Chapter 41
Sarah lay still, her body slowly returning to her in pieces—the pulse still thudding between her thighs, the heat of his hand where it rested on her, the damp sheen of sweat cooling across her stomach.
His forehead rested against her temple.
She ran her tongue over her dry lower lip. “I’m thirsty.”
Hudson was out of the bed before she said anything more, the soft pad of his bare feet crossing the carpet. Water ran briefly in the bathroom. The quiet clink of glass.
Sarah rolled onto her side.
Hudson walked back carrying a glass of water, wearing nothing but his boxers and the low lamplight.
She drank him in. The broad line of his shoulders. The lean planes of his stomach, muscle shifting beneath skin. A scar zigzagged low along his left side, pale and neat as a signature.
His hair was wrecked, but his mouth was relaxed. She’d never seen him look like this. And the sight of him sent a slow pull of need through her all over again.
She took a long drink and handed it back. He set it on the nightstand and caught her staring. “What?”
Sarah pulled the sheet an inch higher, as though that might disguise the fact she’d been appreciating him.
“Nothing. Just appreciating the room service.”
His mouth curved as he climbed back into bed. The mattress dipped beneath his weight, and Sarah let herself move into the warmth of him.
Gravity, she told herself. The lie lasted less than a second.
She turned to him, her palm finding his chest. Warm skin. The steady percussion of his heart beneath her hand, still too fast, not quite recovered from what he’d just done to her.
She let her fingers wander.
Across the solid breadth of his chest. Through the rough hair that tapered to a fine line down the center of his stomach where muscle tightened at the lightest pass of her fingertips.
Mmm.
She looked up. Hudson was watching her. His expression gave nothing away, but the muscles beneath her palm had gone taut.
She ran gentle fingertips across the scar below his collarbone—the pale ridge she’d found earlier. Her fingertips moved to the one along his ribs, a neat zigzag beneath her touch.
A body built to survive. And the evidence of how often it had been asked to.
She traced the zigzag, and his breath hitched. So quietly she might have missed it. She rose and pulled his mouth back to hers.
The kiss was slow. Deep. His hand lingered at her waist, moved over her ribs to the curve of her hip.
She kissed him deeper and ran her hands down his chest again.
She kissed the corner of his mouth, his throat, her lips pressing into the hollow where his pulse beat wild and graceless beneath his skin.
She lingered there, loving the kick of it against her tongue.
His hand came to the back of her head, fingers threading into her hair, and the small, involuntary pressure of his grip sent heat curling through her.
Lower.
His collarbone. The sharp ridge of it beneath her lips. The scar below, the one she’d already learned with her fingertips. She found it again with her mouth and pressed a kiss to its center.
Hudson stilled beneath her, every muscle held tight with the effort of not moving.
Sarah lifted her head. She wanted more. The tiny betrayals of a body that had spent years following orders and, under her hands, was beginning to forget how.
Her mouth traced the line of his ribs as her hand moved lower. Across the ridged hardness of his stomach, muscle contracting beneath her palm, down to where his boxers sat low on his hips.
She trailed one fingertip along his waistband, a graze, barely there, then slid her fingers under to where his muscles quivered under her touch.
His groan was low and rough, pulled from somewhere so deep inside him it rumbled against her lips. His hips lifted into her hand, his hands fisting in the sheets.
She kept her hand where it was, loving the hardness of him.
God.
Hudson’s eyes met hers.
His lips parted.
Oh.
There he was.
The fierce warmth spreading through her wasn’t only desire. He was letting her see what nobody else did.
He caught hold of her wrist and pressed his thumb to her pulse point as though he needed to feel the beat of her beneath his skin. Then he released her, pushed his boxers down and kicked them free.
He reached across her toward the nightstand, his weight shifting over her. The quiet rasp of a zipper and a rustle from inside his bag, the small foil square caught between his fingers as he settled back.
He held it between them, his eyes on hers.
Sarah took the packet from his fingers without looking away and tore the foil. She rolled the condom down the length of him. His sharp inhale. The flex of his stomach. His eyes closed for one brief second before finding hers again.
His hand gripped her hip, five points of heat against her skin.
She planted a kiss on his throat. “Come here.”
He hooked his fingers inside the waist of her underwear, his knuckles brushing her hip as he drew the navy lace down her legs and tossed it aside. Cool air touched her skin for barely a second before his warmth replaced it.
Sarah caught his shoulders and drew him to her.
Hudson came willingly. He braced over her, and for a suspended second she forgot how to breathe.
So close.
His skin was warm against hers. He kept part of his weight braced away from her bruised ribs. Even now, some part of him kept an inventory of where she hurt.
She arched into him, wrapping her arms around his back and pulling him closer. More. She wanted more of his weight. More of his warmth. Every solid inch of him.
Hudson’s breath shuddered against her neck. His arms tightened around her, and his mouth came to rest against her shoulder, breathing her in. The warm, impossible reality of Hudson Kane wrapped around her was the opposite of leaving.
She reached between them. Found the thickness of his cock and guided him to her.
The first full press of him drove a gasp from her.
Hudson stopped. His forehead dropped to hers, his arms braced on either side of her. “Okay?”
Sarah smiled against his lips. “Very.” She waited a second, her body adjusting around him, every nerve suddenly awake, the intimacy of it almost overwhelming.
She hooked her leg around his and drew him closer. “Don’t stop.”
He began to move. A careful retreat followed by a deep return. A measured roll of his hips that found exactly where she needed him, and Sarah gripped the back of his neck.
Again.
God.
The same devastating patience. The same slow depth. Her body answered him without hesitation, finding his rhythm as if they’d done this before. She held his gaze and let him see her. The pleasure she couldn’t hide. The vulnerability she wasn’t trying to.
“Sarah.” His thumb traced her lower lip.
Then he moved again and thought became impossible.
There was only sensation. Only Hudson.
His eyes on hers, always paying attention.
But he was still holding back.
Giving her exactly what he thought she could take, and not one degree more.
Sarah locked her legs around him. One heel pressed into the back of his thigh, and she pulled him deeper, past the careful boundary he’d set.
She put her mouth to his ear and caught his earlobe gently between her teeth. “I won’t break.”
Hudson went still. Something in those three words reached him. It was there in the sudden silence of his body before his arms hardened around her. One hand slid beneath her and gripped her hip, changing the angle. He drove his hips forward with an urgency that shocked her.
The air punched from her lungs as his body met hers, his thrusts deeper now. He buried his face in her neck. His hand gripped her thigh, hitching her higher, and the new depth of him reached something inside her that made her cry out, a jolt of pleasure blurring her vision at the edges.
“Hudson—” His name broke apart in her mouth. There was no distance left between them now.
She dragged her hands down his back, nails biting into the muscle along his spine. Hudson groaned into her mouth, and she devoured the sound, wanting another.
The kiss had lost all its earlier grace. Their mouths met. Missed. Found each other again. Salt, heat and need.
Hudson shuddered. “Sarah.” Her name was rough against the damp curve of her neck.
His mouth.
At her jaw. Her throat. The place below her ear. The corner of her lips. As though this still wasn’t close enough. As if he needed every part of her he could reach.
His teeth grazed her collarbone. Sarah lifted her hips toward him.
Oh God.
She was close again.
“Hudson—”
His forehead found hers, his eyes open, dark and unfocused. His rhythm faltered, a tremble rocking through his arms. Sarah slid her hand to the side of his face.
Her body locked around him as his name left her again.
Hudson followed.
He drove deep and held. A rough sound escaped him, and his arms finally bent, bringing his chest down against hers.
Sarah caught him.
Her hands went into his hair. Her face pressed into his neck as the last tremors moved through them both.
Then nothing.
Just breath.
Weight.
The hard thud of his heart against hers.
Hudson’s face stayed buried against her neck. Sarah threaded her fingers through his damp hair. After a moment, he started to shift his weight off her.
Sarah tightened her arms. “Stay.”
She didn’t explain or soften it with for now or tonight.
She just held him. And this time, Hudson stayed.