His hands slid up my body, skimming up my breasts and molding beneath my jaw. Holding my face in his gentle hands, the lines and muscles of his face smoothed. “Luce. I love you. This is exactly what I need right now. Doctor’s orders be damned.”

My heart was pounding so hard in my chest, my sternum was starting to ache. This was it. The green light. Yet I also knew in this moment that a red light was on the horizon and it was because of that glimpse at cruel realty I lifted myself above him.

“This?” I implied, bracing my hands on his chest. His heart thrust against them.

He nodded, running his thumbs down my jaw. “This.”

And then I lowered myself onto him, letting him consume me every way he could.

He groaned below me as his hands fell back to my hips.

“This?” I breathed, not able to catch it as I moved above him again.

We both winced from the separation.

His fingers curled into my hips, sliding them back down over him. The heart rate monitor was really screaming now, barely able to keep up with Jude.

“Damn this thing,” he breathed, his forehead lining as I moved above him again. Tearing at his chest, he ripped the wires from his chest, chucking them to the floor. He did the same with his IV.

“There,” he said, twisting below me, rocking me over until I was on my back beside him. “Nothing is coming between us,” he said, nuzzling into my neck as he rocked over me. I was vaguely aware the heart rate monitor was now screaming some sort of warning, but when Jude’s hips rocked into mine, his moan getting lost inside me as he kissed me to the beat our hips were creating, there was nothing else but him.

His tongue rocked into me, followed by his hips, while he fitted his entire body against mine. He wasn’t only making love to me‌—‌he was possessing me.

There was nothing I wanted more than him, nothing I wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice. Nothing my life felt more dependent upon than this man moving inside of me in every way a person could enter another.

Separating his mouth from mine, his heavy breath came just outside my ear. I could feel the sheen of sweat covering his face, mixing with mine.

Moving inside me again, deeper this time, I almost screamed. I was so close I doubted I would last one more. “I’m not letting you go, Luce,” he whispered, his voice tight. “I won’t let you leave. You’re mine,” he breathed, sinking his teeth into my ear as his hips flinched against mine once more.

And that was it. My body trembled against his, my hand reaching for the metal bedrail to brace myself. He continued moving inside of me, his beat quickening as my body clenched around him. His hand joined mine braced over the bedrail and, as he followed me down the forgetting reality path, his fingers wove through mine, squeezing them before his body collapsed against mine.

“Damn, Luce,” he said, his head rising and falling against my chest.

My thoughts exactly. “How do you feel?” I asked, trying to bring my heart rate down. It wasn’t having any of it. “How’s your head?”

“My head’s fine,” he said, winding his arms around my back. “It’s my goddamn heart that’s about ready to bust something.”

I started laughing, feeling as close to euphoric as a snarky, natural pessimist could be. He joined in, his laughter vibrating against me.

And then the door exploded open as the same kind-faced nurse rushed in, her expression lined with concern.

Her eyes landed on the flat-lining machine first, then on where Jude rested bare ass naked over me. The worry lines faded from her face as she blessed us with a very parental expression. Walking over to the monitor, she shut the screaming thing off before turning and heading out of the room.

“At least you died and went to heaven,” she said in an amused tone before closing us back inside the room.

“Yes,” Jude said into my chest, his laughter dimming. “I most certainly did.”

“Too bad our celestial vacay didn’t last a little longer,” I said, running my fingers over his shaved head.

His body tensed in my hold as I felt that smile curve into the side of my breast. “Who says we can’t make a return trip?” he said, lifting himself over me again.

I didn’t have a chance to reply with my answer‌—‌reality‌—‌before his mouth and body moved into mine again.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Jude was sleeping the slumber of a happy man beside me. His crooked smile was still a ghost on his face as his arms held me like vices. Even after a second handrail bracing, body trembling, grit your teeth around a scream, roll in a hospital bed, I hadn’t been able to fall asleep.

Jude had no trouble. In fact, my heart beat hadn’t recovered fully before he’d fallen asleep. So I’d been awake for six hours, staring at the man curled around me, more confused than I’d ever been before. How could we be wrong for each other after one more very big part of a relationship just proved how very right we were for one another? And why, no matter what we seemed to do, did things not want to work out for us?

My flight was leaving in less than two hours. I didn’t have my bag with me, and there would be no way I’d be able to drive to my dorm to get it and make it back before my plane had already landed in sunny south Arizona where my family was spending Christmas with my grandparents.

Thankfully when I’d booked the ticket last month, I guessed I’d be at Jude’s game the Saturday before I flew out and planned on staying at his place that night before driving to the airport. My plans certainly hadn’t factored in a hospital bed, or clenched fingers running down cool metal bed rails, but if I left now, at least I could still make my flight.

I couldn’t wake him. I couldn’t let him know I was leaving because he wouldn’t let me go. Or he’d buy a ticket and come along with me.

And one part of me very much wanted that to happen. But the confused part of me, the one that was scratching her head in wonder, contemplating what to do next, needed some time and space to work out this new complication in what was becoming the never ending tale of Jude’s and my story.

More time and space.

I sighed, shifting in bed, trying to weave myself from beneath him. This past month’s “time and space” had done nothing but further confuse me and complicate things between the two of us. So I vowed I would force myself to make a decision by the time that airplane headed back to New York after the New Year. Before I came back here, I would be able to give him a firm and final answer to the question that was Jude and Lucy.

Tucking the sheet around him, I herded up my clothes, jamming my neck and limbs into all the appropriate openings. Grabbing my bag from the table, I paused at the foot of the bed and just stared at him. It seemed like I wouldn’t be able to stop. He was mine. I knew this with all my heart.

But could I have him?

This was the question I wouldn’t rest until I could answer.

Not even daring to run my fingers over the tips of his toes for fear of him waking up and convincing me back into bed, I rushed out the door, careful to close the door without a noise.

I took the stairs, dodging the elevators by the nurses’s station because I didn’t want to explain myself. I couldn’t explain anything right now. Other than I was confused as all hell.

Once I was outside the hospital, I had a line of cabs to choose from. Sliding inside the closest one, I glanced back at the hospital, my eyes shifting to the fifth floor.

“The airport, please,” I said, narrowing my eyes to better focus on the window I was looking into. A shadow moved suddenly away from it. “And please hurry,” I added, the ball reforming in my throat.

The cabdriver followed my request to the speed-defying T. In fact, he put NYC cabdrivers to shame. Less than a half hour after we’d left the hospital, we were pulling up to the airport’s curb. Having no luggage other than my purse, I handed the driver his money plus a nice tip for a job well done.