Uncommon Romance (21 page)

“You can come if you need to.” Hollis thrust again, pressing the cock deep inside.

Jude moaned and gripped Hollis by the shoulders, holding her tight against her. She let herself feel the bands of heat flowing within her, ready to unfurl and explode. It would take so little. “Close.”

Hollis eased her hips back while maintaining full contact with the rest of her body, and just as carefully thrust forward. A few more controlled thrusts and Jude’s orgasm swept over her, slow and easy, like a heated drink overflowing the cup. She rode it until the heat and tide receded, but instead of feeling empty and wanting, her body clenched around Hollis’s cock deep inside her. She started the steep rise toward orgasm again.

“So good.” She arched into Hollis, urging her to stop holding back and fuck her for real.

Hollis kissed her languidly, her lips and tongue owning every part of Jude. She ended the kiss with a tight tug at Jude’s bottom lip, catching it between her teeth. She held it and sucked, then released it slowly. “Are you ready?”

“Ready?”

“I want to fuck you now. Just us.” She thrust into Jude to punctuate her point.

There was a time in her life, years ago, when the statement would have seemed absurd. Hollis was penetrating her with a fake cock. She was stretched and filled and so wet for more. She wanted to be pounded through the floor, and the look in Hollis’s eyes promised that she’d deliver. But with the cock between them, it was so much more than
just us.

Jude understood what she meant, though, and was touched by the sentiment. No cuffs, no clamps, no commands, and no safe word. Just the two of them feeling each other, making each other feel without the formality and rules. She stared into Hollis’s eyes and lifted the other leg up until they were both wrapped tight around Hollis’s waist. She nodded and tightened her hold on Hollis’s shoulders.

She was there, beneath Hollis, open and offering herself in the most pure way she knew. Hollis kissed her again and shifted her grip, moving her hands from between them and back to the floor at Jude’s shoulders. She pushed up, angling her body for better, deeper penetration.

Jude hadn’t thought it was possible, in that position, for Hollis to touch her any deeper. She had been wrong. Just the subtle shift in body position forced her deeper into Jude, forcing a strangled gasp from her lips.

“Hold on.”

Hollis fucked her slowly and thoroughly, pushing into her with careful, deep strokes. The firestorm brewed within her, swirling low in her cunt and curling out and traveling through her belly and up into her chest.

Jude rose hard and fast, in counterpoint to Hollis’s slow, controlled movements. She reached the brink of falling shamefully fast and didn’t care. Hollis fucked her so good, and all she wanted was to find the orgasm her body was chasing.

Hollis thrust once more, sharp and hard, and Jude fell, flew, shattered. Her body slumped into a puddled, weak mass, too spent to hold herself together. Her legs fell away from Hollis, her hands slipped to the floor. She was a quivering, happy mess.

“Not yet.” Hollis’s command barely penetrated her fog, but she knew, as Hollis gripped her ankles and urged her legs up to her chest, that the command wasn’t about Jude’s orgasm, but more about her own desire to continue.

With Jude’s body folded open, her cunt angled up to meet Hollis’s cock, Hollis began to fuck her hard and fast. She slammed into Jude with so much force her body inched back across the floor with each thrust. Hollis pushed her forward, crawling forward to push into her over and over and over.

When Jude’s head touched the chest at the foot of the bed, Hollis released the hold on her ankles. She gripped Jude’s hips, letting her feet rest against her shoulders. She jerked Jude’s body onto her cock with each punishing thrust until they were both covered with a thick sheen of sweat.

Jude let herself be manhandled, her hands grabbing at the floor uselessly with each forward thrust of Hollis’s hips. Her cunt was oversensitized and buzzing with each stroke. Just a little more, a little harder, and she’d come again.

“Harder,” she pleaded. She wanted Hollis to abuse her body, to pound through her cunt until she exploded.

Hollis jerked Jude’s hips up higher and arched back, changing the angle and the depth of her stroke slightly. Her back and legs trembled as she thrust, pushing forward with the full power of her body in each stroke.

“I’m close.” Hollis gritted the words out, but they didn’t matter.

Jude came on the next stroke, when the cock pressed against her back wall and her exposed, raw clit rubbed hard against Hollis. She shuddered and orgasmed in sloppy, wet completion.

As she trembled through her orgasm, Hollis jerked and stiffened. She came with her cock deep inside Jude, then collapsed on top of her. Her back and legs twitched helplessly as she rode out the power of her release.

“Stay with me.” Hollis whispered the words.

“Yes.” Jude wasn’t sure if Hollis was talking about the night or if she meant something longer. She didn’t question it as Hollis led her to her bed and held her close until they both fell asleep.

“Oh, you’re in here.” Reeva stopped in the doorway, her arms full of books. Several people stood behind her waiting to enter.

Jude raised her text. “Studying.”

“We’ll just go to the common room.” Reeva started to back out of the room.

“That’s not necessary.” Given a choice, Jude would rather study in silence, but in fairness, it was Reeva’s room, too. She could hardly deny her access just because she liked the quiet.

“Are you sure?” Reeva looked as skeptical as Jude felt.

They hadn’t talked much since Reeva’s third degree about her relationship with Hollis. Ironically, Hollis had avoided her for the last week as well.

“Sure.” Jude went against her instincts. “Why not?”

Reeva looked at her like she didn’t quite believe what she was hearing, but she came in anyway. Four of their classmates followed her.

“We’re hitting the books before the final tomorrow.”

Jude doubted Reeva needed the book time at all. Girl wasn’t kidding when she said she remembered everything.

Reeva and Tim sat on her bed, and the other three looked at Jude’s bed, then sat on the floor. Apparently she was disrupting their usual seating arrangement. That explained why her bed was crumpled when she got back to her room on most nights.

“What’s going on with you and Hollis? Did you break up or something?” Tim asked with an open smirk. Jude couldn’t for the life of her understand what Reeva saw in him.

“Is this how you spend your study time? Gossiping about things that are none of your business?”

Tim was unperturbed. “All I know is, she was in a lot better mood the past two weeks. Then suddenly on Tuesday, she’s turns into a total bitch.”

“Nah, she’s always been a bitch. It’s just worse now.” Their classmate didn’t even look up from his book when he spoke.

“Right,” continued Tim, “can’t you do the rest of us a favor and make up with her before the test tomorrow?”

“Fuck off.” It wasn’t the most eloquent response, but Jude enjoyed saying it nonetheless.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“I’m sorry, Jude. We shouldn’t pry, but I’m worried about you.” The look on Reeva’s face convinced Jude that might actually be true.

“You might be, but the only thing he cares about is his grade.”

“Damn right. This test will influence placement. I want behavioral sciences.” Tim was ambitious.

A gentle knock sounded and then door opened. Hollis poked her head in. “Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt.” She nodded to the full room, then met Jude’s watchful gaze. “Can I have a word?”

“Sure.” Jude left her book in the middle of her bed and open to the page she was studying. It was a test to see who was brave enough to close it and move to her vacated seat.

“Thank fuck.” Tim’s voice carried through the closed door.

“Can we go for a ride?” Hollis looked more uncertain than Jude had seen her during the entire past three weeks. Her eyes were red rimmed and vulnerable.

“I have a test tomorrow, I really should study.” Jude wanted to be sympathetic, but she was too pissed for that. Hollis had touched her in a way she’d never been touched before, and then completely ignored her afterward. Jude hadn’t asked for the change in their relationship, but it’d happened nonetheless. She wasn’t the one running from it, or punishing the other person because of it.

“Please? We need to talk.”

As much as she should be studying, Jude had to admit that Hollis was right. They had to talk and this might be their last chance to do so.

“Okay.” She debated taking Hollis’s hand as they walked toward her car. Jude wasn’t a fan of handholding, so the impulse caught her off guard. How would Hollis respond? Would she allow it? Would Jude be able to stand the simple niceness of it? She doubted it.

Hollis opened the door for Jude and held it until she was safely inside with her seatbelt on. Then she circled the car, her steps slow and deliberate. Her lips moved as though she was rehearsing a speech.

She didn’t speak until they’d been driving for over ten minutes. “I don’t know exactly what to say.”

“Figure it out,” Jude said. This is why she liked the rules of BDSM. She didn’t have to wait for her partner to sort out her emotional shit. She had enough baggage of her own, but it didn’t keep her from voicing her thoughts. All the wishy-washy bullshit made her crazy.

“I like you.” Hollis’s simple admission was more than Jude expected. It surprised her, but it didn’t exactly get them anywhere.

“I like you, too.”

Hollis took her hand in hers as she had on the drive to her house Tuesday night. “A lot. I like you a lot. More than I was prepared for and I’m not sure what to do about it.”

“There’s not a lot to do about it. I’m headed back to Portland on Saturday morning.”

“I know, but I’m not ready to let you go.”

“I don’t have a choice.” Jude’s whole life was in Portland. Her family, her friends, her job. Everything.

“I could come with you.” Hollis spoke quietly, but very clearly. There was no mistaking the words, or the emotion behind them.

Jude tightened her grip on Hollis’s hand.

“Is that an option?”

“There are openings in the Portland Field Office. I checked.”

“So you put in for a transfer? Then what?” Jude didn’t care about the semantics of FBI protocol, she just didn’t understand what this all meant for their relationship.

“Then we could try. It might not work, but it just might. I want to find out.”

“How would it work? Do you want to move in together and play house?”

Hollis scrunched up her face in a thoughtful frown. “I don’t think I could live with anyone, not even you.”

“Okay, then what?”

“I figured I’d get an apartment.”

“An apartment?” This was all just a little too cookie dough and pearls normal for Jude. She liked Hollis with reflector glasses over her emotions and a riding crop in her hand.

“Yes, one with sound proofing and eyebolts in the ceiling.” And there was the Hollis that Jude loved.

“You know, my house has a basement. With a playroom.”

Hollis flipped around in the middle of the street and the car behind them honked. Jude gripped the door to keep from toppling into Hollis.

“Where are we going?”

“My place. You don’t really need to study do you?”

“No, I’m good.” In truth, Jude hadn’t needed the review at all. Unlike her classmates who were actual FBI, she wasn’t being graded. She just needed to do something with her time to keep from going crazy over the distance Hollis had placed between them.

“Good, then you’ll spend the night with me.”

Jude didn’t answer because it wasn’t actually a question. She reclaimed Hollis’s hand. It seemed the more she held it, the more she liked holding it.

As they drove toward Hollis’s house, Jude reflected on the past few weeks. She’d arrived feeling spent, worn out from the demands the homicide department placed on her, but couldn’t wait to get back home. She had a stack of open cases that needed to be closed. She had victims who needed a voice and families who deserved closure.

She’d come only because her captain insisted. She didn’t expect to learn anything new, and she certainly hadn’t expected to find her future on that first day.

Hollis squeezed her hand, then released her hold to press the garage-door open button as she pulled into her driveway. Coming home together was such a simple act. So
normal
. She’d never expected to want something like that in her life, but it’d found her anyway. She wasn’t sure how all of this would work out, but Hollis made her want to try.

Jove Belle
was born and raised against a backdrop of orchards and potato fields. The youngest of four children, she was raised in a conservative, Christian home and began asking why at a very young age, much to the consternation of her mother and grandmother. At the customary age of eighteen, she fled southern Idaho in pursuit of broader minds and fewer traffic jams involving the local livestock. The road didn’t end in Portland, Oregon, but there were many confusing freeway interchanges that a girl from the sticks was ill prepared to deal with. As a result, she has lived in the Portland metro area for over fifteen years and still can’t figure out how she manages to spend so much time in traffic when there’s not a stray sheep or cow in sight.

She lives with her partner of twelve years. Between them, they share three children, two dogs, two cats, two mortgage payments, one sedan, and one requisite dyke pickup truck. One day she hopes to live in a house that doesn’t generate a never ending honey-do list.

Incidentally, she never stopped asking why, but did expand her arsenal of questions to include who, what, when, where, and, most important of all, how. In those questions, a story is born.

Edge of Darkness
“wins points for its well-rounded and developed main character and its breezy, light writing style, making it a fun read…The plotline has its share of twists, turns and revelations…I look forward to reading more from Jove Belle.”—
Our Chart

“
Edge of Darkness
is a very well written book. It has sympathetic characters, an exciting story, hot sex, and a wonderful cliff-hanger ending. This is a book that makes the reader forget everything but turning the next page.”—
Just About Write

Indelible
has “some pleasing plot twists and delicious sex scenes.”—
Seattle Gay News

“
Chaps
grips the reader in its first few pages and never lets go. …There are heart-pounding scary scenes contrasted with plenty of quiet country roads, and enough action to keep the pages flying.”—
Just About Write