Heartbreaker (Havenbrook #3)

Chapter 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

HUDSON

“Are you gonna do this all day?” Kenna asked against my lips. “Because I’m not sure we’re gonna make it before sunset.”

So I’d been stopping her every five minutes to push her up against a tree and kiss the living hell out of her… So what? It wasn’t as if she weren’t enjoying it. Her smiling eyes and the hungry way she kissed me back told me as much.

“If you’d stop shakin’ your ass in my face as you climb, I wouldn’t have to.”

She huffed out a laugh. “Apparently in Hudsonland, hikin’ is ‘shakin’ my ass,’ huh?”

“Yes,” I growled. “And it’s drivin’ me fucking crazy.”

“Do you want me to stop?” she asked, batting her eyelashes, all faux innocence. My Kenna didn’t have an innocent bone in her beautiful body.

“Fuck no.” And with that, I lowered my head to hers, taking her mouth in another heated kiss.

Christ, it was like being seventeen again—although, even at seventeen, I hadn’t been this hungry and wild with anyone, because I hadn’t been able to do this with her .

By the time we came up for air, we were both panting hard, and my cock was pressing insistently against my zipper, aching to be released.

“That reminds me,” she said, still trying to catch her breath.

“What?”

“You never told me when we said fuck for the first time. Because I don’t remember this at all, and I think you’re lyin’.”

“ That’s what me kissin’ you within an inch of your life reminded you of? Not of earlier when you were ridin’ my cock while kissin’ me the same way?”

“Such a dirty boy.” She shook her head, but the breathless quality of her voice negated any berating she might’ve intended.

“C’mon.” I pressed a kiss to her nose before grabbing her hand and tugging her behind me. “If we don’t start movin’, I’m gonna fuck you against that tree.”

“You’ve said that at literally every other tree we’ve stopped at.”

“And I’ve meant it at every other tree we’ve stopped at.”

She hummed. “I expected more self-control from an army captain.”

“Oh, I’ve got all the self-control in the world when I’m on the job. Around you? Nada.” I tugged her into me and planted a kiss on her lips. “Complainin’, Ms. Haven?”

“No. Just, you know, observin’.”

Unabashedly, I placed a hand on her ass and pressed her into my never-ending erection. “I’ve got something much better for you to observe.”

Without restraint, she tossed her head back and laughed, the sound shooting straight up into the cloudless November sky. When she finally quieted moments later, she was wiping tears from her eyes. “You are seriously like a fourteen-year-old boy. What’s gotten into you?”

“You bring it out in me, I guess. Can’t say I mind.” I squeezed her hand, earnestness replacing my joking. “I’ve missed seein’ this part of you.”

Her smile slipped away slowly, and she tucked her lower lip between her teeth as her eyes tracked over my face. “Yeah,” she finally said. “Me too.”

I pressed a kiss to her forehead, then led us up the path toward the higher summit we’d be camping at tonight. CB—yes, the name had stuck—was being a trooper, trotting along beside us and sticking tight to my side.

“As I was sayin’…” Kenna elbowed me lightly, then took up her position in front, leading the way. “Your potty mouth reminded me that you never told me when we said fuck for the first time. Because I don’t remember it at all…”

“Probably ’cause you were worried about other things.”

She glanced back at me, her brows drawn. “Like what?”

“Like me losin’ your granddad’s marble.”

I could count on two fingers the number of times I’d hurt Kenna, and one of them had been that day. We’d been at the lake cabin, and I’d been teasing her about always lugging the marble around. She’d carried it like it’d been a piece of gold. To her, it had been, seeing as it’d been the last thing her grandpa had given her before he’d suddenly passed from a heart attack.

And, like a jackass, I had gone and lost it at the bottom of the fucking lake. I hadn’t meant to—of course I hadn’t. I’d never do anything to hurt her intentionally, even back then when I was a dumb-ass adolescent. But it’d slipped from my wet hands, nonetheless, and had sunk straight to the bottom of the murky water. No amount of searching on my part—and I’d done hours of it…until my body was wrinkled and the sun was setting—had done a damn thing.

“Oh,” she said, her tone soft, her expression wistful.

I had tried to make up the loss to her, sending her marbles from all over the world just like the one she’d lost. I still sent her those damn things—I couldn’t help it. Any time I came across a tiger’s-eye marble, I thought of her, and I had to buy it. It’d been the one steady thing we’d kept on with in all the years we’d been apart, even when we hadn’t spoken.

“Yeah, ‘Oh.’” I reached up, tugging her ponytail. “So, I can see why you wouldn’t remember how colorful our language got after that, but believe me, it did.”

Kenna hummed in acknowledgment but otherwise didn’t say anything, just continuing along the rocky path toward the top.

Eventually, she broke the silence. “I’ve forgiven you, you know. You don’t have to keep sendin’ me marbles.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

She glanced back at me, her eyes searching, as if looking for something in my expression. Finally, she shook her head. “I didn’t say that.”

I exhaled, not even aware I’d been holding my breath in anticipation of her answer until she’d said the words. Maybe she felt as connected to me when she received them as I did to her when I purchased and sent them.

The two of us might’ve been thousands of miles away and on different continents, but we’d shared this. This tiny, inconsequential thing that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else but us. And there was little else in the world I loved more than sharing secrets with Kenna. Besides maybe Kenna herself.

“I’ve kept them all,” she said.

“Yeah?”

I’d hoped she had, of course, but I knew I had no hold over her. No obligation that would make her do so. But the thought that she’d kept something from me for all these years lit a fire inside me.

Had me aching for a future with her I now knew, without a doubt, I desperately wanted.

“They take up a whole shoe box, I hope you know. You’ve sent me a fuckton of ’em.”

I chuckled, catching up with her and tossing my arm around her shoulders. Pulling her into my side, I pressed a kiss to her temple. “Any time I found one—and I mean any time —I bought it.”

“And mailed it.”

Nodding in agreement, I echoed, “And mailed it.”

“You really know how to blow through your money, don’t you?”

I grinned. “That I do.”

And, truth be told, I’d spend every penny in my bank account if it’d make her smile exactly like she was as she stared up at me.