Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 87961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
As soon as we get outside, I turn and pin her against the wall next to the door. People pass us, most drunkenly singing and celebrating.
“Jude?” She glances up at me with those innocent eyes and it hits me in a place that I’m not sure should ever be touched.
“You shouldn’t be getting in the middle of a fight,” I breathe across her lips. I hear her inhale deeply as her fingers cling to my shoulders. “If anyone hurt you, I’d fucking kill them. You’re my girl.” There is so much more to say than just that, but I can’t and I won’t say it. Whatever this is, it needs to remain unsaid because it is wrong on numerous levels.
“Didn’t want him to ruin your pretty face.” She smirks. “It’s your only redeeming feature.” Her voice is low and raspy as her eyes fall to my lips. Damn, I wish she wouldn’t look at me like that.
“My face isn’t my best asset.” My lips barely brush against hers. “And you damn well know it.” I smirk.
She bites at her bottom lip as her fingers trail from my shoulders to wrap around the back of my neck.
“I am rather fond of your face, though.” She pushes onto her tiptoes and closes the space between us, placing a tender kiss to my lips. I crave this. I crave her. Even the devil needs something to break through his darkness at times. And that’s what Tor does...she rips through my darkness. I wrap my arms around her small waist, pulling her body close to mine to kiss her deeper. When I release her she’s breathless, her cheeks flushed. I fucking love that I do that to her every fucking time.
“Let’s go before we both get arrested,” she says.
I chuckle as we weave through the masses. “I don’t get arrested. Too many cops and politicians owe me, doll. I’m untouchable.”
Untouchable, except with her. She touches places inside me that shouldn’t be alive. She makes me weak, and the fucked-up thing is that I like it. She takes my control and challenges it, and it drives me insane, but I get off on it. She forces me to fucking feel. Honestly, obsession isn’t enough to explain this pull between us, because it’s more like an addiction. I know it will kill one of us, but at the moment the high seems fucking worth it.
She glances back at me, smiling like she couldn't be any fucking happier, like she’s forgotten why she’s even with me. She‘s stopped thinking of me as the person holding her captive...because I’m really not. She doesn’t belong with me, much less in this life, and for that I feel guilty because I’m nowhere near willing to let her go.
I stare at my reflection in the mirror, trying desperately to figure out who the hell this girl is looking back at me. I’ve told myself for months now that this is just temporary, that I will leave as soon as it’s safe, but when will that be. The longer I stay here, the less reason I can see to leave. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t know what I want.
Jude’s sordid life of corruption has tangled with mine. I think nothing of the fact that he carries a gun or that he gets stabbed in the leg. I thought nothing of shooting a man, I felt nothing. It’s all just par for the course. Slowly this is becoming my normal. What scares me the most, though, is that I’m okay with that. Why am I okay with that?
Jude has managed to impress himself into my world effortlessly. He has caused me pain and watched me break, only to put me back together again, and in a weird way, he’s made me stronger. I feel untouchable when I’m with him, because he’s untouchable. He protects me and fights for me in ways that no one else ever has, and I feel instinctively protective of him in return.
Every day it becomes harder to remember why this is wrong. I can’t deny that I feel for Jude, even while I hate myself for it.
I think I might be falling in love with him, and of all the things I thought he might do to me, loving him was not one of them.
I know that I’m nothing more than a willing bed warmer, a hostage he was forced to harbour. Men like Jude aren’t capable of love, and I know that. I question my own sanity on a daily basis. How the hell do you even fall for a guy like Jude?
I always told myself that passion and love don’t matter, spoken by a girl who had never felt it. They matter, and losing them will hurt more than any of my physical wounds.