Jude shut his eyes, wanting to vanish into the mattress.
“It’s not that I don’t want to.” Warren coaxed him back, tilting his face up until their eyes met. “And this won’t make any sense but…it’s because Ido.”
Jude swallowed, hard.
Warren looked wrecked. Wanting. As if holding himself back with a single frayed thread that could snap if either of them breathed wrong. But Jude didn’t trust himself to speak. Couldn’t trust what would come out if he did. So he stayed still. The way he’d learned to. Every inch of his skin alive, lips tingling, chest tight enough to ache.
“God, Jude.” Warren dipped forward, resting his forehead to Jude’s. “I need to tell you something—”
“No, don’t. Please don’t.” Jude closed his eyes. “I don’t need to hear whatever it is.”
Whatever Warren was about to confess. Be it a girlfriend, a wife, or something far worse than rejection, Jude couldn’t handle the fall-out. Because he’d been around long enough to recognise the pattern. The kiss had been an accident...Jude had read too much into a look, a question. And he’d pounced while Warren was… what? Being kind? Reading him like an open book because he was intuitive, not interested. And too polite to push him away.
The humiliation burned.
“No, Jude, I—”
“Don’t. Please.” Jude rolled onto his side, putting his back as a shield. “Forget it ever happened.”
Warren didn’t say he would. He didn’t lie. He went quiet. And somehow that hurt more than any denial could have. Jude almost hated how he obeyed him. Hated it almost as much as he needed it. After years of being forced, pushed, cornered into what he didn’t want, Warren’s restraint was its own kind of mercy. Maybe that was why it terrified him. Why he pushed him away.
So he lay there listening to the silence stretch between them until it filled the bed, thick and aching, and pretended to sleep, though his pulse still tripped beneath his skin. The heat of Warren’s body stayed at his back.
But heartbreakingly out of reach.
Chapter thirteen
Stop and Search
To say the next morning was awkward didn’t even scratch the surface.
The one silver lining, although Warren wasn’t sure it counted as one, was that by the time he woke, Jude was already up, showered, changed, bag packed, and out in the corridor herding kids towards breakfast. Which meant Warren hadn’t had to face him.
But it also meant Jude had let him sleep right through that part of the morning.
And Warren knew exactly why.
The noise of laughing teenagers filtering in from the hall pulled him out of bed. He stretched, scrubbing a hand over his face, still feeling the ghost of last night’s heat on his skin when the door opened.
“Hey.” Jude didn’t meet his eyes, his tone clipped but casual enough for the audience outside. He grabbed his phone from the desk, shoved it into his chino pocket. “I’ll take this early lot down to breakfast. Switch in fifteen so I can grab my bag? If you’re ready.”
Warren noted the quick sweep of his body, but it was gone in a blink. Then so was Jude, the door clicking shut behind him.
Warren exhaled his frustration.Fuck.
It was unravelling.
The kiss… he shouldn’t have let it happen. And at the same time, maybe he should have let it go further. Maybe he should have given Jude whatever he wanted if it meant cracking him open, earning the trust that would get him to talk. That was the job. But Warren had a battle on his hands, and it wasn’t the one written into his cover. Because the truth was, he hadn’t kissed Jude for the job. He hadn’t been thinking about strategy or leverage. When he’d asked if Jude wanted him to give him something else to think about, he’d meant talking. The way he’d been taught to interrogate without it feeling like an interrogation. To coax and calm. He hadn’t expected Jude to kiss him.
But when he had…God, Warren kissed him back. Not because it was smart. Or because it would gain him trust or loosen his tongue.
Because hewantedto.
And not in the way he sometimes did when undercover. Those calculated touches, that occasional compromise of boundaries to keep a role believable, tools he used to gather intelligence. No. Last night had been different. It had beenhim. Warren Beckford. Not the fabricated PE teacher. Or the copper with an angle. Just him, kissing someone he wanted.
Jesus Christ.
The strangest part? The fact Jude was a man barely registered as a complication.
