Chapter 28

28

Charlie

Charlie’s Luck:

Just my luck when I’m at my absolute horniest, Hudson tags along.

When Hudson turned up for our second trip to Dallas, I let out a decidedly unmanly squeak. Nico shot me a smirk from the front seat, but I did my best to brush it off.

“Sorry, just pinched myself with the seat belt,” I muttered.

“Sure you did,” he replied, deadpan. The man was clearly onto me.

Hudson slid into the big SUV next to me, and I couldn’t help but catch a whiff of his scent. It was the same unique smell I always noticed first thing in the morning when we rode together to work in the cab of his truck: a combination of whatever laundry soap he used and the sharp, sporty scent of his deodorant. When we’d gotten together back in Ireland, I’d made a point of inhaling the delicious smell from his pits like some kind of psychopath. The minute I caught a whiff of that familiar smell in the narrow confines of the vehicle’s back seat, I felt my dick perk up and act like a bloody nuisance.

“Hey,” he said before clearing his throat. “Hope you don’t mind me tagging along.”

“Mm, the more the merrier,” I said with a decided effort to project an I don’t give a shit attitude.

“How’s Darci?” West asked as he began to pull down the long gravel lane to the road. “She still staying up at the cabin with you?”

I noticed Nico’s eyes flick back toward me, confirming he knew I gave a shit. And he was right. I gave plenty of shits. It was fine for Nico to think I had a little crush on his brother-in-law as long as he didn’t discover I knew what the man looked like naked.

When Hudson responded, he acted like I wasn’t even there.

“Yeah. She’s still there. She’s staying with me until she finds a new apartment.”

I couldn’t help but butt in. “She doesn’t mind you’re going out with us?”

Hudson’s brows furrowed. “No, why would she mind?”

I shrugged. “Some girlfriends don’t like when their man goes clubbing without them, I guess.”

My nonchalance act was for shit. I’d never been any good at fishing.

Hudson’s eyebrow lifted, and the side of his mouth curved up. “Who said she was my girlfriend?”

I felt my cheeks fire up. No telling how red my pale skin was turning. I leaned forward to let my hair fall over my cheeks. If that hid my blushing, it was a pleasant side effect of my studying the very interesting interior fittings of West’s vehicle.

“She’s not?” I asked. “It seemed like she was hoping otherwise.”

Blasé. I am all ease and detachment. Watch me not care about your answer. La-la-la.

“No, definitely not,” Hudson said

Thank bloody Christ.

“Oh. Shame. She’s a nice woman.”

I looked out the window at the farmland rushing past before closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. Suddenly, it was a bit hard to swallow, and I was sure it was from the dry air of the vehicle’s heating vents.

Irritating dry air.

“What about you?” Hudson asked. “You didn’t want to invite Stevie to join us tonight?”

“Stevie?” I asked, turning to him in confusion. “Oh, right. Stevie.”

Play it cool. You have options. All sorts of men want to be with you. No need to look desperate for him.

“I asked him this morning at breakfast, but he said he had to work,” I replied. If he assumed breakfast was a Morning After thing as opposed to a stop in at Sugar Britches for coffee and a croissant, then who was I to correct him?

“Oh.”

He was jealous of Stevie. Well, what do you know?

My heart beat triple time.

Nico turned to West in the front seat. “Why is Stevie working so much these days? I give him as many hours as I can at the shop, but I know he’s working the hospital coffee cart and feeding animals for Doc and Grandpa for extra money. Stevie feeding animals in a barn is a cry for help, don’t you think? Could he be in some kind of trouble?”

West shrugged. “Maybe you should talk to him. Ask him about it. I thought you guys were close.”

“We are, that’s just it. If he’s not talking to me about it, it must be really personal.”

They continued discussing it while I tried my hardest not to sniff Hudson.

It was a long couple of hours.

* * *

Maybe I’d madea mistake when I’d declined Hudson’s offer to dance with him, but I was still annoyed at him for being so hot and cold around me. Keeping my distance was probably the right plan. However, watching Hudson grind against strangers made me want to simultaneously vomit and beat some fuckers to death.

I wondered if my teeth might crack from how tightly clamped my jaw was.

“You’re going to break that glass if you don’t ease up,” Nico yelled over the house music. He gently unclenched my fingers from the glass I held and moved it to the center of the table. “What’s wrong? Guys have been trying to pick you up all night, and you’ve only danced a couple of times.”

How could I explain to the tattooed man that his brother-in-law was all I could see? That every man who’d come up to me that night looked like the arse end of a wheelie bin compared to Hudson Wilde?

I caught the subject of my peevish thoughts glancing across the table at me as he returned to take his seat, so I made a big production out of throwing back the rest of my drink and standing up. Many of the men in the club had their shirts off, so I peeled mine off and tossed it to Nico. His eyes widened and his grin flashed.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” he whooped. West leaned over and covered Nico’s eyes, shooting me a wink.

I ran my hands down my chest to my stomach and then shifted my cock as if no one was watching.

Everyone was watching.

I flicked my hair back over my shoulder and sauntered into the center of the dancing mob. Within moments, I was surrounded by men reaching out to touch me and pull me against them, using the deep beat of the bass as an excuse to grope and feel.

Despite having partied plenty at college, it was nothing like this. I’d never actually been pawed by several men at once, and it began to scare me a little. I wasn’t a big guy. I was femme and skinny and likely unable to defend myself if a big man truly wanted to have his way with me, but I was in the middle of a crowded dance floor, so how dangerous could it be?

I closed my eyes and tried to enjoy the attention, tried to experience what it was like to play with the big dogs in a big American gay dance club where the music was hot and the men were hotter.

Someone’s hands tweaked my nipples, and someone else’s grabbed my ass. I took a deep breath, reminding myself to relax and just give myself over to the new experience.

I felt coarse beard scruff on my shoulder and then the sharp pain of a bite to my skin. I yelped and jumped, turning to glare at the man grinning behind me. Before I had a chance to tell him where to shove his fucking vampire teeth, he was gone.

They were all gone.

And in their place was Hudson. His arms were wrapped tightly around me, and his face was feral. He eyeballed anyone and everyone who even considered getting near me. At one point, he even growled when someone reached out to grab my hips from behind. By the time he was done marking his territory, I was wrapped up in his arms and legs so tightly, I felt like he was wearing me like a vest.

His lips grazed my ear, causing me to shudder violently.

“Please,” he said into my ear with a hoarse voice. “Please stop. Please don’t let them touch you anymore. Please.”

I felt my eyes smart. The desperation in his voice and his protective physical shell around me nearly brought me to my knees. Who the fuck was this guy who ran so hot and cold with me? One minute he was confessing to wanting to kiss me, the next he was pushing me away. And now here he was begging me not to be with anyone else. I didn’t understand.

“Why?” I asked before tucking my face into his chest and inhaling the smell as comforting as home.

It took him a minute to respond, and I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me over the music. And then it came.

“I told you the reason the first night we met.”

I thought back to what we’d talked about as he sat in the bar that first night. There wasn’t anything about relationships or… wait.

That was the night Hudson had looked at me and said mine.

I pulled back enough to look up at him in confusion. “But, you—”

His lips met mine before I could finish. The kiss wasn’t aggressive and possessive the way his reaction to my dance partners had been. It was tender and slow, the way my dreams of him were. He sipped from my lips as we swayed together to a slower beat than the actual music surrounding us. I lost myself in him for a minute until I remembered his brother and brother-in-law sitting only several yards away.

“Shit,” I yelped, jumping back. My vision darted to the table where West and Nico had been sitting, but I didn’t see them there. “Where’s your brother?”

Hudson seemed to shake himself awake and look around. “There. At the bar. Why?”

I stared at him. “They could have seen us.”

The wheels began turning in his head, and I could tell he was surprised to have acted without thinking first. Knowing Hudson the little I already did, it wasn’t a usual state of affairs for him. He seemed the premeditated sort, the bloke who calculated best practices and chose the most appropriate path. Hudson Wilde wasn’t the man who kissed someone without thinking about it first.

“I’m sorry,” he said without making eye contact. “I shouldn’t have kissed you here.”

I grabbed the front of his shirt in my fist and twisted the fabric to pull him closer with a hard yank until our noses were an inch apart. I’d caught him off guard. “Don’t,” I seethed. “Don’t fucking run me round like that. Make up your damned mind. I don’t deserve to be played with.”

I pushed away from him and made for the bar, finding my way toward West and Nico’s spot in the queue for another drink. As soon as they saw me approach, they smiled and welcomed me in a way that made it clear they’d not seen the stolen kisses on the dance floor.

I wasn’t quite sure if I was relieved or disappointed, but I knew thinking about it overmuch would have me fair pissed by last call.

And so it did.

I switched from pints to shots. Hudson made several attempts to get me alone for a conversation, even trying to drag me to the jacks at one point. I laughed and made a scene about what usually went on in the toilet of a place like that and how I wasn’t sure Hudson was looking for that sort of action from me. Nico and West had laughed well enough at the joke, but I could tell Hudson was losing his composure the more I drank and the louder I became. Somehow I got it into my fool head to find someone and snog the hell out of them in front of him.

“’At’s the one,” I slurred, catching eyes with a right bear of a man a few tables over. I tossed my hair over my shoulder and bit my lower lip at him. “Downright climbable.”

Hudson muttered a curse word into his beer.

“’Scuse me fellas,” I proclaimed. “Don’t wait up.”

I stood up and took one step toward the bear before being yanked down into Hudson’s lap.

“What?” I asked into the front of the most delicious-smelling shirt on earth.

“Time to go,” he snapped over my head to his brother. “Someone has passed the point of legal consent.”

I looked up at him. “’At means I don’t consent to leave with you.”

The look on his face changed from stern and angry to soft and sweet in the span of a heartbeat as he met my eyes. “If you think I’m leaving you here to get mauled by some stranger, you don’t know me very well.” He ran long fingers through my hair, leaving the lightest caress on my cheek as he did so. My stomach dissolved into an army of heart-eyed minions, every last one of them swooning and dizzy. “Let me put you to bed, Irish.”

He said “Irish” with the soft affection with which he’d have said “sweetheart” or “love,” and I drank it up like sweet summer wine.

“Hudson,” I breathed, locking eyes with him. Those fucking eyes, what they did to me. I would follow those fuckers off a cliff if he looked at me that way and asked politely.

A drunken patron stumbled nearby, bumping into us and shattering the moment. Hudson’s arms tightened around me protectively the same way he’d done on the dance floor. Within moments, he was leading me out of there tucked into his side to prevent any more jostling from strangers.

I didn’t remember much after that, only the warmth of a body next to mine in a vehicle, the indecipherable murmurs of conversation around me as we made our way into Saint’s apartment, and the bone-deep sense of relief when Hudson chose to share the guest bed with me rather than sleep on the sofa. I fell asleep curled up against his great furnace of a body and slept in the security of his embrace the whole night through.

When I awoke the following morning, I knew reality was going to rear its ugly little head and we were going to go back to being platonic friends at best and professional coworkers at worst.

So I took advantage of him while he slept and ran my hands over every bit of him.