“And you don’t?”
“Hey, I didn’t say it was a flaw. It’s a knack. A propensity. No, a forte. That’s a good one. Forte.” He exaggerated the accent on the word and let go of her hand long enough to hold open the building’s front door. As soon as they were both through, his hand found hers again. “I want you to make up a list of other possible suspects that I can give to my brothers for background checks.”
“That’s not necessary. They don’t need to waste their time.”
“Nah, Reece’s only pleasure comes from running background checks. God knows the dude has no life to speak of.”
A cloud of dust danced across the pavement, and clouds lumbered toward the city from the east, dark and foreboding, promising a storm. The gusty, late spring wind still held enough of a hint of winter that it ripped the heat from her body, but with Jude’s hand encircling hers, she didn’t feel the chill. That hand, so familiar and yet so different, rougher with more calluses than she remembered… It could give pleasure like she hadn’t felt since he last touched her.
Too bad it wasn’t attached to a different man.
As if sensing the direction of her thoughts, he stopped walking and turned her bodily to face him. He’d done a lot of growing up in these last eight years. When she met him in college, he’d still been handsome in the way of a teenager, wholesome and fresh-faced. Now, no trace of that twenty-two-year-old boy remained in his chiseled jaw, wide shoulders, and shadowed pale blue eyes. He towered over her, making her feel petite when she hadn’t qualified as petite since middle school. At five eight, she was constantly fighting a battle against her size-ten jeans, and more often than not, she lost due to long hours at the office, lots of on-the-go food, and no time for a daily workout. She had wide-load hips and D-cup boobs and never thought of either as sexy—until Jude looked at her with that hot gleam in his eyes.
God, why couldn’t he have gained a hundred pounds and lost all his teeth in the last eight years? She hated that she was still attracted to him.
“Fearless Libby,” he said in such a low tone that she almost couldn’t hear him over the wind. She saw the kiss coming. Could have avoided it, but dammit, she wanted it. Wanted to know if having his mouth on hers was as erotic as it had been earlier when he’d kissed her in the hallway.
He dragged his lips over hers, back and forth, back and forth, a barely there caress that lit her up from the inside like a human torch. It wasn’t fair how her body responded instantly to him when she’d spent years having to coax even a mild reaction from it. After Jude devastated her life, sex had become a chore rather than a pleasure, and she’d taken to avoiding even the most casual of encounters. And now here he was again, offering part of what she’d once had. Offering what she burned for, what she shouldn’t still want.
She nipped at his lip, punishing him for making her ache with desire like this, but he didn’t back away. Instead, he took that as an invitation, and the taste of him filled her mouth as he invaded and claimed. She gripped his shoulders, needing the rock-solid weight to steady herself. Her head roared with a jumbled mix of outrage and don’t-you-dare-stop.
No, wait. That roaring sound wasn’t her head. A…car?
Jude yanked away with a curse, and before she fully grasped what was happening, he folded his body into a protective shield around her and spun them to the left. She felt a jarring thump as Jude took the brunt of their landing and heard him grunt in pain, but he didn’t let go of her as they rolled across the pavement. The car with the noisy engine whipped past in a flash of blue and a squeal of tires as it fishtailed out of the lot.
“Damn,” Jude breathed and helped her to her feet again. Her knees wobbled. He steadied her with a hand on her shoulder. “You okay, Libs?”
“Yes,” she said, eying him up and down. He had a tear in the thigh of his jeans and seemed to be favoring his right side. “Are you? Did it hit you?”
“No. Landed hard, but I’m fine.” He grinned. “Better than fine. This is the most fun I’ve had in weeks. Feels good to get the adrenaline going. Wanna have sex?”
Libby huffed out a breath in disbelief. “You’re insane.”
“Depends on your definition. So is that a no?”
“Yes.”
His eyes danced. “Yes?”
“No! I meant yes as in yes, it’s a no. I mean—” She threw up her hands. She never got tongue-tied, and yet she couldn’t seem to string two coherent sentences together around him. But at least she could stand on her own two feet now without wobbling, and she had a sneaky suspicion he’d put her on the defensive for just for that reason. “I’m going home.”
“Good.” All the laughter faded from his expression. “Nobody can try to run you over there.”