I should go—I want to go—but there’s something in his gaze that keeps me right where I am, pinned to my chair, with my stomach turning flips deep inside me.
I grow more and more uncomfortable with each second that passes, though, and finally I can’t take it anymore. I’m not ready to deal with this. With any of it. I push my chair back from the table and say, “I need to get going—” “You want to know what else I remember?” Hudson cuts me off. Yes. I want to know everything he remembers, want to know everything I told him so I can make sure it wasn’t too much, so I can make sure I didn’t give him the power to destroy me. But even more than that, I want to know everything he told me. I want to know about the little boy whose brother was ripped away from him. I want to know about the father who treated him like a trained seal and used him like a weapon. I want to know about the mother who looked the other way at all the terrible things that were done to her son, but who then so easily scarred Jaxon for destroying him. “‘Oh, what tangled webs we weave…’” “Stay out of my head!” I command, glaring at him. “How can you—” “It doesn’t take mind-reading powers to know what you’re thinking, Grace. It’s written all over your face.” “Yeah, well, I need to go.” “And here I was, just getting warmed up.” He stands when I do, and the mocking tone is back in his voice when he says, “Aww, come on, Grace. Don’t you want to know what I thought of your red prom dress? Or that bathing suit you wore to Mission Beach that one time?” “Bathing suit?” I squeak out, my cheeks on fire as I realize which one he’s talking about. A teeny tiny little bikini. Heather had bought it on sale at a local surf shop, then dared me to wear it. Normally, I wouldn’t have taken that dare for anything, but she’d also accused me of being staid, stuck in my comfort zone, and flat-out chicken. “You remember,” Hudson prompts. “The purple one with all the strings. It was very”—he draws a couple of tiny little triangles in the air—“geometric.” He’s teasing me, I know he is, but there’s something more than just a few laughs kindling in his eyes. Something dark and dangerous and just a little bit hot. I lick my suddenly dry lips as I struggle to get words past the giant lump in my throat. “I really did tell you everything, didn’t I?” He raises a brow. “How exactly am I supposed to know the answer to that question?” He makes a good point, but I’m too far gone to acknowledge it now. “If you saw the bathing suit, then you saw…” He doesn’t say anything else, and he certainly doesn’t fill in the blanks for me. I don’t know if that’s a kindness, though, or just another way to torture me. Because there’s no mistaking the heat in his eyes now, and all of a sudden, it feels like my blood is freezing and boiling at the same time. I don’t know what to do, what to say—may even have forgotten how to breathe for a couple of oxygen-deprived moments—but then Hudson blinks, and the heat is gone as easily as it came. So easily, in fact, that I wonder if I imagined it. Especially when he smirks at me and says, “Don’t worry, Grace. I’m sure you still have plenty of secrets left.” “Yeah, well, I’m not so sure about that.” I force myself to answer his smirk with one of my own. “Which sucks, considering I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen you in anything besides your little Armani safety blankets.” I wave an airy hand toward his shirt and pants. He glances down at himself, then demands, “What’s wrong with how I dress?” “There’s nothing wrong with it,” I answer, and it’s the truth, because no one—and I mean no one—looks hotter in a pair of Armani trousers than the vampire standing across from me. Not that I’m going to say that to him. His head is big enough already. Plus, admitting it feels like turning the corner on something I’m still not sure I want any part of, mating bond or not. His eyes narrow dangerously. “Yeah, well, you may say that, but the look on your face says something entirely different.” “Oh yeah?” It’s my turn to lift a brow as I lean in a little closer. “What exactly does the look on my face say?” At first, I don’t think he’s going to answer. But then I can see something inside him shift. See something dissolve until the caution he’s been wearing like a shield for the last several weeks morphs into a recklessness I don’t expect from Hudson. “It says that it doesn’t matter what happened between us during those four months. It says that you’re always going to want Jaxon. It says—” He pauses and leans forward until our faces are mere inches apart and my heart is beating like a wild bird in my chest. “That you won’t rest until you find a way to break our mating bond.” 13