by Jenn Burke
“He’s not dead,” I gasped, skidding to my knees beside Hudson’s body.
“Oh, hon,” Lexi said, “vampires are pretty tough but—”
I ignored her, ripping off my jacket and tossing it aside. My forearms were exposed by my T-shirt. “Evan, I need your teeth.”
“What the hell,” Kat muttered. Then, louder, “What are you doing?”
I held out my wrist to Evan as he approached and gave him a nod. “Hudson’s not dead,” I said to Kat.
“He was shot in the heart! He’s not breathing, he’s bleeding, he’s—”
“I know,” I gritted out. “But he’s a vampire.” Thankfully the weapon Julia used must have been a small caliber because there was no—god—no exit wound. Blood stained his shirt but there was very little on the floor around him.
“Wait—Hudson was one...one of those...” Kat wavered. “I think—I need to sit down.”
“Help her,” I said to Lexi. Then I met Evan’s gaze as he bit down.
He quickly released my wrist and licked away a stray drop from the corner of his mouth, his eyes growing a little unfocused. I pressed my torn skin to Hudson’s lips and let my blood drip on his teeth and tongue and down his throat. Evan had to reopen my wound twice before we saw any reaction from Hudson. The gray seeped out of his skin, returning it to its normal bronze depth.
At my nod, Evan ripped away Hudson’s shirt to expose his chest and I watched, grossed out and fascinated, as his body expelled the bullet. It rolled off his pec and plinked against the tile floor. The hole healed, and then, wonder of wonders, Hudson’s lips twitched against my wrist.
Before I could say anything, his fangs dropped, his mouth opened, and he bit down.
Not a pleasant experience, but I laughed, anyway.
Hudson was alive.
“Holy shit,” Kat whispered. “Holy fucking shit.”
I grinned at her. “You said it, sister.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
In the end, Kat agreed to cover up the existence of the paranormal, though, to be honest, she didn’t have much choice. The vampires’ bodies were gone, disintegrated by their deaths—which, had any of us known about that quirk of magic beforehand, we would have realized much sooner that Hudson wasn’t quite dead. Lexi had accidentally-on-purpose set Julia’s body—uh, and head—on fire when Kat was still considering telling the whole truth of what went down. So yeah, by the time Hudson and I had regained enough strength to get up, there was no evidence left that Kat could point to. Except the guards’ bodies, and Tawfiq’s.
We decided that creating a story about some shady group tangentially related to me who’d kidnapped Hudson and Lexi made the most sense. It was what the cops suspected, anyway. Kat said they had had little evidence of what happened to Hudson—Frank had ambushed him well after he’d visited Julia, to keep the trail away from her. We’d say Hudson and Lexi had escaped their captors and made it home, but they’d both been drugged, so neither remembered any details of where they’d been held. Somewhere near the water, to throw everyone off the real trail. And neither Evan, Kat nor myself had anything to do with their escape.
It was a shitty position to put Kat in, and I could see Hudson struggling with that knowledge as he asked her to do it, but they didn’t have much choice in the matter. The existence of the paranormal couldn’t be revealed—not just because it would endanger all of us, but because any hint of the unbelievable truth would ruin Kat’s reputation.
Lexi, with her purpose of protecting the paranormal community and her friends firmly in mind, rather than the benefit to herself, cast a spell to erase all electronics in Tawfiq’s building. Just in case. It left her as weakened as Hudson and me, and we stumbled out of the building, leaning on each other to keep our steps straight.
We spent the rest of the night at a police station while Hudson and Lexi both recounted their stories. I sat in the waiting area with Evan. Kat came in separately, dressed in a new suit and fresh off the hunt for them—and oh look, they’d already been found. The cops released both Lexi and Hudson before dawn and we all raced back to Hudson’s place before the sun could fully rise.
I turned to Evan before we went to our separate rooms. Brave, amazing, heroic Evan. I pulled him into an extra tight embrace and held on even as his body trembled.
“You did good,” I whispered. “I’m proud of you.”
He grabbed my shoulders, as though I were a lifeline. “I killed someone,” he breathed.
“You saved us,” Hudson countered, his arms encircling both of us from the side.
Lexi nudged her way under one of my arms, and held on to all of us too.
I was wrung out, but this hug, this moment of closeness, of family, did a lot to bolster me. I hoped it was just as effective for Evan. “Do you need us tonight?” I asked softly.
His chuckle was more air than sound. “No, I’m a big boy. I can handle sleeping on my own.”
“All you need to do is ask, you know. I am a champion cuddler.”
“I know. And thanks.” He kissed my cheek then drew back just enough to look up at Hudson. “I think you guys need to cuddle alone.”
I regarded Hudson too and caught him watching me intently.
Yeah... Evan was not dumb, that’s for sure.
He retreated to the basement and Lexi to the guest room. Hudson and I headed for the master suite on the main floor—what I’d started to think of as our room—and showered together. We shared a few kisses, but neither of us had any strength for more than ridding ourselves of the filth we’d gathered that night—both physical and mental. We fell into bed and I was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.
And I dreamed.
If it had been a dream about the horrors we’d all experienced that night, I wouldn’t have been surprised. But instead... I dreamed of Michael.
Michael Aster, the lover who’d convinced me dying was the only option for us to be together and killed me when I couldn’t kill myself. It was odd, but I couldn’t remember if I’d ever dreamed of him before. Probably? But not for years—decades.
So why now?
He looked at me with his big dark blue eyes, as deep as a bottomless lake. Once those eyes had been filled with smiles, laughter, happiness and hope—now, they were sad. He smiled, the expression as sorrow-filled as his eyes, and nodded.
“Soon,” he said.
I woke with a gasp. Red-orange light glowed around the edges of the blinds, telling me it was almost sunset. With a grunt, I rolled to my side to look at Hudson, and found him awake already, watching me.
“That’s a little creepy,” I said.
“I’m not allowed to admire you?”
“Well... I...”
He smiled at my stuttering, the big, full smile that made his eyes crinkle. It was my favorite smile. “You’re cute.”
“Is that the start of a twink joke? Because—”
He kissed the tip of my nose and I sucked in a breath, the memory of him doing the same thing on the otherplane hitting me hard. But I don’t think Hudson remembered our interaction there. He’d been in a coma—essentially—and what had happened would have been like a dream. I was curious, but I wasn’t sure how to bring it up.
Hey, do you remember being a ghost?
Nope. Not going there.
He was here. He was alive—and so was I. I wasn’t going to waste another minute.
“Make love with me?” I asked, my voice soft.
His entire body shuddered, and the breath he took was ragged and uneven. “Yes,” he said, so low I almost couldn’t hear the word over the growly timbre of his voice.
He rolled me onto my back and I parted my legs to cradle his body against mine. Most of his weight was braced on his forearms, resting on either side of my head, as he kissed me. Softly, sweetly, then with more urgency and need. Before long, our morning
hardness had been coaxed into full erections and I gasped every time his rubbed against mine.
I needed, like I hadn’t in years.
“Clothes off,” I gasped.
Thankfully all we had to remove was our underwear, since we hadn’t bothered to put on more than that after our shower at dawn. I hissed as his hard-on seared my upper thigh, so hot compared to the rest of his body. I reached down and cupped it as it found a home in the crease between my thigh and groin, and Hudson groaned in appreciation and closed his eyes as he thrust his hips.
“So good,” he said.
“If you think that’s good, you’re gonna love my ass.”
Hudson laughed and opened his eyes. His hips slowed down, but didn’t stop moving entirely. “I forgot, you know?”
“Forgot what?”
“How much fun it was to have sex with you.”
Well, yeah. Sex could be serious and emotional, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t also be light and irreverent. I mean, at its very core, the act was kind of ridiculous. Hudson was going to insert his penis into my butt and thrash around until he spurted baby-making stuff, and hopefully I would too. We’d make silly noises we’d never make at any other time, and say porn-worthy things like harder, faster, give it to me! It was the most ridiculous thing ever.
But somehow, with Hudson, it had always been magical. A celebration. A joyful act filled with love and laughter. Like he said, fun.
Smiling, I rose up and pushed Hudson onto his back. He bounced against the bed, laughing, his head barely missing the footboard, and I pounced on him, swallowing his cock to the root. His laughter cut off midway in favor of a loud, appreciative moan.
I thought I’d choke on his dick—it had been a while since I’d sucked one, let alone tried deep-throating—but he slid home like he was meant to be there. I slurped with abandon, moaning so he’d know how much I enjoyed it, and his soft curses acted as a counterpoint. At the back of my mind, I hoped Lexi and Evan weren’t awake, but I didn’t care if they were, or if they were standing outside the closed bedroom door to listen in. Hudson and I deserved this time together, damn it.
“Fuck, oh fuck.” I looked up at Hudson to find him watching me, his eyes darkened to little more than pupils. A glowing golden line surrounded the black, and his fangs had dropped. The dark, wide pupils—that I remembered from our time together. The fangs and the glowing iris should have thrown me out of the moment, but they didn’t. They simply illustrated that Hudson had changed. He wasn’t the same man I’d known, and that was okay. I liked who he’d become. A lot.
I waited for the hint of precome but it never came. Hudson’s breathy warning, “Gonna come,” caught me by surprise and I pulled off to look at him quizzically.
“Didn’t think you were that close,” I said, my voice rough.
“Yeah, I, uh...” He lay back and blew out a breath. “Dry orgasms. It’s a vampire thing.”
“Really?”
Hudson didn’t look at me. “Yeah.”
I grinned. “That’s awesome.”
His head jerked up. “What?”
“I hate swallowing!” My brows twitched. “Don’t you remember?”
After a second, he let out a breath of laughter. “Oh my god, I do now.”
I never minded the taste of precome on my tongue, but the flood of semen from orgasm? Nope. Not my thing. I always pulled off or spit it out. “Wait—is that the reason for the disappearing act when we rubbed one out together?”
Hudson wouldn’t look at me, so I scrambled up his body to look down at him. He tried to turn his head away, but I cupped his chin to guide his eyes to mine. “Yes,” he admitted finally.
“You’re a dork.”
“Yeah.”
“You could have told me.”
He grunted a reluctant admission that I was right.
“You suck at communicating. You know that?”
He grunted again. This one was his agreement grunt.
“And just because I’m fluent in Hudson non-verbalisms doesn’t mean you can get away without using your words.”
“Are we gonna fuck?”
“No.” I laughed as his grumpy expression fell into disappointment. “We are going to make sweet, sweet love until your fangs fall out because they’ll be rotted from all the emotional sugar—”
It was Hudson’s turn to rise up and flip me onto my back. I laughed, same as he had, laughter that turned into giggles as his fingers found my ribs and the ticklish spots that hadn’t changed in my entire, too-long life. Soon, tickling turned to caressing, which turned to nibbling and sucking. I gasped as Hudson took one of my nipples between his teeth, tugging and tonguing it, as his fingers squeezed the other.
“I really do like your nipples,” he murmured against my skin.
I smiled and gasped with need. My head tilted back and seconds later, I felt Hudson’s mouth against my neck, his breath heaving against my skin. He dragged the flat of his tongue over the vein pulsing there.
“Do it,” I whispered. He obviously wanted it, and despite my misgivings, I wanted him to feel cared for. “But maybe only take a little, so you don’t get too high to function?”
He huffed out a laugh. “I didn’t get high yesterday.”
No, that was true—he hadn’t. Maybe it only happened the first time a vampire tasted my blood, or maybe all of the energy had been directed at healing. Though, come to think of it, Evan hadn’t seemed high from the few sips he’d had, either.
Whatever. That was a puzzle for a different day.
I cupped the back of Hudson’s head and pressed him gently to my neck. I couldn’t be any more clear than that, and he stopped fighting. His fangs sank into my skin and, yeah, it still hurt, but it was a good sort of hurt. I felt the pull of him sucking my blood and had to revise that conclusion—it was really good.
I got lost in the sensation of Hudson sucking on my neck—until slicked-up fingers touched my hole. I didn’t know how he’d managed to get the lube and coat his fingers while drinking my blood—but then I realized he wasn’t drinking my blood anymore. And damn, but I felt good, loose-limbed and radiant, as though I’d already had an orgasm. Except I hadn’t, because my dick was hard as a fucking rock and my balls ached with a need to release.
Okay, so, maybe the whole biting thing was better than I’d expected it to be.
“You with me?” Hudson asked gently as his fingers probed me.
“Oh yeah.” I blinked my eyes open. He was stretched out beside me, his head propped on one hand as the other played with me. “Did I, uh, pass out?”
“I don’t think so. But you were definitely floating.” His smile held a trace of uncertainty. “Was it all right?”
I picked up my stiff dick and slapped it against my stomach. “What do you think?”
“I think I want to be inside you.”
“Fuck yes. Good plan.”
I spread my legs in welcome and Hudson climbed between them on his knees. He grabbed one of the pillows and tucked it under my butt, and then grabbed his dick by the root to paint its slick head over my opening. Just as I’d missed him getting the lube to start with, I’d also missed him slicking himself up. But I could watch him now, dragging a loose hand up and down his length in an abstract manner as he watched my ass. Finally he pressed himself against my hole.
I hissed. I couldn’t help it. As much as I wanted this—needed it—there was no escaping it had been a long, long time since I’d done this. Hudson was the last man who I’d wanted to share my body with. He had always accepted every part of who I was—okay, maybe not the thief part, but that was the one part of me I could change. The things I couldn’t? He never made me feel less because of them.
He moved slowly but inexorably. I concentrated on letting him in, on relaxing my muscles. He pulled out and drizzled more lube on himself, and when he pushed
forward again, the going was easier and I started to remember how damned good sex could be with my person.
Finally he slid home. He lowered himself to press tiny kisses to the corner of my lips, my chin and my neck, which was still thrumming from his earlier attention. “You okay?” he murmured.
I didn’t have words, so I nodded. And Hudson began to move.
Oh god, did he move.
I gasped, and then I whimpered, and then, on one particularly hard and accurate thrust, I cried out. Not a scream—it was too broken for that—but it was loud and unmistakably carnal.
I wouldn’t have held it in if I could.
“God, I love your noises,” Hudson said. He lifted one of my legs and sat back so he could thrust harder and deeper. I rewarded his efforts with another cry and a mangled curse. “Look at me.”
I couldn’t not obey the demand in his voice. My eyes opened and focused on him—his beautiful, glistening skin, the lines of effort etched around his mouth and across his forehead.
“We’re gonna try again,” he told me.
Of course now was when he decided to communicate. “Y-yeah,” I managed.
“We’re gonna—Fuck.” He closed his eyes for an instant, trying to force back his climax. “We’re gonna make it work.”
“Yeah.”
“Not give up.”
I bit my lip and nodded vigorously. I fought to keep my eyes open as he pegged my prostate, and precome leaked in copious amounts from my flushed dick.
“We’re not gonna walk away this time.” He thrust deep and remained still, his eyes boring holes into mine. “It’s you and me, Wes. Always. Right?”
“If—if I say no, are you gonna leave me with blue balls?”
Hudson’s fierce expression softened. “Yeah—okay, maybe not the best moment—”
“You and me, Hud,” I assured him. Then I rolled my hips and he started thrusting again, his control broken. My eyes closed—they couldn’t stay open with the intensity of what I was feeling. “Fuck yeah—you and me, Hud, always, always—god, right there—”
My mouth opened on a silent scream as my orgasm slammed into me. It stole my breath, my words, all sound—but that was okay, because Hudson was making enough sound for the two of us as he found his own peak. His thrusts were uneven and erratic, and I spread my legs to give him all the room I could to pursue his own pleasure.
