by Violet Duke
Shit, even that image was a turn-on.
In retrospect, had some of his body’s blood still been pumping up to his brain, he probably wouldn’t have jumped up to meet her halfway. In the dark. Talking in a voice that sounded just this side of menacing.
Yeah. He definitely deserved what happened next.
* * * * *
“SON OF A BITCH!”
For a second, it seemed like time had stopped for Lia. Before fast-forwarding at warp speed. She’d realized about two seconds too late that her leg was whipping around to make contact not with some ski mask wearing psycho stalker rapist in her apartment.
But rather, Hudson.
The hot, sexy man she’d been dreaming about all night, who could’ve easily gone on the offensive and fought back. She wasn’t stupid. She knew the man could fight. But instead of going G.I. Joe on her as she was sure he could, he just muscled up and took the hit, jutting one of those canon-like arms up to presumably take the brunt of the kick on his shoulder.
Unfortunately, Lia had impeccable aim.
Along with a tendency to fall back on her foundational Chinese kung-fu training when she was reacting on instinct. He’d probably been expecting an MMA fighting style response, which would have resulted in her shin catching him in the shoulder.
Not her ankle clocking him in the head.
“Hudson!” She shot forward to his side as he staggered back against the wall.
While she was glad he was still standing, pride be truthful, she was rather surprised he wasn’t out cold. She’d knocked out bigger men before with the same kick. Without nearly any of the self-preservation kill-or-be-killed adrenaline rushing through her veins.
Was it wrong that the fact that he was still standing there was a huge turn-on? It wasn’t very evolved of her. But color her impressed.
The not-so-silent curse slipping past his clenched teeth brought Lia’s attention back to what was definitely going to turn into a massive bruise on his temple. She flicked on the hallway light and ran to the kitchen. Grabbing an ice pack from the freezer, she spun around and jolted again when she found Hudson right behind her.
This time, he caught, not just blocked her impending strike.
“Woman, stop attacking me.”
“It’s reflex,” she defended by way of apology. “You’re the one who keeps sneaking up on me.”
“Only in self-defense. Earlier, it was to stop you from torture with a deadly vibrator.”
“What?!”
She jumped back a foot and refused to look down, the question poised for fire over his comment completely forgotten now due to a more recent…development. “Seriously, Hudson? I just kicked you in the head and that’s your body’s response.”
“Cut me some slack,” he grabbed the ice pack she was holding and paused just long enough for Lia to wonder if he was contemplating sticking it down his pants to ‘cool off.’
A travesty she was glad he didn’t go through with. Not that she was looking. And not that she was a connoisseur of that sort of art, or even a first-time spectator if she was being brutally honest. Then again, she didn’t have to see the Eifel tower to be a fan. And where Hudson was concerned, his ‘tower’ had felt unbelievably sexy. She was definitely a fan.
“Not helping, Lia.”
Dammit, who took control of her eyes and sent them drifting down south?
All the female atoms in her body boldly raised their hands in reverence.
She shot her gaze back up to his face.
It occurred to her then that he was avoiding looking at her.
Maybe he was embarrassed. Not about this but rather, the whole head-kicking thing. Most guys didn’t like it when she beat down on them. Funny, but she hadn’t pictured Hudson with that sort of ego. “Look, Hudson—” she began and took a step toward him.
After which, he promptly slid a step away from her. Eyes still averted. With a hand holding the ice pack to his head and the other balled in a fist and shoved down his front pocket, Hudson’s voice graveled even more as he said, with what sounded like instant-jello-quick-dissolving patience, “Lia. Could you maybe put on a pair of shorts. A sheet. Something?”
What was he talking about?
She looked down and gasped.
Grabbing an oven mitt, which was barely helpful, she tried her best to hide the evidence that she liked wearing low-rise boyshort panties and sprinted back to her bedroom to look for the jeans she’d probably shucked off sometime during the night. It wasn’t an uncommon thing. But it was extremely uncommon for someone to actually notice that she did it, seeing as how she hadn’t had a guy greet her right out of bed since her husband.
And even he’d barely seen as much as Hudson had.
She dismissed the irony of that thought to her mental bank of things she’d write in her can’t-make-this-stuff-up memoir one day.
Finding a wayward pair of flannel shorts under her bed, she yanked them on and went back out to the kitchen, only to find Hudson had plopped himself onto the couch.
Good Lord. Why did he have to go and sprawl out like that? Lia thought, averting her eyes upward as if in silent prayer. Hudson’s current seating posture just made her imagine him pinned under her, spread eagle with her legs wrapped around his in a ‘Saturday Night’ wrestling move—so appropriately named. She exhaled a hot breath.
That’s when she realized he hadn’t had a pillow or anything to make his night comfortable. He’d stayed on her old couch while she’d been fifteen feet away. Bottomless.
Well, hell. That whole melting at the knees thing from the movies was apparently a real thing. Tamping down the girly swoon factor she felt for the first time ever, Lia sat down beside him and checked the growing bruise on his face.
Ouch.
Bad night for her to have worn an anklet. She refrained from telling him that his bruising had rather, um, pretty decorative qualities. There’s no way she’d be able to pull that off without cracking a very ill-timed smile.
“Hudson, I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He gave her a lopsided grin that looked more self-deprecating than anything else.
There it was. That lack of an ego she was certain she’d seen in him even. Another turn-on.
“It was my fault for surprising you in the dark, sweetheart. I knew better.”
That’s when she remembered what he’d said earlier about his coming over in self-defense. She must have heard him wrong, right? Feeling her cheeks flush bright red, she decided to ask straight out, curiosity never really being one of the things she could keep bottled up and all. “You mentioned you were trying to stop me from doing something earlier?” A passive question.
...That got one hell of a fired response from him if the darkening of his stormy gray eyes had anything to say about it.
“I wasn’t trying to stop you per se. More asking for mercy. At least until I was out of earshot.”
She blushed even brighter. “Hudson, I have no clue what you’re talking about. I don’t have…one of those.” Only because she’d never built up the nerve to buy one. Not even online. She could just imagine that plain brown box with the smiling arrow buzzing away by some fluke when Richard, the town’s sixty year-old mailman, brought it up to her doorstep.
Hudson shook his head in confusion over her statement and immediately winced. Blinking slowly in dull pain, he eventually peered open an eye again and studied her face.
“I’m not lying.”
“I can see that.” He frowned. “But I swear I heard the buzzing.”
“Oh!” She ran back to her bed and grabbed her watch from under the comforters. “It was the alarm on my watch. I have an online auction at six this morning and I’m bidding on behalf of a client for several pieces. I set about seven alarms in a row a minute apart since I’m horrible when it comes to the snooze button.”
“That’s some watch. Mine has one measly alarm, and it certainly doesn’t vibrate.”
“It’s one of my brother’s inventions. You remember Gabe, right
? He’s the one that probably lo-jacked your phone last night. Gadgets are his thing.” She slipped the watch back on her wrist. “He even rigged it to read my mood via my wrist—sort of like how a lie detector works—and play music accordingly, through some sort of algorithm that’s linked up to playlists and Satellite radio. Basically he has the mind of a genius and a desire to live forever as a teenager. Or Peter Pan.”
“Does it use headphones or a speaker?” asked Hudson curiously.
“Both. He built speakers into the watch but it also has Bluetooth earphones as well. Why?”
He leaned over to try and see the face of the watch. “Because with the way you’re blushing right now, I’d pay good money to hear what music that little device will be playing in response.”
She gasped and pulled her wrist away. “NO. That’s…private.”
He attempted to chuckle but stopped with another smothered wince and slid sideways so he was laying down fully on the couch, ice pack wedged against his head via one rock-hard bicep, while his Thor-like forearm covered his eyes. “So this was all because of a vibrating watch. For the massive headache I have right now, I think I’m going to imagine it the good way,” he teased. “Some sexy music in the background, and you with a seven-speed vibrator calling out my name.”
She almost swallowed her tongue. His knowing vibrator speeds, she would need to revisit another day. The part about her calling out his name last night?
A very real possibility.
Especially considering the very pleased smile the man was wearing right now.
She should’ve kicked him harder.
When he started flat-out chortling, pain seemingly a thing of the past, she realized she’d said the last reflection out loud.
“You are nothing like what I thought you’d be,” he said removing the gel pack from his face to look at her. “If I invite myself to breakfast with you, will you keep surprising me? I’ll take it as your apology. You know, for tattooing what feels like dainty little flowers across my temple.”
She bit her lip to keep from laughing. But she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. She liked being a surprise to someone for a change.
“My treat?” she asked. “I’ll take you to breakfast at the Saturday Market at the Town Square—it’s like a Bazaar with food and crafts booths, and stuff for the kids. There’s a great little Cajun and Creole breakfast booth with just the best grits.”
He smiled and closed his eyes again. “Stop with the dirty talk already. A man can only take so much. I’ve spent almost the entire night up. Literally. So now that I don’t have to worry about sex noises from you, I’m going to get a little shut-eye for a bit. Wake me when you’re done with your auctions?”
Criminally flirtatious and attentive to her work to boot.
He was almost too good to be true.
Before she could respond, he continued, serious as can be, “I figure seven a.m. should be early enough for us to head out for breakfast, don’t you? Unless you think your brothers will be stopping by before that to check if I’m still here. Then we should leave earlier. I really prefer not to have to tell them they don’t have to rough me up because their sister already took care of it.”
Lia blinked at him for a few seconds. No one ever talked to her like this. Folks were always so gentle with her, men especially. Either that, or they were usually trying to prove their toughness to her for some reason, again, men especially. True, that would be utterly unnecessary and just redundant where Hudson was concerned, but she never expected him to be like this.
She wondered over that as she went to get him a new ice pack. Pulling the melted one away from his battle wound, she placed a gentle kiss on it before putting the new ice pack on.
Damn. The way his eyes caught fire from that one simple peck, she could only imagine how hot they’d burn over something more.
So much for no more sex noises on her part.
He shaped his warm, calloused palm against her cheek. “Sweetheart, if you put those sweet lips of yours on me again, innocent gesture or not, I’m definitely going to deserve that beating your brothers threatened me with last night.”
She stared at him for a second, surprised at the novel thoughts running rampant through her brain…and other parts of her body.
“I’m holding you to that,” she said quietly, before hurrying over to her computer without waiting for a reply. She told herself it was because her eighth, ninth, and tenth alarms of the morning were buzzing away, telling her she needed to get logged in soon.
Not because she could feel his focus on her, though his eyes were now closed.
CHAPTER FOUR
“SO WHY ANTIQUE ARMS?” asked Hudson as he followed Lia across the street toward what appeared to be a town square of sorts.
The most unusual one he’d ever seen.
Lia waved at a woman manning a funnel cake food truck that was parked along the street before turning back to him with a thoughtful look. “I sort of fell into it, I guess. I worked part time at Spencer’s all through high school and got sucked in by the unique intricacies of each weapon, and the windows to the past each provided. And while I was never really interested in the fabrication aspects, I absolutely loved the authentication part. It was like solving a puzzle, unraveling every chapter of the weapon’s story. Antique weapons are one of the most striking combinations of art and innovation, science and history. In most, the story of a man along with his town or country. Each shows forward thinking beyond what most could imagine at the time, all for the basic human struggles.”
Her eyes twinkled with humor. “Aaand that particular geek-out is exactly why folks always say I’m more like Jack Spencer than his own sons.”
“Ah, mystery solved. So you’re not ‘officially’ a Spencer. I was wondering.”
She laughed. “What gave it away? The fact that I’m full-Chinese while my brother Caine looks like a Swat Team Ken doll, just like my foster dad?”
“I was going to go with a humor-challenged Captain America, but we can use your description.” He grinned when her mouth fell open in a mischievously awed I-can’t-believe-you-just-said-that…I’m-so-going-to-use-that sort of way. “But see that’s exactly what threw me off,” he continued. “You call the guys your brothers. Minus the foster.”
Her soft smile was quietly affectionate. “The guys wore me down. The Spencers took me in after my parents died when I was a freshman. Sometime during my junior year, the three of them decided they didn’t like me calling them their foster sibling anymore. So they proceeded to play the copycat game with me whenever I referred to any of them that way. Drove me freakin’ crazy. While Max used to parrot everything I said in an annoying imitation of my voice, Gabe—being the quintessential little brother that he was—would copy every single thing I did as well. Hell, even Caine, who was already a grown-ass cop living out of the house at the time, would jump in on the copycat torment whenever he’d come by to visit. Despite all their differences, in this, they’d always been a united front.”
Having grown up an only child, Hudson couldn’t even imagine what that whole scenario would’ve been like. To him though, it sounded kind of great. “So how long did it take them to break you? A few months?”
“Ha! Try weeks. Even when I spoke in Chinese just to try and throw them off, they’d just barrel right along doing a valiant job keeping up, even as they completely butchered the language. They were relentless. I remember Max even got detention once because of it. He’s a year older than me but we were in the same economics class. I’d made the mistake of correcting the teacher when he made a joke about Max and I clearly sharing the same genes. Max deemed it a tangential offense and started in on the copycatting all through class until the teacher sent him to the principal’s office. Caine and Gabe decreed later that Max was clearly within his copycat rights, and while they never went on record about it, my foster parents seemed to be rather supportive of the whole thing also. Even to this day, if they ever hear me say the phrase, ‘foster brother
,’ even when it’s justifiable in its usage—like, say in an introduction—they slip right back into copycat torture.”
She walked them into a bazaar or open market of sorts and led them over to the food booths. “So yes, my brothers were fairly dogged about deleting the word foster from my vocabulary in reference to them. My foster parents never pushed me about it though.”
The shift in her tone made it clear that a part of her had wanted them to.
Hudson suddenly felt an insanely strong desire to pull her into his arms to comfort her.
What was it about her that made him want to protect her?
As he looked around, he saw various town folks eyeing him up and down, studying him as if they were committing his features to memory so they could describe it to a police sketch artist later. It was the same last night in the brewpub too. They were all clearly protective of her as well.
And for some bizarre reason, he was envious of them. That they knew enough about her to be protective.
That they’d get to keep feeling protective of her.
Even long after he left town today.
It occurred to him then that Lia hadn’t said anything for a few minutes. She was just leaning against the railing beside him watching the scenery, giving him a little interruption-free time for him and his thoughts.
A comfortable silence. That’s what they were in right now. No smartphones to fill the quiet, no teasing hand-waving in front of his eyes to bring him back to reality.
When he ghosted his hand over the small of her back to get her attention, she turned and smiled as if she were finally seeing the sun peek out from behind the clouds. Gazing at him for a moment without standing, he felt her silently checking to see if there were more clouds on his horizon, one leg swinging gently like she had all the time in the world to wait for him.
Never had he met anyone like her before.
“Hungry yet?” she asked as she stood.
Yes. More than he’d been in a long time, in fact. But not in a dirty way. He just felt hungry, period. Eager. For whatever was going to come next in their day.