“You think you were the first older man I’d been with? You weren’t even the second!”
My eyes burned, but I didn’t move.
He held on.
And I hated how good it still felt.
“It doesn’t matter how many other men you had beforeme. You were nineteen, and it wasn’t right to saddle you with my mistakes.”
“Is this supposed to be the part where we have sex and make up?” I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice.
He nipped the side of my neck with his teeth. “I want you. Always have, but I understand that you’ve had to process a lot. If you want to go?—”
I turned in his arms, reversing our hold, and cupped his cheeks. “I’m not leaving you alone again.”
He grabbed the front of my shirt, eyes scanning my face. “Matty, you need to think about it.”
“I’ve had four years in which all I did was think about you, Hudson.”
“I don’t want you to regret. And Ivy’s already lost a mother. If you’re not sure?—”
I shoved him up against the wall, and he gasped. I dipped my head, caught his bottom lip between my teeth, and bit down hard. He moaned, his body caving into me.
“Stop making decisions for me.” I licked his bruised lip. “Years ago, someone else took that choice away from me, and I hated every moment of it. I lived every year of my life since ensuring that didn’t happen again, not knowing you would do exactly the same thing. I’m capable of deciding what I want, Hudson, and I never stopped wanting you.”
“So what are you saying?”
I kissed his nose, blocking out the clippings I’d just read, the money, the interference of my mom.
For now.
“I’m saying let’s do what we do best, Hud. Let’s fuck and make up for good.”
17
HUDSON
Matty picked me up like I was paper.
Me, a man who weighed more than him. A man who wrestled cattle, fixed busted fences, and spent ten-hour days in the sun covered in dirt and sweat and regret. A man who never got to be the soft one. Never got to be held like something precious.
And he had me gripped by the back of my thighs like he owned me, like carrying me was nothing. God, he did it so easily. Just the way he had four years ago when I got kicked in the chest by a horse.
My back hit the wall, and he swallowed the gasp I let out with a kiss that seared every part of me. He slid his hands up my sides, dragging his thumbs just under the hem of my shirt, grounding me to the here and now.
His mouth claimed mine like he’d been starving for it. Like he was furious and in love and desperate and somehow still afraid it would be the last time.
I grunted and clutched his shoulders harder. The wall behind me dug into my spine, the pressure of his body pinning me. My cock twitched. His tongue swept into mymouth, coaxing, demanding, learning me all over again. He tasted like need and memory, the ghost of a shared summer and every dream I’d tried to bury but failed.
I tangled my fingers in his hair, tugged just to ground myself. “Matt, so good.”
He moaned low, deep in his chest, and something about the sound undid me. His lips softened for a second, like he was asking me if I was still with him—still here—before he deepened it again, and fuck, I was lost.
I tightened my legs around him instinctively, and he moved with me, bringing me over to the couch, swiping off the box that had imprisoned our future, finally free for us to be together.
Matty released me only long enough to pull my shirt over my head. He fastened his lips to my neck, nipping, biting, while he reached for the drawstrings at the front of my sweats.
I grabbed his hand. “We have to go to the bedroom. Ivy…”
