HE PUSHES INSIDE me from behind and I moan, tangling my fingers with his where his arm is banded around my waist. I’m sore. I’m certain he must be too. He’s been hard for hours. I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve come. It’s as if it’s our last night of human existence—we’re both utterly exhausted but aware that every second counts. There is no containing this degree of pleasure. This desperate compulsion. It’s all-consuming torment.
I reach behind me and tangle my fingers in his hair, directing his lips back to the tender spot on my neck where I’m certain I must have a love bite, because he’s kissed and sucked that place so much in the past few hours. But I don’t care. I want his marks on my body, the sign of his relentless possession, which fortunately shows no sign of abating.
Dangerous, dangerous wants...
Hudson cups my breast, his thumb rubbing over my nipple as he thrusts into me from behind. Doubt dampens my pleasure, allowing memories of the awkwardness at dinner earlier to rush in. Was Hudson jealous? I knew the minute he walked into the restaurant that it isn’t over for him, just as it isn’t for me. Did Sterling notice the lost look in Hudson’s eyes when he let his guard slip? Could he interpret my nervous chatter? Any minute I expected me or Hudson to blurt out our secret over dessert.
Guilt bombards the flood of desire taking me hostage. I don’t want to hurt either of them. Or Bold.
During dinner I had a blinding moment of clarity. For Hudson to become the man I need, he’d not only have to risk his personal fears—of being abandoned, of never being loved, of not mattering to a single soul on this Earth—he’d also need to risk Bold. Both of us would. Because there’s no denying there would be fallout if we confessed to Sterling—a fallout that could be both enormous and destructive.
Could he do that? Could I?
What am I doing?
Hudson abandons my nipple and slides his hand down my stomach to my swollen clit. I gasp, my muscles fluttering around him in the first stirrings of another orgasm.
‘Please...’ I don’t know why I’m begging. To come? Because I can’t? Or am I begging for this night never to end?
With the ruthlessness I expect from him, Hudson doubles his efforts, his thrusts deepening, his fingers strumming more rapidly until I crack open for him, my climax tearing through me on an inevitable wail of pleasure.
He buries his face against my neck and pumps his own release into me, crushing me in his grip.
‘We need to stop,’ I murmur as my breathing settles and my heart ceases its exhausted pounding. I open my eyes and see that the digital clock on my bedside table reads four-twenty a.m.
‘I need to get up in two hours to travel to Comberton.’ Even as I speak I’m still grinding my hips and gripping his buttocks, holding him inside me, because I don’t want him to pull out. Ever.
My heart clenches. Getting up, showering, dressing and continuing with life as normal will force me to acknowledge that something has changed for me, something monumental. I’m not ready to face that. Not today. Mum’s day.
But everything has changed. Otherwise we would have stuck to our five nights and ended this back in Tokyo. I think back to last night, to that first frantic time on the stairs. We didn’t speak in the car, didn’t even argue that we shouldn’t do this or rationalise one more night. It’s as if our passion is a forest fire, and the blaze has quickly spread out of control, so the only sane solution is to burn.
If there was anything left to say, now would be the moment to voice uncertainty or a change of heart. But we’re both silent. Today will be difficult for both of us, but for very different reasons: for me because family is everything, and for Hudson because he doesn’t know how to be anything other than alone. He’s been emotionally withdrawn most of his life. Except he’s let me in, whether he realises it or not.
How can I expect more from such a man? And yet how can I not, for my own needs? Am I ready to abandon my own hopes of ‘for ever’ for a chance that he might, one day, decide he wants a relationship after all? Even then we live on different continents, the ultimate in long distance.
It’s impossible.
He softens and slips from my body. His arms tighten around my waist. His fingers squeeze mine. His soft sigh kisses my shoulder. Wordlessly, he rolls away and stumbles to the bathroom.
Shivers break out over my skin. I clamber from the bed and put on my robe, cranking up the thermostat to try to warm myself. But there’s ice in my veins. I’ve let in a man who can’t give me what I need. To build a relationship with a family and a home and a life together in every way. He’s never been in love the way I need to be loved.
When Hudson emerges from the bathroom, he’s fully dressed and achingly beautiful in that broken way. I want to hold him, to reassure him that I don’t expect anything of him, today or ever. And it’s partly true. But that also means I can’t risk my heart to any greater degree where he’s concerned. Or I will want more. I’ll want it all, and I’m terrified to test him for fear he’ll let me down.
For fear that I’ll fail again.
‘I’d better head back to the hotel.’ He scrubs a hand through his haphazard hair. ‘Sterling will expect to see me at breakfast.’
I nod, folding my arms across my chest and gripping my biceps to stop myself from shivering. This day is always sad, always hard for me, no matter how much we dress up Mum’s memorial as a party. She’s still gone. I still miss her all the time. I want more than anything for Hudson to hold me, to stroke my hair and shower with me. To drive me to my childhood home and hold my hand all day, just to let me know he’s there.
But he can’t, and I can’t ask him for any of that. If I force it, I might see just how misguided I’ve allowed myself to be once more.
‘Yes, good plan. I’ll see you later.’ Mum, my family, is the only thing I can think of right now.
He presses a kiss to my forehead, lingering for a heartbeat too long, as if he has more to say. But then he’s gone and I’m alone with only my own strength for company. It’s enough, but I wish with all of my aching heart it could be different.
The family home Mum loved is in Comberton, a quintessential English village six miles from Cambridge. Dad maintains the expansive lawns and pretty herbaceous borders, which are bursting with spring colour, as a tribute to her. The weather has come out to celebrate Mum too. The sun warms my face as I watch my nieces and nephews play football on the lawn, fighting to score by kicking the ball between two battered cricket wickets Dad has pushed into the grass to act as goal posts.
Hudson, dressed in a casual shirt and dark chinos, and so sexy I could weep, is deep in conversation with my older brother Elliot. Only the slight tiredness around his eyes provides any clue as to how he spent the night.
Every time one of the younger kids mis-kicks the ball, either Elliot or Hudson breaks off their conversation and retrieves it from the bushes, tossing it back into play with endless patience. I expect that from my brother. After all, three of the children playing belong to him.
But Hudson...
Our eyes collide for the umpteenth time, a violent connection passing between us across the garden. I take a shaky sip of Pimm’s, which does nothing to settle the rage of emotion inside me. Emotion he’s drawing to the surface as effortlessly as he makes my heart pound.
This is bad.
‘He’s good with the kids,’ my sister Brie, seven years my senior, says.
I hadn’t even noticed she’d come to sit next to me, so engrossed am I in the man I seem to need like oxygen. I shield my eyes from the sun and squint at the game taking place.
‘Who...Elliot? I should hope so.’ My deliberate misunderstanding fools no one. Brie shoots me an ‘I’m onto you’ look. There’s no point trying to pull the wool over any of my siblings’ eyes. They know me too well.
‘Yes, he is,’ I admit on a sigh, recalling the wide smiles of the Blackhearts’ boys from Hudson’s photo in Tokyo. ‘Shame he doesn’t want any, though... He’d make a great dad.’ My throat grows tight. I gulp some of my ice-cold drink to fight off the choking feeling.
I’m seriously falling for Hudson Black. It’s the only explanation for the terrible, wonderful way I feel.
‘How do you know he doesn’t want any?’ My sister interrupts my flight of panic. ‘It’s something most men don’t even think about until they meet the one, or get married.’ Brie looks and sounds so much like Mum sometimes, it’s hard to talk to her. I can imagine Mum sharing the same wisdom over a vast glass of wine or bottomless cup of tea.
‘Well, that’s just it—Hudson doesn’t want to get married. I’ve never known him to have a relationship, even. He’s a committed lone wolf.’ I knew that from the start and I stupidly allowed feelings to develop.
And now what? Do I pretend as if everything is normal, as I promised I would back in Tokyo? Do I tell him how I feel, freak him out? Should I ask Sterling’s advice and risk hurting him too?
This was exactly the kind of mess I’d hoped to avoid.
‘Perhaps you’re the one.’ Brie makes air quotes. ‘You could be the woman to make him change his mind.’
I glare at my sister, fear and longing warring for control of my pulse.
‘Oh, come on, sis.’ Brie nudges my arm. ‘You’re looking at him the way you used to drool over my Barbie playhouse when you were four.’
‘Well, you should have let me play with it, then. Perhaps I’d be more inclined to confide in you now if you had.’ I turn away from her in a huff and then snigger at my ridiculous lifelong grudge over my sister’s doll collection. I’ve never been able to hold on to resentment for long where my siblings are concerned. They’ve rescued me more than they’ve dragged me down or disappointed me. And it seems they’re still at it, as Brie’s gentle intervention proves.
She regards me with compassion, the way only a sister can.
I collapse in defeat. ‘You’re right. We have been fooling around. But we haven’t told Sterling,’ I hiss, my eyes darting around the garden in search of my ex. I don’t want him to overhear us. I’m not sure I want him to find out at all. Hudson’s leaving soon. Life will go back to normal. Why rock the boat and cause unnecessary pain?
Because a part of you hopes that Hudson will tell Sterling he wants to keep seeing you...
No. That’s a fantasy I can’t indulge.
‘Have you fallen for him?’ asks Brie.
I sigh, abandoning my drink altogether and gripping my hands in my lap. ‘I think I could.’ My eyes burn. I can’t look at Brie, and I’m grateful for my sunglasses. ‘But it’s pointless. We want different things.’
‘Are you sure about that? He can’t seem to keep his eyes off you. Claire’s noticed too,’ she says, referring to our eldest sister. ‘You won’t be able to hide it from Sterling for much longer if he carries on like that.’
I sigh, understandably exhausted, both physically and mentally. ‘The thing is, I’ve always wanted to be like Mum and Dad, like you lot. You know—a husband, a family, the whole package.’ I glance up at my parents’ beautiful Tudor cottage with the thatched roof and remember endless summers, when us kids built forts and dens by stringing blankets between the trees to play house or castles...
‘But...?’
I roll my eyes in defeat. ‘But, when I think of Hudson, I think I could be happy just the two of us. Living together, here, in Tokyo, anywhere. The white dress and the rush for a family seems...less important, somehow.’
‘And that bothers you?’
‘Not really. Just surprises me. It’s not that I’d be willing to give up my dreams for him. It’s more that my dreams seem to have shifted. I don’t know what to do.’
‘Well, love will do that to you,’ says Brie.
My head whips to the side and my jaw drops. ‘I’m not in love with him. I just...care.’ Blood whooshes through my head.
‘Aren’t you? Pretty close, I’d say.’ Brie’s toddler, Ami, runs into her arms at that moment, distracting us both. They share a brief hug and some conversation about snails before Ami rushes off again in her bare feet.
Panic fills every cell of my body. I can’t be in love with Hudson. It’s ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.
‘The thing is,’ continues Brie, her tone full of sympathy, ‘when you find the one, you work all that other stuff out with them, together. Kids, where you’re going to live, who gets to empty the dishwasher. Mum and Dad didn’t always agree. He wanted another child after you and she didn’t. At one stage his job wanted to relocate him to the States and they planned to pack us all up and move before it fell through.’
I gasp. ‘Really? I didn’t know that.’
My sister nods. ‘My point is that life often turns out different from how we expect, but love and respect are the keys to compromise, and that’s really all it takes for any relationship to work. Look at you and Sterling—it didn’t work out, but you still love each other. Still respect each other enough to stay friends and work together. How many couples achieve that?’
I nod because she’s right. I’d been in search of perfection when I married Sterling. I put so much pressure on us. I was inflexible and he had his own hang-ups to contend with. We only really started communicating and compromising well once we agreed to split but decided to keep the business partnership intact.
I stare at Brie, my head spinning. What if she’s right? What if I have fallen in love with Hudson? What will I do? It’s destined to be a bigger fail than the last time I was in love. And I vowed that next time I’d get it right.
‘Oh-oh,’ she says under her breath. ‘Incoming.’ She looks up and grins at whoever is approaching. I turn, temporarily blinded by the sun, then making out Hudson’s tall, broad outline.
‘I thought I might head back to London,’ he says. ‘Sterling suggested I can take his car, if he can grab a lift with you later.’
My blood runs cold. I can’t see his eyes behind his dark glasses, but I can tell from the rigid set of his shoulders that he’s out of his comfort zone and withdrawing. He’s probably been uncomfortable since the moment he arrived.
Brie and I stand.
‘Okay,’ I agree, hiding my disappointment. I shouldn’t have forced him to attend. I hoped he might come home with me tonight, as he’s leaving London early the day after tomorrow.
Hudson bids my sister farewell and he and I move through the garden, passing from group to group so he can say his goodbyes.
We crunch across the gravel driveway to the hire car Sterling drove here—a cute cherry-red Porsche convertible.
‘Nice car,’ I say. Sterling loves cars.
Hudson nods and fiddles with the keys.
It’s like we’re strangers, not two lovers who didn’t sleep the night before because of our incendiary desire for each other. I scrape my foot through an uneven gravel patch, searching for something to say that won’t convey my feelings.
But desire isn’t love. As far as I know, Hudson’s never been in love. Do I want to risk my own dreams and happiness and security to be his test case, even if he wants a relationship with me beyond sex? Can I fail again? Break the promise I made to myself in memory of Mum?
I look up. He’s standing close, but he too is at a loss for words.
I take pity on him, because it’s not his fault that he’s out of his depth emotionally, or that he can’t love me back. ‘Thanks for coming. It means a lot to me that you were here. I know it’s not your kind of thing.’
He grips my elbow and presses a kiss to my forehead, his lips lingering for a few fraught seconds.
When he pulls back I almost blurt out my feelings. Beg him to stay. Convince him that we have something worth taking a risk on.
But the words that emerge tell me I too am scared to break what we’ve built these past five years. ‘Drive carefully—don’t fall asleep at the wheel.’
‘You too.’
It’s our only acknowledgement of our lapse last night. There’s no secret communication this time. No promise that tonight there’ll be another lapse.
My chest feels hollow as he jumps in the car and drives away. I watch the road for a whole minute and then return to my family, my realisation iron-cast.
Brie’s right: I do love him.