by Ella Fields
My mind began to spin. I was thinking maybe I was still a little too drunk.
“… out of all the factions, ours has the reputation as the most ruthless.”
I listened, I watched, and I couldn’t help but ask, “Did you want to join?”
Jude stood, taking the paper with him to the kitchen. “I did, yeah.”
I followed, getting a glass of water while he scavenged for something in the third drawer. “So you knew it was messed up, and you still wanted in?”
Lighter in hand, he lit a corner of the paper aflame and dropped it into the sink.
We both watched it burn.
“Red, no one knows just how messed up something is until they experience it for themselves.” Jude stared at the vanishing paper, then turned on the tap. “I’d wanted it more than anything in the world.”
He went upstairs before I could needle him further, but I stayed until the scent of smoke cleared from the kitchen, more questions arising than what were answered.
The bell over the door tinkled, and I marched straight for the counter, smiling at Veronica, who was working the old coffee machine. “She in?”
Veronica rolled her eyes. “Please, she lives here.”
I laughed, but it died quickly when my aunt appeared, her hair pulled back in a loose braid with a mermaid clip and flour dusting her denim apron. “Twice in one week,” she said with forced surprise. “Am I lucky, or what?”
“Extremely,” I said, grinning.
She leaned over the chocolate powder-coated counter, studying me. “That husband of yours must be a real fraud, after all.”
“The worst kind,” I said, but I was still grinning, unable to quit thinking about the previous night. That could be because I was still feeling a little worse for wear after all that champagne, or because I was struggling to make sense of Jude’s actions.
Protector or extreme tormentor? Both, possibly.
I’m the only one allowed to taste your tears.
“Out with it,” she said. “You’ve got that look.”
I feigned offense. “I came for the coffee.”
“And to ask me something. You know the saying about eyes being the windows into people’s souls?” I nodded, and she stabbed a finger at me. “Never believed it until I held you in my arms. They give you away every time.”
I’d need to work on that. Pity Jude didn’t destroy my soul instead of my heart. Maybe that would have hurt less. I was determined to make sure he didn’t decimate both.
I chewed my lip, taking a quick look around the almost empty coffee shop. “My dad.”
Ray instantly stiffened. “You haven’t asked about him in years.”
“He’s your brother,” I said unnecessarily. “I need to know one thing and one thing only, and I know you can help me.”
After seeing the type of people Nightingale kept on the payroll and knowing the lifestyle my mother liked to live, I couldn’t help but wonder if I needed to ask more questions.
If I should have done so long before now.
“You know I can’t say anything, Fern.” Her voice gentled, eyes darting around. “And you know, or you will soon, what could happen if I do.”
Hope was squashed by fear.
If Jude was right about their punishments, and deep down, something nudged that he was, then I couldn’t do that to her. Reluctantly, I nodded, sliding off the torn plastic of the stool. “You’re right, and I shouldn’t have thought to ask.”
“You should,” she said, and my eyes shot to hers. It took everything I had to keep my expression somewhat neutral as she began wiping down the countertop, humming a tune I only vaguely recognized.
“Why are you humming the Australian anthem?” Veronica asked, laughing a little.
“I hear the winters there are like spring here,” Ray said, daydreaming and airy. “You know I love me some springtime weather.”
“So weird,” Veronica mouthed to me.
My aunt raised a brow, and smiling, I backed up to the door. “Catch you crazy ladies later. I need a nap after finally turning in that paper.”
Australia.
She wouldn’t have said that unless he was there, but I had to wonder, why so far away?
Before I could ponder it anymore, a black Town Car pulled up to the curb in front of my car.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
A tinted window rolled down. “Get in, Fern.”
With my heart beating in my ears, I slid over the leather seat and closed the door, the car pulling away instantly. “What’s up?” I said with as much calm as I could force.
Mom was clicking away on her phone. “You’re missing something, and we need to rectify that as soon as possible.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, and she didn’t deign to fill me in. Her phone rang, and I listened to her squawk into it for the ten-minute drive to the docks.
We pulled up outside a long row of warehouses, and the car waited as we headed inside. Mom’s heels clipped over the asphalt, echoing as the roller door went up, revealing hundreds of crates and boxes.
We walked into the dark. The door rolled closed behind us, trapping the scent of brine and erasing the shriek of a lone gull. I followed the winding path between stacked mayhem behind my mom, one that she seemed to know by heart, until a small bright light from a windowed room came into view.
Inside, a guy riddled with tattoos with a piercing through his nose tipped his chin up at me in greeting.
“Uh, hi,” I said, flinching when he snapped on some black gloves.
Then I remembered.
Jude’s tattoo. The picture in the foyer of our home. The giant one at Nightingale headquarters.
“Sit down, Fern.”
I think that was the first time I wished my husband was present since the moment he became my sworn enemy. And as my limbs trembled, my every exhale shorter than the last, I knew.
I knew with concrete certainty he’d encouraged me to drink until I could hardly see for my own good.
I wished he was here to do the same now.
Left with no other choice, I swallowed the rising fear and dropped onto the chair, my chest facing the back and my arms hugging it. My back was prepared with clinical swiftness.
I squeezed my eyes closed at the sudden hum of the gun, but the tears escaped anyway.
Fern
I was dropped off at the curb, my mom’s driver speeding away.
The silence swallowing our street, the darkness seeping from inside the house before me made the eroding ache in my back so much worse.
I wiped beneath my eyes, my fingers were probably black and my cheeks too, and walked up our short drive to let myself in.
A lamp clicked on outside the living room. “Where were you?”
I would’ve screamed, but just flinching hurt like hell, and I was too spent to bother. “Oh, you know. Just getting maimed for life.”
Jude launched out of the armchair he’d been waiting in, wearing plaid pajama pants and nothing else. My eyes dragged up his ribbed, solid torso, every darkened crevice absorbing the buttery glow of the lamp behind him, to his eyes.
They were filled with something I’d never seen before, and I didn’t want to take a leap of faith by thinking it was something it definitely was not. Fear.
His next words were sharper than the needle used upon my flesh. “What did they do?”
My tongue was too thick, the sides of it battered from my gritted teeth as a thousand knives had drilled into my back. “The tattoo.”
He cursed, gently grasping my wrist and turning me into the light of the lamp. The back of my dress had been cut open, exposing my new scars for him. I felt his hand hovering, fingers curling over the red, freshly inked skin, but they didn’t touch.
He knew firsthand just how badly it hurt. “Come upstairs. I have some cream for it.”
Too stunned from the evening’s events, I didn’t think to question why he was being nice or if it was a trap. I simply followed
him upstairs to his room and waited outside, not wanting to enter. In the short time we’d lived here, I’d never once stepped foot inside it.
From where I was standing, it was sparsely dressed in a much similar way to his room back home. Grays and blacks soaked up the moonlight, spraying bursts onto the dark bookshelves lining one wall.
I wondered which books he’d brought with him, and what he’d chosen to leave behind. For although his room here was huge in its own right, it paled to the size of his room at his dad’s place.
Jude exited his bathroom with some type of cream in hand. Gesturing to the guest bathroom down the hall, I walked there and waited as he uncapped the tube and switched on the light.
His touch was fire, the pain a steady burn that spread with every careful swipe of his fingers. I bit my lip so hard that I tasted more blood.
“Mine was done right after,” he said, so soft, I almost didn’t hear. “I’m surprised they let you leave the hotel without it.”
“We had just gotten married,” I whispered, not trusting myself to use my entire voice.
He hummed. “For a shark with the sharpest teeth I’ve ever seen, your mother is shockingly soft on you.”
“I’m beginning to see that,” I whispered again. “And that you’re probably right about it doing me more harm than good.” It was as if I’d spent my life living in the sun, never knowing what true night looked like, nor how it tasted.
Now I knew it was luxuriously toxic, a bitter red wine, and I was still learning. Undoubtedly, I could have been better prepared for this new world that had always existed alongside my own and many others. Maybe then, each new revelation wouldn’t feel like a slap to the face.
Not that I’d even know what that felt like.
Jude took his time until every ounce of ruined skin was smothered in the heavy, oily barrier. “No, I think she was right to make you exactly the way you are.”
Cold swept in, and I turned to find only the tube of cream remained.
Out on the main street, a cobbled road filled with roaming weeds, I stared up at Cory’s vine drowned window and called her.
She hadn’t answered the door, so I’d sent her a text telling her I was outside. No response, and as I saw the time, realizing I’d been standing there for twenty minutes, I had a feeling she wasn’t about to humor me at all.
I missed her. The diamonds on my hand taunted, flashing under the muted shine from the streetlamp above. I stared at them, then back up at her window.
The light inside went out, and I dragged myself to my car.
Our house was dark, but Jude was home. Surprisingly, he spent a lot of time there, mainly in his room or the gym he’d set up in the garage.
He exited the latter when I walked in and dumped my phone and keys on the entry table. Rubbing a towel down his face, he slung it over his shoulder. It slid down his bare back and hit the floor. He didn’t bother picking it up.
“Hey,” I said, and not sure why I’d said it, or where to put my eyes. He was shirtless. Again. Gray sweats clung to his defined hips. He was still the worst person alive, but even the worst people could have moments of decency.
There was none of that present now, though. Jude’s hand encircled my wrist, halting me in the hallway. “You can’t keep doing this. They’ll find out, and no one can know it’s a fucking sham.”
I frowned, then smiled. He thought I’d been on a date. “No one will know,” I said, pulling my wrist free. “Chill.”
I made it up the stairs before I was planted against the wall outside the guest room. “You will stop,” he said through his teeth, eyes so bright, I thought they might actually glow. “You will go to school, see your friend if she’ll still have you, but then you’re to come home.”
Rage. That was rage in his eyes, weighing his words and rolling off his damp skin. The heat of it wrapped around me like a tantalizing hug. “You can’t control me, Jude. Now let go.”
His nostrils flared, and then, he grinned. “Never. Ask me what I’m afraid of.”
I frowned. “Jude…”
He closed the tiny gap, our chests almost touching. “Just ask me.”
“Fine.” Tilting my head back to meet his gaze, I asked with as much indifference as I could summon, “What are you afraid of, Jude Delouxe?”
His smile vanished, every cruel edge of his beauty returning. “You.”
Our mouths moved at the same time, colliding so hard I tasted blood when his tongue slid over mine. He didn’t seem to care. I didn’t care. I grabbed his waist, fingers dragging and digging into every muscle. They climbed his chest, and he groaned, stealing my lip with his teeth.
A curse, violent and drugging, infiltrated my mouth when my hands pushed at his sweats. “Off,” I panted.
He didn’t listen, but he picked me up and carted me into the spare room. I was thrown on the bed, Jude barking, “Off, too,” as he removed his sweats and briefs.
I peeled off my apricot dress and threw my bra across the white bedding. It tumbled to the floor, and then Jude crawled onto the end of the bed. “Stop.”
Fingers tucked inside the elastic of my panties, I frowned. “I don’t want to.”
His grin was a thing of evil perfection, and I wanted to kiss it off his exquisite face. “Allow me.”
“Oh,” I murmured, my hands falling into his hair when his head lowered and his nose aligned itself with my center.
He inhaled deep, groaning a hot exhale over the fabric, and then he carefully tugged the damp panties down my legs. His mouth visited me for all of a second before he was staring up at me with barely contained need.
I could hardly keep up with what was happening, let alone remember that we shouldn’t do this. That I shouldn’t do this.
The idea of stopping—unfathomable.
He needed me, and I’d never felt it so potently, never as ferocious as right now.
It gave me the courage to say, “Wanna know something fucked up?”
He hummed against my swelling flesh, licking and sucking.
“I wasn’t on a date tonight. I tried to see Cory.” He stilled. “In fact, ever since you slid the ugliest, tackiest ring of all time onto my finger, I haven’t been able to even look at someone else.” I swallowed over the knot forming in my throat. “And I hate it. I hate you.”
He rose onto his knees, a naked god attacked by moonlight. “I fucking hate that I’m so relieved right now, and I hate you, too.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, and then he was eating my mouth with his, his body fitting itself over mine.
I made to pull away, to catch my breath, but every time I tried, I couldn’t do it. I needed to stay synced with him—swallowing his every breath, touching every part of him—and to drown inside the burning and fizzing erupting under my skin.
And then he was pushing inside me.
I tried to stop it, to just stomach it and hope it wouldn’t hurt too bad, but my entire body seized. He was too big, so big, and I’d never had anything thicker than half a finger inside me before.
He kept pushing forward, a slow crawling fire. “You’re so fucking tight.”
My mouth tore away from his, my head rolling back with my arching spine as I screamed, silent and breathless.
“Fern?” he asked, the sound drenched in a red fog. “Fuck.” Fingers gripped my chin, tilting my head down for his wild eyes to search my own. “You… You’re a virgin,” he said, blinking profusely.
“Was,” I wheezed, trying to focus on his face and not the searing pain.
His eyes lit up, and a shocked burst of laughter coated my lips. “You beautiful fucking liar.”
“I’m not a liar,” I said through gritted teeth. “I never said I wasn’t one.”
Jude’s smile waned. “But the guys you brought home.”
“Three,” I said. “Three guys who bailed as soon as they realized I didn’t want to do anything other than dry hump them and make out.” I tried to relax beneath him, but it was almost impossible. “Can you m
ove or something,” I whined. “Hurts.”
“Searching for what I gave you, were you?” Our noses brushed, and he blew hair from my forehead. “Why? Why not take it further with someone else?”
I didn’t want to answer that, and I didn’t have to.
His shoulders fell with a rough exhale. “I don’t deserve this.”
I smiled a little. “You don’t think I know that?”
He kissed me tenderly and whispered, “Wrap your arms and legs around me.” I did as instructed. “Good. Fuck, you feel like you were made for me to live inside you.”
A spark ignited in my stomach, and my arms tightened around his neck.
Dragging his lips across mine, Jude slid his arms under me and began to gently thrust. “Breathe, Red.” I released a huge rush of air I’d been holding, some of the tension fading from my limbs. “Now kiss me.”
I kissed him, felt one of his arms slide out from beneath me for his hand to coast up and down my side. I shivered, clenching around him, and he groaned. “There’s my little freak,” he whispered. “Always so responsive with me.”
I moaned, the heat from the pain morphing into a heady mixture of both pain and pleasure.
“Just for me,” he said, groggy and low, his hips rolling into me now before rearing back and then slowly pushing forward. “I’d almost forgotten how good it feels to taste you, your mouth, your cunt.” His lips glided over my jaw and down my throat. “Your skin.” Teeth sank into my neck, and I gasped. “And your pain.”
My legs quaked. “Jude.”
“Can I make my virgin bride come all over my cock?”
I couldn’t breathe. His mouth stole mine, and all I could do was lay there as his tongue and lips assaulted me. “I’ll bet I can,” he murmured, a wicked laugh spilling over my lips, “I’ll bet you come so fucking hard for me, you’ll forget what your name is, let alone the fact I destroyed your hymen…”
I exploded into fragments, carried among the stars.
Jude gripped the side of my face, our foreheads touching as his hips jerked with mine. “Now look what you’ve gone and done,” he rasped, kissing me long and hard, our eyes unable to detach as we shook and choked on each breath. “I think you’ve more than ruined my life, Wife.” His lashes fluttered as he drank in my face. “You’ve ruined me.”
