forward, lifted her off her feet, and carried her until her back hit the wall.
Shock registered on her face, but I lost sight of it when my mouth roughly found her neck.
“Oh, God!” she cried out, threading her fingers into the back of my hair. She slanted her head to the side to allow me better access.
With all the finesse of a hurricane, I kissed and sucked my way up to her ear, rumbling, “Are you done yet?”
“Hudson,” she moaned. “I’m trying.”
I bit the sensitive flesh below her ear and then set her on her feet, but only so I could palm either side of her gorgeous face. “Try harder. Do you understand me?”
Her mouth hung open, and unable to stop myself, I pressed my lips to hers in an equally punishing and erotic union. Our mouths sealed and our tongues tangled with the brutal strength of passion. We were both panting when I came back up for air.
“Get out of the fucking past, Lex. You don’t belong there.” I released her face and slid my impatient hands down to her ass, using it for leverage as I ground into her. “Don’t you get it? You belong with me. You have always belonged with me.”
She kissed me again, the salt from her tears mingling on our taste buds. “I’m yours. I swear I am.”
“Then show me. Let this shit go and come back to me. I am wasting away over here, babe. Do what you have to do, but please, just hurry the hell up.” I rolled my hips, my thick cock pressing against her stomach.
“I am,” she whimpered, her hands diving between us to the button on my jeans.
That was all the permission I needed. Shoving her dress up, I hooked a finger in her panties and tugged them to the side. When she finally freed my length, I lifted her off her feet and drove into her with a feral possession I’d never be able to control with her.
“Hudson,” she moaned, her arms folding around my neck.
“Say you love me.”
“I love you.”
I raked my teeth over her bare shoulder. “Say this is it for you. Tell me this will be over soon. Then it will just be me and you forever.”
“I promise.”
I drove into her again, more determined with every thrust. “Soon, Lex. Soon.”
“Stop talking,” she begged, her core tightening around my cock.
“Then say the fucking words I want to hear.”
“I love you. I’m yours. Me and you forever. Soon. I swear to you. And everything else in between, Hud. Now, stop fucking talking. I’m about to come.”
I was about to come too, but I still smiled. God, I’d missed that woman.
We were upstairs and relatively quiet, but I couldn’t have cared less if the entire world had heard us. The weight lifted off my shoulders in that bathroom was monumental.
It wasn’t an immediate fix. Lex still had a lot of work to do before we could jump back into things. And damn if that space I was going to have to continue to give her wasn’t going to hurt even more now, but as we walked back down the stairs, hand in hand, the first real smile I’d felt in three fucking weeks pulling at my lips and her promises of soon still ringing in my ear, I had renewed hope that the end was near.
Little did I know that fate was just getting started.
Three weeks. It took three weeks—and one big reminder in my childhood bathroom—that, yes, being emotionally ready was one thing, but actually doing something about it was another.
I was ready, and now, I had a plan of attack.
As the phone rang in my ear, I wondered if maybe they’d had it disconnected and the number belonged to someone else now. Just as I was about to hang up, I heard, “Hello.”
“Mrs. Parker?”
“Yes,” Brenden’s mother, Lisa, answered.
“It’s me. Alexis.”
Over the line, I heard her draw an audible breath. I’d never purposefully quit talking to them or intentionally put distance between us, but after those first few months when I’d nearly slipped away from everyone, there were just some people I never found my way back to. That included the entire Parker family.
Waiting for her to say something—or possibly hang up—I scratched Beep’s head at my kitchen table. Over the last three weeks, I’d made a list to tackle and it started with people. Hudson was right. I’d been hiding and that was no better than lying. Now that I was finished lying to myself,