Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Jude was losing her and he knew it. He couldn’t lie, though, not now, not when there was so much on the line. Maybe you should have thought about that shit before you set the bridge on fire while you were standing on it. He didn’t touch Sloan. She looked half a second from either going for his throat or for the nearest window.

If he pushed her now, she’d be gone, and then he’d have to track her down to keep her safe.

So he took a careful step away from the doorway, clearing a path for her to escape. “I don’t expect you to understand.” How could she? Even with the bullshit that came from being raised in a mob family, the woman had led a pampered life overall. It had been touched by the barest fingers of tragedy when her brother died last year, but what was one death compared to familial genocide?

One doesn’t make the other okay. He didn’t know what to think of the fact that it was her voice he heard, his long-forgotten conscious deciding to find itself now.

“I do understand.”

He froze, his gaze flying to her face, taking in the steely glint in her dark eyes, the barely contained fury in her body. “What?”

“I know what it’s like to want them dead—the ones who hurt you. But the difference is that I left it all behind, instead of letting vengeance consume me.” She tucked her hair behind her ears, not meeting his gaze. “Maybe you should consider it. Though if you’re willing to kill a pregnant woman, I don’t know that you can be reasoned with. Some things are unforgiveable, Jude.” And then she was gone, striding through the door, her shoulders back and her spine straight.

Callista Sheridan is pregnant.

The knowledge rocked him back on his heels. Jude stared blankly after Sloan, trying to process the knowledge, but his brain kept offering up a picture of his mother. She’d been pregnant and wouldn’t have escaped the slaughter if Colm Sheridan had known. Rationally, he knew his mother and Callista weren’t the same.

But he couldn’t shake the comparison.

Killing her would make him worse than Colm Sheridan had ever been.

Jude moved to the window and looked out across the beach. The incoming storm had created a false twilight, leaving shadows where there’d been sunlight before. There was a chill in the late afternoon air that had driven people inside. With the knowledge of Sloan’s parting shot riding him hard, he welcomed it.

He needed time and space to plan. To think. That had always been his strength—to detach himself from any situation and to implement a strategy guaranteed to succeed. In all the years since he’d started down this path, he’d never had a problem taking that first step back.

But that was before Sloan.

Before his perfect plan had blown up in his face.

It was easier to focus on her and their present situation than whatever the hell he was supposed to do about the future. How the fuck was he supposed to stay calm and rational when she was marching out across the sand, without a weapon on her, alone? He moved before he made a decision to, throwing open the door and following her.

It didn’t take long to catch up to her. She’d stopped just short of the waterline, her head tilted back and her hair whipping in the wind. She looked…Fuck, he didn’t know. She looked like some kind of fey creature who’d wandered into their world by mistake. It made him hesitant to break the silence—what there was of it against the crash of the waves and the wind picking up to nearly a howl.

Storm will be here faster than I thought.

He wasn’t superstitious by nature, but he’d have been a fool to think of the impending storm as anything other than a sign. “Sloan.” He barely raised his voice, but she heard him all the same.

“I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

He started to argue but reconsidered. The woman had had everything she thought was true shaken down to the roots in the last hour. She needed time to process that. He could respect it. He glanced up and down the beach, searching for threats, but it was impossible. The sand was far from perfectly flat, and any hit man worth his salt could dig in a little bit and become nearly invisible in the twilight. “Then don’t talk to me while you’re in the house with the shades shut. It’s not safe.”

“It’s not safe.” She did a fair job of mocking his deep voice. Sloan spun on him, her eyes as wild as he’d ever seen them. “And who’s fault is that, Jude? What else did you lie about?” Her voice caught, but she charged on. “I was safe here before you looked into me, leading us directly into Dmitri Romanov’s web. Do you know what he does to his enemies?”

“Probably better than you do.” The man was ruthless to a clinical degree, but he seemed to keep his word. It was more than Jude could say for others in the underground world.

“Of course you do—because you’re a stone-cold killer.” She moved closer, pushing him with both hands. He let himself fall back a step because otherwise she might shove herself back and land on her ass. Sloan closed the distance between them, fury written over her face. “Are you going to kill me, Jude? It would hurt the Sheridans, and that’s all you care about, isn’t it? Your goddamn revenge.”

“Wrong.” He caught her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “So fucking wrong.”

She didn’t so much as flinch. “Really? Because we both know the only reason you got close to me in the first place was to get your vengeance. It wasn’t about me. It still isn’t about me.”

“Do you think for a goddamn second that this is convenient for me? You were a potential source of information, true, but I’ve told myself half a dozen times to walk the fuck away. Damn it, I just can’t leave you alone.”

*  *  *

A fury unlike any Sloan had ever known rose from beneath her skin. She wanted to attack Jude, to hit him, to shove him, to claw out his eyes. How dare he stand there and look tormented while her entire world was crashing down around her again? “Stop it,” she hissed. “You have all the power and I have none.”

“You don’t think so?” Jude shook his head. “You’ve met me every single step of the way. You’re not stupid. You knew the second you met me that I wasn’t like the rest of them.” He slashed his hand through the air, indicating the entirety of Callaway Rock. “You loved that I was dangerous—your rabid little pet who let you lead him around by his cock.”

She took a step back. “That’s not true.” Except hadn’t she liked that he pushed her, that she rode the line of fear like a wave about to crest, hoping like hell she wouldn’t wipe out and feeling more alive because of that fear? But some things she couldn’t get past, no matter how good he made her body feel. “I meant what I said before—some things are unforgivable. If you hurt Callie and my niece or nephew, that makes you a monster. A real one.” It struck her that he wasn’t in Callaway Rock for Callie. “And what about Sorcha? She’s just an old woman.”

“Sorcha isn’t just anything.” A muscle ticked in his jaw and, for a moment, she thought he’d leave it at that. “She and Ronan were planning a coup—a coup that might have very well left your precious Callista a casualty.”

“No. I’ve heard Callie talk about her brother. He never would have hurt her.” …would he? She tried to think past the emotions roaring through her, but it was nearly impossible. She didn’t know a single thing about Ronan except that he’d been an heir and died—which was why Callie and Teague ended up engaged in the first place. Just because Callie wasn’t a horrible person didn’t mean that truth extended to her brother.

Sloan shook her head. “Even if that’s true, it changes nothing.” That was the life she left behind—for a good damn reason. It shouldn’t have anything to do with her and Jude.

“I know.”

She waited, holding her breath even though she told herself she was a fool for doing so. What they had might be earth-shattering to her, but that didn’t mean he felt it on the same level. To turn his back on a vendetta that he’d obviously spent his life preparing for…It was too much to ask.

Jude scrubbed a hand over his face, looking tired for the first time since she’d met him. “I didn’t know she was pregnant.”

“Why would that change anything? Even if Ronan was planning a coup, you said yourself that Callie wasn’t involved. You’d be killing a woman who’s innocent.”

He looked out toward the ocean. “Do you know I’ve never killed an innocent? Not once in a decade.”

Part of her tried to soften, but she wouldn’t let it. “I’m less concerned with what you’ve done in your past than with what you intend for your future.” Not Callie. She couldn’t let him do it. Or Sorcha, for that matter. Sloan might not particularly like the woman—and she might like her even less if what he claimed was true—but that didn’t mean she was okay with her being cold bloodedly murdered.

He cursed, low and defeated. “Killing Callista would be like going back in time and killing my mother.”

Hope rose, but it faltered when he said, “I make no promises for Colm, though. That man has been living on borrowed time for thirty-five years.”

Sloan tried to hold on to her anger, but it slipped through her grasp. She didn’t know if she was supposed to be happy that he apparently wasn’t planning on murdering her friend, or if she should try to convince him to walk away completely…She was just so incredibly tired. “I don’t want to see you again.”

“Bullshit.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You will respect my wishes.”

“I won’t do anything of the damn sort, even if you’re throwing a tantrum like a spoiled princess who didn’t get her way.” He moved forward, closing the distance between them until he towered over her. “There’s more at stake than some wounded pride, and you’re smart enough to know that if you’d stop reacting and think.”

“I can’t think with you so close.” She grabbed the back of his neck and kissed him. It was more a sign of aggression than intimacy, a clash of tongue and teeth, with him meeting her every step of the way. Sloan pushed him, all too aware that he let her, and then rode him down to the sand.

More, more, I need more. Anything to keep from thinking a little while longer. She yanked his shirt off, dragging her nails across his chest as she went for the front of his jeans.

Jude’s hands were rough on her, shoving up her dress and ripping her panties off, his mouth never leaving hers. As if he needed this as much as she did. He pushed a finger into her, testing her, and then there was nothing there but his hard length, ready and waiting.

He stopped her from descending, his grip hard on her hips. “Wait.”

Sloan met his gaze, knowing in her heart of hearts that it didn’t matter, that it was too late, and one more choice had been taken away from her. Even if it was too early for a test to pick it up, she would have had a period by now if the Plan B pill had worked.

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—for once not 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 drives you insane, 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.

I must be insane if 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 just talking to 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.”