It was the first day of their friendship and it was rare, even after three decades, for them to go a full day without talking. He used that bike day in and day out for years and the work Mrs. Roman and her neighbors paid him helped keep his family safe.
Elderly Mrs. Connelly changed his future.
Only Natalia knew that before she died, the old woman used the “nest egg” she’d been saving since World War II and paid for his college education. Her children didn’t know about the money so no one questioned such generosity to a young man they’d never met.
She also left him several suits, ties, and accessories from her late husband with a note that said, “To get you started. You’ll be buying your own suits soon enough.”
Sister Dana, Mrs. Roman, and Mrs. Connelly were the three adult women who had saved him when he was too young to save himself. Natalia had often saved him as a grown man.
When he started making money, he returned the favors he’d received by helping every person who had a part in keeping him alive.
The loss of Sister Dana a few years ago hit him hard. In many ways, she’d been his real mother when Camille was too broken to assume the role. Until her death, he ensured she wanted for nothing.
Natalia’s mother was still alive, living in Boca Raton since her father’s death. He shared responsibility for her needs with his best friend.
He replaced the small stone that once stood on Mrs. Connelly’s grave with one that was a work of art. An intricately carved marble angel held a plaque inscribed with the words, “A devoted wife, mother, and friend. She always remembered her struggles and strived to help the hungry.”
There was no end to what he would do to keep Camille and Natalia safe and happy.
His younger brother and sister lived under his umbrella of protection from birth. Ensuring they had food, shelter, and clothing drove him as nothing else could have. He often forgot they were his siblings and not his children.
Now Gabriella would find herself in a very small group. He hoped, eventually, she would be glad of it. He hoped she would let them love her, as she deserved.
First, they had to keep her alive.
Chapter Eighteen
Brie’s family arrived within hours of the accident. Eleanor contacted them per Hudson’s instructions. He stepped back, unwilling to interact with them while she was unable to tell him what she wanted.
The day after the surgery that saved her life, Gabriella was placed in a medicated coma.
He spent that day organizing his professional life with Lola and made sure nothing would take him out of New York while Brie was still in the hospital.
Less than twenty-four hours after a car struck and almost killed her, Hudson’s phone rang.
“Winters.”
“Hollow. Can you talk?”
“Yes.”
“Winters, this needs to be beyond private.”
A sense of foreboding settled over his body. “I’m alone. Tell me.”
There was a long pause. “You already know. You know exactly what I found out because you already suspected.” There was silence for almost ten seconds. “Fuck.”
“Say it. I need to hear you say it, Hollow.”
“The car that hit Gabriella Hernandez was paid for in cash the day before. We tracked him using the toll cameras. The license plates were bogus but the prints left behind when my guys found the car match Scott Truing’s. He wiped the interior down but forgot the trunk and inside the doorframe.”
Hudson remained silent, processing the fact that the brother he’d loved from birth and always tried to be there for had tried to murder someone he loved.
“He was living with Christina but there hasn’t been any sign of her in almost two months. Not at her apartment and not on her credit cards.”
“Christina would sell out her own mother to save her skin. Scott would have known that about her.” He pressed his thumb and forefinger into the bridge of his nose. “How the fuck did I miss the fact that my brother is a sociopath?”
It was a rhetorical question and Hollow didn’t answer.
“I need him picked up and taken to a secure location. I don’t care what it costs.”
“Consider it done.”
“Hollow?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t hurt him if it can be prevented.”
“I understand. I’ll call you with the location when it’s done.”
For an hour, he stared out at the magnificent view of Manhattan from his office. There was so much to consider. At the top of his mind was Gabriella’s care and safety.
After all, his brother had already tried to kill her once.
He called Natalia.
“Have you heard anything?” Briefly, he told her about his call from Hollow and she whimpered in pain. “I hoped you were wrong. I wanted you to be wrong.”
“I want you to move into the penthouse.”
“Why?”
“Many reasons, Natalia. Some are urgent while others are preference. Christina is missing. I’m having Scott picked up. I’ve already assigned security to Brie in the hospital but…I don’t know. Was he doing this for himself? Did he work with someone else? Until I can trust myself to question him…I don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
“What about Camille and Sylvia?”
“Mom won’t leave the building. Sylvia isn’t speaking to me right now.”
His best friend was quiet as she thought about his offer. “I’m not sure what to do. I want you to be comfortable, to know I’m safe. I know that’s important to you.”
“But…?”
“I worry about Gabriella.”
That went around in his brain and he closed his eyes against the possible landmines the relationship he wanted could present. “You think she’ll feel second.”
“Second to you. Second to me. Yes.”
“Natalia, I absolutely understand and can only say we’ll deal with that particular problem when we get to it. Her doctors say they’ll keep her under for at least two weeks. Possibly longer. The damage to her skull…”
Calming the pounding of his heart, he started again. “That is too long to spread my attention in so many directions. I’ve had someone watching my mom for a while now. Since my initial conversation with Gabriella. I wanted to know if Scott visited. If he tried to twist her up.”
“I know you’re not leaving Sylvia in the wind.”
“Hollow is tracking her.” He was prepared to pressure her.
“Alright. I’ll pack some things and be over tonight.”
He exhaled roughly. Thank you. “I’ll send the car.”
Hudson and Natalia’s first night living together started awkwardly.
Over the past decade, when Natalia arrived at his place after dark, she was his submissive from the moment she stepped off the elevator.
This time, he greeted her. One of the valets carried her bags to the spare bedroom he’d prepared for her. He held her hand and led her to the kitchen.
When he handed her a glass of wine, she gave him a careful smile.
“I don’t…know what to do. I’ve been away from traditional relationships too long.”
Hudson lifted his hand and stroked her black hair away from her face. “I’m afraid to frighten Brie.” She nodded in understanding. “I get so pent up. So stressed.” He shrugged. “I don’t know how to relieve it without tying someone up and taking complete control of them and I know she can never match what you give me with your submission…”
“She isn’t me and you would not want her if she was, Hudson. In comparison, I would never think to make you roast beef and comfort you with gentle words and a soft touch. I would bring the box and wait for you to take my body in the way that suited you best.”
“Why am I like this? Why do I tie the one person I trust in all things?”
“In your sexual life…much like your business life…you are the king of all you survey. You have earned your alpha status with intelligence and hard work. You do
not cause me pain for your pleasure. You know I need the edge. I need the freefall. You don’t injure me and you don’t disrespect me…you push me higher than anyone else is capable and you bring me back safe.”
She raked her fingers through his hair. “Then there is the side of you that adores women and wishes nothing more than to protect us. Your trouble, my darling Hudson, is trying to keep them in two separate realms. Both of those sides are you.”
“I don’t know if I can merge them.”
“We’ll practice. So we’re ready when we bring Brie home from the hospital.”
Starting that night, they ordered food and waited until they received a call from the hospital that Gabriella’s parents had returned to their hotel.
They walked to the building a few blocks away and no one stopped them from entering her room. First she was in intensive care, then critical care, and finally in long-term care.
Words whispered at her ears as they held her hands helped them forget how close she’d come to death. They ignored the swelling, the bruising, stitches, the bandages, the casts, and talked to her about the life they would show her.
They kissed her goodbye before the shift change just after dawn and walked home. Sometimes they walked the entire way without a word but they always held hands.
Several days after being placed into a medicated coma, Brie’s brain began to swell a few minutes before their nightly visit. She coded twice before they were able to stabilize her.
Hudson and Natalia stood shell-shocked outside her room. The nurses and doctors frequently glanced nervously into the hall.
The two of them understood that it was Hudson’s recent history of threatening administration making the hospital staff uncomfortable and he wanted them focused on Brie.
A cab returned them to the penthouse.
Ragged emotionally and physically, they crashed in his bed. Natalia sobbed and they talked each other through fear that was unfamiliar. They fell asleep hours later, still wrapped tightly together, taking comfort from a trusted source.
Something roused Hudson in the hour before dawn and he stared at Natalia’s sleeping face.
Her eyes were swollen from crying. Her lower lip was red where she’d bitten it to keep from screaming when the nurse wheeled a crash cart into Brie’s room.
For a long time, he watched her sleep, remembering every time she’d stepped up when others couldn’t or wouldn’t. How she took his moods and turned them around. The way only she could keep him from losing his mind.
When her eyes fluttered open, he kissed her.
It was different from every kiss they’d ever shared.
Slowly, his tongue explored her mouth as his hands explored her body. He pulled the thin tank top over her head and pushed the soft panties down her legs. If she tried to speak, to question what was happening, he kissed her again.
This was no time for words.
Her hands lifted to trace him. She rarely had the ability during sexual play. Short nails raked through his hair, over his nipples, down his back, and her touch sank to his inner core.
He held her hard and the kisses, the exploration went on and on. Then she pulled him and he moved willingly between her thighs. She was slick, ready for him. The head of his cock found the heated entrance of her pussy and he slid just inside.
The skin of her back slipped over his arms where he hugged her, connecting them as he worked his way inside a body that yesterday he would have said was familiar.
Fully seated, they stared at one another for a long minute. Sweat beaded on their skin, her face was flushed, their hearts pounded – their flesh touched everywhere possible.
Then Hudson made love to his best friend for the first time.
Pressed as close as they could get, his strokes were slow and deep. He never looked away from her face. He watched her watch him. One hand slipped around to brush her hair from her face. His thrusts continued.
Accustomed to being taken hard and fast, the first orgasm built slowly. As it broke over her, the flush staining her breasts, chest, and neck, Hudson exhaled sharply and kept going, pushing her past the tightness of her body and the milking of his cock.
She sighed his name.
It could have been ten minutes or an hour but they maintained the full body hugs as he showed Natalia in actions what had always escaped him in words.
The second climax stole her breath and it was the sight of tears slipping from the corners of her eyes that took his control.
He gave her his kiss as he filled her with his seed and it was a moment unlike any that had come before. When the spasms finally settled, he continued to thrust lightly.
“I love you.”
“I love you, Hudson.”
“Look at me.”
Her eyes were closed and she slowly shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Look at me, Natalia.”
The light blue of her eyes shimmered with her tears. He kissed the corners, her cheeks, and at last her lips. The touch of her hands on his face, in his hair, was different from every other touch and he knew, in that moment, that Brie had been right all along.
It was all about timing.
The first time Hudson took Natalia to his bed had been after he stopped her from having plastic surgery she didn’t need. The beating he later delivered to her boyfriend ensured their relationship was over for good.
He’d had several lovers by then and he found himself holding back sexually with women who could not have handled what he wanted. He dated them, took them to dinner, and fucked them as hard as he could without the edge he truly wanted.
He wanted complete control. Over their experience and his own. He wanted to warm the surface of their skin to increase blood flow and heighten the climax he provided. To tie them down, perhaps completely immobilize them, so they had no choice but to take what he gave.
His personal need started at nineteen with a random book found on a forgotten shelf in a bookstore that no longer existed. Images of bondage – combining control with sexuality – sank into his brain and never shook loose.
Over the years, he visited clubs and found some were too extreme while others were where older married couples walked on the dark side. He didn’t trust the women he dated with his secret. He already had far too much to lose if he confided in the wrong lover.
There was only one person he’d ever trusted in all things.
During high school, they kissed, experimented, and laughed about how being “boyfriend and girlfriend” was too mainstream.
In college, they fucked around when they had too much to drink. A ready excuse was necessary back then. A reason for touching one another intimately without a commitment on either side.
The night everything changed between them, she stayed at his apartment and he was twenty-four. She came out of his shower barefoot in panties and a t-shirt, toweling her hair.
From his chair across the room, he watched her. Gradually, her movements slowed and finally stopped. She held the towel in one hand as she stared back at him.
“Come here.”
He still remembered how her eyes widened at the command in his voice an instant before her nipples hardened sharply.
She made her way across the wood floor and stopped inches from his knees.
“I want to fuck you.”
Her eyes were huge in her face. Her damp hair curled around her cheeks. “Alright.” The words were said softly and he knew she was unsure of what he was trying to tell her.
“I need to experience something with you tonight. If you don’t like it, we’ll never try it again. If you aren’t happy, we’ll go on as we have…with this between us.” He took a deep breath. “If you do enjoy it, we need to talk.”
She didn’t speak, simply nodded. Her trust in him was written on her face as it had been the night he met her and walked her home to make sure she arrived safely.
He would always make sure she arrived safely.
Standing, he slid her t-shirt up her body and tossed i
t to the couch. “Walk to the bedroom.”
She turned on her heel without hesitation and entered his room. His bed featured a wrought iron headboard and he planned to tie her to it.
“Get on the bed on your knees. Grip the top rail.” He opened his closet and removed two ties. Approaching her from the side, her eyes flicked to his hands and back to his face. “I won’t hurt you. I would never hurt you, Natalia.”
“I know.” She faced the wall above the bed and held the rail until her knuckles were white. “I trust you more than anyone else in my life, Hudson. I hope you don’t think badly of me…after.”
He didn’t bother to respond to the statement. It was ridiculous to even consider that he would ever think badly of her. He accepted her unconditionally.
He secured her to the frame and removed her panties. He took his time stripping away his clothes and watched her. She didn’t move. From the bedside table, he removed lubricant. He hesitated as he reached for a rubber.
“Are you still on birth control?” She nodded. “Can I take you without a condom?” Her eyes met his and she nodded again, slower this time. “I’m clean and if you should ever end up pregnant, I’ll take care of you.”
Swallowing hard, she turned back to the wall.
“Spread your knees.”
She did and when he stood on the bed, she stared at his cock. Never in his life had he been so hard. The shaft jutted from his body, the head was almost purple, and his balls were drawn tight.
“Open your mouth.”
Her eyes lifted as her lips parted and he fisted her hair. Holding her still, he started with shallow thrusts, gradually increasing the depth and force.
When her eyes began to water, he slowed and pulled back. Gently, he told her, “Breathe through your nose. I’ll be more careful.”
The first climax took less than ten minutes. Being able to fuck her hot mouth had stolen control he hadn’t fully achieved yet. When he softened a bit, he thrust between her lips more firmly and she gained confidence in the act.
Over the years, she would perfect the art of taking his cock.
Hudson Page 20