“I wasn’t going to. I was going to say…”
As he trailed off, something strange happened. Something absolutely baffling. Hudson raised one perfect hand, ghosted the tips of his fingers up my knee, and lightly, almost incidentally, traced the hem of my skirt.
My entire body erupted in goose bumps. I licked my lips involuntarily.
Was he…was he touching meon purpose?
“Say what?”
Hudson glanced up at me from under his eyelashes. If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn he looked…hungry. “Your dream man sounds a lot like me.”
11
A Sindecent Proposal
I’m not sure how I managed to concentrate with his fingers dancing across my knee.
But somehow, a snap plan occurred to me.
Problem: Need to lose my virginity.
Proposed Solution: Find someone to have safe, emotionally unattached sex with.
Test: Have sex with Hudson.
Result: Some potentially amazing virginity-losing shenanigans?
“I have an idea,” I said, breathless.
“Yeah?”
“Would you…How would you feel about a trade?”
His fingers paused on my knee. “I’m listening.”
“If you still want those sex toy lessons, then I’ll give them to you. And in exchange, we should have sex.”
The air between us pulled—a bridge jumper’s cable about to snap and break our necks or rebound and send us soaring.
Hudson let out a long breath. His expression turned wolfish. “I think that’s a fair trade.”
“It only makes sense,” I said, trying to tamp down my swell ofsentiment with good old-fashioned practical, scientific thinking. “I’ll get to know what sex is like, which can only improve the quality of The Fantasy. And you’ll know more about sex toys, which will achieve the same result.”
“You don’t need an excuse to do what you want, Scout,” he said, leaning closer. “You can just have it. You can just haveme. If that’s what you want.”
“I do.”
“Good,” he said. Once again, those fingers did their dance across the skin of my thigh, awakening deep, primal lust in me. “Because I want you. You’re my type, too.”
“That’s so hard to believe,” I muttered.
Hudson’s gaze went flat, as if it was the height of stupidity not to think I was eminently bangable. “Haven’t I made it obvious?”
Obvious? I tried to think back over the last few weeks we’d known each other, examining them in a different light. Yeah, he’d held doors open for me. Gotten me cookies at the conference. Listened to me. Stood up for me at the airport. Accidentally kissed me.
And yes, sure, he’d gotten an erection during my talk at the sex toy convention. But that wasn’t…
He wasn’t…
