Page 40 of Cherish

When I first started this, I thought I wanted it to be gentle and soft—thought I wanted to let the heat between us build as slow and steady as the love I have inside myself for him.

But it’s hard to be gentle when desire barrels through you like a bullet train.

Hard to be soft when every part of you aches for every part of him.

And it sure as hell is hard to be steady when you’re being ravaged by the man you love like you’re the very air he needs to breathe.

Which is exactly what Hudson’s doing to me right now.

My Hudson.

My mate.

The man with as many secrets as the Sphinx and as many depths as the Pacific Ocean that’s fascinated me my entire life.

His mouth is plundering mine like this is our first—or our last—time.

Because just the thought of the latter disturbs me, I shove the thought out of my head. Bury it deep inside my mind in a place I don’t let myself go to very often. And concentrate instead on making Hudson as hot, as achy, as desperate as he’s already made me.

As he always makes me.

I start by shoving his T-shirt up and out of the way. Then I rake my nails down his lean, muscular chest, relishing the way his entire body stiffens with the same need pulsing inside me.

“Grace.” My name is a gasp on his lips as he drags me down until I’m stretched out over him, every part of my body touching some part of his.

“Hudson,” I murmur back, and if there’s a teasing note in my tone right now, it’s because sometimes turning the tables on him is just plain fun.

And this is definitely one of those times, I decide as I slide my tongue along his lower lip before pressing open-mouthed kisses across his jaw, down his neck, over one broad, beautiful shoulder.

He bucks against me as I do, groans low and deep in his throat in a way that sets the tiny hairs on the back of my neck to standing straight up even before his hands tighten in my curls.

Once he does, heat pours over me like lava from a volcano—molten hot and devastating but so good I never want it to stop.

Never want this to stop.

So I do it again, only this time I add my tongue—licking and sucking and nibbling my way over his collarbone and down the chest I have spent entirely too many hours thinking about.

His hand finds its way from tangling in my hair to gripping my hip as something wild breaks free inside him.

I can see it in his too-bright eyes.

Hear it in his uneven breathing.

Feel it in his powerful fingers digging into my flesh.

Suddenly, his mouth is everywhere—my lips, my neck, the sensitive spot behind my ear—before moving down.

In the blink of an eye, I’m the one on the bottom and he’s the one above me, his fangs scraping over my collarbone, down my breasts, across my stomach, to my navel and then lower, lower, lower.

It’s my turn to cry out, my turn to clutch the sheets in my hands, my turn to arch and shudder against him as he takes me higher and higher and higher until I worry we’ll fly too close to the sun.

And then we do, and I forget to care about sunburn or melted wings or anything else that might happen because it feels so good. He feels so good. Even before he moves back over me and we race toward the surface of the sun together.

Later, much later, when it’s over and we’re done free-falling through the atmosphere back to earth, I wrap myself around him and hold on as tightly as I can. Because this is Hudson and me, and I am never, ever letting go.

Even if in the morning the world is going to try its damnedest to make me do just that.

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