She rocked me back and forth. “No one’s telling you what you should or shouldn’t do here. Either way, you got my support.”
“Good, because I think I’m going to give him another chance.” I wasn’t quite sure what that chance would be yet—dinner? A date? Lots of dates?
That was a decision for tomorrow.
***
Though I didn’t have a lot to pack up from the penthouse, I wanted to get started on it early enough in the day that we’d be long gone before Hudson arrived home from work. Getting Liesl anywhere before noon, however, proved difficult.
“Maybe I could join you later,” she said, burying her head in her pillow at my first attempt to drag her out of bed.
“But I need you the whole time,” I whined. “Please?”
The pleading worked, but she tried again to get out of going as we were getting in the cab. Then at The Bowery, she suggested that she make a coffee run and join me later.
“There’s a beautiful Keurig inside. Best coffee ever. I’ll make you as many mugs as you want.” Maybe Liesl wasn’t really big on packing.
“Fine.”
It was much easier to go inside the building with Liesl along. As we went up in the elevator, I wrapped my arm around hers, grateful for the support. Though I hadn’t been living there for two weeks, moving out was big. It reeked of finality. And with my recent decision to let Hudson back in my life in some way, I wasn’t quite looking for finality. I needed Liesl to talk me out of anything stupid.
Like deciding to leave my stuff there and not move out.
When the door opened to the apartment, I waited for Liesl to step out first. She didn’t move so I went ahead of her. I turned around and put my hand on the side to keep the elevator open. “Aren’t you coming?”
“Uh…” her eyes grew wide. Then she pushed my arm out of the door and pressed a button on the call panel. “Don’t hate me!” she called as the doors shut.
What the fuck? I heaved a frustrated air of breath out of my lungs and closed my eyes. Either Liesl had somewhere else she wanted to be or she had something up her sleeve. And if it was the latter, there was no doubt Hudson was involved.
Might as well find out what was up.
I opened my eyes and peered around the corner of the foyer toward the living area. It was empty. Not just empty as in no Hudson, but empty as in no furniture. None. I wandered into the room to be sure I wasn’t going crazy.
Well, if I were going crazy, the delusion I was having was of an apartment with no furniture. I glanced at the dining room. Also empty. Strangely, the place didn’t feel any more cold and lonely than it had when I’d been there the last time. But the emptiness put me off. I couldn’t understand what it meant. Was my stuff gone as well?
I backtracked and pushed the door open to the library. This room was only mostly empty. The sofa and desk and all the rest of the furniture were gone, but the shelves still contained all my books and movies. The books I’d pulled that Celia had marked were gone from the floor, but several boxes were stacked against the wall.
I walked toward the stack, intending to peek in and see if the books were there, but it was sealed.
“Those are new books.”
Ah, there he is.
I turned slightly to find Hudson leaning in the doorframe. Again he was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Dammit, he hadn’t even planned on going to work if he was dressed like that. And he looked extra yummy. Somehow he had arranged that as well, I was sure of it.
He nodded again at the box I was still touching. “They’re for you. To replace the ones that had been damaged.”
“Oh,” I said. Then I frowned.
“What is it?”
“I have nowhere to put all these.” I hadn’t intended to take them. They were beautiful and I loved them, but in New York City, that many books were a luxury.
He sighed softly and I could tell the rejection of his gift hurt, no matter what the reason. But all he said was, “I’ll keep them for as long as you want me to.”
“Thank you.” I caught myself scanning his body. It was impossible not to. He was so good-looking, and I missed him so much. Though I’d planned my move on a day that he wouldn’t be around, I was happy to see him. Elated, actually.
I wondered if he could see that in my smile. “I didn’t expect you to be here.” I’m so glad you are.
“You didn’t say I couldn’t be.”
“It was implied,” I teased.
He caught my eyes with his. “You don’t seem that horribly pissed to see me.”
God, the butterflies were stirring in my belly. Not the tug of fixation that used to make me act crazy, but the twitters I felt only with Hudson. It had confused me when I first felt it those months ago, but now I recognized it for what it was—a combination of nerves and excitement and attraction and anticipation. It was such a gloriously delicious feeling.
Surprisingly, it eclipsed the still fresh wounds from his betrayal.
Still, I was scared. And I didn’t know what he was up to. His stuff was gone from the apartment. I didn’t like what that had to mean. What did it mean? “Where is everything?”
His lips drew tight. “Your stuff is still all here.”
“But where’s your stuff?”
With another deep breath, he threw his eyes to the window then brought them back to me. “I can’t live here without you, Alayna.”
“So you’re moving out?” I didn’t know how I felt about that.
Strike that, I did know. I didn’t like it. At all. The penthouse was where our real relationship had taken place. I hated the idea of someone else being in our space.
And Hudson moving out because I wasn’t there—that meant he didn’t really believe I’d ever be back.
I was too late. He was giving up on me.
But his next words tossed everything up in the air again. “Actually, I hope I’m moving in.”
The twists and turns of this interaction had me flustered and on edge. I had to call an emotional timeout before I broke down. “H, you confuse me enough without you trying to be confusing. Could you say something I can understand?”
“I confuse you?” His eyes sparkled with satisfaction.
“Is this a surprise?”
He shrugged.
“So you’re moving in?” I prompted. Dammit, why did he have to be so difficult?
Seeming to sense I was on my last nerve, he answered. “One day. I hope.” He rubbed his lips together—ah, I missed those sweet lips. “But for now, I want you to live here.”
“What?” One day a proposal, another live in my million dollar penthouse without me. The man certainly knew how to keep me on my toes.
He also had no idea what I really wanted or needed from him.
Hudson’s expression grew serious again. “I can’t live here without you, precious.” His words were soft and low, but I could hear him clearly. “But I don’t want to sell it, because I love being here with you. Someday, you and I will be here again. While I’m waiting for you—scratch that—while I’m groveling for your forgiveness, it’s a shame to let it sit empty. You and Liesl should move in.”
“I can’t accept that, H.” My eyes felt watery. But at least he’d said he wasn’t giving up on me.
“I had a feeling you’d say that.” He sighed, giving up much more easily than was characteristic. “Then it will have to sit.”
I bit back the urge to say we could live here together and offered instead, “You could rent it out.”
His brows rose. “I could rent it out to you.”
I laughed.
“Best rent in town—only cost you a weekly dinner with the landlord.”
“Stop it.” I was still smiling.
“Biweekly then. I’m not above bargaining.”
“Hudson.” He had no idea that he already had me sold. Not on moving in, but on the dates.
“Fine, monthly. I’ll take whatever scraps you’re willing to give me.” He studied me. “You’re considering giving me scra
“Maybe.” How did he read me so easily? And why was it so easy to be with him when he’d hurt me so deeply?
The question scared me, so I skirted the issue. “Seriously, though, where’s all your stuff? Did you get another place?” All his furniture wouldn’t fit in the loft.
He shook his head. “I gave it all to a charity fundraiser.”
“Lifestyles of the rich and famous.” Though I couldn’t say I’d miss any of it. It was beautiful furniture, but Celia had chosen it all. I was quite happy with the thought of the less fortunate benefitting from it.
It seemed Hudson felt the same. “I wasn’t attached to any of it.” He straightened and walked into the room, gesturing to the empty space. “This entire apartment was perfectly designed to my tastes and style, but it never felt like a home.” He stopped a couple feet from me. “Not until you, Alayna. You made it come alive. The things that were here—they were chosen for me by someone I want completely removed from my life. Right now, the things here are the only things that made this house a place I’d want to live. Your things. You.”
“I…” My throat was too tight to speak.
“And when I move back in, we can refurnish this place from scratch. Together. You and I.”
I took in a shuddering breath. “You’re so sure that one day I’ll take you back.” The outlook was getting better and better.
“I’m hopeful.” He smiled mischievously. “Would you like to see how hopeful I am?”
“Sure.” Really, all I wanted was for him to pull me into his arms. I was almost certain that was where we’d end up. But the game we were playing to get there was intriguing.
Hudson dug in his pocket and pulled out something small and silver. “I bought this.”
He held the object by the jewel so I couldn’t really see all of it at first, but when I realized what it was, my breath caught. Because it was a ring. The ring.
He dropped it in my palm for me to examine. It wasn’t silver after all—it was platinum, if I guessed right. And the jewel was surrounded by two tapered baguette stones that led the eye to a round, brilliantly cut diamond in the center. It was at least two and half carats, maybe three. Maybe even four, for all I knew.
Tears gathered in my eyes and bewilderment muddled my brain. He’d handed it to me—it wasn’t a proposal. What was this then? A way to mess with me?
“There’s an inscription,” Hudson said softly, as though he could read my confusion.
I blinked to clear my vision enough to read: I give you all of me.
Then he bent down on one knee.
It was a proposal.
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t even breathe.
“I realized something about the last time I asked this,” he said from his place on the floor in front of me. “I did it wrong. First, I didn’t have a ring, and second, I should have gotten on one knee. But more importantly, I didn’t give you the right thing. I offered you everything I had, thinking that was the way to win your heart. That wasn’t what you wanted at all. The only thing you ever asked for, the only thing I would never give you, was me.”
A sob escaped my throat, but for the first time in days, it wasn’t a sorrowful sob.
“But now I do.” Hudson threw his arms out to the side. “Here I am, precious. I give myself freely. All of me, Alayna. No more walls or secrets or games or lies. I give you all of me, honestly. For forever, if you’ll take it.”
He took the ring from my grasp. With hands that were so steady compared to my shaky one, he slipped it on my finger.
I stared at it, shining brilliantly on my hand like a beacon in the darkness I’d been living in. Was he really asking me to marry him? Not elope, but marriage? Was this really something I could actually consider?
My plan to let him back into my life had been much simpler and less drastic—like a dinner and a movie type of thing. Not a proposal.
But that had always been Hudson. He moved fast and furiously, but when he truly wanted something, he committed with everything he had. If I said no, if I turned him away, I knew without a doubt he’d ask again and again. And again.
That wasn’t a reason to accept a marriage proposal.
The reason to accept was because I loved Hudson Pierce with every fiber of my being. Even his flaws and imperfections attracted me to him. They made him who he was. And I wanted all of him. I wanted to give him all of me.
And he had a lot of making up to do to me. Forever might just be the only way he’d get it covered.
“Alayna, I love you.” He drew my gaze from the ring to his eyes—his wildly intense, passionate eyes that shown brighter than the diamond on my hand. “Will you marry me? Not today, and not in Vegas, but in a church if you like, or at Mabel Shores in the Hamptons—”
Somehow I found my voice. “Or the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens during the cherry blossom season?”
“Yes, there.” His eyes widened. “Is that a—”
“Yes,” I nodded. “It’s a yes.”
Hudson pulled me onto his knee and into his arms faster than I could blink. “Say it again.”
“Yes,” I whispered, placing my hand on his cheek. “Yes, I’ll marry you.”
His lips found mine, and it was like a first kiss—soft and tentative. Then our mouths parted and our tongues met and the kiss gathered from a fragile breeze into a raging storm. One of his hands tangled in my hair, the other cupped my face, holding me as if he feared I wouldn’t stay, as if I might disappear.
And the way I held him was the same. I wrapped my arms around his neck, clutching onto him with all my strength. When our kiss began to metamorphosis into something bigger, something that required more of our body to be touching, and less of our clothing to be on, he grabbed his hand around my thigh, lifting it around his waist as he stood. I threw my other leg around him, hooking my ankles together at his backside and bucked my hips, rubbing against his crotch.
Damn, I’d missed this. Missed him—all of him. His touch was searing, his kiss burned me to my core. And the solidness of his body, his strong arms, his muscled chest—he was my foundation. Sturdy and fixed. Permanent.
Permanently mine.
We were halfway down the hall, our lips still locked when I realized I had no idea where he was taking me. If the house was empty, did it matter that we made it to the bedroom?
Asking, though, would require me to let go of his tongue, and the growl he made as I sucked on it made that not an option I wanted to consider.
I got my answer soon enough anyway. Hudson pushed into our bedroom and in my peripheral vision I saw on the floor, minus the bedframe, our mattress.
He toed his shoes off and then dropped with me onto the bed.
“You left the mattress?” I asked while he pulled my shirt over my head.
His shirt disappeared quickly after. “I picked it out myself. Besides, I couldn’t bear to part with it. It has too many memories.”
Yes, it does.
And more to be made. A lifetime of them, in fact. Oh my god, a lifetime with Hudson.
He bent down to nip my breast through my bra, bringing me sharply back to the present.
I moaned breathily. “Are you sure you weren’t simply—” I moaned again as he nipped my other breast. “—being prepared for me to say yes?”
His mouth returned to mine. “There may have been a little bit of that,” he said against my lips, his hands reaching behind me to undo the clasp of my bra.
“You know me so well, don’t you?”
He grinned and lowered his gaze to my breasts newly released from captivity. “I want to know you better.” He licked around one taut nipple. “I want to know you better right now. God, I’ve missed your gorgeous body.”
And god, how I’d missed the things he did to it. Was there a manual somewhere entitled How to Please Alayna? If so, Hudson had surely memorized the thing. More likely, he’d written it. He knew how to please me better than I knew how to please myself.
As he teased and taunted my breasts, making me dizzy with desire, I reached down to cup his erection through his jeans. The warmth of it, the hardness, even through the thick denim material, had a geyser going off in my panties.
I stroked along the length of his imprisoned cock. “I remember this.”
“Uh-uh. First we’re focusing on you.” He already had a hand traveling beneath the band of my yoga pants, determined to prove his point.
“But I like this.” I petted him again. “There should definitely be some of this.”
“Oh, there will be a whole lot of this.” He bucked into my palm then turned his attention back to what his hand was doing. What his hand was doing so well. His thumb had settled on my clit, swirling across it with expert pressure.
I wiggled underneath him, wishing I was naked and that he was naked and that we were to the next part where he was inside me. I was desperate for that.
But Hudson made me wait. He dipped a finger inside me and I gasped.
“Jesus, Alayna. You’re so wet. Do you know how hard that makes me? You’re so wet and juicy that I’m tempted to lick you clean. But I’m anxious and missing you and I need my cock inside you as soon as possible. Tasting you will have to wait until the next round.”
“Next round?” I was a bit delirious with the awesomeness of this round.
He added a second finger, bending them so that they rubbed against that magic spot that only Hudson ever knew how to find. Quickly my belly tightened and my legs began to quiver.
“You’re so turned on—you’re going to come fast, aren’t you, precious?”
That was all it took to push me over. Pleasure washed over me in a tidal wave, and I let out a moan, digging my fingers into his back as he continued to rub me and finger me until the last spasm trembled through me.
Hudson sucked the lobe of my ear and then praised me. “Good girl. You’re so fucking sexy when you come. It makes me so hard my cock throbs.”
Fuck, his mouth alone was going to send me over again.
Hudson removed his hand from my pussy and pulled off my pants and underwear. “Remember our first night in the Hamptons? When I made love to you so many times that you were sore the next day?”
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