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Blush

Page 12

by Lauren Jameson


  Yes. Yes, she liked this. Someone taking control of her scattered, wayward self, because heaven knew that she hadn’t been doing such a good job of it herself.

  “I—” She wanted to submit. She did, but it wasn’t as easy as all that.

  “All right, then,” Alex muttered as if to himself, studying her as if he were committing something to memory. Then he crushed her against his chest and captured her lips with his.

  Maddy was caught entirely off guard, and her worries were incinerated as he splayed one hand flat against her back, the other on her ass, pressing her into him until she felt like they might melt together. Her hands were trapped between their bodies, flat against the rock-solid expanse of his bare chest.

  Bending his neck, he slanted his lips over hers, coaxing her lips into parting for the bold sweep of his tongue.

  She couldn’t remember what she’d been nervous about or why she was upset. She couldn’t think at all. She was consumed by heat, dominated by Alex, until all she could do was feel the pleasure he was introducing to her.

  “That’s better.” His words were rough and vibrated along the line of her jaw when every last bit of defiance evaporated beneath his onslaught.

  His hands moved to capture her waist, urging her closer. She could feel him grow hard beneath the press of their flesh, and the knowledge that she was arousing him was both surreal and exciting.

  Tentatively, Maddy slid her hands from his chest and up, to stroke over his shoulders. The physical act took her straight back to the night before, when in the matter of a moment he had made her forget that she’d never much cared for sex.

  “Good girl.” His hands squeezed once, tightly, at her hips, then slid over her belly and between her legs. “Let it go. You don’t have to hold on to control when I’m here. I’ve got you.”

  Maddy’s knees buckled when he undid the button of her shorts and then the zipper with deft fingers. She was bare beneath, not having had a spare pair of clean panties with her when she’d left for the casino the night before.

  “I won’t let you fall.” He slid a finger through her folds. Maddy was startled to find that she was already damp. Her hips moved involuntarily, pressing into his touch.

  He made her forget.

  “Alex.” Her fingers scrabbled at the impossibly hard muscles of his shoulders. “Now. Please.” If he didn’t take her now, if he didn’t fill that aching hole inside of her with his heat, then the panic would come back.

  “Not yet.” A dismayed cry slipped from between Maddy’s lips, but it was swallowed in another scorching kiss. At the same time, Alex shoved her shorts down her hips. They fell to the floor as he tugged her shirt and her bra up over her head and off.

  “Step out.” He kicked her shorts away, then backed her up until the edge of the solid wooden table hit her just below the curve of her buttocks. She startled a little as the cool, glossy wood pressed against her feverish skin.

  “Lie back.” Maddy hesitated for a moment, self-conscious—he’d managed to get her entirely naked, while he was still fully clothed. She felt . . . vulnerable.

  “Maddy.” The look on his face told her that he expected her to do it. Again, she felt the slight anger at being told what to do, and again it was quickly followed by relief.

  Is this what it would be like all the time? she wondered as, hesitantly, she settled herself back on the smooth expanse of the kitchen table. The corners of Alex’s lips turned up with pleasure as she obeyed his command, and she found herself inexorably happy to have pleased him.

  What was wrong with her? She tried to push herself back up onto her elbows.

  She had issues, yes, and she had grief. But she’d gotten through it all, more or less, hadn’t she? She was strong. And strong women didn’t enjoy being bossed around.

  “Alex, this isn’t—” His pants were undone and he was spreading her thighs farther apart. He settled himself between her legs, then pulled a condom from the pocket of his pants, which were hanging loosely around his hips.

  “Maddy, let yourself enjoy it.” His voice was firm. With one hand, he stroked over the crease that divided her leg from her belly; with the other, he lifted the foil packet to his teeth and pulled until the wrapping ripped.

  Oh God. It was going to happen again. Heat washed over her in a tremendous wave at the thought of being filled in the way that only he had ever filled her.

  “Maddy, it’s okay to let me be in control.” Taking the base of his newly sheathed cock in his fingers, he settled the head of his erection against her entrance. Her hips rose, urging him to slide inside.

  “Alex, oh yes.”

  His hands instead slid to her breasts, caressing her nipples, pulling at them, arousing and holding Maddy in place at the same time.

  “I want to be in control. I need it. And if that lets you lose control for a while, with me, in a safe place, then there’s nothing at all wrong with what we’re doing.”

  Maddy frowned, trying to wrap her head around his words through the thick fog of lust that crowded her mind, when he pressed forward, easing into her bit by delicious bit.

  “Ahh,” she cried out, biting her lip. There was that same delicious stretching sensation, waking all the nerves in its path. There was also some discomfort, because he hadn’t been gentle last night, not that she’d been complaining at the time.

  “Shh.” Alex stilled, letting her adjust. When she could feel the muscles that were clenching him so tightly relax, just the tiniest bit, he slid the rest of the way home, sheathing himself inside of her.

  “It’s not enough.” Maddy reached up for him blindly, clinging to the final threads of control that she couldn’t seem to let go of. “Alex, please, give me more.”

  He understood what she was asking. His expression became darker, more intense, and his fingers stopped their lazy caress to pinch, hard.

  “Alex!” Maddy’s voice was nearly a scream. In only a few minutes he’d brought a primal desire out of her very core. She was frantic, desperate for this strange ache to be assuaged.

  “Hold on.”

  Her fingers searched for the edges of the island and clung tightly as he drew nearly all the way out of her heat. When he slammed back in, sheathing himself entirely in her tight passage, she shuddered.

  It hurt, because he was too big and she was sore. But then he started to thrust in and out, hard and fast, and the pain was replaced with need so acute that it was almost an ache.

  “Alex.” For a woman who had never before enjoyed sex, this was insane. There hadn’t been any foreplay, he was just a bit rough, and yet she felt like an animal. She wanted to lose herself in him.

  Maddy watched through half-shuttered lids as he seated himself inside her again and again. She loved that it was her, her body, that was bringing him such pleasure. Yes, bringing him pleasure—and her, too. She could feel everything inside of her coiling tighter and tighter still.

  Alex slid one hand from Maddy’s hip and between her slick folds, right above the place where his cock was claiming her. He pinched her clit between his thumb and forefinger and rubbed back and forth.

  She tried to close her legs against the onslaught of pleasure. It was too much. As she pressed her legs against his hips, he moved faster, and she settled for closing her eyes.

  “Look at me.” Maddy’s eyes snapped back open at the command. She didn’t even think of disobeying. “Look right at me. Now.”

  Her blue eyes met his.

  “Come for me, Maddy.” As if he had commanded it, the tight spiral of pleasure unfurled in a wild, potent burst.

  Maddy cried out, her voice full of wonder even to her own ears.

  Alex was the first man to ever make her come.

  Once her wave had receded back to shore, once he had milked every last bit of pleasure out of the moment for her, Alex thrust one last time inside of her, and he groaned as her heat sheathed him to the hilt, urging him on to his own release.

  They lay still for a moment, and Maddy could hear t
he sounds of their breath, mingled together in the quiet air of Alex’s kitchen. As with last night, in this, the aftermath of what he had drawn out of her, her mind was clear. Her emotions were clean. It was a glorious sensation, and she clutched at it greedily, this brief moment of peace.

  Alex leaned over Maddy, his cheek resting against her stomach. When, finally, he pulled away, slipped out of her to dispose of the condom, she sat up, the tile pulling uncomfortably at the skin of her back as she did.

  As usual, Alex was the picture of self-possession as he moved to the sink and threw the used latex into the trash hidden beneath. Maddy was far more awkward, sliding off the island on shaky legs, then dressing herself in yesterday’s clothing yet one more time.

  Who was this woman who had taken over her body? She didn’t do things like this.

  “Here.” Maddy looked up from fastening the zipper of her shorts. Alex was holding out both a tall glass of iced water and a sheath of papers.

  “Thank you.” She took the water gratefully; the encounter had left her throat dry and her mouth feeling like cotton.

  The papers she accepted with a bit more wariness. “What is this?”

  Alex smiled, that wicked smile that reminded her that he knew exactly how much she wanted him.

  “Information for you.”

  Maddy’s eyes widened and her breath hitched. Damn it, how did he know? How did he know that, despite all of the protests that sounded so valid to her own ears, she was truly intrigued by what he was offering her?

  Her wonder was threaded through with irritation. “What makes you assume that, after all the times I’ve told you that I can’t do this, I will anyway?”

  Alex raised an eyebrow. Damn it, but those glasses perched on the end of his nose were hot.

  “Part of a Dominant’s job is to know what his sub needs.”

  Maddy groaned with frustration. “Alex, I’m not your sub. I don’t even know what that means.” She needed to get out of there. When she was around him, he encompassed her entire being. She wasn’t rational. “And since I’ve told you so many times that this isn’t what I want, I think you must just be hearing what you want to hear.”

  Alex’s expression grew more serious, and grasping her arm with one hand, he pulled her to him, quick and hard.

  “You’re the one who isn’t listening, Maddy.” She sucked in a startled breath when he slipped his hand beneath the waistband of the shorts that she’d just refastened. His fingers trailed down the plane of her stomach, then slid into the folds that were still damp. “I didn’t say this was what you wanted. I said it was what you needed. And as for how I know, this is how.”

  He pulled his hand from between her legs and lifted his fingers between their faces. Maddy could see them shining with wetness, and she squirmed with embarrassment.

  “You want me. I want you. We each have something that the other needs. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.” Her mouth fell open with shock when he ran his tongue lightly over the fingers that had just been inside her. He smirked at her shocked expression.

  She felt herself scowl despite her intense attraction to him. “I haven’t signed that . . . that agreement thing you talked about yet. And I might not.” She expected to see disappointment on his face.

  Instead he grinned. “I can hope. In the meantime, I find I have a taste for vanilla.”

  Maddy was sure the resultant thump of her heart was audible. Then he continued, and that same heart sank all the way to her toes with nerves and anticipation.

  “Unless you glower at me like that again. Then you’re in for a decidedly nonvanilla spanking. I’m looking forward to it.”

  Maddy stared at him for a full ten seconds, trying to wrap her head around what he had just said. When he again smirked, she decided to preserve what was left of her dignity.

  She left.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It wasn’t until she closed the door of her apartment behind her and sagged back against it with relief that Maddy found herself able to draw in a full breath.

  What had she gotten herself into?

  The sheath of papers that Alex had foisted on her was clutched tightly in her right hand. Though she was tempted to start reading right away, she instead laid them down on her kitchen table, smoothing out the crinkles made by her damp palm.

  His scent clung to her clothes, her skin. It was distracting her.

  Her shower was brief and hot. She had expected it to wash away the sensation of his hands on her body, of his lips on her own, to help her get her bearings. It did erase his scent, leaving her smelling of her own lavender soap and rosemary shampoo, but the ghost of his touch lingered.

  It was as if he had branded her . . . had already begun to possess her. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea, and yet, as she combed her wet hair into a slick ponytail and pulled on stretchy yoga shorts and a loose tank top, she found her thoughts stayed stuck on the image of him thrusting inside of her again and again.

  Circling around the stack of papers that were screaming at her to be read, Maddy brewed a pot of coffee and put a slice of bread in the toaster. She had left before Alex could force-feed her, and though she wrinkled her nose at the thought, she knew that he had been right.

  She was starving. She’d had a lot more exercise than usual over the last twenty-four hours.

  Her phone beeped with an incoming text. Maddy picked it up, smiled when she saw that it was from Alex.

  READING ANYTHING INTERESTING?

  WELL . . . I’M NOT SAYING NO. YET.

  I WILL SEND DECLAN FOR YOU TOMORROW NIGHT AT 7:00 P.M.

  Maddy knew that she should have expected it, but she was still speechless. Give the man an inch and all that. She waited for the irritation to hit her, but as she chewed on her lower lip, she found that, actually, she liked his confidence.

  The phone rang, vibrating against Maddy’s palm and startling her from her thoughts. She stared at it for a moment, then flipped it over to see the call display. Her pulse was fast, and her breath came rapid and shallow.

  Maybe it was Alex.

  When she saw the name displayed on the screen of the cell, though, her heart sank and her stomach clenched.

  HUDSON, NATHAN.

  “Phone. Right. Answer the phone, Maddy.” Her sense of guilt was so strong that she couldn’t do anything else, even though she knew that the rest of her day was now going to be agony.

  Well, she deserved it.

  “Hi, Nate.”

  “Maddy!” Though the voice on the other end of the line was friendly and familiar, every muscle in her body felt stretched taut. “It’s been too long.”

  “It has been a long time.” For Maddy it was never too long. Nathan didn’t blame her, never would if she knew him, but that didn’t matter when she blamed herself.

  “So how’s Paradise?”

  She heard Nathan swallow. She could picture him, leaning against the counter in the house they had all shared, his battered green mug full of scalding black coffee.

  Except he wasn’t at that house. None of them—Nathan, Erin, Maddy—lived there anymore.

  “Oh, you know. Another day in Paradise. What else would it be?” Maddy managed a dry laugh. She had chosen Paradise, Nevada, to run to because she had been wryly amused by the irony of the city’s name.

  “Still waitressing?” Nathan’s tone was light, but she knew that he disapproved of some of the choices she’d made, even though he would never tell her so.

  “You know I am.” She didn’t want to talk about herself. “How’s the gallery going?”

  The diversion worked. Sounding excited, her sister’s former fiancé told Maddy all about the details of the business that he had started a few years earlier, when they had all shared a house. He was a woodworker, made incredible pieces of art from wood, and had started the gallery to showcase his own work, though it had expanded from there.

  Inevitably, of course, he circled back to her. The man was amiable, even sweet, but
under the teddy bear demeanor was a steel resolve.

  “Maddy, how long are you going to lock yourself away in exile?”

  Maddy’s jaw snapped closed so abruptly that her teeth bit into her tongue. The warm, bitter taste of blood filled her mouth. “I’m not in exile, Nathan.” Though he’d made a habit of checking in on her since she’d moved away, he’d never come right out and asked her anything that pointed before.

  “What else would you call it?”

  Maddy scowled even as her fingers found the locket that she never took off. She stroked the polished metal, looking for comfort and finding none.

  “I’m . . . I just . . . I needed a change, okay?” Her words were defensive. Of all people, Nathan was the one she owed explanations, apologies, recriminations.

  But when she’d offered all of that time and time again, what else was there to give?

  “A change.” She’d poked the sleeping bear. Irritation colored the voice of the man she’d considered her brother-in-law, though her sister and he never had a chance to marry. “Right. Leaving your family, abandoning your career . . . You were just looking for a change. Not running away at all.”

  “I was an optician, Nathan.” Maddy cringed as she said it. “There are lots of us around. And I like what I’m doing. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

  She was defensive, but damn it, he was starting to make her mad, which was exactly the opposite of what she wanted. Why couldn’t he just be mad at her? If he could just be mad at her, furious even, if they could have one big knockdown, drag-out fight where he told her that he blamed her as much as she blamed herself for her sister’s death. And then maybe she could begin to move on.

  But instead Nathan Hudson was nothing but kind, nothing but loving and forgiving.

  “You serve bacon and eggs to truckers, Maddy.” Nathan’s voice was flat. “And there’s nothing wrong with that, except that it’s not what you actually want to do. But if you want to hide away out in the desert, away from your family, denying yourself the right to live a full life, then I guess it’s your business.”

 

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