Thief: A Bad Boy Romance (79 page)

The bathroom door slams open; “Is my toothbrush-”

“Hudson!” But it’s not a cry of anger or shock, or even surprise; it’s me crying out his name as I come. And gasping out his name as my body begins to shatter pushes me tumbling over that sweet edge as my climax explodes through me.

“I- uh-” His voice is choked, and as I look up through the semi-frosted clear shower curtain, I see him staring at me as he backs out of the room; “Sorry.”

The door shuts, and I slump against the wall, feeling like I want to turn to liquid and let the water pelting down on top of me carry me right down the drain along with it.

It’s a frosted shower curtain, so- no, there’s no way-

The water and the steam swirl around me as I slide to my knees in the tub and curl my legs up to my chin as I rock myself. He couldn’t have;
God
he couldn't have.

“
H
ere
, drink up.” Rob from accounting slides me a glass of amber liquid, and I wonder for the ninth time why the fuck I came out to a damn
club
tonight. To blend in, I guess? To go out with some of the “guys from the office” and be a normal person maybe? In any case, this is going from a stupid to a terrible idea really fast as I find myself staring at the glass in front of me with the hunger of a man who hasn’t eaten in a year. Some people keep a medallion of some kind around like some sort of stupid talisman or lucky charm that they can attach themselves to when they start to feel weak about relapsing.

I carry the bullet they pulled out of my shoulder in my pocket.

I smile at Rob and Hiro, and some guy who’s name I’m pretty sure is Mike; “Naw, I’m good, thanks though man.”

Hiro frowns at me; “You
did
see the year on that bottle this shit came out of right?”

I force out a laugh; “Yeah, looks like good stuff.”
It looks like mana from the Gods and I want to guzzle the whole fucking bottle, but I can’t do that you fucking pricks.

Rob looks at me quizzically; “Wait, are you really not gonna drink it? Seriously?”

“Yeah, seriously. Thanks though.”

“Dude, just have a fuckin drink.” Probably-Mike says, sipping on the scotch in his hand.

“I said fucking
no
, ok?” I clench my fists, feeling the rage hit me harder than I was thinking it would. I need some new fucking friends.

They all give me strange looks and I shake my head; “Sorry, I’ve just got a long day tomorrow at work.”

That seems to be the magic word as Rob nods empathetically; “Old Man Archer got you working on the West Side Highway project huh?”

No, actually I’m just distracted by the fact that I can’t get Old Man Archer’s DAUGHTER out of my fucking head for even a second.  
”Mhmm, yeah, it’s a doozy.”

There’s a tap on my shoulder, and I turn to see 120 pounds of
sex
just staring at me with dark brown eyes and a hot pink dress; “Hey, you wanna dance?”

She’s hot, she’s dressed up, she’s smiling at me like that and batting those eyes; why not? Hey, a man’s gotta have
some
vices, and it’s not drinking, right?

“Uh, sure.”

And then we’re out in the heat and the sweat of the throngs of peoples dancing and moving to the thumping bass on the dance floor, and I’m just not feeling it. She’s all over me, her hands on my biceps as she tries to grind on me, and instead of getting turned on it’s just putting me off in a major way.

“Look, just stop.”

She looks at me like doesn’t hear what I said and leans in to try and kiss me. I push her back and hold her there with my hands on her arms; “I said stop.”

She pouts; “Awww, you’re no
fun.
”

“Ok.” I turn and start to push my way through the crowd when she grabs my hand; “Hey, lets just get out of here instead. I’ve got plenty to drink at my place.”

Ok, this girl is seriously asking me to come home with her, I’m seriously about to say no, and I’m starting to wonder if there is
seriously
something wrong with me; “No, thanks.”

She looks at me like I’m totally nuts, which I can’t exactly disagree with her on at that particular junction; “Well fuck you then, prick.”

Yeah, fuck me, right?

The guys I came with are out trying to score on the dance floor, so I just pay their tab as a goodbye before I just leave. Out on the street, I breathe, fingering the metal slug in my pocket and feeling the sharp tug of the addiction demons grabbing at my fucking throat. Me, Hudson Banks, turning down no-strings sex with a hot girl; something is definitely throwing the world and reality as we know it out of whack. I take out my phone and scroll through my contacts until I see her name.
This
is why the world is off it’s axis, I think as I stare at Reagan Archer’s number.

Fuck
, this is a bad idea.

I
t’s hours later
, and I’m still rock hard. All I can think about - the only possible real thought going through my head at all actually - is the memory of her calling my name like that;
Jesus.
I mean I couldn't
totally
see through the curtain, but I could enough that I can
assume
what she was doing, and
assuming
is enough to have me going out of my mind right now. It’s not just the way she said my name like that either, it’s knowing
what
she was doing, naked with that hot water steaming over her perfect skin, trickling over her hot body when she did say it. It’s knowing that she was uttering my name when she came, and that thought has kept me hard for
hours
since.

I tried fixing the situation myself;
by hand
, if you will. I tried wrapping my hand around my throbbing hard cock and stroking it as I imagined Reagan’s perfect pouty lips wrapping around my dick. I tried to imagine that insane body of hers sliding down onto me, my cock sliding hotly through her wetness as she came for me -
on
me - calling my name. But it wasn't the same, not by a damn mile, and I just couldn't do it with being pissed at it not being the real thing.

The apartment,
completely
unsurprisingly, has been silent since; like, pin-drop quiet. And I’m willing to bet she’d down the hall doing the exact same thing I am - sitting on a bed staring at a wall trying to get thoughts together enough to think about what the hell we do now. What we had before? Yeah, they call that sexual
tension
. Now? I don’t they have a name for whatever the fuck falls between sexual tension and fucking, but Goddamn if it isn’t so damn
tense
that I feel like I’m about to snap.

I’m on my feet in a second; I can’t just stay in this tiny fucking guest room anymore. Her door is still closed when I go to the living room and turn on some mindless movie, thoughI think I hear the quietest intake of breath in the world as I walk past her door.

I want to leave, well, sort of. I want to give her
space
is more accurate.
I
don’t want to leave at all, but something tells me Reagan will stay in her room
indefinitely
until I do. I whip out my phone and text my office to get two of my guys to come watch the place tonight so I can get the fuck out of here; so I can clear the air of whatever just happened back there.

“Sorry for walking in on you.”

Her voice makes me jump, and I’m amazed at how I never heard her coming; “Reagan-”

“I’m sorry for walking in on you.” She repeats herself, her voice level and quite, her face neutral, as if she never said it the first time at all.

“I- I’m sorry too, for, walking in on-”

For walking in on you with your fingers buried in that sweet pussy that I’d love to cover with my mouth and lick until you couldn’t see straight
is what I want to say. I don’t obviously, but it doesn’t stop me from congratulating myself on being such a smooth talker.

“It’s fine,” She cuts off my thoughts; “Look, if we’re going to- I mean if you’re going to be around-” She sighs, her hand coming up as she runs her fingers through her long hair; “That time before- you know, at my Da-”

“This is my
job
, Reagan, I’m not going to get tripped up by-”

“No, look, I’m just saying before was nothing, right?”

I feel a tight clench somewhere deep inside my chest. ‘Before’, meaning ‘that kiss’.
That
kiss; the only kiss that’s ever mattered, anywhere. And yet I hear myself talking, and saying the opposite of everything I want to tell her; “Uh, yeah I guess so.”

Fuck!

“Good,” She breathes out, an expression that looks a lot like relief moving over her face; “OK, good.”

Yeah, fucking awesome.

“So before was nothing, right? I mean,
I
was drunk, you might've been drunk, I was grieving-” I start to open my mouth, but she cuts me off again. “No no, it’s not like you were taking advantage or anything, Hudson, I’m just saying it was nothing, OK?”

I’m not sure who she’s trying to convince harder here, me or her, but it fucking sucks either way.

“We were horny and sad and drunk and just made- well,
almost
made a terrible mistake.”

I’m nodding at her words, even though every single fiber of my being is raging otherwise inside.

“I- I just wanted to get that out so we can be in the same place together without biting each other’s heads off or there being this sort of-”

“Sexual tension?”

She blushes as I say the word, and it’s so cute and so fucking predictable that I’m grinning at her.

“I- I just wanted to say that now, before anything else popped up.”

“Well I’ve only got the one, you know.”

Her face goes
bright
red, and I can’t help but grin even wider

“So, there’s nothing more to talk about then, right? No sexual tension or anything like that? We’re just doing our jobs and just working together without anything like that lingering?”

“Sure.” I say thinly; “Listen, Reagan, I’m out of your hair tonight anyways, so you can relax.”

“Oh, you are?” She looks quickly up at me, her expression hard to read.

“Yeah, I’ve got two guys coming over to watch you instead.”

“Wait, two
strangers?
” Her voice quavers for a second, her eyes looking nervous.

“They’re good guys, Reagan. I think they’ll watch you better than I c-”

“Hudson  I don’t want two strangers.”

I sigh in exasperation; “Well what the hell
do
you want, Red? Because you don’t want these guys watching you, and it sure as shit seems like you don’t want
me
around-”

“I do want you-” She winces and shakes her as that adorable flush creeps up her cheeks; “I mean, I want you to stay and be the one watching me, if
someone
has to be doing it.”

I stare at her with a puzzled look, trying to read her face.

“Please?” Her voice is shy, naked in it’s honesty, and I find myself nodding as I open my phone to call off the two guards.

Jesus, this girl is going to be the end of me.

“Fine.”

T
he buzzing
beneath my pillow shakes me awake, and I frown as I feel sleep begin to slide away from me. I’m grumbling to myself as I pull out the offending cellphone I must have fallen asleep with, blinking at its glaringly bright screen. The number isn’t familiar, but I
do
recognize the time that says it’s 3:45 in the morning, and with a muttered swear, I reject the call and shove the phone back under my head.

The buzzing starts again
just
as I start to drift off. “Ugh
, what?
” I groan out loud, grinding my teeth as I see the same unknown number illuminating my screen and wrecking my sleep a second time. I’m tempted to answer just to tell them where they can stick it, but instead I just turn my phone off entirely. I’m yanking the covers up around me and burrowing deeper into my sleep when I hear the knock at my dorm-room door.

What the actual fuck.

“
What?!
” I know the disheveled, skate-punk-looking kid standing outside my door, but only through faint recognition as someone who lives on my floor on the other side of the dorm. “Can I
help you?
”

“There’s, uh, someone here to see you.” He takes a sip from the atypical college red plastic solo cup in his hand.

I furrow my brow at him; “Excuse me?”

“Outside; there’s some dude who wants to see you.”

“Who?”

He shrugs. He looks high, or drunk; “I dunno, some guy just gave me a hundred bucks to come knock on your door and tell you to answer your phone.” He frowns and taps a finger to his forehead which would be comical if I hadn’t just been woken up at four in the morning.

“Wait, no, that’s not it, he said to say ‘Answer your
damn
phone, Archer.’”

I almost smirk; Hudson.

* * *

“
A
hundred dollars
, huh? Just to get me outside?”

Hudson is leaning against the side of a bright red Porsche convertible, his white oxford shirt unbuttoned at the neck and his sleeves rolled up, uncharacteristically showing off his tattoos. He grins and shrugs; “Eh, its the only cash I had in my wallet. Answer your damn phone next time.”

“What do you want, Hudson.” Ok so part of me is thrilled that he’s shown up here like this at four in the morning like something out of a John Hughes movie; especially looking like
that
with his hair pushed back and that cocky grin and those tattoos peeking out down his forearms. The other part of me though - the
sensible
part of me - is wary of this for those exact reasons.

“I want to show you something, get in.”

I raise my eyebrows skeptically; “Have you been drinking or something?”

“What? No, I don-” He frowns and shakes his head; “No, Reagan, I haven’t.”

I cock my head towards the red convertible; “What happened to the white one?”

“I got bored. Look, just get in ok?”

“Hudson, it’s four o’clock in the morning,” I’ve been at college for all of a month, and the work is already
seriously
piling up. I roll my eyes at him; “I need to
sleep
.”

“No, what you
need
to do is get in the car.”

He’s so insistent and so earnest about it that something wants me to say yes when I know I shouldn’t, and suddenly, I’m caving.

“Let me just go change my-”

“Nah, PJ’s are fine.” He winks at me; “c’mon Archer, quit being a diva and get in the car.”

* * *

H
udson
, predictably, drives like an insane person, and we’re roaring over the George Washington bridge in less time than I thought was physically possible. He whips us around a van and veers off onto the Palisades Parkway, and then we’re tearing away from the city and up the west bank of the Hudson River. We aren’t talking, but the stereo is playing an old Grateful Dead record, and I almost grin at how
not
expected this choice of music is for the Armani-suited wild man Hudson.

He smirks as if reading my mind; “I’m a man of odd taste, Ms. Archer.”

“What, like drunk bimbos and sports cars?” I smirk, unable to help but get that cheap shot in; “Yeah,
so
outside the lines for rich young finance guys in New York.”

“I was going to say like night drives and girls in pajamas, actually.”

I feel myself blushing as I turn and look out the window at the inky black of the river we’re following. I don’t know what this is that we’re doing out here, but I’m suddenly
very
curious to see where it goes.

Hudson swerves off the main parkway, and then we’re speeding
up
; up a twisting, winding, and wooded road. The elevation climbs, and Hudson drives faster and higher, taking bend after bend with screeching tires until I’m holding onto the edges of my seat with white knuckles and gasping as the trees rush past us.

And then suddenly, the darkness of the trees gives way, the sky opens up, and and we’re squealing to a stop. I can still feel my heart hammering from the drive, but I gasp as I look around the parking lot lookout where we’ve stopped. I can see the lights of the whole city from here, down along the black ribbon of the Hudson River, and its
incredible.

“I just thought you’d want to see the whole Hudson.” He says quietly from the seat next to me.

I turn and see that he’s staring out at the view himself, and I grin; “Please tell me that’s a pickup line you’ve used before.”

He laughs, his whole face breaking into a wide smile; “Not on a first date, Ray.”

“Oh, is this a first date?” I smirk.

“Is it?” He shrugs; “First date and I already get to see what you sleep in; not bad I’d sa-”

I smack him on the arm with a laugh and he turns to grin at me; “No, Ray, it’s not a line; just something I wanted to show you.”

We both turn back to the view for another minute of silence. I open my mouth to ask it but then stop myself, before changing my mind again; “You show this to a lot of girls?”

A song ends on the album, and in the absolute silence of the car, he turns to me, his sharp eyes glinting in the light from the dash; “None, actually.”

The music starts up again as we both sit back in our seats and just stare off into the predawn as civil twilight crests over the city; and its
wonderful
.

O
K
, so being around Hudson is hard.
Ugh
, I need to get my mind out of the gutter; it’s
difficult
I should say, being around him. Mostly because the only thing I can think about
at all
is that cock of his I saw when I stumbled into the bathroom. I mean, it’s not enough that he’s rich, cocky, muscled and criminally attractive; the guy has to have an big dick
too
?

I mean honestly, it’s distracting.

He
of course seems to have have totally moved on from seeing, well, whatever it is he thinks he saw. Although at this point, I’m fairly sure he knows
exactly
what he saw; and heard. I cringe a little, thinking about gasping his name out as my orgasm ripped through me, and then seeing him just
standing there
, staring at me. Whats worse is that I can’t I get my damned mind off of that image of him standing there totally naked and
completely
hard. And why can’t I help but wonder what or who he was thinking about that got him that way?

His back is to me, as he reads through business emails of some kind on his phone in my living room, and I find myself chewing at my lip nervously, my mind a whirlwind. I mean, would it
really
be so bad?

YES!
The voice in my head screams, shaking me from my idle day-dreaming and making me realize with a  blush that I’ve been
staring
at Hudson’s back for the past five full minutes.
YES
, it would be bad like ruination of public image bad. I mean
sleeping
with the guy in charge of donating campaign funds? It’s not illegal or anything, but they’d fucking
crucify
me for that in the papers. I can almost see the headlines now, something like “Silly Little Rich Girl Predictably Bangs the Guy With Money; Bows Out of Campaign”.

No, fuck that. What I
need
is to get images and thoughts of me banging Hudson out of my head,
now
. Of course, the pathetic amount of time it’s been since I’ve been involved in
banging
of any kind makes me groan, and I know that’s part of the problem. I mean there was Chet - yes,
Chet
, like something out of a fucking Archie comic - but that was over six months ago, and even then it was barely a thing. It was barely a thing so much that when I heard the whispers about him fucking his intern like a walking cliche, I remember feeling more sorry for whatever college poli-sci major had to lay there and fake it now that I wasn’t doing it than I did for myself. Erika, my “brand manager” (God I hate that title), of course want’s me to get back together with him, and is always talking about how much of a “complimentary companion” he is for a “power-woman” like myself.

Yeah, because “complimentary companion” has “sexy” written all over it. And
again
my mind instead thinks of the hard-bodied, cocky Hudson. Hudson with the tattoos and the obnoxious bad-boy chip on his shoulder; Hudson with the dangerous glint in his eye and the fucking
missile
hanging between his legs. I’m pretty sure it would give Erika an aneurism if I announced that
he
was going to be my new “companion” of any kind.

I’m still mulling all of this over in my head when Chelsea comes over later with takeout sushi.

“So what do you think, Hudson?”

I grumble into my yellowtail maki. I don’t know if I’m pissy because she’s decided to include him in what
was
going to be a sister get-together, or that she’s somehow getting along with him
swimmingly
. Or maybe I’m just
generally
feeling
on edge because of the Hudson situation as a whole.

“Your ex sounds like a dick, Chelsea,” He’s saying as he takes a bite of salmon. He sees me staring at him and grins as he makes an extra big show of sensually slurping the piece of fish between his lips while Chelsea is looking down at her own food. I make a face at him, which only gets him grinning more and more my own pulse beating faster.

“Aw, thanks Hudson!” I’m still making my stink face at him when Chelsea looks up sees me, before she turns and nods her head at Hudson; “You know, you can always come hang with me if my sisters being a bitch, Hudson.”

He chuckles right along with her as I stuff seaweed salad into my mouth and look away. It’s not
flirty
between them - she’s acting like more of a kid sister and him more like a conspiratorial brother than anything like
that
- but it’s still getting under my skin. It’s as if their closeness brings out some sort of bizarre jealousy in me, which is stupid because I don’t want or need to be close to Hudson.

Keep saying that to yourself and maybe you’ll start to believe it.

I’m interrupted from battling my inner dialogue by Chelsea poking me in the arm with a chopstick; “We should ask his opinion on
your
ex, Ray.”

I blush as Hudson arches an eyebrow at me, a grin teasing his perfect lips; “Ex-boyfriend, huh?” Yeah, I definitely haven’t mentioned Chet to Hudson.

“Let’s…
not?
” I’m staring daggers at my sister, but she’s either not getting the hint or just ignoring them anyways.

“Oh com’on! I bet Hudson has a ton to say about you and Chet.”

I groan inside as Hudson grins wickedly at me; “
Chet
?” His cocky, smug mouth cracks even even wider as winks at me; “Oh, yeah, I think I’ve got
loads
to say about ‘Chet’.”

“
See?
” Chelsea gives me a sassy look as she reaches past me for the ginger.

“I’m
sure
you do.” I say icily.