Page 27 of Amelia and Her Prince Charming
“Hudson.” I shook him again, and he wrapped his good arm around my waist. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?” he slurred.
“Should I keep you awake? Or let you sleep?”
“Sleep,” he said.
“But will you wake up if I let you sleep?” I asked desperately. I shook him again, harder. “Hudson!”
He blinked a few times as if trying to focus on me. I saw the moment his eyes cleared. “It’s okay if I sleep,” he said, his voice husky. “We both need water.”
“I know,” I told him. “I’m going to go to the cabin and find us some.”
“No. I’ll do it.” He shifted to the side and winced. “Give me a minute.”
I leaned over him so I could see his whole face. He did look a little better than he had a few hours ago, but not well enough to walk a mile on a rough trail.
He reached his hand up and tucked a stray hair, stiff with salt and dirt, behind my ear. His fingers lingered at the nape of my neck, sending a strange, twirling sensation through my stomach. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered.
“I look like I almost drowned.” I tried to laugh it off, but I was cemented in place by how he was looking at me. Like he’d never seen me before.
“Thank you for worrying about me.”
Tears stung my eyes at the gentle gesture, but I was too dehydrated to cry. “Tell me you’re going to be okay.”
“I’m going to be okay.” But his voice slurred, one word bleeding into the other like a freshly inked paper getting wet.
“I can’t lose you too.”
“You won’t.”
“But what if we don’t get help in time and the weather never clears and something happens to you, and I’m left all alone—”
“Amelia.” He took my hand and brought my knuckles to his lips, kissing them gently, his action stealing the words from my mouth. “What if it all works out?”
“I don’t know if I have that kind of hope.”
“I have enough for both of us,” he said. “Your hands are freezing.”
“I can’t get warm.” My teeth were chattering now, from fear, but also from cold.
“I also have enough warmth for the both of us.”
“But your fever.”
“Amelia,” he growled. “Come here.”
I lay down and scooted close to him, immediately feeling his delicious heat as his good arm wrapped around my waist and tugged me closer.
Hudson’sbreathingevenedintothe sounds of someone who was sleeping deeply, but I was wide awake, staring at the flickering shadows on the wall in front of me.
Obsessing over how thirsty I was warred with obsessing at how it felt when Hudson’s lips had grazed my knuckles. My ears burned remembering his soft touch, the small puff of breath across my hand, the gentle press of his mouth to my skin …
I wasn’t some teenager being touched by a boy for the first time. I’d been married and wildly in love with my husband. But this, this had been different.
Not bad different or good different.
Intoxicatingly different.
One of his arms was draped protectively over my waist, and the other was under my head like a firm pillow. When we firstgot to the cabin, I hadn’t been in a head space to really consider what it felt like to be held by Hudson Blaire. It was hard to get my thoughts to chill enough to analyze them like I might an essay or a poem. Instead, it was a barrage of sensation—heat and burning, comfort and security, wild-heart racing and breath-stealing.
