by Cameron Dane
Wyn looked away then. His jaw clenched visibly, repeatedly, and he covered the lower half of his face with his hand. He stayed dead quiet for the longest time, and the night seemed to follow; not a critter on the mountain or partier back at the cabin cut through the stillness and silence. Everything waited, it seemed, for him to make the next move.
Still staring into the black night surrounding them, Wyn finally murmured, “I don’t want to talk about what the phone call was about, I’m not ready for that, not even with Ethan, but I will say the call I took was from my father.” He shifted his focus back to her then, and the dark edge in his stare warned people away. “He’s been calling me off and on since my mom passed,” a gutting scratch filled Wyn’s voice, “and it gets under my skin in a really bad way when he does.”
A lump filled Maddie throat, but she swallowed it, determined to keep him talking. “You’re not close to your father. I know that much. I know he left you guys when your mom got sick the first time.”
“Yeah.” More grim lines aged Wyn’s already severe face. “He did.”
Maddie grazed the back of her hand across Wyn’s cheek and jaw, desperate to wipe some of the hardness away. “I’m sorry he’s stirring stuff up for you. You don’t deserve the pain.” She cupped the side of his neck and rubbed tension from his shoulder, trying to absorb some of his hurt. “I wish I had the power to stop him for you.”
Wyn took her hand from his shoulder and clutched it against the bench under his. “I’m handling it.” Shrugging, he nearly successfully achieved a smile. “Mostly.”
So very aware of her gloved hand protected under his, of him consciously connecting to her, his choosing to accept her friendship with that one gesture, Maddie blossomed inside, and the unadulterated pleasure poured through her like rays of sunshine.
“That’s all we can do,” she told him, her breath tight in her breast. “And I think for each of our circumstances, we do it pretty darn well.”
Sliding down a bit on the bench, Wyn exhaled, and it sounded like nothing so much as sweet release. He studied Maddie, and finally the easiest grin appeared. “I wish Aidan had come home a little bit earlier, so he and Ethan could have gotten back together sooner, so you would have had a chance to know my mom before she died. Christ, Maddie.” New shades of chocolate brightened Wyn’s eyes. “She would have gotten such a kick out of you.”
Feeling light as a feather now, Maddie grinned at him too. “I met her just that one time, for like two seconds, enough to say hi, when I was at her house with Aidan that one time.” That day, an emotional, pivotal moment in Aidan and Ethan’s relationship, flooded Maddie anew. “Do you remember that afternoon?”
“Yeah. If my memory is correct,” Wyn’s stare narrowed pointedly, and his tone could not have been more dry, “I served you iced tea while you endlessly pummeled me with ridiculous insults.”
What? No way. Just as deadpan, Maddie defended herself with, “In fairness to me, you were a hugely massive asshole back then.”
“The hell?” Wyn shot up out of his seat, towering over her. “Maddie!”
She jumped up too, bringing a handful of snow with her. “I said back then. You aren’t anymore.” Toe to toe with him, her breath coming fast and hard, Maddie added, “Much,” and smashed the handful of snow in his face and took off running with a victory scream.
Wyn howled at the moon like a wolf. “You’ll pay for that!” Fast behind her, his boots crunching the snow under his feet, Wyn warned, “Give up now or I’ll start calling you M and M again every time I see you.”
With that threat, a handful of snow smashed into the back of Maddie’s head and went down her scarf. “Ahhh!” Maddie shrieked and just managed to dance out of Wyn’s reach. “Don’t.” Stumbling sideways, she reached back and put her hands up like a shield. “Don’t.” She ducked under a branch just as another ball of snow nailed her in the arm. “Stop!”
“Only if you give a retraction!” Wyn sent another snowball flying her way. “Only if you say I’m the coolest, most awesome guy on earth.”
Swerving and laughing, Wyn on her tail, Maddie still shouted, “No way!”
Laughing too, Wyn snagged Maddie’s coat and swung her around to face him. “Yes way.” One arm around her waist, holding her to him, in the other hand Wyn clutched a ball of loosely packed snow inches from her nose. “Say it now,” his tone was light, but he let the cold snow tweak the tip of her nose, “or this goes right in your face.”
Her heart racing, out of breath, Maddie held up her hands. “Okay, okay. Stop. I give.” Maddie got caught in Wyn’s gaze, and the glints of open joy in his eyes made her heart sing. “You’re the coolest, most awesome guy on earth.” She then moved her hand in front of her face, down over her features like a movie curtain falling, and tried to shift to looking dreadfully serious. “But I have to stand firm and confess I truly hated when you called me M and M, and that contributed a big part of why I correctly nailed you for being a tool.”
Grinning, Wyn said, “I knew it bugged the hell out of you. You were terrible at hiding your irritation with anyone, but most especially me.” Wyn’s breathing changed slowly as he spoke, deepened. His focus moved across her face, and he grazed the snow on her skin again, this time across her cheek. “Why do you think it was so much fun to tease you?”
Maddie’s breathing shifted too, moving into alignment with Wyn’s, and she became very aware of the way their bodies touched from top to bottom in front. He’s so incredible.
Right then, Maddie’s blood warmed, and somehow more naturally than any other firsts she’d done in her life—I have to know—she lifted up on her toes and brushed her mouth so very softly against the hardness of his. Oh yes. Wonderful sensation tingled to life on Maddie’s lips, and she couldn’t resist; she grazed their mouths together again, the feel of his lips warming hers in the most perfect way.
Instantly Wyn’s pupils dilated, and he sucked in a breath of air. Taking hold of her wrists, he said, “Mad—” and started to shake his head. Before he could complete her name, Maddie put her lips to his once more and held them pressed together, forcing the connection. Suddenly Wyn stopped holding her back, and sank into her instead. Her name changed into a moan, and he slashed his mouth across hers and took her with a voracious kiss.
Force and power and heat poured out of Wyn and slammed straight into Maddie, and she shot up into the starry night. Wyn crushed his lips against hers, and Maddie wrapped her arms around his shoulders, desperate to touch him everywhere. His mouth fused to hers, Wyn wound his arms around Maddie’s waist and dug his fingers into her through her layers of clothes. Maddie swore she could feel his blunt fingertips sinking into the small of her back as if there was nothing between them at all. He dragged her against a tree, drove them both into it, and parted his lips and dipped his tongue into her mouth.
Oh yes, oh yes, please. The intensity of this new connection, this deeper kiss, something Maddie had never done with a boy, pulsed through her body and into her sex, wrenching her body awake in a way it had never been before. Not an ounce of fear in her, Maddie tunneled her fingers into Wyn’s short locks, pulled on his hair to keep them close, and strained against him to feed this new kind of kiss. The moment she did, his length, so thick and hard, pushed into her lower belly, and they both shuddered.
Breathing heavily, Maddie moaned and touched the tip of her tongue against Wyn’s, excited to taste him and learn more. Just as she did, Wyn muttered a curse against her lips and tore away. Maddie tried to pull him back in, but with his face flushed and looking as harsh as ever, Wyn said, “No, Maddie,” and moved her a measure away from him.
Before she could gather her breath enough to protest, Wyn exhaled loudly and eyeballed her with shades of black swirling in his brown gaze. “Christ. We can’t do this.” He moved in a circle around her, swinging his arms, looking like a guy walking off a hard kick to the nuts, all the while watching her as if wary of an attack. “We shouldn’t have done that. It’s not right.”
Rejection and confusion punched Maddie in the gut. “Why? Because I’m Aidan’s sister?”
Wyn whirled on her, his gaze blazing hot. “Because you’re a kid!”
“I’m eighteen!”
“Barely. And Christ,” still stalking in a circle, Wyn glanced at her, and jagged, rough laughter escaped, “you’re fucking still in high school.”
“You have got to be kidding me.” Maddie threw up her hands, exposed in every way now, with nothing to protect her from his jabs. “I just finished spilling my guts to you and showing you how I’m not like other teenagers in the slightest. You can’t lump me with all teenage girls as an excuse not to kiss me.”
Hands locked behind his neck, steam from his body heat swirling in the cold air around him, Wyn shook his head and looked toward the heavens. “Your differences don’t make this right.” His focus briefly slid her way and once again he shook his head. “In fact, they might even make it more wrong.”
All Maddie’s hackles rose high on end at once. “What the hell does that mean?”
Finally Wyn came to a stop in front of her, locked in, and his focus didn’t waver. “It means you’re beyond innocent. You don’t even have the experience of dating and making out and all that shit that comes with what most young people learn in high school. Jesus, honey.” He leaned in and lifted his hand to her cheek but abruptly pulled away, his jaw going hard again. “You’re so sheltered. It’s almost criminal to think of you in a sexual way.”
Maddie quirked a brow at him. “You’re all of twenty-four, Wyn. You’re not exactly ancient.”
“As far as you’re concerned, with the differences in life experience between us, I might as well be forty-four.”
In the face of Wyn’s frustrating, levelheaded calm, Maddie itched to shake him, desperate to get him to respond to her again. “Backtrack all you want now, but you kissed me too.” The shape of his erection against her stomach had created a vivid memory that would never go away, and even as her cheeks burned with the phantom sensation, she told him, “And I felt you get excited for me too. You were…hard.”
Locking his shoulders back and keeping his head notched level, Wyn clasped his hands behind his back in a military stance. “I don’t deny that. You’re an amazing young woman, Maddie, and I am human and will respond to an attractive female. I respect you a hell of a lot, probably more than you realize. And for that reason, I will not kiss you again.”
Ignoring the odd mix of stabbed-in-the-gut and wild pulse fluttering his comments created within her, Maddie crossed her arms under her breasts and gave him an exaggerated once over. “Uh-huh. And if I keep hitting on you, pushing at you, doing my inexperienced best to tempt you, how are you going to deal with that?”
Without hesitation, Wyn shook his head. “You won’t do any of those things. You’ll respect my position and situation in this community and with your brothers, because that’s who you are. You’re not that girl who hammers away when a person says no and gives a good reason for that refusal.” He finally shifted into an easier position and looked at her without blinking. “You’re better than that. I know you well enough to say that without question.”
Maddie’s stomach tumbled in the best kind of way, while at the same time her bullshit detector dinged. “So you’re calling me too young and inexperienced to kiss, but at the same time saying I have an admirable level of maturity that allows me to understand, accept, and have enough dignity not to chase you to get what I want.”
“That is what I’m saying.” Everything about Wyn as he spoke remained steady as a rock. “And it’s all true.”
The hum in Maddie’s belly jumped up to a skip in her heart, undeniable proof that she responded powerfully to everything this man said and did. He was aggravatingly tempting. At the same time, blood still pumped to Maddie’s brain too, and she told him, “I’m not so naïve and unworldly that I can’t see that you’re complimenting me so nicely in an effort to get your own way.”
Once again, Wyn shook his head. “I speak only the truth.”
“Okay, if you’re being so honest tonight.” Maddie moved closer to Wyn, into his smoldering air space, leaving only inches between them. She looked up at him, and held her hands behind her back too. “I want you to tell me the truth about what would have happened here tonight if I weren’t only eighteen and thus too young and inexperienced for you.”
Wyn held his rigid military position, but Maddie swore the slightest hint of a wolfish grin briefly appeared. “So you want me to envision a scenario where tonight you were twenty-one, and had spent the last few years going out and meeting people, letting yourself get to know what it feels like to date and get to know somebody, learning along the way more about what makes you tick. You want the unvarnished truth about what would have happened if that was the situation we were in tonight?”
Her throat and mouth suddenly feeling like it was filled with cotton, Maddie still managed to murmur, “Yes.”
Wyn dipped down, put his mouth next to her ear, and said, “I would have stripped you naked, gotten you under me, and spent the whole night living inside you. Then I would have taken you home, put you in my bed, and spent the daylight hours fucking you too.” He moved just the slightest bit, and in doing so grazed his stubbly cheek against her smooth one. Suddenly they were eye to eye, the tips of their noses touching. “In between learning every inch of your body,” his warm breath fanned across her face, “I would have spent every other waking minute getting to know even more about you. And at the end of twenty-four hours I’m sure I would have decided that I wanted to keep doing the same with you every day for the rest of my life.” He straightened back up to his full height then and took a step back, but he did not crack a smile or look away. “That is how tonight would have gone down if the circumstances had been just the slightest bit different than they are right now.”
Oh my Lord. Forget the pleasant throb that had developed between her thighs when he’d kissed her, Maddie now understood what becoming wet for a man meant in reality in a way she’d only gotten intellectually before. “Well then.” She fanned herself with her hands. It didn’t matter if he saw; he had to be better at reading her response than she was at hiding it. “That would be,” she cleared her throat and tried again, “that would be a clear explanation.”
The intensity in his stare didn’t diminish one bit. “You asked for the truth.”
Maddie’s neck was sweating and her heart drummed in her throat, but at the same time the depth of his confession, the “at the end of twenty-four hours I’m sure I would have decided that I wanted to keep doing the same with you every day for the rest of my life”, something he probably hadn’t even realized he’d let slip free, filled her, and a happiness grew from her core.
A measure of confidence slipping back in, Maddie flashed Wyn a smile. “So I guess when I’m twenty-one we have a date.”
His returning grin was lopsided. “By the time you’re twenty-one, you’ll have done so much living and met so many new people you won’t want the extended director’s cut of the kiss we just shared.”
Maddie kept standing taller, back to feeling fully alive. “You let me be the judge of that.”
“Right.” He held up his hands in surrender. “I wouldn’t presume to tell you how you feel now or in the future.”
A burst of laughter shot out of Maddie; she couldn’t help it. “Sure you would, but you can’t seem to help it, so I’ll forgive you.”
He blew into his hands. “Thank you.” His teeth suddenly chattered, and he rubbed his arms, covered only by the hoodie sweater.
Starting to walk backward toward the house on instinct, to someplace warm, Maddie waited the heartbeat for Wyn to follow and then said, “In the meantime, I’m going to try to be better around you. I won’t let my nervousness and uncertainty get the better of me, and hopefully that will help keep the jabs and punches I throw at you in control.” Forcing complete honesty between them, she added sheepishly, “I can’t promise perfect
ion, and the truth is I kind of like poking at you, but if I can stop calling you names so much when I get scared, maybe you’ll let yourself get to know the real me better too.”
True softness finally cleared the last of the hardness from Wyn’s eyes. “I know you don’t mean harm when you call me names. Just like I hope you know it was never my intention to hurt you when I called you M and M.”
“I do.” She studied him for a long moment, and as she did, every part of her being called at her to embrace him. Answering the cry emotionally rather than physically, she said, “But maybe between us it’s time to attempt something new.”
Both of Wyn’s dark brows shot halfway up his forehead. “Like a real friendship?”
“Yeah.” He held back giving her more, and a claw of doubt scratched at her, making her voice drop to a whisper. “If you want it.”
Coming upon the steps to the cabin, Wyn paused, braced against one of the bottom posts. In the background Maddie could see the party still going at full swing behind the curtainless windows, but she stayed focused on Wyn, trapped, her breath held while waiting for his response.
Hands tucked into the pockets of his sweatshirt, the zipper tucked all the way up to his chin, in that moment a bear of an imposing, brash guy became just a real, true imperfect but genuine human in Maddie’s eyes.
“I’d take a stab at friendship with you in a heartbeat, Maddie.” The light in Wyn’s steady stare backed up his words. “You already took the first step with me tonight. You saw me in a bad place and you helped me out of it.” He cleared his throat, and his shoulders went rigid as he looked toward where the benches would be beyond the trees. “I won’t forget how you came looking for me tonight to help. And you did. A lot.”