Page 10 of Don't Make Me Fall
“You about done?” Hudson calls back to me.
Well, peaceful except for the unfairly sexy man who’s apparently annoyed with my constant stopping to capture the view.
“Just one more picture,” I insist, snapping three before I hurry up the steep trail after him.
“Your battery isn’t dead yet?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Doesn’t matter what I’d like,” he says, turning his back to me so I can’t see his expression. But there’s something in his tone that hints at…more.
I’d be a fool to deny the electrical current that seems tethered between us. If he wasn’t my brother’s best friend, I might entertain seducing him for a fun vacation fling. Or maybe all I’d have to do is give in. Hudson definitely seems like a man who’d take charge in that department. If he were just some stranger I’d never see again, I’d totally let him push me up against a tree and have his very dirty way with me.
Have I ever been fucked in the woods before?
“What now?” Hudson asks, stopping again and looking as annoyed as he sounds.
Heat warms my cheeks, and I turn away. “Thought I saw something.”
“Mountain lions rarely come out in broad daylight if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Probably just a squirrel then.”
We hike up the rest of the trail in companionable silence, and for once in my life, I don’t feel the need to fill it. It’s oddly refreshing.
Around Tyler, silence makes me jittery. Probably why that man knows my entire life story without ever having asked. Pathetic, I know. But damn him for listening and pretending to care. And for leading me to believe that we would eventually go to HR and declare our intentions to date. Never mind that the man has only ever kissed me—once!
I’m so infuriated at the whole situation that I stumble forward right before the clearing. I let out a quick scream,catching my palm on the hardpacked dirt trail. My phone goes flying into a pile of dead leaves.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
Hudson’s at my side instantly, his hand cupping my cheek. He studies my face, as though searching for injury, gently turning it back and forth. I dare to peer into those chocolate brown eyes as he does, mesmerized by the gold flecks dancing near his irises. Yeah, I’d totally let him fuck me against the side of the tree, if only he’d let me stare into those gorgeous eyes while he plunged into me.
“Alanna?”
“Hmm?”
“You done undressing me with your eyes?”
I shove at his shoulder, using my aggravation to get me back on my feet and start searching for my lost phone.
“I wasn’t undressing you with my eyes.” But now I am. Dammit.
“Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart,” he chuckles, following behind me.
“Shut up.”
“Looking for this?” Hudson holds out my phone in offering.
I swipe for it, but he pulls my phone away just before I can grab it.
“What are we ten?”
“Definitely not ten,” he says, holding the phone above his head where I can’t reach it.
I grip his bicep, using it as leverage as I jump. But my fingers barely graze his wrist.
