by Cameron Dane
Grimacing, staring at the spot Nico had just vacated, Maddie pulled her hair off her face and knotted it at the back of her head. “I hate that this whole mess instantly made me suspicious when I saw him. I hate that I invited him in for a drink so that you could get his DNA off the glass when he left, rather than merely because it was the polite thing to do.”
A satisfied rumble rolled through Wyn. “I did wonder if that was what you were doing when you invited him to stay here.”
“Yeah.” Furrowed lines pulled Maddie’s mouth down at the edges even more. “And when he didn’t go for that I scrambled with the drink offer. I’m sorry it didn’t work.”
His chest twisting, Wyn reached out and rubbed her leg. “Hey, don’t beat yourself up. It was good.” Gently, he squeezed her knee, and repeated, “You did good.”
“Thanks.” Facing him, she drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “I guess.” She dropped her chin to rest on her kneecap.
Christ, honey. Watching her so closely right now, this was the first time Wyn truly understood, really felt in his gut, how tough this was for Maddie, to truly suspect her friends, people she trusted, of skulking around in her home and stealing from her.
Drawn to her, Wyn scooted closer and tucked her in the spread of his legs. He tilted her head back so she could see to the truth in his eyes. “This sucks so hard for you. I know.” Leaning in, he pressed a kiss to the worry lines on her forehead. “Hopefully we’ll have it figured out soon. And for your sake I hope it isn’t anyone you know.”
Maddie glanced toward the kitchen, and a beat later murmured, “Well, it’s as hot as balls these days, so if Nico decides to start cleaning tomorrow then he’ll have to drink something at some point. I’ll make sure all the trash cans are emptied and newly lined, that way if there’s a water bottle or something in them when we get back to the house we’ll know it’s his, and then you can use it for your DNA test.”
Jesus. Wyn had planned to do that very thing himself, but hearing it come out of Maddie’s mouth had his nuts twitching with new life. He growled and nipped a fast kiss. “You have one hell of a sexy mind. Have I ever told you that?”
Maddie swatted his leg and muttered, “Shut up,” but she hid a grin behind her knee; he saw the edge of her lips lift.
A companionable silence fell between them then, but Wyn’s mind still replayed and dissected not only Nico’s presence but his demeanor and everything he’d said.
“Listen,” Wyn suddenly said aloud, figuring if they were partners he had to talk things out with her now, “playing over Nico’s sudden appearance and his desire to get all these memories cleared out of this house has me thinking. If it is Nico doing this to you, is it possible he’s looking for something? Something he hasn’t been able to locate on the down low, and realizing something is up with my sudden presence here, has he decided to come out in the open and create a legitimate reason for being here, poking wherever he wants, in your house?”
“But what would he want?” Maddie wondered back, her tone conversational like his. “Everything Mr. Corsini left here rightly belongs to Nico. What would he need to search for in secret?”
“I don’t know.” Wyn racked his brain, searching back over details he’d noted when searching Maddie’s home, mentally scanning to see if anything in hindsight was out of place. When he came up empty, he shrugged and looked to her once more. “Maybe it has something to do with the house itself rather than the stuff in it.”
Right then a loud double knock thumped against the back side of the house.
Maddie chuckled. “She doesn’t think so.”
“She’s also his mother.” Wyn gave the house the side-eye and a little bit of a snarl. “She would protect him from us figuring him out.”
Maddie perked up. “Look at you being all open-minded. You were so matter-of-fact about her place in the conversation just then.” She pinched his cheeks and made a funny face at him. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Thank you.” Sahara desert dryness had nothing on Wyn’s tone. He curled his hand against the wood decking, unable to keep his brain from conjuring possible secrets this home might hold. “Now that the idea is in my head, I’m going to look into this house a little bit. See what history I can uncover. Maybe there’s a reason for someone to believe there’s treasure here. Maybe there’s something valuable in the walls or under the floorboards. Maybe Nico found out about it and wants it for himself. What is considered part of the house itself or hidden within the house wouldn’t rightfully be his. It would be yours.”
Two loud bangs thundered from the second floor.
Maddie grinned. “Our ghost says no, but you knock yourself out with that research, Lieutenant. I will be happy to hear about whatever you discover.”
A new lightness floating within Wyn, he tapped Maddie’s nose with the tip of his index finger. “And I will be happy to share.” His stomach rumbled, loudly, and instantly redirected this thoughts. “You ready to eat?” He jumped up, and with one gentle tug had Maddie on her feet too. “You wore me out, woman, and I need sustenance if I’m going to keep up with your stamina tonight.”
On her tiptoes, Maddie wound her arms around Wyn’s neck and purred, “Then by all means let’s get some food into you.”
His soft laughter filling the night sky, Wyn pulled Maddie to him. Arm around her waist, his gentle kiss leading to a series of sweet pecks from her, he shuffled them into the house for some barbecue.
* * * *
Eyes closed, fast asleep, Maddie scrunched her face as scene after scene of Wyn in and around her home raced through her subconscious mind. The way his giant frame filled her big front doorway, how comfortable he looked maneuvering multiple pots and pans at her stove, how right it felt to see him in her hallway in the morning with sleep in his eyes and his hair mussed and his sweats hanging low on his hips, the musk of him hanging in the air before he showered, the way he left little messes around the place at night but that by the morning were straightened or gone, his commanding presence when doing something as simple as cleaning the debris out of her garden. The more she saw of Wyn in this place, the more his presence melded into her space as if it were created for him. And the more he looked as if he were the missing puzzle piece in her world.
As Maddie slept and dreamed of Wyn, the tighter the tension within her body grew.
And then how he somehow makes his big strong frame fit so perfectly in my bed that surely must be too small for him…
Right then Wyn rolled over. His heat and hardness seared the side of Maddie’s body, and she jerked up in bed, yanked out of her disturbing dream.
Just as fast, Wyn rubbed his hand down her bare back. “You all right?”
Her heart beating too fast, perspiration slicking her skin, Maddie exhaled carefully and laid back down, this time on her side. Facing away from Wyn, Maddie squeezed her eyes closed and prayed she could play off how disturbing her dreams had been, and who’d they’d been about.
Pressing against her from behind, Wyn slid his arm around her waist and nudged her. “Maddie?”
“For a second I thought I heard the gate open,” Maddie said, a pit opening in her gut over the lie, “but I think this time I was just dreaming it.”
His lips pressed against her shoulder, Wyn murmured, “Be right back,” and crawled out of bed. In a handful of steps he was at the window, the light from the low hanging moon outside highlighting the savagely hard sculpted lines of his big naked body. “Gate is still closed.” His walk surprisingly quiet for a man of his size, he moved to the other window in the room and peered out of it too. “Both of them.”
A sizzle went through Maddie’s middle. “That might have been what really woke me up.” Snapshots of earlier this evening fanned through Maddie’s mind, freezing on one in particular: Wyn with his arms full of debris, and the direction from which he’d been walking. And when I chased the ghost, I ran through the back gate too. Oh my goodness. Her belly fluttered ridiculously. “My dreams wer
e replaying the course of the day and the gate was in my mind. It didn’t hit me at first, but maybe subconsciously I realized you were coming out of the back gate of the garden earlier, not the front.”
Wyn crawled back into bed behind her, and she couldn’t control the breathless catch in her voice as she said, “You fixed it.”
“Yeah.” He laid his arm around her waist once more. “I figured it was the least I could do.”
More than fixed just the gate. Wyn had been carrying overgrowth out of that now operating gate. He’s cleaning the space for me. The knot in Maddie’s belly grew, along with a nervous flutter in her pulse she could not command to calm.
Staring at the sheer curtains flowing lightly away from the window upon a night breeze, Maddie murmured, “Thank you,” her heart squeezing with a burst of tender feelings but her head still sending out signals of panic to her body.
Wyn scratched his fingers gently against her middle. “Something else on your mind? You feel wound up.”
Tightness in her throat, Maddie curled her hands under her cheek and blinked the hated threat of wetness from her eyes. “I’m okay.”
Wyn fell into silence after that, and Maddie began counting backward from one hundred, praying that before she reached zero he would have rolled over and back into a deep sleep, and that the chaotic thoughts twisting tension in her body would dissipate and allow her a peaceful night’s rest. Instead he slid his hand between her thighs and gently caressed her sex. At the same time, he nudged his shaft against her rear, the length already stiffening against her cheeks.
He teased one long, rough finger over her crease, awakening every nerve ending along the way, and Maddie gasped and whispered, “What are you doing?”
Circling his hips in a slow, easy pattern against her ass, Wyn pressed kisses up the slope of her shoulder and into her hair. “Something isn’t right. You don’t have to spill your guts if you don’t want to, but I’m going to do my best to take your mind off of it for a little while. If I’m lucky, I can relax you enough so you can fall asleep afterward.”
Maddie parted her lips to promise Wyn she was all right—even though she wasn’t sure she was. He slipped his fingers into her pussy and feathered the tips deliciously against her clit, and Maddie’s protest turned into a choking cry of, “Wyn.” She shamelessly parted her thighs, a shift that put her almost fully on her stomach, silently begging for more.
Wyn growled and his cock rose to full staff against her hip, but rather than crawl on top of her and ram into her to the hilt, he kissed her nape and then teased the skin with the tip of his tongue, creating a filigree pattern across the top of her back. Each soft brush of his tongue wound its way through Maddie’s body and deep into her cunt, as if each flick touched her inside her core and ignited her need. He grazed his hand up from her sex and kneaded her breast, first one and then the other, and Maddie bit her lip as her pussy flooded for him and the tips of her breasts turned into hard, tiny points. Wyn kept up the slow, too-good play. Rolling her beaded nipples between his long fingers, from one tit to the other, he massaged the tender orbs of flesh and nibbled on her shoulder and the side of her neck.
Her breathing coming hard and heavy, Maddie undulated on her side, desperate to loosen the coil Wyn was twisting inside of her. But he merely plucked her breasts and sucked on a sweet spot he’d discovered the previous night behind her ear, and she cried out and lost her tenuous grip on control.
Rolling onto her stomach, Maddie pleaded, “Wyn…” and shoved her hand under her body to her pussy, hungry and frantic to spin out into oblivion. “Fuck me now.” Rubbing her aching clit like a mad woman, she parted her thighs for him, offering him her soaking sex. “Please.”
With a soft nip to her shoulder blade, Wyn eased Maddie’s hand out from under her body and stretched her arm across the bed. “Trust that I’ll take care of you, Maddie.” He placed her other arm wide across the bed too, but finally shifted to lie between her legs. “Just let yourself feel and respond to everything I’m doing.”
Once again though, instead of sinking into her channel, he dipped down and licked one shoulder blade, then the other, and then began planting a series of small kisses down her spine. Peck after tiny peck, Wyn worked his way down Maddie’s back. In between each kiss, he flicked out his tongue, licked a little pattern on her skin, and made her flesh sing. Every touch of his mouth corkscrewed into her body, marking places deep inside that no amount of physical release could ever erase.
The thought that Wyn would always exist inside her in some manner, no matter how things were resolved between them in less than two weeks, spiked a new wave of fear and tore through Maddie’s soul. Her pulse skyrocketing, she rubbed her body into the bedding, abrading her breasts and mound against the comforter, frantic to push this to a purely sexual place.
In an instant Wyn covered her body with his. Using his big frame, he pressed her into the bed, stilling her gyrations. He put his mouth next to her ear and slid a hand up her arm, linking his fingers with hers. “Shh, shh.” Fitting his cock to her entrance, he scraped his stubbly jaw against her cheek and promised, “It’s okay. Let me help you, baby.” He then nudged his hips. A groan slipped free. He expelled warm breath against her skin, and then slowly, too too too slowly, he pushed his length into her pussy, making them one.
Biting the pillow, Maddie moaned into the white cotton fabric as Wyn’s thick shaft stretched her inner walls with delicious, gentle force. With silent, slow command, he claimed her body, until he was in to the hilt. Her channel instantly fluttered all around him, and Maddie gasped and jolted as a small burst of concentrated pleasure exploded in her core, offering her a hint of needed release.
Wyn grunted a curse, jerked on top of her, and swore again. He reached out and covered her other hand with his, and with his lips parted against the side of her face, he breathed heavily as she trembled under him. With one more heartbeat of still silence, and a kiss brushed to her cheek, Wyn pumped his hips and oh-so-precisely began moving within her body.
No big moves or slamming his dick into her cunt, Wyn instead rocked on top of Maddie, barely sliding his shaft within her sex. And with every soft glide of his cock, each stroke so insanely good yet so very frightening at the same time, Maddie felt as if he was slowly branding his name into her body, and the terrifying thought pushed her toward a gaping abyss. He rubbed his prickly cheek against her ear and into her hair, murmuring her name in a wonderfully gritty tone that sank into her bones. He owned her body with such confident, sure ease, and she groaned, unable to accept a second more of his tenderness without losing her heart to him again—this time certain her soul would die if he hurt her a second time.
Exploding under him, Maddie bucked her hips and rammed her tail end back against him, forcing his cock deep into her pussy. She ordered, “Fuck me,” through gritted teeth. She curled her hands into fists against the bedding, her fingers still twined with his, and pulled his digits into the knot of her hands. Wyn uttered her name like a curse but drove his length into her hard and fast, the heat of which seared through her very flesh, but still it wasn’t enough. Maddie slammed her ass back and rode the steely length of Wyn’s dick as if she needed the rough penetration in order to live. “Harder.” She was like an enthusiastic mare being covered by a stallion. “Fuck me through the bed.”
Except this beast in bed with her changed this particular mating game. He dragged their tangled arms under her breasts, wrestled Maddie fully down to the mattress, and pinned her there with his dick embedded root-deep in her cunt. “Stop fighting me.” His tone cut through her, demanding she obey. “Let me help you come.”
Whimpering, strung so tightly on so many levels she could never reveal to him, Maddie whispered brokenly, “Please.”
Wyn kissed her ear and temple, and sighed against her skin. “I know, baby. I’ve been in this place with you too. I know how this need between us feels too.” He clutched her hands in the sure grip of his and eased her legs a little wider apart with h
is powerful thighs. “Let go and lose yourself in the way I move inside you.”
Before she panicked further, he moved on top of her with a steady, sure thrust and claimed her deep, but without manic force. Her pussy pulsated all around him; she sucked in a breath, but before she lost her sanity, he pulled out and sank into her again, gliding in along her shivering walls until there was not another centimeter for him to steal. A third and fourth time Wyn filled her with his thick heat, each time pushing in to the base of his cock, never fast or hard, and always with a squeeze around her hands that let her know he struggled with controlling his pleasure in this mating too.
One more full dip into her cunt with his prick and Wyn groaned low. “Feel the way you grip my cock, Maddie.” His voice raw against her cheek, she trembled uncontrollably inside, and he hissed and moved within her clutching channel again. “It’s ego, I know, but I swear I tell myself it’s because you want this so much too that your body doesn’t want to let me go, and that’s why you hold me so tight.”
So full of need for this man, Maddie turned her head sideways and pressed a kiss to his arm, the only thing she could reach right now. He rocked on top of her with delicious perfection, sinking his hot length into her with such masterful strokes, and Maddie lost the battle and let go. She reveled in Wyn’s arms around her and his weight on top of her and his cock inside her. She confessed, “You only have to look at me and I wake up inside like a V8 engine that’s been ignored for too long.” Her face buried in her pillow, she bumped back against him, meeting the drive of his cock, but this time worked with his rhythm instead of against it. “Only you know how to work my gears to make me hum.” Balls deep, he circled himself against her pussy, and she throbbed and cried out, “Oh God, Wyn, yes,” and ground herself back against his invasion. “I think about you and I’m wet for you all the time.”
Wyn drove them both flat down onto the bed, a jolt rocking through his whole body. “Fuck, baby.” Crushing her in the circle of his arms, his lips against her cheek, he uttered, “I love you, Maddie.” He scraped his teeth against her skin, and his voice went hoarse. “I never stopped.”