Page 25 of Rust of Control

"He was right to," Nate said. "Then. He wasn't wrong about me. I hadn't told anybody I was bi." He reached out, slow enough that Jude could have moved, and didn't, and tucked a strand of the almost-white hair behind Jude's ear. "There's something else."

"There always is, with this week."

"My tests came back." Nate said it plainly, no weight on it, the way he made the hardest sentences easy. "Clean. I had Scarlet run them quick, he's got a contact at the lab." He looked at Jude. "Yours came too. They called the house line. Clean, Jude. Both of us."

The wait was over.

Jude looked at the man beside him, at the three years of Rand's theft spread out on the table in front of them both, and understood that two things had come home to him on the same day, the anger and the all-clear, and that they were not opposites. They were the same thing wearing two faces. They were both his body and his life coming back into his own hands.

"Okay," Jude said, and this time the okay was not the small worn-out one. It was a different word entirely. "Okay. Come upstairs."

He took Nate's hand on the stairs and Nate let him lead, which Jude noticed, and which undid him a little, because Nate led everything, Nate had led him out of the clubhouse and out of the alley and up these same stairs the first night with a hand under his ribs, and now Nate was letting himself be walked up them by a man half his size without a word of complaint.

In the room Jude shut the door. Benny, asleep on the foot of the bed, lifted his head, took in the situation, and removed himself to the chair with a put-upon grunt, which made Jude laugh. It was the right way to start, the laugh taking the last of the nerves with it.

"The ribs," Nate said, because he could not help it.

"Healing. Scarlet said four more weeks, not dead." Jude put his hands flat on Nate's chest and felt the heart going under them, faster than Nate's stillness let on. "You don't have to manage me. I want this. I've wanted it since I was sixteen and I'm not fragile."

"Tell me if anything-"

"I'll tell you. I'm good at telling you now. I've had practice this week." Jude kissed him, slowly, and felt Nate's breath go, and walked him backward to the bed with both hands, gentle, in charge of it, watching Nate let it happen.

This was the part Jude had been mocked for. The wanting to be the one with his hands on the wheel. The guys who'd laughed, the ones who took one look at him, small and pretty and nervous, and decided what he was for. Rand, who'd let him think he wanted it and then made it a thing to take away. And here was Nate, big and strong, lying back on a bed and looking up at Jude with his hands open at his sides, handing his power over, not because Jude had wrestled it from him but because giving it away was the thing Nate had been starving for as long as Jude had been starving to be trusted with it.

Jude moved with deliberate slowness, his fingers tracing the hem of Nate’s shirt before peeling it upward, exposing the broad expanse of chest dusted with dark hair that tickled his palms. He pressed his lips to the center, right over the frantic thud of Nate’s heart, tasting the salt of sweat-slick skin and inhaling the raw, musky scent of arousal that thickened the air between them. Nate shuddered beneath him, a low, guttural moan vibrating from deep in his throat—the private sound he never let slip around others, raw and unguarded. Jude’s own cock throbbed in response, straining against his jeans as he committed every hitch and tremor to memory.

He worked lower, the leather of Nate’s belt yielding with a soft creak under his hands, the metal buckle clinking free like a forbidden chord finally struck. No one stopped him this time. Permission flooded through him hot and electric, making his pulse hammer as he tugged the denim down, freeing the thick, heavy length of Nate’s cock; veined, flushed dark, already leaking at the slit. Jude glanced up, eyes locking on Nate’s wrecked face, and asked without words. Nate met him with parted lips and blown pupils, voice gravel-rough. “Yeah. Fuck, yes. Please.”

That plea from a man built like a wall sent a fresh surge of heat straight to Jude’s groin. He lowered his mouth, tongue swirling over the broad head, savoring the bitter-salt tang of pre-cum as he took Nate deeper. The stretch burned his jaw, but he welcomed it, hollowing his cheeks and breathing through his nose to catch every earthy whiff of Nate’s crotch. Nate’s thigh flexed under Jude’s palm, muscle bunching like coiled steel, while thick fingers threaded gently into Jude’s hair, never pushing, just anchoring, trembling with restraint. Jude set the rhythm, slow and relentless, edging Nate with every deliberate suck and swirl until the big man’s hips twitched and his breath came in ragged pants that filled the room.

When Nate warned, voice cracking, “Close… fuck, Jude, I’m gonna -” Jude stayed locked on him, swallowing the first hot pulse of cum as it flooded his tongue, thick and bitter-sweet, Nate’s broken groan of “Jude” reverberating through both their bodies. Nate came apart completely, thighs shaking, chest heaving, every spurt painting Jude’s throat while the scent of sex grew heavier, mingling with the faint river breeze drifting through the open window.

Afterward, Jude rose, lips slick, and Nate drew him close with careful strength, ribs cradled against that still-pounding heart. Sweat cooled on their skin. The dog shifted on the chair with a soft huff, but neither man moved until Nate rolled them, his weight pinning Jude deliciously as he looked down with that open, shattered expression. “Your turn. If you want it.”

“I want it,” Jude rasped, voice hoarse.

Nate descended the length of him with unhurried reverence, tongue tracing every ridge of muscle, breath hot against Jude’s straining cock before taking him in deep. He was careful of the ribs, one broad hand splayed protectively while the other stroked and teased, building the ache until Jude arched and spilled with a shout, the taste of Nate still on his tongue, the river murmuring outside, and nothing left between them but the clean, shared hunger finally set free.

Later, in the dark, Jude lay with his head on Nate's chest and the three years of Rand's theft still spread on the kitchen table downstairs waiting for him, and he was not afraid of it. That was the new thing. He had a man's heartbeat under his ear and a folder full of proof downstairs and an anger with firm ground under it, and tomorrow he was going to start taking his life apart from the studs and building it back his own way.

"I'm going to deal with Rand," Jude said into the dark. Not a question. Not afraid. "The money. All of it. I'm not going to let it go."

Nate's hand moved slowly on his back. "No," he agreed. "We're not."

Jude heard the we and let it be true.

He did not yet know how big of a mess waited for him, but for tonight Jude had gotten his hands back around his own life and deserved one night to hold it before the rest of it came.

Chapter 13

The morning was so ordinary it frightened him.

Nate stood at the kitchen counter with coffee that was hot for once. For once he'd had the ten minutes to drink it while it was. He watched Jude at the table with a pen behind his ear and the band's three years of stolen money sorted into piles he'd made himself. Jude worked like he sang, leaning into it a little, humming something under his breath that had no words yet. The bruise on his face had gone from plum to the faint yellow of an old photograph. He reached across the table for the highlighter without bracing first, without the small flinch the ribs had been putting in him for two weeks. Nate watched him not-flinch and felt it in his own chest like good news.

Marcus came through for the coffee pot and refilled Jude's mug without asking. Jude said thanks without looking up, easy, unhurried, like a man in a house he'd stopped expecting to be charged for. Benny lay under the table with his chin on Jude's foot. Somebody upstairs was running a drill into a wall. It was a Tuesday. It was nothing. It was the kind of nothing Nate had spent his whole life standing guard at the edge of so that other people could have it, and here he was inside one, allowed in, his coffee hot. He'd never thought it'd look like this. He hadn't thought about what it'd look like at all, just whether he'd ever get here.

He let himself have it for the length of the cup. Then he put the cup in the sink and let himself remember his core mission.