by Nina Merrill
"Anything?" she breathed.
Jude caressed the inside of her right thigh.
"Anything." His hand slid upward, his palm pressed against her mons, and his long fingers slipped between her nether lips, finding the places that most aroused her. Nona squirmed beneath his knowing touch, trying to keep hold of her common sense for a little while longer. Jude's erection was warm and snug against her thigh as he lay alongside her, and she could feel its pulsing as it stiffened more. His mouth explored the underside of her right breast, trekking to the hard nipple pointing into the night.
She took the plunge. "I want you to answer my questions."
Jude's mouth stilled. His head lifted and he stared down at her in the dimly lit room, but his fingers kept moving between her legs. He found the small bud of her clitoris and circled it, circled, circled. Nona's breathing hitched and she shook her head. "I won't be put off, Jude. Not like that, not again."
His fingers missed only one beat as he said, "Ask then."
"Why did you never tell me your full name? Why didn't you tell me your mother was so bitter?"
Jude's face grew hard. "What would you have thought of me?"
"I'd have thought you had an unfortunate name."
"It's made me who I am." He dipped his head to her breast again, catching the nipple between his teeth and biting--not so gently.
"It's nothing to do with who you are," she insisted.
"It's everything, when all you hear from the time you can talk is how men are hateful, liars, cheats. Nona--please, let me give you pleasure." His fingers moved, thrust slowly inside her, and touched the place that made her splinter into shards of golden glass. She cried out, her hips lifting as her heels braced against the mattress, and could clearly see the triumph on his face as he made her come. "I promised myself I'd be different."
"You're not hateful!" She gritted her teeth against the waves of pleasure clenching and unclenching her body. "Jude!"
"Yes, call my name, Nona." He moved over her, nudging her thighs apart, ready to slide inside her while she was climaxing, but she writhed away.
"Not--yet--"
"Christ, Nona, don't do this to me. It's been so long since I--"
"Since...you?" She reached down to grasp his wrist and pull his hand away from her body. "Are you telling me there's been no one since I left you?"
Jude's face darkened.
"You promised me anything I asked," she reminded him, panting a little. "Tell me."
"There has been no one." He looked away from her in fury, and moved to lie on his back. His fingers sought a jasmine blossom and crushed it.
Nona turned, trembling, onto her side and pressed her breasts against Jude's ribs, running her hand over his chest, following the trail of dark hair down his belly. "For me, either," she whispered.
Jude stared up into the canopy, not responding.
"Now tell me why you're here in Brookton, Jude."
"I found a good investment." He spoke through clenched teeth.
Nona glanced down at his pelvis, where his erection was flagging slightly. Not unexpected, for someone so accustomed to controlling every aspect of his life. To have given himself into her hands this way spoke volumes. Some of the ice around her heart began to thaw. Nona bent to lick at the nipple closest to her. Jude's fist clenched in the sheet.
"And that's all?" She blew a cool breath over the wet skin and watched in the dim light as his nipple puckered. He swallowed hard. "Jude."
"Not all."
"It was me, wasn't it? It was a way to get close to me." Her hand slid down his belly and she traced the vein on the underside of his cock with the lightest of touches. It leaped eagerly beneath her touch, and Jude cursed.
"Christ, Nona! Fuck me or don't, but don't play with me like this!"
She took a firm hold of his erection, and moved to lie on his chest, where she could look right into his eyes. "It's not about fucking anymore, Jude. Answer me. Did you buy the Brinkley place as a way to get close to me?" Her thumb moved in a slow caress across the weeping tip of his penis.
Jude himself had taught her what he liked best on all those hot nights in his apartment, or in his car with the seats tipped all the way back, or on a blanket in the hot Miami sand long after dark. Nona could feel him tensing as his body reacted to this treacherous pleasure, and knew she was moments from being thrown on her back and ridden roughly, hungrily. Something in her wanted him to lose control, wanted to feel that hot hardness parting her, filling her, pushing her to the edge, but not before she had her answers.
"What do you want? What the fuck do you want, Nona?"
"I want you to admit you came to Brookton for me, and me alone, and buying Brinkley's place was just a way to get to me. Admit it, Jude."
"All right, yes, I admit it. Is that what you wanted?" He erupted from beneath her and tossed her onto her back as he arched over her. Jude pulled her wrists above her head and pushed his knee rudely between her thighs.
Nona opened her legs without a word, staring into the black fury of his eyes. There was a moment when she thought he might walk away, might leave them both thrumming on this fever pitch of unsatisfied desire, but then his hips drove forward and he entered her as swiftly, as unerringly, as ever. And her body lifted, curved, arched to receive him.
"Yes, that's what I wanted," she whispered on an sigh of breath that matched his long sliding entry. Her legs lifted to lock her ankles behind his thighs. She rocked with every motion of his body.
"God." His groan seemed to come from his very spine. "It's like coming home. Why did you leave, Nona? How could you give this up? It's...so...good. So...oh, Christ...so good."
"Let go of my hands, Jude. Let me hold you. Let me touch you." It wasn't yet time to say it. Not quite, though she had her answer at last. It wasn't that he didn't love her.
He simply didn't know how to love her. He'd never known love, and this thing that had happened to him--every bit as much an obsession as her own--had turned her into something else entirely, an object to be acquired and controlled. The knowledge that she had controlled him all along made her tremble. She could teach him what love meant. It might have begun with physical attraction, but there was more, buried deep inside him. It would be enough.
The sick feeling of the past two years eased at last. When Jude released her wrists, it was to twine his hands in her hair, so he could hungrily capture her mouth with his. He thrust into her body almost harshly, but Nona wanted all of him this time. She pulled his chest down to press hard against hers, arching up to meet each ramming push, feeling his pubic bone pressing hard against her mons, spiking her own pleasure into wave after wave of heat.
"Harder," she breathed into his mouth.
"Nona." He was resisting her urging, and she knew it. Even in his harsh passion he was holding back from her as he had always done. This time she would not let him.
"Harder." She clenched her hands, digging the tips of her fingers into the small of his back, pressing him so tightly to her she truly could not tell where their bodies separated. "Give it all to me, Jude. Jude...Judas...Judas..."
"Nona...Christ, Nona!"
And as she tangled her legs with his, locking him down so he had to buck hard against her, she felt Jude coming inside her, a hot, drenching pulse, and another, and yet another, so deep he was touching bottom.
"Nona. Nona..." Jude's lips brushed her throat, and then her mouth, and then he lifted his head to look down at her. The fury was gone, and in its place she saw a yielding lassitude. Nona lifted a hand and pushed back the sweaty hair from his forehead.
"I love you, Judas Benedict," she breathed.
Jude flinched.
Nona held him tightly and wrapped her legs around his waist. "You're not going anywhere."
"There's no such thing as love. Don't confuse intense sexual pleasure with something as stupid as infatuation."
"Ah, what your mother did to you." She cupped her palms to his cheeks. "I wish you'd told me! Think of the t
ime we've lost."
"You don't know what you're talking about, Nona. This is some sort of--"
"I do know what I'm talking about. I love you." She pulled his mouth down to hers, though he resisted. One light kiss. "It's not obsession, not anymore." A second kiss, longer than the first. Jude held himself tensely. "And I'm not a possession to be bid for at auction. If you want to win me, you'll only do it with the truth. I'll start...how's that? I fell in love with you two years ago. I've been in love with you since. And this afternoon, I knew it all over again. I wanted nothing more than to go into your bedroom, or have you pull me down on that rug and--"
"Shut up." He stopped her mouth with his. A long, dizzying kiss, with his tongue shoving between her lips. Nona ground her pelvis against his, and felt his body stir inside her. "Damn it, Nona!"
"It's been two years. I don't think you can say 'There's no need to lie. I'll fuck you all the same' anymore, can you? Because you know it's not a lie."
"There's no such thing as love," he repeated. "It's only a construct, a daydream, a way to bind someone."
"Then I'm bound," she said. "Call it what you will...go ahead, be a coward. Don't face the truth. But don't lie to me either." She moved beneath him, starting a slow, steady rhythm as she felt him hardening inside her. "Come on, Jude...make love to me this time."
"It's sex, nothing more."
"Your mother lied to you because she was hurt and she wanted to hurt your father, even if it was by hurting you. But I won't lie to you...I never have, and you know it."
"All you wanted from me was sex, Nona." Jude was beginning to catch her rhythm, though she knew it was reluctantly.
"At first, yes. But not later. Later, it was love. And love's what made you follow me here after all this time." She squirmed beneath him, pushing at his chest, and Jude allowed her to shove him onto his back and slip atop him, settling him deep inside her body as she rode him. He looked into her eyes.
"I don't believe in love." He shuddered. His hands clung to her hips now, helping her move, building up friction.
"Do you believe in me?" Nona leaned down to let her nipples brush against his. She was almost undone. All that remained was one final admission from Jude.
"Christ--yes--here, move like this--ahhh--sit back--"
"Oh, yes. So good. Do you?"
"I believe in you, Nona. I believe in this."
Nona smiled before her head tipped back and her body convulsed around Jude's willing cock. He moved her body harder, faster, against his, groaning as he came.
"I believe in us," she whispered into his ear when she slumped onto his chest. "You're not unloved. Not at all."
"Us," sighed Jude.
"It may take a little getting used to, but I'm sure I can help."
Jude's kiss, when it came, was slow and sweet. "I believe in you," he said again. "Nona."
Nina Merrill
Nina Merrill started writing stories in elementary school and wrote her first full-length novel in a spiral-bound notebook at age thirteen, followed by several practice novels. Her favorite Christmas present was a typewriter and a ream of paper. After college, she took a job with a large international corporation, programming computers and writing technical documentation. A few years ago, she rediscovered writing during a prolonged period of insomnia and began to indulge her passion with a vengeance. Nina is currently making the leap from corporate drone to mild-mannered bookseller in an independent bookstore in Washington, where she can feed her addiction to fiction. Nina currently lives with her computer geek husband in a quiet happy house full of books, animals, and dust.
You can learn more about Nina by visiting her website: http://nina_merrill.livejournal.com/
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