I sighed my answer.
“Okay, okay. So you can’t physically keep your distance from him, but keep your emotional distance from him. That’s all I’m saying, Luce,” he said, sounding more tired than anything else. That was the same way I felt. “And no more lying next to him with a bunch of blankets and shit, dressed in nothing but a tiny tank top and my underwear. Okay?”
“Are you asking or telling?”
“Do you really need to ask, Luce?”
“After the whole thing tonight . . .” I said, trying not to replay it in my head. “Yeah, I need to ask.”
“Asking. I’m always asking, Luce,” he said. “Sometimes I just ask with a little extra enthusiasm.”
I heard an almost-smile in his voice and could feel my own starting to bloom. “Sometimes? More like all the time.”
He gave his low laugh. “Yeah, you’re right. But the only reason I’m asking with enthusiasm is because I care about you, Luce. I care about you more than I’ve ever cared about anything else. I’d do anything, sacrifice anything, and say anything to protect you.”
“I wouldn’t put Anton Xavier high on the list of what I need protecting from,” I replied.
“I would,” he answered instantly. “And if you’re having a tough time understanding where I’m coming from, just put yourself in my shoes. What would you do if you found out I was working for some rich, fine chick who would do anything to get me into bed, and then you called one night to say good night and found me cozied up next to her?” He paused, probably more to drive the point home than to catch his breath. “Would your reaction be so different from mine?”
I wanted to snap back with, Of course it would, or, Hell yes, but I didn’t. Because I knew he was right. Jude had made me understand his point of view, and that was a feat worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.
“No, it wouldn’t,” I admitted reluctantly. “I’d claw that bitch’s eyes out through the phone if I needed to.”
Jude was laughing in earnest now. Hearing him laugh made me chuckle, too. “So we understand each other, Luce.”
“Always,” I said, yawning around my laughter. “Sometimes it just takes us a while to get there.”
“Sometimes?” he said. “How about all the time?”
I lay back down and burrowed into my pillow. “Thanks for calling fifty times and apologizing.”
“Thanks for answering on the fiftieth call and accepting.”
The moment after we hung up, I was free of the rest/awake limbo land. I didn’t wake up once until my little-man alarm clock was bouncing on my bed, bearing pancakes in the shape of footballs.
It was Friday night again. Our weekly dinners with our thrown-together family already felt like a time-honored tradition. Last week we’d made manicotti and garlic bread, and this week we were making our special guest’s favorite meal: cheeseburgers and fries.
Jude had flown in earlier this afternoon, and even though I fought tooth and nail to get the day off so I could pick him up at the airport, Anton had had a big day full of meetings and conference calls, and said that if ever he needed an admin, today was the day. So I’d been stuck at the office when Jude had landed. I knew he was probably already at our apartment, just waiting.
This afternoon had been a torturous practice in patience.
I was watching my computer screen like a hawk, so when it changed over to five p.m., I was out of my seat and halfway to the door before anyone else had powered down their computers over in cubicle city. Anton had gone to an off-site meeting an hour ago, so I didn’t have to check with him to see if he had any last-minute tasks for me before I left.
Once I was inside the Mazda, I fought every instinct to NASCAR my way back to the apartment. I forced myself to follow the speed limit, and I even made myself pull over at the mall to make a quick purchase.
My watching LJ evenings and weekends was working out better than any of us could have imagined. He listened to me as much as a minicaveman could, he helped me with chores around the apartment, and I could even take him out in public without having to worry about leaving behind a trail of chaos.
However, the store I was heading to now wasn’t one I wanted to take a little boy into. It didn’t take me long to pick out what I thought Jude would like best, since he wasn’t hard to please when it came to lingerie. I paid for it, and was back to the Mazda in less than ten minutes.
Once I was in my parking spot, I checked the mirror. Applying a coat of lipstick and adding a touch of bronzer, I was good as good could be right now. I’d worn my new cobalt skirt and a sleeveless wrap blouse, paired with a patent-leather pair of red heels that were sure to drive Jude a little wild. These were his favorite shoes of mine, although he preferred it when I wore them with nothing.
I was hoping that was exactly what he had planned for tonight. Logistics-wise, we were going to have to get creative, but you know what they say: Necessity is the mother of invention.
I jogged up the stairs as fast as I dared in these four-inchers, and continued the trek down the hall. As had become the norm, I could hear laughter as I approached the apartment, but for the first time in weeks, my Jude’s was thrown into the mix. My heart hurt hearing him without the filter of a phone. His voice, his laugh, was meant to be experienced filter-free.
I threw the door open and burst inside. The room went silent following my dramatic entrance. I didn’t notice anyone else; I couldn’t have even told you who was there and where they were standing. All I saw was him.
And all he saw was me.
I barely had time to drop my bags before he made it across the room. His arms wound around me and he pulled me hard against him.
I was home.
“Luce,” he breathed, weaving his fingers into my hair.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and dropped my face into the curve of his neck. I inhaled his scent. I inhaled him. “I missed you, too.”
“I missed you more.”
“Oh, yeah?”
His mouth dropped to my ear. “Yeah.”
“Prove it,” I said, pressing my lips into his neck.
Leaning back, he cupped my face in his hand, holding it steady while his mouth lowered over mine. He kissed me gently, almost tenderly. It was sweet and soft, and the kind of kiss that could have melted me into a pile of mush if he hadn’t been holding me so strongly.
His lips moved mine apart before his tongue entered my mouth. When it touched mine, gliding and exploring with the excitement of a first touch and the familiarity of a last touch, a slow moan escaped out of me. My hands left his neck, roaming the rest of his body like they couldn’t get to the next place fast enough. His hands followed my lead, up, down, around and around. Gliding, squeezing, digging. It was enough to make my head spin.
When my teeth grazed the tip of his tongue, the breath caught in his lungs, before he shoved me back up against the wall. His body pressed against the front of me was as hard as the wall against my back. He was hard in all the right places. All the places that made heat surge into the center of my body.
“Okay, this is family dinner and movie night.” Holly’s voice entered the world Jude and I created whenever we were together. “Not swingers night at the seedy theater that has a back entrance.”
I groaned in protest when Jude’s mouth left mine, but his hands didn’t. They stayed on the curve of my hips in such a way that I could still feel that desire between my legs growing.
“How was that for proving it?” he said, his chest rising and falling hard.
“I’ll let you know later tonight,” I said. “After everyone is tucked in my bedroom and you tuck me in.” I arched a brow in suggestion.
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Do you think it would be rude if we told everyone it was time to get lost?”
I laughed and grabbed his hand in mine. “Maybe just a little.” Towing him behind me, I made the rounds.
Holly was standing behind LJ with her hands covering his eyes. “Are you two done?” she said with a wink.
“No promises,” Jude answered.
“Yes,” I said, elbowing him. “For now, at least.”
“Flippin’ rabbits,” she muttered with an eye roll before uncovering LJ’s eyes.
LJ had on a Chargers jersey that was a couple sizes too big, and his tongue was blue from licking the lollipop in his hand that was as big as his face. If he was hoping this little guy would be tucked in and asleep before midnight, Uncle Jude shouldn’t have loaded him up with a thousand grams of sugar a couple of hours before bedtime.
“Why are Aunt Luce and Uncle Jude flippin’ rabbits?”
My eyes bulged as Jude tried to muffle his laugher behind me. It wasn’t working out so well.
Holly froze on her way into the kitchen. “Because they like to be . . . petted.” Holly shook her head. Seeing her like this, tongue-tied, was a rarer occurrence than a solar eclipse. “Because they like to . . . hu—”
“Because they’re cute and fluffy,” Thomas interrupted.
LJ’s eyebrows came together for one second before he got to work on his lollipop. “Oh, okay.” Running over to his toy box, he started rummaging through it. Crisis averted.
Holly thanked Thomas with a smile.
“Good save, Thomas,” I said, grabbing a beer from the fridge for Jude. Angling it against the counter, I drove my palm down on it. The cap popped off, tinkling when it hit the floor.
“Damn,” Jude said, when I handed him the beer. “You know how turned on I get when you do that.”
“Oh, God, you two. Really?” Holly groaned, sounding more jealous than irritated. Grabbing something off the floor, she marched toward Jude and me. Holding up LJ’s Spider-Man bouncy ball, she stared us both down. “You know how back in the day they used to put balloons between boys and girls at school dances to make sure they kept their distance?”
I gave her a really? look. “You’re not ramming that thing against my boobs.”
“You’re right, I’m not.” She gave me a sweet smile before jamming the ball in between Jude and me. South of our belly buttons. “There, now the rest of us can actually eat tonight, since you won’t be able to grind up on each other every two seconds.”
Jude looked down at the ball between us and burst into laughter. “Man, Luce. You been telling on me again?” he said, flexing his hips against the ball, successfully shoving me against the fridge. “You know I like it kinky, but even for me, this might be a stretch.”
I sighed. “I’m sure it wouldn’t stop you.”
“No,” he said, tilting his beer at me. “No, it wouldn’t.”
“Mom?!” LJ shouted from the toy box. “What’s kinky?”
Jude’s face froze in surprise. Holly gave him a shove before clearing her throat.
“It’s when a chain gets tangled up,” Thomas said, all matter-of-fact.
“Oh,” LJ replied, before going back to unloading the entire contents of the toy box.
“Nice save, my man,” Jude said, lifting his chin at Thomas.
Thomas shook his head as he continued to stack cheeseburgers onto a serving tray. “So today I’m ‘your man,’ but not too long ago I was Peter Pan. What earned me the upgrade?”
“First off, I called you Peter Pan because I’m a jealous dick who’d just found you undressing my girl,” Jude explained. “And you’re ‘my man’ because you’ve been looking after the three most important people in my life.”
Thomas fought his smile. “What do you know? The dumb jock is deep.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Jude said, taking a drink of his beer. “I’ve heard enough dumb-jock jokes to last an eternity.”
“And I’ve heard enough Peter Pan jokes to last two,” Thomas tossed back, before heading to the table with a tray holding more cheeseburgers than we could eat in a week.
Jude took another drink before examining the bottle. “PBR?” he said, looking impressed. “Luce, you know how to treat me right.”
I wrapped an arm around him because, after three weeks of being apart, I didn’t want to be apart anymore. “Nothing but the best for my man.”
“Come on. Let’s eat,” he said, ringing an arm around my neck. “I’m starving.”
“Me, too,” I said, lowering my voice, since young ears and sexual innuendos shouldn’t go together. “But not for food.”
Jude stopped in place. His mouth lowered just outside my ear. “You keep up that kind of talk and I will throw you down and do you on this table, too.”
Goose bumps were already rising, but when his teeth grazed my earlobe, those goose bumps exploded to the surface even quicker.
Fine. Two could play at this foreplay game. I had to rise up on my tiptoes to settle my mouth at his ear. “I’m so ready for you my panties would be wet . . .” I said, going one step further and sucking the tip of his earlobe between my teeth, “if I was wearing any.”
His breath hitched between his teeth.
Flashing him an innocent smile, I continued to the table. Just as I was sitting down, he came up behind me. “Thanks to you and that filthy mouth, I’ve got to take a little time-out in the bathroom.”
“What?” I said, spinning in my seat. “We’re just about to eat dinner. A cold shower can wait.”
I chalked up a point for Lucy Larson. She’d won this round of verbal foreplay.
“My dick’s so hard a cold shower wouldn’t even touch it. And I’m not going to sit through dinner with a hard-on tenting my jeans,” he said into my ear. “I’m going to go rub one out. I’ll be right back.”
Speaking of wet panties . . .
“I’ll help,” I said, jumping out of my chair.
He grabbed my hand and pulled me along. “Good. Your hands are softer than mine.”
We’d just about made it to the bathroom, so close I was already reaching for the top button of Jude’s jeans, when a solo knock sounded outside the front door.
A solo knock followed by three fast ones.
I wanted to cry from the letdown. If we’d been two seconds faster, we already would have been behind that closed door and my hand would have been sliding up and down—
“Lookie here. We’ve got a welcoming committee,” India said after swinging the door open.
With Anton at her side.
“Shit.”
Did that just slip out of my mouth?
“‘Hello. Nice to see you. Good of you to make it,’” India said, stepping inside. “These are a few commonly accepted greetings when welcoming someone to your place.” Smirking at me, she gave Jude a quick hug. “It sure is nice to have my arms around your sexy-ass body again. Any idea why we had to shove through a mini army of paparazzi camped out on the sidewalk?”
“Hey, Indie,” Jude said, his eyes locked on Anton. “I hope you kicked each one of those bloodsuckers in the junk on your way up.”
I sighed. I must have been too absorbed and focused on getting up to the apartment to notice that the small crowd of people outside our apartment had cameras around their necks. It seemed wherever Jude Ryder went, so did the photographers. Looked like we wouldn’t be leaving the apartment all weekend, which, actually . . . wasn’t such a bad deal.
“I hope you are hooking up my girl tonight, because she needs some sweet, sweet lovin’,” India said, patting his cheek before heading down the hall. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen Lucy’s cute little freshly F-U-C-K-E-D face.”
“Don’t worry,” Jude answered her, continuing his stare-down with Anton, who didn’t look the least bit threatened. “I plan on taking care of my girl. All. Night. Long.”
I flushed so hard I could feel it bleeding into my neck. “Hi, Anton. Nice to see you,” I said, wrapping both hands around Jude’s arm. “Even for you, this is one hell of a ballsy move.”
“Lucy,” he replied with an amused smile.
I shot him a tight smile before tugging on Jude’s arm. Yeah, that wasn’t happening. “Now, if you’re done talking about our sex life with my boss . . .” I pulled again, harder this time. Nope. One of the
downsides to being with a man who could bench a school bus was feeling like the biggest wimp in the world. “I’ve got a half dozen cheeseburgers with your name on them.”
Jude squared himself in front of Anton, not taking the cheeseburger bait. “You must be Anton.”
How could he make a few harmless words sound like a death threat?
Anton looked pointedly at Jude’s arm draped over me. “And you must be Jude.”
“In the flesh,” he said. “No more phones keeping us apart if you try to cuddle up to my girl again.”
“Jude,” I warned for quite possibly the millionth time in my life.
“Okay. How do we do this?” Anton said, sliding his hands into his slacks. “I haven’t been in a fight over a girl since fifth grade. Do we take it outside? Throw down right here in the doorway? Schedule an appointment? I’m in uncharted territory here.”
I would have laughed had the whole situation been so not funny. Where was everyone else when I needed them to help me separate these two? A peek over my shoulder revealed my answer.
“Oblivious” was the name of the game back in the kitchen.
“Let’s get one thing straight right now. We are not fighting for a girl. Luce is my girl. She will always be my girl.” The veins were starting to bulge in Jude’s neck. We were two stages away from fists flying. “What we’re fighting over is the way you look at my girl. The way I know you think about her. The way I know you want to have her. That’s what we’re fighting over.” Jude straightened his back to stand a little taller. He had a way of making his three-inch advantage seem like he was towering over Anton. “But let’s be honest. Since you and I both know you don’t stand a chance in a fight against me, why don’t we just pretend I’ve just kicked your ass into next year and you stop trying to weasel your way into Luce’s better judgment, heart, or pants. Got it?”
“I’ve never been one to take the easy road,” Anton replied, as calm as if he were conducting a business meeting. “And I don’t like being told what to do, so I’m afraid that’s a no-go, big guy.”
“Anton,” I hissed, wondering if he had a death wish. From what he was saying, I would guess he did.
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