Page 79 of Cherish

But Hudson grabs my hips and holds me in place. “Tiola told me she leaves the house every evening. Even though she’s still a baby, she likes to hunt at night with the other umbras.”

“Just like she always did.” I smile down at him.

He smiles right back up at me. “Just like she always did.”

And for this one moment, everything feels right in the world.

He must feel it, too, because he reaches up and tangles his hands in my curls before slowly, gently,inexorablydragging my face down to his. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispers.

“Not as beautiful as you,” I whisper back.

His fingers weave their way through my hair until he’s cupping the back of my head so he can bring me down closer and press kisses along my jawline. “I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on that.”

“I’m okay with that.” I sigh, tilting my head back to give him better access.

He takes the hint, scraping his fangs along the sensitive skin beneath my ear before sliding slowly, slowly, slowly down my throat to my collarbone.

Heat explodes inside me like a sunrise, streaking along my nerve endings and melting me from the inside out. My hands clutch at his shoulders, my body arches against his, and I pull him closer.

It feels like forever since he’s held me like this, touched me like this. And even though it was just last night at the Gargoyle Court, a lot of things have happened since then. And right now, I’m not thinking about any of them. Right now, all I’m thinking about—all Icanthink about—is Hudson.

His mouth. His hands. Hissoul. I want him. More, I need him.

I shift a little bit so he can sit up. Then, when he does, I tilt my head even farther to the side in a silent plea for more of him—for all of him.

Hudson’s only response is a groan deep in his throat before licking his way back and forth across the pulse at the base of my neck.

Frissons of pleasure work their way down my spine, lighting me up from the inside. Spreading along my nerves, working their way into my very cells, until there isn’t a single part of me that isn’t aching for him. That isn’t burning with want and need and love.

So much love that I can’t hold it inside any longer. So much love that it comes pouring out of me and wraps itself around Hudson, pulling him closer, closer, closer.

Weaving us together even more tightly until all I can feel is him. Until all I can taste or smell or hear is him.

He scrapes his fangs against my pulse point again and again and again until I’m little more than a trembling, sobbing mess. I arch against him, shuddering, burning, aching.

“Please,” I murmur brokenly, the words falling from my lips like cries—or prayers. “Please, Hudson. Please, please, please.”

Again, he scrapes his fangs against my skin. Again, I shudder and arch against him in a desperate attempt to get closer. Right now, I’d crawl inside him if I could. That’s how desperate I am to feel all of him, to have all of him.

The worries of earlier burn away in the wake of the supernova turning my skin to kindling and my insides to ash.

“Please,” I say again, only this time it’s as much order as it is plea.

Hudson must realize it, because he chuckles deep in his throat. Murmurs my name. And then strikes, his fangs slicing through my skin between one breath and the next.

Ecstasy explodes through me as he drinks, my body erupting a little more with each pull of his mouth against my skin.

He drinks and drinks and drinks, until I can’t tell where I end and he begins. And then he drinks some more.

It’s what I wanted—what I needed right now—and I hold him to me as tightly as I can for as long as I can. The future is uncertain—maybe even the next few moments are. But this? I’ve never been more certain in my life than I am about the heat, the connection, the power burning between my mate and myself.

When it’s over, when he’s broken the connection and licked away the trickle of blood that runs from my wound, he keeps me wrapped around him as he stands up and moves us back to the bed.

“I love you,” he whispers as I spread out on top of him.

“I love you, too. So much.”

And though there are a dozen things we need to talk about, a hundred questions I’m dying to ask him, I don’t say another word. Because who knows what the next few days are going to bring, and all I want is to spend these moments in the arms of the guy I love. Everything else can wait for just a little while longer.

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