Page 43 of Sweet Nightmare

No, this time, there are three years of pain and loneliness and betrayal between us. Three years of denied heat, and need, and an all-encompassing desperation that boils up from a place deep inside me—a place I didn’t even know existed before this moment. This kiss.

And there’s Jude—always Jude—guiding me through the maelstrom and the magic with his sweetness and his strength.

His mouth is soft and warm, his body is wonderful and wicked. And his kiss…his kiss is everything.

Magic and mystery.

Power and persuasion.

Right and oh so wrong in all the best, most important ways.

It’s every escape I’ve ever dreamed of. Every wish I’ve ever made. Every crash of the deep and endless ocean against the shore.

I gasp at the intensity of it, the all-consuming command that pulls me in and drags me down, over and over and over again. It bathes me in its perfection, overwhelms me with its power, threatens to break me into a million tiny pieces all over again. And I. Don’t. Care.

I can’t, not when every beat of my heart is his name and every breath in my body is the call of my soul to his.

The world we live in may be a nightmare, but this moment—this kiss—is a dream come true. One I never ever want to end.

I gasp out his name, and though it’s just a broken whisper on the sweet, wild wind whipping through the air around us, Jude hears me. More, he feels me and takes instant, desperate, glorious advantage.

He nibbles his way across my lower lip, licks his way into my mouth, strokes his tongue against my own until I’m drowning in the wicked, wonderful heat of him sliding through my veins and into every single part of me.

He feels like the ocean and tastes like the sun breaking across the early morning sky—and nothing in my life has ever felt this good.

My hands clutch at his shoulders, my fingers twist in the wet, untamed strands of his hair, and my body opens to him like a flower to that sun, arms tightening, body arching, everything inside of me reaching for more.

More of him.

More of us.

And more—definitely more—of this, of the sensations Jude calls forth so effortlessly from inside of me with every squeeze of his fingers on my hip and every slide of his body against my own.

I pull him closer, relishing the way he wraps himself around me, the way his warm honey-and-cardamom scent envelops me. But before I can take the kiss even deeper, before I can take him even deeper, the lull in the storm ends.

The sky opens up once more, and rain comes crashing down around us.

And Jude slowly lets me go.

I clutch at him with desperate fingers, determined to hold on to him. And for a second—when he buries his face in my hair and whispers, “I’ve always been crazy about you, Tangelo”—I even think it’s going to work.

I pull him back to me, so tight that I can feel the deep, fast beat of his heart against my own. “Then why?” I whisper through the storm. “Why did you just let me go?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THE OLD KISS

AND RUN

“Because it’s the only way to keep you safe.” I feel Jude’s words—on my skin, in my soul—more than I actually hear them. “And no matter what, that will always be the most important thing to me.”

“It’s not your job to keep me safe,” I tell him.

The look he gives me says he disagrees. “Go back to the dorm, Clementine. There’s nothing for you out here.”

I reach a hand out for him before I can stop myself. “Jude, don’t just—”

But he’s already pulling away—already running away—head bent and shoulders hunched against the wind.

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