Chapter Twenty-Two
Scarlett
I ’m freaking out. I know this and I can’t stop. The sun beats down on me through the window, pummeling into me, it feels like. I know it isn’t doing that. But I can’t shake that hot seat, spotlight feeling and it isn’t helping by Hudson rising to his feet, and coming around to face me.
My breath comes short and fast and not just from fear. He rounds the desk and comes up to me, hands large and warm and firm as he takes hold of my upper arms.
“It had to be last night. We shouldn’t have…I know you want to keep everything as much on the downlow or a needs to know level, even with upping the ante. You hate the media, and it’s there. And I’m there.”
Mystery woman.
What even is that?
There’s a part of me that wants it to shout my name, but why would they? I’m nobody. Worse, if they did, what a can of worms. Already my heart is jumping because what if his friend, Sarah’s cousin, sees it?
They’re not close, I know that. Not Sarah and Bixby, and not Bixby and Hudson. Not to mention this is in New York based gossip pages.
But we live in a global community, one that loves getting in other people’s business.
I swallow hard, my skin alive and blood hot in my veins at Hudson’s touch. And I remember everything we did last night. In the living room downstairs, on all those stairs, against his floor’s wall, the bed…
With great effort, I push that all away. I’d rather not, it’s way more pleasant than thinking about the pictures and the little article.
It’s all out of hand. Things are out there. He’ll blame me. He’ll find out the truth. Then he’ll come for me and my brother. And—
“Scarlett?”
I blink. He’s not morphing into a wrathful creature from hell. He’s not angry. His dark blue gaze is warm, not full of fire. There’s not even a hint of brimstone. Hudson’s mouth turns up in the slightest of smiles and I stare up at him.
“Yes?”
“Oh, good, you’re back.”
“I was thinking of escaping to the ether, but you’ve tethered me down by your manhandling.”
Hudson laughs. Actually, for real, laughs. I’m not shocked because it’s at my feeble joke or that he can do that. I know he can. It’s the fact he’s doing it now.
“This isn’t manhandling,” he says, the tone light. “Now, have you calmed?”
“A smidge. Why are you so calm? Did you break your brain?”
He lets me go and leans back against his desk, crossing his arms over his chest. He’s not wearing his jacket, just the dove gray shirt and slate gray vest and trousers. And as he crosses his ankles, I catch a flash of an emerald-green sock. The man has hidden and unexpected depths. But I knew that.
“No. I’ve been trying to tell you something.”
Alarm bells start ringing somewhere from inside me. I narrow my eyes. “What?”
“I set it up.”
For a moment I don’t move.
Time has stopped or I’ve gone and done it, finally lost my mind. Because it sounded like Hudson just told me he’d done something he’d never do. He—he did say that.
I replay it again, just to be sure.
Nope, definitely.
I narrow my eyes. “You did what now?”
“Set it up.” He uncrosses his arms and spreads them wide.
“Why would you do that? They made it sound like I was some dirty secret! Mystery woman?”
The corner of his mouth twitches and it sets my blood boiling. Oh, yeah, it bubbles and spits in my veins and it takes everything I am not to shove him. Hard.
“I upped the ante. That’s why we went to those places, especially the dinner. Come on, you know I’m not the type to go there.”
He wasn’t and it hadn’t even hit me. I was just so caught up in him after pulling off showing him my place, so impressed he didn’t wrinkle his nose or look down on me or judge me as the fallen rich girl. He doesn’t know that’s just me and my place and I’ve never been rich, but he didn’t judge me for what he thinks I am and that meant something.
Like me being an idiot, obviously.
“So you took me out to…what? Get a photo-op and a fuck?”
He winces. “The first, yes, the second wasn’t a plan. That happened.”
“And gullible Scarlett went for it.” I shake my head, not sure who I’m more disgusted with, him or me.
Him because he’s pissing me off, and me because…yes, I wanted to sleep with him, I still do…I went there again thinking, I don’t know what. Not that we’d suddenly get a happy ending. This man doesn’t believe in the romantic happy ending. I’m sure one day he’ll decide to pick someone suited to him and his life and position her just so and honestly, I hope he’s really miserable in the little hypothetical I just conjured.
And— I’m off topic. I’m pissed off. I’m furious. I want to make him bleed. And cry. Although I don’t think he does the latter.
Shit. Why am I so mad?
“We talked about upping the ante. I made a decision. Give a little whiff of a scandal to push things forward. I’m not sure why you’re upset about the sex.”
I sniff. “I’m not.”
He just looks at me like I’m lying. Which I am. And it makes me even madder. “The sex, we agreed, was a separate entity, just sex. You—”
“I’m not. I just don’t like the feeling of being used.”
“I’m paying you.”
It’s the reason in his tone that makes me stalk up to him and shove him. “I’m not your property. This is a fake relationship. Not just sort of fake boss and sort of fake employee.”
“Scarlett, you’re complicating things. I just wanted a nice, well-bred woman who needed extra cash from the same social strata as me. I figured you would take the money, and like any good girl of good breeding, you wouldn’t talk about your failed relationships.”
“I’m also not a horse.”
“No. Horses have a better temperament. Even the difficult ones.”
“You, Hudson, are a complete asshole.”
“And you’re being a class A brat. Stop it.”
“Make me.”
His gaze crashes with mine and I can barely breathe as the heat of that loaded, bone-melting tension rises between us. “Is that,” he asks softly, “a challenge?”
“No.” Oh, is that word hard to say. “You said scandal. What are you trying to turn me into?”
“My pretend wife to be. Come on, you’re working for me. I don’t go around fucking the help. So, upping the ante with a whiff of a scandal is perfect. It all goes together. It was basically your idea.”
My head is spinning, but I think it’s because we’re so close and that fire in his gaze is sexual and predatory and I’m the kind of victim who’s tying herself to the rock.
The tricky thing is I know Sarah well enough to know she’d go with the flow. She’d probably try to marry him because he’s almost the whole package, and would be complete and perfect if he had a heart he wanted to use. Which he doesn’t. Which wouldn’t stop her.
I don’t want to marry him and we’re both using each other, and we agreed sex was just sex and still I’m furious and I don’t understand why.
“I think,” I snap, “I have to go.”
Whipping around, I take a step towards the door, but he can move fast. He’s right there, my wrist caught in his hand as he pulls me back to face him.
He stares down at me with narrowed eyes that still burn with fire, but it’s a mix of anger and sex and it turns me on more than it has any right to. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
“Away.”
“I haven’t said you can leave.”
I move into him, brushing my body against him, and it’s like brushing against an exposed low-current live wire. A buzz and a thrill and a charge. “I don’t need your permission.”
“There are several pieces of paper with your signature on it, Scarlett, that says I can. There’s the fact if you go and walk out the door and screw this up, I’ll screw up things for you.”
Placing my palm flat on his chest I go to push him, but he clamps his other hand on my wrist, holding me, and I’m trapped. Caught by him. Literally and figuratively. Because the way he looks at me, like I’m dessert that might be laced with poison but he’s damn hungry anyway, holds me there more than the physical.
I couldn’t walk away even if I tried.
“Hudson, I just want to get away for a bit. Calm down.”
“No.”
“No?” Heat and need is pooling in my body, and even though he’s been in it, even though we had sex a few hours ago, I start to ache for him all over again. I crave him.
“That’s what I said.”
“Why?”
He lets me go, only to twine his arms around me and draw me in and he stops, mouth a breath from mine he says, “This.”
And Hudson kisses me. It’s like an explosion of need as our mouths meet and open. Tongues dance and tease and duel. The carnal power rocks me right down through my core, right into the marrow of my bones.
I kiss him back and it’s not enough. How is it never enough?
He spins me, his hands everywhere, in my hair, skimming my body, sliding up between my thighs as I hit the desk.
I open for him and he steps in, his hand there, on my pussy, and I feel it through the layers of the material and he strokes and pushes against me with his fingers, teasing my clit with little light squeezes that are just sharp enough to send jolts of an almost-orgasm through me. I reach for him, for his fly, and his hand rises up to my zipper.
I’m ready, I’m so ready for this, here, now.
And then he’s there, my zipper is a hiss in the air and I raise my hips, and bite down on his throat as he reaches in.
I’m going to reach my own personal nirvana in seconds, all I need is him to touch my bare, wet flesh—
“Knock knock?” Someone says.
And we both freeze.