Page 47 of When the Time Is Right
But I didn’t want to be.
“It was fine. Well, except…” His voice trailed off before he could finish the sentence.
Damn my curiosity. “What was wrong with her? I swear. You’re getting awful picky in our old age.”
He took a step closer, and I took a step back toward my sink. It was easier to pretend when there was distance between us. But though he was still several feet away, my pulse raced and my breaths became shallow. It was hell.
“The truth?” His booming voice shot back as he crept forward, but I had nowhere else to go. “The truth is the date was a ten. Kate looked great. The food—the finger food more specifically—was delicious, what little there was of it. Our conversation flowed easily enough.”
When he stopped, only an arm’s length away, I finally seized what scrap of pride I had and looked up into his blue eyes. His big, deep-blue eyes. Then I swallowed.
“So, what happened? Are you seeing her again?”
Hudson huffed. “Well, that’s kind of up to you.”
“Me?” I dropped the spoon into the sink and put the ice cream down so I could cross my arms over my chest. “What do I have to do with it?”
His lids fell shut, and he tipped his head at the ceiling, stretched his neck from side to side, and then brought his gaze back to mine. “Kate seems to think that, maybe, I have a thing…for you.”
My face flushed hot, and I wondered if maybe I’d fallen down trying to get out of my leather skirt earlier and I was dreaming, passed out on my bedroom floor. The issue with that theory was I could smell him, feel the warmth from his body in front of me, and see his heartbeat thumping in the vein in his neck.
This was real, but I still wasn’t sure I could handle it.
“Well, that’s just, uh, dumb,” I contended weakly. Shaking my head to rattle myself back to sanity, I asked, “W-why did she say that?” I tried to laugh, but it was as fake as my gusto.
“Because, apparently, I talked about you the whole night.”
Okay, I was wrong. I’d thought riding in a car with him and seeing him shirtless and watching him play with Jack and seeing how much he loved my family and having him touch me and avoiding him all week had been torture.
This moment was a whole new level of torment.
“So?” I said childishly.
Because it didn’t matter how I felt or what I wanted. I couldn’t just leap into his arms and expect everything to turn out the way it was supposed to. That’s not how my life worked.
“So I need to find out if this, whatever’s been building between us, is something.”
Wouldn’t that be nice? Up until that very second, it had all been so one-sided and I’d racked my brain all week to understand why I’d felt the crazy things I did about him.
“How you gonna do that?”
“We’re going to kiss,” he stated very matter-of-factly, and then he closed the distance between our bodies.
“We are?” I whispered. My voice had all but left the building.
“Unless you stop me right now.”
I wanted to.
I didn’t want to.
I was scared.
I was excited.
But mostly, I wasn’t stopping him. I was frozen.
He tipped my chin up and I trembled.
“Tell me to stop, Lex.”
I said nothing.
He licked his lips and then whispered, “Last chance.”
That close, I saw the flecks of sapphire in his eyes as he slowly blinked down at me.
Still, I didn’t tell him to stop.
Were we about to ruin everything? Would there ever be a way to go back to the way things had been after this?
Hudson leaned in and then paused. Eye to eye, I could see that he was as nervous as I was. He was doing this for both of us, and for us, I could at least meet him halfway. And a saying from our youth came back to me. Where we go one, we go all.
I lifted up onto my toes, letting him know I was all in.
He let out a short exhale and then crushed his mouth to mine. He didn’t go easy on me, didn’t hold anything back. Instinctively, I tipped my head one way and then the other when he deepened the kiss, mingling his tongue and lips with mine. It was just enough wet. And just enough breath. And just enough Hudson to pull a whimper from my chest.
As if the sound were a shot fired at a starting line, he hoisted me up into his strong arms and placed me on the edge of my sink, never breaking our connection.
My legs wrapped around his waist and the sexiest groan I’d ever heard poured into my mouth.
All thoughts of whether it was right or wrong were drowned out by my hammering heart. We kissed and touched and held on to each other like it was life or death. His calloused hand climbed my thigh and then palmed my ass as he came even closer between my bare legs. My fingers tangled in the longer hair he had on top, and when he moved the kiss from our mouths to my neck, I was lucky to be sitting. Had I needed to rely on my knees, they would have buckled under the weight of it all.
