Believe (2 page)

Her hands clasped at the curve of her back. The cuffs were tight enough to remind her she was bound, but not tight enough to truly hurt. The edge of the leather poked against the tender flesh of her wrists. Each time she shifted even just slightly, she felt the rasp there, sending waves of pleasure rolling through her senses. Her nipples
throb, throb, throbbed
as the chain with the tiny weights swayed with her breathing.

She knew Jude sat in a chair nearby, watching her with hungry eyes. That knowledge caught her breath, bringing her tongue to swipe over her lips. Lips swollen from his kisses, salty with the taste of him. Of his cock.

She had to imagine it, use her other senses in the absence of her sight and the ability to touch. Imagining it was part of the allure, knowing he was there, knowing how he watched her with greedy eyes, knowing he saw her as beautiful and desirable intensified the experience.

“You’re so beautiful.”

The slow, sticky-warm drawl of his voice brought a hitch to her breath. Such a sexy sound, filled with enough awe that she believed every bit of praise he gave. Made her feel like the most magnificent woman to ever live. Certainly the luckiest one.

He stood. She could hear the rustle and then the steps he took toward where she knelt on the bed. His scent caught her first. That all-man smell he had. Warm. The heat of his body caressed her as he got close enough to lean down and press a kiss on her shoulder.

“I do believe I want you again. I think my cock is foolhardy to undertake such a goal when I just blew down your pretty throat only ten minutes ago. But—” he paused to chuckle, “—where you’re concerned, my cock is a little greedy.”

“Please,” she managed to say. His nearness pulled her from the soft, cushioned space she’d been in. Needing to feel his skin against hers, his cock inside her body where it was meant to be.

He caressed her skin, running his hands up and down her back, she knew, pausing to look at the tattoo that’d started this little interlude. She’d uncovered it and his gaze had gone hooded when she met it in the mirror she stood before. Her knees had gone to rubber when he ordered her to them.

Jude’s cock jumped at the sound the cuffs made when she shifted a little. The tiny shuss of metal against metal and leather. It mixed with the scent of her cunt, the heat of her skin, her shampoo and the cinnamon of the gum she’d been chewing before she’d come home.

Though this was far from the first time, each time he touched her it was as if he fell in love with her anew. He paused to unclip one nipple and then the other, knowing sensation would rush back and bring her more pleasure. God, he loved looking at her when she was like this. Eyes covered with the deep purple satin mask, breasts thrust forward, nipples hard and dark from the weights and her own arousal, hands bound at her back. On her knees. Because he liked it. Because it pleased him and she wanted that too.

Christ, he was the most fortunate man alive that this woman had cleaved herself to him.

And he’d nearly lost her forever.

Driven back to near frantic need by that thought, he picked her up and carried her back to the chair he’d been sitting in. “I want you, darlin. On my cock.” As he said it, he moved her just so, astride his lap, mesmerized by the O of pleasure her lips made as he thrust up and into that welcoming heat.

He paused as she tightened and fluttered around him.

Nothing else could ever compare to this. To the way her cunt slid around his cock, hugging him as he fucked into her.

Taking a deep breath, he kissed up her neck as he undid her wrists so she could hold on. Her hands sought his shoulders as she rose up and then moved back down his cock. “Yes. Just like that. Slow and deep.” She’d keep the mask on because he hadn’t told her otherwise. The beauty of that, the dark power of it wrapped around them both.

Her breath hitched as she began to ride him. Just like he’d asked.

Her nipple begged for more against his left palm while the fingers of his other hand walked down her belly and spread her pussy open, exposing the ring there. Her clit swollen and needy.

“Shhh,” he murmured as he flicked a fingertip over it and she whimpered.

“More.” Her voice threaded with need.

“There’s always more where you’re concerned,” he managed to stutter out as she squirmed, arching closer as he idly flicked a fingertip over her clit.

She was ready, as he knew she would be. He’d teased her to the point where she’d explode when he gave her the right speed and intensity of pressure. Knowing she was also hyper-sensitive, he kept his fingers against her light and steady, until her soft murmurs and entreaties had nearly driven him right over the edge again.

“Are you ready to come?” He whispered it against her temple, pinching her nipple just so.

“Yes. God, yes!”

“All right then, come all over my cock, Rori.”

He gave her a tiny bit more pressure, just what she needed to cross over and fly apart in his arms, the rush of her wet heat coating his cock as she squeezed him, her nails digging into his shoulders.

At that point, he was too close to resist the allure of thrusting up into her one last time, deep and hard, unloading himself with jerk after jerk of his cock until they both sighed long and rested against the other.

When he pulled the mask off, her eyelids fluttered open and their gazes locked. “I love you, Jude.”

He smiled, his heart swelling to the point of bursting. “I love you too, Rori.” Shifting her a bit, he dipped to kiss the tip of her nose. “I guess since you just gave me your Christmas present, I should give you mine.” He preferred to surprise her closer to the date, but because of what the present was, he knew she’d need the time to plan around it.

“Is it in your pants?”

“You’re trouble, you know that?” He kissed her again and lost himself in her—the way he had every time he touched her. His hands fisted in her hair, tugging her closer and she made a soft sound. “Now then. I think I can live another hour or so without having you again.”

Alert at the prospect of presents, she sat up and scrambled off his lap. “I thought you said it was
three weeks away.
Not that I’m complaining,” she amended quickly.

Laughing, he got up and tugged her toward their bathroom. “Shower and then present.” He kept an eye on her in the many mirrors as he turned the taps on. The pipes were old and it was December so it took a while to get the water hot enough for a shower.

She leaned back into his body as he massaged the shampoo into her scalp. She loved the way he was with her. Gentle like this, sweet and giving. He took care of her in ways that made her life easy. Made sure she never had to do anything unpleasant. Well, he couldn’t make her mother go away, but other than that part, he made her feel like a cosseted princess.

“Should I even ask you what that smile is about?” He moved so she could rinse her hair and took liberties with her soap-slick nipples in the meantime.

“Just thinking about how lucky I am to have a man like you to love me.”

“You always say the very right thing at the perfect time.”

He soaped her body up far more than was necessary but she had no plans to complain. He made her forget her own name sometimes with the way he touched her.

Sometime later, ensconced on the couch in front of a roaring fire in the fireplace and the tea she’d made steeping in the pot, she sighed happily as he leaned back into her fingers where she massaged his shoulders. “You’re so good to me,” he murmured.

“Pffft. No more than you deserve. Now, about my present?”

He laughed, settling back into her so she could wrap her arms around him and hold on tight.

“I know we both normally spend Christmas at Kelly and Max’s house.” Kelly was Rori’s sister and she was married to Max, Jude’s brother. They’d all grown up together and spent the holidays as a family since Rori had returned to Oakley some years before.

“This will be our first Christmas as a couple.” He paused and she kissed the top of his head. “So I thought we could, you know, get away for a few days. Make our own holiday celebration.”

She smiled but he couldn’t see it so she kissed him again. “Really?”

“There’s a place in Highlands. In North Carolina. A few hours drive from here. It overlooks the valley. High enough to get snow sometimes the owner said. Our own cabin at the resort. Private and secluded. Restaurant looks good, but they have room service too if we want it.”

She scrambled around him to wrap herself around his waist, wanting him to see how much she loved this present. “Just you and me for Christmas? Really?”

He nodded. “Is that all right? Four nights. We’d be back for the New Year’s Eve party your sister is planning. I know we spend it with family and all. But I thought it would be nice to get away.”

Just the two of them.

They needed it, she knew. She sure as heck wanted it. Wanted to make their own traditions without the shadow of Zach between them.

“Silly, we
will
be with family. You and I are a family, aren’t we? I love the idea. It’s fabulous and I can’t wait to have you all to myself.”

He smiled. “I’ve arranged coverage at work. No calls in the middle of the night. The cabin we’re in is secluded, so you can make all the noise you want and we won’t have our nephews at the front door first thing in the morning begging for breakfast or to go hiking or what have you. I can have my wicked way with you over and over.”

“
Lots
of wicked ways. I heartily endorse this plan, Jude. Thank you.” It would be good to leave Oakley behind for a few days. And she loved the idea of not having to share him with anyone else.

“Just Rori and Jude.” He said it as he stretched up to kiss her on the lips.

They’d known each other pretty much their entire lives. He’d been her best friend and her roommate in the nearly two years after Zach’s murder, they’d only shared that first kiss the New Year’s Eve before and hadn’t become a real couple until later than that. It’d be good to go on a vacation together.

Things between them were good. It had felt totally natural to be with him. She’d loved him before Zach and then he’d been there after Zach and she’d loved him again.

She was past the point where she questioned her glorious second chance at forever with a man she knew would love her just as long.
Her man.

A good, strong man who loved his people. A man who’d die to protect not just her, but the people in town. As a cop, Jude took that commitment even further. She knew when he made a commitment, he’d keep it. It was part of her attraction to him. That steadfast loyalty and strength of character. Even when she worried, though they lived in a small, relatively safe town, that one day she’d have to face his death too. Sometimes, in the dead of night, it paralyzed her, swamped her and blurred the memories of how it had been to hear Zach was dead.

But it meant something to him. He did it because he cared.
Serve
and
protect
weren’t just words on his vehicle, he felt them deeply. She admired that, even as it scared her.

On top of that, he looked like walking sin. A face that made her tingly all over just looking at it. A slow, sexy southern drawl. Hands that knew their business. A mouth he used to her great delight. They had chemistry in a big way. Sex that left her weak-kneed and gasping for breath.

Dominant too.

A man who’d never use his strength to harm her, but who used that strength to take her to the darkest, sweetest of places, all while holding her so she wouldn’t drift away. He didn’t hurt her, but he knew how to take her on a ride of pleasure just on the very edges of pain.

She loved it. More than that, she craved it. Found solace and satiation in it. They fit in ways she couldn’t possibly begin to describe with enough wonder and gratitude.

Jude made her whole.

“Well, I can’t lie and say I’m not disappointed you won’t be here on Christmas morning.” Kelly topped Rori’s coffee off before sitting back down at the dining room table they sat at every Friday morning.

Her sister’s house had become as comfortable as her own, a second home in many ways and a place she knew would always welcome her.

While Rori had told her sister about the change in plans two weeks before, right after Jude had told her about it, it had been clear Kelly wasn’t entirely happy with the situation.

“We need this, Kel.” Rori toyed with the edge of the newspaper her sister had been reading before she’d arrived.

“I know. I know you do. It’s just…well this is the first Christmas since Zach that you’re…” Kelly licked her lips, Rori knew, searching for just exactly the best way to say
normal.

So Rori did instead. “Normal.” She shrugged. “Oh don’t look so guilty. It’s true. Losing him made me a little crazy for a while. But during that time Jude was always there for me. Patiently loving me even when I was in pieces.”

“I imagine it has to be hard living with Zach’s ghost. Max said the other day that he’d never seen his brother work harder or be a better man than he is with you. But how can you compete with the memory of a guy like Zach?”

Her stomach tensed for a moment. “He doesn’t need to compete. If he feels that way, I’m doing this all wrong.” Rori sighed. Zach was gone and she’d accepted it. But the time after he’d died had been dark. He’d been her husband. She’d loved him with all her heart and soul. Jude never expected her to act any other way and she was grateful for it. Had known, by the time they finally came together, that it was meant to be that way. He’d proved over and over that he loved her and would care for her, had shown her the depths of his commitment to her and their relationship.

Part of that had been him taking a back seat to Rori’s need to put the ghost of her life with another man to rest. “He deliberately put himself and his own needs on the back burner for me.”

“He may have acted like a dick years ago, but he loves you. No doubt in my mind. And Max is probably right about Zach.” Kelly groaned. “I hate it when I have to not be selfish.” She winked.

Rori laughed. “This time away is about building something that is Rori and Jude. He deserves that and I want it too. It feels like I’ve loved Jude since I was a bitty girl, you know? But that’s different from this thing we have now.”

“Well, you have grown-up love. Complete with in-laws and all that politics stuff that comes with it. Relationships are different than crushes or even dating. You know that.”

“I know. I do and I totally agree. I see this trip as a big foundational wall in our relationship. We need to build it, to put the work into it. Hell,
I
need to do it so he knows he’s first and foremost. I don’t want to phone it in.”

Kelly burst out laughing. “Rori, the way the two of you look at each other is so hot it makes me want to shove my husband into a closet and violate him that very moment. You two are connected in a big way. He absolutely adores you. I had my doubts. I can’t lie. But he’s been good to you. Always put you first. He’d do anything to make you smile and how can I not love him for that too?”

Rori blushed, the heat on her cheeks also due in part to how hot it was that he looked at her the way he did.

“I love him. More than I ever thought possible. He makes me happy. Fills me up and makes me feel beautiful. I want to put him first. I want him to be as happy as he makes me. I want him to know without a doubt that what we have isn’t a rebound thing, or me settling.”

Kelly squeezed her hand. “That’s the key to a successful marriage. Well, that and good sex. Though—” she lifted a shoulder, “—combining those things is always a plus.”

“I just never want him to feel second best. But it’s hard to find a way to say it without bringing Zach up and I don’t want to make him think I’m hiding it either. It’s a careful walk right now.”

“Course it is, baby. You both love each other. You care about the other’s feelings. That’s why it’s so hard. And frankly, I think that’s why it works. You both understand you had a second chance at love. It’s rare enough to find it once, the way you and Zach had it. But you and Jude have it too. In your own way. It’s not the same, and I think it’s better that way. Imagine if it was very similar. You’d be wondering, deep down, if it was just that you saw parts of Zach in him and that’s why you were with him. And he’d wonder the same thing.”

Rori took a deep breath and sipped her coffee. It was good to be understood the way she and her sister shared.

“Thanks for listening.”

Kelly narrowed her eyes at her sister. “Anytime. Now, you’ll be back in time for New Year’s Eve though, right?”

Rori snorted, nodding. “Of course.”

“All right, then I love you and I’m always here for you.”

***

Across town, Jude was at the diner eating breakfast with a friend of theirs who’d dropped in while in the area for his job. Cole was someone he’d originally worked with on some cross training between local and federal law enforcement. Shortly after the assignment had ended, they’d run into each other at a club. A D/s-themed club in Nashville.

Cole had been very much in the closet about his sexual preferences. He worried about people finding out he liked BDSM and kept his activities to states farther away from where he currently lived.

Jude had, at that time, lied to himself about what he was and what he liked. Maybe the two men had seen that need to pretend in the other and left it alone. But Jude didn’t have to be that anymore and finally, Cole had come to trust Jude enough to share his own details and perhaps come to grips with the things he liked without feeling guilty or wrong for it.

Jude had had a confidante in Zach. Another sexually dominant man he could discuss things with. A good friend, even though they’d both loved the same woman. When Zach had died, Jude lost that. Fortuitously, he’d bumped into Cole some months before and they’d reconnected their friendship.

“You said she took it well. That she sounded excited and happy. Let it be. Stop feeling guilty about it. You all live close to each other. You’ll be back for New Year’s. She’s yours too, man.” Cole mopped up his eggs with a piece of toast.

“I know. I just feel sort of selfish for wanting her all to myself.”

Cole snorted. “Why the hell would you feel that? Your woman is incredible. It’s clear you love her. It’s more than clear she loves you. It’s not selfish to want to be creating memories and traditions that will be the foundation for the rest of your life. She lived in Europe for years anyway, it’s not like she spent every single Christmas here with her family.”

“Go on and be rational.”

“You have something special, Jude. Something I look at and pretend I don’t need, but in reality, everyone yearns for. You
should
feel selfish over it.”

“And five hours from home means I don’t have to worry about anyone coming over when I’ve got her bound. I can play for hours with her and no one is going to interrupt.” Damn did that appeal to him in a major way.

Cole’s eyes lit. “That too. I imagine living so close to your family and the fact that you two share so much family in common must mean a lot of interruptions.”

Yes. He didn’t regret living in such close quarters with their family. He loved it and it was a value he and Rori shared. He knew their children would have that closeness of kin they did and knew it would serve them all their days.

Family was, in the end, the most important thing a man could do. Not just marriage or partnership with another person, but children, home and hearth. Building a life for not only your generation, but touching those beyond it. Being with Rori, being loved by her, had made him into a family man on a whole new level.

At the same time, when your brother lived a few streets away, it meant a lot of drop-in visits. It meant there were times when he didn’t have the opportunity to go as deep with her as he’d wanted.

He’d have days to lure her, seduce her over and over again at his pace. However loud she wanted to be, whatever and wherever. A flush worked over his chest thinking about it and the new toys he’d picked up in preparation for this trip.

Cole’s left eyebrow rose slowly. “Must be some plans in your head right about now.”

“We need a place where the world falls away.” There was the boat. The boat Rori loved to sail. The boat that had a lovely bedroom chock full of toys. A boat Zach had built and turned into their getaway.

Jude paused. And there was Zach again. Impossibly far away, and yet always so close. “I feel like a total asshole, but I want to move into a place of our own.” He’d blurted it, needing to just say it so fast he couldn’t change his mind.

Again, Cole took his measure. “Can’t say as I blame you. It’d be hard…to live where they lived. To try to make memories where hers and his were first. Will always be first.”

“I can’t expect her to pretend he never existed. I think of him all the time too.”

“I don’t think I’d agree that wanting a house of your own with her is you asking her to pretend he never existed. Have you talked to her about it?”

“When we first got together earlier this year, we decided to stay in the house but move bedrooms. I thought I could deal with it and the economy sucks and all so it would be better to wait.”

“How’s that working out for you?” Cole snorted and sipped his coffee.

Smartass.

“She’s had a lot to deal with in the last nearly two years. Can I ask her to marry me and move out of her own home because I can’t deal with her dead husband’s memories? What kind of dick does that?”

Cole waved lazily, leaning back into the booth’s squeaky upholstery. “You’re not even giving her a chance. You haven’t brought it up. It’s a reasonable thing to want your own home. A reasonable thing to bring up these concerns to the woman you plan to marry. Rori is a smart, together woman and she loves you.”

“I just… He was my friend too. I miss him. Which sounds so fucked up given that I’m with his wife now and I loved her before. But it’s true. He was like a brother to me. They were good together. I admired that. Admired how he was with her. Envied it too, I suppose.” Jude had learned a lot about dominating a woman, about how to bring it into a relationship and keep an eye on the balance of power, from Zach.

He took a bite, chewed as he thought. “But she’s mine now and I’m not going backward.”

“This is going to sound harsh, but take it in the sprit I deliver it. She’s
not
his wife anymore. He is dead. She is yours. You said it yourself.” Cole looked around as he leaned in. “He’d be the first guy to tell you to own her fully. To thank your ass and little green apples that you’ve got a woman like her giving herself to you.”

Jude smiled. “Yeah.”