Shield Her (A Bad Boys in Her Bed Menage, Cop Versus Biker)
Page 4
I stopped, my body emotionally wrung out. These two men didn’t get women, did they? Not once had either stopped to notice in the last eight years how much I loved them — that I loved them beyond their status as my best friends, my only true friends. And I was the most constant woman in either of their lives. They moved through girlfriends like a ski moved through snow. Carson’s mom had died shortly before he realized his dream of opening his bike shop. And Maddox never saw his mother, refusing to acknowledge her free-spirited lifestyle.
“You’re saying you can’t and wouldn’t choose?” Carson asked, his tone full of understanding when I thought there was none to be had.
“Exactly,” I whispered.
“Choosing might damage what Maddox and I have going.”
“Yes,” I agreed, but that was only a small part of why I couldn’t choose.
“Just like one of us choosing to pursue you would damage it — because we both want you.”
My knees went weak. I was sure I had heard him wrong, or that I heard the words well enough but twisting their context.
“That’s why he’s so pissed,” Carson continued. “Pissed at me for being on the verge of going to jail because it would mean he lost eight years with you for my benefit.”
I shook my head. This was not happening. Carson was as wrong as anyone could possibly be.
“He’s pissed because tonight I touched you in ways we both agreed we never would. And he’s going to stay pissed until he gets the same time with you.”
Hair flew around my shoulders as hard as I was shaking my head. I looked at the stone statute next to me, implored him to tell Carson he was wrong.
“He doesn’t even let me touch him,” I argued when Maddox said nothing despite all my urging. I looked at him again, stepped directly in his line of sight. “Most of the time, I’m not even sure you want to be my friend.”
“I don’t,” he bit out.
********************
I staggered backward, almost falling onto the coffee table. His words were worse than a knife through the heart. I felt like they had blasted straight through my soul, leaving me empty inside. I rushed past him, heading for my bedroom.
His hands brushed against me, tugged at the side of my robe but I kept going. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. Me almost making it to the hallway, Maddox grabbing me from behind and forcing me hard against the wall. One hand raveling through my hair while the other formed a fist that pushed at the plaster next to me, his whole arm shaking as he panted and glared.
“Stop talking,” he wheezed. “Both of you. Today never happened. We’re getting through this damn investigation, nothing will change if you just stop talking.”
I shook my head. What he had just said hurt too much to ever forget.
“You don’t want to be my friend,” I accused with a mouse’s whisper. “You can’t appreciate how long I’ve known that on the inside, how many times I’ve cried over it…”
I kept shaking my head at him, trying to deny something but I didn’t know what. Trying to deny that he had said those horrible words? Or deny that he meant them?
But both were true.
“He wants to be your lover,” Carson softly interceded from his place on the couch. “Being just your friend is tearing him up inside. It tears me up, too. You said earlier that he and I had never been violent with one another before, but you were wrong, baby girl. We fought over you.”
Maddox released his hold on my hair, pulled back and spun. I thought he might, for the first time ever, actually harm Carson, but he scooped up his keys and headed for my front door.
“Are you really going to leave her like this?” Carson asked. “Look at her before you go.”
Maddox’s head jerked in my direction, his expression one of a reluctant marionette that couldn’t help but obey the command once given.
Pain slashed across his face.
“I don’t believe him,” I whispered. “Tell me it’s not true and I’ll believe you.”
He said nothing. He always said nothing, just bottled up whatever was eating at him. I couldn’t take it, not with all the stress of the last few days, not with what he had just said.
My body began to shake as the room started to spin. I needed to throw up but knew if I did I would soon be face down in my own vomit.
The floor was falling out, I could see it spiraling down, my body going with it.
Maddox caught me as I started to faint. He scooped me up, growled for Carson to get off the couch then placed me on it. My whole body had turned clammy and he smoothed away the hair plastered to my face.
“Get her some water,” he ordered.
“Are you mad at Carson for the clubhouse?” I asked, dancing around the real question of “why.”
“Yes,” he panted.
“Are you mad at me for the clubhouse?”
No nod, no shake, he just looked down, his cheeks flushing a dark red.
Carson returned with the glass of water. Maddox took it, one arm helping to lift my head while the other held the glass to my mouth so I could take a few sips.
“You don’t want to be my friend?”
He closed his eyes, pressed his forehead against mine. “I want to be your friend, Reg. I always want to be your friend.”
I lifted my hand and caressed his cheek, marveling when he didn’t pull away or shoot darts at me with his eyes. I kept caressing, touching, my fingers coming at last to his full lips.
Damn, he was beautiful. They both were, each a masterpiece cut from a different cloth.
Carson was a blend of his Scots-Irish mother with the curls and dark ginger hair, while he had inherited a Viking’s physique and teal colored gaze from his father. For Maddox, the only hint at who his father might be came from the subtle strains of Native American ancestry that ran through him — the blue black cast to his hair, the dark almond-shaped eyes, and cheekbones that could cut diamonds.
They could certainly cut through a girl’s heart.
“Don’t you have another question you want to ask him, baby girl?”
I didn’t answer Carson. Everything had warped in the space of a few minutes from the complicated nature of the last few days to something that seemed unmanageable. And no matter how we tried to manage it, the end would be heartbreak.
Maybe Maddox had it right from the beginning. Maybe we really did need to stop talking and start forgetting.
I pulled the hand that stroked at his cheek back to my chest, my lips rolling together to block any urge to speak, to ask Maddox how he felt beyond wanting to ignore his feelings and those around him.
“You really don’t want to know if he imagined himself in that clubhouse with you on his lap, your breasts swelling as they pushed against his chest…if he didn’t want to be the one watching your face as you came, to see how incredibly beautiful you are at that moment?”
Maddox jerked away from me, his ass landing by my feet at the far end of the couch. I expected him to storm out — he’d been seconds from doing so earlier. But he leaned back, his head staring up at the ceiling like there was some divine guidance hidden within the popcorn texture. Then he covered his hands with his face.
Sitting up, I slid next to him. I wanted to rest my still dizzy head on his shoulder, but his upraised arms made it impossible. So I placed my palm against his broad chest and pressed my lips against the side of his shoulder, the barrier of his jacket muting the contact.
“Eight years,” I whispered. “The two of you have been lying to me.”
Maddox lowered his hands from his face, the act trapping my arm against his chest.
“The whole time?” I asked. Certainly they had entertained other women in their lives. They couldn’t truly have been in love with me while fucking someone else.
“Yes,” they agreed in unison.
Shocked that Maddox had finally admitted something, I tugged my arm away from him. I crawled onto his lap, the bottom of my nightgown pulled tight against my thighs as I faced hi
m. Cupping both sides of his head so he couldn’t look away, I sought clarification from the prickly, reclusive male in front of me.
“You said ‘yes,’ you’ve been lying to me for eight years — that you have been in love with me for all that time.”
I tensed harder with each word that passed my lips. He wouldn’t answer, that was his way, at least when it came to how he felt about me. Before I could ever get the truth out of him, he would harden again, this display of vulnerability fleeting.
“Yes,” he admitted, his gaze darting to Carson and fixing on him with a fresh burst of anger.
I nudged at his stubborn jaw until he looked at me.
“Carson,” I said, surprising myself with the level of command in my tone. “Turn off the light.”
********************
We sat in darkness, the three of us. Carson occupied the side chair so often favored by Maddox, while I sat on Maddox’s lap at the far end of the couch. I waited, eyes adjusting while the man beneath me came to terms with what I was offering.
In the club house, I had told Carson he had to make the first move because the bikers around us expected him to. Here, with my two best friends, especially with Maddox, I knew I would have to be more assertive, at least at the beginning.
Rejecting his hippie upbringing, Maddox was Mister Straight-Laced. That was part of why I had wanted the lights off — to lower his inhibitions. No light, no sight, no judging. Part of the darkness was for me, though. If he continued as still and stiff as stone beneath me, I could pretend he was just that, a beautiful statue. I could caress and kiss until I finally broke through his thick crust of self-control.
Stretching up, I propped my elbows on the back of the couch and gripped his short-cut hair. He was mine now, until he took control and made me his or forced his way out from under me. Softly, I brushed my lips along the sides of his face, listened to my stone lover’s deep breathing as my mouth tracked from temple to chin then up the other side.
I kissed across his eyelids, his broad chest pushing up at me more quickly as his breaths became more shallow and urgent.
“Touch me,” I coaxed, wanting his hands on my hips. “It’s okay — neither of us will break.”
A harsh laugh escaped him. He didn’t believe me about the potential for damage.
I bit at his full bottom lip in reprimand, sucked it into my mouth, my lungs inflating with oxygen and my back arching so that my breasts smashed and molded against the arm he still had folded across his chest.
I released my own laugh, the air leaving me with a bittersweet taste.
“How can I be so wet,” I whispered against his ear, “for a man who doesn’t want to touch me, to hold me or stroke me?”
He drew tenser. I bit at his chin, along his jawline, at the plump earlobe as the muscles of my ass and thighs began to tense and squeeze against him. I really was wet, wetter than I had been at the club. Maybe it was knowing Carson was watching, knowing that things could progress beyond one man touching me to two if only I could get under Maddox’s skin and make him act on the desire he supposedly kept bottled inside.
My nails scraped along his scalp, down his neck. The jacket frustrated me. I wanted it off him but I would have had an easier time undressing a rusted mannequin.
Fine, if I couldn’t get his clothes off him, I’d get mine off me.
Lifting my ass off his legs, I grabbed the bottom hem of my gown and pulled it and my robe off, leaving only my panties on.
With just enough light in the room for his adjusted eyesight to see what I had done, Carson groaned. Maddox seemed to have stopped breathing altogether. I leaned forward again, my torso settling against his, my breasts pushing at his bare hands. He moved them, seeming, for a second, to consider whether he should put them on me so he could get me off of him. Then they fell to the sides.
Damn, he was going to make a girl work for it.
Unless I was deluding myself.
Fuck! Which was it? Had he loved me in silence for eight years, hiding it behind a mask that often seemed indifferent and at times hostile, or had he stupidly agreed to what Carson had said to make up for telling me he didn’t want to be my friend?
Indecision froze me in place. I could only lean on him, my palms planted against his chest, our faces inches apart. Cold air played over my skin and I realized that I was naked in every sense of the word.
“I don’t know your mind,” I said, voice low and halting. “I only know your actions…”
His actions said he wouldn’t touch me.
Could I have been any more foolish? Sighing, I lifted my torso upright, my weight leaning to the side so I could roll away from Maddox.
He grabbed me, one hand on my right hip, the other on my left shoulder.
“Don’t worry,” I rasped. “I wasn’t fainting again.”
“I know,” he answered, his voice a mix of sand and gravel. “You were leaving.”
Wrapping his arms around me, Maddox cinched me against his chest. First he just hugged me, hands and arms flexing, his breathing ragged. He kissed the crown of my head, his hand starting to stroke my back, the motion intimate and comforting but not sexual. It was more like comforting an upset child.
I relaxed against him, stopped trying to push him toward something I wasn’t sure he wanted. It was enough that he was holding me. All those years of restrictive contact had worn on me worse than I knew. Tears started to flow, wetting his shirt.
Shushing me, he tilted my chin up, kissed sweetly across my cheeks before his mouth settled on mine. Slow, nudging, confident — he coaxed my lips into parting, his tongue an expert tease, wet and exploring.
A sigh shuddered through me at the kiss. I felt him fully awaken beneath me. Hands roamed, squeezing and exploring. His cock grew hard, the fabric of his pants silky and shifting as I began to squirm with a refreshed need.
He gripped the back of my head, guiding the kiss as his other hand pressed against the small of my back to control the rest of me — how much I could squirm, how far I could pull back. My pussy drooled against the gusset of my panties, soaking through the thin fabric to wet his slacks.
I groaned into his mouth and he groaned back, the sound on a loop between us.
Breaking the kiss, Maddox buried his face against my neck, his strong arms and hands sliding me up and down the hard line of his cock as he nuzzled my flesh. Heat pooled between my thighs, overflowed so that I felt the burn all the way down to my curling toes. He squeezed my breast, tugged at a nipple.
Strange sounds left my throat. Groans, gurgles, sharp pleas of “more” and “yes” and “there, yes, there.”
I was jerking, coming, crying, a scream locked in my throat as I seized one last time and my juices gushed from me, soaking the front of his pants and the hard cock beneath.
Broken from the spastic fury of my release, I collapsed against him, his hands once again lightly stroking at me. I listened to his heart beating and the harsh breathing as he controlled his need for more. Slowly, I realized it wasn’t just Maddox I heard. Another panted in the room with us, someone inseparable from who we were but whose presence we had nevertheless forgotten as we moved in the dark.
Carson was there, waiting for the moment he could join us.
********************
My panties soaked but still on me, I sat at the edge of my bed and tried to hide the trembling uncertainty over what was about to happen. Carson, who was forever ready to jump into something head first, had stripped naked on the way into the bedroom, leaving a trail of clothing in the hall.