Chapter 40
Hudson was good under pressure.
This was entirely different. Sarah walked beside him without rushing. Her thumb moved across his knuckles, and the contact traveled through him like a current finding bare wire.
He stopped outside his hotel room door. The key card took him two attempts because his hands had forgotten how to perform basic motor functions. At last the lock clicked green. He pushed the door open and stepped back to let Sarah go in first.
The room was lamp-lit and warm, with white sheets and pale walls. Snow drifted against the window in fat flakes, the glass dark beyond them.
Hudson closed the door and took off his jacket.
Sarah shrugged out of her coat and draped it over a chair. She walked a few paces toward the window, then turned to face him, the snow falling silently behind her. “You’re staring.”
He shook his head, a small laugh escaping him, hands useless at his sides. “Can you blame me?”
She smiled as she held his gaze and reached down.
The sound of her boot zipper was loud in the privacy of his room. She drew it down, stepped out of the boot, then reached for the other, her eyes never leaving his.
Hudson didn’t move. He couldn’t have said what was happening to his pulse. Something well beyond its operational parameters.
She walked toward him, then turned her back to him, the zipper of the navy dress running from her nape to the small of her back.
His fingers located the zipper at the top of her spine, and he drew it down slowly, the teeth parting in a soft metallic rasp that sounded louder than it had any right to in the stillness.
Skin appeared beneath the fabric—the smooth ridge of her spine, the warm expanse of her back opening to him inch by inch. For several seconds he blanked. No clever thought. No comparison. Just the overwhelming certainty that she trusted him.
She shivered as he pushed the dress off her shoulders. Sarah stepped forward, out of his reach. The dress pooled at her feet, leaving her in navy lace, the color deep as twilight against her skin. Lamplight traced the graceful line of her spine.
She was really here.
She reached up and removed one silver hoop. Then the other. She set them on the nightstand.
The earrings she’d put on for him.
Fuck.
Sarah turned.
She looked at him, her gaze steady, barefoot in the lamplight. Purple and yellow spread beneath her ribs, fading toward her hip—the marks left by the seat belt still visible across her chest. Hudson’s jaw locked.
Her expression softened, but she didn’t cover herself. For a second, looking at her hurt. This wasn’t memory.
Sarah. Present tense. Choosing him.
She closed the space between them and stopped, near enough that the narrow space between them held the warmth of her body, even though they weren’t touching yet.
She looked up at him. “What?”
“I just—” He shook his head. “I spent a long time convinced this would never happen.”
“Mmm.” Her eyes were dark in the soft light. “We’re here now.”
He lifted his hand and cupped her face. She leaned into his palm, her skin impossibly soft. He traced the line of her jaw, and her eyes closed for a fraction of a second.
Her eyes opened and found his. For a moment, neither of them moved. Then her palm curved around his neck, and she rose to kiss him.
Slowly at first. A soft press of her mouth, chocolate and coffee, the warmth of her breath mingling with his. Hudson followed the pressure of her lips, every small shift, letting her show him exactly where she wanted this to go.
She drew back barely an inch, her gaze finding his again before she kissed him deeper.
He skimmed her waist. Bare skin, warm and alive under his palms, and the sensation of finally touching her—properly, without gloves, without an excuse, without a crisis to justify the contact—obliterated every coherent thought he’d had in the last thirty seconds.
Her fingers went to his collar. The buttons of his shirt.
She unfastened the first without breaking the kiss, then the second, her knuckles grazing his chest as each one opened.
Third. Fourth. Her hands spread flat against his skin and pushed the shirt off his shoulders.
It dropped to the floor as her palms slid down his chest, and he had to lock his knees to stay upright.
Hudson kicked off his shoes and socks.
She studied him without hurry. Her fingers found the scar below his collarbone. She didn’t ask or give him the careful look people used when they wanted the story behind damaged skin.
She touched it gently and moved on.
Her hands landed on his belt. The buckle opened with a sound that seemed to fill the room. She held his gaze while she unfastened his pants and let them drop. He took a breath and stepped out of them.
They stood in the lamplight, equally bare and exposed. He wanted to memorize this part, savor every second—remember everything. There had been enough urgency in both their lives. This they could take slowly.
Sarah put her hand flat on his chest, over his heart.
He was sure she would feel how fast it beat.
Then she took hold of his hand and stepped backward, drawing him with her until the backs of her knees hit the bed.
She sat, pulled him down, and he followed because that was the only direction left—toward her, always toward her.
The bed took their weight. He braced above her on his forearms, her hair spread dark gold across the white sheets, her face tilted up to his.
She pulled him closer, her arms around his neck, her body arching into his. The full contact—skin to skin, the length of her pressed against him—fractured something in his breathing he’d fought to hold steady for years.
He kissed her throat. The hollow at the base of it where her pulse beat fast and visible against her skin.
The line of her collarbone, one side, then the other.
Her shoulder, where the strap of her bra rested against skin he’d been thinking about since she’d turned around and offered him the zipper.
He reached behind her. The clasp of her bra opened under his fingers, and she exhaled—a shaky, real sound that sliced through him. He drew the straps down her arms slowly, his mouth following the path his hands made, tasting every inch of her.
Her breath caught when his lips found the slope of her breast. Caught again, harder, when his thumb traced beneath the curve and then across, and the sound she made when he reached her nipple ripped through him.
He stayed there. Learned what made her hands tighten in his hair. What made her hips shift beneath him, testing every remaining thread of his self-control.
Then he kissed her mouth again, deep and slow, and let his hand travel lower.
Around the bruising at her ribs, careful even now. Across the plane of her stomach, where her muscles tensed and released under his palm. The dip of her navel. The line of her underwear, where his fingers traced the edge and her whole body tensed in anticipation.
His cock had been hard for so long it bordered on painful, every slow inch of his hand across her skin eroding the last of his restraint.
Still, he paused.
His forehead rested against hers, their breaths mingling in the narrow space between them. He gave her room to move. To stop him. Or pull him closer.
She lifted her hips against his hand. “Hudson.”
He slid his hand beneath the lace, to where she was warm and slick.
The discovery of how much she wanted him pulled a low, unsteady groan from his throat, a sound he’d been holding for far too long.
His fingers found her rhythm. Slow at first. She exhaled sharply and her head pressed back into the pillow, a flush spreading down her throat and across her breasts.
He’d been wrong earlier when he’d thought no one had ever looked more beautiful to him.
Sarah right now. This was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
He kissed her as his hand moved. Her mouth, her jaw, the place below her ear where her pulse hammered against his lips.
She kissed him back in fragments, kisses that broke apart when his fingers discovered the angle that made her breath stall, then found it again, until she stopped trying to kiss him at all because she couldn’t hold on to both.
A whimper caught low in her throat. So small it was barely there.
Every muscle in his body locked against the instinct to take more, push harder, hear it again.
Hudson lifted his head. Sarah looked right at him, hiding nothing.
For a long moment she held his gaze and let him see everything, her lips parted, color high across her cheeks. The intimacy of it almost destroyed him.
Her hand gripped his forearm. Her nails bit into the muscle and he didn’t care. He’d have let her draw blood if that was what she needed. Because she was still looking at him.
“Hudson—”
She tensed beneath him, her thighs closing around his hand, her fingers digging harder into his arm.
He pressed his forehead to her damp temple. “Sarah.”
Her body drew tight and then let go, the release starting deep and rolling through her in waves. He felt each one against his hand and his chest, his mouth pressed to her temple. Slowly, he gentled his touch without pulling away.
Her breathing returned in stages. Hudson stayed where he was. He would stay here forever if she’d let him.
Her fingers found his cheek and drew him back until he was looking at her. She kept reaching for him. And every time she did, the old certainty that he’d lost her forever loosened its grip a little more.
He turned his face into her palm and closed his eyes. He breathed in, and the breath was easy. He hadn’t had to fight for it.
Peace had always felt temporary.
With Sarah, for the first time, he wanted to stay and trust it.