Heartbreaker (Havenbrook #3)

Chapter 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

MAC

My panties were at dangerous risk of catching on fire. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I looked down and found my jeans had combusted right along with them. But of course, I couldn’t look down—not when Hudson was kissing me like I was oxygen and he was cresting water for the first time in an eternity.

There was no denying the heat that still crackled between us. We were hot and hungry, hands grasping and pulling. Tugging and cupping and squeezing, and I was barely sane enough to quiet the whisper in my mind that begged me to strip right there in the middle of the woods and take him deep inside me. Let him love me like that, even if he hadn’t loved me enough to stay.

“Kenna,” he breathed, his mouth trailing over my jaw and down my neck. He cupped my breasts in both palms, lifting and squeezing, his thumbs plucking my nipples and sending jolts of electricity straight to my clit.

Lord almighty, I was needy for him. Needy and wet and absolutely aching to feel him filling me up. Feel his hands inside my panties, his fingers separating me, his tongue licking straight up my slit.

“Hud,” I panted in response, my fingers thrust through his short hair, his hat long gone on the forest floor.

Needing to get closer, desperate to relieve the incessant throb in my pussy, I hooked my leg around his hip, and he groaned into my neck. And then suddenly, I was in the air, my feet off the ground as both his hands gripped just below my ass.

“Need to feel you…” he rasped into my neck.

I certainly wasn’t going to disagree, desperate to feel him too. Wrapping my legs around him, I tugged him closer, groaning into his mouth when the hard, thick ridge of his cock pressed up against me.

And then, without thought, I began to rock. My hips started up a rhythm all on their own, a rough slide that had him groaning my name and dropping his forehead to my shoulder as he grasped my thighs.

“Christ, do you know how many times I’ve thought about this?” His voice was thick and rough and so damn needy I could hardly breathe. “How many times I imagined you ridin’ my cock just like this? Rubbin’ that hot little pussy all over me?” He guided me harder against him, pinning me to the tree trunk as he swiveled his hips into the cradle of my thighs. “Except when I think about it, there aren’t any goddamn clothes between us. Nothing stoppin’ me from lickin’ up all your sweetness. Nothing gettin’ in the way of you soakin’ my dick.”

I choked out a sob, my eyes squeezing shut as the orgasm slammed into me without warning. His words, along with the incessant rocking of his cock against me, ignited the flame inside me and turned my body into an inferno.

Unable to do anything but pant through my release, I clung to Hudson as he kept up the rhythm, using his hands to move me just like he wanted. Prolonging my pleasure…as well as increasing his torture, if the rough groans coming from his chest were any indication.

When I finally felt like I could catch my breath and had safely settled back into my body after my orgasm blew me straight into the clouds, I held him tighter, clutching his head to my chest. I pressed my mouth against his ear, brushing my bottom lip along the shell and delighting in the groan that sounded as if it were ripped from his chest. Delighting in the way his fingers dug into the flesh of my ass even harder. In the way he rocked me faster and faster against him.

In that moment, our history didn’t matter. My heart didn’t ache for the man who’d gone missing from my life, because he was there now.

He was there with me, pressed as close as we could get without him being inside me, and I wanted to live in that moment with him forever. Wanted to leave everything else—all the baggage we had—behind and just revel in this.

“I thought about it too, you know,” I said, locking my ankles at the small of his back, pressing him tighter to the seam of my jeans. The friction against my sensitive clit was enough to make me gasp, my eyes fluttering when he didn’t let up, instead exploiting my newfound weakness.

“Tell me,” he demanded, his voice ragged with need.

“I—” I broke off on a moan when he pressed into me hard, swiveling his hips as he pinned me to the tree.

“ Tell me , Kenna.”

The commanding note in his voice didn’t do anything to alleviate the fire he was stoking in my panties—the one I was so certain had been extinguished only moments before. And when he reached up, pinching my hardened nipple between his thumb and forefinger, the words just tumbled right out of my mouth.

“I thought about you and me—at the cabin,” I said, my words shooting out between panting breaths. “Replayed everything we did that weekend. When you sucked on my nipples. When you licked my clit. When you were inside me.”

“ Christ .”

And then I couldn’t talk anymore because his thrusts became animalistic, his fingers gripping me so tightly, I was certain I’d have bruises tomorrow, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care because I was coming. Again. In the arms of the only man I’d ever loved with my whole heart. And he was coming right along with me.

He held me close and groaned into my neck as he jerked against me, his breaths sweeping across my overheated skin.

We stood like that for long moments, Hudson’s forehead pressed to my clavicle as we both tried to catch our breath. I ran my short nails over his scalp, down his neck, and across his shoulders, needing to touch him.

I’d have to unhook my ankles from around him at some point, but I didn’t want to. Not yet. And since Hudson didn’t seem any more inclined to let me down than I was to be put down, I stayed wrapped around him, just like that.

Finally, his warm breath puffed against me as he let out a low chuckle. “Pretty sure the last time I came in my pants, it was because of you, too.”

I smiled, my cheek lifting against the top of his head. “I’d say I’m sorry, but you just made me come twice, so…”

He lifted his head and pulled back to look at me, his brows lifted. “So, you’d be lyin’?”

“Definitely.”

He flashed his teeth in a smile, and then he pressed his lips to mine, the kiss soft and sweet and slow. Even when his tongue swept into my mouth, it wasn’t hurried. Nothing like the frantic dry-hump we’d just participated in. God, he hadn’t even had to get me naked to make me come harder than I had in recent—or distant—memory.

He ran his hands up and down the length of my thighs, his caresses igniting something in me all over again. That couldn’t be normal. Why couldn’t I seem to get enough of him?

Eventually, he slowed the kiss even more, backing off and pressing two small pecks to my lips before pulling away. “Much as I’d love to keep kissin’ you, things are gettin’ a little uncomfortable down south.”

I couldn’t stop the laugh from bursting forth. And though he scowled at me initially, eventually a smile swept over his mouth.

“I don’t guess you have an extra pair of boxer briefs in that backpack of yours, do you?” he asked, a hopeful note in his voice.

“No, but I’ve got some wet wipes.”

“You,” he said, pressing a kiss to my lips, “are an angel.”

He reached back and unhooked my ankles from the small of his back, then guided my body down the front of him, grimacing as I slid over his fly.

I cringed right along with him, imagining the unpleasantness that awaited in his pants. Being a woman sucked in a lot of ways—periods and menopause and pregnancies, not to mention the host of other bullshit we were forced to endure—but I couldn’t deny we got the better end of the orgasm deal.

Bending down to where my backpack had fallen, I riffled through the contents and handed him the small travel pack when I found it.

“See? An angel,” he said, plucking the package from me and undoing the button on his jeans with a wince.

“I’m just gonna…” I hooked my thumb in the opposite direction, hefting the backpack over my shoulder as I gave him some privacy to take care of his…situation.

It took me only a minute of walking before I realized I was smiling. Just out there, trudging through the forest, completely sated and grinning like a fool. Even knowing what my day was going to entail. That I was going to have to, somehow, figure out how to do my daddy’s job well enough so he could rest and recuperate.

I was grinning because, without warning, hope surged in my chest, fierce and unrelenting. And even though I didn’t want to feel it—hadn’t dared to feel it for so long—I couldn’t deny that it felt right. Somehow, with Hud, it felt right.

Not wanting to get separated from him, I turned around after putting out another flag for Ella and strode back in the direction from which I’d come.

When I was close to where I’d left him, his voice rang out. “It’s fine, sir.”

I furrowed my brow. Who was he talking to? No one came out here except me and Ella, and Ella was at school. And also not a sir. It didn’t take me long to realize the one-sided conversation must’ve been a phone call, which I confirmed a moment later when he came into view, his head bowed as he held his cell to his ear.

He nodded at something the other person said, his lips pressed into a tight line. Whoever was on the other end of the call wasn’t someone Hudson was thrilled to talk to.

A branch snapped under my boots, and his eyes lifted, locking on mine immediately. “Will do, sir.” Without another word, he ended the call and pocketed his phone.

“Hey,” he said, his tone quiet. Reserved. So different from the man who growled about me riding him not even ten minutes before.

I forced a smile, though it felt like the corners of my mouth weighed two tons. “You get all cleaned up?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

His legs ate up the space between us in two long strides, and he bent down to press a kiss to my lips. As good as they felt against mine, I couldn’t deny that they still felt… off somehow.

My stomach ached, though I didn’t understand why. All that hope I’d felt only minutes ago had been replaced by dread and uncertainty. I didn’t want to know who that call was from, but on some level, I was desperate to and couldn’t stop myself from asking. “Who was that?”

His pause lasted only a moment. “My commanding officer.”

The small ache that had bubbled up in my gut suddenly filled every inch of my body.

“Oh?” I managed to get out through the boulder currently lodged in my throat. “Bad news?”

He squeezed my hand, dipping his head to try to catch my eyes, imploring me for…something. “No, not bad news. Just discussin’.” He cleared his throat. “My next deployment.”

I was in free fall, the bottom dropping out from under me as my heart jumped into my throat. Without thought, I nodded, over and over again, until I felt like a bobblehead. A bobbleheaded idiot .

Apparently, I hadn’t learned my lesson last time. Apparently, ten years of near-constant heartache weren’t enough to get through my thick skull that maybe, just maybe , I shouldn’t allow Hudson into my life again like I had before. I knew from experience he was the single soul in the entire universe with the power to break me, and yet I’d willingly walked right into his arms. Again .

Even when it was my own damn rules, I couldn’t stick to them. Just one more thing I failed at.

Well, that was enough of that. I needed to put my guard back up, erect those walls around my heart that had served me well for so long, because I couldn’t afford to lose my head around him. Not when it was my heart on the line.

Thank God we’d only taken things as far as we had. Thank God I hadn’t slept with him again. Because heaven knew if I opened myself up to him like that, allowed him into my body, my heart was a goner. And that was a price I couldn’t afford to pay.

It was a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

Now I only had to remind myself of that every day for the next fifteen days until he left. Had to remind myself not to fall into those whiskey-colored eyes. Not to be swept away by his sweet words and sweeter demeanor. Or worse, by his dirty words and dirtier demeanor.

Because it was way too easy to fall right back into old patterns with Hudson, and I needed my feet firmly planted on the ground if I had any hope of surviving this once he was gone.