“God, come!” he ordered with one last thrusting penetration that shook the bed and blasted him into the stars. Deep into her.
“Yessss! Oh, good grief, I’m… I’m…!” she moaned, whining and writhing and sweating and hissing, “Jameson, Jameson, Jamessssson!”
And once again, they were linked. Two stars joined in the sweetest cataclysmic furnace that had once created mankind. Just that quick. They were one, just one. The perfect one. One her. One him. One brand-new soul with the same shuddering heartbeat. The same heated breath.
He sighed into her face, unintentionally fanning the flames that still flickered at the base of his spine. His arms were shaking, and so was Maddie. He buried his face in the quivering hollow of her neck, so damned content and thrilled, he had to fight his tears.
Since that incident in Iraq, he’d become a damned baby. His mom believed his tender emotions were a side effect, that maybe there was some undiagnosed traumatic brain injury. But his dad explained things differently.
He believed those untapped emotions now releasing at the most inopportune times—like now—were simply Jameson’s body and soul acclimating to his new reality. That he was now more aware of the universe around him, which in turn, made him more sensitive to other living things and feelings. Other powers and energies, both good and bad.
Which was true. Jameson did perceive people and his surroundings more acutely than he ever had before the incident. He sensed good intentions, and he felt more deeply. Sometimes his lack of sight provided a virtual kind of insight. The incident had awakened an inner sixth sense that made him, well, more sensitive, damn it. And sometimes that sensitivity leaked out his eyes.
There were moments these past five years when he’d wondered if the trade had been worth it, his vision for this cutting new sensitivity to the universe, with all its pulsating depths and precarious twists. Reclaiming his confidence in his dark new world had taken time. It’d been damned hard. But now? With this panting beauty hot and sweaty in his arms and under his body, Jameson had no more doubts. He didn’t need sight to know he’d found all he’d ever wanted.
“I love you,” he told her with utmost certainty. “You’re mine, Maddie. My heart. My soul. God bless, I hope you know that.”
He heard her smile. Really. Smiles glowed with warmth, and Maddie was glowing now. Contentment purred off her like a warm, crackling fire that even the densest man on earth could’ve heard, if he’d been smart enough to listen.
She brushed her fingertips into his hair. Still purring. Still smiling. Her chest heaved. “I do know that. I didn’t hurt you, did I? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good. No worries,” he growled as he wiped the back of a hand over his eyes. “But I’ve got to warn you. I’m as emotional as a pregnant woman sometimes.”
“I like that you’re not afraid to tell me something like that. Men aren’t usually so—”
“Sensitive? Yeah, that’s me. I like fluffy puppies and dark chocolate, too.”
Maddie’s honest laughter made him smile. “Want to know how I’m sure you love me?”
He dropped his forehead to hers. “How, babe?” he breathed.
Her lips melted against his. “Because I think I’ve been looking for you for a long time,’” she whispered into his mouth. “You’re a keeper.”
“Nah, you’re the keeper. All mine.”
She giggled like the little girl she was in so many confounding ways. “Then let’s be keepers together. Let’s keep each other, just like this. Forever.”
He canted his head to make sure he’d heard right. Was that what it sounded like? Had she just proposed? Or was that her way of accepting his proposal? He tread lightly. “Do you know what went through my mind when the Black Rose exploded today? When I thought I’d never get to hear your voice again, never taste another kiss, never smell the lavender flowers in your hair?”
She stilled beneath him. “What?” she asked, her voice as soft and timid as a child’s.
He kissed the end of that perfect nose. “I thought how cruel God was, to send me an angel, then let her die while I stood just inches away, too far away to save her. For Him to take her back after letting me have everything I’d ever wanted for only a couple days. To lie to me and tell me I was finally going to be okay, then break my heart like it was all a joke. A divine dirty trick. That I really was alone in the dark.”
“Oh, Jameson…”
He didn’t care that he was making a fool of himself. Maddie needed to know. “I don’t want to go through life without you. I probably sound like a stalker, but I’m not letting you go. I want every last breath I breathe and every step I take to be with you by my side. I’m willing to wait as long as you need. Mom’s still expecting us for dinner this Sunday. I told her before I didn’t think we could make it, but we can now. If you’ll go with me.”
“Can I still leave if I want to?”
He swallowed hard, but asked, “You mean from Mom and Dad’s place? Sure. We don’t have to go if you’d rather not.”
“I meant from here. Your apartment. If we get married, can I still l-leave?”
Ah, she was doing it again. Pulling back into her timid shell. It took all he had to tell her, “You can leave anytime, babe. Any day. You’ll have your own key. If you choose to marry me, this’ll be your home, not your dungeon.” It’ll break my heart, but if you want to leave me—
“I mean, I’ll still need to work and buy groceries and clothes, stuff like that. Not leave, leave. Just...” Her shoulders lifted. Her hips wiggled. “Just do what I want, when I want, then come home. You wouldn’t lock me out if I was late or if I missed my bus, would you?”
God, she was asking for permission to be a human being. He dropped his head to her shoulder, understanding her ex and her father a little better, and liking them less and less. Both bastards had instilled fear into this delightful, charming, but oh, so timid woman, enough that she’d misunderstood a simple proposal.
“Maddie, sweetheart,” he breathed, his damned eyeballs watering again. “I’m not the boss of you, and there are no rules to falling in love with me. Only give and take. Only total freedom. Lovers are meant to fly together, not drag each other down or hold each other back. Men don’t own women in this country. You can move out of state if you decide you want to leave. Do anything, be anything you choose. I just hoped you’d want to be all that with me.”
“Why would I do that? Leave you?” she asked, her voice tiny, as her palms settled flat to his cheeks, her thumbs under his chin, forcing his head back up.
She was looking at him. He could tell. Seeing the teary eyes he knew were blank and would forevermore be unreceptive to light or expression. Eyes that could never again convey what was in his soul. Yet he sensed no rejection or pity coming from Maddie. Only love when she planted her lush, warm lips on his mouth and what was left of his battered heart.
“Does that mean you’ll stay?” he had to ask.
“Yes, Jameson, I want the same thing as you. Can I live here with you while we’re engaged?”
“You can stay as long as you want.”
“Forever?”
Hallelujah! “And the day after,” he breathed, so damned happy. “And every day after that.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Amazed at the size of the bonus check that hit his bank account simply for joining The TEAM, Jameson took Maddie house-hunting. It was a week after she’d moved in with him, but his apartment was small, built for a single person. They needed room to play and love and grow together.
But first, he’d insisted they update the twelve-year-old budget sedan she’d bought after she’d graduated night school. His treat. He couldn’t wipe the smile off his face when she climbed behind the wheel of her very own sapphire-blue, fresh off the truck SUV and squealed, “Are you sure we can afford this?”
“We…” he purred, loving that grounding, delightful, two-letter word, “can afford low interest and a five-year loan.”
> “Oh, yeah,” she giggled. “Us and the bank, huh?”
He tugged the seatbelt across his chest and fastened himself in. Maddie had been like a kid in a candy store on the car lot. For every practical, cheaper, older model she’d selected, he’d upped the options until he knew for certain he was spoiling her. She’d declined every option, saying she didn’t need all-wheel drive, nine speed automatic transmission, or a 3.5-liter V6 engine. But he got them for her all the same. The only thing this woman asked for was the ability to charge her cell phone. She had all that and more now, including a new wireless charger for the cell he had yet to buy her.
Two hundred-eighty horses sprang to life the instant she pressed the ignition button.
“Where are we going?” she asked breathlessly. “We’ve got another week off. The sky’s the limit.”
“You’re driving. You tell me.”
“Okay then,” she breathed. “Look out world, here we come!”
Jameson adored the excitement in her tone. Since the morning had gone well so far, he broached a subject that had been on his mind since the first time they’d made love. “Do you see us having kids?”
“Sure. Someday.”
Cocking his knee, Jameson turned sideways, facing her. “How many? One? A dozen?”
Judging by the direction change in her voice, she’d glanced at him, then turned away. “To be honest, I’ve never thought about it. It never felt like something I could do with, you know. Him.”
He reached for and found the soft silky curls resting on her shoulder. “And now?”
Her hair brushed over his fingers as she turned her attention to him, then just as quickly back to the traffic on the street. “How many would you like?”
“Two’s the national norm, but I was an only child, and so were you, and—”
“You want a big family.”
His head canted at the hint of excitement in that statement. “Yes. If that’s what you want. It was lonely growing up. Always an adult, never just a kid. Not sure I want to do that to our child.”
“So, we’re house hunting for a mansion?”
That made him smile. “Only if you’ll help me fill it up, babe.”
Once again, he could hear her smiling. The energy between them when Maddie was happy felt warm, like a summer breeze off the Atlantic. A man could get lost inside that breeze.
“I’m not good at numbers,” she, the only one in the SUV with the accounting degree, lied blithely, while the vehicle shifted into a slow curve. “How about we practice until we get it right?”
Damned if Jameson’s eyes didn’t burn with unexpected emotion. Sweet Baby Jesus, this woman was everything he’d wanted. “I can live with that,” he murmured, his voice husky and his heart in his throat.
Her fingers reached under his chin. “Two people who love each other can do anything,” she whispered. “A very smart man I know taught me that.”
Taking hold of that sweet hand, he kissed her palm. “Can’t remember what I ever did before you came along.”
Her arm lifted with a shrug. “You make me happy. Let’s make lots of babies. Lots of little boys who look just like you.”
“And dozens of fairy princesses who look like their mom.”
Maddie drew her hand back and feigned choking. “Dozens?”
“We’ll see,” he promised with a grin. “You’re the CPA in our family. I’ll let you keep track.”
They were both laughing, as the SUV maintained a straight away for the next few miles.
Since that first topic went so well, Jameson broached another. “Have you ever wanted to talk with your mother?”
Instant silence. Precisely what he’d expected. He gave Maddie time to absorb that possibility. He’d never force her, but this was one very large stone left unturned in her life. And he had a good feeling in his gut, so...
“No,” she admitted, the joy in her tone throttled down to a flat nothing. “Why would I? She left me.”
Jameson stretched his long legs, loving the comfort this vehicle offered. “Thought maybe you’d like to hear from her why she left, not just what your dad told you.”
They rode in silence for a few long minutes before Maddie admitted, “He did lie a lot. Always made me feel worthless when I was a kid, too. I invited him to my college graduation. Thought that would impress him. Make him finally see that I was good for something after all.”
“He didn’t show,” Jameson said quietly.
“Of course not. I should’ve known better than to ask. Kids aren’t very smart, you know. Their whole life, they think they’re the problem, that they’re what’s wrong. That they’re the reason they get slapped or chewed out. They try everything they know how to make their dads and moms love them.”
Envisioning the younger, more gullible version of Maddie, Jameson settled his fingers over her forearm. “Kids are smart, babe. Their only mistake is they unconditionally love the people who should love them first. That’s why abused children cover up for their cruel, intentionally thoughtless parents.”
And Rick Bannister was a flaming narcissist. In between getting to know Maddie better and moving her into his apartment, Jameson had investigated the guy, which was why he was certain Bannister only kept Maddie to hurt her mother. Yet, because he was Maddie’s father, Jameson gave the bastard the benefit of the doubt. “Things aren’t always black and white. Deep down, we’re all just kids doing the best we can with what we’ve got to work with.”
She huffed through her nostrils. “You should’ve gone into child psychology.”
“I did. That’s my minor. Figured it’d go well with criminal profiling.”
A few more moments of silence invaded that great new car smell. “I don’t know where she lives,” Maddie murmured. “I, umm, guess I just believed my dad. What he said.”
“How could you have known any different? She left when you were a baby.” He canted his head her way, listening for a telltale sigh or a hard swallow. Maddie was still so much that little deserted girl, searching for her place in the world. Which, until he’d come along, she hadn’t yet found. Not with her old man, nor her ex. Jameson couldn’t imagine how hard life had to have been for a timid girl without a mother against those odds. “What else did he tell you about her?”
She cleared her throat. “When he was mad at me, he used to say I looked just like her and acted like her, too. That I was just as bad. Just as ugly. I hated when he came home drunk after work. Booze makes him crazy. Loud. Mean.”
Jameson pinched his lips to keep his opinion of her father from spilling out. Rick Bannister was not only a narcissist, he was an over-weight, alcoholic asshole, with two felonies to his credit. One for stealing his neighbor’s car, the other for nearly beating that neighbor to death after Rick decided he liked the guy’s wife. She’d shot him to save her husband, which proved how one-sided Rick’s take on reality was. Her husband recovered, which was the only reason Rick hadn’t done time for manslaughter. All this went down before he’d sweet talked Krystyna into marrying him. She’d been pregnant by him, trapped into marriage with a charming, but mean-tempered man.
In his quiet investigation, Jameson had also uncovered Krystyna’s medical history. Two miscarriages, one live birth, and a frightening number of emergency room visits. Some other important details, too. But none of that mattered if Maddie chose not to investigate her mother further. Some things were better left alone. Jameson just didn’t think a woman’s mother should be one of those things.
“What would you say if I told you I know where she lives?”
“You do?”
He nodded in lieu of answering. Jameson could feel Maddie’s heart racing. She was probably grabbing sharp glances at him. Breathy panic crackled through the air between them. The atmosphere in her car had turned into a sucking black hole.
“Why would you do this to me?” she whispered.
“Because I’m a mama’s boy, Maddie. Yeah. Big, tough Navy SE
AL here, but I know who’s been in my corner every step of my way. I grew up with everything you didn’t, and I guess… I believe…” He inhaled deeply, needing a gut full of positivity before he said, “Most moms love their kids more than they love themselves. Like my mom loves me. We don’t have to visit Krystyna, honest. We can just leave this in the past and never find out why she left you behind, why she thought she had to. But if you ever decide to meet her, I’ll go with you. I’ve got your six, babe. I’ll always be in your corner. Just want you to consider the possibility that she might be in your corner, too.”
“You… y-y-you want me to give her a second chance?”
His fingers squeezed her arm tighter. “You gave your dad more second chances than he deserved. Why not your mom?”
A quiet hitch in her breath was all that answered. Miles passed. The tires hummed over smooth pavement.
Jameson took his hand back. By then, he had no idea where they were, except inside Maddie’s car. The traffic sounds were the same. Busy. Rushed. A herd of people he’d never see or know rushing by like soldiers off to their private wars. She maneuvered corners, waited for red lights, then smoothly pulled over to a curb. Still not speaking.
At last he asked, “Where are we?”
“Brentwood. Crabby Rocks.”
Great. They were parked outside her dad’s bar. Her expressionless tone explained more than her words. Maddie was hurting, right back where she’d started, and that was on Jameson. Thank goodness it was too early in the day to go inside for a drink.
“I called him this morning,” Jameson admitted. “Your dad. While you were showering after the second time we made love. Before I made breakfast.”
She snorted. “How’d that go?”
“He’s everything you said he was and less.”
“What’d you expect?”
“Honestly?” Jameson turned in the direction where he guessed Maddie was looking. At what he now knew was a two-bit bar in a rundown neighborhood that boasted more murders per capita than most other Washington, DC, neighborhoods. Computers for the visually impaired were a godsend. A guy could find anything if he knew where to look and what to look for. “I wanted his permission to marry you, Maddie. That’s why I called your dad. I wanted his blessing. It’s what a real man does when he loves a woman. He does the right thing. He respects her enough to man up and ask to meet her dad, so they can talk face-to-face about the woman he intends to take away from that father.”
Jameson (In the Company of Snipers Book 22) Page 25