“So somehow all this stuff, arranged the way you have it, influences what happens in your life.”
“Basically, yeah.” I set my glass on a side table and flopped into my couch’s embrace.
“It’s actually rather comfortable, inviting.”
“I’ll take that rousing endorsement.”
Hudson flushed. “I didn’t mean it like that. Feng shui just seems so . . . so woo-woo. Don’t pay attention to me. I sound like an ass. Your home is very nice.”
“Thank you.” I closed my eyes and savored the silence. His opinions about feng shui notwithstanding, I liked having Hudson in my house. Some guests simply didn’t work. They sucked up all the peaceful serenity of my sanctuary and put me on edge until they left. Despite it being the sort of woo-woo judgment Hudson would make fun of, I didn’t get those feelings from him. He strolled about the spacious great room, openly curious about me and my things, and I felt relaxed.
“Does this work?” Hudson asked, pointing to an ornate gold switch plate.
“Flip it,” I said, opening my eyes.
The gas clicked twice in the fireplace, then flames illuminated the brass interior. I rose and shut off the other lights. The shiny walls backing the flames radiated a warm, cozy glow through the room. I jumped when a pair of bunnies hopped up to the glass front, then turned white tails to the warmth and snuggled against each other.
Hudson watched me with dilated eyes, and I smiled. The bunnies were a divination I could interpret. I’d known Hudson for forty-eight hours. He loved electronics, drove a motorcycle, and didn’t see the value in feng shui: The con column was full to bursting. But he was also sexy as hell, dependable, honorable, a great kisser, and intelligent. In my book, that put the pro column on top.
I sashayed to his side and took the glass from his unresisting fingers, setting it on a nearby table.
“Maybe I am feeling a little vulnerable,” I said softly. I stood close enough for our body heat to mingle. Tilting my head back, I dropped my lashes. Hudson sucked in a breath.
“Ah, vulnerable? That’s, um . . . Right. You’ve been through a lot today. Maybe I should get you settled in and then . . . go.” He took a step back, running a hand through his hair.
I opened my eyes fully. “You’re leaving?”
“Look, Eva. I like you. Don’t think I don’t want this—a lot. But I don’t take advantage of vulnerable women. I don’t want—” He stopped and glared at me. “Are you laughing?”
“A little. Don’t be mad. It seemed like in the lobby, you wanted me to be more emotional. But screw that.” Still grinning, I reached for his neck and pulled his face close to mine. “Here’s what I should have said,” I breathed against his lips. “I want to kiss you. I want to start at your mouth, and I want to see what your skin tastes like everywhere from your neck to your toes. I want to know what—”
Hudson wrapped his arms around me and pulled me up against him. My breasts flattened against his hard chest, and I swallowed a moan. I slid my fingers into his hair as his mouth settled over mine, hot and wet. We didn’t come up for air until my toes were curled.
I shifted in his embrace, enjoying the dual sensation of his hard body pressed against my nipples and the muscular cage of his arms. Hudson slid a hand down my spine to rest at the base of my tailbone. I wriggled against him, and he groaned. Lifting on tiptoes, I teased his deliciously firm lips with my tongue, then sank my teeth into his full bottom lip before soothing it with a gentle kiss. Hudson dipped his knees, evening our heights, and returned the kiss.
“You’re absolutely gorgeous, Eva.” Framing my face with his large, warm hands, Hudson stared into my eyes with the intensity of a man looking for a soul.
“You’re not bad yourself, Hudson.” I worked my hands under his T-shirt and up his back, running my fingers lightly along his vertebrae. Goose bumps followed my fingers back to his waistband. “Though I think I need to look at the big picture before I form an opinion.”
Hudson obligingly stepped back and yanked his shirt over his head. The muscles in his stomach shifted, flexing in a clearly defined six-pack. Golden brown hair dusted his pectorals and his stomach below his belly button, disappearing under the waistband of his jeans. I moistened my lips and savored the view.
“Your turn.”
I lowered the hand that had been reaching for him and smiled. I didn’t try to turn taking off my shirt into something sexy; my fingers were too clumsy. I tossed my top toward the sofa, then paused with my hands behind my back on my bra’s clasp. Hudson tracked me with dark, predatory eyes, and anticipation rushed hot from my bones to my skin. I forced my feet to back up, knocking into furniture as I went.
“Stay there.” I spun and jogged up the stairs to my bedroom, grabbed a string of condoms from the nightstand, and trotted back down the stairs. Hudson’s gaze fastened on the jiggle of my breasts above the cup of the bra, and I added a little extra bounce in my steps just to see his smile widen.
I tossed the condoms toward the coffee table and grabbed a thick blanket from within a storage ottoman. Hudson helped me spread it in front of the fireplace, but I barely noticed where the blanket fell. The golden glow of firelight against Hudson’s chest and abdomen, the hunger in his dark blue eyes, his dimple flashing with a secretive smile—everything about him captivated me, leaving little room to concentrate on anything else. An apparition I couldn’t make out shimmered around Hudson’s body, drawing me to him. He met me halfway, our feet sinking into the plush blanket.
Bubbles. Tiny golden champagne bubbles floated from Hudson’s skin. They rose in a continuous stream, disappearing an inch above his body, making him literally glow. I ran my hand over his taut stomach, not touching him, just the bubbles. I couldn’t feel anything but the heat of him, yet the bubbles intensified in reaction to my hand, flowing brighter in an after-trail of light and effervescence.
“I believe I was promised the big picture,” Hudson said. He skirted his fingertips across the tops of my shoulders, tracing the straps of my bra down to the cups. I sucked in a breath as his fingers skimmed the swell of my breasts. When I unlatched my bra and let it slide down my arms, my breasts fell into his hands. I moaned and leaned into him. Hudson rasped his thumbs across my nipples, and pleasure zinged down my body.
When I reached for him, he released my breasts and pulled me into his arms for another kiss hot enough to fuse our bodies together. The shocking pleasure of skin against skin ignited my bloodstream. With fumbling fingers, I shimmied out of my tight skirt and underwear, then helped Hudson free himself from his jeans and boxer briefs.
I slid my hand around him as he kissed my lips, my jaw, my neck. The weight of him in my palm made my breath quicken. From the moment I’d suggested tonight’s date, I’d hoped we’d end up here, but I hadn’t anticipated how intense or fast the spark between us would ignite, or how our urgency would spike my arousal. Curling my fingers, I squeezed him, earning a nip at the base of my neck.
I lost my grip when Hudson dipped to flick his tongue across a nipple. Gasping, I arched into him, balancing on my toes. He slid an arm around the back of my legs, another around my shoulders, and the world tilted. Hudson eased me onto the blanket and braced above me, lavishing attention on each breast. I lifted my head to stare down our bodies, feasting on the sight of him poised so close to me. Wrapping my legs around him, I tried to pull him against me.
Hudson’s deep chuckle did fun things to my middle, but he wouldn’t budge. Gliding a hand down my body, he traced my hips and thighs while gently nipping my breasts. The disparate sensations pinged through my body, pooling pleasure between my legs. When he teased my clitoris, I writhed and moaned, anticipation riding the cusp of frustration.
“Condom. Now,” I panted.
Hudson lifted his dark gaze to mine, his bottom lip caught in his teeth.
“Oh, God, now. Please.”
He shifted back to his heels to grab a foil packet, and I sat up with him, running my fingers over his body while
he rolled on a condom. His pale nipples stood at attention, and when I gently tweaked them, he growled and pounced, taking me back to the floor. I shrieked, but my giggle cut off when he slid a hand over my breast. Pulling his head to me, I kissed him, relishing the returning buildup of anticipation.
Twisting, I rolled with Hudson until I lay on top of him. I guided him inside me, and every promise of chemistry and heat between us paled in comparison to the reality. My body smoldered, pleasure building in rolling waves, and when it crested, it seared through my body, burning away every moment but the present one. Hudson followed on an echo of my orgasm.
* * *
“I’m never looking at those stairs the same way again,” I said, hours later, when we lay exhausted in my bed. We were both on top of the covers, bodies cooling. Hudson sprawled with his hands behind his head, eyes closed and smiling. A fluffy white cloud rested beneath his head and the bubbles were gone. I didn’t see any bunnies, either.
“You were the one wriggling your heinie in my face. What’d you expect?”
“I was walking up the stairs in front of you.”
“Exactly. Now you can appreciate my restraint earlier when we marched up the million steps to get here.”
“You’re a veritable monk.”
He cracked his eyelids to peer at me. I was grinning like a fool, and I couldn’t do a thing about it. He winked at me, and I laughed.
“I’m going to shower.” I rolled out of bed and stretched gingerly, popping my toes against the carpet. Hudson shifted to watch me walk away.
“Alone?” he asked.
“I prefer not.”
Hudson beat me to the shower stall.
* * *
“I just got this phone yesterday. Talked the rep into replacing my other phone because they know it’s impossible to diagnose intermittent problems. And now this one’s dead? Three phones dead in three days? What are the odds?”
Hudson wasn’t really talking to me. He was talking to the useless slab of his cell phone. I rolled out of bed and padded naked to the closet. Hudson tossed his phone onto the comforter and followed me. He wrapped an arm around me from behind and pulled me back against him, then kissed my neck. I melted into him.
“Got anything in my size?” he asked.
“I think you’d look great in that,” I said, pointing to a slinky sequined spaghetti-strapped tank top.
“I don’t think it’d go with my underarm hair.”
He turned me around and I tilted my face up for a kiss. I could feel him getting happy against my stomach.
“I need to carry a change of clothes if I’m going to spend any time with you,” he said. “This is the second morning in a row I’m going to be wearing the same clothes as the day before.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t have a walk of shame yesterday.”
“There’s definitely no shame today, either.” He kissed me again and I shivered as his chest hair rasped my hard nipples. With a mischievous grin, he shimmied just to watch my reaction. I gasped when he pushed me back to arm’s length. “No, you’re not going to distract me,” he said. “I don’t care what you—”
I licked my lips.
“What you, ah, do, you won’t—”
I ran my hands over my chest. His eyes glazed.
When I finished dressing forty-five minutes and another shower later, Hudson waited downstairs in my office. He handed me a glass of orange juice and chugged through his own glass’s contents. The cold liquid soothed my parched throat.
“You’re a little OCD, aren’t you?” he asked.
“If you mean organized, yes.”
I loved my office. A huge wooden desk anchored the whole room, kept company by a sleek black chair, uplifting art on the walls, a custom cabinet filled with cubbies of all sizes, and attractive filing cabinets—it had been a long and difficult quest to find filing cabinets that qualified as attractive. After the desk, my second-favorite feature was the giant three-by-three-foot wall calendar displaying one month at a time. Not only did the calendar keep me organized, it reminded me daily of the prosperity in my life and how blessed I was to have a successful business.
As I did every morning, I went straight to the calendar and checked the day’s lineup. I had a consultation today at four, and two tomorrow. Ari would have to reschedule all three. I also had two long-distance workups due in the next seven days.
Working for a client outside of a ten-mile radius of my LA loft still felt surreal. My curse denied me access to phones, Internet, and e-mail—all the easy-contact resources the world took for granted. Without Ari, my business would have remained what it started as: a word-of-mouth, single-client-a-month practice funded by my aunt’s generous friends.
Two years ago, when Ari had gone freelance as a graphic design artist, she had insisted on also becoming my executive assistant. The first thing she had done was build me a beautiful website—I’d seen printed screenshots. She took phone calls, booked appointments, and set up online consultations. Together we had designed templates that allowed people outside my small radius of travel to write in with their feng shui concerns, and based off pictures they sent, I was able to do written consultations for people whose homes I’d never visited. In three months, I was booking clients from across the nation and scheduling a steady stream of on-site consultations in the local LA area.
Baby elephant or no baby elephant, I decided I could finish both long-distance workups on time.
My stomach growled loud enough to turn Hudson’s head. “Hey, I forgot to tell you. The kidnappers, they called Kyoko an elephantini. They thought she was an alcoholic drink. Do you think that means anything?”
“Elephantini,” Hudson said, testing the word. “Does that mean she’s not a real elephant, but some new kind of breed?”
“No clue.”
I grabbed a sticky note and jotted down all the adjustments to the schedule I wanted Ari to make.
“Where’s your computer?”
“In the shop,” I said. Lie number one of the day.
“Your TV, too?”
“Nope. I don’t have one.”
“Is that a feng shui thing?”
“Something like that.”
“You don’t watch TV? At all?”
My back was to Hudson, and I closed my eyes. Never underestimate the importance of TV to men. It was the great medium of sports and explosions and porn. Plus our society entertained strange prejudices against people without TVs. Somehow, not having one made me a pariah, someone who thought herself more important and worldly than everyone else. Someone full of herself.
“Are you as hungry as I am?” I deflected.
Hudson paused before answering. “Starved.”
“You do know how to work up a woman’s appetite,” I teased. I smiled as I turned around and kissed him. Hudson was apparition-free, and for once, I could have used a divination to give me a clue to his feelings. His expression gave nothing. However, after a night in my electricity-free apartment, my gift had no juice. Any electricity I might have absorbed from neighboring lofts wasn’t enough to fuel even a pint-size apparition.
Hudson’s body language revealed as little as his face. My only option was to power through and hope he’d forget about my suspicious idiosyncrasies.
“How many donuts can you fit on your bike?”
“How many do you need?”
“Personally, at least two. Maybe five after last night. But Ari will want a few, and Antonio could eat a dozen all by himself.”
“What do Ari and Antonio have to do with our breakfast?”
“Ari’s my business partner and executive assistant.” I waved the sticky note at him. “I need her to reschedule a few appointments for me if I’m going to be free to hunt Jenny down. And we need to make up for some lost time this morning. I thought we’d combine everything over breakfast.” My stomach punctuated my words with a grumble.
“Give me a half hour. I don’t want to show up at Ari’s in the same clothes as yesterday.�
�
“Doesn’t matter. She’ll know.”
“I don’t care about that. I want clean clothes.”
* * *
I straightened up after Hudson left, then applied sunscreen, eyebrow darkener, light-brown mascara, and lip gloss. My bangs took a little product to get them to look naturally side swept. Satisfied I looked presentable for whatever the day held, I collected my satchel. I’d opted for practical apparel today—jeans and a lightweight T-shirt, which would make escape easier if I were kidnapped again. I didn’t think too hard about the motivation behind my outfit selection, either, or I wouldn’t have left my apartment.
I ran into Ari a block before her house, Chatter frolicking on a harness and leash beside her.
“Where’s hunky Hudson?” Ari asked in greeting.
“He’s going to meet us.” Chatter planted her front legs against my thigh and flexed her claws, then belted out a meow.
“Oh, is he? And how does he know where to find you this morning? Have you developed telepathy?” Ari teased.
“We could have made plans last night.” I attempted a neutral expression, but my blush gave me away. Ari opened her mouth, but I cut her off before she could pry. “Did you learn anything new after we left?”
Chatter, unimpressed by the lack of attention, twined between my legs. A wiggling blade of grass distracted her, and before I could free myself, she leapt across the sidewalk, constricting my legs in a knot with the leash. I tripped into Ari. She caught me reflexively—one hand firmly planted on my breast, the other between my legs holding the leash.
“Oof!” I straightened.
A man stared unabashedly at us from the nearby porch.
“Beautiful cat,” he said, never once looking in Chatter’s direction.
“Morning, Nathan,” Ari called from the vicinity of my crotch as she unwound the leash from my legs.
I gave Nathan a weak wave and twisted to help Ari. “Pervert,” I muttered. “Chatter, attack.”
Tiny Glitches: A Magical Contemporary Romance Page 14