Jude pulled back, his gaze amused, and…something else. “I’ve been wanting to do that since the night at the hotel. You’ve never kissed a bloke before, have you?”
“Nope. That a bad thing?”
“Not at all. I like that you had something just for me.”
“There’s lots of things I haven’t done with blokes, mate. Not just kissing.”
“I know. But if we start talking about that I’ll lose my fucking mind.”
Him and me both. And I loved him for not forcing a conversation I wasn’t ready to have. Jude challenged me in ways I hadn’t known existed, but my head was spinning too fast to make sense of the snatched images hurtling through it. Maybe one day.
But not today.
Jude kissed me one more time, and then he stepped away with a rueful grin. “I need a shower. How long will breakfast be?”
“Hmm?”
He pointed at the bowl of beans and pile of toast.
Damn. I’d forgotten all about it. “Uh. A few minutes, maybe? Can you be quick?”
Jude’s grin widened. “I can be anything you want.”
Git. He sloped upstairs before I thought of a sensible reply. Not that one came to me after he’d gone. Or when we were eating breakfast a little while later, or kissing goodbye in the hallway. My phone buzzed as I lost myself in his wise gaze, a message, a barrage of emails, and then a phone call from the office that I ignored. Twice.
But the sense that reality had dragged me back was hard to ignore, and walking out of his house felt like the end of the world.
Seventeen
Jude
I liked routine. In a world where my brain was prone to creating its own chaos, the mundane reality of my life made me feel safe. Work, sleep, repeat. Sometimes it got boring and lonely, but I’d learned to deal, because the alternative was the wreck I’d been as a child.
“Are you close to your parents?”
I glanced down at Isha. He was stretched out on the couch with his head in my lap, the picture of relaxation. He was naked, obviously, like he had been every evening we’d spent holed up in my house, but I was growing used to the perpetual heat sluicing through me when we were together like this. I could hold a conversation without becoming fixated on his dick, his lightly furred abdomen, or the dark nipples that seemed connected to his nerves by a live wire. “Not particularly. They still live in Pontypridd.”
“In Wales?”
“Yeah, in the valleys, near Cardiff.”
“I’ve never been to Wales.”
“No? Well, you’re missing a treat, unless you end up at my mum’s house. That place is a fucking theme park.”
“You say that like someone who doesn’t like theme parks.”
“Do I?”
“Yeah.” Isha sat up slightly, and ran two fingers down the side of my face, something he often did when he wanted to know something about me. As if his touch could open doors to the life I’d lived before him. I wasn’t good at talking about myself, but something about Isha’s bright-eyed curiosity made it easier. “Was your childhood shitty?” he asked.
I sighed. “Define shitty. At one point, I was having seizures every day, so I missed loads of school and social development, but that was my normal, so I didn’t angst over it too much.”
“So what was the shitty part?”
“The rest of it, I guess.” My gaze flickered to Frances, who’d taken to watching over us like a guard dog, legit barking every time someone walked down the alley at the back of the house. I was dreading the moment she started imitating the sounds she’d heard coming from the couch. “My mum’s kinda nuts. She thought my fits could be cured with crystals and river water, so I spent a lot of time not taking the correct medication and drinking from streams.”
“That’s abuse, surely.”