Heartbreaker (Havenbrook #3)

Chapter 21

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

MAC

I lay in my sleeping bag, hands tucked between my thighs as I tried to muffle the sound of my chattering teeth. The cold front the weather app had cautioned about earlier in the day had settled in with a vengeance, and I’d give anything for a hot shower right about now. Even bundled in layers and with a hat covering my head, I felt like a popsicle. I wouldn’t be surprised if my lips were blue.

Thank God we hadn’t been able to get both tents set up, because at least I had Hudson’s body heat in the small space—little as it provided me from where he lay zipped in his own sleeping bag.

It’d been quiet inside the tent for what felt like hours—but was probably more like thirty minutes—and I had no idea how he’d fallen asleep so quickly in this cold. But he was a soldier, probably used to much worse conditions than this. Plus, he had the dog cuddling up to him, helping to keep him warm, and I was over here, shaking like a leaf, my teeth about to break from all the chattering.

“Out of curiosity,” he said, his sudden words in the otherwise quiet night making me jump, “would you actually allow yourself to freeze to death before you told me you were cold?”

“What g-g-gave me away?”

He shifted, his sleeping bag rustling with his movement. “I’ve been listenin’ to your teeth chatter for the past ten minutes.”

“It’s only b-b-been ten minutes?” I asked, horrified.

This was going to be the longest night of my life. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself into sleep, because once I awoke, the sun would be up and I’d be able to feel my toes again.

Suddenly, my zipper was yanked down, and I snapped my eyes open at the rush of cold air against me. “What the hell, Hud?”

“C’mon. It’s gonna suck right now, but the faster you get out of there, the faster I can zip our bags together.”

I didn’t stop to think about the possible ramifications of that before I bolted upright, the lure of sharing his body heat too good to pass up. As I knelt in the corner, snuggling up to the still-snoozing dog, Hudson made quick work of zipping our sleeping bags together to make one giant bed for us.

“You ready?” he asked, his nearness startling me again.

It was pitch black in the tent, and I couldn’t see a damn thing, merely relying on my ears to tell me where he was and what he was doing. And my ears now had to be playing tricks on me because it sounded like he was getting naked.

“Hud?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s…um… What’s happenin’ right now?”

His knees shuffled along the sleeping bag as he neared my corner. With steady hands, he unlaced my boots and slipped them off, then reached up and unzipped my jacket. “We’re gonna get you warm, that’s what’s happenin’.”

“I’m ok-k-kay.”

“All right then, how about you do it for me? Pretty sure my balls have shriveled up while I’ve been out here.”

The last thing I needed to be thinking about as he was stripping me was his balls.

Blindly, I reached out, my fingers brushing his bare shoulder, and I yanked my hand back as if burned.

“Are you naked?” I hissed.

He snorted. “Don’t sound so scandalized. It’s not like you haven’t seen it before.”

“Hudson Matthew Miller…”

He chuckled low under his breath, his hands still working to get me out of my many, many, many layers. “All my bits are covered, promise.”

A sudden, overwhelming wave of disappointment shot through me, and I could only shake my head at myself. I’d like to say I was surprised by that, but that’d be the furthest thing from the truth. I might’ve done a good job lying to myself—had even put up a good fight—but I’d been lusting after Hudson since the second he’d walked back into Havenbrook. And being around him…getting to know him all over again? That only made matters worse.

Now we were about to share a sleeping bag with only a couple layers of clothing separating our bodies. I had firsthand experience just how little a couple layers of clothing mattered between us. Memories of what we’d done against the tree the other day swarmed my mind, and I felt myself getting hot despite the freezing temps.

A sudden gust of wind rocked the tent, sending a shiver through me. Or maybe that was the daydream of what Hudson had done to me with my legs wrapped tight around his pumping hips…

Regardless, I no longer cared how little clothing we’d have on or that I’d be pressed up against him all night in my underwear. I just needed to be surrounded by his heat, and I needed it quickly.

Brushing his hands away, I rid myself of the rest of my clothes, save for a thin, long-sleeved T-shirt and my panties, and dove into the sleeping bag, yanking it up to my chin as I waited for him.

He slipped inside behind me, and I didn’t even give him a chance to pull me back against him before I scooted in his direction, tucking my ass into his lap and my back flat against his chest.

“Oh my God,” I breathed, a shudder running through me. “How are you so damn warm?”

Tucking his feet under my freezing ones and my head under his chin, he wrapped his arm around me, fitting his body to every curve of mine. “I’m a furnace, remember?”

A fact that used to irritate the hell out of me on hot Mississippi summer nights when we’d share a tent outside, but one that I was incredibly grateful for now.

“I take back every nasty thing I said about that. I love that you’re a furnace.”

“You’re only sayin’ that because your feet are like fucking ice cubes. Jesus, woman.”

I spread out my toes, trying to reach every inch of warm skin he had to offer. “I’m not even sorry.”

He exhaled a laugh into my neck, and I couldn’t fight the shiver that spread through my body. Now that I wasn’t out of my mind with looming hypothermia, I was able to take in the myriad of sensations being this close to him afforded—the coarseness of his leg hair at the back of my knees, the soft rasp of his short beard as he rested his jaw against my neck, the bulk of his muscled forearm wrapped tightly just below my breasts.

And then, of course, there was the long, thick, very hard length of him nestled against my ass.

It took every ounce of willpower I had not to arch my back and press my bottom against his cock. Not to reach back and just…feel him. Wrap my hand around him and stroke. Reacquaint myself with the shape and size of him, feel the weight of it in my palm.

“What would you do?”

“What?” I squeaked—actually squeaked—jolting at his question.

Oh my God, had I voiced my fantasies aloud? Did he want me to tell him what I’d do with his dick ?

He nuzzled into me, pressing a soft kiss where my shoulder met my neck. “Out by the fire, you said they don’t take you seriously… What would you do in Havenbrook if that didn’t matter? If you could do anything?”

A nearly hysterical laugh escaped me. “Oh, I thought you—” I shook my head, cutting myself off. “Never mind.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then when he spoke, his voice was low and rough, barely a whisper between us. “You thought I was askin’ what you’d do if we didn’t have these layers of clothes between us?”

I managed to get out some sort of garbled mix of vowel sounds.

He chuckled. “Good as it feels to have your tight little ass tucked all nice and snug against my cock, and as much as I’d love to do nothing more than strip off the rest of your clothes and reacquaint myself with the delicious taste of your pussy, I think discussin’ this is probably a safer bet.” He shifted behind me, the movement doing nothing to hide the steel pipe pressed against my backside. “Besides that, I want you to want it, Kenna. Really want it. Because you know I do.”

Oh, I wanted it, all right. Wanted it so desperately my body was aching for him, wet and ready. My nipples were hard points against the cotton of my shirt, and it had nothing to do with the chill in the air and everything to do with the mind-numbing circles he was tracing against my lower belly, directly above my panties.

Three inches… He only had to lower his hand three inches, and he could make me see stars.

“What—what was the question?” I finally managed.

His cheek puffed up against me as he smiled. “If you had free rein to do whatever you wanted to in Havenbrook, what would you do?”

I sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly, ignoring the way the move pushed me up against him. “I’m not even sure.”

“Yeah, you are. I know you’ve got a dozen ideas floating in your head. I wanna hear what they are.”

I stilled for a moment, my breath held in my lungs, before I exhaled and poured out all the thoughts I had of what I’d do for my hometown—reinvesting real money in the Square to make it not only a destination but a staying point to keep people my age and younger in Havenbrook. Maybe offer some sort of bonus to entice entrepreneurs to bring their businesses there. And, of course, finally fund and educate a true SAR team.

He hadn’t talked through any of my ramblings, just letting me spill my ideas into the quiet night air between us.

When I was done, he squeezed me tighter. “You should do it, then. All of it.”

“Hud…” I said, my voice incredulous. “I can’t just…like, do whatever the hell I want.”

“Why not? Your daddy’s been doin’ it for years, and nobody’s had a damn thing to say about it. Why can’t you do the same thing?”

The question hung in the air between us, playing on a loop in my mind and lulling me to sleep as Hudson’s warmth seeped into my skin and his encouragement seeped into my bones.

Making me feel like maybe, just maybe, I could be the woman he’d somehow always seen me as.