Thirty-Three
I’ve been sitting on the floor of Hudson’s living room for ten minutes, staring at what I’m almost certain is my centerpiece.
It’s encased in an enormous wooden transport crate that two very serious men carried through Hudson’s front door ten minutes ago.
A tear slips down my cheek. I wipe it away, but another takes its place. Apparently, sleeping with Hudson has completely dismantled my emotional regulation.
I woke this morning tangled in his limbs, my face mashed into his chest, his heavy arm pinned around my waist. When every moment from last night came flooding back, I’d buried my head in his shoulder and informed him I was going back to sleep until adulthood felt less humiliating.
He laughed, kissed the top of my head, and said he needed a shower.
I assumed that would be the most destabilizing part of my morning.
I was wrong.
My eyes track the stenciled gallery logo on the pine slats.
It was him. Hudson was the anonymous online buyer who snapped up the canvas an hour before the gallery doors even opened. The stranger I’d privately resented all night.
I’ve sold work before. Commissions, smaller gallery pieces, things that leave the studio to become background scenery in someone else’s life. You wrap them, hand them over, and move on. That’s the job.
This one was different.
The underwater figures aren’t literally me and my mother—nobody looking at them would know our history.
But I know. I know which section I painted the night she told me what it was like after I was born.
I know which shade of blue went down after Dad said the thing he didn’t realize would crack open twenty years of hurt.
I poured things into that canvas I couldn’t explain to my own family, and then I sold it because I had an exhibition to fill.
I was proud of the show, but a small, selfish part of me hated knowing that painting was leaving. That a stranger would walk past it every day without ever knowing what it cost to make.
They wouldn’t know the woman who painted it spent years wondering if she imagined her own pain. They wouldn’t know the space between those figures contained every conversation my mother and I never had.
Hudson knows.
My throat tightens. “You absolute bastard,” I whisper to the empty room.
Upstairs, the shower pipes hum through the ceiling.
He didn’t buy it out of pity. He didn’t see me spiraling beside it at the gallery and decide to rescue the tragic artist. He bought it before either of us knew last night would end with me naked in his bed.
Heat begins creeping through my veins.
Because who does that? Who spends months tracking every detail I try to hide, quietly buys the one piece I couldn’t bear to lose, looks at the most complicated parts of me, and never once asks me to make them easier to handle?
Hudson fucking Vaughn.
I push myself to my feet.
If I wait for him to come downstairs, he’ll do what he always does. He’ll look calm and controlled, say something infuriatingly reasonable, and I’ll deflect with a joke while my chest collapses.
I head for the stairs, abandoning whatever remained of my rational decision-making by the fifth step.
Steam is curling out of the cracked bathroom door when I reach the bedroom. His clothes from last night are scattered across the floor; my green dress is draped over a chair.
The shower beats steadily against the glass.
Normal people would knock. Normal people would also wear pants when confronting a man about a secret art purchase, so logic left the building long ago.
I grab the hem of his T-shirt, pull it over my head, and drop it.
I slide the glass door open.
Hudson turns, water streaming over his broad shoulders and down his chest. His eyes land on me, his expression shifting instantly from startled to sharp awareness.
“Rowan?”
I step inside the enclosure, the warm spray hitting my skin as the door clicks shut behind me.
I plant both palms flat against his chest, cutting him off before he can say anything.
If I don’t touch him, I’m going to burst through my own skin.
His chest is warm, slick with water, the muscle going rigid beneath my hands. I slide my palms upward over his collarbones, down his arms, and back across his chest.
He stands completely still, watching me through the mist.
“Good morning,” he says carefully.
I rise onto my toes and kiss him hard.
A split-second beat of surprise passes before his hands find my waist. I press closer, kissing him deeper before he can pull back to ask questions.
Water streams over my hair and down my shoulders, but every inch of me is already on fire.
I break the kiss, dragging my mouth down the side of his neck, over the slick muscle of his shoulder, and lower down his chest.
His cock is rock-hard, thick, and heavy against his stomach.
“Rowan,” Hudson rasps, as I slowly drop to my knees.
I wrap my hand around the base of his shaft and pull him into my mouth.
A low, violent curse rips from his throat. His palm slams against the shower wall to brace himself as the other hand tangles deep into my wet hair. The muscles in his thighs and abdomen go rigid beneath my hands.
“Fuck,” he groans, his hips giving an involuntary twitch forward.
I swirl my tongue around the slick tip before sliding him deeper, sucking him in as far as my throat will allow.
“Rowan… Christ.”
His fingers tighten in my hair, not pulling me away, but holding me right there as he begins to roll his hips in small thrusts into my mouth. I hollow my cheeks, swirling my tongue over the sensitive underside of his head while my hand strokes the rest of him.
I stroke him faster, taking him deeper, letting him feel every bit of the overwhelming feeling that drove me into this shower.
His hand in my hair tightens, guiding my movement as his breathing turns into shallow, ragged gasps.
“Rowan, stop—” he groans, his body going taut as a wire. “If you keep doing that, I’m going to come in your mouth.”
I look up through the water dripping into my eyes, my lips still wrapped tight around him, and give him a slow, deliberate suction that sends a shudder straight through his massive frame.
“Rowan—fuck!”
His palm slams against the tile above my head, his fingers tangling wildly into my wet hair.
He can’t stop his hips from bucking forward, driving deep into my throat as he loses control completely.
A low, guttural groan rips out of him, his body shuddering violently as he comes hard in my mouth.
Hot pulses stream against my tongue, and I swallow every drop, keeping the suction tight until the final tremor wracks through his frame.
He stands there for a beat, chest heaving, water cascading over his broad shoulders as he catches his breath. Then he grips my arms and hauls me up off the floor.
He turns me around under the warm spray.
Reaching for the bottle on the ledge, he lathers shampoo between his palms and works it gently through my hair, his long fingers massaging my scalp with practiced ease.
The tension leaves my neck as his hands move down, slick with soap, gliding over the curve of my shoulders and down my spine.
He slides his hands forward, cupping my breasts from behind.
His thumbs circle my nipples, pinching them lightly until they harden under the warm water, sending a quick spark of heat straight to my core.
I lean back against his chest, my breath hitching as his hands continue their slow, possessive roam over my stomach and the flared curve of my hips.
He turns me back to face him, stepping in close and pinning me gently against the tile. He plants one hand beside my head, his eyes fixed on mine as my breathing shallows.
“Spread your legs for me.”
I open my thighs, resting one heel back against the wall to take the pressure off my hip.
His thumb finds my clit, circling it with a pressure that makes my knees buckle.
He slides two fingers deep inside me, stretching me wide, and begins a fast, relentless rhythm.
“Hudson,” I plead, my hands scrambling for purchase on his wet shoulders.
“Not yet.”
As my body starts to tremble around his fingers, he intentionally slows the strokes. He pulls almost all the way out, then glides back in with excruciating slowness.
“You like that?” he whispers, leaning down until his lips brush the sensitive shell of my ear. “You like being teased after what you just did to me?”
I can hardly breathe, let alone answer him.
“You have no idea how good you feel right now. So wet. Tightening around my fingers every time I touch you.”
A white-hot spark shoots straight to my core.
“Oh, God.”
He increases the speed, his thumb swirling over my clit with a heavy, fast pressure while his fingers stroke deep and hard inside me, hitting that exact, swollen spot over and over. He watches every shift in my expression, taking in the ruin he’s making of me.
The coil tightens past the point of endurance and shatters.
A sharp scream tears from my throat, echoing off the wet glass as a blinding orgasm crashes over me.
My walls clamp tightly around his fingers in hard, violent spasms, my body shuddering uncontrollably as he holds me up against the wall, riding out every single pulse until I’m left completely breathless in his arms.
When the last pulse of the orgasm subsides, my knees give out completely.
Hudson catches me before I can slide down the wet tile, scooping me up against his chest under the warm water. I lean my face into his neck, holding his damp shoulders as my heart slows.
He turns off the faucet, leaving the room quiet except for our breathing.
Grabbing a towel from the rack, he wraps it around me and lifts me out of the shower. He carries me into the bedroom and sets me gently on my feet.
I stand there wrapped in the towel, watching him pull on a pair of gray sweatpants. Drops of water run down his chest, and his dark hair is messy. The polished doctor looks completely undone.
“A delivery came for you while you were in the shower,” I finally tell him.
I watch the realization settle over him when he looks at me.
“It was you,” I whisper, the words catching in my throat. “You were the buyer.”
“I didn’t think you should have to hand over so much of yourself. I witnessed what you put into it. I bought it for you.”
I blink, confused. “For me?”
He nods once.
I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t.
He simply steps closer, runs his thumb over my cheek, and presses a quick kiss to my forehead. “Come on. Let’s get some breakfast.”