Thirty-Two
Hudson makes ridiculously good pancakes.
This is irritating for several reasons, but mostly because the man already has enough going for him without also knowing how to get the edges crisp while keeping the middle soft.
I cut another piece with the side of my fork and drag it through what’s left of the maple syrup.
“This is upsetting.”
Hudson looks over from the sink. His sleeves are rolled to his elbows, and there’s flour on one forearm.
“What is?”
“The pancakes. I was hoping they’d be mediocre. You need flaws.”
“I have flaws.”
“Name one.”
“I invited you into my house.”
I flip him off with one hand and dig my fork into a piece of pancake with the other.
Goddammit.
Still good.
The last time I was here, we threw paint on a wall. The time before that, I woke up wearing one of his T-shirts, with no idea whose bed I’d climbed into.
Tonight is considerably less traumatic.
I abandon the fork and hop off the stool.
Hudson looks over. “Where are you going?”
“Exploring.” I start toward the living room. “You have a beautiful house, and I’ve only seen the kitchen and bedroom. That feels like an incomplete data set.”
He leans a hip against the counter. “That’s an interesting use of my own terminology against me.”
“I learn from the best.”
“You were terrible data.”
I grin and keep walking.
His living room is very Hudson. Books that have been read instead of arranged for decoration. A couch big enough to sleep on. Plants near the windows that I’m convinced are fake because nobody has plants that look that good.
A row of framed photographs sits on the lowest shelf. I crouch to look at them properly.
A much younger Hudson stands on a beach with another boy beside him. They share the same dark hair, but the boy is leaner, grinning at the camera with one arm draped over Hudson’s shoulders.
Ethan.
My chest aches looking at it. Not just for what happened to him. For how alive he looks in this one frozen second, like nothing in the world could touch him.
“You found him.” Hudson’s voice comes from behind me.
I turn to see him leaning in the doorway, dish towel thrown over one shoulder.
“He’s handsome,” I say.
“You wouldn’t be the first woman to think that.”
“He looks like fun.”
“He was.”
He pushes off the doorframe and crosses the room to stand behind me.
I feel his heat at my back as he reaches over my shoulder and gently takes the frame from my hands.
“We were at my grandparents’ place,” he says.
“I was nineteen, so Ethan would have been seventeen. He’d just gotten his license three weeks earlier and drove us the whole way there without telling our parents.
Our father had told him not to take the car on the highway yet.
” He huffs a quiet laugh, eyes still on the photo.
“Ethan said those rules didn’t apply when I was in the car with him.
He spent the whole first day telling anyone who’d listen that he’d driven ninety miles on the interstate like it was a moon landing. ”
He’s not really talking to me anymore. He’s somewhere back on that beach.
I don’t say a word. I think this might be the first time in a long while that he’s told it and felt something other than the ending attached to it.
When he finally sets the frame back on the shelf, some of the weight lifts off his shoulders.
The house goes quiet as it fades, and I’m suddenly aware of everything—the late hour, his house, my dress, the way he’s looking at me.
The gallery comes rushing back.
He feels it too. I know he does.
His eyes trace the line of my collarbone before locking back onto my face. His gaze is possessive and completely devoid of his usual professional distance. My skin tingles under its weight.
He clears his throat. “I should take you home,” he says, but he doesn’t step back.
My heart hammers against my ribs.
Home.
Back to my cold, quiet studio.
God, I don’t want to go home.
Be selfish, Rowan.
The thought rings loud and clear, drowning out every instinct to play it safe, to deflect with a joke, to protect myself from wanting too much.
“Should you?” I ask softly.
“Ro—”
I don’t let him finish. I step out from the shadow of the shelf, get up on my tiptoes, and catch his mouth with mine.
The heat is instant. I tangle my fingers in his hair, pulling him down and tasting the sweet syrup on his tongue.
For a second, he freezes beneath my touch.
Oh God, I misread the entire situation, didn’t I?
I pull back sharply. “I—I’m sorry,” I stammer. “Jesus, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—that was—I’ll go.”
I turn to bolt for the kitchen, but Hudson’s hand shoots out, his fingers wrapping around my arm and yanking me back against his chest.
“Like hell,” he growls, his hand wrapping around my nape, pulling me flush against him until I can feel every inch of how hard he is. “You don’t get to start a fire in my house and run away from it.”
His mouth crashes down on mine, and this time, there’s zero hesitation.
A choked moan escapes from the back of my throat and into his mouth. His hands slide down to frame my hips, his fingers digging into my dress. In one fluid motion, he lifts me off the floor.
His lips only leave mine to drag a scorching trail of biting, wet kisses down my jawline, over the hammering pulse in my throat, and down to the exposed curve of my collarbone. I throw my head back as a shiver runs through me.
“If we don’t stop right now—”
I grab a handful of his hair, pulling his head up so his blown-out eyes are locked on mine. “If you stop, so help me God, I will kill you myself.”
The last of his restraint snaps.
He carries me upstairs with an effortless strength that makes my stomach roll with heat.
In his bedroom, he lowers me onto the edge of the mattress and steps back just long enough to pull his shirt over his head, tossing it aside.
My thighs press together as I watch, transfixed, the flex of his corded chest and shoulders.
He drops to his knees between my legs, and I almost moan at the sight of it.
The shift in height puts his face level with my waist. His large hands slide up my calves, smoothing over the bare skin.
My heart feels like it's going to beat out of my chest.
Suddenly, the reality of where we are catches up to me. My dress feels heavy, gathered around my hips.
Seeing him there, a sudden wave of self-consciousness hits me. My body isn’t simple. I’m bruises and loose joints, and right now I feel too exposed.
Sensing my hesitation, he cups my face in his hands. “We can stop. Just say the word.”
God, no.
“I don’t want to stop,” I whisper.
His thumbs sweep over my cheekbones, tilting my head until I’m forced to meet his gaze.
“Come back to me. You’re in your head,” he murmurs, his thumbs continuing to stroke my skin. “Leave it outside the door. There is nothing in this room right now except you and me.”
“I’m…” I swallow. “I’m not built like other women, Hudson. I’m—”
“You’re beautiful,” he says, cutting off the self-deprecation before it can take root. “Every single inch of you.”
He slides his hands down my neck, sweeping over my collarbones to the hidden zipper at the back of my dress. He peels it down my shoulders until it pools at my waist, exposing my breasts and the pale curve of my ribs.
His gaze follows the fabric, but his eyes show no shock. Only a hunger that makes my skin prickle with goosebumps.
He presses a slow, lingering kiss right to the hollow of my throat, over the leaping pulse that hasn’t slowed all night.
“Beautiful. So fucking beautiful.”
Heat floods my core when he takes my nipple into his mouth, licking and sucking as my body trembles.
He guides me back onto the sheets, and before I can even think about the ache in my lower back or the angle of my hips, he grabs an extra pillow, gently lifts my hips, and slides it under my pelvis.
“Better?”
I nod frantically. “Yes.”
He takes his time kissing the inside of my right knee before moving to my left. His thumbs trace the line of my inner thighs, working out the tiny knots of tension in my muscles as he works his way up.
Resting his palm flat against my stomach, I know he feels the frantic rise and fall of my breathing, and the tremor running beneath the surface.
“Breathe,” he instructs softly.
He parts my thighs gently, his large hands supporting the outsides of my knees, lifting them just enough so there’s zero tension in my joints
His breath hits my skin a second before his mouth does.
His tongue meets my clit, and a sharp gasp tears from my throat.
The flat of his tongue sweeps upward.
I cry out as he swirls his tongue around my clit again, slower this time, applying a steady, torturous pressure.
Using his fingers to part me, he licks in agonizingly slow strokes, learning the exact rhythm that makes my breath catch. He doesn’t rush. Every movement of his mouth is measured, patient, designed to build a fire from the inside out.
My hands tighten in his hair, my knuckles turning white.
I feel the familiar, terrifying rise of sensation—the heat coiling tight and sharp in the base of my belly.
But with it comes that lingering beat of fear, the voice telling me I’m taking too long, that my body is too complicated, that I’m demanding too much effort.
I try to breathe through it, telling myself it’s fine and that I can enjoy this.
“Rowan.” My name on his tongue cuts through the noise in my head. “Stop fighting it.”
“I’m… It’s taking too long,” I choke out, mortified by the tremor in my own voice.
“Look at me. Do I look like I’m in a hurry?”
His hair is rumpled from my fingers, his jaw set, but not a trace of impatience crosses his face. He looks like a man who would stay on his knees between my legs for the rest of the night if that’s what it took.
His thumb sweeps the inside of my thigh, calming the muscle spasm there. “Close your eyes, relax your hips, and let me be.”
I throw my head back and breathe.
This time, there’s no holding him back.
He sucks my clit while he slides one finger inside, stretching me until my muscles tighten around him.
“Fuck, yes,” he groans against my skin.
He adds a second finger, slowly working them inside me, his thumb coming around to circle my clit with steady, relentless pressure, hitting a spot high inside me that makes my entire body go taut.
“Hudson!” I cry out, my head tossing back against the mattress.
“Right there?” he asks. “Tell me, Rowan. Tell me how it feels.”
“Yes—god, right there—please—”
“I’ve got you,” he whispers, his pace quickening until the coil in my stomach is stretched to its absolute limit. “Come for me.”
My back arches, a sharp cry breaking out of me as the orgasm rips through my body.
He rides out every single aftershock, his fingers staying buried deep inside me until the last tremor fades and I slump back into the mattress, gasping for air.
I open my eyes to see him kissing his way up my body, his breathing as ragged and uneven as mine.
The insecurity that usually sits like a lead weight in my chest is gone, scoured away by the heat of his mouth.
“I think I died for a minute,” I whisper, an exhausted smile tugging at my lips.
He chuckles against my neck. “I like to make sure my work is thorough.”
His eyes finally meet mine, and I… blush.
It’s a little late for modesty, but the intensity of his stare makes my cheeks burn. He traces the sudden heat on my face with the pad of his thumb.
“Hudson?”
“Yeah?”
“Please say you’re thorough in every aspect of your life and you’ve got condoms?”
His eyes darken again.
“A plus for preparation,” I murmur as he leans over the edge of the bed, opens the top drawer of his nightstand, and comes back holding a square foil wrapper.
I lie back against the pillow, watching him step off the mattress.
My eyes trace the hard line of his back and shoulders as he shoves his trousers and boxers down his legs, kicking them aside.
He turns back to the bed completely bare, tearing the foil open with his teeth and rolling the condom down his length.
Any lingering reservation I had completely vanishes. The sight of him takes what little breath I have left.
He settles between my knees, guiding the tip of his cock against me, but he doesn’t push in right away.
“Eyes on me,” he whispers.
Nodding, I open my eyes.
Then he slowly pushes inside, giving my body time to stretch and open around him.
He’s thick, filling me so completely that a long, low sigh escapes my lips.
The pillow beneath my hips takes every bit of pressure off my lower back and joints, letting me sink into the mattress without a single flare of pain.
He pauses when he’s fully buried, his forehead coming down to rest against mine.
“You okay?”
“Don’t stop,” I moan, wrapping my arms around his neck, pulling him closer. “Hudson, please.”
A low groan rumbles deep in his chest, and then he sets the pace.
He drives all the way in, then pulls back out, lifting my hips to meet his thrusts.
“Fuck. So tight for me,” he rasps, his chest heaving as he drives into me again and again.
He shifts his angle, pressing deeper, while his thumb finds my clit.
“Hudson—” I gasp, my nails digging into his shoulders as my head rolls back against the pillow.
“Let go.”
I fracture completely. Another orgasm rips through me, my walls clenching around his cock in waves.
Hearing me break shatters whatever restraint he had left.
He drives into me three, four more times before he lets out a low, guttural roar. He buries his face into the side of my neck as he comes, his entire body trembling.
He stays there, his heart hammering against my ribs.
And because I can never sit in silence for too long, I press my lips to his ear and whisper, “What the hell did you put in those pancakes?”
He lifts his head to look at me before we both burst out laughing.