Dare Me (Take Me 2)

Case in point, she diligently asked, “So who is this woman?”

“I met her at the VIP launch of Topline—the rooftop club of the new Amherst-Hull Building overlooking Times Square.”

“Mm. Was she your favored blonde-haired, doe-eyed, just-past-the-age-of-innocence sort…or—”

“You don’t judge, Kate.” His gaze narrowed on her. “What the hell?”

A long stream of air blew between her parted lips. She paused a moment, as though to regroup. Then she added the swabs of Neosporin to the surgical pads in the brushed-aluminum garbage bin alongside his mammoth, glass-topped desk. Returning to him at the window, she said, “I’m just trying to determine if that was a phase, Jude. Your taste in women changed dramatically from the one you were engaged to for eighteen months.”

Jude studied Kate’s reflection as she reached for the fat spiral of gauze. She stepped behind him once more and wrapped her arms around him at his waist, the even more intimate proximity of her instantly igniting every inch of him.

“Hold this end here, please,” she murmured. Her warm, feathery breath swept tantalizingly along his spine.

Jude pressed a hand to the edge of the gauze above his navel, as instructed. She began to unravel the roll, making her first pass around his toned midsection to his back, then circling to the front of him again. All the while, he battled the erotic temptation of her rich perfume wafting under his nose. The teasing of her wispy strands of hair and the silky material of her dress against his flesh. He knew not to imagine she wore a sexy black lace bra as her breasts grazed his shoulder blades, but it was no easy feat. She permeated his senses and made his cock throb in wicked beats.

Even when all of her current ministrations—her words, even—stung like hell, she still aroused him.

How fucked up was that?

As she continued to wind the bandage around him, she said, “I’m trying to figure out what happened last night. Maybe you’ll confess straight-up, so I don’t have to piece it all together myself. Because I have to tell you, Jude, these gashes are either this side of an I can’t get enough of you obsession—or a please stop fucking me cry for help.”

“Kate,” he ground out, his intense gaze locking with hers in the window, his facial features turning stony, the thick cords of his neck pulling taut. “Take two seconds to decide which is more accurate.”

Her brow furrowed and her hauntingly beautiful face scrunched. Uncertainty flashed in her eyes.

Jude swore under his breath. Tore his gaze from her. He stared out at the skyline as anger burned through him. The cumulus clouds overhead threatened to break open at any second with a torrential downpour. Lightning rippled through the haze and an ominous rumble of thunder followed.

Perfectly apropos for the storm raging within him.

“I can’t read the barometer when you’re like this, Jude. You’re tense and moody. And I need more information.”

He let out a low growl. Then quietly insisted over his shoulder, “You once claimed to know me well enough to champion my cause.”

“Sure,” she conceded. Then hastily—and cryptically—added, “When I did, you cut me out of your life.”

His gaze snapped back to the window. But connected with hers again in the pane, the image of her slightly distorted with the sudden onslaught of rain sluicing along the sleek side of the building.

It was a wonder he could temper his fury over her having doubts about him when he was also aggravated by her obliviousness at being so entangled with him at the moment. She did a damn good job of not visibly taking in his naked torso and the tattoo covering half of his right biceps and shoulder, which she’d not known he’d had prior to today. It was a symbolic, artistic rendering that held significance to him, but to him alone. His dress shirts, suit jackets and tuxedoes always concealed the ink.

Damn it, never once had Kate appeared to take an interest in the bodily characteristics he possessed or his overall physicality. She was interested in his mind, his actions, his motivations, his…feelings. What intrigued Kate were all the psychological fragmentations of his intricate emotional composition.

So why the hell should it surprise him she was acting purely clinical with him now? Keeping her eyes locked with his, not letting them wander to his shoulders, his back…or his chest.

His teeth clenched. He’d created this reality with her by never revealing she enticed him. Excited him. In a way he hadn’t imagined possible after losing Annalise.

Jude had no one to blame but himself that Dr. Kathryn Stockman was the consummate professional.

That did not keep her unwavering objectivity from grating on his nerves.

Though he told her, “Perhaps we should stick solely to patching me up, Doc.”

She let out a low tsk. Jude recognized the disapproving sound for what it was. And could astutely deduce what her next words would be.

“I let you break free last time, Jude,” she judiciously commented. “But now…?” She speared him with a dogged look. “I don’t think so.”

His muscles tightened. She continued speaking while snipping at the gauze with her scissors and securing it along his spine with tape.

“Something happened that compelled you to call me—completely out of the blue. And here I am. So spill, Jude. Because I came to help you.” Her expression remained piercing. “If that’s what you want, it’s exactly what you’ll get.”