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My gaze flashes up to his impassive face, and I yank my arm from his grip. “Get your hands off me.”
Hudson puts his hands up and takes a step back and it takes all my strength not to step forward and sink into him. To run my hands over his hard chest, to card my fingers through his thick, dark hair and feel the softness, and I hate myself for it.
“Apologies. I merely wished to stop you from falling to the floor at my feet.”
I snort, hating how this man can make me lose my composure, and have me wanting him with a passion that is scalding hot. “You wish, asshole.”
His teeth roll his bottom lip and I follow the movement like a drug addict needing a fix.
“You have no idea what I wish, Belle.”
“Don’t you fucking dare call me that.”
“Always so on edge, Miss Kennedy. Are you perhaps a little sexually frustrated?”
Anger clouds my senses. He can unravel me quicker than any other person on the planet.
“Oh, please. I’d rather fuck a cactus than let you touch me.”
His eyes travel over my skin, burning a path where they touch. “Hmm, that’s not quite true, is it, Audrey? If I remember rightly, you begged me to ruin that sweet pussy with my cock and my mouth.”
How dare he bring that up after everything he did. I want to eviscerate him, to wound him and bring him to his knees like he did me. My chest is heaving as I try and fail to contain the temper that is rising in me like a monster ready to eat me whole. “You’re the fucking devil, Hudson Carmichael.” I scan him from top to bottom, my gaze moving over him before finding his heated stare. I step forward, getting in his face, my lips close to his ear. “The truth is, Hudson, that night when we were oh so young, was an audition and you never got the callback, asshole.” I step back, holding my breath so his scent doesn’t consume me.
His lips spread into an arrogant grin, and I want to slap it off his face and then tackle him to the floor and take out all my anger on the body I know lies beneath. He dips his head closer, and his scent floods my senses again until I swear I’ll never get it out of my nostrils.
“You’re a fucking goddess when you’re angry, Audrey, and do you want to know a secret?”
I go silent, not trusting myself to speak but unable to move away from him.
“Your pussy is still the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted.”
“You’re a pig.”
“Think what you like of me, but it’s the truth.”
I move in for the kill, needing to end this before I do something I regret. “That’s the thing, Hudson. I don’t think of you. You’re nothing to me, you never were.”
Then I turn on my heel and head for the bar, my head held high as I fight not to break down and cry from anger, from vicious memories, and from the fact that he’s still the only man who has ever made me feel alive.
2Hudson
I stand,watching her walk away and want to punch myself in the face for my inability to stay away from her. I never should’ve come here. I should’ve stayed home and caught up on some work or fucking anything but coming here and torturing myself with what I can’t have.
Audrey will never be mine, no matter that she haunts my dreams both awake and asleep. I made my choices long ago, and putting us both through this special brand of torture, by hanging around on the periphery of her life just to catch a glimpse, is unfair to us both. So why can’t I stop?
I should apologize to her for riling her up, and as my feet guide me to the bar where she sits on a stool, her spine straight her elegant neck long and begging for my touch, that is what I vow to do.
I’m feet from her when the man, who has monopolized her attention all night, cuts across me and slides his arm around her back. I pause, my hand going to my left trouser pocket and flipping the coin through my fingers. Audrey stiffens at his touch and leans away but the stupid prick can’t seem to catch a clue as he leans in to try and nuzzle her neck.
It takes everything in me not to slam his face against the bar until he’s nothing but a bloody pulp. To tear him apart for touching what is mine, for thinking he’s good enough to even breathe the same air as her. He’ll never be good enough for her, nobody will. Especially not me, and I know it, but I can’t squash the blind jealous rage that slams through me whenever anyone goes near her.
I’ve tried everything to exorcise the beautiful, frustrating woman from my brain, but she’s burrowed so deep, nothing will ever evict her, and I’m not even sure who I’d be without that tiny light that is her that flickers around my heart. She’s as much a part of me as my heart, my lungs.
Audrey will always belong to me in some way, even if she doesn’t know it, not because I wish to control her or own her, because something as precious as what she makes me feel is not tangible, but because she took my heart so many years ago and never gave it back.
Now, remembering my actions from back then, the empty space in my chest fills with the black tar of guilt. I made my choices, and I don’t regret them, at least most of them, but giving up Audrey is the one thing that I wish with all my dead heart I could go back and change.
“Take the fucking hint, Jason. I’m not interested so back up before I drive your balls through your teeth.”
