Page 43 of Beautiful Vengeance
She hadn’t.
She gripped his chin much the same way he’d held hers earlier.“Don’t you think we’re beyond that?It’s too late.It’s happened.”When he didn’t say anything—foroncenot using that mouth of his—she continued.“I want to feel you, Jude.All of you, with nothing between us.”
“It shouldn’t be like this.”
She laughed, low and desperate.“And how else should it be?Are you going to romance me with sweet words and tell me that you love me?That’s not what this is—something you’ve told me from the beginning.”He still didn’t budge, so she aimed below the belt.“Take what I’m offering or I’ll find someone who will.”
“Find someone who will.”He repeated it like he couldn’t believe she said it.Jude’s fingers tightened hard enough to bruise on her hips.“Do you think for a goddamn second that I’ll let you fuck someone else?”
A thrill went through her at his words, but she fought to keep her face expressionless—a Herculean feat considering their position.“This is temporary, Jude.You told me so yourself.”
“I changed my fucking mind.”
She reached between them and notched him at her entrance, silently daring him to tell her to stop.“Maybe I don’t want you.”
“You want me, sunshine.”He used his grip to guide her down, impaling her inch by glorious inch.“You want me so much it scares the shit out of you.No other man will do, and you damn well know it.”
She rocked her hips, taking him deeper yet, and tangled her fingers in his hair.The wind screamed around them, but she couldn’t care less because all that mattered was the man inside her and the forbidding look on his face.He wanted her as much as she wanted him, even if a part of him hated that.Sloan didn’t care.Everyone else in this world was taking what they wanted with no apologies.It was time for her to do the same.
She licked her way up his neck to bite his earlobe.“You can’t get me out of your system and that pisses you off, doesn’t it?”The sky opened up, rain falling in sheets, plastering her dress to her, slicking their bodies as she rode him.“You want to keep me.”
“Yes.”He lifted her almost completely off him and slammed her down.Jude kept one hand on the small of her back, preventing her from moving away—as if she were going anywhere—and reached up with the other to rip her dress down the front.“I’m keeping you.You had your chance to leave.You didn’t.You’re mine now.”
She picked up her movements, not caring where they were or who might see them through the sheets of rain.“For good.”It was a demand, not a request.If he wanted her, he was very well going to have her.She hadn’t realized she had no intention of letting this man go, but sometime in the last hour it had cemented in her mind.Come hell or high water, they were in this together.
“For good.”Jude palmed one breast, his mouth against her neck.
She leaned back enough to force him to meet her eyes.“And if you lie to me again, I will leave, and I will disappear to where you can never find me.”
“There’s nowhere you could run that I wouldn’t find you.”He shifted, gripping the back of her neck with one hand and stroking her clit with the other.“And that gets you off like nothing else, knowing that I’d rip myself apart to hunt you down, that I wouldn’t rest, wouldn’t eat, would go mad with wanting you until you were with me again.To know that you’re fucking irreplaceable.”
Sloan’s orgasm exploded through her, brought on by his words as much as by what he was doing to her body.He kept her riding him until his strokes became jerky and he came, her name on his lips.She slumped against him, her mind slowly kicking back into gear despite her best efforts to keep the glorious post-orgasm fog around her.
What does it say about me that I find his threatening to hunt me down sexy?That’s not sexy.It’s deranged.
Except…Part of her felt the same way.She hated that he’d lied to her, hated that his looking for information instead of justtalkingto her had brought Romanov dogs down upon them, hated that he’d killed people…But she could understand, no matter how much she didn’t want to.
She wasn’t fierce, like Carrigan or Keira.She hadn’t been willing to go to war when Devlin was killed.All Sloan had wanted was to curl in on herself until the pain passed enough that she could breathe through it.But Carrigan?What would Carrigan have done if her entire family was murdered by the enemy?
The exact same thing Jude has.She wouldn’t have let something as simple as pain or guilt stop her from seeking vengeance.
She didn’t want to understand, but she did all the same.
She lifted her head.“Jude—”
“Not yet.”He helped her stand and fixed his clothing.There was no help for hers.Even if the rain hadn’t made her sundress sheer, the rip down the center ensured there was no way she could cover herself effectively.
There was no one around to see, though it was entirely possible that Sorcha had gotten an eyeful if she’d happened to look out the window at the wrong time.Sloan glanced in that direction, but the rain created a haze that made it difficult to see more than the vague shapes of their houses.“I—”
“I said not yet.”
He started to take her hand, but she jerked away.“If we’re doing this, there’s one thing you’re going to have to come to terms with.You can’t steamroll me anywhere except the bedroom.I won’t stand for it.”She’d been a doormat for far too long.She’d just finally gotten her feet beneath her, and going back to how things had been before wasn’t an option.She refused to allow it to be.
For a moment, it looked like Jude might argue, but he crossed his arms over his chest and raised his eyebrows instead.“Yes?”
Right about then was when she realized they were both soaked to the bone and standing in the rain, and that it was downright foolish to have any kind of conversation out here when his house was a hundred yards away.Sloan shook her head.“No, you’re right.We’ll talk once we’re inside.”
Chapter Eighteen
