Without another word, I started for the thundering waves.
“There’s sharks and shit out there, Luce,” he called after me.
I smiled as I continued on my merry way. How far would he let me get before he couldn’t stay away? Skimming my fingers into my swimsuit bottoms, I slid them down my body.
Once they were littering the beach, I turned toward him.
He swallowed again and stood up. His Cons were already off.
“Then you’d better come save me,” I called back. “From the sharks and shit.” Giving a wave and a shake, I turned and bounded toward the water.
Jude cursed behind me, and a glance over my shoulder revealed he was peeling his clothes off as quickly as clothes could be peeled. I was up to my knees before the water temperature registered. Cold barely described it. Mental note number one million and one: The ocean is more pleasurable from the beach than from the water.
“Ah! Shit! That’s cold!” Jude exploded into the water, sprinting toward me. His arms wound around me after another round of curse hollering. Pressing my back to his chest, he spun me to face him.
“I guess I didn’t really think this out,” I shrieked, laughing. Damn, this water was really too cold to even think about getting hot and heavy in.
Jude slowed and settled me back down, but his arms didn’t loosen. They tightened. He pulled me harder to him, his warmth running against my back and down lower. His hips flexed against my backside. I exhaled.
“I take that back,” I said as I wound my arms behind his neck. “I totally thought this out.”
I felt his smile on my neck before his tongue took its place. Jude’s hands traveled up my stomach until they found my breasts.
“Nice tan lines,” he breathed into my neck.
“I worked on them all day,” I replied, letting my head fall back against him. As his hands and mouth moved over me, I no longer felt the chill of the water. There was nothing but warmth. A heat that ran so deep I felt it in every nerve.
One of his hands moved from my chest and trailed down my stomach. When it paused below my belly button, his finger moved against me. My breath hitched in my lungs.
“And I’m planning on working on you all night.”
ELEVEN
I was so sick of saying good-bye at airports. If Jude had asked me to stay with him, I would have happily missed my flight.
I’d blinked and two days and two nights had passed. I knew the next couple of weeks before Jude was scheduled to fly out to New York would pass like each day was a year.
“Luce?” Jude popped his head back inside the truck after he’d grabbed my suitcase out of the bed. “Not that I’d mind, but if we don’t hustle, you’re going to miss your flight.”
I held in my sigh and put on a brave face. Scooting down the seat, I patted the steering wheel. “Lots of good memories in this old rust can,” I said. “Don’t go and scrap it while I’m gone.”
Jude shook his head as he grabbed my hand and slammed the door. “What do you see in this piece of shit?” he said, kicking the back tire as we walked through the garage.
I smiled to myself before answering. “I like things a little rough around the edges. Besides, it’s what’s inside that counts.”
“‘It’s what’s inside that counts,’” he repeated. “Who said that?”
“Some guy I know.” I tucked my shoulder under his arm and wrapped my arm behind him.
“He sounds amazing,” he said, grinning at me from the side.
I made a face and motioned my hand in a so-so way.
He chuckled, checking both ways before we crossed the road to the terminal. “That’s not what you were saying last night,” he said.
I pinched his side. “I wasn’t saying much, that I recall.”
“No, you weren’t saying much. There was a shitload of moaning, though.”
This earned him a few harder pinches.
“‘Jude,’” he cried out, channeling me last night. “‘Yes! Yes! Yes! You’re amazing!’” I couldn’t even pretend to be irritated with him. I was laughing so damn hard tears started to leak out of the corners of my eyes. “‘Jude . . . Amazing . . . Ryder! Yes! Yes! Yeeeeesss!’”
He was causing a scene as we approached curbside check-in, but I was too hysterical to mind. My giant fiancé was bouncing, shaking, and shouting, not caring what anyone thought.
“Control yourself,” I ordered amid my laughter, swatting his arm. “And if your performance is any indicator of what I act like during sex, I must look like a hippo about to give birth.”
Dropping the Lucy Larson Orgasming Show, he laughed with me. “Nah.” He laughed one more note before his expression changed. “It’s the damn sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced, Luce.”
Thankfully his words were no louder than a whisper, but as we approached the ticket counter, I was sure the heat rushing into my face, paired with Jude’s crooked smile, gave away the gist of what he’d just whispered into my ear.
From the sly smile on the employee’s face, he caught more than just the gist.
While I waited for my ticket, Jude handed my suitcase off and gave the guy a hefty tip. It was only a month ago when that tip would have paid for a movie-and-dinner date.
The ticket counter employee handed me my ticket, but he had eyes for no one but Jude. I knew that look, but it was weird sharing it with middle-aged males.
“You’re Jude Ryder,” the employee said, looking, sounding, and acting starstruck. “Aren’t you?”
Shoving his hands in his pockets, Jude winked over at me. “Jude Amazing Ryder,” he managed with a straight face. I couldn’t perform the same feat.
Coming up behind me, Jude wrapped his arms around me. “What’s so funny?” he teased.
Thrusting a pen and a newspaper at us, the poor guy looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel. It was so odd the way people treated Jude now, like they idolized him. “Could I have your autograph?” His voice was shaky.
“You bet,” Jude answered, uncapping the pen as the employee unfolded the front page of the local newspaper. On it was a huge photograph of a man and a woman at night. In the ocean. Bare-ass naked.
“Shit,” I murmured, twisting in Jude’s arms, hoping he hadn’t seen it yet.
Nothing good would come of Jude seeing this.
His eyes were locked on the picture, like he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. The confusion shifted toward red-faced anger in the time it took me to plant my hands on either side of his face.
“Jude,” I said, trying to sound calm. Trying to be calm for him, when I felt anything but. Calm was impossible when a full-frontal naked shot of me was plastered on who knew how many thousands of papers. “It’s all right. Calm down,” I continued, trying to get his eyes to focus on mine. But they would not look away from the picture below the headline, “Ryder Has Game Both On and Off the Field.” The photographer must have snapped the picture right when he’d joined me in the water and spun me around. Other than his face and arms, that was all of Jude the stupid pap had caught. But with me, they’d had to make use of the photo-blur tool in a couple of places.
Jude snatched the paper from the man’s hand and glowered at him. “What the hell is this?” Rolling it up, Jude stuffed the paper into the back of his pants and waited.
Once the employee realized Jude wasn’t going to move until he got an answer, he shrugged. “A newspaper.” He had the decency to look ashamed.
“That’s not a newspaper,” Jude said, seething. The muscles of his jaw rolled beneath my hands. “That’s a naked picture of my fiancée.”
Dammit. His face had just gone from red to purple. Soon we’d be past the point where anything I could do would talk him down.
“You got any more of those back there?” Rushing behind the counter, Jude inspected the area. I followed him.