Secret: A Military Stepbrother Romance (53 page)

I feel a tight clench somewhere deep inside my chest. ‘Before’, meaning ‘that kiss’.
That
kiss; the only kiss that’s ever mattered, anywhere. And yet I hear myself talking, and saying the opposite of everything I want to tell her; “Uh, yeah I guess so.”

Fuck!

“Good,” She breathes out, an expression that looks a lot like relief moving over her face; “OK, good.”

Yeah, fucking awesome.

“So before was nothing, right? I mean,
I
was drunk, you might've been drunk, I was grieving-“ I start to open my mouth, but she cuts me off again. “No no, it’s not like you were taking advantage or anything, Hudson, I’m just saying it was nothing, OK?”

I’m not sure who she’s trying to convince harder here, me or her, but it fucking sucks either way.

“We were horny and sad and drunk and just made- well,
almost
made a terrible mistake.”

I’m nodding at her words, even though every single fiber of my being is raging otherwise inside. 

“I- I just wanted to get that out so we can be in the same place together without biting each other’s heads off or there being this sort of-“

“Sexual tension?”

She blushes as I say the word, and it’s so cute and so fucking predictable that I’m grinning at her.

“I- I just wanted to say that now, before anything else popped up.”

“Well I’ve only got the one, you know.”

Her face goes
bright
red, and I can’t help but grin even wider

“So, there’s nothing more to talk about then, right? No sexual tension or anything like that? We’re just doing our jobs and just working together without anything like that lingering?”

“Sure.” I say thinly; “Listen, Reagan, I’m out of your hair tonight anyways, so you can relax.”

“Oh, you are?” She looks quickly up at me, her expression hard to read.

“Yeah, I’ve got two guys coming over to watch you instead.”

“Wait, two
strangers?
” Her voice quavers for a second, her eyes looking nervous.

“They’re good guys, Reagan. I think they’ll watch you better than I c-“

“Hudson  I don’t want two strangers.”

I sigh in exasperation; “Well what the hell
do
you want, Red? Because you don’t want these guys watching you, and it sure as shit seems like you don’t want
me
around-“

“I do want you-“ She winces and shakes her as that adorable flush creeps up her cheeks; “I mean, I want you to stay and be the one watching me, if
someone
has to be doing it.”

I stare at her with a puzzled look, trying to read her face.

“Please?” Her voice is shy, naked in it’s honesty, and I find myself nodding as I open my phone to call off the two guards.

Jesus, this girl is going to be the end of me.

“Fine.” 

Chapter Eleven

P A S T

The buzzing beneath my pillow shakes me awake, and I frown as I feel sleep begin to slide away from me. I’m grumbling to myself as I pull out the offending cellphone I must have fallen asleep with, blinking at its glaringly bright screen. The number isn’t familiar, but I
do
recognize the time that says it’s 3:45 in the morning, and with a muttered swear, I reject the call and shove the phone back under my head. 

The buzzing starts again
just
as I start to drift off. “Ugh
, what?
” I groan out loud, grinding my teeth as I see the same unknown number illuminating my screen and wrecking my sleep a second time. I’m tempted to answer just to tell them where they can stick it, but instead I just turn my phone off entirely. I’m yanking the covers up around me and burrowing deeper into my sleep when I hear the knock at my dorm-room door.

What the actual fuck.

“
What?!
” I know the disheveled, skate-punk-looking kid standing outside my door, but only through faint recognition as someone who lives on my floor on the other side of the dorm. “Can I
help you?
”

“There’s, uh, someone here to see you.” He takes a sip from the atypical college red plastic solo cup in his hand.

I furrow my brow at him; “Excuse me?”

“Outside; there’s some dude who wants to see you.”

“Who?”

He shrugs. He looks high, or drunk; “I dunno, some guy just gave me a hundred bucks to come knock on your door and tell you to answer your phone.” He frowns and taps a finger to his forehead which would be comical if I hadn’t just been woken up at four in the morning.

“Wait, no, that’s not it, he said to say ‘Answer your
damn
phone, Archer.’”

I almost smirk; Hudson.

*****

“A hundred dollars, huh? Just to get me outside?”

Hudson is leaning against the side of a bright red Porsche convertible, his white oxford shirt unbuttoned at the neck and his sleeves rolled up, uncharacteristically showing off his tattoos. He grins and shrugs; “Eh, its the only cash I had in my wallet. Answer your damn phone next time.”

“What do you want, Hudson.” Ok so part of me is thrilled that he’s shown up here like this at four in the morning like something out of a John Hughes movie; especially looking like
that
with his hair pushed back and that cocky grin and those tattoos peeking out down his forearms. The other part of me though - the
sensible
part of me - is wary of this for those exact reasons.

“I want to show you something, get in.”

I raise my eyebrows skeptically; “Have you been drinking or something?”

“What? No, I don-“ He frowns and shakes his head; “No, Reagan, I haven’t.”

I cock my head towards the red convertible; “What happened to the white one?”

“I got bored. Look, just get in ok?”

“Hudson, it’s four o’clock in the morning,” I’ve been at college for all of a month, and the work is already
seriously
piling up. I roll my eyes at him; “I need to
sleep
.”

“No, what you
need
to do is get in the car.”

He’s so insistent and so earnest about it that something wants me to say yes when I know I shouldn’t, and suddenly, I’m caving.

“Let me just go change my-“

“Nah, PJ’s are fine.” He winks at me; “Com’on Archer, quit being a diva and get in the car.”

*****

Hudson, predictably, drives like an insane person, and we’re roaring over the George Washington bridge in less time than I thought was physically possible. He whips us around a van and veers off onto the Palisades Parkway, and then we’re tearing away from the city and up the west bank of the Hudson River. We aren’t talking, but the stereo is playing an old Grateful Dead record, and I almost grin at how
not
expected this choice of music is for the Armani-suited wild man Hudson.

He smirks as if reading my mind; “I’m a man of odd taste, Ms. Archer.”

“What, like drunk bimbos and sports cars?” I smirk, unable to help but get that cheap shot in; “Yeah,
so
outside the lines for rich young finance guys in New York.”

“I was going to say like night drives and girls in pajamas, actually.”

I feel myself blushing as I turn and look out the window at the inky black of the river we’re following. I don’t know what this is that we’re doing out here, but I’m suddenly
very
curious to see where it goes.

Hudson swerves off the main parkway, and then we’re speeding
up
; up a twisting, winding, and wooded road. The elevation climbs, and Hudson drives faster and higher, taking bend after bend with screeching tires until I’m holding onto the edges of my seat with white knuckles and gasping as the trees rush past us.

And then suddenly, the darkness of the trees gives way, the sky opens up, and and we’re squealing to a stop. I can still feel my heart hammering from the drive, but I gasp as I look around the parking lot lookout where we’ve stopped. I can see the lights of the whole city from here, down along the black ribbon of the Hudson River, and its
incredible.

“I just thought you’d want to see the whole Hudson.” He says quietly from the seat next to me.

I turn and see that he’s staring out at the view himself, and I grin; “Please tell me that’s a pickup line you’ve used before.”

He laughs, his whole face breaking into a wide smile; “Not on a first date, Ray.”

“Oh, is this a first date?” I smirk.

“Is it?” He shrugs; “First date and I already get to see what you sleep in; not bad I’d sa-“

I smack him on the arm with a laugh and he turns to grin at me; “No, Ray, it’s not a line; just something I wanted to show you.”

We both turn back to the view for another minute of silence. I open my mouth to ask it but then stop myself, before changing my mind again; “You show this to a lot of girls?”

A song ends on the album, and in the absolute silence of the car, he turns to me, his sharp eyes glinting in the light from the dash; “None, actually.”

The music starts up again as we both sit back in our seats and just stare off into the predawn as civil twilight crests over the city; and its
wonderful
.

P R E S E N T

OK, so being around Hudson is hard.
Ugh
, I need to get my mind out of the gutter; it’s
difficult
I should say, being around him. Mostly because the only thing I can think about
at all
is that cock of his I saw when I stumbled into the bathroom. I mean, it’s not enough that he’s rich, cocky, muscled and criminally attractive; the guy has to have an big dick
too
?

I mean honestly, it’s distracting.

He
of course seems to have have totally moved on from seeing, well, whatever it is he thinks he saw. Although at this point, I’m fairly sure he knows
exactly
what he saw; and heard. I cringe a little, thinking about gasping his name out as my orgasm ripped through me, and then seeing him just
standing there
, staring at me. Whats worse is that I can’t I get my damned mind off of that image of him standing there totally naked and
completely
hard. And why can’t I help but wonder what or who he was thinking about that got him that way?

His back is to me, as he reads through business emails of some kind on his phone in my living room, and I find myself chewing at my lip nervously, my mind a whirlwind. I mean, would it
really
be so bad?

YES!
The voice in my head screams, shaking me from my idle day-dreaming and making me realize with a  blush that I’ve been
staring
at Hudson’s back for the past five full minutes.
YES
, it would be bad like ruination of public image bad. I mean
sleeping
with the guy in charge of donating campaign funds? It’s not illegal or anything, but they’d fucking
crucify
me for that in the papers. I can almost see the headlines now, something like “Silly Little Rich Girl Predictably Bangs the Guy With Money; Bows Out of Campaign”.

No, fuck that. What I
need
is to get images and thoughts of me banging Hudson out of my head,
now
. Of course, the pathetic amount of time it’s been since I’ve been involved in
banging
of any kind makes me groan, and I know that’s part of the problem. I mean there was Chet - yes,
Chet
, like something out of a fucking Archie comic - but that was over six months ago, and even then it was barely a thing. It was barely a thing so much that when I heard the whispers about him fucking his intern like a walking cliche, I remember feeling more sorry for whatever college poli-sci major had to lay there and fake it now that I wasn’t doing it than I did for myself. Erika, my “brand manager” (God I hate that title), of course want’s me to get back together with him, and is always talking about how much of a “complimentary companion” he is for a “power-woman” like myself.

Yeah, because “complimentary companion” has “sexy” written all over it. And
again
my mind instead thinks of the hard-bodied, cocky Hudson. Hudson with the tattoos and the obnoxious bad-boy chip on his shoulder; Hudson with the dangerous glint in his eye and the fucking
missile
hanging between his legs. I’m pretty sure it would give Erika an aneurism if I announced that
he
was going to be my new “companion” of any kind.