Besides that, I was relieved to know that even though she’d stayed in Havenbrook, she hadn’t abandoned her adventurous soul—the one that had goaded me to rappel or zip-line or cliff dive with her. I loved that she’d found a way to stay close to her family but still feed that part of her that thrived on the rush of adrenaline.
I envied her that. She made it look so easy—doing what she loved without immersing her entire being in it and forgetting about everything else. Without losing herself to a career she might truly enjoy, but which took her from what—or whom—she loved.
I’d lived that. Was currently living that. And some days, I’d give anything to be back in Havenbrook, surrounded by family and lifelong friends, without the weight of the world on my shoulders.
But that wasn’t the path I’d chosen. What would my dad say if I quit now? If I gave up my career in the army, all because I washomesick?
As I looked down into Kenna’s eyes, hers searching and just as hungry as mine were, I knew I wasn’t just homesick. I wasKennasick.
Not a day had gone by since I’d left where I didn’t feel that ache in my chest, the desperate need to talk to her, touch her, hold her, nearly overwhelming sometimes. Made all the worse because the only place I could do any of it was in my dreams.
I didn’t have to dream about it now, though. Not when she was pressed right up against me, her fingers still tucked in my waistband and her breasts pushing against my chest with every inhale.
“You’re amazin’, you know that?” I said, my voice thick and rough.
She started shaking her head, but I didn’t let her voice her objection. Instead, I wrapped my hand around her neck, my thumb lifting her chin up and presenting her mouth to me, and I leaned down to press my lips to hers. Softly, at first. Slow enough that I would know the second she didn’t want this. But when no protests came…when, instead, she lifted on her toes to chase my lips as I pulled away, I didn’t wait another breath before sweeping my tongue into her mouth and groaning at the taste of her.
Christ, I’d missed this. Hadn’t had nearly enough of it in the days before I’d left for good. Our weekend together ten years ago had been only a blip on the calendar, a tiny portion of all the time we’d spent together our whole lives, but it’d been what I’dthought of the most while I’d been gone. It’d kept me company in my bunk when I’d been stationed all over the world. Had kept me sane while transporting VIPs safely from Point A to Point B.
And now that I had her like this again, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to walk away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MAC
My panties wereat dangerous risk of catching on fire. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if I looked down and found my jeans had combusted right along with them. But of course, I couldn’t look down—not when Hudson was kissing me like I was oxygen and he was cresting water for the first time in an eternity.
There was no denying the heat that still crackled between us. We were hot and hungry, hands grasping and pulling. Tugging and cupping and squeezing, and I was barely sane enough to quiet the whisper in my mind that begged me to strip right there in the middle of the woods and take him deep inside me. Let him love me like that, even if he hadn’t loved me enough to stay.
“Kenna,” he breathed, his mouth trailing over my jaw and down my neck. He cupped my breasts in both palms, lifting and squeezing, his thumbs plucking my nipples and sending jolts of electricity straight to my clit.
Lord almighty, I was needy for him. Needy and wet and absolutely aching to feel him filling me up. Feel his hands inside my panties, his fingers separating me, his tongue licking straight up my slit.
“Hud,” I panted in response, my fingers thrust through his short hair, his hat long gone on the forest floor.
Needing to get closer, desperate to relieve the incessant throb in my pussy, I hooked my leg around his hip, and he groaned into my neck. And then suddenly, I was in the air, my feet off the ground as both his hands gripped just below my ass.
“Need to feel you…” he rasped into my neck.
I certainly wasn’t going to disagree, desperate to feel him too. Wrapping my legs around him, I tugged him closer, groaning into his mouth when the hard, thick ridge of his cock pressed up against me.
And then, without thought, I began to rock. My hips started up a rhythm all on their own, a rough slide that had him groaning my name and dropping his forehead to my shoulder as he grasped my thighs.
“Christ, do you know how many times I’ve thought about this?” His voice was thick and rough and so damn needy I could hardly breathe. “How many times I imagined you ridin’ my cock just like this? Rubbin’ that hot little pussy all over me?” He guided me harder against him, pinning me to the tree trunk as he swiveled his hips into the cradle of my thighs. “Except when I think about it, there aren’t any goddamn clothes between us. Nothing stoppin’ me from lickin’ up all your sweetness. Nothing gettin’ in the way of you soakin’ my dick.”
I choked out a sob, my eyes squeezing shut as the orgasm slammed into me without warning. His words, along with the incessant rocking of his cock against me, ignited the flame inside me and turned my body into an inferno.
Unable to do anything but pant through my release, I clung to Hudson as he kept up the rhythm, using his hands to move me just like he wanted. Prolonging my pleasure…as well as increasing his torture, if the rough groans coming from his chest were any indication.
When I finally felt like I could catch my breath and had safely settled back into my body after my orgasm blew me straight intothe clouds, I held him tighter, clutching his head to my chest. I pressed my mouth against his ear, brushing my bottom lip along the shell and delighting in the groan that sounded as if it were ripped from his chest. Delighting in the way his fingers dug into the flesh of my ass even harder. In the way he rocked me faster and faster against him.
In that moment, our history didn’t matter. My heart didn’t ache for the man who’d gone missing from my life, because he was there now.
He was there with me, pressed as close as we could get without him being inside me, and I wanted to live in that moment with him forever. Wanted to leave everything else—all the baggage we had—behind and just revel in this.
“I thought about it too, you know,” I said, locking my ankles at the small of his back, pressing him tighter to the seam of my jeans. The friction against my sensitive clit was enough to make me gasp, my eyes fluttering when he didn’t let up, instead exploiting my newfound weakness.
“Tell me,” he demanded, his voice ragged with need.
