He moved a hand from my face to wrap around my waist and pulled me into him where I could feel his erection against my thigh through the thin material of his boxers. His other hand reached behind my head to tangle in my hair. I pressed my breasts into him, needing to feel him with every part of my body.
A moan caught in the back of Hudson’s throat, vibrating underneath our kiss and kindling the desire in my belly. I shifted, trying to get closer, my leg antsy to hook around him.
His lips still wrapped around mine, he said, “I do have one room I want to show you tonight.”
“I hope it’s the bedroom.”
“It is.” In a blur of motion, he lifted me in his arms and headed back to the foyer I’d come from. Just like that he carried me away, the movement imitating the effect he had on me in general—with him, I was a branch in a roaring river, rushing toward the sea. And Hudson, he was the current, pulling me whichever way he wanted to take me. I was at his mercy.
He’d promised me that he wouldn’t play his manipulative games with me, that he’d never try to control me. But it was a promise he couldn’t keep. He swept me away with him whether he intended to or not. And that was perfectly fine with me.
He carried me through the foyer, kissing me as he did until we reached the end of the hallway where he turned into what had to be the master bedroom. My attention still entirely on him, I only registered that he was laying me on a king-size bed, the light gray sheets disheveled on one side, the left side. His side. The intimacy of being in the place that Hudson slept, had slept in earlier that evening, shot a pang of need to my already aching core. I wanted him on me and in me, not standing above me gazing down with hooded eyes.
He’d take his time with me though, and there was no use disputing his tempo. There was no reason to dispute. Though a dominant lover, he always focused his attention on my needs, always attended to me in the ways he knew best. And god, did he know me best, knew how to turn my body boneless and sated, knew how to arouse and love me, even when I didn’t.
His hand lagged down the length of my leg to my ankle where he removed my strappy sandal with a gentleness that had me writhing. He repeated the action with my other shoe, then knelt over me to deliver a brief kiss. I reached up to pull him in for more, but he resisted.
“Last time we went quickly. This time I need to savor you.” Last time had been fast and fraught, a reprieve mid-argument, on the new couch in the manager’s office at The Sky Launch, and he hadn’t left me with any complaints. But being savored sounded pretty damn awesome, too.
With a trail of wet kisses, he made his way down my body to the hem of my dress. With a wicked gleam in his eyes, he shoved the material up around my waist, placing a kiss on the center of my want.
A moan escaped my lips and he chuckled softly. His fingers slipped under the band of my panties, pulling them off and tossing them aside. He hooked my leg over his shoulder and then his mouth was back on me, licking and sucking greedily at the bundle of nerves between my thighs.
I was already delirious from pleasure when he slipped two fingers inside me, probing and twisting until he pulled my orgasm from me with ease. I shuddered and quaked while he climbed up to reclaim my mouth where he kissed me with deep hunger.
The soft sounds he made as he devoured me, the taste of me on his tongue, the jab of his cock in my thigh—it was only half a minute before the tightness built again in my belly, ready for another ride up the hill to ecstasy. Drawn to touch him, my hand found his cock and rubbed it through his underwear.
His mouth broke from mine with a groan. I nudged at him to roll to his side while I continued to stroke him. “Boxers? Do you wear these often?”
“To bed.”
“I like them. I’ve never seen you in them.” My hand slipped inside the opening of his shorts, marveling as I always did at the softness of his thick shaft in my hand, at the heat rolling off his skin.
“Because when I go to bed with you—” His voice broke as I ran my hand across his crown. “I wear nothing.”
“Oh, yeah. I like that even better.” It was my turn to slip my hand into the band of his underwear and pull them down his strong legs, my eyes pinned on the gorgeous sight of his erection as I did.
As soon as his boxers hit the floor, he drew me to him again. “I like it when you’re wearing nothing.” His fingers were already tugging my dress up over my belly. “You need to be wearing nothing right now.”
“I won’t argue.” I sat up to help him pull the outfit over my head. He tossed the dress aside and his hands circled around me to unhook my bra, freeing my breasts. Then he was stretched out over me, his penis hot at my entrance for only a second before he plunged inside of me, penetrating me, stretching me, filling me the way only he could.
He turned to his side, taking me with him, and I wrapped a leg around him, urging him deeper. He’d wanted to savor me, but either he changed his mind or he couldn’t contain himself, unleashing his passion with rapid thrusts. Each time he drove in, he hit a tender spot that made me crazy, drawing another climax to surface, starting in my core, tightening my thighs, traveling down to curl my toes as it rolled through my body.
Hudson continued his assault, increasing his speed until he grunted out his own release. He collapsed, still inside me, and gathered me in his arms to spread kisses down my face—an unusually tender gesture from the guarded man I’d grown to love. I delighted in the sweetness of it.
“Did I mention that I’m awfully glad you’re here?” he asked, breaking his sentence to continue his trail of kisses.
Hearing those words meant everything. I recognized it as Hudson’s version of I love you. He hadn’t brought himself to say it to me directly—he was too new to the emotion, and I didn’t expect it. Though he had accepted it earlier in the evening when I’d informed him that I knew he was in love with me, and he hadn’t freaked when I told him I was in love with him.
Still, I didn’t fool myself into thinking we’d have instant hearts and roses. Baby steps. Saying how he felt at all was a step in itself. That it included how he felt about me equaled two steps in my book.
I ran my hand through his hair as his mouth lowered to my neck. “You did say it. And if you hadn’t, I think I figured it out.” I waggled my eyebrows to make sure he knew I was referring to what had just occurred physically. “But you can tell me as many times as you’d like.” In as many different ways as you’d like, I added silently.
He shifted over me and sucked further down my body, heading toward my breasts. Obviously, we were already headed for round two. “I’m glad you’re here, precious.” He tugged my nipple between his teeth then eased the sting with a swirl of his tongue.
I drew in a deep breath, delighting in the mix of pleasure and pain as he showered my other breast with the same attention. His nickname for me, precious, floated through my mind as his mouth licked at my skin. He’d called me that since our first sexual encounter, nearly two weeks before. Had it only been that long? And had it only been another week before that when I’d first met him at the club, when I didn’t yet know he was the Hudson Pierce? It already seemed like a lifetime. The term of endearment he used for me had held weight from the first moment he’d said it. But we’d only just met then. Maybe it didn’t have as much meaning as I attributed to it.
Curiosity overtook me even though my body was already vibrating under his ardor. “Why do you call me that, anyway?”
He answered without looking up from my bosom. “Because you are.”
“You started calling me precious before you could ever possibly know.”
“Not true.” He propped his elbow up on the bed and leaned his head on his hand. “I knew the minute I first saw you.”
For a brief second I thought he meant at the bar—the first night I had seen him. Then I remembered he’d seen me nearly two weeks before that when I was still working on my MBA and he’d been in the audience during my graduate symposium. I hadn’t found out about that until later, and he�
��d barely told me anything about it.
I propped my torso up on my elbows and eagerly waited for him to continue.
“You were on that stage at Stern,” he said, his hand stroking along the dip and curve of my waist to my hip. “When you started your presentation, you were nervous. It took you a few minutes to fall into the rhythm of your speech. But when you hit your stride, you were magnificent. Yet you had no idea. It was completely obvious that it never crossed your mind that the room was full of people who would have hired you had you spoken to any of them. Thank god, you didn’t. Because I watched them watch you and I knew. I knew that they saw you were smart. They saw you had business savvy. But none of them recognized the rare jewel that stood before them. Precious.”
Tears stung at the corners of my eyes. No one had ever seen me like that, no had ever even looked. Not my parents before they died or my brother, Brian, or any of the men I’d ever dated or obsessed over. No one.
“I love you, Hudson.” It was out before I could think not to say it, before I could worry about him freaking like he had the first time I’d voiced my feelings for him. I wouldn’t have been able to keep the words inside if I’d wanted to—they were always at the surface now, at risk of tumbling off my tongue at any given moment. If we were going to make a relationship work, we’d both have to get comfortable with it.
My eyes never left his while he processed my declaration.
Then, in a flash, he covered his body with mine. Bracing one hand under my neck, he circled my nose with his. “You can tell me that as many times as you like,” he said, repeating my earlier words.
“I plan on it.” But it came out mumbled, lost inside his mouth as his lips overtook mine, and we expressed our emotions with our tongues and hands and bodies and a slew of other ways that didn’t require talking.
Chapter Two
Awareness of movement in the room woke me the next morning. I opened my eyes and saw Hudson adjusting his tie in front of the dresser mirror, his back to me. He had yet to put on his jacket so I had a full view of his tight behind. God, that man could wear a suit. He could wear nothing as easily. I wasn’t choosy.
He met my eyes in the mirror and a slight smile graced his lips. “Good morning.”
“Morning. I’m enjoying the view.”
“So am I.”
I blushed and pulled the sheet up over my naked body. The room seemed awfully light for as early as it had to be. “What time is it?” I glanced around for a clock and found none.
“Almost eleven.” He finished with his tie—a silver patterned one that brought out his eyes—and opened a drawer, retrieving a pair of dress socks.
Eleven? Hudson was usually at work before eight. “Why are you still here? Shouldn’t you have made half a million dollars by now?”
“Half a billion,” he said, straight-faced, as he sat on the bed next to me. “But they don’t need me for that. I canceled my morning.”
“When did you do that?” I was mesmerized with watching him put on his socks. It shouldn’t be so sexy to watch a man get dressed, yet my belly tightened and my girl parts started humming.
“Last night. Before you got here.”
“Smart thinking.” His invitation to spend the night in his penthouse had come at the beginning of my shift at The Sky Launch. I’d obsessed about it the entire evening, but being at work, there was nothing I could do to prepare for it. I didn’t even have a change of clothing or a toothbrush. It hadn’t occurred to me that Hudson would have used the time to get ready for my arrival. But of course he did. He was a very organized man, a planner with a fine attention to detail.
And since two rounds of lovemaking had transpired, we hadn’t gone to sleep until nearly six in the morning. Canceling his morning was good planning indeed.
I yawned and stretched my arms over my head, the sheet falling below my breasts as I did.
Socks on, Hudson stood and peered down at me, his eyes clouding as he perused my naked body. “Fuck, Alayna, you’re making me want to cancel my afternoon, too. And I can’t cancel my afternoon.”
I grinned. “Sorry.” But I wasn’t. Hudson could make me wet from across a crowded room. It was nice to think I had some of the same power over him. “Um, I need to get up. Is that going to be too…distracting?”
He narrowed his eyes at me then turned and disappeared into a closet returning with a cream robe. “Here.”
I took the robe from him, not bothering to put it on until I was standing.
“You’re a wicked, wicked woman,” he said as he watched me pull the garment around myself.
“And you love it.”
Without acknowledging my statement, he nodded toward a closed door. “The bathroom’s there. There should be brand new toothbrushes in one of the drawers. Look around until you find what you need.”
“Thank you.” I crossed to him and gave him a peck on the cheek before making my way to the bathroom to pee.
It hadn’t been a cuddly afterglow morning like we’d spent together at Mabel Shores, his family’s summerhouse in the Hamptons. But this was Hudson—aloof and compartmentalized. He was focused on getting to work, and, to his credit, he’d been pretty hospitable considering.
I found the toothbrush easily; as he’d said, there was a drawer full of them. While I brushed, I wondered about that. What was with the surplus? Did he simply want to always be prepared, in case he needed a new one? Maybe he believed toothbrushes should be disposable. He certainly could afford that attitude.
Or did he have them for overnight guests? Female overnight guests, to be precise.
I might have decided I was being paranoid, except it wasn’t only the toothbrushes. Now that I looked around, there was floral scented deodorant by one of the sinks with a bottle of women’s face cream and another bottle of moisturizer next to it.
And the robe—the woman’s robe that I was wearing at that very moment —where had that come from?
A chill ran down my spine. I tightened the sash around myself, despite my growing concern that I was wearing clothing that belonged to someone else. To another woman. Another woman in Hudson’s life.
Okay, okay. No need to panic. Maybe there had been other women before me at the penthouse. That was fine. Not wonderful, but fine. I just wished he hadn’t lied about it. And why had he lied about it?
I opened the moisturizer and brought the bottle to my nose. It smelled fresh and familiar—was that the scent Celia wore?
Now I was being ridiculous. Paranoid, even. Knowing that didn’t change the sick, angry emotion rooting through my gut. It was a feeling I’d once been very intimate with. The driving force of most of the unhealthy behaviors I’d acted upon in the past. Behaviors I did not want to relive.
I had to get calm, handle the situation constructively. I forced myself to count to ten. In between each number I repeated the mantra I’d learned in counseling: when in doubt, talk it out. One, when in doubt, talk it out. Two, when in doubt, talk it out.
Yeah, easier said than done.
By the time I reached four, the mantra had turned into when in fucking doubt and still I was very much doubting.
But that was my tendency, my go-to in all of my relationships. I jumped to conclusions—conclusions that very often were way off-base and unfounded. Late nights at work meant another girlfriend. Mysterious phone calls meant cheating. With my previous boyfriends, I never asked. I assumed. I accused.
Not this time. This time I would be different. Even though the evidence suggested that Hudson had lied to me, I couldn’t accept that as fact. I would have to ask him about it.
I scrubbed my face clean with the facial cream, hoping that stalling before I talked to Hudson would relieve the simmer of fury. After patting my face dry with a hand towel, I convinced myself that I was together enough to address him and started out of the bathroom, grabbing the cream and moisturizer to take with me as evidence.
So, maybe collecting evidence was more of an attack than a discussion tactic. As long a
s I didn’t end up throwing them, I considered it an improvement on my past.
Hudson wasn’t in the bedroom when I came out, so I made my way out through the apartment until I found him in the kitchen. He’d donned his suit jacket now, and he stood at the kitchen table, reading the paper as he drank from a mug.
He looked up when I appeared. “I made you some—”
“Why do you have all this stuff?” Though I’d cut him off, I was pretty sure my question sounded more curious than accusatory. Hopefully.
“What stuff?”
“This stuff.” I set the bottles on the table in front of him. All right, maybe it was closer to a slam. “And you have a plethora of toothbrushes and this woman’s robe. Why do you have a woman’s robe?”
His eyes narrowed and he took a sip from his beverage before answering. “I have more than the robe. I have several pieces of women’s clothing in the extra closet in my bedroom.”
“That’s not helping.” The panic I thought I had smothered deep inside worked its way up my throat, tightening my voice. “You told me you never had a woman here before.”
“Do I detect a hint of jealousy?”
The gleam in his eye unleashed me. “You detect more than a fucking hint. Also, a whole lot of suspicion. Come on, H, this isn’t any way to start a relationship. If you’ve had a woman here—if this is someone else’s clothing I’m wearing—I need to know.” My eyes burned, but I managed to keep them pinned on him.
Hudson set his mug down and turned his whole body toward me.
I kept my hand on the table, bracing myself for whatever excuse he’d give. What he said—if he chose to speak the truth, if I chose to believe him—it could make or break us.
“They’re yours, Alayna.”
“What?” That, I wasn’t expecting.
“I purchased them for you. Except the toothbrushes. My housekeeper buys me those so I have plenty for when I travel. The clothing and cosmetics are yours.”
Mine?
No, it wasn’t possible.
The Fixed Trilogy Page 27