“So, Aria, tell me how to find a girl who’ll keep me on my toes like you keep Jude on his.”
Vance shakes his head at his friend because he probably assumes this attempt at learning something will be hopeless.
I pull out my right earbud, squaring my shoulders for the conversation we’re about to have.
“Are you ready to settle down with a girlfriend?” I pose the most obvious question.
Kingston’s pretty-boy face screws up in disgust. “Bloody hell, no!”
“Then you’re not ready for a girl like me.” I smile meanly.
“So, she’s your girlfriend, Jude?” Vance asks from his seat at the front of the limo, right by the partition that the driver rolled up.
My heart seizes, and everyone in the car is holding their breath waiting for Jude to answer.
“You’re going to put me on the spot like that?” Jude looks like he might leap across the leather seats and strangle Vance.
“Come on, superstar.” Vance wiggles his eyebrows at him.
My hands begin to sweat as I chant over and over in my head, please don’t embarrass me, please don’t embarrass me.
Jude clears his throat. “I fancy Aria, a lot. And I like spending time with her. The reason I invited her on this trip is to see where we can go. If you want to call that a girlfriend, then sure, she’s my girlfriend.”
Blowing out the breath I’m holding, a grin spreads across my lips. Because that was the exact right answer, the one I didn’t even realize I needed Jude to give.
Sure, we have been flirting and trying to sneak around to see each other. He’s met my father and knows a part of me, my singing, that no one else is privy to. But we need to spend more time together. I need to decide if my doubts about him outweigh the pull my heart and mind feel whenever I think about him.
“I’ll decide if and when I want to claim that title.” I cross my arms with a smug grin.
The limo zooms down the motorway, and I get lost in my music once more. When it begins to slow about an hour and a half later, I turn to look out the windows, discovering we’ve arrived in Brighton.
The town of Brighton is unique and charming, with shops along a main road, restaurants facing the water, a pier with old-school carnival games, and from what Jude says, a happening nightlife scene. The minute we arrive in Vance’s hometown, we’re driven to his parents’ house. Or, the house that Vance helped purchase for them with money from the contract he signed last year.
It’s a modern, glass and steel thing right on the water, and honestly, it’s not my style at all. To me, it looks like a museum; I prefer the homey, English feel of a local pub, or furniture passed down from your grandmother. But, it’s a long way from my musty row home, and the room his mum shows me to has its own tub, so I’m not going to utter a word of complaint.
“Ready to go?” Jude stops in my doorway twenty minutes after I’ve set my bags down on the bed.
“What? Go where?” I’m surprised we’re moving again so quickly.
“Time to go out. When we have a few days off, we like to let our hair down. And that means lots of alcohol and shenanigans.”
Why do I feel like this bloke and his mates are about to get me into serious trouble? And why do I like the thought of that?
“Give me a few minutes to get dressed. Are we going somewhere posh?” Not that I had clothes nearly as expensive to measure up to the likes of Jude, Kingston, and Vance.
“Jeans and a nice top will do. I can help you pick them out, if you’d like.” His green eyes dance with sexual energy.
Something inside my belly flips, and I know we’re on the precipice of falling into an act we can’t take back. It both surprises me and scares me that I’m excited for it, that the anticipation only adds to the heat building between us.
I shut the door on him for good measure, because if he asks again, I’ll be tempted to let him do more than select my outfit.
Twenty minutes later and we’re out the door again, my threadbare black jeans and the most expensive top I own, a thirty-pound maroon blouse from H&M, looking completely average next to the demigods in their designer clothes. I try to push it out of my mind and focus on the fact that I’m in a new place with no responsibilities … at least for the weekend.
The pier in Brighton is adorable, and the pebble-covered beach is vastly different than the only other sand I’ve felt. When I was seven, my parents took me to Greece to summer and from what I can remember, it was the most magical time I’ve ever had.
But living in Clavering, and never really getting to escape to the coast since my mother left us, I don’t often see the beach or the ocean.
We start the night at a neat Mexican restaurant, with a lounge feel and windows overlooking the ocean.
“A round of tequila shots for the table, and then you can keep the margarita pitchers coming,” Kingston instructs the waitress.
“Oh, I’m fine, thanks, just water,” I beg off.
All three men eye me skeptically, but Vance is the one who speaks. “You’re legal, right?”
“Of course.” My pride is wounded. I’m only one year younger than them.
“So, have a drink. We have a car service, you’re on vacation, who cares?” Vance presents me with the situation.
Jude, who is sitting next to me at the four-person high-top, rubs my jean-clad thigh under the table. “Whatever you choose, I’m going to take care of you tonight.”
His words are meant to soothe, but they only cause a furious simmer to bubble right at the apex of my core. His big hand on my leg, the presence of three alpha males, his words about taking care of me …
If I didn’t have the attention of all three, I would have fanned my face right about now.
“Okay, I’ll have a drink.”
In the end, I do the shot with them and have one margarita. It’s been so long since I had liquor, that the drinks go straight to my head. The buzz stays there long after we’ve inhaled guacamole, fajitas, tacos, and plantains. After dinner, the four of us move to a nightclub, Jude lacing his fingers through mine as we push through the surging crowd. The place is loud and electric, and when he presses his body to mine and begins to sway our hips in time, I become feverish.
My arms wind backward, around his neck, as I lose myself in the music. It’s a techno beat set to a Rihanna song, one perfect for this kind of atmosphere. It pulses with the crowd, and though I’ve always loved music for the voices in it and how it makes me feel emotionally … right now, I’m loving that it’s invading the part of me that needs to move my body.
Jude surrounds me, his long limbs enveloping me, and an unmistakable hardness presses against my backside. When I feel his lips press down on the sensitive spot halfway between my ear and collarbone, I jump, goose bumps breaking loose on my flesh.
“I need some air,” I shout over the noise and point to the exit.
Because I do, and I also need one more quiet moment to consider what I’m about to allow myself to drown in.
My physical, and mental, attraction to Jude.
The sounds of the nightclub begin to fade away as I tipsily stumble out of it, the beer I consumed half an hour ago only adding to the nice hum the drinks created in my system. Instead of booming music and the shouts of people, waves crashing against the beach fill my ears, and I walk toward them.
Jude catches up to me as I sit myself in a red and white striped chair to watch the ocean lap the stones. It gives me a sense of peace I haven’t felt in a very long time.
“Too much for you back there?” he asks as he takes the chair next to me.
I press a hand to my rapidly beating chest. “Not at first, but after a while, I need a break.”
“Sounds a lot like what I’m always thinking,” Jude murmurs, and I turn to look at him.
His eyes aren’t on me but gazing out at the dark line of the horizon, where the murky black water meets the starry sky. A bead of sweat trickles down from his temple to his jaw, and I find myself desperate
to lay my tongue along that path. It’s a strange notion because even with my ex-boyfriend, I never felt the kind of physical pull I do when my eyes hold Jude in them. His dark hair is tousled, wild, and he makes my mouth go dry just studying his profile.
“Is it too much for you? All of this?” I ask, repositioning to lean on my side so that I can face him.
Jude turns to me and doesn’t touch me but we’re close enough that I can feel his heat. “Yes, and no. I was born for this life, brought up in it. Really, it’s all I’ve ever known. I thrive on the attention, the cheers, the boos. My energy builds from the circus of it all, and yet, sometimes, I just want to shut myself up in my room and never come out. I am their prince and their scapegoat. When I’m winning for them, I am untouchable, sitting at the top of the world. And when I cock up, they’re the first to start digging my grave and throwing me six feet under. It’s a lot of pressure. Admitting that probably makes me a wanker, but I have a feeling you won’t spill my secret.”
I get this gnawing feeling that not a lot of people see this side of Jude Davies, if any. It makes me, in turn, feel vulnerable and I’m nervous with the thought that he’s trusting me with his deepest emotions.
“But you have to know that this is what you were meant to do, right? You have more talent in your pinky than most do in their entire bodies.”
Jude’s face grows dark as he nods. “And what about you?”
I snort out a laugh; the beer making my defenses come down. “What about me? A seamstress for a football club? Oh, and you forgot to add nighttime janitor.”
Jude bridges the gap between us, taking a lock of my hair in his hands and rubbing it back and forth as he talks.
“Don’t do that. Don’t act as if you don’t have the singing voice of a bloody angel. You sound better than anyone I’ve ever heard on the radio, Aria, and you’re doing nothing with it.”
Wrenching out of his grasp, fury lights my lowered inhibitions on fire. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know you’re working a dead-end job when you could be providing for your family with the ease of posting a video on YouTube. I might not know much about the recording industry, but I have a feeling you’d be signed in three seconds flat if someone discovered you. You’re wasting time!”
Jude stands, marching down the beach. Is this how it will be with us? This push and pull? The ferocity of emotion and attraction waging war against each other.
I follow him, trying to calm myself down enough to tell him my biggest secret. When I reach him, I tug on his elbow; the moonlight bending around his body as he turns to face me.
I’ve never told anyone, not even my dad, what I am about to reveal to Jude.
“When I was ten, I joined the chorus at my school. I loved it, fell in love with singing right away. The choir director told me I had a real talent and wanted me to start voice lessons on the side. I’d already been a music addict since the first day my dad had played a Nina Simone CD on our living room stereo when I was five. So I went home, professed my love for it, and asked my mom if she could sign me up for lessons. By that point in their marriage, and in my life, my mom was distant. She worked all the time, acted as if every word I uttered was a nuisance, and just generally didn’t want to be around me. I remember it so clearly; my mom looked me in the eye, told me I was a foolish girl to think I could become a singer, and that it was a useless career path. She told me my voice was average, and a week later, she’d packed her things and walked out the door.”
In front of my very eyes, Jude transforms into the very definition of empathy and fury, all at the same time.
“What a bloody cunt.” It comes off his lips like the worst kind of curse.
The word is foul but accurate. All I can do is shrug in the directness of his gaze. I expect him to say more, but Jude only looks at me, assessing, searching. A few moments after I confess about the most shameful moment of my life, he finally speaks.
“We should get back to the club, find Kingston and Vance. It’s getting late.”
21
Jude
I’ve been a gentleman or as much of one as I could possibly be, the entire night. And now I am tired of that.
Creeping across the hall, I come to stand in front of the door to the bedroom Aria is staying in. I’m not sure what Vance told his mum and dad about our situation, but it either wasn’t enough or was too much so that they’d put us in separate rooms.
As if that was going to keep me from getting into her bed.
It’s the first time, aside from the hotel room, that I am in close proximity to Aria, at night, in a bedroom. We finally wrangled Kingston and Vance from the club to go home around two a.m. One had his tongue down a girl’s throat, you can only guess that was Mr. Phillips, and the other had been having a stare off with some bird across the room. Vance claims it was nothing, that she was an old acquaintance, but I’d have to question him about it later as there seemed to be daggers floating between their two glares.
When we finally arrived back to the Morley residence, Aria bid me a good night in an awkward, forced parting gesture. She side-hugged me and then scurried off to her room like a frightened mouse. She was still rattled by the conversation we had on the beach, I know it. It was deep, far too heavy than either of us had intended for this trip to be.
Too bad I’m not more honorable, or that would have given me pause. The scoundrel in me takes no caution, however, as I bypass knocking and simply, quietly let myself into her bedroom.
Aria hadn’t locked the door, and I twist that into a signal that she wants me to pay her a late-night visit. I am about to show her just how interested in her I am, in the best way I know how.
As I inch closer to the bed, wearing nothing but the boxer briefs I typically sleep in, my heart begins to thump. Out of anticipation, but also out of nervousness. What if she kicks me in the bollocks and sends me packing?
“Jude.”
Aria’s quiet voice fills the air of the dark room, and now I know that she watched me enter, cross the floor, and come to stand next to her bed. She’s been awake the entire time.
I kneel next to where she lies on the outermost spot of the queen bed, her body obscured by the duvet. From the scant amount of moonlight filtering through the drapes, I can make out her elegant cheekbones and the way her wheat-blond hair splays over the pillow.
“You have more talent in your pinky than most people have in their entire bodies,” I repeat her own words back to her. “Everything you do matters to me.”
They are simple thoughts, but I hope they get a clear message across to Aria. Since the moment she caught me in the locker room, there has been this unexplainable urge to learn everything about her. From the way she looks while angry, or sad, or happy, to her biggest dreams and the way she sounds as she’s being kissed.
I’m not able to make out the look in her eye after I say these words to her, but it doesn’t matter. Because one second I’m kneeling there, and the next, Aria is throwing herself at me, no other noises ripple in the room aside from our lips bridging the gap between us.
She half-pulls me, and I help the rest of the way by climbing, on top of her. My body fits into the groove of hers with only the duvet between us, and her hands begin to explore every naked part of my skin.
Those tiny hands skim the length of my back and in an instant, I’m so bloody hard for her that my balls ache something bad. Her fingertips tickle my sides as they peruse as my tongue invades her mouth, fucking it like I wish to fuck her.
Aria is squirming beneath me and the sheets, and in one smooth pull, I’m under them with her. From what I can feel, her pajamas are a set of cotton pants and short-sleeved button-up. It doesn’t surprise me that her choice of sleepwear is conservative; if anything, it fuels my desire more. She is both innocent and willingly giving herself to a wolf in wolf’s clothing.
I am no gentleman, as I said. Once Aria allows me full access to her naked body, I’m not going to slow down.
Aria’s breathing is husky, jagged. I can feel the indecision on her tongue; sense it in her body language.
“You have to answer me. It’s the only time I’ll ask because once we start, I won’t be able to stop. So, tell me to stop.”
With all the other girls, sex has been a release. I am a physical man, with a body I work hard for and have built for exerting energy. I can’t be expected to play football all hours of the day, and sex is the next best enjoyable thing. I never cared who they were, how well they conversed. It didn’t bother me that I had no clue where they came from or what their family was like or what they did for a living.
Being with Aria, though? There is this indescribable knowing that shakes me down deep. I care about all of it.
It would be better than even football, of that I am afraid. When I finally touch her skin, feel her come alive under my fingertips, I know I’ll think of nothing else but the distance between my lips and hers. Between my cock plunging into her. Each time she sighs, I feel like I want to live in that sound forever.
It’s cliché to say I have never felt this way, but it is true. I have never felt the maddening desire to repeat this moment over and over again. And nothing has even happened yet.
Nothing has ever been as addicting as she is.
“Stop,” she says quietly, and something inside me dies.
Probably the raging blue bollocks offing themselves, knowing they won’t be getting a release tonight.
“I shouldn’t have asked,” I grumble, my head dropping to the pillow, next to her head.
“Sorry …” Aria murmurs.
This has me tensing. Pulling my chin, up, I palm her face. “Look at me. I did not mean it in that way. I won’t rush you, but once you tell me you’re ready, there will be no holding back. Of course, my cock is disappointed, but that doesn’t mean I’m disappointed. You should feel explicitly comfortable whenever you decide to—”
The Second Coming (Rogue Academy Book 1) Page 9
