Seven Day Seduction (7 page)

William suggested you
diet. William has never called you perfect. Never asked you to get
down on your knees and…
Louise screamed at
her brain to shut up!

“Don’t be silly.”

“Louise, I am perfectly serious,” Jude said.
“God, do you have any idea what you do to me? Any idea what I’m
thinking when I look at you? You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever
met, and you don’t even know it do you? You don’t realize how badly
I want to peel your clothes off and have you panting underneath
me.”

“Stop…”

“I wouldn’t stop, Louise,” Jude promised.
“Not for many, many hours. Jesus, the things I am going to do to
you.”

Her heart pounded, adrenaline flooded her
system, and Louise dropped her spoon. It hit the table with a thud,
the noise seemingly louder than it should have been.

“I think it’s time I went home

***

“I’ll follow you back,” Jude said, flagging
the server over. “Make sure you get home safely.”

Louise picked her spoon up—the very one
she’d dropped at his suggestive words—and shook her head. “I think
I can manage. I’ve lived here a long while you know.”

“Strange to think we’ve never met before,”
he said as the server approached.

“Is it?”

“Yes…anyway I will see you home,” he said as
he inserted his card into the server’s portable payment machine. A
moment later and she passed across a receipt, thanked them for
their custom, and bustled off to one of her other tables. “It’s the
gentlemanly thing to do,”

“You’re no gentleman, Jude.”

He laughed, taking her arm—this time she did
not shrug him off—and guiding her from the room. “You’d be
surprised, Louise.”

“Really?”

The temperature had dropped whilst they’d
been inside, almost like summer would stretch into the fall days,
but stop as night rolled around. Jude saw Louise shiver in her thin
shirt. He didn’t even think before shrugging of his sweater and
passing it across.

Her eyes widened as he held it out, first on
the sweater, and then on him. Jude grinned, knowing that—whether
she admitted it or not—Louise liked his body. He worked out every
single day, it was a habit he’d gotten into when he was in his
teens, and Jude knew that his physique was something women found
attractive. He’d always sort of taken that fact in his stride, but
the way Louise looked at him, the hunger in her eyes, the way her
fingers almost twitched. Fuck, he’d pump iron all day, every day,
to have her look at him like that.

“You only have a tee shirt on,” she
whispered.

“Take it,” he insisted. “I bet your heater
doesn’t work, and I want to know your warm on the drive back.” And
didn’t part of him quite like the idea of her having something of
his? Of walking around in fabric that had recently lay next to his
own skin?

Jesus, he was pathetic, and yet...

“But—”

“Louise, I insist. Don’t make me come over
there and put it on you.”

“Okay…I’ll get it back to you tomorrow,” she
said, placing her satchel between her legs and pulling the sweater
over her head. The action dislodged her bun slightly, and tendrils
of hair fell over his sweater, curling around her chest and
shoulders. Jude itched to reach out and capture one, to twist it
around his hand, pull her towards him…

“I should get going,” she said.

And though it was the last
thing he wanted Jude found himself nodding. His control was on the
thinnest of knife edges, soon he
would
pull her to him, there was no
doubt about it. “Maybe you should,” he agreed, “before my
gentlemanly impulses leave me completely.”

“Gentlemanly,” she sighed, swinging her
satchel back on her shoulder, and turning towards her car. “Of
course.”

“I know the way I’m behaving with you is
wrong,” he admitted. “I know there are lines that shouldn’t be
crossed, and three days ago I would never have imagined chasing an
engaged woman.”

His honesty made her pause, and she turned
back to look at him, shock obvious in her gaze. “Then…”

Jude crossed his arms over his chest, and
shifted a little, shocked himself that he was being so honest with
her. But she demanded it from him, there was no other way to
explain it. She stripped him bare and there could be no pretence
with her.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said
slowly. “The moment you walked into my office something clicked in
me. I don’t even know what it was, but I’m not going to play games
here. I’m not going to pretend to feel less than I do. When I say I
want you I mean it in every way.”

“Jude…”

“You do something to me, Louise,” he
continued. “Something that makes no sense. The idea of you with
that fucking fiancé of yours...” He paused, the familiar anger
shooting through his system. “It burns me, makes me so fucking mad.
I rage whenever I think of it.”

“You shouldn’t be thinking of it,” Louise
whispered. “Of William and me. It isn’t right.”

“It’s unavoidable. How would you feel if the
situation was reversed?”

“I…” Louise shook her head. “I wouldn’t be
chasing you.”

“No,” Jude said, unclenching his fists,
trying to get a hold of his temper. “You wouldn’t would you? You’d
simply lower those eyes of yours, and keep your feelings bottled
up. But I can’t do that. It’s impossible. I want and I get, it’s
always been that way for me.”

“You can’t have everything you want.”

“I have so far.”

“Then maybe it’s about time you learned
otherwise.”

“Maybe it is,” he agreed. “But it won’t be
this time, not us.”

She turned away again, strode off towards
her car, but still he heard her words. “Jude, there is no us.”

“You know there is,” he grated. “Already
after just three days it’s there. Feels like it’s been there for
months. You know I asked myself last night what I’d be doing if you
were married already.”

Once again his words made her halt, her hand
on the handle of her car. “And?”

“I like to think I would have kept my
distance, I like to think that is a line I wouldn’t cross, but
Louise…” He sighed. “I have a nasty suspicion that I’m lying to
myself. I think even if you were married, if that ring was a
different kind, I’d still want you, and I’d still chase you.”

“Marriage vows are sacred. Breaking them is
wrong.”

“Of course it is.” Jude agreed as he walked
the distance between them, pausing right in front of her. “Just
another reason why you can’t marry him.”

“Sorry?”

“He’s not the man for you.”

She glared and took a step back. “You don’t
know that. You can’t know that.”

“I do. Because fact of the matter is, if he
was, you wouldn’t feel the way you do about me.”

***

With one sentence, one comment, Jude managed
to sum up everything that Louise had been thinking for the past few
days. It was like he’d reached into her mind, the part she was
trying to desperately ignore, and read everything that was in
there. The lust, the shame, the excitement…that horrible, stomach
churning excitement.

“I don’t have feelings for you,” she
lied.

“Stop,” he said. “Just stop. We’re well past
that point now.”

“Jude—”

“Louise, you can’t lie to me, not about
this, it’s too important.”

He was close to her. Too close all over
again. Louise could practically feel the tension arching between
them, and she was sure that he could hear the racing of her
heart.

“We just met,” she said, trying to find
something, some sort of barrier to put between them. “We’ve known
each other a handful of days.”

“I guess it must just happen that way
sometimes. Isn’t it what the poets write about? The songs? I always
thought they were bullshit. I was wrong.”

She groaned, closed her eyes, tried to
remove his words from her overexcited brain. “Don’t do this to me.
Please, don’t.”

“I have to,” he insisted. “I can’t not. Just
tell me, be honest with me, and I swear I will get in that car and
drive away. I’ll let you see yourself home, keep your denial a
little longer. You can wrap yourself back up in it, pretend this
conversation did not happen.”

She snapped her eyes back open, met his, and
wanted to groan all over again. He looked so serious, so intense,
and it was that more than anything else that made her speak. “The
way I feel for you…it’s wrong.”

“Why?”

“Because I shouldn’t,” she whispered. “I
shouldn’t feel anything.”

“Because of him.”

“Yes.”

“And if he wasn’t here,” Jude demanded. “If
he was out of the picture, what then?”

“Even then I think it would be too much,”
Louise replied honestly.

“Too much.”

“Jude.” She held up her hands, trying to
explain. “You’re overwhelming. You make me
feel…weird…confused.”

“Weird how?”

“Like everything is spinning out of
control,” she admitted. “Like I can’t think straight.”

He let out a sigh, it washed over her, made
her shiver. “You do the exact same thing to me.”

She wanted to rejoice at his words, but how
could she? How could any of this make her feel right? Happy? It was
so messed up. “This isn’t normal,” she whispered. “It can’t be.
People aren’t supposed to feel like this about each other so
soon.”

“Of course they are,” he insisted. “We
desire each other, Louise. That’s what it all comes down to,
desire.”

Desire.
Her heart thumped, her head spun, and all of a
sudden Louise realized what was making her feel so panicky. How
could she have missed it? How could she have let herself? Jude and
she were on completely different paths. Yes, she wanted him, yes it
was all she could do to keep her hands by her sides and stop
reaching out to touch him, but it was more than that. Underneath
the pulse of want, was something else entirely, something that
spoke of more than just a physical need. Louise had
feelings
for him. Real
feelings already. After just three days she was already falling far
too fast, but Jude…she swallowed down the sudden lump in her
throat. It made sense now, when he spoke of wanting her he meant
just that.

He wanted to bed her. To fuck her. And
likely that was all it ever would be.

That thought hurt her in a completely
inexplicable way.

“Stop,” she said. “Just stop.”

But he didn’t. Jude moved forward and before
Louise could take another shaky step back, wrapped his hands around
her arms. He pulled her to him, pressing her body up tight to his.
Louise could feel the muscles of his stomach, the hard length in
his pants. She almost whimpered.

“
I woke up thinking about
you,” he ground out. “Went to sleep thinking about you. For the
past three days you are all I can think about. It’s fucking
impossible but it’s there. Tell me it isn’t the same for
you.”

Maybe if he hadn’t pulled her to him. Maybe
if she couldn’t feel his heart racing against her ear, she would
have. But Louise’s defenses were behind her, left next to the car,
and so she shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Then we have no choice.”

“What do you—”

He bent his head and tilted her body, so
that she was looking directly at him. Louise had just a moment to
see the desire in his eyes, the intent, and then it was all too
late. When his lips touched hers she felt like she might actually
swoon. Dizziness hit, her heart leapt into her throat, and she had
no choice but to press her hands against his chest to steady
herself.

He deepened the kiss, demanding she respond.
Louise was helpless not to. She gave one little moan. A denial? An
encouragement? She didn’t know. A moment later and they were lost
in one another. Jude took, she gave, he took more, she did not stop
him.

They moved together, right there on the
street, lips dancing, tongues touching. It should have been a
tentative exploration, the first kiss, but it wasn’t. It was
explosive, passionate, it held everything they had both denied
themselves.

It was overwhelming, she
couldn’t think. Her breasts ached, sensations travelled down from
them right to the other ache—deep and low in her stomach. Her
panties drenched, her own juices flooded them. Louise wanted Jude
to touch her there, to touch her everywhere. She
wanted
him, needed him,
the kiss was not enough.

When Jude finally pulled away she lifted her
hands to pull him back, the only thought in her mind to feel his
lips on her again. But he leaned back, out of her reach, and
whispered. “Open your eyes.”

Louise complied instantly, meeting his
gaze.

“Tell him.”

“Tell?” She shook her head, confusion
chasing her though her, until a moment later and his words made
sense. Horrifying, guilt inducing sense. “William,” she
breathed.

Jude gave a sharp nod, and pulled her
closer, so that there was absolutely nothing between them. “Tell
him,” he demanded. “And then end it.”

She gasped. “I can’t do that.”

“You can’t not do it. This,” he tightened
his grip on her arms, “this is not going to go away. You think at
the end of the week, if you manage to hold out that long, that
you’ll simply go back to your normal life? Pick up the pieces like
nothing happened?”

She was so confused, so lost. Louise
couldn’t even imagine past the week, couldn’t even consider it…and
yet, surely that told her plenty? But how could she see straight
with Jude pressed against her? How could anything make sense?

“You won’t be able to,” he added. “And
neither will I. End it, Louise, and do it now, before we’re both
too far gone to care.

Day Four

Jude had an early morning meeting so he was
not in the office to see Louise first thing. He rushed through it
as quickly as he could, and drove far too fast to get back to the
office, desperate to see her.