Chapter 15 Begin the Sex Scene
Begin the Sex Scene
Somehow we managed to make it home without having sex in the office, the car, or the elevator up to my place. I’m not sure how, but it happened.
“It’s very weird to have you in my house.”
Not my finest welcome. I wouldn’t be getting that embroidered on a welcome mat any time soon. But when I locked the door behind me, turned, and found Hudson towering over my kitchen counter, casually surveying my home like it was a guide to understanding me, it’s all I could think.
When I’d been fired from GalacticSolutions, I’d given my parents the bulk of my severance package.
However, I’d saved some to buy this apartment.
I called it my Hush Money House, which wasn’t a great way to look at one’s home, but hey—at least I was honest about it.
The apartment was simple and elegant and at least twenty years behind current trends, but it also had high ceilings and big windows and a kicking AC unit that beat the Texas summers back.
I didn’t spend much time here, though, preferring to eat out and devote most of my waking hours to my desk, so now, seeing it through Hudson’s eyes, I realized the messy bookshelves stacked high with academic texts and the takeout menus tacked up on the fridge made the place look a little sad. Slightly devoid of personality.
“Why should it be weird?” he asked. “It’s just sex, right?”
“Right. Yeah. Just sex,” I said, trying to convince myself more than anything. “Not a big deal.”
His gaze burned everywhere it touched. My cheeks, my neck, the swell of my breasts peeking out from my sweater.
With slight pressure on my wrist—the only place our bodies currently touched—he navigated me back until I was pressed against the kitchen island. Nowhere to run. Just me, this handsome man, and the ghost of sex yet to come between us.
“Right. Yeah. This is casual. We’re just two people…who happen to be attracted to each other…and we’re going to have sex and…and…”
He released my wrist and let his fingers drift lazily to my waist, where he found an exposed patch of skin between my skirt and my sweater’s hemline.
“Do you want to keep going, or would you like me to find a better use for your mouth?” he asked.
“You can try, but I’ll just keep thinking like this even if I’m not saying it out loud.”
“Then I’ll need to distract your big, beautiful brain, too.”
“Good luck.”
Every inch of my body was almost painfully aware of his. He still only touched that one part of my body, that flesh at my waist, but the distance drove me crazy.
Why didn’t he just bend me over and fuck me already?
“I love a challenge, remember?” he said. “It’s why I like you so much.”
“I hope there are other reasons you like me,” I said, my hips unconsciously shifting forward into his touch.
“There are. Many reasons. And I’m sure I’ll discover even more reasons to like you tonight.”
Without taking his eyes away from mine, he let his hand drift down my back. He stepped forward. He cupped my ass, gripping it tight and pulling me against him—testing, judging how I felt in his hold.
I must have passed muster, because his cock stirred.
Which, of course, made a rush of arousal flood between my legs.
“You’d better not like me too much, though,” I reminded him. “We have a deal. Sex tonight, and then we go back to the way things were.”
“There’s one thing I think you should know about sex, Scout.”
“Yeah?”
He pulled me even closer somehow. My breasts were now flush against his chest. Our clothes were the only thing keeping my virginity intact at this point.
“We can never go back to the way things were. Once I see you like this, I’ll never be able to unsee you like this. I’ll never forget the way you feel, never forget how you moan for me…and it’ll be the same for you.”
I scoffed, sounding braver than I felt. “I’m a rational, responsible, clearheaded adult. I’m going to be able to blow off one night of passion.”
“You don’t sound so sure.”
I kissed him instead of answering.
Why would I waste time talking about my feelings when I had a perfectly good cock standing at attention between my thighs?
This was why he was here, after all. For sex. That was it. Not talking, not heart-to-hearts, not getting-to-know-yous. Just fucking.
He must not have minded the distraction too much. As I kissed him in earnest, he answered back, throwing himself into every touch and every breathless gesture.
Picking me up, he hoisted me onto the kitchen island, spreading my legs and positioning himself between them.
As we kissed, I angled my hips into his again, desperate for any friction.
The heat that had been building up since the conference, that Hudson itch I’d not been able to fully scratch with any of my best dildos, all spurred me forward. I was greedy for him, ready for him.
And I knew that I was rushing, but I couldn’t help it. My hands went straight from his cheeks to his shoulders, down the expanse of his chest, tracing every line and committing it to memory. But then I went for his belt, and suddenly, it was déjà vu all over again.
He backed away from me, stopping our seemingly unstoppable descent into sex.
“Wait! Cosmos!”
“Okay,” I managed through panting breaths, responding instantly to the safe word we’d agreed to on the ride over.
“I almost forgot.”
Untangling himself from me, he stumbled backward and dug his hands into his pockets. Even stumbly and awkward, he was unbelievably fucking sexy. My pussy throbbed. I’d never been this close to having sex with someone before. The waiting was unbearable.
A moment later, he found what he’d been looking for. He offered it to me.
It was a glass jar about the size of my hand. Inside, there were rose petals, some glitter, a tea light candle, and a few of those tiny fireworks that you set off by throwing them on the ground. A small tag hung from the neck of the jar. It read, in Hudson’s blocky, mathematician’s script:
Break in case of emergency virginity loss.
“You said you weren’t the girl who got roses and candles and all that,” he said, shrugging. “I just think you’re wrong.”
My chest was suddenly very tight. This felt too nice, too personal. I didn’t need him to lie to me, didn’t need him to pretend that I was some great prize. This was just sex. Transactional sex. I didn’t need or want to feel special.
I couldn’t want that. I didn’t need to get addicted to the feeling.
I set aside the jar. Then I looped my fingers through his belt and pulled him back between my legs.
“I’m a sure thing, Hudson,” I reminded him. “You don’t need to butter me up to get me to have sex with you.”
“And you didn’t have to do a damn thing to get me to have sex with you, Scout. You just had to be you. You just had to ask.” He took my face in his hands. One thumb brushed down my lips. I shivered. “Why has a woman as beautiful, as brilliant, as funny and sexy as you never been taken before?”
Because nothing had ever led me to believe that was possible.
“A long time ago, I posited a theory that I was not capable of trusting myself with big decisions. Like whether to have sex. And who to have sex with. And time and time again, my experiments have proven this hypothesis correct.”
“Why did you finally choose me, then?”
“Because the cosmos is impossibly vast. We might as well be two specks of dust when compared against it. Then somehow, an understanding, handsome man with strong hands and a laugh like Christmas morning found me. And against all odds, he wanted me. You are the right man at the right time. And I’m trying to become a Scout who can welcome a gift like that.
Who isn’t afraid of it. Even just for one night. ”
“And what’s been holding you back?”
“A million things, really. Like my second hypothesis, for example.”
“Which is?”
“That I’m not sexy.”
I was, after all, a twenty-six-year-old virgin who spent her days behind a desk.
I wasn’t fielding offers from eligible gentlemen in line at the bagel shop, nor was my last relationship particularly affirming.
I worried, deep down, that this experiment of mine with Hudson would fail, and it would be all my fault. Just by virtue of who I was.
Hudson got that look in his eye again. That I’m going to fuck you look. The emptiness between my legs felt unbearable now.
“A good scientist should always be open to the possibility of being proven wrong,” he reminded me. Then his hand traveled up my thigh. Beneath my skirt. And right to my parted legs, where his fingers toyed with the lining of my wet thong. “Are you open, Scout?”