Page 120 of All the Ugly Things
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“Hudson Alexander Valentine.That is quite the mouthful.”
“Alexander means protector,” I said. “Mom didn’t name me for that, but once they started doing foster care, she used to remind me of that all the time. That my job is to protect people.”
“And here you are.” She flipped her hand in the air, gloves still on even though we were back at her house after dinner. “Killing it.”
She gestured to her apartment and then to herself.
Yeah, I’d protected her. Or tried. But that had nothing to do with my name. It was because I was falling in love with her.
“Yours,” I stated, asking for her middle name. We’d been playing this game since dinner. Favorite toys. Favorite memories. Favorite enemy. I barely resisted the urge to say her father’s name for that one. I didn’t have enemies, but that man would be at the top of my Most Hated list.
“I don’t think I know you well enough for that.”
“It can’t be that bad,” I teased. Her cheeks were burning and it had nothing to do with the cold weather. We’d been in my truck and her apartment was warm.
“It’s horrific.”
“Lilly.” I reached for her then, threaded my hands beneath her winter coat so I was holding her waist and yanked her to my chest. “Tell me your middle name.”
“I’m surprised you don’t know it.”
I did. I couldn’t remember it right now. Not with her windswept hair and pink cheeks and those damn freckles. I wanted to kiss every single one until I knew them all by heart.
“Tell me,” I whispered, and bent to kiss her cheek, the hinge of her jaw. She shivered beneath me and as she did, I pushed her coat off her shoulders until it fell to the floor behind her.
God. Iwantedthis woman. All of her. I was desperate to know everything about her, to have her tell me all the things I’d already learned before we met.
“Gertrude,” she said and cringed. “It’s stupid and horrible.”
I kept kissing her, trailed my lips down the column of her throat. “What does it mean?”
She tore off her gloves. “I have no idea.”
I needed to slow this down. Immediately.
Pulling back, I reached for my phone inside my own coat pocket and waited for the facial ID scan. A few quick taps on my screen gave me my answer.
“Strength.”
“What?” she asked.
I turned my phone so she could see it herself. “Gertrude means strength. I think that fits you pretty well.”
She traced her fingernail over my screen, mesmerized by it.
“Huh,” she said softly. She glanced at me, gave me a sad smile. “At least my mom gave me something good then, didn’t she?”
God, I wanted to show her all the good things I saw in her.
Which meant it was time to go.
“I should let you get to studying.” She had a test in the morning. Her last before the Thanksgiving break next week.
“I don’t think I want you to go.” She kissed me then. Lilly’s kisses tasted like sunshine and innocence, such contradiction to how she’d lived, but I knew she was inexperienced with men. She had to have been. Which made it all the more important we took this slow.
“Lilly.” I murmured it against her mouth, pulling back, peeling her hands off me. She glanced up at me, eyes glazed with desire, lips wet with the taste of me.
