by JC Harroway
But it’s not enough.
‘So, thoughts on the Kunosu Tech investment,’ I say, trying to drag my mind away from Monroe and appear normal. Otherwise Sterling will be able to tell something is up. The last thing I want is a scene. I’m selfish. If he learns about us and feels upset, there’s less of a chance Monroe will let me touch her again. My mind is so focussed on making that happen, I can barely think straight or contribute to this evening’s conversation.
‘Oh, no, no, no.’ Sterling flags our waiter and requests another bottle of Burgundy. ‘No business talk tonight.’
He’s in a strange mood himself—overly upbeat, as if it’s an act. I want to pry but my head is so fucked it would be the ultimate act of hypocrisy.
‘Now you see what I’ve been dealing with without you in Tokyo,’ teases Monroe with a playful wink in my direction. ‘Also, I need you to help me persuade Hudson to come to the party at Comberton tomorrow.’
My stomach sinks. No matter how hard I wriggle, I can’t extricate myself from the invitation to Cathy’s memorial. Not now Monroe’s enlisting Sterling’s help. And it won’t be that bad. It’s just that family shit always makes me feel...irrelevant. I’m selfish enough to want to avoid that at all costs.
Still, it’s not worth upsetting Monroe over.
Sterling’s expression turns serious and full of compassion for Monroe. ‘I’ll bring him to Comberton.’ Then he faces me. ‘I’ll pick you up at eleven.’
I bristle at being discussed like an errant child. But I nod, my eyes on Monroe. ‘I wouldn’t miss it, Dove.’ Shit my voice couldn’t be more telling.
Silent communication passes between us. Her eyes say, I see you, I know you, and maybe even, I want you. But in reality she doesn’t. She wants more than me. She still wants all of the things she did a week ago. We’re just both hooked on the physical connection.
I shudder and clear my throat. Perhaps she thinks she can change me. That I’ll miraculously wake up one day and want to be her knight in shining armour.
‘Thank you,’ she says, looking between Sterling and me, her eyes shiny.
I look away first because I’m emotionally moribund. I don’t know what I’d do if she cried. Sterling knows her better. He’ll know how to console her tomorrow, just as he did four years ago when Cathy died.
The rest of the meal passes in a similar vein. Them laughing at shared jokes, chatting about common acquaintances, and trying to include me, when I prefer to count the minutes until I can get Monroe alone.
As we leave the restaurant and head outside for our cabs, I physically wedge myself between them.
‘I’ll see Monroe home.’ I keep my gaze averted from their expressions. I don’t give a fuck what it looks like. I open the rear door of the front taxi and turn to Sterling. ‘There’s no point both of us going. Why don’t you head back to the hotel? You said you had a few calls to make.’
He nods amiably but his stare is assessing. It makes my stomach twist. I’m a shitty, deceitful friend. I say I don’t want to hurt him, but I can’t seem to quell my need for Monroe. I want to come clean, but I don’t want anything to change.
Before he heads to the second cab idling behind, he kisses her cheek and grips her shoulders warmly. ‘See you tomorrow. Let me know if we can bring anything.’
She hugs him hard, lingering for a few seconds. My stomach lurches so violently, I have to look away. I’ve watched them embrace a thousand times over the years. I’ve even watched them kiss, back when they were in love. Now I want to rip them apart and punch Sterling in the face when it’s me who’s the snake.
It makes no sense, beyond some Neanderthal urge to beat off the competition, and he deserves better.
Monroe and I don’t speak a word in the cab. The space between us on the back seat crackles with tension, as if we’re both fighting the urge to touch. My mind races for some clever quip or outlandish seduction scenario but I’m too strung out for anything beyond basic instincts. And every one of those drivers demands I hold her, kiss her, push my way inside her until the ferocious internal instability I’m battling fades. Until I’m a different man, the only man she needs.
She’s silent too. Does she feel as out of control as me? Has she too realised what a mistake we made by starting this?
At her house, I pay the cab driver and walk her to the door, my hand tingling on the small of her back. I feel her tremble. She’s there with me. On the edge. Desperate. Doomed.
There’s no stopping this.
She swings the door inward and I follow her inside without hesitation. If she doesn’t want me, she’ll kick me out.
The click of the lock has barely echoed off the walls before she spins and launches herself at me. I drag her into my arms and press her up against the wall.
‘I can’t stop wanting you.’ I pant, ripping at her coat and heeling off my shoes. ‘Tell me to stop. Kick me out.’ My words are as jumbled as the mess in my brain. Every sentence is punctuated with my tongue in her mouth and my teeth tugging at her soft lips. ‘Make me leave.’
‘No, I want you too.’ She shoves my jacket from my shoulders and tears open my shirt, buttons scattering on her hardwood floors. ‘Hurry...’
We find bare skin at the same moment, her moan as violent as my growl of triumph. I hoist her dress above her head and flick her bra open with one hand, tossing the garments away with impatience. They’re keeping me from her. From the scent and texture of her naked skin. From her perfect breasts and the haven between her legs. I’m wild enough for her to crush anything that stands in my way, including my own sense of self-preservation.
‘Hudson!’ she cries as I slide her panties aside and palm her soaking core.
‘You’ve wanted me too, haven’t you? All night.’ I toss my shirt and loosen my belt, walking her back towards the stairs.
‘Yes, yes...every minute.’ She sits on the stairs and tugs me to my knees in front of her. I lean her back, kissing her closed eyes, her cheeks and her neck while I rub her swollen greedy clit. I move lower, sucking her nipple into my mouth. She grips my hair, directing me first to one side and then the other, demanding, desperate and, like me, beyond the stage of denial that in any way we’ve got a handle on this ferocious want for each other.
It’s as if we’ve never touched before. Our first time. Only better, because I’m fully addicted to her, certain the next hit will surpass all previous ones combined.
I scrape my teeth across her distended nipple and plunge my fingers inside her, my cock surging at her cries of unabashed pleasure.
It’s not enough. I want her ecstasy. I want her climax. Her orgasmic exhaustion. I want her too pleasure-drunk to remember any man of her past or to crave anyone in her future, selfish bastard that I am.
I rip my mouth from her breast and ignore her aggrieved cry. With my hands under her arms, I hoist her up to the stair above and shove her thighs open wide.
‘I need to taste you.’
‘Yes.’ She grips my face, urging me close as I drag her underwear off.
There’s no time to admire the view of her glistening wet for me or splayed open, waiting. I bury my face between her legs and lick her from her seam to her clit, a guttural groan of encouragement ripping from my throat when she cries out and fists my hair.
I toss one thigh over my shoulder. ‘Yes, give me everything you’ve got. Tell me what you need.’ I dive back in, covering her folds with my mouth, sucking and laving at her flesh until she’s a panting, delirious mess. Begging. Writhing. Chanting my name with a hoarse voice.
But she’s magnificent. Debauched, she’s even more beautiful, and I know in that moment I’ll never get enough of Monroe Dove. I’ll die craving her.
Before that thought can send me into a panic, she grips the back of my head with one hand and holds on to the bannister with the other as she rides my face, her eyes locked on mine.
‘Suck me,’ she says, her demand snatched from her throat by her broken cry.
I focus on her clit, spreading her open with two fingers, plunging them inside her tight channel. In that moment she’s mine. I want to roar a victory yell. But there’s no time. Monroe comes on my mouth, her hips jerking, her head craned back on the stair behind and her fingers fisted in my hair as she’s racked by the powerful spasms.
I sit back on my haunches and tear open my fly, releasing my aching cock and appeasing it with a few lazy tugs. Monroe drags me between her legs and my hips slot there so perfectly, she could’ve been made for me and I for her.
I brace my hands on the stair on either side of her waist while I kiss her, and my foggy brain recalls how my wallet and my means of protection are somewhere near the front door in my jacket pocket.
Monroe fists my cock and slides the tip through her drenched folds, crying out as she rubs me over her sensitive clit. She wraps her legs around my hips and encircles my shoulders. ‘Hurry. Forget the condom. I’m safe if you are.’
She’s panting, on the edge, her mouth swollen and her eyes glazed. Her hair is a sexy mess that I fist in my fingers. I mash my mouth to hers and pour everything that I am into kissing her. It’s an erotic duelling of tongues and teeth and lips. It’s a sensual sharing of parts of our souls, but it’s not enough. It will never be enough.
With our stares locked, I push into her in a single, steady thrust that makes us groan together. I wince and close my eyes as intense pleasure—the likes of which I’ve never known—overwhelms me, body and mind.
‘It’s too good,’ she says, resting back on her elbows. I grip her hips and plunge inside her time and time again. Telling myself this time will be the last. It can’t be beaten and it will be sufficient for me to walk away.
I capture one breast with my mouth and lave at the bud, my cock squeezed by her internal muscles.
‘Hudson...’ My name is a plea on her lips. ‘Don’t stop...’
I scoop one arm around her hips, still thrusting for all I’m worth, and rub my thumb over her clit. She detonates around me, squeezing me so tight my vision blacks and I follow her, coming so hard in violent spasms that I don’t know where she ends and I begin.
But I know one thing: every word I’ve just told myself is a lie.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Monroe
HE PUSHES INSIDE me from behind and I moan, tangling my fingers with his where his arm is banded around my waist. I’m sore. I’m certain he must be too. He’s been hard for hours. I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve come. It’s as if it’s our last night of human existence—we’re both utterly exhausted but aware that every second counts. There is no containing this degree of pleasure. This desperate compulsion. It’s all-consuming torment.
I reach behind me and tangle my fingers in his hair, directing his lips back to the tender spot on my neck where I’m certain I must have a love bite, because he’s kissed and sucked that place so much in the past few hours. But I don’t care. I want his marks on my body, the sign of his relentless possession, which fortunately shows no sign of abating.
Dangerous, dangerous wants...
Hudson cups my breast, his thumb rubbing over my nipple as he thrusts into me from behind. Doubt dampens my pleasure, allowing memories of the awkwardness at dinner earlier to rush in. Was Hudson jealous? I knew the minute he walked into the restaurant that it isn’t over for him, just as it isn’t for me. Did Sterling notice the lost look in Hudson’s eyes when he let his guard slip? Could he interpret my nervous chatter? Any minute I expected me or Hudson to blurt out our secret over dessert.
Guilt bombards the flood of desire taking me hostage. I don’t want to hurt either of them. Or Bold.
During dinner I had a blinding moment of clarity. For Hudson to become the man I need, he’d not only have to risk his personal fears—of being abandoned, of never being loved, of not mattering to a single soul on this Earth—he’d also need to risk Bold. Both of us would. Because there’s no denying there would be fallout if we confessed to Sterling—a fallout that could be both enormous and destructive.
Could he do that? Could I?
What am I doing?
Hudson abandons my nipple and slides his hand down my stomach to my swollen clit. I gasp, my muscles fluttering around him in the first stirrings of another orgasm.
‘Please...’ I don’t know why I’m begging. To come? Because I can’t? Or am I begging for this night never to end?
With the ruthlessness I expect from him, Hudson doubles his efforts, his thrusts deepening, his fingers strumming more rapidly until I crack open for him, my climax tearing through me on an inevitable wail of pleasure.
He buries his face against my neck and pumps his own release into me, crushing me in his grip.
‘We need to stop,’ I murmur as my breathing settles and my heart ceases its exhausted pounding. I open my eyes and see that the digital clock on my bedside table reads four-twenty a.m.
‘I need to get up in two hours to travel to Comberton.’ Even as I speak I’m still grinding my hips and gripping his buttocks, holding him inside me, because I don’t want him to pull out. Ever.
My heart clenches. Getting up, showering, dressing and continuing with life as normal will force me to acknowledge that something has changed for me, something monumental. I’m not ready to face that. Not today. Mum’s day.
But everything has changed. Otherwise we would have stuck to our five nights and ended this back in Tokyo. I think back to last night, to that first frantic time on the stairs. We didn’t speak in the car, didn’t even argue that we shouldn’t do this or rationalise one more night. It’s as if our passion is a forest fire, and the blaze has quickly spread out of control, so the only sane solution is to burn.
If there was anything left to say, now would be the moment to voice uncertainty or a change of heart. But we’re both silent. Today will be difficult for both of us, but for very different reasons: for me because family is everything, and for Hudson because he doesn’t know how to be anything other than alone. He’s been emotionally withdrawn most of his life. Except he’s let me in, whether he realises it or not.
How can I expect more from such a man? And yet how can I not, for my own needs? Am I ready to abandon my own hopes of ‘for ever’ for a chance that he might, one day, decide he wants a relationship after all? Even then we live on different continents, the ultimate in long distance.
It’s impossible.
He softens and slips from my body. His arms tighten around my waist. His fingers squeeze mine. His soft sigh kisses my shoulder. Wordlessly, he rolls away and stumbles to the bathroom.
Shivers break out over my skin. I clamber from the bed and put on my robe, cranking up the thermostat to try to warm myself. But there’s ice in my veins. I’ve let in a man who can’t give me what I need. To build a relationship with a family and a home and a life together in every way. He’s never been in love the way I need to be loved.
When Hudson emerges from the bathroom, he’s fully dressed and achingly beautiful in that broken way. I want to hold him, to reassure him that I don’t expect anything of him, today or ever. And it’s partly true. But that also means I can’t risk my heart to any greater degree where he’s concerned. Or I will want more. I’ll want it all, and I’m terrified to test him for fear he’ll let me down.
For fear that I’ll fail again.
‘I’d better head back to the hotel.’ He scrubs a hand through his haphazard hair. ‘Sterling will expect to see me at breakfast.’
I nod, folding my arms across my chest and gripping my biceps to stop myself from shivering. This day is always sad, always hard for me, no matter how much we dress up Mum’s memorial as a party. She’s still gone. I still miss her all the time. I want more than anything for Hudson to hold me, to stroke my hair and shower with me. To drive me to my childhood ho
me and hold my hand all day, just to let me know he’s there.
But he can’t, and I can’t ask him for any of that. If I force it, I might see just how misguided I’ve allowed myself to be once more.
‘Yes, good plan. I’ll see you later.’ Mum, my family, is the only thing I can think of right now.
He presses a kiss to my forehead, lingering for a heartbeat too long, as if he has more to say. But then he’s gone and I’m alone with only my own strength for company. It’s enough, but I wish with all of my aching heart it could be different.
* * *
The family home Mum loved is in Comberton, a quintessential English village six miles from Cambridge. Dad maintains the expansive lawns and pretty herbaceous borders, which are bursting with spring colour, as a tribute to her. The weather has come out to celebrate Mum too. The sun warms my face as I watch my nieces and nephews play football on the lawn, fighting to score by kicking the ball between two battered cricket wickets Dad has pushed into the grass to act as goal posts.
Hudson, dressed in a casual shirt and dark chinos, and so sexy I could weep, is deep in conversation with my older brother Elliot. Only the slight tiredness around his eyes provides any clue as to how he spent the night.
Every time one of the younger kids mis-kicks the ball, either Elliot or Hudson breaks off their conversation and retrieves it from the bushes, tossing it back into play with endless patience. I expect that from my brother. After all, three of the children playing belong to him.
But Hudson...
Our eyes collide for the umpteenth time, a violent connection passing between us across the garden. I take a shaky sip of Pimm’s, which does nothing to settle the rage of emotion inside me. Emotion he’s drawing to the surface as effortlessly as he makes my heart pound.
This is bad.
‘He’s good with the kids,’ my sister Brie, seven years my senior, says.