by Bea Paige
“Bryce, may I?” Hudson says after a little while. The wracking sobs may have subsided, but the tears have not. “There’s something I need to say to Louisa.”
“Yes, there is,” Bryce says, releasing me from his hold. “It’s been a long time coming.”
I don’t register the meaning behind Bryce’s words, I just turn around and face Hudson. He wipes my damp hair away from my face and brushes the tears away with his thumbs, before pressing a soft kiss against my mouth.
“The first morning after you arrived here I asked you to promise never to run again, that whatever problem or issue or fucked up feeling you hold inside, you stay no matter what. Do you remember, Louisa?”
“Yes, of course I do,” I say, my voice cracking.
“Well, I’m calling in that promise right now. I know you’re scared, I’m scared too, but I’m asking you not to run.”
“But I can’t…”
“No, you do not run,” he says firmly, lifting my chin so my gaze meets his. “None of this is down to you. Your mum, she made bad decisions, but her biggest mistake wasn’t seeing just how incredible you are. She missed out on knowing the most wonderful, brave, kind, generous, loving person.” He stops, drawing in a ragged breath.
“Hudson tell her, it’s time, mate,” Bryce says.
Hudson nods his head, looking from Bryce to me. “When I was a kid I was emotionally and physically abused. I suffered a lot of cruelty at the hand of a woman who should have loved me above all else. The one person in my young life who I should’ve been able to trust implicitly hurt me every single day. My mother was a cruel, wicked woman with nothing but hate in her heart. Finally, after years of abuse, when I was a week away from my tenth birthday, social services took me from her, but it wasn’t soon enough. The effect of my mum’s evil, her abandonment as a mother, as a human fucking being, lived with me for a very long time. It still does. As an adult, I’ve tried to fill the chasm that she tore in my heart with sex. I wanted to feel loved, but every time I fucked a woman it was just that, fucking. It wasn’t love, it wasn’t anything close. Eventually, I figured I was incapable of loving anyone, that my mum’s cruelty had stripped that ability away. Three years ago, I met Beth and something inside me began to soften. Like you, she didn’t force me to feel anything. She didn’t expect anything apart from my friendship. It’s possible, had she not been attacked, that I could have shared a life with her, but she was taken from me and my heart was torn from my chest once again. Then I met you. This incredible, astounding woman who was as broken as me. I saw it in you on the plane, in the club when you stood up to me, when you stepped out of the pool naked, not afraid to bare yourself. I saw that you had got to a point where you had nothing to lose. I saw a desolation deep inside of you and I was drawn to it, drawn to the broken, dark, pieces of you. Then one day, I realised that it wasn’t the broken parts I was drawn to at all, but the light between them. You have this way, Louisa. Despite everything, despite all you’ve been through, despite your own heartache, you have this enormous capacity to love. You care. That day in the chalet when you were washing up, I wanted you so bad I could barely breathe. I wanted to fuck you, I wanted to control those new, scary feelings and replace them with something familiar. You see, whenever I had sex before, I felt nothing but emptiness in here,” he says, pressing his palm flat against his chest once more. “With you it was different, I didn’t need to fuck you to feel anything because I already did, though at the time I didn’t understand it. I couldn’t comprehend how I could feel that way about a person so soon.” He stops for a moment, leaning down to press a delicate kiss against my lips. “You fluttered into my heart from the moment our eyes met on the plane, and you have remained there ever since. Louisa, I am a fucking fool, but I am not an idiot. I can say to you now, without any doubt, that I, Hudson Freed, love you. You are not damaged goods and I sure as hell am not better off without you. I’m not a man who has ever begged, not when I was kid and my mum was beating me black and blue, and I won’t do that now, but I will ask you one more time to stay. Stay for us, love us. Will you do that, Louisa?”
For a moment I can barely breathe, I can barely take in what Hudson has said. But in a rush of understanding, of emotion, his words finally register in my head. He loves me. They all love me, my men, my brothers Freed. With that knowledge, I throw myself into his arms. “Yes, I’ll stay.”
Epilogue
Lying here now amongst my sleeping men, I try and evaluate what has happened these past few weeks. How have I gone from that broken girl to this woman right here, loved by these men? It seems inconceivable to me. Even now when we are a tangle of limbs and hot breaths, I still find it difficult to fathom. I would be lying if I didn’t say that I’m scared, that even though I promised to stay, I still have the urge to run. I won’t though, no matter what. These men have shackled me to their hearts well and truly, and I am responsible for their happiness as well as my own. Besides, we are a family now by choice. It’s what I’ve always wanted.
Somehow, we are mending each other, and whilst I know that our love may not be the conventional kind, that there will be times when it will be challenged, I know now that as long as we are together we’ll be able to weather any storm.
Or so I had thought.
To be continued…
Brothers Freed Book 3
Dawn of Love – Book three of the Brothers Freed series is available to order now:
https://books2read.com/DawnOfLove
Author’s Note
Thanks so much for reading Storm of Seduction. Next up will be Dawn of Love, the last book in the trilogy. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them!
Special thanks for Jacky Bck for naming Calum (Cal)! He is quite the character, and who knows, perhaps Nisha and Cal will get their own story? Watch this space!
Thanks so much for sticking with me, and for loving these characters as much as I do.
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