by August Red
The veil lifts from his eyes. “What?” he sighs angrily, his eyes narrowing.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she snaps. He doesn't say anything. “I'm fine. I don't need you coddling me. I have a headache, not an aneurysm. Give me some space—and why do you care, anyway? You’ve made it perfectly clear how much you care about me."
“Why were you out there?” he questions, as if he hasn’t heard a word she’s said.
“I like running at night. Didn't Tate tell you?"
His breathing grows lethargic, his glare beating down on her. "Why?"
She eyes him with trepidation before returning her attention to the cut on her head. “Clears my head."
“From what?”
“From being here."
“With me," he says, lowering his head.
“Yes, because everything is about you, isn’t it, Judas?" She scrapes the hair away from her eyes, her body imploring for some semblance of balance her senses have been abandoned of. “It helps me think, all right."
“And you have to endanger yourself to think? You could've run in the courtyard—it's big enough. But no. You have to journey into the fucking woods at night. You could’ve injured yourself worse than a few cuts, goddammit."
“Don't curse at me.” Despite the screaming soreness in her head, she stumbles to her feet, leaning her legs against the couch. “I like the woods. I like the trees and the open air. I like being there. Alone. And I don't have to explain why. Especially not to you. I’ll run where I want, when I want. "
She turns her back to him to leave, but he stands up and grabs her by the wrist. “It’s my duty to keep you safe."
She tips her head at the ceiling. “You're trying to make me crazy. Stop pretending, Judas.” She pulls at his hold, but it's useless. “Stop pretending to care. I know where you stand. I get it now. Crystal clear. So this whole caring routine you're doing isn't necessary."
He shifts closer, close enough that the tip of his toe is touching hers. “You think I'm pretending to care for you?" he growls throatily.
“You said the other night—”
“Fuck what I said—”
“Judas,” she warns. Her eyes close and she sighs. “I don’t like that word.”
“Too bad,” he shoots back, not falling for her petty attempts at diversion. “Answer the question,” he demands. “You really think I don't care?"
She doesn’t hesitate in replying, “Yes." Her voice lifts then falls. "I really think you don't… Can you blame me?”
His bottom lip drops ever so slightly to reveal his hurt. Her throat feels dry, and suddenly she’s almost too aware of the warm skin underneath her fingers that are wrapping around her. She feels her goose-bumps ringing around his hold, her shoulders lifting.
“You don't, Judas. You don't.” Her body tenses, fighting back his touch. His closeness. She can’t give in. She can’t. “Right?" she croaks.
His body drifts nearer, diminishing the distance between them to a sliver of a thread. His stare heats, and she knows he can see her burning in slow degrees as the pad of his thumb falls and swishes against the white unexposed flesh of her inner wrist. He licks his lips, like the battle of wills war to life inside him. His thumb presses deeply into her flesh. His eyes follow her small, nervous movements, and he seems to grow more aggressively pleased with each shake her body makes.
“Belle,” he murmurs with tight restraint, looking unsure of what he himself is doing as his other hand comes up to her face.
“Judas…” She breathes his name in a warning, wanting him to stop, but pleading for him to touch her. To invade her space. She pulls at his hold, twisting her hand so that her palm is facing the ceiling.
“Don't…” his breathless whisper cautions.
“Don't what?” she asks, her words foggy. “Judas?"
Neither of them have the strength to look away from each other, with the gravitational intensity that climbs between their bodies and pulses in their gaze. Belle tries to back away, but Judas won’t let her walk away.
Not this time.
“I'm sorry."
Her heart stops for a split second. The sincerity of his apology has her eyes meet his lingering stare.
Since Judas left, she’s been dreaming—begging—to hear those words from his lips. “For... what?” she asks, breathless. There never seems to be enough air to inhale when she’s around him.
“I did this,” he confesses, lowly. “If I hadn’t been a bastard to you… The thought of losing you... I was wrong… God, Belle, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean the things I said. You have to know that. You’re beautiful. Too fucking beautiful for me." Her body scoots forward, acting on sheer impulse. “I don't want you hurt because of me. You're already in enough danger."
“Judas, I—” A sharp, tight sting ricochets off her skull, drumming to the depths of her brain. She leans forward, pressing the flat of her palm into her head. “Ow!” Judas is right over her and guides her back to sit down on the couch. She tries to conceal her pain from him because that’s what she’s done for most of her life.
Hide.
“I'm okay. I'm fine."
But he won’t let her.
“Look at me.” His soft order stirs the tiny hairs on the back of her neck. When she doesn’t immediately tilt her head up, both his hands cup each side of her head, raising it in small deathly inches.
“Don’t, Judas… Don’t.” She tries to fight him, the pain and anger he caused inside her still intoxicates her mind and heart.
“Don’t fight me, Belle.” His voice drops. “I’m sorry.” When his brilliant eyes sweep across her face, she melts in his hands. She can’t deny him. The self-loathing she sees in his eyes for what he’s done to her, eradicates any hate within her. For a man like Judas Bane to ask for forgiveness, it is something rare.
Belle licks the dry, parched patches of flesh on her lips, feeling self-conscious when his face inches to the point of sensory suffocation. Her eyes drill into the spot above his shoulder, her hands fist at her sides clumping fabric with her hands. His inspection drags out at a torturing pace. His eyes seem to sketch and memorize every detail of her as they move the length and width of her, from ear to ear, hairline to chin. It's as if she isn’t there at all. He is so thrown into what he’s doing, Belle almost feels like a distant memory. A ghost.
Her mouth opens on a sigh, barely missing his chin, “It's okay, Judas. I'm fine." But she isn’t. She’s been breaking apart ever since that night.
Judas doesn’t seem content with her words or with what he sees, as though knowing she isn’t talking about her physical injuries. He stops, releasing her face, but not budging from where he sits over her. “I hurt you, Belle. I know I have.” His whisper almost hazes in her mind. “You’re not okay because of me.”
“I-I…" The side of his finger comes up, pushing her chin gently but firmly in the direction of his face. Looking openly at him, her eyes grow large, darting reluctantly between his candid stare. Her skin grows heavy, she feels like cement is being poured over her whole body. She can’t move to resist him. It’s as if she has ignored all the warnings and leapt with both feet from a dizzying cliff, and now she’s afraid to look down for fear of what she may see. Feel.
But she can’t stop falling.
“You hurt me.” Belle makes the phrase come out before she crumbles altogether.
His thumb climbs from her chin to the cut below her bottom lip. In a slow menacing caress, he follows the pattern of the cut and whispers, “I know…” and his stare follows his finger, darkening along its path. “You scared me,” he confesses, so quietly, she isn’t sure if she imagined it.
“I didn't mean to,” she admits, just as low, swallowing when his hand voyages farther back and palms her head in his hand.
“You never mean to,” he lightly accuses before his tone switches. “I’ll never forgive myself for the things I’ve done and said. But I’ll do anything to make it up to you, Belle. I promise.” His voic
e is solemn as he speaks against her face, drawing her breath into the rhythm of his. The small connecting sounds, like tiny earthquakes, silence the room, wrapping around their bodies, annihilating whatever excuse she is about to hand him.
All she can do is feel and think... him.
He is overloading her senses, drowning out her pain, her worry, her life, and taking full reign of what small control she has left. The weight of his palm under the curtain of hair, presses against her skin like a hot furnace. He unabashedly brings her closer, nudging her unwillingness to surrender. Her cheeks keep up their continuous everlasting burning as the tip of her nose bumps the space between his upper lip and nose.
She hasn’t touched him yet, but her imagination is running wild with the idea of him. She remembers vividly how his body feels against hers. The small hairs on his face, the smooth sharp tip of his nose as he draws her in with his greedy intake of breath, the way his eyes cut through her thin veil of awkwardness, reaching for the one he wants, the one he hunts out and seeks, like a starving man in need of sustenance.
He licks his lips, his breath shaky against hers, “What do you want?"
“I... I want… I don’t know..." He’s breaking down her defenses—again—to the point she can no longer trust her instincts.
“Right now…” His eyes pin her against the wall of her mind. “…what do you want?"
The details of the night they were intimate come back to her in a warm rush, and her answer is urgent, desperate, “Something that doesn't exist.” A tear pricks at one of her eyes, but it never falls.
That answer seems to be enough for Judas, pushing him over some limit, some line he swore never to cross. He grips her hair tighter, firmer, almost to the point of pain, but the pleasure is so overflowing and cumbersome, she has to bite at her lip to shield the moan her body threatens to scream.
“Belle,” he warns darkly, the crackle of the fireplace meeting in beat with the crackle of building sensations that are stalling and waiting at the very edge of her. “Aren't you going to stop me?” he taunts.
Belle Dela Cruz has fallen hard for Judas Bane.
There is no going back.
How can her world ever go back to being normal?
“I can’t...” Her cry comes against his mouth, her lips quivering and dipping in between the slit of his mouth that opens in await for hers. “I can’t, even if I tried,” she gasps.
She goes to finish what he’s trying to torment her with by inching her head and mouth up at once, but when her lips make contact with his, Judas takes charge, leaning the full weight of his desire in his kiss. She thinks he will be brutal, seducing her with hard unforgiving strokes of his tongue, demanding her to open herself up to him and take ample advantage of her innocence.
She will like that.
She doesn’t know why exactly, but his forcefulness is so intoxicating—mind-numbing—she is helpless but to follow his lead willingly. His patience, his burning need for her, is evident in every whispering tremble of his touch—and that is enough.
But she isn’t ready for this.
Judas is gentle. His mouth against hers is so gentle, she barely feels the sweet capturing lead of his lips between hers. His mouth comes and falls away like a beckoning call to her insides, pressing her senses against the surface of her in a throb that pulses low and quick. Her hands come up, clutching his hair as they beg through his dark silky strands.
Butterfly-soft, he kisses her once, one way, skims her nose as he slants the other way to start the kiss all over again. His face seems to circle hers as he dips and teases her into the hypnotizing steps of his captivation. Then she comes closer, opening her mouth, catching his lips, and he immediately deepens the kiss to a severity that stuns her into submission as both their mouths remain open and their tongues dominate their actions.
Judas’ one hand is steady, cupping her teetering head while the other compresses different parts of her body; squeezing the soft side of her back, traveling down and grabbing at her hips so greedily into his palm, it’s like he wants to take it with him. Her hands are no less busy, working off pure compulsion as she curls her fingers in his thick luscious hair, grabbing at the sides of his head and then going to the back to bring him so close, she can feel the imprint of his face on hers.
Both their breaths pick up. The sweater-vest she’s wearing feels like a dissolvable fabric against the heated skin of his chest. Like he is fire and she is snow, melting into him, becoming consumed by him to the point where she doesn’t know where she begins or ends, without his touch on her.
The rough friction of his tongue slows, finding a new speed, one that is generous as he strokes her again and again, the same way, repeatedly, in a design to make her faint. And just when she thinks she will, Judas switches, relieving pressure, then moves slightly another way, and the magnetic pull starts all over again.
Not willing to break any sort of physical connection, Judas leans his forehead against hers in a silent message that has her following the lead of his utopian body to the rug beneath them. Eyes shut, Belle falls blindly against the pillows behind her, their mouths fused together like they’re melded that way by their kiss.
With his one hand, Judas grabs at the back of his shirt from his neck and pulls it over his head, allowing only the small moment of absence from her mouth because of necessity. She takes the small second to gulp for air, but it isn’t long enough to even draw a full breath. Judas is everywhere; over her, so near she can’t breathe without grazing him. His solid body barricades hers, the hardness of his chest burning a hole through the paper-thin wall of her clothing. He kisses her cheek tenderly, washing away the ache there, then the cut on her lip before skittering farther toward her ear.
She holds her moan in, knowing it will break the glassware if she ever allows herself to relish in the pleasures he is inflicting on her. The heated moisture of his mouth encloses around the dangling flesh of her ear, suckling just loud enough for her to hear.
Her stomach caves in, an avalanche of need robbing her senses blind of anything else but him. His weight presses into her so deeply, she can hear his heart beat against her chest, feel the tremble of his knees as she pushes out her pelvis in an unmistaken message.
He hears it.
Using his knee, he parts her legs and she welcomes his body by wrapping her limbs around his middle in a tight, heady embrace.
“Belle...” he groans her name against the side of her face, his body pulsing like a tightly coiled spring that is about to burst from the pressure.
All she can do is breathe against his satiny tan shoulder and squeeze her eyes shut. She feels the subtle gesture of his hips move against her center, rub slowly up, and press her right where she is throbbing with sensitivity, and withdraw back only to come a second time. Harder. Stronger.
Belle encourages him, lifting her bottom from the ground and following his movements eagerly. With one hand she finds the trail of his spine, and using the pad of her fingers she presses her body deeper into his, wanting more of his strokes.
Hungry for him, she widens her legs and immediately feels the steel hot thickness of his erection. The length and width of him seems to bury itself, even with his jeans on, inside her; grazing the delicate nub of hers at a tempo that is draining her of restraint.
She cranes her neck back as his lips explore the distance between her ear and the flesh of her throat. He’s making that sucking noise again and the feasting sound carries such an enjoying timbre, it makes the wetness of her private heat up. She is going to come right there.
His lips sink lower, the top hairs of his head an erotic tickle against her chin. There is a small scoop at the lining of her top in front, and he pulls it down, trying to nudge the cloth away, but the impatient tug sends a tearing noise ripping through the room. His lusty gaze—half-lidded and drunk on her—lifts, and she shoves the sweater-vest farther down, along with her flimsy undershirt, until the white globe of one breast pops out for him.
God,
she is so desperate for Judas, she isn’t even acting in character. Where is the meek, shy girl who barely shows her shins to the world, forget about her breasts? The tiny miniscule thought makes her a little stiff, her body clenching under him. He feels it, reads her mind, but doesn’t stop as he rasps, kissing the spot between her breasts, “Don't.” He shakes his head, opening his mouth to kiss her again. “Whatever you're thinking—don't." It isn’t a request. He’s demanding her to obey to his will.
And whatever she’s thinking, thaws into a shadow of nothing when her whole body goes limp in his strong, muscled arms. With his chin, he pushes the white cotton of her bra away, exposing a sharp rosy nipple. It stands up, aroused, begging for his mouth, his tongue, and he doesn’t hesitate to oblige her silent urges.
His tongue licks the protruding flesh first, skimming it lightly, making her back arch for deeper access into his mouth. She moans, squeezes her mouth shut, dying for the hard penetration of his slick wetness—but he ignores her, circling her red bud sluggishly in a taunting manner that makes her want to rip her hair from its root. It actually hurts, the pleasure is so immense.
Just when she is about to scream, Judas traps the jutting flesh between his lips. And he sucks on her. He sucks so hard and so long, her mind goes blank, blackening out. His tongue alone is lapping her up, making her mouth go dry. He corners the tiny nub, pinching her senseless. The momentous, endless sensations, ripples up and down her arms, liquefying her boneless, saturating her underwear until his long thick cock embeds into her to the point where she can feel the straining pulse of him burning through all barriers.
It isn’t until he begins to move against her again that she realizes all this feeling is building to something. His hips buck against her recklessly, and his mouth comes back to hers, kissing her with an erotic hungriness that slaughters whatever sense of reserve she has left. The fingers of his one hand enfold to the shape of her bottom, cupping and lifting her from the floor to meet and reply to the urgency of need his body demands of hers.