Book Review: Dirty Like Jude

Title: Dirty Like Jude
Author: Jaine Diamond
Genre: Romance, Fiction

What It’s Like: Jude is the head of security for Dirty, as well as Jesse’s personal body guard. At the same time, he has been part of the Kings Motorcycle club, an outlaw motorcycle club run by his brother, Piper as the VP. When members of the Motorcycle Club (“MC”) were looking for legitimate employment, and as long as they weren’t getting into illegal things, Jude would take them as part of his security team around Dirty, the biggest rock band in a while. One of these individuals included Lexington, known as Lex, a man whom Jude tasked with a personal project of his own–keeping tabs on Veronica ‘Roni’ Webber, especially as she has been dating a member of the other club, the Sinners, who Jude believed was no good.

In fact, that morning while Jude was trying to figure out why Roni drove him nuts, Roni wakes up to morning sex with Taze, while imagining that she is doing it with Jude. Taze ends up taking a call just as she’s getting close to an orgasm, and tells her that he has to leave for MC business. Roni takes a shower and calls her best friend Jessa, who asked her to call her. She then picks up some drinks from Nomad, the cafe owned by Katie’s sister Becca, and makes her way to Jessa, who tells her that Dirty has been wanting to do a New Year’s Eve party, but that everything is booked. Jessa knows that Roni has been wanting to get into the Event/ Party Promotion space, and that by doing this for Dirty, she would get a lot of coverage. After further consideration, Roni takes her on it knowing that she would have to put a lot of things together before she pitched this to Jessa’s boyfriend–Brody, who happens to be the manager of Dirty.

So Roni gets started on that with the help with Talia, a friend that has done some promotion events for Dirty. They begin searching with Talia’s list of Dirty’s previously approved venues, with the problem being that all of them are likely booked. One of them specifically is booked by a DJ group that includes DJ Summer–a friend of some of Dirty’s members–and coincidentally Talia gets a message from DJ Summer that her event for New Years Eve has been pulled because the DJ that was supposed to headline pulled out. Roni gets excited and decides to buy out the promoter of that event, and makes a plan to go down to the club where Summer is actually playing tonight to speak with her. When Taze stops by to finish what they started earlier that morning, Roni kicks him out, telling him that she’s not interested in being his fuck buddy only when that suffices for him, but not for her. She gets dressed and then heads out to the club.

Jude in the meantime finds out about Roni going to the club, so he stops by the club, relieving Lex, when he sees that Roni is speaking with Ash, who is being super flirty with her, and then Ash takes her to the back. Jude runs out of the club in frustration at how she just keeps being easy with other men, while Roni actually gets taken by Ash to the back to speak with Summer. She gives Summer her plan, and Summer is actually intrigued by it, telling her that she will do it if Roni actually gets Dirty to agree to this plan, and gets a band that will mix Dirty’s and Summer’s style of music. Roni then gets invited to party with Summer, and she goes out partying with her.

Jude rides out to the middle of a gas station quite literally in the middle of nowhere. He’s so focused on the whole situation with Roni that he doesn’t even notice the people sneaking up behind him–one guy places a tire rod against his kidney and they all force him around to the back of the store, where they beat him because Taze has figured out that he is having Roni followed around. The three men who do jump Jude are still terrified of him because they don’t know what he would do or when he would act up, but Taze specifically threatens to hurt Lex, which is a big no go for the MCs. Once they leave him behind, Jude gets on his bike and drives close to his home that he’s 20 minutes away before he stops and calls people–first, Conner, the man who works as Dylan’s security guard, to ask him to bring $2K with him and take him to the doctor’s. Then Jude calls Brody and tells him to bring Roni to his home under the guise of Jessa needing additional help with the baby. Finally, he calls Lex and tells him that he’s been replaced by a different guy, but that he has a special project for him as well. Conner picks him up, and takes him to a doctor that works with the Kings MC, who checks him over and tells Jude that he doesn’t have any internal injuries or anything broken but a bruise on his back from the hit. He prescribes him some medicine and then Conner drops him off at his home, with the promise that a prospect will be sent to deliver Jude’s bike to his home.

Jude wakes up super late the following morning, and then drags himself to Brody’s house, where he finds himself in a meeting with Brody and Roni regarding Dirty’s business. Roni presents the plan, and answers a few questions, leaving Brody shocked that she managed to pull this off, though he is a bit hesitant still if she can pull this off. Particularly, his issue is that they do not have a starting band to play before Dirty, and at first he wasn’t sure about Summer, but when Roni asked him if Dirty really wanted to play until 3 am, he realized that she was right. She then explained to him that she will find a band that will be the right mix of Dirty’s music as well as Summer’s style of music for the first part of it, and added that since she’s figured this out with 5 weeks to go for New Year’s Eve, she’s sure she can pull of the band. Brody agrees with it, after they go over a few more details, and Jude tells her that they need to meet up to go over security for the venue. At first Roni tries to push back and tell him that it can be done over the phone, but Jude tells her that she’s never done something of this size so it will be easier to do the conversations in person, and adds that they will need to work together on the security aspect because he hasn’t been in the venue in a while. Once Roni leaves, Brody retorts that the venue hadn’t changed, but Jude tells him that she doesn’t know that. Jude leaves Brody’s place and texts Roni telling her to meet him at a specific restaurant.

That night at 8pm, Roni meets up with Jude at the restaurant and they start talking–mostly about their own relationships and personal lives, catching up since the last time they actually talked. Jude tells her that Taze isn’t a good guy again, but Roni tells him that she can take care of herself. After the dinner, they go barhopping and Roni pays for everything, showing Jude that she does not really need him for anything. As they are going to another bar, in the taxi, they start to make out, with Jude telling Roni that she needs to tell Taze that he’s done. Roni refuses, but when they make it to Roni’s apartment and almost have sex, Roni tells Taze that they’re finished via text message a moment before Jude has sex with her. He’s in pain from the bruise, so it’s hard for him to do the things that Roni wants–she likes it rough–but he still tries.

They don’t talk for a bit after that, before they start messaging each other, and start spending time with each other with more restaurant dates and late night sex. During that time, Jude has his men take Taze to an abandoned wearhouse where he scares him before telling Taze that if he so much as gets close to Roni, or even looks in her direction via any of the chats, he will raise hell–and it won’t be so good because he will take all of the proof of what Taze and his minions did to Jude and it will go to the President of Taze MC which would lead to severe repercussions for Taze. Taze does stop contacting Roni and blocks her instagram; however, in order for Jude to make this meeting, he has to skip out on a date night with Roni. So he makes that up to her by showing up with flowers to a teahouse where Roni, Jessa, Katie, Devi and Amber are meeting.

As things progress, Roni gets mad at Jude because he wants her to be exclusive with him, but doesn’t seem to imply that he will be exclusive with her, even though he’s always told her that he’s not a cheater, and is always with one woman at a time. They end the relationship for some time and when Jude tries to talk to her, Roni just avoids his text messages and him, until the eve of Christmas Eve party at Zane’s house, where Roni sees Jude, recognizes Lex, and finds out that Jude had put a tail on her for her safety. He explains to her that Taze might do something stupid because of an incident between the two of them, but he didn’t want to involve Roni in something dangerous. and will put her in touch with her guard if she wants. Then they end up having sex on the couch in Zane’s house, before waking up the following day at Jude’s home. Except he finds the bed empty as Roni is cooking breakfast. They exchange some words and Roni asks Jude if he wants her to be at the Orphan’s Potluck–which is a tradition that started between him, Zane, Jesse and Brody at the early days of the band, when they were all without parents–and he tells her that yes. As he gets into the shower, he feels her pulling away but he doesn’t know why she’s doing that. She then goes into the shower, and he decides to pull her Christmas gift out earlier to see if she will open up to him–it’s a vase to replace the one that they knocked over when they were having sex the very first night in her apartment. She likes it, but their moment is interrupted by a phone call from her mother who is calling to see what Roni’s last minute, Christmas Eve plans are. Jude takes the phone from her and tells her mother that they are looking forward to seeing her at the Orphan’s potluck that night.

Several hours later, the party gets underway, and everyone is enjoying the dinner. Piper is there, and he recognizes Roni after a while. He then asks her if she wants to fuck on the counter in the kitchen, even though Jude has told her to knock it off. Roni gets upset with it all and asks Piper if he wants to know if she could go back in time and take back the time that she had sex with him, if it meant that she would have Jude. Her answer is yes several times over, and she asks Jude how much longer he would keep holding that against her–it’s not like they were both virgins when they were together. After that is all out in the open, Roni goes to the balcony in Jessa’s songwriting room. Jude follows her up.

It turns out that Jude has known a lot about Roni’s life–he pegged her wrong at the outset, thinking that she was that girl who slept around with everyone. Then one night, he was trying to pick up Jessa and Roni from Roni’s house when he watched one of the boyfriends of Roni’s mom push her back out the door, making her fall over the threshold. He realized that her mother had a revolving door of men who weren’t especially kind to Roni, and that is why she had been acting out so much when she was a young girl, trying to get attention. He later had that boyfriend jumped and chased off from Roni’s life. When Roni was sixteen, and had taken Jessa to a Dirty party, trying to slip by Brody and Jude at the party, Jude had followed her around and kissed her. But then he never called her or talked to her about it. After Dirty returned for a break from their first tour, it was six days before Roni saw Jude, after she had sex with Piper on the kitchen counter, and Jude had to leave her alone. A few days after that, they had sex for the first time, and then it was something that Jesse said to Jude that had Jude checking in with Piper, who confirmed that he did sleep with Roni. It was Piper who told Jude that she’s the kind of chick who will open up her legs for anyone and that she wouldn’t go back for seconds. This resulted in Jude pushing Roni away and being cold towards her for years. A while later, once the tour ended and they had a party at Brody’s house, Roni ended up in Zane’s bed after a night of partying. Jude pushed her out of the house, and then nearly lost his anger at Zane. Then he showed up at Roni’s house, had sex with her, and told her that it’s to get her out of his system. The next time they had sex was the night of Jesse’s and Katie’s wedding, not having spoken for years between that. Jude grew up with his brother and his dad after his mom left them alone with their dad.

Jude talks with Roni about things, and tells her that he wants to be with her, but she also needs to stop hiding her heart. They both are honest with each other that they have hurt each other deeply, so they need to work on trusting each other, and then they end up having sex in the bathroom of Jessa’s and Brody’s en-suite bathroom. He holds her hand as they go back to meet with the rest of the group and he kisses her in front of the mistletoe, in front of the whole band.

Roni’s event for Dirty’s New Year’s Eve goes really well–it sells out and the band is happy. In the end she has the band mingle with the rest of the people out on the floor, while she and Jude have sex in the VIP room. When the tour starts a few weeks later, Jude has moved in all of his things into Roni’s apartment and she’s planning to visit Jude and the band throughout their tour when time allows.

Jude stops by to visit Maggie and tells her that he knows about Zane’s and Maggie’s Las Vegas outing. He also tells Maggie that Zane has not been himself; he hasn’t been chasing skirts like he used to. Maggie is super nervous but when Jude asks her if this will be a problem for them on the tour, she says no.

My Thoughts: Jude and Roni’s story was nice, but it’s probably my least favorite of the series thus far. I don’t know if Roni is a good fit for Jude, but based on this book, it seems like it. Their romance story is a bit less steamy than all of the other–it is very muted, and soft as opposed to something that would be typical of romance book. Overall, it was fun to read as I was curious about Jude’s background, but I’ve never really been a fan of Roni because I feel like she was stirring up trouble while Jude was always saving people from things and keeping people safe. The little bit of Jude’s background that we do get is too little to get an idea of who he really is and what has made him always stick so close to Jesse. It’s a nice story, but it’s not my favorite of the series.