Page 57 of Stealthy Seduction
The game took on an entirely different energy after that. Each hand became an exercise in calculated risk and barely controlled desire. When she lost the first round, she took her time working the line of buttons on her blouse.
It hit the floor with theatrical flair.
“Your poker face isn’t helping you now.” He ran his tongue over his hard bottom lip as he stared at her breasts in her pushup bra.
“How did you know I was bluffing?” She sounded as if she’d run up ten flights of stairs.
He directed a look at her thumb.
She quickly slid her hand under the table, but she couldn’t be annoyed that Hudson had picked up on her habit of tucking her thumb into her fist whenever she got anxious.
The game resumed with an even heavier rope of tension between them. When he lost the next, his shirt followed, revealing the sculpted chest she’d been trying not to think about all evening.
When she won again, his belt joined the growing pile of discarded clothing. “You’re enjoying this.”
“Damn right I am.” She couldn’t keep the satisfied smile from her face. “Though I have to say, your game isn’t nearly as good when the stakes are personal.”
“Personal, huh?” He dealt the next hand with deliberate slowness. “Is that what this is?”
“What do you think it is?”
He set his cards aside without looking at them to study her face instead. “I think,” he said, standing slowly and moving around the table toward her, “that I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want you right now.”
Her heart hammered against her ribs as he approached, the intensity in his eyes making it hard to think. “Hudson…”
“I think,” he continued, his hands bracing on the arms of her chair as he leaned down, “that I’m tired of playing games.”
“Are you forfeiting?” she said on a sigh, tilting her head back to meet his gaze.
“I’m changing the rules.”
Before she could ask what he meant, his hands were on the edge of the table, and with one fluid motion, he sent the cards, chips, and untouched cigars scattering across the bedroom floor. The crash was loud in the quiet room, but she barely heard it over the sound of her own pulse thundering in her ears.
“Hudson,” she whispered, but he was already pulling her to her feet, his hands framing her face with a gentleness that contrasted sharply with the urgency in his movements.
“Tell me to stop.” His chest heaved as he rested his forehead against hers. “Tell me this isn’t what you want, and I’ll walk away right now.”
That statement was locked and loaded. In that moment, she knew he wasn’t only talking about taking her to bed.
Stopping was the last thing she wanted. After everything they’d been through, and with the growing certainty that he’d become essential to her in ways she was still discovering, being in his arms felt like coming home after a long journey through dangerous territory.
“Don’t you dare walk away.” She was already reaching for him. “Don’t you dare.”
Their lips met with a force that left her spinning. Passion raged between their lips and tongues, and she met him stroke for stroke.
Raking her fingers lightly down his back, she dragged him closer until skin heated skin. She gasped beneath his kiss, then suddenly, she was weightless, cradled in his arms as he carried her two steps to the bed and laid her down.
With his body braced over hers, she looked into his eyes. “You need to consider getting a bigger bed.”
“I’ve got everything I need. Right here.” He claimed her mouth again in a kiss that spiraled into something stronger, deeper, leaving her with an ache that stole her breath and bound her to him, body and soul, until the rest of the world faded away and there was nothing left but the two of them, tangled in need and the promise of more.
His kiss was fire and hunger, and threaded through it was something gentler, something that made her heart squeeze—complete ownership wrapped in tenderness.
The heat of his chest burned through her skin, and she arched, wordlessly begging for more contact. His hands skimmed along her sides, mapping her, memorizing her curves as if he’d been starved for this. Starved for her.
“Hudson,” she whispered against his mouth, half plea, half declaration.
In the aesthetic glow of the room, his gaze was molten with desire but glimmered with something else—something she didn’t dare name yet.
