Chapter Nineteen
The scotch had done its best to grind away the world’s sharp edges, but they were still there, jabbing Hudson in the stomach, and there was only one way to make that feeling go away.
After the Uber driver pulled away from Everly’s building, he meant to give the driver the address to his penthouse. But that’s not what he told the nice lady with the spiked pink hair and the neck tattoo of a tiger. He gave her Felicia’s address. That’s how he ended up on the street where she lived, standing outside her apartment while Honeypot wailed in greeting.
She was probably in there with Tyler. That’s why he was here. His subconscious knew that he needed to see it. See them together—not in a stalker kind of way but more in a pound your head against the wall spiked with rusty nails kind of way. So here he was. The kitchen light was off, but a dim light from somewhere deeper inside the apartment that sent enough light to outline Honeypot as she sat on the kitchen windowsill. It probably came from her bedroom. That’s probably where they were, on that big blue bedspread of hers with all the girlie pillows scattered on the floor.
His gut contracted and twisted itself into a knot that had him seeing red dots at the edges of his vision.
The smart thing would be to turn around and head back to his side of town, using the long walk to clear his head. Instead, the next thing he knew he was walking down the stairs to her door and knocking on it.
Felicia opened it a few seconds later with Honeypot in her arms, wearing black yoga pants and a threadbare long-sleeved T-shirt that Honeypot was in the process of shredding. She didn’t have any makeup on. Her hair was yanked back into a ponytail, big, chunky strands of which had escaped. The tip of her nose was red and her eyes puffy behind her glasses.
Hudson clenched his hands into fists. “What did Captain Clueless do?” Whatever it was, he was going to pay for it.
“Tyler?” She blinked. “Nothing.”
Something had happened, and he was going to do whatever it took to fix it. He just had to find out what happened first. “Then why do you look like you’ve been crying?”
She clamped down on Honeypot as the cat renewed its attempts to break free. “I always get that way when I’m in the middle of a fascinating article about honeypot ant queens that can lay two thousand eggs a day.”
Ants. He was keeping her from reading about ants. Relief seeped through the tight knot of his shoulder muscles, knocking out some of the frustrated tension acting as a vice. Of course, that only left the Felicia-sized hole inside him, and nature abhorred a vacuum. All the want and need and bittersweet-tinged lust roared to the forefront, powerful enough to propel him through the door. He closed it behind him with a backward kick, and he cupped her face in his hands. Honeypot let out a squawk and managed to wriggle free of Felicia’s hold as he backed her up so her ass was against her blue chair. The tip of her tongue snuck out and wet her lips, and he had to bite back a desperate groan.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice breathy as a pink flush colored her cheeks.
“Making a mistake.” One he’d pay for, but he couldn’t care less.
She tugged her bottom lip between her teeth as she looked up at him. “Then why not leave?”
“I can’t.” And it was the truth—for tonight anyway.
He crashed his mouth down on hers, desperate for her. Sex had never been more than scratching an itch for him—until Felicia. She’d changed everything. This had to be it, the last time, because there was no way he could walk away if they kept this up. Seeing her with Captain Clueless tonight had proven that.
He didn’t strip her bare. There wasn’t time. The need to be the only man she could want for this one moment in time was too strong.
He tore his lips from hers. “Take off those yoga pants.”
She did, her eyes blazing with the same urgency blasting through him. He grabbed his wallet, had his pants shoved down around his thighs and had a condom in his hand by the time she sent the black Lycra sailing through the air.
“Are you wet for me?” he asked as he rolled it on. “Even without me even touching you?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice husky with desire.
“How wet?”
She slipped her hand between her legs. Despite her wide stance, the long length of her T-shirt kept him from seeing as much as she wanted. Frustration nipped at him, making his muscles tighten as he watched her wrist push against the hem of her shirt. He wanted to holler at her to stop and keep going forever at the same time. Damn, this woman and her ability to make him insane. And just when he thought he couldn’t take any more, she lifted her busy hand to her lips, mimicking his move from weeks ago, and traced her glistening finger across her lips.
Challenge gleaming in her eyes, she asked, “Why don’t you kiss me and find out?”
Whatever tenuous hold he had on his sanity snapped. Whatever happened next didn’t matter. It was just about right now.
He grabbed her by the waist and lifted her up at the same time as he spun around so his ass was propped against the blue chair. Demanding mouth on his, fingers yanking against his hair, she lifted her hips enough that the head of his cock was at her entrance. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t tease. Without even a heartbeat of a pause, she impaled herself on him, sliding down until he was buried to the hilt and her legs were wrapped snug around his waist.
“So. Fucking. Tight.” And wet. Jesus the sounds their bodies made as they moved together.
He squeezed her bucking hips in his hands, helping her to raise and lower herself so fast it was nearly a blur.
“Love how you fill me up,” she said, panting. “How you make me want more, even though I know I can’t take it.”
“Oh, you can take it. You can take it all.”
And he wanted to give it to her, every inch and so much more to the woman he loved. The realization made him miss a stroke, but she wasn’t having it. She arched her back and reached below them cupping his balls.
“I’m so close.” She let out a yearning moan. “Just fuck me as hard as you can.”
That he could do. Renewing his efforts, he plowed into her as she rode him with an almost frenzied focus. Her bouncing tits were in his face, and he sucked a nipple into his mouth, biting down with enough pressure to elicit a mewl of approval as she sped up her hips, rubbing hard against him where their bodies met on each downward stroke. He bit down again and tugged the stiff peak. She nearly pulled out his hair in response, her core squeezing his dick so tight his climax was making his balls tingle a half second later.
Desperate not to come before her, he ground her against him, making sure her clit made contact. “Matches, I—”
Before he could finish his plea, her entire body bowed, and she cried out. His body responded instantly, his orgasm slamming into him and knocking out everything except for one thought. This whole time he’d thought he was giving the lessons to Felicia, but he’d ended up the one who got schooled.
…
Felicia didn’t know where she was. She could be floating in space for all she knew. That’s what it felt like. It was like that first bite of chocolate after a really shitty day, when her entire body relaxed and she settled into as close to a Zen state of mind as she ever got. Her eyelids were heavy, but she forced herself to open them.
The first thing she saw was the curve of Hudson’s jaw. The first shadow of a beard was starting to show. She wanted to trace her fingers over the coarse spikes to remind herself he was real. That they’d just had crazy hot monkey sex in her living room. That maybe…
“Felicia.” Hudson lowered her feet to the floor and took a step back, taking his warmth and that fuzzy, happy feeling with him.
She took a deep breath. That did not sound like the beginning of a conversation she wanted to have wearing only a T-shirt that was half hanging off her—her yoga pants had been tossed somewhere else during the frenzy of touching, licking, sucking, and fucking.
“We need to talk,” he said.
Yep. Definitely a fully-dressed type of conversation. “Let me just put my pants back on.”
She crossed over to where her yoga pants had landed on the table lamp and yanked them off the shade. Of course, her cell phone started buzzing like crazy. It was too late to be anyone but family, and she knew better than to try to ignore the Hartigans—even at a time like this. If she didn’t answer, she could set the timer for the moment they’d be at her door.
“Do you mind grabbing that?” she asked. “It’s probably my sister, Fallon, and she’s an emergency room nurse across the harbor in Waterbury who expects me to be murdered at any moment since I live in the city.”
Ramble? Her? Never.
Hudson, still soft around the edges and almost fully dressed—although the buttons on his shirt would probably never be found—walked over to the kitchen island and picked it up right as it stopped buzzing.
“It’s not your sister,” he said, his voice hard.
In the middle of pulling on her pants, she looked up. Hudson’s face had lost the satisfied look of a minute before. Instead, it was all sharp angles and hard planes. They ended up meeting halfway, and he handed her the phone then went to work buttoning his pants. Lungs tight, she glanced down at her cell’s screen.
Tyler: Thanks for tonight. Sleep well. You’re going to need that energy for tomorrow.
“You made the right move not inviting him in,” Hudson said as he slipped his belt through the buckle with jerky movements.
What was his problem? She and Tyler were going jogging tomorrow morning. It wasn’t like…oooohhhhh. He thought something totally different. In any other circumstance, that could be a good thing if it bothered him. But with Hudson? He’d already declared she wasn’t his type. The memory of hearing those words coming out of his mouth put her on guard.
“Oh really,” she asked, bracing for a blow. “Why’s that?”
He smoothed his belt through the loop, then turned his attention to her, giving her an assessing up and down. “After you’ve worked so hard for so long to get him to notice you, you don’t want to just bang him right away. Gotta make him work for it.”
It took a minute for her brain to make sense of his words. Was he slut shaming her? After what they’d done? After what they’d done on multiple occasions? Oh. Hell. No. “How dare you!”
“You dared with me on the first date.” He pointed over her shoulder. “Right there on that ottoman when you came around my fingers.”
“Date?” It came out shrill, and she didn’t care. He wasn’t getting away with that kind of bullshit. “What date? It was all just a project, remember? Operation: Bromance. Because God forbid you ever go after something or someone just because you want it.”
He started. “What the hell are you talking about?”
What was she talking about? Of course he would ask that. Of. Course. Heat slammed through her as all the pieces came together and exploded inside her like an atom bomb. It wasn’t just that she wasn’t his type. It was that none of what had happened between them—none of it—had ever meant anything to him. Not even the cabin. The realizations came in short bursts like gunfire aimed right at her chest. She’d thought she’d hurt before. She was wrong. So very wrong. About so much of it. If he hadn’t been standing only a foot in front of her, she would have collapsed to the floor, but he was here, so that wasn’t an option. Instead, she grabbed ahold of every bit of spit-in-your-eye, pissed-off Irish the Hartigan family had handed down to her and turned it on Hudson.
“You like to think that you’re so fucking superior, the man who sees all and knows what people really want. That’s why you have that stupid secret cabin where you get to pretend to be the man behind the curtain who controls it all. And why?” She marched up to him and jabbed a finger in his unrelenting chest. “Because it makes you feel good to have that secret. That’s the real reason you haven’t told your family that you’re Hughston, not some bullshit about your dad.”
He brushed her hand aside and glared down at her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he snarled.
“I’m a trained scientist who observes for a living.” That’s right, buddy. Undergrad. Grad. Doctoral thesis. This is what I do. “You wanna know what I see when I step back and look at the contained and compartmentalized habitat you’ve created for yourself?”
His mask slid into place, and he lifted an eyebrow as if he could barely contain his boredom but had decided to indulge her. “Enlighten me, Ant Lady.”
“I see a man who likes to think that he’s all about sacrificing for the people he loves, but it’s a lie. You’re a lie.” Just like the supposed friendship between them that had turned to something more for her. Tears burned in her eyes but she blinked them away. So much for her keen observational skills if she’d missed all of that until it was too late. It was too little, too late, but she saw it all now. “You keep your whole life, the important parts of it, secret. You wear that fake as shit Mr. Charming mask and you let people think they know you when they don’t have a clue. You think you’re being gallant letting people have their illusions. But you’re not. You’re being a total chickenshit who’s too scared to show the world who he really is and what he really values.”
…
If Hudson looked down, there’d be a giant gaping hole in his chest. He was sure of it. He’d ached before. That had been nothing. This was like a baseball bat to the head but without the sweet relief of unconsciousness. So this was how it would end—with a bang of the non-orgasmic kind. Fine. He could do that.
Too mad to do anything but ignore the tears glimmering in her eyes, he went on the defensive. “So now it’s my turn to take lessons from the woman who lives her life according to to-do lists she wrote as a fifteen-year-old?”
She gasped, her hand flying to her throat. “That’s not fair.”
“Matches, life isn’t fair.” If it were, they wouldn’t be screaming at each other. “Get used to it. If I lie to the people I love, it’s only because it makes everyone happier, makes their lives a little easier.”
And that was exactly why he did it. He wasn’t hiding anything, unless it was for their peace of mind. And as to being a fixer? Well, big fucking deal. He liked to help people. She could sue him.
“Sounds like rationalizing to me,” she shot back, crossing her arms so that her tits rose higher under the sorry excuse of a shirt she was wearing.
Why was he even noticing that? He sure as hell shouldn’t. What he needed to do was get the fuck out of here. His feet didn’t move.
“I don’t give two shits about what the way I live my life sounds like to a woman who spends her life in a lab surrounded by ants.”
She flipped him off. “At least I know who I am and I’m honest about it.”
“Oh really?” He laughed. It was a rough, mean sound that perfectly complimented the acidic anger flowing through his veins. She couldn’t be right about him. She wasn’t. “That’s what you think?”
“It’s the truth.”
And she probably really thought it was. He may have been delusional when he fell for her, but she was just lying to herself. And if this was all imploding right before his eyes, he might as well go all in and watch the world burn down around him. He took in a deep breath, watching her whole body practically spark with fury as she stood in front of him, five-feet-nothing of ticked-off woman. Good. That’s what he needed. She said he never took what he wanted? She was wrong. Because right now he needed her to despise him. It was the only way he could walk out that door. The only way he could stand seeing her beside Tyler at another Harbor City event. Or God forbid, at her wedding. So he ignored the voices telling him to shut the fuck up already and did what he had to do.
“I don’t know whether to laugh at you, or pat you on the head and go my way, Matches, because the truth is that you don’t have a fucking clue about anything, especially not what a real man and not a fifteen-year-old’s fantasy of a man wants. Hell, you didn’t even know what you wanted until I showed you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So now you’re mansplaining my own wants and needs to me?”
“Someone has to.” He reached out and glided his thumb across her full bottom lip. It was the wrong thing to do, but he couldn’t stop himself. He needed to touch her. Righteous indignation still flared in her eyes, but her mouth softened just a bit. He could kiss her right now. It was the only fucking thing he wanted to do. But he couldn’t. That wasn’t what she needed—and to give her what she wanted he had to let loose with the napalm. “If you could’ve figured it out on your own then you wouldn’t have fucked—repeatedly—the first guy who offered to help you learn what exactly it is that you need between your legs.”
Her eyes went wide, and she inhaled a sharp breath. Her hand struck out, connecting with his cheek before he saw it coming. It hurt like a motherfucker, and he was glad it did.
“Get the fuck out of my apartment, and don’t come back,” she ordered, her voice shaking with emotion. “Ever.”
“Gladly.” He thought he couldn’t feel worse. He was wrong. There were people whose parachutes hadn’t opened that had experienced less pain than was breaking him from the inside out right now. But he turned his back on her, and his feet finally started to move toward the door. “You’ll have to text me and let me know what Tyler thinks of that little moan you make when you come. Maybe you can give him a blowjob while you’re on the ottoman. It’s a good move. I taught you well.”
“Just go,” her voice broke.
Hudson yanked open the door and walked out, stopping halfway through, unable to keep moving without one last look at her. But it was too late. By the time he’d turned, she was already gone. Her bedroom door that had been open before was now closed. It was for the best. How else could it have ever ended for a man like him but with misery? He closed the door and headed for the only place in the world where he could escape.