by Quint, Suzie
If the duffel hadn’t still been in the hotel room, Maddie realized, she could have left then. She was nervous about going back but not heartbroken that she had to.
She stopped at a store and bought some teething toys for Jesse, to alibi herself, but if she was really lucky, Zach might not even have noticed she’d left.
*
That proved too much to expect. She’d barely gotten the driver’s door open when Zach was standing in the V between the car’s body and the door, glaring down at her.
“Where’d you go?”
Maddie fought down the resentment that sprang up in her. She had one last night with him; she didn’t want to spend it fighting. “To the store. I bought Jesse some teething toys.”
“It took you four hours to buy teething toys?”
“Then I browsed. I figured you were busy. Can I get out of the car please?”
Zach backed up. The scowl lost some intensity. “I’m sorry. I was worried.”
“What? You thought I’d get lost? I’d have to work pretty hard to get lost in a town this size.”
Zach just shook his head and walked back to their room.
Maddie felt as though a light had gone on over her head. Her hands still on the steering wheel, her arms stiffened, pushing her deep into the driver’s seat. How unbelievably dense could she be? So focused on her own plans and indulging in wishful thinking that she couldn’t see what was right in front of her. Of course, Jake had told Zach about the trunk.
And knowing she was a flight risk, her sudden disappearance had scared him. He had to know he couldn’t stop her. Just the same, he could force a scene instead of letting her slip silently away.
Maddie leaned her forehead against the steering wheel. Thinking only of herself and her problems, she hadn’t considered how her disappearance might affect him. She didn’t owe him a goodbye, but he didn’t deserve to be hurt either after everything he’d done for her.
She discovered she was more of a coward than she’d thought. Zach’s sister had taught her about his temper. Maddie couldn’t face the possibility of his temper directed at herself. She’d call him a day or two after she’d gone, she decided, and explain as best she could. But he’d never know how much leaving him behind hurt.
She got Jesse from the back seat and opened the trunk for the one thing still there—Zach’s iPod.
“Where’s Jake and Daisy?” Maddie asked as she set the iPod on the dresser.
Zach sat on the edge of the bed, his eyes downcast. “They went to the rodeo.”
In just those few words, he seemed like a different man. Clearly not liking that his fears had been exposed, he’d withdrawn into himself. Maddie felt like she was dancing on nerves rubbed raw with pretending.
She put Jesse in the crib and gave him a teething ring before she turned to face Zach. “I didn’t mean to worry you. It was just … this thing with Daisy. It’s a family thing, and I’m not part of your family.”
“Okay.” Zach nodded his head, but it didn’t ease the discomfort between them.
“Should we go to the rodeo?” Maddie asked.
“If you want. They won’t get to the bulls for a while yet.”
“Jesse could use a nap then.”
Zach didn’t say anything.
Any other time, if they had a few hours to kill, Maddie would have put money on them ending up in bed together in the time it took them to get their clothes off.
If she hadn’t been planning to do exactly what he was worried about, she would have addressed his fears head on and gotten him out of himself. She could pretend along with him that the possibilities were open ended, but she couldn’t lie to him today and leave him tomorrow. That would be worse than cowardly; it would be cruel.
Maddie plugged the iPod in and shuffled through the music until she found Josh Turner’s. She wasn’t about to let the album start at the beginning; Would You Go With Me? would be about the worst choice she could make. Angels Fall Sometimes was at least something they could slow dance to.
She stood in front of Zach as the song’s opening notes played.
He looked up at her and shook his head. “No, Maddie.”
“You won’t dance with me?”
“No.”
“Please.”
He looked away. Maddie could almost follow the deliberation in his head. They’d made such a game of him giving her whatever she wanted if only she said please, but it wasn’t working this time. Maddie thought it had been close though.
She went to her knees in front of him. “Zach, please don’t do this.” When he still wouldn’t look at her, she caught his face between her hands and forced him to. “Don’t do this.”
The misery in his eyes wrenched at her heart. Her need to erase that look was just more evidence of her cowardice; who would erase it when she left?
Desperate to reach him, she kissed him. The lack of response from his lips put another knife in her heart, but she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. Still holding his head, she covered his face with gentle kisses. He started to thaw, his hands rising slowly to rest on her hips. Suddenly, they encircled her waist and he pulled her between his knees as his lips found hers. His kisses were fierce and fervent.
Zach stood, raising her with him then twisted, still carrying her with him, so she landed on the bed beneath him. Whatever consideration he’d shown her in the past was gone. His touch was firm and demanding, nearly brutal, as he hastily explored her body, removing her clothes as he went.
Maddie couldn’t keep up. When she was down to her panties, Zach rose to his knees to pull his T-shirt off. His jeans followed.
He grabbed her panties and pulled them down, barely giving her the chance to lift her hips from the bed, then he fell on her, forcing his way inside her, demanding that her body accept his full length whether she was prepared or not.
She was, but only just. His ferocity took her by surprise. As did her response to it. When he raised himself on his arms and drove into her, like a battering ram against castle gates, her hips rose in response, meeting his violence with violence of her own. Her hands cupped his lean buttocks, her nails digging crescents into the tender flesh, urging him deeper, encouraging his savagery.
Their coupling was too turbulent to last. The need for satisfaction escalated with each vicious thrust until a shockwave of shattering intensity took her.
Chapter Ninteen
When Maddie returned to reality, Zach was laying limp and drained on top of her, as heavy as ever. Instead of complaining, she wrapped her legs around him, holding him to her.
He arched his back, seeking the depth he’d achieved such a short time before. The movement brought him in hard contact with her clitoris. Maddie gasped and pressed her cheek against his shoulder as aftershocks rolled through her.
Zach held her until they passed, then he lifted himself onto his elbows to look down into her face. His thumb wiped her wet cheek. Maddie was stunned to realize that at some point she’d shed tears.
“I’m sorry, Maddie. I didn’t mean to … I want … I wanted to be tender.” He paused as though seeking some excuse, but he didn’t seem to find one. “I just couldn’t.”
“It’s okay, Zach. It’s what I needed, too.”
She saw disbelief in his eyes.
“Then how come you’re crying?”
“I don’t know. It was just … so intense.”
“Then I didn’t … I didn’t hurt you?”
“No more than I hurt you.” Maddie unlocked her ankles and brushed her hand over the indentations her nails had made.
Zach flinched under her hand, driving himself momentarily deeper inside her. “Funny how it didn’t hurt at the time.”
“You promised me last night I’d walk funny today. I think you may just have made good on that threat.”
“Then we’re even coz I think I’m going to be sitting gentle like.” He dropped his head, resting his forehead against her shoulder. “Shit!”
“What?”
“I�
�ve gone and done it again.”
“What?”
“Condoms.”
Shit! Maddie echoed silently. There were a dozen condoms within easy reach in the nightstand. Why hadn’t she even thought about them?
“I’m sorry, Maddie. I didn’t mean to risk giving you a baby.”
He made an odd move as he spoke, one that brushed his belly against hers.
Maddie’s sudden interpretation of the Zach’s unconscious movement made her gasp. “You— You—“
“What?”
“You’re turned on by … by the risk,” Maddie accused. “You think it’s sexy!”
“What? Where’d you get a crazy idea like that?” He looked like a guilty man trying to play innocent.
Maddie hit his shoulder with her fist. “Get off me!”
But Zach refused to move.
Maddie bucked, but even limp, he was too deep inside her to dislodge. Even worse, she thought she felt him stiffen.
He caught her wrists and held them against the bed, ignoring the fists above his hands.
“Okay. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I think knocking you up wouldn’t be the worst thing I could do.”
“And I don’t get a vote?” Maddie spat at him.
“You ain’t yet told me to stop and put on a condom. In fact, as I recall it, the first time was your idea.”
Maddie lay under him, her breath coming hard with anger, unable to deny it. Zach lowered himself until each rise of her chest brought her nipples into contact with the springy hairs on his chest. Against her will, her nipples hardened.
“I think, deep down, you like the risk, too. I think you get hotter when you know I’m gonna spill inside you. I think you like the idea of carrying a part of me around like a secret.”
Maddie’s cheeks burned hot. “That doesn’t mean I want to have your baby.”
“Maybe not. Then again, maybe you just ain’t thought that far ahead yet.” Zach lowered his head to the hollow where her neck met her shoulder, his lips brushing against her skin as he spoke, sending shivers the length of her body. “Maybe you ain’t thought how it would feel to put your hand on your belly and feel a baby we made move inside you.”
Not for all the bucking bulls in the world would she admit that the picture he was painting had some appeal.
“When you bring Jesse into our bed,” Zach murmured, “and he lies between us, with you all naked and beautiful, I can almost see a baby at your breast, and I feel a deep need to put that baby inside you.”
Maddie was no more stunned by the picture he painted than by the awakening that he harbored such thoughts. Was it part of a biological imperative that made her melt inside? Or was it the unexpected revelation that a man could think this way?
He pressed deeper inside her as he turned himself on with his words.
“Diapers,” Maddie murmured, her eyes closed.
“What?”
“Diapers and morning sickness. Swollen ankles. Hemorrhoids. Two A.M. feedings, potty training, getting kicked in the bladder in the middle of the grocery store.” She opened her eyes to meet his. “Those are the realities, Zach. What you’re talking about is fantasy.”
“Some people would think the sex we have is a fantasy. We can make our fantasies real if we’re willing to work at it.” He proved his point by moving inside her.
Maddie fought to keep from being swept away. How could he possibly arouse her again so soon? But he could. And he did.
He made love to her with all the tenderness that had been lacking in their last coupling, and when he arched his back, doing his damnedest to make the baby he’d talked to her about, Maddie climaxed. It may not have been as earth shattering as the one before, but it made up for it by shaking her to her soul as she experienced her first multiple orgasm.
Chapter Twenty
Having wanted their last day together to be memorable, Maddie had to admit she’d gotten her wish. She should have been more careful about what she’d wished for.
She eyed their clothes strewn all over the room like a cyclone had passed through.
“What time do you need to be at the rodeo to see that bull?”
Stretched out on his stomach beside her, Zach lifted his head as though it weighed a ton. He looked at the clock on his side of the bed. “Soon.” He let his head fall as though it was dead weight.
She lay there, savoring the feel of him next to her, storing it in her memory to recall after she was gone. In the quiet she heard his breathing change, and she tensed.
“Maddie—” His voice had that time-to-face-the-music tone.
In her mind, she heard him say we need to talk. Before he could utter the words, she sat up, swung her legs off the bed, and started gathering up her clothes. He released a long exhale that made her think of a death-row prisoner who’d just gotten an unexpected reprieve. Her heart broke a little to hear it.
She passed close to the bed, and Zach’s hand shot out, catching her wrist. He rolled over as he pulled her down to him, kissed her hard then whispered in her ear. “Don’t shower.”
“What? Why?”
“I want to be able to smell our love making on you tonight.”
“Zach!” She pulled back, shocked.
He didn’t ask again, but his eyes shone with subdued arousal and something deeper. Something Maddie’s heart echoed.
“You are an animal,” she accused, wanting to break the rush of sudden emotion.
“And an oversexed pervert.” Zach smiled. “I know. You’ve told me before.”
She stood up from the bed. He caught her wrist. “Don’t shower,” he said again before letting her go.
It went against her personal sense of hygiene, but in the end, she did as he asked.
They arrived at the rodeo halfway through the barrel racing. He was carrying Jesse to spare her the burden of his weight. After Zach’s earlier confession, it gave Maddie the strangest sensation in the pit of her stomach, seeing him with Jesse on his hip.
She hadn’t really had time to consider that the risk they’d taken today was far greater than what they’d taken before. So much greater that, if she were trying to get pregnant, this would be the week she’d have bet had the best odds. It gave her cold chills to even think about it.
“Damn!” Zach said under his breath just seconds after they’d walked into the arena.
Maddie followed his gaze to see Jake beckoning them from the beer stand.
“You didn’t want to find them?” Maddie asked.
“I wanted to spend the time until the bull riding sniffing you.”
“Now aren’t you sorry you wouldn’t let me shower?”
“Not even a little,” he said as they moved to join Jake.
“Was beginning to think you wasn’t going to make it in time,” Jake said.
Zach’s eyes caught Maddie’s. The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile meant just for her. “We wouldn’t miss the bull riding for nothing. Would we, Maddie?”
It didn’t escape her that he wasn’t talking about the bulls in the holding pens.
“Where’s Daisy? You ain’t left her alone, have you?” Zach asked, handing Jesse off to Maddie so he could get them two beers.
“I did. But she knows if she moves, next time, I’ll peg her down and hog tie her.”
They followed Jake to where he’d left Daisy in the third tier of the bleachers across from the bull chutes.
The cutoffs and midriff top had been replaced by a respectable pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Instead of a cowgirl Lolita, she looked like any other teenage girl as she accepted the large soda Jake had brought her. Somehow, Maddie ended up sitting next to her. Jake boxed his sister in on the other side. Zach stepped up one tier to sit behind Maddie.
Zach held her beer as she dug out a bottle of juice for Jesse. Daisy glanced at Jesse, then shifted her gaze back to Zach for a second. Maddie could almost see the wheels turning in her head, but the thoughts those wheels were churning out were a mystery to her. Daisy gave her a tentative
smile that Maddie returned. “How old’s your baby?”
“Six months.”
“He’s cute. I like his hair.”
Maddie brushed a hand over Jesse’s fine red hair. She had left off the bonnet Zach found so offensive. Even she couldn’t justify it with the warm weather.
Zach leaned forward to ask, “You ever ride in a rodeo?”
She shook her head. “I never had a horse of my own.”
“Really?” Daisy said. “I can’t imagine not having a horse.”
“You’re lucky to have grown up with them, Deborah.” Unsure if the girl would welcome her using the family nickname, Maddie decided to err on the side of caution. “For most people, horses are a luxury item. My family sure couldn’t afford one.
“What kind of car do you drive?” Daisy asked abruptly.
It seemed like a peculiar question in the middle of all the rodeo talk, but that shouldn’t have caused the sudden tension Maddie thought she felt behind her. “A Lincoln Continental.”
Daisy’s eyebrows lifted as she shot another quick look at Zach. “You can call me Daisy. If you want to.”
“Thanks, Daisy.” With the lightning changes in the direction of Daisy’s conversation, Maddie wondered if the girl had grown up ADHD. “Your whole family seems rodeo afflicted. Why don’t you race?” Maddie asked, tipping her head toward the arena where a horse and rider cut around the second barrel.
Daisy shrugged. “Barrel racing’s kind of tame. It’s really the only event they let women compete in though. Rodeo’s one of the last places where it’s politically correct for men to be macho jerks.”
Maddie laughed. “I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but you’re right.”
“Hey, Jake, I think we done been defamed,” Zach said.
“Yeah, I’ll worry about it when the buckle bunnies lose interest.” Jake stared at two shapely, twenty-something blondes in cowboy hats and tight jeans walking by. One of them caught him staring and smiled her best hey-cowboy smile.