by Brandi Evans
Katlyn Matthews was getting dressed up.
A soft pink skirt, with buttons spanning the length of the front, wrapped around her slender hips. The material stopped about mid-thigh and showed a lot of the long, lean legs that had fueled his fantasies since the first night he'd seen her in his PD T-shirt. Her black top was simple, but it, too, showed off skin. Several inches of bare midriff were visible, even with her arms semi-lowered as she applied something smoky to her eyelids.
She wore no shoes, but she'd painted her toes and fingernails the same soft pink as the skirt. Her flaxen hair fell in soft ringlets he wanted to see laid over his pillow as he laid her on the mattress and covered her body with his. She was humming something in a low, sultry tone. He couldn't make out a specific melody, but he was sure it was what the Sirens sang to lure their prey closer.
He took a clumsy step toward her, and his keys slipped from his hands. The carpet muffled the worst of the sound, but Kat still spun toward him, wide-eyed, hands flying to her heart before shock turned to relief.
"Holy Jesus, Maddox, you scared me."
But he didn't speak, didn't trust himself to yet. He wanted to rip every scrap of clothing off her until she was naked in his arms and, preferably, beneath him. Or on top of him. He didn't care at this point. He was in love and desperately horny, a dangerous combination for a Dom. But how did he resist her when she looked like that? She was fucking adorable and adorably fuckable.
Carter's hairy, naked ass.
Maddox repeated the words ad nauseam until he conjured a revolting visual so overpowering that he could bank the worst of his lust.
"You look…" No, he couldn't start there. He'd give too much away. "You, uh, didn't answer my texts. I was worried."
"I didn't mean to worry you. As you can see, I'm perfectly fine."
"Yes, you are." He couldn't keep the double entendre from coloring his tone.
A slow smile curling her lips, she sauntered across the room. When she reached him, she dropped to a knee and lowered her head. Her hair spilled forward over her shoulders. His hormone-flooded brain exploded with ideas and possibilities, each more graphic and sexual than the last. He wanted to bury his fingers in those curls, pull her close, wanted to see the flame of desire that would seize her features when he told her to open wide so he could fuck that sweet, wet mouth. The idea her expression might turn to horror, or worse, fear was the only thing that stilled his actions.
She lifted her gaze to meet his, sin on her lips, and slowly pushed back to her feet. "You dropped these." She held his keys in her outstretched palm.
He didn't so much as look at the keys as he took them. Mother of fucking god, she knew! She knew every line of every wicked thought that had gone through his head; she knew because she'd planned it.
She was coming on to him.
"Sorry I worried you earlier." Her voice was a sultry purr. "Dinner took longer than expected. I started making stovetop chicken pot pie, but then, I realized I didn't have one of the ingredients I'd need to make the actual pie crust, so I had to make do with fresh biscuits. I bet my phone's still on the kitchen counter."
"You don't owe me an explanation. I overreacted. I just worry about you, Kat."
Well, fuck. He shouldn't have said that, especially given the interlude with the keys and the way her eyes just lit as if a million stars had burst to life inside them.
She took one more step toward him, putting them toe to toe. She smelled like a meadow of wildflowers. The scent drew him in and fucked with his mind. He balled his hands into fists to keep from burying his fingers in her hair and forcing her back to her knees to make his earlier fantasy a fantastic reality.
"You smell amazing," he murmured. "I mean—dinner smells amazing."
Her sinful grin turned positively wicked. "If you think dinner smells good, wait until you taste it."
She pressed onto her tiptoes. He braced for a kiss, but she only grazed her lips over his cheek.
When she pulled back, nerves dampened the Siren's smile. "I'll go get everything on the table. Join me when you're ready, okay?"
When she'd gone, he stumbled to his bed, his legs feeling as if someone had strapped one-hundred-pound weights to each ankle. She'd been coming on to him, no doubt in his mind. As in full-on putting herself out there. The candlelight, the soft music, dressing up, that was all to seduce him.
"Fuck, fuck."
He kept his voice low as he ripped his jacket off and hurled it at the bed. He'd been with enough women, with enough subs, to recognize the signs, but then, her nerves had gotten the better of her. He should take her skittish nerves as a reprieve, should let the moment pass, and find a way to keep it from happening again, no matter how much he wanted the opposite.
He needed to keep things between them professional. It didn't matter how much he wanted her. She was under his protection, and until they caught Harris, he needed his head straight. He'd promised himself, for her sake, he wouldn't let this become personal. Except, fuck!
Fuck!
Things were already personal. She was living with him. No, they were living together if he were to be exact. Aside from his sister and mother, he'd never lived with a woman. He enjoyed living with Kat, though, even if sharing his space with her was also torture at times. Like when he wanted to kiss her goodbye and then kiss her hello when he returned from work. He wanted her naked in his arms when they drifted off to sleep, and damn it, he didn't want to keep denying himself the pleasure of touching her when he woke beside her.
He wanted a relationship with her, to share who he was with her, and, yes, he wanted to take her to Restrained Fantasies. He wanted all of her, and he wanted her to have, and hopefully accept, all of him. Was that too much to fucking ask?
Carter had fallen for Emily and then let things get personal, and as a result, she'd died. Carter's guilt over that decision had been Maddox's ultimate driving force for sending Kat away before.
Carter's decision had been personal, and the woman he loved had died.
Maddox's decision had been professional, and the woman he loved had almost died.
Maddox was beginning to think there was no right or wrong here. And if that were the case, would giving in to what he felt for Kat really be such a bad idea?
Chapter 10
Stupid. Stupid!
Katlyn's hands shook so badly that the lid of the casserole dish she held clattered from its position and tumbled to the ground. Luckily, it fell on the carpet and didn't shatter into a million pieces like her courage had.
Stupid!
She managed to set the dish on the table without dropping it. After grabbing a tea towel from the kitchen, she set about scrubbing the splatters of cream sauce from the rug. Served her right, coming on to him. She should have known she'd screw it up. Sensual music, a few lit candles, a romantic dinner, she'd created a beautiful atmosphere, but then, when it had mattered, she'd lost her nerve. His mouth had been so close to hers. The heat of his breath had kissed her lips. All she'd had to do was stay the course, but she'd chickened out.
She pushed to her feet, turned back toward the kitchen, and yelped. "Holy shit, Maddox, you scared me."
Maddox stood in the hallway, leaning against the wall and watching her. Just watching her.
She forced out a laugh as she willed her heart rate back into the average range. "You've got to stop doing that to me tonight."
"Sorry." But the grin tugging his lips didn't portray sorry.
She held up the lid. "I, uh, dropped this."
"Mmm-hmm, I can see that.
"I think I got everything off your carpet, though. If I didn't, I promise I'll—"
"I don't care about the carpet, Kat." His smile dropped away, and he looked at her that way again.
The ligaments and tendons in her knees threatened to rebel. If she weren't careful, she'd have to clean herself off the floor real soon. She needed to escape, to pull her head back on straight.
"I'm, uh, gonna go back to the kitchen and gra
b the Chardonnay I thought would go great with dinner. If you want, you can go ahead and sit down. I'll only be a second."
"I don't want food." With three ground-eating strides, he closed the distance between them, took the lid from her hands, and tossed it right back on the carpet. Their position mirrored the one from the bedroom, toe-to-toe. "I don't want food, Kat. I want you."
Oh, god.
Lava replaced blood in her veins. Her lungs forgot how to process oxygen. She stood suspended between real life and fantasy. She would have collapsed into a puddle of desire on the floor if his strong hands hadn't spanned her waist and pulled her firmly against him.
Her arms came instantly, automatically around him. They always did when he opened his arms to her, but this embrace wasn't like any they'd shared before. The desire she'd kept banked for so long burst free, fluttering through her like a charm of hummingbirds tasting nectar for the first time after a period of starvation.
His lips hovered a breath from hers. The aroma of coffee and something sweet and a little nutty filled her nostrils, probably the coffee nut M&Ms he liked so much, and her mouth watered. Did he taste as good as he smelled? To find out, all she had to do was lift her head the tiniest amount, and their lips would touch.
But she didn't lean in, and neither did he. She wanted him, and he'd said he wanted her. So why weren't either moving, taking that next step?
Fingers digging into her waist, he pulled her harder into him. "Tonight, when we go to bed, I want you naked beside me so I can explore your body, so I can discover all the places that make you quiver, and then, I want to exploit that knowledge. I want to make you squirm. I want to make you come and come and come until you're too spent and too wracked with pleasure to move a single muscle. And then, only then, will I finally make love with you, slowly, thoroughly, stroking into your sweet, willing pussy until I can make you come one last time."
"I want that, too, Maddox."
But still, he didn't take that final step, didn't touch his lips to hers. Confusion doing its damndest to overpower lust, she pulled back and searched his face. His eyes were stormy with emotion—and like a light switched on, she understood his hesitation. Jeff had battered her, taken her choices away from her—he'd raped her—but not Maddox. He was a man on the edge, and he was still waiting on absolute consent.
Just when she didn't think she could love him more…
She cradled his cheeks between shaking hands, pressed onto the tips of her toes, and touched her lips to his in a kiss that awakened all the dead places inside her.
Don't stop breathing, she told herself as his tongue swept lazily into her mouth.
The kiss started slowly, exploratively, the kind she could sink into and stay content for a million years. In fact, she felt as if she had been kissing him for that long. The swipe of his tongue over hers, the quick nibbles along her bottom lip, the way his hands flattened along the exposed skin of her lower back. Every action made her believe in reincarnation and past lives and soulmates meeting lifetime after lifetime because she couldn't believe this was the first time they'd ever done this.
She twined her arms around his neck. In one fluid motion, he lifted her into his arms and deposited her unceremoniously on the side of the table. The plates and silverware she'd laid out earlier clattered, and she was pretty sure one of the wine glasses tipped over. But she didn't care, not when Maddox held her.
She wrapped both arms and legs around him, drew him closer. His cock, hard and unyielding, ground against her sex, sending a shot of arousal straight to her core. She gasped at the unexpected jolt, embarrassingly close to orgasm. It had been too long…
She tightened her legs harder around him, grinding herself against him, desperate to find the type of release she hadn't experienced with a lover in far, far too long. Not just an orgasm, but one brought on by someone she wanted to be with—someone who wanted to be with her.
"Maddox," she breathed against his lips and then sucked in air like a drowning victim.
Maddox forced a hand between her legs and pressed skilled fingertips to her clit, only the thin layer of her underwear separating flesh from flesh. He worked her clit in a circular motion.
"The next time I touch you here," he said against her lips, "it's going to be with my tongue."
She was gone.
She screamed his name as the orgasm enveloped her. She clawed at him, desperate to find some sort of purchase as the room spun. She lost control of her limbs, felt them quivering. The trembling started at her core and worked its way outward until pleasure saturated and penetrated every cell in her body.
When she regained a semblance of awareness, she found she was flat on her back, her hair in their dinner, and Maddox smiling down at her. Her arm felt as if it weighed an extra thirty pounds as she traced his lower lip with the pads of her fingers. "I think you killed me."
"I hope not." He gathered her close for a long, slow kiss. "Because we are just getting started."
"Good."
She did her damndest to still the spinning in her head. She still needed to ask him something, and she wanted her wits about her when she did. She didn't want to give him any reason to deny her request.
"Maddox, there's something I want to ask you before you orgasm me into another near coma. It's important."
His cocky smile morphed into concern. "What's wrong? Did you not want—"
"No," she said quickly and then accented her denial with a quick kiss. "I most certainly wanted this. That's not even something you need to question, okay? This is more about the way I want it."
His eyebrows drew together. "Okay?"
She took a deep breath. "You see, Maddox, like you, I'm—"
His cellphone cut her off, and a million expletives scrolled through his eyes. "Two seconds," he said as he yanked his cell from his belt clip. "Detective Westbrook."
She couldn't make out the caller's words, but she didn't have to hear them to know they upset him.
"What do you mean the news is breaking now? Did you take that asshole into custody?"
Jeff! This was about Jeff. She reached for Maddox as he reached for her, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her back against him.
"Yeah, yeah, I'll turn it on." He clicked off and returned his cell to its clip. "And a big fuck you to you, too, asshole."
"What's going on?" Her voice wobbled.
"I don't know. That was Agent Andrei. She just told me news about Harris was breaking and to tune in. Come on."
In the living room, they cuddled on the sofa, the TV tuned to a twenty-four-hour news station; the report was a feature on a family of four who had been brutally murdered in their Chicago home.
"Did Agent Andrei say what we're supposed to be looking for?" she asked.
"No, just that we'd know it when we saw it."
He drew her closer as an on-scene reporter ran through the details. "Tragedy struck this tranquil Chicago suburb in the early hours of the morning when an armed intruder took the lives of an entire family. The victims include a ten-year-old girl and a nine-month-old boy, slain in his crib…"
"Oh, god. What kind of monster could kill two kids?" Tucking her legs beneath her, she turned farther into Maddox.
He didn't have time to respond before a name from the report caught their attention. "…police are looking for Jeff Harris in connection with this quadruple homicide. Police won't say if their interest in him is as a suspect or as a witness. This is a breaking story. We will have more information as—"
Maddox hit the mute button even as his phone rang again. "I saw it, too," he said to the caller.
She recognized the angry cadence blasting through the speaker: Carter. She couldn't make out individual words over the suddenly swirling, pounding insanity inside her head. Jeff had killed those people. Her ex-husband, a man she'd once loved, had slain a family of four. She'd shared her bed with an abuser and a killer. How was she supposed to reconcile this?
She pulled at a neckline that wasn't there, a r
ed-hot sensation burning down her neck and into her chest until anxiety held her lungs hostage. Sweat popped out on her forehead, and the world tilted on its axis and went fuzzy.
This was it.
This was how Jeff would kill her.
Chapter 11
"Hurry," Maddox said to his partner and all but threw his cell at the coffee table. "Kat, baby, breathe."
He'd seen enough panic attacks over the years to recognize the signs. He gathered her close. Fuck, she was freezing. He pulled a throw blanket around her and ran his hands up and down, up and down her shivering arms.
"I've got you, Kat. I've got you, baby. I've got you. You're safe. You're safe. I got you." He kept stroking, kept soothing until her trembles turned to gentle shivers, and her breathing calmed.
"He killed them," she finally said, her voice sounding like a ghost of the woman who'd orgasmed so fiercely at his touch not fifteen minutes ago. "All four of them. Even the baby. God, I can't believe I ever once loved a man who could do that. What does that say about me?"
"It says you were smart enough to get away from him."
"But—"
"No buts. By the end, you weren't with him out of love, but out of fear. How many times had you already tried to escape before we met?" He didn't give her time to answer; he already knew. "Three. You left that bastard three times, but he always tracked you down and put you in the hospital, until he thought you were too scared to run again. But you were too brave. You kept leaving, and now, I've got you. You're free, and I swear on my life, Kat, I will never let that asshole near you again."
"Maddox, I—" But an avalanche of sobs drowned anything she might have wanted to say, so he just held her and let her cry until sobs turned to quiet hiccups.
"I want you to take one of your sleeping pills, okay? That way, you'll hopefully sleep well tonight. And then, when you wake up, Carter and I will have details for you and a plan of action, okay?"
She nodded and snuggled deeper into his embrace.