I was so ready for him I could feel it all the way down to my toes.

Sliding my hands between us, I grabbed his pants, tugging on the button of his jeans. It snapped free and I slid my hand inside. He moaned, his forehead leaning into mine as his body moved against mine. Sliding my hand out, I rocked my hips up toward him. Another sound escaped him, “Damn it,” he moaned right before his mouth fell over mine again. His tongue parted my lips, touching the tip of mine, as his fingers slipped beneath my panties. He slid them off in one seamless move, his tongue never leaving my mouth.

I was in another world. A world that was foreign and a world I wanted to make my home. It was passionate and there was heat. The kind that went so deep you absorbed it. The kind that went so deep it became a part of you.

I was so close to losing everything that was balling up inside me, I knew I couldn’t hold on much longer with the way he was touching me. With the way he was consuming me.

Now, totally naked, I wrapped my legs around him, arching my hips against his, rocking up and down. His breathing stopped as every muscle in his body tensed to the surface.

“Not like this,” he breathed, punching the pillow behind me.

Everything inside me screamed. “Not like what?” I said between ragged breaths, leaving my legs around him. I wasn’t giving up when we were this close.

He closed his eyes. “Not right after you were almost raped by Sawyer Diamond,” he said, leaning back.

His skin no longer pressed against mine, a cold crept up me almost immediately. “Jude, I’m fine,” I said, leaning up on my elbows, not ready to let the moment go.

Shifting his legs off the bed, he hunched down. “But I’m not.”

“Why?”

He washed his hands over his face. “Because this is all kinds of wrong right now.”

That one hurt. “It didn’t feel wrong to me,” I said, trying not to think about the fact that I was probably the only woman the legendary Jude Ryder wouldn’t go all the way with.

Retrieving my gown from the floor, he held it out for me, keeping his eyes down. “That’s the thing. It didn’t feel wrong to me either,” he said as I snatched the gown from his hand. I wanted to chuck it across the room to prove a point, but pulled it on instead. “That’s how I know it was.”

“Could we save the mind benders for the morning?” I said, sticking my arms through the gown. “I’m running a little low on comprehension right now.”

“I’m doing a shit job of explaining myself,” he said, tugging on his hat, quiet for a minute. “My notion of right and wrong is so messed up, Luce, that my wrong is everyone else’s right. And my right is everyone’s wrong.”

I wanted to wrap my arms around him and comfort whatever turmoil he was experiencing, but I still felt a bit too shunned for that. “So you’re saying because what we were just doing felt right to you, it must be the wrong thing?” This was every definition of confusing.

He nodded, looking over at me. “I need a right and wrong recalibration, Luce, and until I’m able to get my shit figured out, I need to be careful with you.”

I flopped back down on the bed, covering my head with a pillow. “Careful was not what I had in mind for tonight,” I whined, my voice muffled.

“I know,” he said, rubbing my leg. “But it’s the right thing to do.”

Lifting the pillow, I lifted a brow. “Jude’s right or everyone else’s?” I asked with an innocent smile.

My snark had no effect on him. “I’m not sure,” he said, “and I need to be before we finish . . .” he glanced at the bed meaningfully, “doing what we were doing.”

“Well,” I said, sitting up and scooting close. “Hurry and figure your shit out, Ryder.” I pressed my lips to his, pulling back as everything inside me started to boil.

“Yes, ma’am,” he smiled, running his thumb down my cheek. “I just want it to feel right, okay? I want it to be perfect.”

That would be nice if we lived in a perfect world. “If you’re waiting for everything to feel right and perfect, I’ll save you the suspense and tell you that’s never going to happen,” I said, weaving my fingers through his. “But if you can look at me and say you want to be with me and I can look at you and know I want to be with you, then carpe diem, baby. Because that’s as perfect as it will ever get.”

He nodded, giving my fingers a squeeze. “You’re so damn smart, Luce,” he said, kissing my forehead as he stood. “I’ll see you in the morning,”

Now this was just getting absurd.

“Yes,” I said, grabbing his hand, “you will.” I patted the space beside me, throwing the covers down.

Jude studied the bed as if it were an equation.

I guessed what equation he was trying to work out in his mind. “Right or wrong?”

One side of his face lifted. “I’m not sure,” he confessed.

“Well, I am,” I said, tugging his hand.

He stalled one more second, but whether he just gave in to me or decided on his own, he crawled into bed beside me and wound his arms around me so tight I couldn’t breathe quite right.

I hadn’t experienced such peaceful sleep since that day, almost five years back to the day.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

It was early. Like the sun’s just thinking about rising early. On a Sunday morning, I usually slept another three hours, but this one I didn’t want to. I doubted I could have anyways.

I woke up with the same pit in my stomach I had each of the past four years on this day, that feeling that I wasn’t sure if I was going to throw up or pass out. The feeling of that day happening all over again, and then Jude’s arm wound around me a bit tighter in his sleep, and today everything seemed easier to handle.

He’d stayed. All night. He hadn’t let me go once.

He moaned something indecipherable in his sleep, tucking his face into my neck.

His beanie was still on. Topless and asleep, the man still kept that old hat in place. That couldn’t be good for a head; it needed to breathe every few years. Not sure why it felt like I was doing something I shouldn’t, I slid the hat back from his forehead and pulled it off.

His hair was so short and so light it almost looked like he was bald. And then I noticed the puckering and scarring of skin from the crown of his head to the neck that was familiar. Scars I’d been a couple inches of hair away from having. Burn scars. I ran my fingers over them, wishing I could erase them from his skin and the event that made them from his mind.

Trailing my fingers down his neck, I looked down at his back and, in the almost morning light, the maze of scars that scattered all the way down his back glared back at me. White scars protruded down his back, some small, most large, like he’d been torn open in a hundred different ways and closed back up by someone who didn’t know how to use a needle and thread. I doubted cadavers came out with fewer scars.

I felt sick, sicker than I’d felt waking up to this day, as my fingers drew a line over each raised scar, not able or wanting to imagine what had happened to the man sleeping beside me.

Suddenly, he jolted awake. His eyes were peaceful for the shortest second before he noticed the look on my face and what I held in my hand. Grabbing one of my wrists, he shoved it away before bolting out of bed, snatching his grey knit hat at the same time.

“What are you doing?” he cried, adjusting the hat back over his head. He was angry and he was hurt.

“What happened?” I whispered, sitting up in bed.

He lunged across the room, grabbing his long-sleeved gray thermal and tugging it over his head, not answering.

“They did the same thing to you,” I guessed, wishing these conclusions weren’t so easy to draw. “Those boys burnt you too.”