Breath We Take (Cuffed By Love Duet Book 1)

by Amanda Kaitlyn

  “You okay?”

  Nodding excitedly, she gripped my hands that were grasping the soft fabric of her skirt, ready to rip it off of her the moment she told me to.

  “I-” She stopped, her eyes closing and her chest moving rapidly as she tried to calm herself. As I waited, my thumbs rubbed gently over her hip bones.

  She opened her violet eyes again and they captivated me with the trust in them.

  “I want this so much,” She whispered, her hands moving under mine to slip the hem of her skirt down her legs, her eyes holding mine intently.

  “I want to be yours, Hudson.”

  The moment the words were out of her perfect mouth, I knew I was done for.

  Fuck, she had no idea what those words did to me.

  My control snapped.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Emberly

  MY HEART BEAT sped at a lightning speed as Hudson’s cool, minty breath met my neck and he kissed a line down the skin there and to my shoulder. Moving the collar of my blouse away, he began to torture the skin there, moving on to my bare shoulder where he left playful nips and licks. My skin was pebbled in goosebumps and I all but hummed with pleasure beneath him.

  “Have you ever been claimed, Darlin'?”

  His words brushed along my warmed skin and I arched into his body in response.

  I’d never had this crazy attraction to a man before, not only that I had never wanted it. Men were the reason my heart had been broken over and over again as I watched my father hurt my mother each night as a young girl.

  Men were the reason I distrusted the world and almost everything it consisted of. I never thought I would be proven wrong. I never thought it was possible to meet a man like Hudson Lennox.

  But here I was.

  It scared me how deeply I wanted him, yearned for him, but I knew fighting it would be like fighting the inevitable.

  My feelings for him were undeniable.

  I had no hope of escaping our attraction and if I was honest with myself?

  I didn’t want to.

  “No.” I whispered, reaching down to push my hands in smooth locks of his hair. He groaned against my touch, pushed up my blouse to just under my breasts before diving in and kissing down my stomach, stopping at my hip bones. I blushed fiercely, shame rushing through my veins as I watched him lean back on his knees between my legs and just look at me.

  Ugly.

  Fat.

  Unworthy.

  My self hatred whispered inside my head, threatening to push away the joyful pleasure I had felt just moments ago.

  “Breathe,Emberly. I can see that mind of yours going a mile a minute.”

  I tried to do as he said but fear of what he saw when he looked at me bore down on me like a tidal wave and I couldn’t shake it.

  “You’re going to be mine but first I need to know what just happened that made you lock up like that.”

  I took a breath, finally looking down at him.

  Expecting to see disinterest in his gaze, my mouth parted on a gasp when I witnessed the full on hunger he had for me in his eyes.

  He wanted me.

  I reached down and helped him remove my top from my body and then grasped his hands in mine as I told him.

  “I don’t want you to…”

  “Reject you?”

  His eyes dilated slightly as he heard what I was trying to say and before I knew what was happening, my mouth was crushed under his.

  He kissed me roughly, like he couldn’t help himself, like he needed this kiss to breathe and on a sigh I parted my mouth for his entry.

  The first long, slow lick of his tongue over mine caused need to coil in my lower belly and to pool heavily between my legs.

  I whispered his name against the kiss and felt him sigh as he pulled fractionally away.

  “You are so fucking beautiful it takes my breath away when I look at you. When I saw you for the first time, as I’m sure you could tell, I wasn’t expecting it. I was having a pretty shitty day. But meeting you made all of that fucked up shit disappear and that’s what you do to me every day. I was hired to protect your best friend but in all honesty? I only stayed on her detail to be close to you.”

  Leaning forward onto his elbows, his body caged mine in and his hands, rough skinned and callused, whispered over my face.

  “Do you believe me, Darlin'? That your perfect, to me? Because if I have to spend the entire night telling you that; I will.”

  Shaking my head at him, I smiled softly at his need to make me see what he already knew. I wished I could see myself the way he did and I was pretty sure by the time morning came, I would.

  “I do. I believe you.”

  Relief sparkled in his eyes then, causing the pale blues in them to appear almost white.

  Reaching down to grasp my waist, Hudson lowered his mouth to my collarbone where he teased the sensitive skin, making a moan to fall from my lips.

  “Oh, god.”

  “You ready to be mine?”

  Nodding, I pulled his face up from my chest and kissed him with all the desire and urgency that filled me in that moment. Nothing but giving myself to him would calm the affect he’d had on me and I knew, without a doubt, that I was ready to do just that.

  This was the moment I let myself take a chance and I prayed he would take care of me.

  “Please.”

  ***

  Hudson’s large, thick fingers slipped under the fabric of my laced panties and the action stopped my heart for a beat.

  This was it.

  My bra fell away from my body next and my eyes closed on a breathy sigh when his mouth lowered to my jaw, my neck, the sensitive spot behind my ear.

  It was as if he knew all of my body’s sweet spots and was honing in on them all at the same time.

  It felt amazing.

  The full, wet feel of his mouth venturing down the slope of my throat caused a moan to leave me because I knew where he was heading.

  “Fuck, I could look at you all night and never tire from it.”

  His voice fell over my skin like sandpaper, rough and laced with sex.

  A hot, hungered mouth caught the tip of one of my peaked nipples, causing toe curling need to unfurl beneath my skin, inside my belly, then finally settling where I needed him the most.

  Suddenly, I was surrounded by him.

  His scent- mint and spiced cologne.

  His hands- large and demanding.

  His mouth- licking and biting and kissing me senseless.

  I was lost.

  When his tongue traced down the apex of my thighs and his eyes, dark and filled with hunger, met mine, I gasped at the intensity I saw in them.

  “Tell me your mine, Emberly.”

  I nodded, breathless.

  “I’m yours, Hud.”

  His mouth dove straight for my center then, his sinful tongue tracing the outer folds of my pussy before it entered me.

  “Oh god, right there, Hudson!”

  I couldn’t help but moan out his name, helpless to his ministrations on my sex, my entire body lighting up underneath him. Every thought of anything else slipped from my mind and there was just him.

  Him, tending to me.

  Him, kissing me.

  Him, all but devouring me.

  And it was impossible to deny that I wanted this.

  I wanted him more than my next breath.

  He leaned up on his elbows as he ate me, just like that.

  The whiskers of his beard burned the smooth skin of my thighs and his teeth scraped tortuously over my flesh, enticing low moans from my lips as I neared the edge of oblivion.

  My muscles began to tense as my orgasm neared, the tsunami of pleasure threatening to shoot me into sensations I was sure I had never experienced.

  “Give it to me, Darlin'. Come for me.”

  At his roughly spoken words and one last sharp pull of my swollen clit, I did.

  I screamed his name loudly as every synapse in my body fired all at once
and I shuddered blissfully through the most intense orgasm I had ever felt.

  Before the tremors that wracked my body let up, I felt Hudson cup me between my legs and a thrill of arousal sped through me.

  “I don’t want to hurt you so were going to take this slow.”

  I nodded meekly as one of his fingers slipped between my swollen folds, closely followed by a second. I felt utterly stretched as he pushed those two thick, callused fingers through my lips and toyed with my hyper sensitive folds before drawing them away. He repeated the action at least twice more before I heard the sound of his pants dropping to the floor. My eyes, wide and curious, flew down his hard, sculpted chest, the gathering of black hair that lined his stomach and happy trail. The sight of what lay in his hand then widened my eyes and created a deep ache in my stomach as I panted beneath him, every molecule in my body primed for his taking.

  I didn’t think I had ever needed something as much I needed him in that moment.

  I had spent all of my life just getting by. I plastered on a smile and said the right things, did all of the things I was expected to do but I now realized I hadn’t really been living. Knowing Hudson had been a shock to my system.

  I knew people would say our relationship was fast.

  Rushed.

  Abnormal.

  Intense.

  All of those words would be true.

  But I knew with a startling clarity as he parted my thighs even farther apart and knelt between them that I was safe with this man.

  “Look at me, Emberly.”

  I did. The sky blues in his eyes were darkened with possessive need and I felt the same affliction tear through the jaded walls of my heart.

  He graced me with a full on, no holds barred smile and I felt my lips tipping up in one of return before my breath stilled on a gasp. The large head of his cock rested against my lips, before he gently rubbed his hands up my bared thighs and I shivered in anticipation. The softened touch created tingles of calm to pebble my skin, allowing every muscle of my body to relax as Hudson readied to take me.

  “I won’t last like this, baby. I want to make this so good for you. I want this to be the best sex of your life.”

  A soft laugh bubbled up from my chest as he teased me, knowing that it would in fact be the best of my life.

  It was my first time, after all.

  A small part of my mind told me that making love with Hudson Lennox would be anything but gentle. Everything about him was the complete opposite of what I’d imagined my first time being.

  I bit down on my lips as I toyed with the idea of how he would take me.

  Would he take his time? Would he tease me?

  I didn’t have to wonder for much longer, though.

  On a rock of his thick hips, Hudson pushed inside of me and I lost the ability to breathe for a few seconds as I felt the utter fullness of him inside me.

  My core clenched with need and my stomach knotted as a sharp, shooting pain burst from between my legs and settled deep in my chest.

  He caged me in like that, his large, muscular body all around me and his mouth one one of my pointed breasts, teasing with slow licks of his tongue.

  “It feels… I didn’t know it would feel like this.” I whispered, almost to myself rather than the man loving my body.

  I felt his fingers graze my cheek bone as he looked at me, a mixture of concern and hungered lust masking his normally stoic face.

  “Like what?” He rubbed his lips up my neck and nipped my lips playfully before I parted them for his tongues entry. I soft moan left me as he took a taste of me, his hips locked against mine while my body struggled to adjust to his size.

  “Like heaven.”

  Soon the pain between my legs lessened and my craving for him to move took my body over. I squirmed beneath his weight, pulling back from his wet kiss to beg him to move. But he must have known because before I could take another breath, he was pulling out of me, the slick head of him dragging over the bundle of swollen nerves inside my folds.

  The absence of him inside of me made my walls contract and by the glint in Hudson’s eyes, he’d noticed.

  “You want me inside you, don’t you, Darlin'?”

  Nodding eagerly, his name was ripped from my mouth when he pushed deep once again, this time he didn’t stop until he was all the way inside of me and not one inch of space was separating our bodies.

  My body came alive with pleasure as he continued to drag himself out of my channel, pushing back in even harder, with more force than the last. His thrusts became quicker and my heart pounded a heavy rhythm as I soared to the brink of orgasm again, only this time I knew I wouldn’t be the only one feeling pleasure. Hudson was right there on the brink with me.

  “Hudson, I’m so close. I’m going to… c- come…”

  My breaths came in fast, hiccuped sounds the higher my body flew.

  “Fuck, you’re so snug, so perfect for me. I knew it would be like this. So perfect, so right.”

  I arched up as Hudson’s head lowered and his warm, wet lips caught one of my nipples between his teeth while he tortured the other between his thumbs and the sensations became too much for my body to handle.

  “Hudson!” I screamed his name, a deep blush covering my face as I heard the cathartic sound being pulled from my throat. My walls spasmed as I came, my body going to pieces beneath him. With one full rock of his hips, I felt the rush of his orgasm coating my inner walls as he finally gave himself over to his own pleasure and I closed my eyes in the aftermath of what I knew would be the best sex I had ever had.

  Hudson Lennox had ruined me and healed me and loved my body like nothing I had ever imagined. A blanket of sated calm settled over me.

  “Fuck, Em, my Em.” Hudson pushed his hands through my hair that splayed over the pillow under my head, the touch gentle as he tipped my chin up and kissed me soft and sweetly. Bliss and sated need hummed slowly through my veins as I parted my mouth on a sigh, tasting the taste of peppermints and coffee on his lips.

  “Hudson.” I breathed as he drew away, a heart stopping smile spread over his face that I knew would make my knees go weak and my heart to tremble if I wasn’t lost in him already. But, I was.

  My fingers sunk into his hair and I smiled against his kiss.

  “I knew It,” I breathed, “I lost myself in you.”

  As he kissed me again, his smile widened and a twinkle of mischief sparked in his pale blue eyes, causing my belly to dip.

  “Get used to it.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Emberly

  A LOUD, SUDDEN crash in the hallway jarred me awake from a deep, restful sleep and blinking the sleep from my eyes, I looked for Hudson in the space next to me, but came up empty.

  Did he have to go in to work? It was Saturday morning and I was sure he’d taken the weekend off, as I had the weekend off from the hospital and often enough; where I was, so was he.

  I slowly padded into the hallway, flicking the light-switch on the wall before finding the source of what woke me. A glass tumbler had been knocked off of the kitchen counter and I had a feeling as to how when I saw a bare chested Hudson standing in the dimly lit room, hands clenched tightly into fists at his sides. The muscles of his bared chest and shoulders clenched tautly, the power in his stance rolling off of him in waves. I shivered at the sight.

  “Hud, baby, what’s wrong?”

  As if he’d only then noticed me hovering in the hallway, his steely, blue gaze snapped up to my face before they glazed over with a darkness I’d never seen before. My heart begun beating faster and my breaths became shallow, a familiar sense of dread filling my stomach.

  Had he changed his mind about us after last night?

  I watched as Hudson moved one of his hands from his side and grasped the cell phone I hadn’t noticed laying on the kitchen island. Punk, glittery case, white frame…

  Shit. It was mine.

  “Want to explain this shit to me, Emberly?”

  Hesita
ntly taking my iPhone from his hands, I glanced at the screen noticing the unknown number I’d come to memorize over the past two weeks since the overnight break in at the hospital.

  Linda had said it was nothing, but I knew it had been a warning from whoever was stalking us. With each chilling message I found in my inbox, though, the more I realized that whoever was behind them wasn’t looking for just Ashlee. He was after me, too.

  Just Now, Unknown: We’ll be together soon.

  It read and I trembled as the words registered, fear permeating my chest and squeezing my heart in its grasp.

  “I expect an answer.” The rough, deep, voice came from Hudson and I momentarily stalled, biting my lips, not knowing what to say. He was so still, so quiet, so cold and I knew, beyond anything else- I’d done that to him. It was then I realized how unfair I had been to him. I hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him, to confide in him. This man wasn’t what I thought he was when we’d met. He was loyal, with a good heart that was honest to a fault.

  How could I tell him that at the time the texts started, I wasn’t sure if I could trust him? That I hadn’t wanted to let this sick man, this stalker ruin what we had? I wasn’t an easy person to love. I knew that.

  I had enough insecurities to drive any man away, even the persistent, determined one standing in front of me, as large as a brick wall.

  I wanted to trust in him about all of this but at the time, I just couldn’t make that leap yet. I was scared to let him into my heart, knowing that it could very easily be broken. I opened my mouth to say something, to somehow ease his anger by finding out like this.

  Before I could he was turning away from me, pulling his large, rough hands through his hair, his thick fingers gripping the smooth strands with what I knew now to be disappointment.

  He wasn’t angry that I’d received these messages and he didn’t hate me.

  I had so many opportunities to tell him the truth about… everything.

  And yet… I didn’t.

  “What else are you fucking hiding from me?”

  “Nothing! Hud… I’m sorry. I received the first message right before our first date, when you took me to the chinese restaurant. I was just admitting to myself that I wanted us and I thought that It would rock the boat. I didn’t want that, Hudson. I wanted us to have time to just be together. Just you and me.”