Blush (12 page)

“Look at me.” Maddy’s eyes snapped back open at the command. She didn’t even think of disobeying. “Look right at me. Now.”

Her blue eyes met his.

“Come for me, Maddy.” As if he had commanded it, the tight spiral of pleasure unfurled in a wild, potent burst.

Maddy cried out, her voice full of wonder even to her own ears.

Alex was the first man to ever make her come.

Once her wave had receded back to shore, once he had milked every last bit of pleasure out of the moment for her, Alex thrust one last time inside of her, and he groaned as her heat sheathed him to the hilt, urging him on to his own release.

They lay still for a moment, and Maddy could hear the sounds of their breath, mingled together in the quiet air of Alex’s kitchen. As with last night, in this, the aftermath of what he had drawn out of her, her mind was clear. Her emotions were clean. It was a glorious sensation, and she clutched at it greedily, this brief moment of peace.

Alex leaned over Maddy, his cheek resting against her stomach. When, finally, he pulled away, slipped out of her to dispose of the condom, she sat up, the tile pulling uncomfortably at the skin of her back as she did.

As usual, Alex was the picture of self-possession as he moved to the sink and threw the used latex into the trash hidden beneath. Maddy was far more awkward, sliding off the island on shaky legs, then dressing herself in yesterday’s clothing yet one more time.

Who was this woman who had taken over her body? She didn’t do things like this.

“Here.” Maddy looked up from fastening the zipper of her shorts. Alex was holding out both a tall glass of iced water and a sheath of papers.

“Thank you.” She took the water gratefully; the encounter had left her throat dry and her mouth feeling like cotton.

The papers she accepted with a bit more wariness. “What is this?”

Alex smiled, that wicked smile that reminded her that he knew exactly how much she wanted him.

“Information for you.”

Maddy’s eyes widened and her breath hitched. Damn it, how did he know? How did he know that, despite all of the protests that sounded so valid to her own ears, she was truly intrigued by what he was offering her?

Her wonder was threaded through with irritation. “What makes you assume that, after all the times I’ve told you that I can’t do this, I will anyway?”

Alex raised an eyebrow. Damn it, but those glasses perched on the end of his nose were hot.

“Part of a Dominant’s job is to know what his sub needs.”

Maddy groaned with frustration. “Alex, I’m not your sub. I don’t even know what that means.” She needed to get out of there. When she was around him, he encompassed her entire being. She wasn’t rational. “And since I’ve told you so many times that this isn’t what I want, I think you must just be hearing what
you
want to hear.”

Alex’s expression grew more serious, and grasping her arm with one hand, he pulled her to him, quick and hard.

“You’re the one who isn’t listening, Maddy.” She sucked in a startled breath when he slipped his hand beneath the waistband of the shorts that she’d just refastened. His fingers trailed down the plane of her stomach, then slid into the folds that were still damp. “I didn’t say this was what you wanted. I said it was what you needed. And as for how I know, this is how.”

He pulled his hand from between her legs and lifted his fingers between their faces. Maddy could see them shining with wetness, and she squirmed with embarrassment.

“You want me. I want you. We each have something that the other needs. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.” Her mouth fell open with shock when he ran his tongue lightly over the fingers that had just been inside her. He smirked at her shocked expression.

She felt herself scowl despite her intense attraction to him. “I haven’t signed that . . . that agreement thing you talked about yet. And I might not.” She expected to see disappointment on his face.

Instead he grinned. “I can hope. In the meantime, I find I have a taste for vanilla.”

Maddy was sure the resultant thump of her heart was audible. Then he continued, and that same heart sank all the way to her toes with nerves and anticipation.

“Unless you glower at me like that again. Then you’re in for a decidedly nonvanilla spanking. I’m looking forward to it.”

Maddy stared at him for a full ten seconds, trying to wrap her head around what he had just said. When he again smirked, she decided to preserve what was left of her dignity.

She left.

I
t wasn’t until she closed the door of her apartment behind her and sagged back against it with relief that Maddy found herself able to draw in a full breath.

What had she gotten herself into?

The sheath of papers that Alex had foisted on her was clutched tightly in her right hand. Though she was tempted to start reading right away, she instead laid them down on her kitchen table, smoothing out the crinkles made by her damp palm.

His scent clung to her clothes, her skin. It was distracting her.

Her shower was brief and hot. She had expected it to wash away the sensation of his hands on her body, of his lips on her own, to help her get her bearings. It did erase his scent, leaving her smelling of her own lavender soap and rosemary shampoo, but the ghost of his touch lingered.

It was as if he had branded her . . . had already begun to possess her. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea, and yet, as she combed her wet hair into a slick ponytail and pulled on stretchy yoga shorts and a loose tank top, she found her thoughts stayed stuck on the image of him thrusting inside of her again and again.

Circling around the stack of papers that were screaming at her to be read, Maddy brewed a pot of coffee and put a slice of bread in the toaster. She had left before Alex could force-feed her, and though she wrinkled her nose at the thought, she knew that he had been right.

She was starving. She’d had a lot more exercise than usual over the last twenty-four hours.

Her phone beeped with an incoming text. Maddy picked it up, smiled when she saw that it was from Alex.

READING ANYTHING INTERESTING?

WELL . . . I’M NOT SAYING NO. YET.

I WILL SEND DECLAN FOR YOU TOMORROW NIGHT AT 7:00 P.M.

Maddy knew that she should have expected it, but she was still speechless. Give the man an inch and all that. She waited for the irritation to hit her, but as she chewed on her lower lip, she found that, actually, she liked his confidence.

The phone rang, vibrating against Maddy’s palm and startling her from her thoughts. She stared at it for a moment, then flipped it over to see the call display. Her pulse was fast, and her breath came rapid and shallow.

Maybe it was Alex.

When she saw the name displayed on the screen of the cell, though, her heart sank and her stomach clenched.

HUDSON, NATHAN.

“Phone. Right. Answer the phone, Maddy.” Her sense of guilt was so strong that she couldn’t do anything else, even though she knew that the rest of her day was now going to be agony.

Well, she deserved it.

“Hi, Nate.”

“Maddy!” Though the voice on the other end of the line was friendly and familiar, every muscle in her body felt stretched taut. “It’s been too long.”

“It has been a long time.” For Maddy it was never too long. Nathan didn’t blame her, never would if she knew him, but that didn’t matter when she blamed herself.

“So how’s Paradise?”

She heard Nathan swallow. She could picture him, leaning against the counter in the house they had all shared, his battered green mug full of scalding black coffee.

Except he wasn’t at that house. None of them—Nathan, Erin, Maddy—lived there anymore.

“Oh, you know. Another day in Paradise. What else would it be?” Maddy managed a dry laugh. She had chosen Paradise, Nevada, to run to because she had been wryly amused by the irony of the city’s name.

“Still waitressing?” Nathan’s tone was light, but she knew that he disapproved of some of the choices she’d made, even though he would never tell her so.

“You know I am.” She didn’t want to talk about herself. “How’s the gallery going?”

The diversion worked. Sounding excited, her sister’s former fiancé told Maddy all about the details of the business that he had started a few years earlier, when they had all shared a house. He was a woodworker, made incredible pieces of art from wood, and had started the gallery to showcase his own work, though it had expanded from there.

Inevitably, of course, he circled back to her. The man was amiable, even sweet, but under the teddy bear demeanor was a steel resolve.

“Maddy, how long are you going to lock yourself away in exile?”

Maddy’s jaw snapped closed so abruptly that her teeth bit into her tongue. The warm, bitter taste of blood filled her mouth. “I’m not in exile, Nathan.” Though he’d made a habit of checking in on her since she’d moved away, he’d never come right out and asked her anything that pointed before.

“What else would you call it?”

Maddy scowled even as her fingers found the locket that she never took off. She stroked the polished metal, looking for comfort and finding none.

“I’m . . . I just . . . I needed a change, okay?” Her words were defensive. Of all people, Nathan was the one she owed explanations, apologies, recriminations.

But when she’d offered all of that time and time again, what else was there to give?

“A change.” She’d poked the sleeping bear. Irritation colored the voice of the man she’d considered her brother-in-law, though her sister and he never had a chance to marry. “Right. Leaving your family, abandoning your career . . . You were just looking for a change. Not running away at all.”

“I was an optician, Nathan.” Maddy cringed as she said it. “There are lots of us around. And I like what I’m doing. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

She was defensive, but damn it, he was starting to make her mad, which was exactly the opposite of what she wanted. Why couldn’t
he
just be mad at
her
? If he could just be mad at her, furious even, if they could have one big knockdown, drag-out fight where he told her that he blamed her as much as she blamed herself for her sister’s death. And then maybe she could begin to move on.

But instead Nathan Hudson was nothing but kind, nothing but loving and forgiving.

“You serve bacon and eggs to truckers, Maddy.” Nathan’s voice was flat. “And there’s nothing wrong with that, except that it’s not what you actually want to do. But if you want to hide away out in the desert, away from your family, denying yourself the right to live a full life, then I guess it’s your business.”

“Damn straight it’s my business.” The feelings that swam rapidly to the surface were mottled, mixed, but manifested in anger. “And I can’t run away from my family when none of them are left!”

Silence was thick as soup. Maddy realized what she’d said and hastily backtracked.

“Nathan . . . I didn’t . . . I mean . . .” Oh, what a fuckup she was. She’d just said the worst thing she possibly could have to the one person who
was
, for all intents and purposes, all the family that she had left.

“Yeah, well, I guess that would be what they call a Freudian slip.” Gone was the teddy bear; in his place was a man with all the bitterness that Maddy had thought she wanted to hear.

She’d been wrong.

“Erin was the one who died in that car accident, Maddy, but for all the effort you’re putting into life, it might as well have been you.”

•   •   •

I
t took her nearly a full day to work up the nerve to do what she knew she needed to.

I CAN’T DO IT. I’M SORRY.

Biting down on her lip, Maddy hesitated before hitting send on the message to Alex. When she finally did, she felt as though she had been punched in the gut.

THAT’S IT? EXPLAIN, PLEASE.

Feeling sick, Maddy scrolled to her contact list and very deliberately deleted Alex from it, then dropped the phone in her small locker. The staff room in the back of the diner was freezing, or maybe it was just her, so she pulled the black cardigan that she kept at work over her shoulders before heading out to start her shift.

“Hey, Maddy.” Susannah looked eager to be going. “It’s been slow. I bet you’ll have a quiet night.”

Damn it. Maddy wanted to be run off her feet. She wanted to be distracted.

Instead she found herself rolling flatware into napkins, berating herself for pursuing anything with Alex, for the accident, for life in general.

“Get a grip!” she chided herself as she dropped yet another set of flatware. It clattered to the floor, and she glared at it.

She couldn’t help it. She was so damn mad . . . mad at everything.

She had spent the previous afternoon and evening in a state of numbness that was unfortunately all too familiar to her. Talking to Nathan had that effect on her.

No matter what he said, what he did, she couldn’t face the thought of being around him. The phone calls were bad enough.

The car wreck that had killed her sister had been unavoidable, so said the emergency responders. Unavoidable, however, didn’t mean no fault, and Maddy had been driving.

More than that, she had walked away with a few cuts and bruises.

Erin hadn’t walked away at all.

Maddy had learned to simply hide the guilt from most people, even from Dr. Gill, whose primary job was just to help her function from day to day. But she held her guilt tightly to her, knowing that she deserved every agonizing minute of it.

That was why she’d reneged on her date with Alex. She might have been drawn to the punishment aspect of what he offered her, but she didn’t deserve to find satisfaction even in that.

With a shaky sigh, Maddy loaded a rubber bin with the rolls of cutlery. She knew that Alex, the man used to getting everything he wanted, was not going to be impressed with her. In fact, it was a good thing that she’d left her cell phone in her locker, because she imagined that he was texting and calling, demanding an explanation.

He made her so weak in the knees, she wasn’t sure that she could ignore him for very long. More than that, she thought—no, she
knew
—that she wasn’t going to be able to stay strong in the face of his arguments.

“He wouldn’t understand,” Maddy mumbled as she reminded herself of why she was cutting him off. He couldn’t possibly understand the demons that she held inside of her, and what was more, she had no desire to share them. They were her burden, no one else’s.

“Are you answering yourself, too? If you are, we’re in trouble.”

Maddy felt the warmth of a large hand on her shoulder and looked up to find Joe standing next to her, his eyes crinkled with concern.

She laughed weakly, turning away so that he wouldn’t see the despair that she knew was painted over her features. “Not out loud, I’m not, so that’s something.” She hefted the tub of silverware to the back counter, where it was kept once it had been filled.

When she turned back, she saw something that she didn’t quite recognize in Joe’s eyes.

“That rich guy you’ve been seeing . . . he hasn’t done anything to you, has he?” Joe glared, looking like he wanted nothing more than to punch Alex in the jaw.

“God, no.” Maddy barked out a laugh. Probably not wise to punch a man who owned an entire roomful of instruments of possible pleasure, possible torture. “No, he . . . we’re not . . . hmm.”

There wasn’t any way to phrase it without making Joe angry and indignant on her behalf. What could she say, after all?
No, he hasn’t done anything to me, except make me realize how much I do like sex—sex with him, anyway. And after he made me come more times in one evening than I have in years, he showed me his dungeon and told me that he wants me to be his love slave.

Maddy’s boss was a mild-mannered kind of guy most of the time, but she was pretty sure that he wouldn’t care to hear any of that. No, he wouldn’t like that at all.

“You’re not seeing him?” Joe’s voice grew warmer, and he took a step toward her. Uh-oh. Warily, she eyed the hand that reached out to touch her shoulder. She thought he meant it to be a comforting touch, but had her confession changed things a bit in his mind?

Though she wasn’t usually the kind of woman men were interested in, Maddy would have to have been blind to miss the signals that were suddenly emanating from her boss’s body.

For a long moment, she wished, wished hard, that she could have been interested in Joe. It would have been so much simpler. Joe was so blessedly normal. With him, maybe, she could learn to live with what she felt about herself.

Then Alex’s face swam before her eyes, and she knew that it wasn’t even a little bit possible.

“Joe . . . I’m not really seeing anyone right now. Deliberately,” Maddy added as the interest in Joe’s green eyes intensified.

“I see.” The hand on her shoulder squeezed after a long hesitation, and then he let go. “Well. I’m going to head back to the kitchen.”

She thought he was a bit embarrassed about the blatant interest that he’d just showed in her, and she forced her lips to curve up into a reassuring smile. “Okay. It’s so slow. It’s going to be a long night, so come out and chat when you can.”

The relief on his face was obvious. They would both just forget that that moment had ever happened. And maybe some pleasant company from a man whom she genuinely liked, one who didn’t confuse her with every breath that he took, would help her sort through so many jumbled feelings that she didn’t know how much longer she could hold them in.

•   •   •

“T
ell them they can have a burger from the grill before I clean it, if they want, but everything else is put away!” Joe shouted this at Maddy from the kitchen, where he was closing up for the night, right after the bell over the glass door at the front of the diner jingled, announcing the entry of a new customer, five minutes to closing.

Frustration washed over her. She hated it when people did this. Their hours were clearly marked outside the diner—in neon, no less. Just because their doors were unlocked at five to midnight didn’t mean that it was a great time to come on in and order a meal.

The customer was
not
always right, but Maddy pasted a smile on her face anyway, turning toward the noise.

“Alex.” Surreptitiously, she pinched herself. Ouch. Yes, she was awake, and Alex Fraser, the billionaire who would not be deterred, was in the tiny diner where she worked, yet again.

“Madeline.” His voice was frosty, and goose bumps skittered along her skin. He wasn’t happy with her, understandably so. But . . . why was he here, then?