Page 105 of Play With Me

I exchange a glance with Jude. He rolls his eyes. “Don’t even try to understand my brother.”

“Anyway…” Griff takes a swig of beer. “I came to say hi to you guys too. Was hoping to see Cap but I understand he’s in town.”

“How do you know that?” I ask.

“Don’t ask questions you want answers to, either,” Jude tells me. “He just knows shit. Also, since when do you drop by to say hi?”

“Since I found this for you.”

Griff pulls out a manila envelope and slides it across the table to us. Jude reaches for it, but Griffin clicks his tongue. “Wasn’t talking to you.”

Jude scowls.

I take the envelope, grinning.

The bartender comes back then with my food and Griffin’s.

Jude eyes the bartender, then me, then narrows his eyes in an exaggerated look of suspicion. He slips his hand over my stockinged knee and whispers in my ear, “Were you trying to make me jealous, Shotgun Annie?”

A flutter runs through me that I try to ignore. I open the envelope. “No. I didn’t expect you to be here, remember?”

“Well, I am,” Jude says. “Have you even noticed the other men staring at you? Makes me want to show them who you belong to.”

My stomach swirls, and I look quickly to Griff. The bartender’s off helping someone else now, and he’s not looking at us, just chewing contemplatively on his food. But I swear I see a hint of a smirk on his face.

“I don’t belong to you, Jude.” I’m smiling, but there’s a trace of seriousness in my voice as I recall the reason I came down here in the first place.

“This week you do,” Jude says. There’s a hardness to his voice, like he’s been thinking the same thing I have, about how little time we have left.

Is he thinking about what comes next, too?

Jude looks down as he slides his fingers around my thigh, his hand slipping under the hem of my dress.

My heart flutters. His hand is warm up my skirt, and he’s so brazenly touching me in public with his brother right next to us. I place my hand on his and guide his hand out and back on the bar. “I can’t think like that,” I whisper.

I focus on opening the envelope as Jude curls his hand on the counter. After a moment, Jude pulls my plate toward him, stealing my fork too.

I don’t even try to stop him though, because I’ve emptied the contents of the envelope onto the bar top, and my jaw falls at what I see.

It’s a photograph of a cottage, nestled in some trees. Under that is a map, with coordinates, and some handwritten notes—or copies of them.

“Hey, is that…” Jude spins the photograph so he’s looking at it upright.

“The love shack,” I whisper.

CHAPTER25

Jude

The next morning, I wake up with my dick so hard it hurts. It’s not just regular morning wood, either. I was dreaming about Nora—and yanked my hair before anything could get good. It feels weird, dreaming about her now. I want her to be a part of it.

But I know my dick feels deprived, too, because last night she didn’t come over, after I spent all day fantasizing about what we’d get up to.

But that wasn’t all I was feeling yesterday, and that’s carried over to today too. This weird heaviness in my chest when I think about her after I’m gone, back in London on her own.

Maybe curled up against someone else the way she was with me the other night. Some other guy tangling their hand in her silky red hair.

My dick starts to deflate, finally.

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