Laurelin Paige - Hudson

We’re both still panting when she says, “Can we do that again?”

Does she even have to ask? Of course we can do it again. I make a show of telling her, though, looking at my watch before I respond. “You have to be at work at one? I think we can manage to do that again twice.”

I take her mouth again, not trying to start things up, but rather to cool me down. Her lips are swollen, and my kiss is tender. When my heart rate resumes a normal speed, I break away.

After leading her to the couch, I start toward the kitchen. “Water or iced tea?” I call over my shoulder.

“Water, please.”

I grab a bottle and take a long swallow before returning to her. She’s curled up in the corner of the sofa, hugging her knees. I hate that she still hides her nakedness from me, but it’s adorable at the same time. As if she can actually hide anything from me.

I hand her the bottle. She nods a thank you as she takes it, her forehead wrinkled as if she’s thinking. She has a sip then asks. “Could you really do that? Go again twice?”

“What do you think?” I could go all night with her. She’s the first woman that I can say that about. I can never get enough of Alayna.

Her brown eyes flash with sass. “I think you’d like to think you can.”

My eyes narrow. “You don’t have to challenge me to get me to prove it, precious.” I’m semi-hard already.

“Oh, really?” Her eyes dart to my cock and it grows harder under her gaze.

I take the bottle from her hand and set it on the coffee table before I pounce on top of her. She squeals but easily obeys when I urge her to stretch out her body beneath mine.

“Be careful who you’re playing with, Alayna.” I nip at her jawline. “I assure you, I’m the one who will come out of this on top.”

I prove it by pinning her hands above her head while I kiss her senseless. Her hips wriggle to meet mine, but I keep my pelvis slightly off of hers, taunting her. Just as I’m about to get swept away with my teasing, I back off. There’s something I need to ask her, and I can’t wait any longer for the answer. “Why did you decide to resume this?”

It takes her a minute to understand my question. “The sex?” She blushes, moving her eyes from mine. “Well, besides the obvious reason—”

“Which is?”

“It’s fun.” Her blush deepens.

“Yes, you’re right. Quite obvious.” And quite fun. It’s her other answer I’m interested in, though. “And…?”

Now she meets my gaze, her dark browns penetrating me with their transparency, with their honesty. “And I trust you,” she says.

My throat goes dry and my heart feels like it’s dropped to my stomach. It’s not what I expected her to say in a million years, though what had I expected her to say? That she’d jumped back into bed with me because I’d bullied her? Because she couldn’t resist me? Because she was in love with me?

Most anything she could have said would have had its own repercussions to face, but any other answer would have been easier to take than this one.

It suddenly seems like there isn’t enough air, and I have to sit up. I gently maneuver her legs so I have a place to sit. And then, because I’m a masochist and I have to hear it all, I say, “Go on.”

“Well…” She curls her knees again as she thinks, but doesn’t use them to hide her breasts like she did before. She’s more comfortable—quite ironic considering how uncomfortable I feel at the moment. Thankfully, she doesn’t seem to notice.

“You said you were different now,” she says finally. “Different with me. And I realized that it doesn’t matter if it’s crazy or stupid to believe it. Because I believe it anyway. I believe you. I trust you. About this, I trust you.”

Again, she hits me with those piercing browns, and I feel like someone who’s standing before a judge waiting for his sentencing. It will either be freedom or execution, but the strange thing is that the verdict will be decided by me. By how I choose to respond to her frankness.

I already know what decision I’ll make, even before weighing my options.

There are so many reasons she shouldn’t trust me, of course, and not the least of which is that I’m currently lying and scamming her. This is a perfect opportunity to confess, and if I were decent at all, I would, even though it would certainly be the death of me.

But it’s not what I choose. Because in a very real way, I’ve been more honest with her than anyone in my entire life. Even with Celia, I smothered any emotion that ever began to creep into being. With Alayna, I’m letting that go, letting feelings slip into my existence. It’s changing me into someone who can be trusted. She’s changing me into someone who deserves those words—I trust you.

It moves me—her words, her presence, my transformation. It robs me of speech.

So I pull her into my lap and take up telling her in the way I know best—with my body. With our physical connection that transcends any connection I’ve had with another human being. I kiss her face, her eyelids, her cheeks, the curve of her jaw. Then, as my mouth travels along her neckline, I trail my hands down her sides, memorizing the lines of her ribs with my fingertips, gliding the slope of her hips with my palms.

I speak to her like this. My gestures in place of words. I’m learning for you, I say when I lick the rise of her shoulder. Your trust gives me a reason, I say as I tug her nipple to a peak. Don’t give up on me, I say as I slide my hand between her thighs to rub at her clit. I feel for you, as I lift her up and settle her on my cock.

Though I know nothing of love, I make love to her. Wholly. Completely. Undeniably.

She steadies herself with her hands on my shoulders as I buck into her and glide out. She’s warm and tight, and my crown knocks against her in a place that makes her writhe and makes my cock grow harder. She’s on top, but I control all the movement—the tempo, the force of my thrusts, the depth of my drive. It’s a love song that I sing to her, the way I hold her and kiss her and send her to a state of ecstasy, her breathy gasps the underscore. I make sure she comes—twice, even—before I grip my fingers into her hips and chase my own orgasm, reaching it when I least expect it with a sudden burst of euphoria.

It’s the sweetest sex has ever been for me. The most poetic. The most transformative.

As we settle together, spiraling down from bliss, I land in a space of clarity. I stop worrying if it’s going to be Alayna that falls apart from this affair and start accepting that it’s going to be me.

Before

Trying to ignore the Christmas music my mother had playing, I concentrated on entering some figures into a spreadsheet from one of the companies my father was letting me work on over the break. Plexis, a Pierce Industry subsidiary with a great outlook. If my modifications to the business plan were successful, the earnings for the coming year would far exceed what had been predicted. It was exciting enough to make spending time with my family over the holidays bearable.

“I don’t see any diamond ring size boxes under here,” my mother said behind me.

I glanced back to see her arranging the presents under the tree in the living room for the fifth time in an hour. There were more gifts than I’d ever seen growing up, and I bet that at least half of them were for the baby.

“There’s not going to be a ring, Mother. I’m not marrying Celia. I’ve told you that.”

“I keep hoping you’re trying to surprise me with a Christmas engagement.” She’d talked nonstop of marriage plans since Thanksgiving. I’d thought it would have been Celia’s parents driving a union. Turned out Sophia was even worse.

“I really wish I’d known what color to buy.” She added another gift to the heap. “I saved all the receipts though. In case you and Celia get sick of green and yellow.”

When I’d arranged for limited fathering of Celia’s child, I’d neglected to factor in my mother. Since we’d announced our news, Sophia had been a buzz of excitement. Every conversation stemmed around our child. Every day was another chance for her to dote on her unborn grandchild. It seemed she might not be drinking as much too, though that was hard to prove, especially when I’d been away at school for much of the last few weeks.

She moved a present from the back so that it was more visible. It was one I hadn’t seen before, the package shaped very much like a rocking horse. How long would it be before a kid could even use that? With a sigh, I turned back to my computer.

“I’m so glad Celia’s not going back to school next semester. I wish you were staying here.”

This was another conversation we’d had repeatedly. By phone and then at least twice a day since I’d come home for break. “Boston isn’t far. I’ll come up for every prenatal exam. I’ll make sure I’m here for the birth.”

“That’s what you keep saying. But labor can come on quickly. What if you missed it?”

I didn’t answer. Honestly, I’d be glad to miss it. Seeing Celia in a delivery room did not rank high on my-fun-things-to-do list. The rest, though—the exams, the ultrasounds, even the damn yellow and green layette—that I’d begun to look forward to with surprising enthusiasm. I was going to be a father. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t biologically mine. Because I’d claimed it, it was mine in every way that would ever matter.

Sophia didn’t seem to care that I hadn’t responded. “You know, we don’t have to wait until after Christmas for the gender reveal ultrasound. We could probably get in with one of those 3D ultrasound places. Should I call Celia and arrange it? My treat.”

“No.” I paused while I finished entering the formula I was working on. “Madge doesn’t trust those things. She wants to wait for her scheduled exam.”

“We don’t have to tell Madge.”

“Even if you are capable of keeping a secret from Madge, I don’t think Celia would want to go without her mother.”

“What I don’t understand is why you’re not more excited about it?” My mother’s voice came nearer as she spoke. Then she sat at the table next to me. “It’s your first child, Hudson. Take some more pride.”

Perhaps I needed to do a better job at mustering enthusiasm. My father, though, hadn’t shown much more excitement than me. No wondering why there. We’d never talked about it, but if he didn’t assume the baby could be his, then he was an idiot. Even if he believed I actually was responsible for Celia’s pregnancy, he had to be at least a little uncomfortable with the idea that he’d shared a woman with his son. It would bother me, anyway. But my father and I had obvious differences in what was socially acceptable and what wasn’t.

“I’m not very expressive,” I said, not looking up from my work. “It doesn’t mean I don’t feel things.” It was a line I’d stolen from some movie. Wouldn’t it have been something if it were actually true?

She put a hand on my arm. “I’m glad to hear that, Hudson. I used to worry you didn’t.”

My mother had never given any indication that she noticed my lack of emotional response. I typed in one more figure and shut my laptop. “What exactly worried you, Mother?”

“You, Hudson. You worried me.” She dropped her hand from my arm to the table. “Do you remember when you were twelve and you had those entrance exams for Choice Hill?”

I nodded. Choice Hill had been the elite middle school I’d gone to. The admissions process was a rigorous six-hour session of various IQ and personality tests. The children accepted were not only the wealthiest in Manhattan but also intellectually gifted.

“One of the psychologists that worked with you—” She furrowed her brow as if trying to remember something. After a few seconds, she waved her hand dismissively. “His name escapes me, but anyway, he suggested that you struggled with emotions. He recommended we had you tested further to rule out sociopathic tendencies or schizoid personality disorder or Asperger’s Syndrome. Because you had a blunted affect. Or experience avoidance. Or something like that. I don’t remember the terms.”

My heart thudded in my chest. This was the first time I’d heard any of this. “But I don’t remember being tested for anything.”

“Oh, no. You made it into the school, so we didn’t see any reason to pursue the issue further.”

I sat back in my chair, incredulous. “I made it into the school,” I repeated, “and so you didn’t see any reason to find out if your child might be suffering from a major psychological disorder?”