Until You Loved Me (Silver Springs #3)(73)

She watched with bated breath as his lips moved higher, toward her elbow, which wasn’t that far from her breast. “I am,” she admitted. “You’re not an easy person to resist.”

“Thank God. Take off your clothes. Let me see you. I never got to see you in September.” The hopeful, eager expression on his face was still overshadowed by whatever troubled him, and that made it impossible for her to refuse. She couldn’t leave him to endure whatever he was feeling alone.

He watched, rapt, as she pulled off her shirt. “There you go, sweet Ellie,” he said, pressing his lips to her bare stomach. “Our lives are already intertwined. And we both want this, don’t we?”

She’d be lying if she said no. She raised his chin to tell him so, but he took her breast in his mouth and she moaned instead.

When he’d touched and tasted all she’d exposed so far, she felt him undo the tie at her waist and slide her sweats and panties down past her hips.

With her clothes out of the way, he ran a hand over the slight swell of her stomach. “Hello, baby,” he murmured and lifted her onto the pool table.

“Are you sure you want to do it here?” she asked. “Under the light?”

“I’m going to do you here. I want to see you, watch everything.” Spreading her legs, he kissed a path up her thighs.

Ellie tried to stop him. She was too self-conscious, felt she needed to know him better before she could enjoy oral sex. But he wouldn’t let her refuse him.

“Relax,” he said.

“I don’t think I can relax,” she said. “This is... This is pretty intimate—about the most intimate thing I can imagine letting someone do.”

“It’s also something I doubt your gay ex-fiancé was excited about doing—not very often, anyway.”

“Never,” she admitted.

“Great. Then it’s something I can do that might make you glad you said yes.”

“There are other ways to—”

“I want to do this,” he said, and once his mouth reached its target, she nearly jumped off the table.

“Holy shit,” she gasped.

His tongue moved against her. “I’m assuming that’s a good ‘holy shit.’”

“Better than you could ever dream. I’ve definitely been missing out.”

She felt his breath as he laughed. “We can make up for lost time,” he said and went back to work.

“Wow, you really... You really know what you’re doing.” Her words came out in a whisper. She couldn’t seem to talk any louder. She was struggling just to breathe. She tried to grip the sides of the pool table but couldn’t reach them, so she clenched her hands in his hair.

“That’s it,” he said. “Show me you like it. You’re making me so hard.”

“I do like it. I don’t think I’ve ever liked anything this much.”

He slid his hands under her to give him better access. “Then you’re in for a treat.”

“Oh, God,” she moaned as the suction of his mouth caused every nerve to hum with anticipation.

When her legs began to tremble, she felt his strong hands squeeze her ass, encouraging her to succumb to the pleasure he was giving her—and it wasn’t more than a few seconds before one of the most powerful climaxes she’d ever experienced made her whole body jerk.

“One down. Many more to go,” he said with satisfaction. “Now, let’s go up to my bed.”





19

Yes, this was what he needed, Hudson decided. A woman. Ellie in particular. He’d thought of her so often since that night in September. Hard to believe he had her back, and that she was once again naked beneath him. Although sex wouldn’t change what he’d learned, at least he couldn’t think about anything else right now. He was too consumed with desire. With touching her smooth, soft skin. With the small bump that proved she had his baby inside her. With hearing the little sighs that told him she was enjoying his body as much as he was enjoying hers. With the thrust of her tongue against his and, especially, the exquisite sensation of pressing inside a woman for the first time without wearing a condom. It was all so visceral and present that nothing else could get through.

Until it was over. Then, as he lay spent in her arms, everything he’d been hoping to avoid—the words the private investigator had spoken—scraped through his mind like barbed wire.

Shit. He closed his eyes in an attempt to shut out the memory. He wouldn’t accept that version of events. He’d make up something else, a far more pleasing scenario, like the one he’d so often daydreamed about as a kid, in which some evil man stole him away from loving parents with whom he’d eventually be reunited. But as Ellie’s fingers caressed his cheek, soothing him almost as if he were a child, he felt such an upwelling of emotion—and he was just drunk and exhausted enough that he didn’t have anything left to battle it.

“Hudson?” she murmured.

Hearing the confusion in her voice, he blinked quickly, trying to staunch the tears that were dripping onto her breast.

He didn’t answer. He hoped she’d assume the wetness was merely perspiration. But when another teardrop fell, and then another, he felt her kiss his forehead. “Are you okay?”

The concern in her voice was as soothing as her touch. She was so damn soft and kind. But the gratitude he felt to have her with him in this moment only put him at more of a disadvantage. He wasn’t okay. He should never have hired a private investigator, should never have searched for his parents.