Sexy,” Jude assessed, referring to the vest.
She looked over at him, grinning. “Isn’t that awesome? They carry my stuff.” It happened occasionally, that she was surprised by seeing her own designs in an unfamiliar store window. EsmeEs was still considered to be in its infancy as a company, after all. But the sighting especially thrilled her this morning, with Jude by her side.
His arm went around her shoulders. “Do you want to go inside and check it out?”
“No, that’s okay.”
“Come on,” he insisted. “Let’s see what they’ve got. I want to see more of your designs. Especially if there’s more stuff like that vest and those pants you wore in Beverly Hills.” A thought seemed to occur to him as he led her in the store. “Hey…did you bring those pants with you to Tahoe Shores?” he asked with sudden prurient interest.
She laughed out loud, but a small part of her wondered how long this intoxicating euphoria from being with Jude could last.
It turned out that they didn’t need to talk to one of the mechanics to get a lead on Z.
When they went into the shop, Jude made a beeline for the shearling vest. He held it up to examine it, stroking the supple suede with one hand.
“It leaves your back and shoulders bare, huh?”
“A strip of belly, too,” he heard Esme say next to him.
He ran a suede tie through his fingers. It amused him a little, to feel a shot of arousal go through him. Esme had done it again. Inevitably, he found himself imagining her in the vest…picturing lowering the shearling and suede to reveal inch by inch of her flawless skin, or possibly lowering the front zipper to find the treasure of her sweet, warm breasts…
“You like?”
He glanced into Esme’s face, hearing something unexpected in her tone. Impulsively, he reached up and cupped her delicate face. Her lips were still a little swollen and flushed from their marathon sex last night and this morning. Her tone had been light when she asked him if
he liked the vest, but he saw a tinge of anxiety in her big, hazel eyes. Damn it, if Esme Esterbrook didn’t look anxious for his approval.
He leaned down and kissed her hard. She laughed when he pulled back a few inches a moment later. Color had flown into her cheeks.
“What was that for?” she whispered.
“Because I’m starting to see through you a bit.”
She blinked, looking startled. Alarmed?
“Don’t worry. It’s like I said last night: you’ve never been so beautiful,” he said gruffly, leaning down to kiss her again, this time more gently.
He’d always known she was fearless. Why hadn’t he been able to see her vulnerability until recently?
“And you’re one hell of a talented designer,” he told her pointedly, his lips brushing next to hers. He glanced over at the vest he held.
“I’m buying it,” he stated.
“Buying it?” Esme repeated, incredulous. “I designed it. I have at least five hundred in our warehouse at the moment.”
“So? They aren’t here.” He gave the vest a serious inspection. “This thing is sex personified. You’d look incredible in it, with your gorgeous skin, and back, and shoulders. You designed this thing with yourself in mind, Es. Or me,” he added with a lecherous glance that made her grin widen.
“Designed?” Someone asked from behind them. He and Esme turned at once. A middle-aged woman with a kind, round face stood there. Jude thought she hardly looked like an edgy biker-shop employee. More like someone’s mother.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” the woman said quickly. “I just came over to ask if you needed any help, and I heard you say that she was the designer of this vest? It’s darling. I haven’t worked here that long, but I can tell you that your stuff seems to be very popular.”
“This is Esme Esterbrook,” Jude said. “The owner and designer of EsmeEs Designs.” Esme gave him an amused, fond look, and he realized he’d sounded like a proud papa or something.
“Sherry Fairbanks,” the woman said, reaching to shake Esme’s hand enthusiastically. “Well if this doesn’t beat all. Your stuff is just darling.”