“I’d say you’re doing all right.” I rub my hands over his back, relishing the strength of him beneath my palms and the way his muscles bunch and stretch. Relishing also how this feels right in a way that few things in my life ever have.

I don’t know what it means, and I don’t want to know. Tomorrow is soon enough to take that bill out of the drawer. Tonight, I just want to be here with Hudson, just him and me for a little while.

“Oh yeah?” He crooks a brow. “Do tell.”

“I think I’ll just show you.” I grin and push him over onto his back, my hand sliding to his belt again. This time, he doesn’t push me away.

Hudson groans, and his eyes are wide, his pupils blown out, as he arches into my touch.

He’s trembling now—his breathing shallow, his skin flushed and a little sweaty. And watching him like this is the sexiest thing that’s ever happened to me. Even before his fingers clutch the sheets and my name pours from his lips like rain over the desert.

After we both come down, we get ready for bed. I expect him to lay down beside me, maybe go to sleep. But instead, he rolls over until he’s settled between the V of my legs again. His face is inches from mine, his fingers playing with my curls as he watches me with eyes gone cloudy with release…and with something more that I’m not ready to think about.

It does strike me, though, how natural this feels, like this isn’t the first time we’ve ever been like this. I know it can’t be true, know that I would never have been unfaithful to Jaxon while I was locked in stone.

But it does make me want to know more—if not about that time specifically, then about Hudson. And him currently giving me shivers by pressing a line of kisses down my neck is not going to stop me from finding out.

“Can I ask you something?” I whisper.

He lifts his head to look down at me, brow furrowed. “Of course. Do you really even have to ask?”

“Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

“What, now?” He looks totally confused. “Am I not doing this right?” He gestures to himself currently lying on top of me, his mouth inches from my skin.

I laugh. “You’re doing it great, and you know it.”

I take his hand, press a kiss to the palm. And watch his eyes go blurry with want all over again, which makes my stomach do a half dozen backflips even as he asks, “So why now?”

“I don’t know.” I kiss my way over his knuckles and around his wrist. “I was just thinking—”

“So I am doing it wrong, then,” he interrupts dryly. “I thought the goal was for you not to think.”

“Yeah, well, you covered that portion of the program pretty well, too. But seriously.” I push up onto my elbows. “You know so much about me, and I know that I used to know just as much about you.

“But I can’t remember, and I hate it so much. Can you…” My voice wavers as I think about how much I’ve missed—and how much I’m missing. “Can you tell me something about you? Something I used to know but can’t remember now?”

“Oh, Grace.” He drops his head down until his forehead rests against mine. “Of course. What do you want to know?”

“I don’t know. Anything. Everything?”

“That’s really broad, but okay.” He presses a kiss to my lips, then rolls off me and onto his side.

“I didn’t mean you had to go.” I clutch at him, try to bring him back.

He laughs. “I’m not going far. But if you want me to be able to have a real, coherent discussion, I need to not be on top of you.”

“Maybe we can have the coherent discussion later, then.” Once again, I try to pull him back over me, but there’s no moving Hudson when he doesn’t want to be moved.

“Something about me you used to know.” He thinks for a second. “I’ve read every play Shakespeare ever wrote at least twice.”

“Yeah, no shit.” I roll my eyes. “I didn’t need you to tell me that.”

“Seriously? You’re going to judge what I decide to share?” He looks offended.

“When it’s that obvious, yeah. No offense, but I’m pretty sure you’re a living, breathing library. And not just like a regular community library. Like the Library of Alexandria.”

“You think I’m like a library that burned to the ground?” Now he looks more than offended.

“Turns out it didn’t actually burn to the ground,” I tell him. “Didn’t you listen to the TED Talk?”

“Somehow I must have missed that.” He makes an are-you-serious face.

“Your loss,” I tell him with a shrug. “It was a good one.”

He nods, even makes a fairly decent attempt at not laughing as he answers, “Apparently.”

“It went up in flames when Julius Caesar set the ships in the harbor on fire. But I guess there’s a ton of evidence showing that a bunch of writers and philosophers continued to use the library years later. It wasn’t the fire that got it so much as all the subsequent leaders who were afraid of the knowledge it held.”

As I finish, I realize Hudson is staring at me with the most bemused look on his face that I have ever seen. “What?” I ask.

He just shakes his head. “I’ve got to say, Grace, that is some seriously sexy pillow talk.”

He leans in for a kiss, but I stop him by pressing my hand to his mouth. “No. No way. No pillow talk for you, and no kisses until you tell me something I actually don’t know.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “Are you kidding me? You’re cutting off kissing now?”

“Umm, yes. Until you follow the rules set down, damn right I am.” I reach for the duvet, start to pull it over me for good measure.

But Hudson isn’t having it. He yanks the blue silk away again, this time going so far as to drop it on the floor, well out of my reach. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not very good at following rules. Besides, there are lots of other places I want to kiss you.”

And then he starts tugging down my sweats.

87

When All the

Feels Are a

Few Too Many

I wake up slowly to the feel of sunlight streaming over my face and a long, hard, male body pressed up against my back.

There’s no moment of surprise, no wondering what’s going on. From the second I’m coherent enough to recognize the feel of his breath on the back of my neck, I know exactly what’s happening. I’m in bed with Hudson.

I spent the night with Hudson.

And though we didn’t technically have sex last night, we did a lot of other stuff. Stuff that goes a long way toward explaining how loose and relaxed and happy I feel this morning. Stuff that also makes me feel anxious, because suddenly this might be a thing.

I mean, yeah, the mating bond has always made it a thing, but there was a part of me that still figured things would go back to normal. Then I would…I don’t know. Get a choice?

It’s not that I hate the idea of a mating bond between two people. I don’t. I just always thought choice should factor into it a lot more. I get the whole thing they taught us in class, about how two people have to be open to it for the mating bond to snap into place, but I’m not sure I buy that, considering it snapped into place with Hudson when I was practically comatose from Cyrus’s eternal bite.

Does that mean this is a real mating bond or is it another manufactured one like what I had with Jaxon? And do my feelings just ebb and flow along with who I’m mated to? Or do the feelings I have for Hudson have more to do with that three and a half months we spent together than I ever imagined? Does my heart remember something my conscious mind has forgotten?

The thoughts chase themselves around and around in my head until my happy mood dissipates under the weight of the anxiety building inside me.

I don’t like this not being settled, and I like even less that I have so little control over my life—and haven’t had any for months. From the moment Lia killed my parents, my life has been out of my hands. I just want a chance to take that control back.

Hudson stirs against me and murmurs something into my hair that has my entire body going rigid in shock.

“What did you say?” I ask as I roll over to look into his sleepy blue eyes.

I expect him to freak out, too, or to at least take it back, but Hudson just wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me closer, until our faces are only inches apart. And sidenote—why is it that vampires never get morning breath? I know they don’t eat food. But still. It’s not freaking fair, considering I’m sitting here with my mouth closed as tightly as I can manage when what I really want is to screech at him to take it back…or say it again.

“Don’t worry about it,” he tells me, and though his eyes are heavy-lidded and he’s got a crease from the pillow on his cheek, there’s something in the way he says the words that has my stomach churning as much as the words themselves.

“You can’t tell me not to worry about it! Not if you said what I thought you did.”

He sighs, shoves a hand through his sexy, rumpled hair. “Does it really matter?”

I look at him like he’s grown three heads. “Of course it matters. We talked about this. We said it was only the mating bond—”

“No, you said it was only the mating bond,” he tells me, sitting up now. As he does, the sheet falls down to his hips and, fight or no fight, there is no missing how beautiful his body is.