I scowled. "Not a princess in a tower. Remember?" I retorted.
"Which is why I thought you might care to have lunch, away from the penthouse. Join me, will you?"
Automatically, I started toward the bench opposite him, then stopped myself, remembering that Lee Chong was waiting for me, either in another bubble room, or was about to arrive. "No. I can't."
His brow lifted questioningly. "You can't?"
"I mean, I'm not happy with you. Why would I want to have lunch?" I hugged my laptop to my chest.
"For exactly that reason. To make up." His voice rumbled, sending goosebumps skittering down my arms.
Damn, he made making up sound so… tempting.
But right now I couldn't make up even if I wanted to. I chewed on my lip. "That's really sweet of you, Hudson, but I'm going to have to decline. Enjoy your lunch." I swiveled on my heel and headed toward the door.
"Lee Chong isn't meeting with you," Hudson called after me, freezing me in my tracks.
My hand was hovering above the knob, and now I wanted to punch it through the wall.
I spun around, my pulse racing. "How did you know about—"
"He called me last night before I left work. Wanted to know if it was okay to discuss major purchases and renovations with my wife. He seems to be a bit of a traditionalist—used to only dealing with men."
I threw my head back and cursed under my breath. "Traditionalist, you say? Wonder how he’s going to take it when he finds out his daughter's a lesbian."
"What was that?"
"Nevermind." Lee Chong's daughter’s affair with Liesl was the least of my concerns right now. "And so what— you told him no? Is that why he's not here today?"
Hudson leaned back, looking surprised. "Of course not. I told him The Sky Launch belongs to you. What you do with it and how you choose to run this business has nothing to do with me. It bothers me that you would think that I would say anything different."
I sighed and took a couple steps forward. "I'm sorry, H. It's just, you're here, and he's… not."
"He said it was due to an unrelated matter that he needed to reschedule. I assumed that he’d called you directly as well."
I practically laughed. "Bullshit. You knew he wouldn't call me and reschedule—the traditionalist who doesn't want to deal with women—and that's why you were here. To catch me in the act of doing something sneaky behind your back."
He smirked. "Me? Do that?"
How could there be seven years between now and when we’d first met and still be so much electricity between the two of us? It sizzled, crackled in the air. Made my skin tingle. Made my pussy ache and throb.
"Come sit down. Join me for lunch, Alayna."
He knew he had me. I didn't have to vocally admit it. I walked over and sat down on the bench across from him, setting my laptop next to me and putting the napkin across my lap.
He turned and pressed the button next to him to call the waitress, who showed up immediately and took our orders. When she was gone, Hudson steepled his hands together and placed his elbows on the table. "Do you want to tell me about this grand plan of yours? How it involves Lee Chong and his event space?"
As hesitant as I had been to tell him for all these months, I suddenly did want to tell him, kind of badly.
There were a lot of things I wanted, actually.
I wanted this to just be a casual lunch date. I wanted there to just be sexy electric heat between us. I didn't want there to be dark and heavy terrors hiding in the tension that surrounded us.
But that was our reality. I was willing to face it, if Hudson would only let me.
"Are you ready to tell me everything about your investigation on this threat against our family?" I asked, killing the light mood between us.
He didn't answer, but his expression said it all—that he wasn't talking about it.
"Yeah. That's what I thought." I put my arms around myself, and suddenly I felt very old and very tired. Like I'd been awake for days, like I'd been running from something. In a way I had been running—running from the full force of this shadow. I hadn't let it sink in. Hadn't actually held the idea there was somebody on this earth who maybe wanted to do real harm to me. To my children. To the tiny precious angels that gave my life meaning and joy.
My throat began to tighten. I bit my lip to distract myself, but it didn't work.
Across from me, Hudson seemed to be in a very different mood. His gaze tripped around the bubble room. "We used to do very fun things in these," he said wistfully, seductively.
"I had babies, Hudson. No one has fun in bubble rooms after babies," I snapped.
"The babies don't mean—"
I cut him off. "The babies mean everything! Someone's threatening them, H!” I meant to say more. Meant to tell him this should be something that we dealt with together and that it wasn't fair he had forced me into the dark to deal with it alone.
But I couldn't say anything, because I immediately burst into tears. Not little trickle-down-your-face tears, but full out sobs that shook my body as they wracked through me.
I didn't remember moving or Hudson reaching for me, but next thing I knew, I was in his lap, and he was kissing my head, holding me, and rocking me in his arms, murmuring words of comfort. "I got you. I won't let anything hurt you. I won’t let anything hurt our babies. I swear to you, my love. My precious. Nothing will happen to any of you. Ever."
And as I cried into his suit jacket, I wondered if it was possible to trust someone so much, and still not be sure you entirely believed him.
12
Hudson
We didn't eat lunch at The Sky Launch.
I asked the waitress to box up our orders to go, and on a whim, I brought Alayna back to the loft above my office. Then, after she silently picked through her salad, I tucked her puffy-eyed self into the bed where she fell fast asleep.
I sat in the armchair next to her and watched her while she dozed, long limbs curled into herself, her facial features relaxed and at ease. In this state, she seemed as carefree and burdenless as Brett. Oh, that I could keep her like this forever.
That I could keep them all like this.
The first time I had made love to Alayna, had been inside her and felt the tremendous impact of our worlds colliding, it had been in this very room. And then, as now, I had watched her afterward, knowing I could never let her go, that I had to have more of her, even as I prepared to push her away. She had never been just a game to me, but I had thought that I could hold her at a distance. What a fool I had been.
How long had it been before I learned that I couldn't ever shut her out for good?
Not long, truly. Our courtship had been a whirlwind, mere weeks passing.
What the fuck was I thinking, believing I could shut her out now, after years of building a life together?
She stirred in the bed beside me. A slight mmm escaped her throat, her head tossed from one side to the other. Then her eyes popped open. Her expression was unsettled until her gaze found mine, then a warm smile played on her lips.
"Did I sleep through the entire afternoon, or did you abandon your work obligations just for me?" she asked stretching, her breasts jutting deliciously forward, pressing against her dress as she did.
I let my eyes wander down to her cleavage. "I've rearranged the entire week’s schedule for this project. Which has been very much for you."
Her smile faded. "This project being the one where you are investigating those threatening letters. Right?"
"Right," I admitted. It felt like relief and terror at once to tell her so.
She sat up, and with a sigh tilted her head against the headboard, the wheels in her brain obviously spinning a mile a minute.
I moved to sit beside her on the bed and held my arm open, inviting her in. She came without hesitation, her heat soaking into me, confusing my cock about the mood of the situation.
Subtly, I readjusted myself and pulled her in tighter against me.
"I’m sca
red, Hudson,” she said, her voice vibrating against my chest.
It was the last thing I wanted to hear. “I know, and I don’t want you to be scared. I want you to let me worry about it so you don’t have to be scared.”
“I know that’s what you want, but that’s not how things work. Especially not for me. It's one thing to have this menace looming over us, and to not know anything about it. It makes my mind go crazy. Makes me imagine the worst things, no matter how safe you tell me I am. How protected you try to make me feel. It's a whole other issue, a whole other hurt, to realize you've been shutting me out."
My lids closed momentarily with the squeeze of my heart. "I know, precious. I am—"
"Let me finish. Please," she stopped me.
I held my next words, though I knew they would likely end the need for anything else to be said. She deserved space to be heard, and I needed to give her that.
"You used to have such a thick wall around you. I remember thinking if I could only get inside, if I could just break down your barrier, everything would be okay between us. That we could be perfect together." She fiddled with the button on my shirt as she talked, twisting as far as it would go one way, then twisting it back the other. "And I was right, H. When you finally let me in—we were magic. I felt whole and unstoppable with the complete Hudson Pierce at my side. That's what makes me feel safe, Hudson—you. When you give me all of you. When you stand beside me and treat me like your partner. When you hold my hand and tell me we got this."
She pulled away, sitting upright and looking down at me. "I get what you're trying to do here, keeping this away from me. I get that you don’t want me to have to feel it. But you also shouldn’t feel this alone. This isn't us at our best. Us at our best is a team." She put her hand over mine, gripping my index finger tightly. "We need to do this as a team. We don't work any other way."
I waited a full three seconds after she'd finished talking to make sure she was done. "I was actually thinking the same thing. While you were sleeping."
Her expression warred between doubt and victory. "Really?”
“Yes. Really. I think we need to lay all our cards on the table. No more walls. I need you with me on this.”
Her eyes began to glisten. Cautiously, she asked, “Are you just saying that because you know you've lost?"
I shoved back the growl I felt coming on. "I did not lose."
"It sure sounded like you lost to me. Because I got what I wanted, and you’re giving me what I…"
"That's not a loss," I corrected. "It's a concession of both parties."
"Actually, I really don't feel like I had to concede much of anything at all.” She flashed a mischievous grin, the kind that sent shocks straight to both my heart and my cock.
God, this woman.
I surrendered. A hundred times. A thousand times.
Which meant she was about to push me out of bed and plead with me to walk her through everything. I knew how her brain worked, how eager she got. She didn’t like to wait on an idea once she had it.
I, on the other hand, would be happy sitting here admiring her for a little while longer, if she'd let me.
But as she climbed over me, instead of continuing out of the bed, she stopped, and sat straddling my waist. Her fingers went back to playing with my buttons, but this time she undid them, one by one.
Her grin turned naughty.
"I didn't bring you back here to seduce you," I said, my cock growing thicker underneath her.
"Maybe it's what I need.” Her voice came out breathy. "Besides, it looks like I'm the one doing the seducing." She threw my shirt open and ran her palms over my bare chest, igniting sparks of fire in my veins. I liked her like this—hot, feisty, empowered.
But I liked the reins in my hands even better.
I slipped my hand under her skirt and traced the silky skin of her thigh until I reached the crotch panel of her panties, which were already wet. Hooking my thumb underneath the flimsy material, I found her tight bud and began massaging it, exactly the way I knew she liked.
She let out a sweet whimper that made me instantly turn to steel.
"Take off your dress," I ordered, barely restraining myself from tearing it off for her. She reached behind herself to undo the zipper, and though she struggled with it, I let her do it alone, not wanting to move my hand from her pussy. Wanting to watch her strip just for me.
We’d always been explosive together. I had no complaints about our sex life, but it was rare these days that we had the opportunity to take our time. I didn't always get to fully enjoy these interludes, didn't always get to relish in the way she gave herself to me, every time, so freely, so completely.
The way I always gave her all of me.
Did she even realize it in our fast and frenzied stolen moments? That she still owned every single molecule of my composition? That she still resided in every hidden corner of my being?
She pulled her dress over her head, and as she did I sat up and unfastened my cuffs, quickly yanking my unbuttoned shirt from my arms and discarding it on the floor. By that time, she’d lost her bra as well, and I gazed happily at her tight nipples standing at attention. I cupped one breast in my hand, the familiar shape and weight of it sending relief through my body.
Fuck, I loved her body. Every inch.
I would've delivered a prayer of gratitude, of adoration as I worshiped, but my mouth was already suckling on her other breast, my tongue licking reverently along her nipple before my teeth grazed along the sensitive skin.
That earned me another one of her precious whimpers, this time she added a sweep of her hips along my aching groin. My cock was still imprisoned beneath my suit pants and my boxer briefs, but even with so much between us, the movement was ecstasy and elicited a growl of my own.
"You're killing me," I said, planting kisses in the space between her breasts as I traveled to her other nipple.
"Then I guess I should do it again." She slid her pussy over the ridge of my cock again and again, torture that deserved to be paid back with another nip of my teeth on her tit and a light pinch of her clit through her panties.
She squealed, a delicious sound that I needed to taste. I swallowed the tail of it, pulling her toward me and covering her mouth with mine. I kissed her long and deep, kissed her as though I had forgotten her flavor. Exploring her as though I'd never taken the time to discover every part of her mouth before.
She took it all. Kissed me back with equal fervor, wrapping her arms around my neck and pressing her breasts against my chest where I could feel the tips of her nipples, still wet from my affection, pressing against my skin.
When I pulled away, it was only because I had to be inside her, because I couldn't wait another second to be connected to her. Breathlessly, she wriggled out of her panties, a move she made hot as fuck even when she was in a hurry. Especially when she was in a hurry and needy.
I was just as needy for her. While she undressed, my eyes never left her. I stripped out of my clothes at the same time and laid down again on the bed. Then I pulled her back to sit across my upper thighs.
I fisted myself, pumping up and down even though I was ready for her.
She watched me, as hypnotized as the first time she'd watched me handle my own cock. It turned her on. I could feel how much it turned her on by the way her pussy leaked on my leg. She bit her lip and eagerly began to line herself up, which did things to me. Her eagerness. Her anticipation. It somehow gave me patience for days. I could drag things out a long time—and I often did—just so I could enjoy her excitement.
Today was not one of those days.
Today I was eager too, eager to show her that she was still as close to me as she'd ever been. That there weren't walls between us. That any barrier I had put up had been a mistake, that I had never wanted there to be anything between the two of us.
I pressed my crown to her entrance, and she sat down on me, taking me in fully, with a sigh that I echoed.
Jesus, how coul
d she still feel so good? Every time. Tight and warm and familiar and home. I could sit there, unmoving, and still feel like I'd found heaven.
And I knew from experience it only got better from here.
I thrust into her, a couple of short stabs to warm her up, and then let go full-force, clutching onto her thighs, hips bucking up and up and up. It was never enough—never hard enough or fast enough or deep enough, no matter how we were positioned. I always wanted more of her. Always wanted all of her.
Good girl that she was, she reached down to play with her own clit, and instantly she grew tighter and hotter. My eyes became glued to her fingers as they stroked along the bundle of nerves, making it turn hard and plump and slippery. Then when she stiffened with her orgasm, my gaze ran to her face so I could watch the pleasure as it made its way across her features with vivid expression.
I sat up to hold her, knowing she'd be worn out and weak, wanting her close to me.
She felt even tighter wrapped around me at this new angle. I let out a satisfying grunt and cupped her face in my hands.
"I need you safe, precious," I told her kissing along her jaw. "In every way. If everything I have done to make you feel safe has made you feel like we're growing apart, then there's no point. I need you to feel as safe as you are. I need you with me." I drove into her with my cock, a slower pace, but still deep, reminding her we were connected. Reminding myself that I’d merely forgotten for a moment that we were tethered to each other in everything—the good and the bad.
She looked into my eyes. "Together," she said. "We're doing this together. You'll keep me safe. We’ll keep the kids safe. Together."
“Together,” I repeated before taking her mouth in a searing kiss as my thumb returned to her clit to rouse another orgasm from her beautiful body. Carefully monitoring her signals—watching her breathing, listening to her sounds, feeling the way she clamped down around my cock—I could time her impending climax. A few more quick pumps of my hips, and we found our release together.
Together.
I was still inside her when we collapsed together on the bed, our limbs tangled around each other. She’d said she’d needed this. The truth was, so did I. Needed to feel this much a part of her.
Complete Fixed: The Complete Fixed Series: Books 1-5 Page 137