Chapter 9

9

Hudson

Hudson’s Words To Live By:

Good things happen in Cork. Very good things.

It had taken me three shots of whiskey and as many pints of beer at a pub down the street before I got up the nerve to walk inside the gay bar. I’d used my phone to search for the biggest gay club in Cork and thought I’d just stop in for a drink and look around. Not… not to do anything with anyone. Just to watch.

I was desperate to discover if this attraction to Charlie was an isolated event or if I had somehow unlocked some latent, heretofore unknown queer side of myself I’d never noticed before. I mean, it was all just so strange.

Needless to say, by the time I entered the place, I was a bit blurry and shaking like a leaf.

There were just so many men in there.

“Hiya, sweet cheeks,” a voice purred from behind me. I felt the barest brush of a hand on my ass through the thick fabric of my jeans. “Get you a drink?”

“Oh, no, thank you,” I said as politely as I could. “I’m just here to look.”

“Fuck,” a familiar voice muttered. “You can’t say shit like that, Hudson.”

I glanced up and realized I’d had more to drink than I’d realized. I’d conjured up the man of my fantasies. Clearly he wasn’t really there, so I attempted to ignore the specter and made my way toward the bar.

“Oh, so you’re just going to pretend I’m not here?” he said, clearly miffed.

I swung my head around in surprise. “You’re really here?”

His face was so fucking gorgeous, I almost whimpered. “You seriously still look like that even after midnight? Fuck, Charlie. It’s not fair. I mean… good god.”

I reached my hand out and caressed his angled cheek, running my thumb softly over a few freckles next to his nose. “Look at you, Charlie,” I sighed. “So damned perfect.”

Someone next to me let out a swoony sigh, but I only had eyes for the man in front of me.

His eyes softened, and the edges of his mouth turned up. “You’re drunk.”

“Can I tell you a secret?” I whispered, leaning in to brush his hair away so I could say it up close to his ear. I felt him shiver under my touch.

“Mm-hm,” he drawled. “What is it?”

“I want to kiss you so badly, it aches. It hurts right here, Charlie,” I said, grabbing his hand and pressing it against the middle of my chest. “Please come back to my hotel with me and let me kiss you a little bit.”

“Oh fuck,” he breathed, leaning into me. “Fuck, Hudson.”

“Mmm, maybe,” I said without thinking. “Dunno yet. Just know I need your lips on my lips and my hands all over that creamy skin. I want you naked underneath me in my bed.”

I could feel Charlie trembling now, his entire body pressing closer to mine in the crush at the bar.

“Hudson,” he said in a gravel-filled voice. “You don’t know what you’re saying right now.”

“But I do. I do, Charlie. I’ve been dreaming about you all week.” I dropped my voice even lower and pressed my lips to the shell of his ear. “Naughty dreams. Dreams where you bossed me around and touched me in places no one ever has before. Every morning I woke up hard for you, but you were gone with the ending of my dreams. Now you’re here though. You’re here, and I’m so fucking hard again.”

Charlie was panting now, the fast, hot breaths puffing against the skin of my neck.

“This is such a bad idea,” he said, lowering his chin to his chest. “What are you doing here, Hudson?”

I took a chance and slid my arms around him to hold him closer. “I want to feel what it’s like. I want to know if it’s just you who does this to me.” Some deeper part of my brain realized how selfish that sounded. “I’m sorry, I know you don’t want to be anyone’s experiment…”

Charlie looked up at me, green eyes deepening with an open heat I hadn’t seen in them before.

“Let’s go.”

* * *

The taxito the hotel was a blur. The driver chatted Charlie up with an accent so thick, I couldn’t pick out a single word. Charlie’s voice, on the other hand, was tinged with an edge of nerves. I realized I’d already reached for his hand at some point, and our fingers toyed with each other softly on the seat between our thighs. With each brush of our skin, my stomach filled with more and more flipping fish until there was an ocean of excitement and nerves churning in my gut.

Every movement of Charlie’s body alerted the hairs on my skin like tiny sensation receivers. His feet were crossed over one another in the footwell, and there was just a peek of ankle skin visible below the hem of his pants. I felt my breathing speed up as I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. His gaze was focused straight ahead as he responded to something the driver had said, but his body moved slightly closer to me while he spoke. By the time I spotted the sign for my hotel, we were pressed together from knee to hip to shoulder.

It took all of my self-control not to pull him even closer. My heart hammered for his nearness. My skin begged for his touch. My lips tingled for his kiss. I looked away, wondering how this one man could have so quickly turned me into such a confused mess.

I watched misty rain coat the windows of the overheated car and sighed a breath of relief when it pulled up in front of my hotel. I didn’t realize how tightly I’d ended up clasping Charlie’s hand until I reached for my wallet and felt his own grip loosen.

After paying the driver with some of my last cash, I grabbed Charlie’s hand again and led him into the cold night air and through the hotel lobby to the elevators, not even caring that people would see me touching him so intimately. My need grew and grew as we neared the bank of elevators until it just became too much to contain and I found myself suddenly pulling Charlie into an alcove. I turned him and used my larger body to back him up against the wall. He opened his mouth to say something, but I just couldn’t wait another moment to kiss him, to touch him, to taste what that delectable mouth offered.

The second my lips landed on his, I was gone.

Gone.

They tasted so sweet… pure and plump and ripe for the taking. I wanted to keep my mouth on his for the rest of my damned life if this was how good his kiss felt.

My hands held each side of his face while I plundered his mouth, my tongue seeking more and more and more. I wanted to learn every last bit of what it felt like to kiss the beautiful man, and I wanted to drag my lips down across the inches of creamy skin to find the warm expanse of silk under his clothes.

I’m kissing a man.

That sentence ran through my mind on repeat several times before I recognized I was mentally squealing with glee rather than freaking out. The adrenaline rush seemed to sober me up in a blink.

I’m kissing Charlie.

And dear god, it was hot as hell. Hotter than the time my high school girlfriend went down on me in the limousine on prom night. Hotter than the time my old girlfriend Charlotte let me try anal sex with her. Hotter than the night Darci answered the door in nothing but thigh-highs and stiletto heels.

All this from just a kiss.

I couldn’t stop from lifting my fingers to trace his plump lips. I marveled at how similar and yet so very different they were from any others I’d ever kissed before. My eyes connected with Charlie’s as I caressed his mouth, and my breath caught in my lungs when he softly kissed the tip of one of my fingers. The move should have been nothing, but somehow it changed everything in the blink of an eye.

I couldn’t even imagine how incredible it would feel to do more than kiss Charlie. Without even thinking about it, I knew I wanted to see his creamy skin. I knew I wanted to taste it. My hands were on the hem of his shirt before my next breath, and it took me a minute to slow down and remember there was another person’s feelings to consider. I didn’t want to attack the guy if he was an unwilling participant.

I pulled back, chest heaving with shaky breaths. We stared at each other for a beat. He didn’t say anything, so I forged ahead.

“I should have asked first, but I’d really like to kiss you some more and maybe not just on your lips… if… if you’re willing, that is.”

It was only then that I realized we were still in public.