Love, Tussles, and Takedowns (5 page)

Just when he thought he finally had a handle on the situation—pun definitely not intended—he practically went slack-jawed when he heard a soft vibrating hum echo out of her bedroom, through the surely-not-up-to-code sound-
un-
proof walls and the why-did-I-leave-it-open door.

Hudson slammed himself back down onto the couch, hands fisted in the couch cushions.

You’ve GOT to be kidding me.

For chrissakes, he wasn’t made out of steel. Then again, if
this
kept going in the happy-ending-for-her direction it was heading, parts of him were going to turn positively bionic.

The quiet, sighing groan she made then punched him clear in the gut.

It took him a good three seconds before he finally found his voice in the jumbled and now useless pileup that was his oxygen, sanity, and restraint.

“Lia...” he managed to growl in a voice he didn’t recognize at all. He’d never, in his entire life, thought he’d ever be on the receiving end of a vibrator used as a martial arts weapon. It was hella effective.

His name slipped out of her lips in a questioning murmur, still mostly asleep.

God help him. “Lia,” he rumbled again, voice low and barely controlled. “I’ve never considered myself a particularly weak man but if you get yourself off without my assistance right now, that will be just too cruel for words.”

He heard her tumble gracefully out of bed with a soft gasp and even softer feet, sounding like the world’s sexiest cat burglar landing on all fours.

Shit, even
that
image was a turn-on.

In retrospect, had some of his body’s blood still been pumping up to his brain, he probably wouldn’t have jumped up to meet her halfway. In the dark. Talking in a voice that sounded just this side of menacing.

Yeah. He definitely deserved what happened next.

* * * * *

“SON OF A BITCH!”

For a second, it seemed like time had stopped for Lia. Before fast-forwarding at warp speed. She’d realized about two seconds too late that her leg was whipping around to make contact not with some ski mask wearing psycho stalker rapist in her apartment.

But rather, Hudson.

The hot, sexy man she’d been dreaming about all night, who could’ve easily gone on the offensive and fought back. She wasn’t stupid. She knew the man could fight. But instead of going G.I. Joe on her as she was sure he could, he just muscled up and took the hit, jutting one of those canon-like arms up to presumably take the brunt of the kick on his shoulder.

Unfortunately, Lia had impeccable aim.

Along with a tendency to fall back on her foundational Chinese kung-fu training when she was reacting on instinct. He’d probably been
expecting
an MMA fighting style response, which would have resulted in her shin catching him in the shoulder.

Not her ankle clocking him in the head.

“Hudson!” She shot forward to his side as he staggered back against the wall.

While she was glad he was still standing, pride be truthful, she was rather surprised he wasn’t out cold. She’d knocked out bigger men before with the same kick. Without nearly any of the self-preservation kill-or-be-killed adrenaline rushing through her veins.

Was it wrong that the fact that he was still standing there was a huge turn-on? It wasn’t very evolved of her. But color her impressed.

The not-so-silent curse slipping past his clenched teeth brought Lia’s attention back to what was definitely going to turn into a massive bruise on his temple. She flicked on the hallway light and ran to the kitchen. Grabbing an ice pack from the freezer, she spun around and jolted again when she found Hudson right behind her.

This time, he caught, not just blocked her impending strike.

“Woman, stop attacking me.”

“It’s reflex,” she defended by way of apology. “You’re the one who keeps sneaking up on me.”

“Only in self-defense. Earlier, it was to stop you from torture with a deadly vibrator.”

“
What?!
”

She jumped back a foot and refused to look down, the question poised for fire over his comment completely forgotten now due to a more recent…development. “Seriously, Hudson? I just kicked you in the head and
that’s
your body’s response.”

“Cut me some slack,” he grabbed the ice pack she was holding and paused just long enough for Lia to wonder if he was contemplating sticking it down his pants to ‘cool off.’

A travesty she was glad he didn’t go through with. Not that she was looking. And not that she was a connoisseur of
that
sort of art, or even a first-time spectator if she was being brutally honest. Then again, she didn’t have to see the Eifel tower to be a fan. And where Hudson was concerned, his ‘tower’ had felt unbelievably sexy. She was definitely a fan.

“Not helping, Lia.”

Dammit, who took control of her eyes and sent them drifting down south?

All the female atoms in her body boldly raised their hands in reverence.

She shot her gaze back up to his face.

It occurred to her then that he was avoiding looking at her.

Maybe he was embarrassed. Not about this but rather, the whole head-kicking thing. Most guys didn’t like it when she beat down on them. Funny, but she hadn’t pictured Hudson with that sort of ego. “Look, Hudson—” she began and took a step toward him.

After which, he promptly slid a step away from her. Eyes still averted. With a hand holding the ice pack to his head and the other balled in a fist and shoved down his front pocket, Hudson’s voice graveled even more as he said, with what sounded like instant-jello-quick-dissolving patience, “Lia. Could you maybe put on a pair of shorts. A sheet. Something?”

What was he talking about?

She looked down and gasped.

Grabbing an oven mitt, which was barely helpful, she tried her best to hide the evidence that she liked wearing low-rise boyshort panties and sprinted back to her bedroom to look for the jeans she’d probably shucked off sometime during the night. It wasn’t an uncommon thing. But it was
extremely
uncommon for someone to actually notice that she did it, seeing as how she hadn’t had a guy greet her right out of bed since her husband.

And even he’d barely seen as much as Hudson had.

She dismissed the irony of that thought to her mental bank of things she’d write in her can’t-make-this-stuff-up memoir one day.

Finding a wayward pair of flannel shorts under her bed, she yanked them on and went back out to the kitchen, only to find Hudson had plopped himself onto the couch.

Good Lord. Why did he have to go and sprawl out like that? Lia
thought, averting her eyes upward as if in silent prayer. Hudson’s current seating posture just made her imagine him pinned under her, spread eagle with her legs wrapped around his in a ‘Saturday Night’ wrestling move—so appropriately named. She exhaled a hot breath.

That’s when she realized he hadn’t had a pillow or anything to make his night comfortable. He’d stayed on her old couch while she’d been fifteen feet away. Bottomless.

Well, hell. That whole melting at the knees thing from the movies was apparently a real thing. Tamping down the girly swoon factor she felt for the first time ever, Lia sat down beside him and checked the growing bruise on his face.

Ouch.

Bad night for her to have worn an anklet. She refrained from telling him that his bruising had rather, um,
pretty
decorative qualities. There’s no way she’d be able to pull that off without cracking a very ill-timed smile.

“Hudson, I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He gave her a lopsided grin that looked more self-deprecating than anything else.

There it was. That lack of an ego she was certain she’d seen in him even. Another turn-on.

“It was my fault for surprising you in the dark, sweetheart. I knew better.”

That’s when she remembered what he’d said earlier about his coming over in self-defense. She
must
have heard him wrong, right? Feeling her cheeks flush bright red, she decided to ask straight out, curiosity never really being one of the things she could keep bottled up and all. “You mentioned you were trying to stop me from doing something earlier?” A passive question.

...That got one hell of a fired response from him if the darkening of his stormy gray eyes had anything to say about it.

“I wasn’t trying to
stop
you per se. More asking for mercy. At least until I was out of earshot.”

She blushed even brighter. “Hudson, I have no clue what you’re talking about. I don’t have…one of those.” Only because she’d never built up the nerve to buy one. Not even online. She could just imagine that plain brown box with the smiling arrow buzzing away by some fluke when Richard, the town’s sixty year-old mailman, brought it up to her doorstep.

Hudson shook his head in confusion over her statement and immediately winced. Blinking slowly in dull pain, he eventually peered open an eye again and studied her face.

“I’m not lying.”

“I can see that.” He frowned. “But I swear I heard the buzzing.”

“Oh!” She ran back to her bed and grabbed her watch from under the comforters. “It was the alarm on my watch. I have an online auction at six this morning and I’m bidding on behalf of a client for several pieces. I set about seven alarms in a row a minute apart since I’m horrible when it comes to the snooze button.”

“That’s some watch. Mine has one measly alarm, and it certainly doesn’t vibrate.”

“It’s one of my brother’s inventions. You remember Gabe, right? He’s the one that probably lo-jacked your phone last night. Gadgets are his thing.” She slipped the watch back on her wrist. “He even rigged it to read my mood via my wrist—sort of like how a lie detector works—and play music accordingly, through some sort of algorithm that’s linked up to playlists and Satellite radio. Basically he has the mind of a genius and a desire to live forever as a teenager. Or Peter Pan.”

“Does it use headphones or a speaker?” asked Hudson curiously.

“Both. He built speakers into the watch but it also has Bluetooth earphones as well. Why?”

He leaned over to try and see the face of the watch. “Because with the way you’re blushing right now, I’d pay good money to hear what music that little device will be playing in response.”

She gasped and pulled her wrist away. “NO. That’s…private.”

He attempted to chuckle but stopped with another smothered wince and slid sideways so he was laying down fully on the couch, ice pack wedged against his head via one rock-hard bicep, while his Thor-like forearm covered his eyes. “So this was all because of a vibrating watch. For the massive headache I have right now, I think I’m going to imagine it the good way,” he teased. “Some sexy music in the background, and you with a seven-speed vibrator calling out my name.”

She almost swallowed her tongue. His knowing vibrator speeds, she would need to revisit another day. The part about her calling out his name last night?

A very real possibility.

Especially considering the very pleased smile the man was wearing right now.

She should’ve kicked him harder.

When he started flat-out chortling, pain seemingly a thing of the past, she realized she’d said the last reflection out loud.

“You are nothing like what I thought you’d be,” he said removing the gel pack from his face to look at her. “If I invite myself to breakfast with you, will you keep surprising me? I’ll take it as your apology. You know, for tattooing what feels like dainty little flowers across my temple.”

She bit her lip to keep from laughing. But she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. She liked being a surprise to someone for a change.

“My treat?” she asked. “I’ll take you to breakfast at the Saturday Market at the Town Square—it’s like a Bazaar with food and crafts booths, and stuff for the kids. There’s a great little Cajun and Creole breakfast booth with just the best grits.”

He smiled and closed his eyes again. “Stop with the dirty talk already. A man can only take so much. I’ve spent almost the entire night up. Literally. So now that I don’t have to worry about sex noises from you, I’m going to get a little shut-eye for a bit. Wake me when you’re done with your auctions?”

Criminally flirtatious and attentive to her work to boot.

He was almost too good to be true.

Before she could respond, he continued, serious as can be, “I figure seven a.m. should be early enough for us to head out for breakfast, don’t you? Unless you think your brothers will be stopping by before that to check if I’m still here. Then we should leave earlier. I really prefer not to have to tell them they don’t have to rough me up because their sister already took care of it.”

Lia blinked at him for a few seconds.
No one
ever talked to her like this. Folks were always so gentle with her, men especially. Either that, or they were usually trying to prove their toughness to her for some reason, again, men especially. True, that would be utterly unnecessary and just redundant where Hudson was concerned, but she never expected him to be like this.

She wondered over that as she went to get him a new ice pack. Pulling the melted one away from his battle wound, she placed a gentle kiss on it before putting the new ice pack on.

Damn. The way his eyes caught fire from that one simple peck, she could only imagine how hot they’d burn over something more.

So much for no more sex noises on her part.

He shaped his warm, calloused palm against her cheek. “Sweetheart, if you put those sweet lips of yours on me again, innocent gesture or not, I’m
definitely
going to deserve that beating your brothers threatened me with last night.”

She stared at him for a second, surprised at the novel thoughts running rampant through her brain…and other parts of her body.

“I’m holding you to that,” she said quietly, before hurrying over to her computer without waiting for a reply. She told herself it was because her eighth, ninth, and tenth alarms of the morning were buzzing away, telling her she needed to get logged in soon.