Chapter 30

30

Charlie

Charlie’s Words To Live By:

There’s nothing better than casual sex.

Watching Hudson stammer and stutter around his brother was the highlight of my morning.

“Why are your ears so red?” Nico asked him.

“What? They’re not red. I’m hot. They’re red because it’s hot in here. What does Saint keep the heat set to? Where is Saint? Is he out of town? Still on that same job? What does—”

I reached a hand over and squeezed his thigh underneath the kitchen table. “Maybe it’s the coffee. Why don’t you wait a bit and let it cool?”

Hudson flashed me a look that was half-panic, half-relief. There was no way we were making it back to Hobie without beans being spilled.

I tried to take the focus off him. “Nico, I was thinking about getting some ink. Do you think you can fit me in sometime this—”

Hudson cut in. “What? Why? What kind of tattoo? I thought you didn’t want any ink?”

Nico and West exchanged a look while I turned to glare at my idiotic… what? Friend? Lover? Coworker? None of those felt right. But I cared about him enough to try and get him out of this mess.

“Hudson, I don’t tell you everything, all right? We work together—why would I tell you about getting a tattoo?”

Another look exchanged between West and Nico, only this time I felt noticeable hurt coming off the gorgeous man to my right. Jesus. I couldn’t win.

Nico cleared his throat. “Sure, man. Just stop by anytime and we can talk about what you want. Is it something small or a bigger piece?”

I didn’t want to go into detail in mixed company, so I just replied, “Small and simple. No worries.”

The next few minutes were so awkward I wanted to scream. Apparently I wasn’t the only person who felt the same way.

“Jesusfuckingchrist, are you going to make me ask?” West blurted after serving four plates of eggs and toast. “Is something going on between you two?”

Hudson gagged on his eggs, and I tried my best not to roll my eyes at the dramatics. But I faithfully kept my mouth shut and let him handle it.

When he finally got a hold of himself, Hudson glared at his brother. “Two men can share a bed without sleeping together. I mean, they’d be sleeping together technically, but they wouldn’t be having sex. Necessarily. What I mean is—”

Nico sighed and turned to West. “See? I told you. When have you ever seen him like this? It’s adorable.”

“Oh dear god,” Hudson muttered, dropping his face into his hands.

“Your brother and I only shared a bed last night, if that’s what you’re wondering. We were dressed the entire time,” I said, carefully sidestepping the complete truth.

“Then why does he get so weird around you?” West asked.

“Fuck,” Hudson groaned.

“Because I make him uncomfortable,” I replied, flying by the seat of my pants. “He thought I was a woman when he first saw me, and I think he’s so worried about offending me, he—”

“Stop,” Hudson said with a chuckle. “I can’t listen to you make shit up. It’s ridiculous.”

“It’s all true! Tell me one thing I said that wasn’t true.”

He gazed at me with hearts in his eyes that made me want to crawl into his lap and beg. Hudson’s hand came out to brush my hair back behind one ear before smoothing a thumb over my cheek. “Thank you. You’re very sweet to try and protect me.”

West and Nico were staring at Hudson’s caress of my face. Clearly it wasn’t platonic between the two of us. They must have seen the same gesture last night at the club.

Hudson faced his brother again, reaching over and holding my hand under the table. “I’m stupidly attracted to Charlie. We hooked up in Ireland.”

West and Nico’s jaws both dropped for a split second before they turned to each other and started arguing loudly. Apparently Nico had called it, but West had stubbornly denied Hudson had a gay bone in his body.

“The man’s so straight he refused to drink out of a bendy straw when we were little,” he said. “Hudson used to have Drew Gasticki sleep over at our house, in our room, and not get a boner. The rest of us were hard as fucking nails all night long whenever that kid stayed over. You don’t get it. My brother’s never once been attracted to a guy.” He stopped and turned to Hudson. “Have you?”

Hudson’s smile looked like it held a measurable amount of relief. “No, West is right. I’ve never been attracted to guys before. Charlie is an anomaly.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Both West and Nico turned to study me, as if by staring they’d be able to puzzle it all out.

“Huh. I mean, you’re pretty and all… but you’re still a guy,” West said.

“Last I checked,” I muttered.

“He is,” Hudson declared proudly. “I checked too.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Really, lad?”

His ears turned red again, and he tucked his face into my neck to drop a quick kiss on my skin. “Sorry,” he whispered.

I couldn’t believe he had the guts to kiss me in front of his family members.

“It’s okay,” I murmured before kissing him on the ear. “Big day, huh?”

“Guess so.”

“What does this mean?” West asked. “Are you bi? Are you two together? What’s… what’s happening here?”

Hudson pulled his face out of my neck and sat up, his hand still holding mine tightly. “I don’t know, West. That’s why I didn’t tell you guys. I just know I want to spend time with Charlie while he’s here. After that, I have no idea. Will I want to go back to dating women? Who knows? Will I ever find myself attracted to another man? Stranger things have happened.”

I tried my best to ignore the angry minions in my gut. The ones who didn’t like hearing about who he may or may not date when he was done with me. It wasn’t like I could blame him for feeling that way. It was clear I was only there temporarily, and he certainly wasn’t going to move to Ireland to live out his days in a crumbly cottage by the sea. I swallowed down my nerves.

“Are you going to tell everyone else?” West asked. Clearly, by “everyone else” he meant the family.

“I didn’t particularly want to answer all of their nosy questions,” Hudson said pointedly.

Nico nudged his husband with an elbow. “He means your nosy questions,” he said helpfully.

“So you’d rather us keep it quiet, then?” West asked.

Hudson looked at me, and I squeezed his hand in support. I understood why he wanted to keep things from becoming a big deal.

“Yeah,” Hudson admitted. “I mean, I don’t expect you to lie for me, but I’d prefer keeping our business to ourselves. You know how everyone is. Hallie alone will tell the entire state of Texas.”

Nico nodded emphatically. “He’s right. And sometimes Doc is even worse.”

“I don’t think he even knows when he’s spilling people’s secrets,” Hudson said with a chuckle. “How the hell did he manage as a doctor?”

“He practiced before the days of HIPAA,” West said with a wink. “Thank god.”

Nico elbowed West. “Surely he never broke any patient confidentiality?”

“No,” West said, grabbing the offending elbow and using it to yank Nico onto his lap. “He just likes to gossip about regular stuff. He gets to talking with Goldie, and the two of them together are a force to be reckoned with. When Pippa first said ‘Gamp,’ the entire town had heard about it before sundown. I’m still convinced she was talking to the dog, but if it makes him feel better to think she was saying some form of Great-Grandpa, so be it.”

He leaned over and kissed his husband, paying special attention to one of the lip rings Nico sported. It was funny watching the clean-cut doctor and the pierced tattoo artist together. They were the perfect study in opposites, but they obviously loved each other fiercely. I noticed Hudson’s hand grip mine a bit tighter.

“Is it okay if we head back? I’d like to spend some time in the field with Mama this afternoon since the weather is supposed to be nice,” I said.

“Sure thing,” West agreed. “Let’s pack up and go.”

The drive back to Hobie was much more pleasant than the ride to Dallas had been. West went out of his way to tease Hudson in front of me by telling stories from when they were little and calling him out for his idiosyncrasies. Hudson’s self-conscious laughter was sweet, and at some point I must have felt comfortable enough to lie down on his lap and doze. I’d had way too much to drink the night before and had been guzzling water as much as possible to make up for it. By the time we pulled down the bumpy drive to the ranch, I was ready to be done with the vehicle for the day.

We gave West and Nico our thanks before Hudson headed to the bunkhouse with our bags, and I made my way to the farmhouse to collect Mama.

After thanking Doc for taking care of her, I met Hudson out by the barn and led him to the large open field I’d used for training since I’d been staying at the ranch. It was a shame I didn’t have any sheep on hand to truly show off what she could do, but he could at least see how responsive she was to commands and how her body went low and fluid when she hit top speed.

As I ran her through a list of whistled and called commands, I let the afternoon sun warm my skin through my shirt. It was warmer than usual, according to Hudson, and it almost felt like a summer day in Ireland.

Hudson was suitably impressed with Mama’s tricks and seemed to relax even more than I did in the winter sunshine. We wound up taking a long walk around the ranch. Hudson pointed out places he’d played as a child and the direction of the home he grew up in. He told me about the house burning down the previous year and how his brother Otto had come to be with the town sheriff. At one point he reached for my hand and threaded his fingers through mine as we walked. I thought about how similar our childhoods were but how different they were at the same time.

We ended up by a shady creek and sat down on a large rock by the water. “This is my thinking spot,” he said softly.

“Mm. You love it here,” I said. “On the ranch I mean. You talk about it like it’s your favorite place in the world, and I’ve seen you take a horse out after work the few times we’ve gotten home before sunset.”

“Yeah, I guess. I used to daydream about taking over for Grandpa when I got old enough,” he admitted. “I always wanted to be a rancher when I was little.”

“We both dreamed of working outside,” I said. “I used to pretend I was a sheep farmer. Before I learned to work with dogs specifically, I still knew I wanted to work with animals in some capacity. Why didn’t you grow up to become a rancher?”

He shrugged. “My dad was a financial analyst. He always made it seem like an intelligent man’s pursuit. He wanted me to go to college and get a master’s degree in business so I could join the finance world like he did.”

“Is that something you wanted?” I asked. “We talked about this a bit before, but…”

He opened his mouth to respond but then stopped and sighed. “You know what? Not really. I wanted to make him proud of me more than anything. I followed in his footsteps because it seemed to be what was expected of me. I wanted him to be happy. I think part of me wanted to prove to him I could look after our family if anything ever happened to him.”

I chuckled softly. “The dutiful oldest child. A role I know quite well.”

Hudson smiled and glanced at me. I stood up and pulled him close with a hand on the front of his shirt.

“Kiss me,” I murmured. “I see your lips sometimes and it’s all I can think about.”

Those full lips landed on mine before I took my next breath. They were soft but firmly pressed into mine. He tasted like the peppermints West had offered us on the drive home.

“You taste so good, Irish,” he whispered into my mouth. “I could kiss you forever.”

I wrapped my arms around his neck and tried to stand on tiptoes to keep kissing him. When my legs tired out, I climbed him until he got the message and held me under the arse. With my arms and legs wrapped around him and the late-afternoon sun on my back, I thought maybe I’d reached one of those golden moments in my life—the kind that imprint and burrow forever inside the heart.

His beard scruff scraped at my chin as he moved to suck marks into my neck. His hands palmed my arse cheeks hard enough to separate them while pulling me tightly into the stiffness behind his jeans.

“Want you so much,” Hudson breathed. “Never stopped thinking about being with you. Not once since then.”

My heart flew higher and higher at his confession. I knew I could easily say the same to him, but I held back. In some strange way, I knew I had more to lose than he did. As if he could go back to his “normal” life after this temporary coupling while I would be left at least half-broken on the wreckage of stupid dashed hopes.

“Can we go somewhere?” I asked, temporarily forgetting the name of the building where my room was.

“You don’t want to take me here in the pasture?” he teased before nipping at my collar bone. “Get a little dirty?”

“I’m on board with getting dirty, Hudson Wilde, but I’d prefer it not to be the literal kind.”

When we got through the doors of the bunkhouse, I was half-naked and fully hard. Hudson’s hands were everywhere, and I wasn’t quite sure what had happened to my shirt.

My head was on the fritz, and my pulse pounded behind my zip. “I want to fuck you,” I admitted with a gasp as his hand tweaked a nipple. “But I’m too wound up to do it right.”

“Don’t do it right,” he suggested. He turned me around and walked me toward my bedroom. His lips brushed behind my ear. “Do it wrong. It’ll still be perfect.”

“No, don’t want to hurt you. Want you to feel good.”

His large hands lifted up my hair so he could move his kisses to the back of my neck. “What if I’m okay being hurt?”

My hands ripped at the opening of my jeans. If I didn’t get my cock out before it broke in half, we weren’t going to be able to do any of it.

“What kind of hurt?” I asked, hoping he wasn’t truly into pain.

I wiggled out of my jeans and briefs until I was standing naked as the day I was born in front of a fully dressed Hudson.

His blue-green eyes bore into me.

“The kind where you hold me down and fuck me without giving a shit about being gentle.”

Had Hudson’s hand been on my cock when he said those words, I would have shot off right there and then.