“The house is beautiful, Greer.” I walked to the window and looked out at a massive backyard. “And the backyard is huge.”
“Yeah, it’s a lot of room. Do you see that tree line, way back there? That’s where the property ends. We have about an acre of land.”
“It must have been an amazing place to grow up.”
She leaned against the windowsill and smiled. “I have a lot of good memories in this house.”
I brushed a curl away from her face and moved my hand to the back of her neck. “Come here,” I whispered as I drew her mouth to mine. God, I loved kissing this woman.
Greer pressed her body closer to mine, and the kiss deepened.
She slid her hands under my shirt, and the feeling of her skin on mine made my body go so hard with desire that I had to fight the urge to lay her across the bed.
“Greer,” I panted, pulling my mouth from hers. “We need to stop before I make love to you with your family downstairs.”
Her cheeks turned pink, and she drew in a long, deep breath. “This feeling. I can’t explain it. You make me feel things, want things, I’ve never wanted before. It both scares me and thrills me at the same time.”
God, how I loved that she spoke what she felt. It was fucking refreshing to have a woman tell you her thoughts without having to guess.
“I feel the same way, sweetheart. I could hardly stand being apart from you this afternoon.”
Her face bloomed into a wide grin. “This is crazy. We’ve only known each other a few days!”
I ran the tip of my finger down the side of her face. “It might be crazy, but tell me it doesn’t feel right.”
Her eyes met mine, and I could see her answer in them before she even spoke.
With a quick sweep of her tongue over her lips, she replied, “It feels so very right. And I couldn’t stop thinking about you either, Hudson.”
My heart raced in my chest, and I found myself massaging at it. “I don’t want this to end anytime soon.”
A sweet smile crossed her face. “What are you saying?”
I rubbed at the back of my neck and drew in a slow breath. I glanced around her room and then looked back at her. “Earlier, when your mom called me your boyfriend…”
Greer started to speak, but I pressed my finger to her mouth to stop her. “Don’t say anything, okay? Just listen for a second.” She nodded, and I dropped my hand to my side. “I liked hearing that. I don’t know what’s going to happen when I finish this book. But what I do know is that I want to spend time with you, Greer. I want to see where this goes. I’d say we could take it slow, but considering I’m already fantasizing about how I’m going to peel your clothes off tonight and sink inside of you, I think slow is off the table.”
A soft giggle slipped from her lips, and she pressed her fingers to her mouth to keep from laughing even more.
“I just want to be with you,” I said. “I don’t know any other way to say it.”
She dropped her hand from her mouth and whispered my name. “Hudson.” She took a step closer and wrapped her arms around my neck. “You have no idea what these last few days have meant to me. You’ve brought something to life inside of me, and I find that I’m rather liking the person I am when I’m with you.”
“You do?” I asked, raising one brow.
“Yes,” she replied. “I do.”
I kissed the tip of her nose. “Good, because so do I.”
“Greer! Hudson! Dinner is about ready,” her mom called from the kitchen. “Come help with the table, sweetheart.”
“We should, um, go help your mom,” I said before I kissed Greer gently.
“Yeah, we should.”
She let go of me and started to walk out of her bedroom when I grabbed her hand and pulled her back. Dipping her, I kissed her quickly and then stood her back up. With a laugh, she reached up onto her toes and brushed a light kiss across my mouth.
“You make me happy, Hudson Higgins.”
And just like that, I fell in love with her.
Greer
Dinner at my parents’ house had never been so amazing. My father, mother, Kyle, and even Bishop all loved Hudson. He fit into our family like he had been here the entire time. The dinner table was filled with an abundance of conversations, ranging from Hudson’s books, to Kyle thinking of getting into the K9 program, to a quick lesson in growing Christmas trees.
After we all cleaned up dinner, we found ourselves seated around the large table in the formal dining room with four tubes of pick-up sticks.
Kyle clapped his hands and stood in front of us all. “Alright, for those of you who don’t remember: black sticks are worth twenty-five, red are ten, blue are five, green two, and yellow are one point each. You cannot move any of the other sticks, and if you do, you lose your turn.”