Chapter 10
MATTY
His throat. My hand.
His pulse fluttered beneath my palm. Hudson didn’t fight me. Didn’t so much as flinch. Just stared up at me with those whiskey eyes, dark with heat, resignation, and something close to shame.
He was still naked, glistening water trailing down his tanned skin, hair dripping into his eyes, chest heaving like he was holding his breath.
And fuck, he was beautiful.
Just like the first time I ever saw him, walking across the ranch yard, shirtless, muscles cut and sweat gleaming on his body under the sun. I’d wanted him instantly. No thought, no logic, just raw, all-consuming need.
I never could’ve predicted how hard I’d fall. Or how deep the hurt would cut.
I hated him. I did.
But I hated him in that bone-deep, couldn’t-let-go kind of way.
And ever since Dad’s accident, seeing the way Ozzie cared for him, I’d been thinking people could fade from our lives too fast. I’d been thinking how love might not come in neat boxes.
I’d been thinking…and thinking. Then Dad called me, ripping me a new one for leaving the ranch hands alone.
That because I’d abandoned my post, Hudson got into a fight defending me. The man he walked away from.
Maybe love was more complicated than I’d ever let myself believe. Maybe it wasn’t so black and white. That would explain why, even after four years, I still felt caught in the in-between, unable to fully let go of Hudson Granger. Unable to walk away.
If I’d wanted him gone, all I had to do was ask. One word to Dad, and Hudson would’ve been off this ranch. But I never said it. Not once.
That would explain why I had endured four years of torment, seeing his face every holiday I came home from university, and almost every damn day since I graduated. I hated him, but a day without seeing him left an ache in my heart.
“Get on your knees,” I said, voice flat.
His brows jerked up. “What?”
“You heard me.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Are you fucking with me again?” His voice cracked, raw like sandpaper. “Because humiliating me once was enough.”
The day he’d offered himself to me and I’d turned him down. Treated him like trash.
I leaned in, close enough to smell the lake water on his skin. “You don’t get to negotiate, Granger. Not after everything. Now kneel for me the way you used to. If you could pretend that you loved it back then, you can pretend to love it now.”
He stared up at me. Silent. Processing.
I held my breath. Would he do it? A part of me wanted him to shove me away and turn his back on me. On us. Then I could finally let him go. Let go of this crazy obsession with a man who was not mine. Not anymore. Too bad my heart never caught up that it was supposed to give him back.
The breeze whispered past us, the leaves overhead shivering in the hush between us. The water lapped against the lake’s edge. My blood rushed in my ears.
Hudson lowered himself to his knees.
God.
My heart slammed once—loud and hard. That was all it took. That surrender. That desire, still there beneath the resentment.
He lifted his fingers, slow and unsure, to the button of my jeans. “Do you want me to do this for real?” he whispered.
I doubled my hands into fists to refrain from reaching for him. “You know what to do,” I said, voice controlled, confident, cocky. “You always do.”
Inside, I was shaking.
I hadn’t touched Hudson like this in four years, but I didn’t know what was scarier. That things between us would feel the same or that it might have changed.
Hudson exhaled like the breath cost him something and popped the button open. Slid the zipper down.
I bit the inside of my cheek, pulse hammering like I was nineteen again and seeing him for the first time.
He looked up at me, eyes blown wide, his bottom lip tucked between his teeth like he needed something to anchor himself. Like he needed me.
God, I wanted to kiss him. Wanted to bury my face in his neck and inhale every breath he had left. But kissing him was the one thing I couldn’t let myself do.
Because it felt too much like love.
My cock sprang free, already aching. He moaned. A second before his lips wrapped around my cock. The whole world dropped out from under my feet.
“Jesus—” The word punched out of me, raw and helpless.
My hand flew to the back of his head, threading into his damp hair. I didn’t push, didn’t need to. He took me to the back of his throat like he’d been waiting for this. Like he remembered every damn thing I liked about his mouth.
I couldn’t look away. Couldn’t think. The slide of his tongue, the heat of his mouth, the guttural hum he made. Every bit of it pulled me closer to the edge.
My hips bucked.
He let me.
He wanted me to.
Fuck.
I gritted my teeth, grasped his hair, and snapped my hips back and forth, fucking his unfaithful mouth. He took everything I gave, even when he was gagging on it, saliva dripping to the wet grass.
To think he’d been shocked when four years ago, I’d pegged him for a power bottom and not the top he thought he was.
But the truth hadn’t taken long to come out.
Every time we’d fucked, it was written all over his body.
From the first time, he never just took it.
Didn’t just lie there and let me fuck him.
No, he matched me, challenged me. If I drove into him hard, he’d lock eyes, grab me by the neck, and growl in encouragement.
Like he wasn’t surrendering but claiming every second of it.
“Look at me.”
He raised his eyes, and I realized my mistake too late.
Because they weren’t defiant.
They weren’t full of shame or pride or stubborn heat.
They were soft. Too soft. And wet.
Full of something I couldn’t bear to name.
Something like… love.
And it gutted me. Because it couldn’t be.
After all the years, after the betrayal, after the anger I’d sharpened into knives, he couldn’t look up at me like I was his whole damn world. It was wrong. Deceitful.
I shoved him off. Not hard but fast. Abrupt.
He fell back onto the grass on his ass, gasping, lips swollen and wet, eyes still on me like he would follow me to hell, crawling on broken shards of glass.
“Why did you stop me?” he rasped.
I couldn’t breathe. “I don’t want to come inside your mouth.”
My hands shook as I grabbed my wallet, yanked out a condom, my fingers trembling too badly to tear it open at first.
The condom was everything wrong between us. At first, that summer, we used a condom all the time. Until we didn’t. We’d both talked about it, then got tested. We’d made a big deal of the results, upgrading to a fancier hotel in Cockburn. I’d gone all out—candles, roses, and wine.
That night, I’d truly believed he was mine forever.
The foil slipped once, twice, before I finally ripped it with my teeth.
He didn’t move.
Just lay there, legs parted, chest rising like he’d sprinted a mile, eyes glassy and unreadable.
I lubed my fingers with the packet I kept in my wallet.
The packet I’d started carrying around only after I met him.
Because I’d fucked him in the barn with just spit once.
Hands down one of the best sex sessions we’d had, but after, he’d been too sore and needed a couple of days off work to recover.
Hudson spread his legs for me without shame. He reached for me, pulled me down to him as I lowered myself over him, heart pounding in my ears.
Sliding my fingers between his crack, I found him tight.
Still so tight.
Hudson groaned. “That’s it. You know I love it when you finger fuck me.”
Yeah, I knew exactly how much he loved being fingered.
Back then, he’d strut around the motel room in nothing but a jockstrap on Fridays, acting like it was no big deal.
I’d pretend not to notice, just to rile him up.
Eventually, he’d get fed up, toss himself over my lap with a groan, and dare me to do something about it.
Some of our hottest moments were like that, him folded in half, ass in the air, whimpering my name as I pushed him over the edge with nothing but my fingers and tongue.
“Stop rushing,” I growled when he grabbed my hand to force my fingers deeper inside him. “You’re still so fucking tight.”
Had he been telling the truth that he’d not bottomed for anyone else in all this time? He’d said it, but I hadn’t believed it.
Why did that make my throat close up? It shouldn’t mean anything. Sex was sex. And he’d had sex with Heather. What did it matter that he hadn’t bottomed for anyone else?
But it did matter.
You make me feel like I don’t have to be in control.
Like it’s safe to let go. Topping always felt…
impersonal. Like I was going through the motions.
With you, I want to be the one who’s held.
The one who’s touched like he matters. When you’re inside me, I don’t just feel wanted. I feel like I belong.
His words had gutted me then, and they gutted me now. I’d believed them.
Hudson’s gasp pulled me out of the past. He winced, hips twitching as I breached him, slick and slow. His body opened to me in tiny, trembling increments, like a locked door I still somehow had the key to. And fuck if that didn’t do something to me.
“There’s not much lube,” I whispered more to myself than him. He was too tight, and my cock was on the thicker side.
“I can take it,” he moaned, pulling at my hips. “Don’t stop. It’s been so long, Matt. Do you know how long I’ve waited for this? For you?”
“You waited?” What a joke. “You didn’t even last a fucking semester before you knocked someone up.”
“It was before I realized what we’d become. That you were serious about us.” He grabbed me by the neck, his eyes full of earnestness, begging me to believe him. “So fucking sorry I hurt you, Matt.”
Lies. All lies. How could I ever trust him again?
“Shut up.” I tore my gaze away from his face. “Let me concentrate so I don’t tear you open on my cock.”