to be needed this badly by a man who would flay himself at my doorstep, showing me his need and vulnerability. This. This is what I’d been waiting for, to see beneath the shell. “Tell me—”
I didn’t need him to finish. It all came to me in the blink of an eye. The same words he’d said on the dance floor. “I think that was it.”
Tell me what I have to say. What I must do.
And he’d hit that out of the park with a grand slam.
His jaw snapped closed right before a wicked, heated expression twisted his lips and his eyes gleamed with victory.
I stepped away from him, opening my door and kicked off my shoes. “Do you want to come inside?”
The door closed behind Hudson and sucked all the oxygen out of the room with the click.
“What made you change your mind?”
My gaze swept his frame. Still in his tuxedo from the wedding. The tie gone and last I saw, thrown into the back of his truck. The top button undone. He was rumpled but still the most handsome man I’d ever laid eyes on. The kindest man I’d ever met.
And he loved me.
“You did.”
In the end, it was as simple as that.
He came to me in three long strides and placed his warm palms on my cheek. His lips followed, suffusing me with warmth from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes and my hands went to him, to his hips. I held him to me as he claimed my mouth, slipped his tongue inside and with a feral groan from deep in his throat, he claimed me.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, sliding hands to my neck, down my sides until his hand was at my lower back, dipping beneath the hem of my dress until we were pressed, flesh to flesh.
One barrier gone between us.
Too many remaining. Ones to think of another night.
“I have waited, my entire life, for a man like you and still, even in my wildest dreams, no one I dreamed of came close to the man you are.”
He settled his forehead against mine and exhaled a shuddering breath. “Let me have you.”
I was his to have whenever he wanted. I would deny him nothing. Not for all he’d given me.
It wasn’t the job. It wasn’t the home.
It was everything that was him… safety, security, but most of all, a love that didn’t demand and steal and berate. A love that was pure and honorable and beautiful.
I kissed him this time, rolling to my toes and found the hinge of his jaw, his throat, before he dipped down and took my mouth while sliding his hand deeper into my dress until he was cupping my backside, pressing me against his desire for me.
I gasped into his mouth at the feel of him and surged forward, taking him back a step, guiding him down the short hall to my bedroom.
His other hand slid to the back of my neck, snaked into my hair and dug fingertips to my scalp that held me in place while he devoured my mouth.
We moved slowly and in sync. He paused to kick off a shoe and I unbuttoned his shirt. Another shoe removed. So went the tuxedo coat and vest he wore like a Tom Ford model. He found the zipper at my side and I found the cufflinks at his wrist.
We undressed each other slowly, mouths only separating when necessary until we stood at the edge of my bed, half-disrobed, completely disheveled.
Both of us with heaving breaths and swollen lips and I imagined the desire in his eyes was only the fraction showing in mine. God, I wanted him. I wanted to forget the pain he caused. I wanted to show him how much I loved him too even if those words still cling to my throat unable to break free.
“Hudson,” I whispered and opened his shirt. He stayed still while I explored his chest with my fingertips and hands, sliding them over the curves of his chest, over the definition on his abs. “There is so much I want to learn to do with you.”
“Trust me. I feel the same.”
His voice was the low rumble of an animal, restraining himself before he attacked.
I pushed off his shirt, revealed the muscled expanse of his body, and fumbled with the buttons of his dress pants and belt. Once opened, the zipper tore through the room like a thunderstorm.
And my heart rate rumbled the same when