Fixed on You (33 page)

Sobbing now, I choked out,
“You’ve already done both.”

“Fuck!” His features were
overcome with horror, as if I’d told him I’d killed his mother. Or maybe not
his mother, but someone he was fond of.

He took a step backward, away
from me. It was devastating, to be hurting so deeply, to see my pain echoed on
his face through the torrents of my tears. I couldn’t stand to feel like that,
like I was losing him. I needed his comfort and to comfort him the only way I
was sure that he would let me—I lunged for him, seizing his lips with mine.

It took only seconds for him to
give in to me, and then he was the way I liked him most, dominating and in
command. And I took the reverse role and gave myself over to him.

“Alayna,” he growled. His hand
found my breast again, and he kneaded the ache away as he devoured my mouth. He
wrapped his other arm around me, drawing me to him so tightly I felt consumed
from all sides. Even inside, the flames of lust licked intensely, my arousal
immediately kindled by the welcome assault on my body.

“Hudson,” I cried against his
lips, not caring this time that we were in the middle of a fight or that the
office door might not be locked. “I need you, too.”

He’d known we’d needed this
before when I’d pushed him away. He was such a perfect lover, understanding my
body and its demands even better than I did. Submitting to him, everything
became easy. I could forget for a moment what barriers lay in between us while
he took me in the way where no barriers separated us at all.

Hudson moved my body backward
until the couch bumped against the back of my calf, and a fleeting thought of,
“Oh, yay; we’re going to christen the couch!” passed through my mind when he
let go of me to reach under my short A-line dress and pull my panties down
below my knees. He pushed me back on the couch, spread my legs open and gathered
the material of my dress up around my stomach, completely exposing my most
private parts for him.

I felt beautiful like that—lying
in wait for my lover who I knew would give and take as he pleased.

He gazed down at me, desire
clouding his eyes as he undid his belt and lowered his pants only far enough to
release his bulging cock from its prison. As fast as he moved, it seemed
forever before he lowered himself on top of me, urging my legs further apart
with his knees. Then he shoved into me with such force I gasped.

He pounded into me with driving
thrusts, focused on his own need, his own desire for orgasm. But even through
the fog of his own lust, he attended to me, his thumb pressing expertly on my
clit, massaging me toward my own climax.

The act may have been primarily
physical, but a deeper connection resulted from the joining of our bodies. Each
stroke eased the sting of his earlier words, and I was certain that the
motivation behind each deep lunge was to chase away his own torment, to release
himself from the guilt of wounding me.

He didn’t shower me with his
usual sex words, but we were hardly quiet as I whimpered under him and he
repeated my name over and over like a mantra, like a prayer. And then the sound
turned guttural as he flexed into me, coming in me with such violent eruption that
it spurred me to release with him on my own shaky cry, “Hudson!”

He collapsed onto me, his head
buried in my neck where his warm breath against my skin felt soothing. I loved
it there, buried beneath him, his cock still buried inside me, our precious
bond so fragile it required this carnal connection. Hudson’s breathing becoming
even, and his body became lax until his weight pressed into me with sweet
agony.

Just as I began to wonder if he’d
fallen asleep he whispered, “I wanted to win you. But I didn’t want to hurt
you.” His arm tightened around me. “That’s the last thing I wanted.”

I understood him completely.
After destroying so many people, after ruining my relationship with my only
living relative, it was hell to imagine hurting even one more person. It had
kept me from becoming close to anyone for so long. But now, I was ready to move
past that fear so that I could earn the reward of intimacy. 

I stroked Hudson’s hair. “That’s
part of relationships, H. People get hurt.” I kissed his head. “But you can
make it better, too.”

He lifted his head to meet my
eyes. “Tell me how.”

Cupping his face in my hands, I
rubbed my thumbs across his skin, rough from five o’clock shadow. “Let me in,”
I pleaded.

“Don’t you see I already have?”

I closed my eyes, hoping to stop
a fresh stream of tears. He had opened up, but only enough for me to slip the
tip of my toes past the threshold of the door he kept so tightly closed. It was
a big step for him. But it wasn’t really letting me in. Everything he shared
with me I had to pry from his lips. He hadn’t given me his trust. It wasn’t
enough to build upon and if that was as far as the door was opening, we had no
hope for a future.

I swallowed hard and opened my
eyes, letting one teardrop escape. Wiping it away, I rolled out from underneath
him and pulled my panties up as I stood.

Hudson sighed. Then I heard the
sound of his zipper and, to my ears, it was a metaphor—putting himself away,
shutting himself off. Again.

But when he stood, he wrapped his
arms around me from behind. His voice rasped in my ear. “Why do you act like
I’m running?”

“Because you shut me out. Isn’t
that the same as running?”

“What about you? What about how
you showed up in our bedroom crying and couldn’t even tell me why?”

“That was different.” But maybe
it wasn’t. I hadn’t told him what his mother said because it hurt too much.
Because I was embarrassed. 

He spun me around to look at him.
“What did she say to you, Alayna?”

He’d thrown down the gauntlet. If
I wanted him to be open, I’d have to be too. “That I was insignificant. She
called me a whore.” I looked at a chip of paint on the wall, not able to meet
his eyes.

He cursed under his breath. “My
mother’s heartless and cruel.” Putting two fingers under my chin, he turned my
face to him. “You’re not a whore, Alayna. Not even close. And the magnitude of
your importance in my life can’t be put into words.”

“She also said that you can’t
ever love me.”

He froze. Then his hand dropped
from my face. “I’ve told you that before.”

The pain of his statement hit me
hard in the gut. I pulled out of his arms. “Well, she told me again.” I swung
back toward him. “So there, I opened up. Are you happy?”

“Alayna…”

I ached in the center of my
being. This was why I hadn’t told him—because despite what he and Sophia had
said, I’d believed that he could love. That he could love me.

Tears flooded my eyes and
splashed down my face. “How could you not think I’d fall in love with you,
Hudson? Even if you didn’t mean for it to happen, how could I not?” I wiped at
my damp cheek with the back of my hand. “Does that mean anything to you at
all?”

He drew back as if I’d slapped
him. “How can you ask that? Of course, it does. But, Alayna, you don’t know
that you’d still say that if you knew me.”

“I
do
know you.”

“Not everything.”

“Only because you haven’t let me
in!” We were spinning in circles, getting nowhere.

He spread his arms out to the
sides. “What is it you want to know? About what I did to other women? About
Celia? I’m the reason she got pregnant, Alayna. Because I spent an entire
summer making her fall in love with me when I felt nothing for her. For fun. For
something to do. And then, when I’d completely broken her, she became
destructive—sleeping around, partying, drugs. You name it, she did it. She
didn’t even know who the father was.”

I heaved a breath, wiping the
lingering tears from my face. “So you claimed it was yours.”

“Yes.”

“Because you felt responsible.”

“Yes. She lost the baby at three
months. Likely from the drinking and drugs she’d consumed early on. She was
devastated.”

“That’s awful.” I could sense he
felt as responsible for the death of Celia’s unborn baby as for its conception
in the first place. It was a lot of weight to carry, a lot of blame.

But even though I could concede
Hudson had a role in the situation, it didn’t scare me away. “It’s awful,” I
repeated, “but I don’t understand. You thought this would make me not love
you…why?”

He perched on the arm of the sofa
and pierced me with an incredulous stare. “Because it changes everything. I did
that. That’s who I am. It’s my past and it’s very ugly.”

A sob threatened, but I choked it
back with a hard swallow. The ugly things—there were so many ugly things about
myself that always lay beneath the surface of every conversation, every moment.
They poisoned and destroyed. I was well versed in the ugly.

It broke my heart that the same
darkness haunted Hudson. That he believed his history to be so horrible that it
could change things between us. It couldn’t. It didn’t.

I moved in front of him and
rested my hands on his shoulders. “Do you think your ugly is any different than
mine?”

“This isn’t like following
someone around or calling too many times, Alayna.”

“It was an unforeseen tragedy, Hudson.
A game that got out of hand. You didn’t set out for Celia to get pregnant and
have a miscarriage. And you can’t diminish the things I’ve done to a simple
statement like that either. I hurt people. Deeply. But that was before. Less
than ideal pasts, remember? It doesn’t mean it defines our future. Or even our
now.”

He blew out a warm breath as his
thumb brushed at a lingering tear in the corner of my eye. “When I’m with you,
I almost believe that.”

“That just means you need to
spend more time with me.”

He chuckled softly. “Is that what
that means?” He trailed his thumb down my face to caress my cheek. “Yesterday
morning, when I got the phone call that required me to be in Cincinatti—I
couldn’t even let myself look at you, sleeping in that bed. If I did, I
wouldn’t have been able to leave.”

My chest swelled with his
confession. “I thought you left because you were freaking out.” His puzzled
look drove me to clarify. “Because of the love stuff.”

“I wasn’t freaking out. I was
surprised, that’s all.”

“Surprised?” 

“That that’s what we were
feeling.” His gaze was soft. “That it was love.”

I could barely breathe, afraid
that if I did I’d disturb the path of our conversation. “It was.” I swallowed.
“It is.”

“Hmm.” He smiled. “I never felt
this before. I didn’t know.” His swept his hands down the sides of my torso.
“But, Alayna, I’ve never had a healthy romantic relationship. Every woman who’s
loved me…” His voice tightened. “I don’t want to break you, too.”

“You’re not going to break me,
Hudson. I thought you might, at first. Turns out you make me better. And I
think I do the same for you.”

“You do.”

“If you decide to not…” I
searched for how to say what I meant. “Follow through…with whatever this is
that we have, it will hurt. But I won’t be broken.”

“But it would hurt?”

“Like a motherfucker.”

“Then we better follow through.” He
drew me closer, wrapping his arms around my waist. “Alayna, you’re fired. You
can’t be my pretend girlfriend anymore.” His face grew serious. “Be my real
girlfriend instead.”

Joy swept through me in a
dizzying rush. “I kind of think I already am.”

“You are.”

“Can I still call you H?”

“Absolutely not.” He turned his
mouth to meet mine and kissed me with lips sweet and tender, but passionate all
the same.

I don’t know how long we stayed
there like that—on the arm of the chair, his body wrapped around me, kissing
and cuddling. Time was irrelevant in that moment we were sharing.

Finally though, when I remembered
that the club would be opening soon and that I still had a shift to work, I
pulled my lips from his and asked the question that I knew was burning in both
our minds. “What now?”

One side of Hudson’s mouth curled
up in a sexy smile. “Come to my place after you finish here.”

Yes. Of course, yes!
“I’m
not off until three.”

“I don’t care. I want you in my
bed.”

“Then, yes.”

With great reluctance, I pulled
myself away. I offered my hand to help him up, and he took it, rising in the
graceful way of his. He let go of my hand and tugged the back of his jacket
down and adjusted his tie, transforming back into the man most people knew:
Hudson Pierce, ruler of the business world.

I watched, mesmerized, still in
shock that this man was mine.
Mine
. It was the first time I’d said it to
myself, and it sounded so wonderful I thought I could never get tired of saying
it—
mine, mine, mine.

His eyes swept behind him as he
buttoned his jacket. “Nice couch,” he said, as if noticing it for the first
time.

“Thanks,” I laughed.

He studied me with amusement
before fixing my hair and straightening the collar of my dress. Then he took my
hands in his. “Tell Jordan to take you to the Bowery. He knows where it is.”

“Not the fuck pad?” My voice
seemed unusually high, laced with surprise and excitement.

“No. My home. I’ll leave a key
with the doorman
.”

I hadn’t been anywhere but the
loft with him and didn’t even know where he lived. I’d thought it was a good
thing before. But now that he’d invited me, there was no other place I’d rather
be.

And, besides, I was ready—ready
to stop being afraid of making mistakes, ready to let myself be truly healed of
my past, ready to start again without fear of regret.

Lacing my fingers through his, I
giggled. Since when did I giggle? “We’re really doing this, aren’t we? Moving
forward.”