“Jesus.” His features went taut. “No, I’m going to hurt you.”
The same words she’d thrown at him on the side of the road. You’re going to hurt me. But he wouldn’t, not anymore, not now that she knew what he’d gone through, what had shaped him into the man he was. He wasn’t heartless. He was just a little bit damaged. But he was hers, damn it.
“More, Connor. I need you.”
Groaning, he rose to his knees as he set a hard, relentless rhythm that had his cock slamming into her without mercy. She felt each deep stroke between her legs, in her fingers and toes and the tips of her breasts. When she came, it was in an explosion of white-hot pleasure that blinded her, seared her from head to toe. Her entire world was reduced to Connor, and the heat in his eyes, and the way he groaned her name as he sagged on top of her and shuddered in climax.
“Christ.” He was breathing as hard as she was, his sweat-slickened chest plastered to hers as they both recovered.
Watching him dispose of the condom stole the lingering pleasure from her body and replaced it with prickly unease, because it reminded her of the birth control she’d requested before Tamara had stolen the one piece of insurance Hudson had counted on for her survival – that nobody but her knew who she really was.
Not many people have ever actually seen Dominik…
Tamara’s words suddenly came to mind, solidifying the idea Hudson had been toying with for days now. What if the man Connor had seen leaving his camp hadn’t been Dominik? That would mean Dominik hadn’t been responsible for his wife’s death. It would mean that she could tell Connor who she was, and he might not hate her.
But she wasn’t ready to tell him yet. She wasn’t ready to lose this – his heavy body against hers, his lips trailing kisses on her neck as he came back to bed and settled beside her.
She rested her head on his chest, the even beating of his heart tickling her ear. “Was it like this with your wife?”
The question popped out before she could stop it, and Connor instantly tensed, his pectoral muscles tightening beneath her cheek. His chest rose on an inhale, then fell as the air seeped out of his lungs. “What do you mean?”
“The way it is with us.” She paused, struggling to put it into words. “Intense. Frantic. It’s like… I can never get enough of you.”
Connor was silent for a moment. “No,” he admitted. “It wasn’t like this.”
“What was it like, then?”
“Different.”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “That’s very diplomatic of you. You can say better, if that’s what it was.” But the notion stabbed her heart.
“That’s what it was, though – different.” There was another beat, long and strained. “She didn’t like this side of me.”
Hudson frowned and rose onto her elbow. She could barely see his face in the darkness and it bothered her, so she hastily reached for the lighter on the bed table and lit the candle beside it. The yellow glow that filled the room emphasized Connor’s pained expression.
“What side?”
“When I was rough in bed.” He rested an arm over his forehead, not quite shielding his face from view, but casting a shadow over it, making it hard to read his expression. “Or when I was too intense. It scared her, I think.”
Hudson’s frown deepened. “But that’s who you are. You’re intense.”
His answering chuckle sounded sad. “I guess she didn’t like who I was, then.”
“I don’t think that’s true. I think she loved you.”
He nodded. “Yeah. She loved me.” His arm dropped to the mattress, long fingers tightening in the sheets. “But she didn’t know me, not completely, anyway. I learned pretty fast to hide certain parts of myself from her. I wanted her to be happy, and… well, that part of me didn’t make her happy.”
The admission drove slivers of displeasure into Hudson’s skin. Connor’s dominance, his intensity, his roughness… they were an important part of who he was. It was the reason he’d survived this long in such a primitive, unforgiving land. How could his own wife not understand that?
“You must have really loved her, if you were willing to change who you are,” Hudson whispered.
His voice shook slightly. “Maggie was… she was like a beacon of light in the midst of so much darkness. I’ve never met anyone who smiled so much. I didn’t understand it, but I knew I wanted it. I wanted to feel that light touch in my life and find out how she did it – how she lived without fear.” Connor’s tone sharpened at the edges. “But that’s not possible, not in this world. It took me a year with Maggie before I realized what was really going on. It wasn’t that she’d found a way to bring light to the darkness – she genuinely didn’t recognize that the darkness was there. She was living in a fantasy.”
The notion made Hudson sad. “So are most of the people in the city.”