33. Hudson
Hudson
Here's the thing about being the funny one.
You get very, very good at talking. You can talk your way into a room, out of a fight, around a feeling. You can keep a whole town laughing so hard nobody notices you never actually said anything true. I've been doing it since I was fifteen. It's the best trick I know.
And right now I've got nothing. Not one word. I'm sitting at the edge of a nest built out of my own shirt, watching Josie Porter sleep with Finn's bite fresh and red on her throat and Finn wrapped around her back still purring, and every clever thing I have ever known just walks out of my head.
She's wrung out. She went under not long after the bond landed on her and Finn, the wave that had her finally letting go, and the three of us have just let her rest, tended her quiet, nobody saying much.
Finn's knot has long since eased. Logan got water into her.
I've done nothing but watch her breathe and try to believe I get to be here.
I don't know how long it is before she stirs. A while. Then her scent shifts — brown sugar and oat going thick and sweet again, that honeyed edge coming back up — and she makes a small sound, and I feel the next wave roll into her before her eyes even open.
They open. Heavy, dark, hazed with heat, and they find me.
“Hi,” I manage.
Smooth. All this time knowing her and that's my opener. Hi.
Her face goes soft, even as the heat climbs. “Hi,” she gets out. Just the one word back. She's working for it.
“I did say something about a turn.” I move into the nest, and Finn shifts to make room, one big hand splayed over her hip, staying close the way a newly bonded alpha can't help.
I fit myself along her other side, and her scent hits me full — brown sugar and oat with Finn's woodsmoke laid over the top of it now, his claim all over her skin, and the knot that's been sitting in my chest longer than I ever let myself admit finally lets go.
I have to ask. Even now. Maybe especially now.
“Tell me it's me you want,” I say, low, and the joke I'd normally hide behind isn't there. “Not just the next one in line. Me.”
Her hand comes up, unsteady, and finds my jaw. “You,” she breathes. Fierce, even wrecked, even shaking. “The one who made me forget to guard the door. Always meant you.”
Everything I never had the nerve to name, answered in the space before the wave takes her under.
And then it does.
I feel it hit. Watch it roll up her body, her spine bowing, her hand fisting against my chest, a broken sound tearing out of her as the heat slams down and the ache with it. Empty. She's gone empty again, her body screaming for it, and this time it's mine to answer.
“Hudson—” It cracks in half. “Cramping—hurts—need—”
“I know. I've got you.” No more talking. She doesn't have room for it and neither do I. “Right here. Let me take it away.”
I kiss her, and for once in my life I've got nothing clever to say, so I say it with my mouth instead. Slow. Thorough. Everything I could never fit into the coffees she didn't ask for and the jokes I hid behind.
She melts into it, desperate, still slick and swollen and sensitive from Finn, and when I skim a hand down between her thighs she's soaked all over again, dripping, the wave riding her hard now, wringing broken little sounds out of her against my mouth.
“Hudson—” Barely a word. “Need—”
“I know what you need.” And I do. All this time knowing her, learning her without meaning to, and I stop hiding all of it now. “I've got you, Porter. Let me take care of you.”
She makes a sound like she's been unmade.
I don't take my mouth off hers. I keep kissing her, deep and filthy, and let my hand do the talking lower down, sliding through her slick, learning her, and when I press two fingers into her she's so wet they sink in to the knuckle and her whole body arches off the nest.
“There it is.” I work them deep, curling forward to find the spot that makes her whole body jolt, the heel of my hand grinding against her clit, and she sobs into my mouth. “That's it, Porter. Ride my hand. Don't be shy about it.”
She isn't shy about it. She's frantic, grinding down, chasing it, and I give her everything, pumping steady and merciless, thumbing her clit, talking her through it low and filthy against her jaw.
“That's my girl. Look how greedy you are. So wet for me. Take what you need.” She breaks apart on my hand, gushing, my name torn out of her.
I don't stop. She's still riding the wave, still empty, still reaching, so I keep my fingers moving, drag her back up fast and merciless, and she comes a second time on my hand, slick soaking my wrist, the shirts beneath her, shaking so hard she can barely breathe.
But it's not enough. Her body wants the stretch, the knot, the thing only that can give her, and I know it.
“Turn over for me, Porter.” I ease her up onto her hands and knees, and she goes easy, desperate, presenting for me on pure instinct, and the sight of her like that — flushed, dripping, slick glistening down her thighs — nearly finishes me on the spot.
“Please—” She pushes back toward me, chasing. “Hudson—please—”
“Easy, Porter. Look at you, presenting so pretty for me.” I lean over her back and press my nose behind her ear, breathing her in, scenting her, and she shivers.
“There's my girl. Let me give you what you need.” I notch against her entrance, drag through her slick, and sink into her from behind in one deep push, and we both groan.
Christ, the angle, the heat of her, the wet grip of her cunt — every stray thing I ever wondered about her answered all at once, and none of it came close.
I grip her hips and hold there, buried deep, jaw tight.
“Move—” She's frantic, rocking back against me. “Please, please—”
So I do. I fuck her in earnest, one hand splayed on her lower back, the other fisted in the shirts by her head, and it's not slow and it's not careful.
This deep the angle hits something that makes her sob into the nest with every drive, and I watch my cock disappear into her over and over, slick everywhere, the wet slap of us filling the room.
“That's it,” I growl against her spine, filthy and low, the sound rougher than my voice has any business being.
“Taking me so well. So good, Porter, so fucking perfect.” She pushes back to meet every thrust, gone, and I drop my mouth to her ear, something possessive and primal rising up under all my charm and burning it clean away.
“Don't you go quiet on me now. Nobody here but us and I want to hear every sound you've got.
Get loud, Porter. Let the whole town know who's got you.” She sobs and gives it to me, unspooling, chanting broken pieces of my name, her body gripping me tight, and low in me the knot starts to swell, catching at her rim now, tugging harder with every stroke.
“Knot—” She can barely get it out. “Please—Hudson—yours—”
I drape myself over her back, chest to her spine, and a growl rips out of me, low and helpless and pure want, and I thrust hard and the knot drives past her rim and catches, seating full and deep.
The lock snaps home and she screams, and I feel it punch through both of us, stretching her open around the swell.
She clamps down and breaks around me, pulling me deeper, and I go under completely, spilling into her helpless and endless, filling her, every wall I ever built pouring out into the woman who buried my rope wall five years ago and never left.
And I set my teeth on the far side of her throat, opposite Finn's mark, and sink them until the skin gives, and she's mine.
I lick over the mark to seal it, and the purr comes up out of me loud and helpless, rumbling through my chest into her back where we're pressed together, and she melts into it with a sound like relief.
I ease us both down onto our sides, careful of the knot still tying us, and gather her in against me, and I bury my face in the back of her neck, dragging in lungful after lungful of her, marking her with my scent while she's marked all over with mine, and I don't stop purring.
Finn's already there with the water, tipping it to her lips, and she drinks, boneless, humming at the cool of it.
Somebody's tucked the good fleece blanket over her hip.
Logan's fingers move slow through her hair.
The three of us fold around her in her nest, knot still locking me deep inside her, and she's tended and safe and surrounded, and my purr just keeps going, the most honest sound I've got.
The bond hits me like sunrise.
I watched it land on Finn hours ago, watched his whole face change, and I thought I understood. I didn't. Watching it is a rumor. This is the door thrown open and the whole morning pouring in.
Josie floods through the new bond and she is everywhere at once. Her joy, her relief, her disbelief, and running under all of it, pointed straight at me, bright enough to blind: love. She loves me. Not the jokes. Not the show. The man underneath the noise, the one nobody's supposed to notice.
My whole life I made sure nobody looked too close. And she looked anyway. She saw all of it and she loves it.
“There he is,” she whispers, and I realize I'm the one crying now, the funny one, undone, and I don't even reach up to hide it. “There's the real one. Hi.”
“Hi,” I say again, wrecked, and this time it's the truest word I've got.
She laughs, and it rings down two bonds now, hers and Finn's both, bright and gold and doubling back on itself, and I feel Finn feel it, and for a second the three of us are lit up like a house with all the windows on.
“For the record,” I manage, scrubbing a hand over my wet face, reaching for solid ground the only way I know how, “that was even better than I'd built it up to be.
And I'd built it up a lot, Porter, more than I ever let on.” She feels the wobble under the joke, I know she does, because the bond's wide open and there's no hiding in it.
She just laughs harder and it goes straight through my chest.
And then the laugh softens into something slower, and I feel the exhaustion roll over her through the bond, the heat gone quiet for now, her body wrung out and heavy and finally, blessedly still.
“Rest,” I murmur, easing us both down onto our sides, careful of the knot still tying us. “I've got you. We're not going anywhere.”
She's already half gone. Finn tucks the good blanket around her shoulder.
Someone gets water into her, a few slow sips, and she takes it without opening her eyes.
I stay wrapped around her back, purring low and steady, and she drifts off tied to me with two marks on her throat and both of us still locked together.
I hold her through all of it while she sleeps. And for the first time I can remember, I'm not on the outside of anything, not hiding behind a single joke. I'm exactly where I always wanted to be and never let myself ask for, and she's safe, and she's ours, and she loves me.
I press my mouth to the back of her neck, breathe her in, and let her rest.