He stares at me. Surprise first, then his eyes go dark with lust.
"How do you know that?"
"I document everything in this facility."
He laughs. It's not the dry exhale I've heard before—it's real, rough, startled out of him.
Then his hands are on my waist and he's lifting me onto the table, positioning me in front of him so smoothly that I don't register the movement until I'm there. My legs bracket his hips. His hands stay on my waist, fingers pressing into the fabric of my shirt.
"Two weeks," he says, low. "Two weeks of white walls and nothing, and all I could think about was whether you were okay."
"I'm okay."
I think about him in isolation, sedated, alone, and my eyes sting.
"I'm here now," I say, echoing his words back to him.
His hand lifts from my waist, finds my jaw, and tilts my face up until I'm looking directly into those green eyes, and what I see there makes my breath catch.
He wants me. No mask, no blankness, nothing held back. Just pure hunger.
"I need to know you're real," he says, and then his mouth is on mine.
The kiss is not gentle—hard and desperate, and the sound he makes against my lips is low and rough and urgent. His hand slides into my hair, tilts my head back, and I open for him without thinking, without hesitation.
He tastes like coffee and underneath that, just him, and I can't get close enough. My hands find his shoulders, his neck, the short hair at his nape. He groans into my mouth and pulls me closer, until I'm pressed against his chest and his heart is pounding under my palm.
His mouth moves to my jaw. My throat. His hands are everywhere—my waist, my back, sliding under the hem of my shirt to find skin.
"We shouldn't—" I start, but my voice comes out breathless and unconvincing.
"Tell me to stop." His lips brush my collarbone. "Say the word and I'll stop."
I don't say the word.
His hand slides up my ribs, and I arch into his touch, and his mouth finds mine again, swallowing the sound I make. The table is hard under my thighs but I don't care, don't care about anything except his hands and his mouth and the solid heat of him between my legs.
A door slams somewhere in the corridor.
We freeze.
Footsteps. The guard making his rounds, his shadow passing across the frosted window of the day room door.
Jude pulls back. His breathing is ragged, his eyes dark, his hair disheveled where my hands were just buried in it. He looks wrecked, and God help me, he's beautiful.
"Time," he says roughly.
I glance at my watch. Twenty-two minutes left.
"We have time."
"Not enough." His thumb traces my lower lip, swollen from his mouth. "Not nearly enough for what I want to do to you."
The words send heat pooling low in my stomach. Any other version of me would be embarrassed, horrified at what wealmost did, what we were doing, in the middle of a psychiatric facility with cameras and guards and everything at stake.
I'm not.
"Next time," I say.
