Blush (6 page)

“Mr. Fraser, why didn’t you tell me you would be here?” Massimo took Alex’s hand before it was offered and shook it vigorously. Alex didn’t stand, but stayed seated.

It was deliberate, a tactic Alex often used to tip dealings in his favor. Make yourself seem larger, more important than your opponent. It makes them want to please you.

“Massimo.” Alex used the other man’s first name, which was again deliberate. He watched Santorini’s lips pinch together briefly at the perceived slight.

For all of Santorini’s exuberance, Alex’s instincts, which were finely honed after so many years, told him that the man was a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The wolf had to be smart to get as far as he had . . . so why was he turning to a stranger to bail him out of trouble with a cash deal?

Maybe Alex had simply been too suspicious for far too long. After all, it was only his gut telling him that something was off. Everything else about the deal checked out.

“Why didn’t you tell us you were coming, Mr. Fraser?” Santorini emphasized the
mister
.

“I wasn’t aware that I needed to inform you that I would be on the premises.” Alex’s voice was low, layered with steel. He couldn’t quite understand his own hostility, only that he was responding to something that the other man was giving off.

“Of course. Of course.” Again, the wolf gave every impression of being genial, but the tension radiating from him was palpable. “But if I had known, I would have arranged for you to be treated like a king. In fact, can I get you anything now? Something to drink that’s better than this swill? Some . . . entertainment?”

In his peripheral vision, Alex saw Maddy’s glare. She swallowed it down, probably not wanting to interfere in his business, but rage washed over Alex that she felt put down at all.

He stood abruptly, and deliberately taking Maddy’s hand, pulled her with him. His arm wrapped around her shoulders, his arm sliding down, down, until his hand came to rest on her waist. It was an intimate touch, a possessive one.

“It is in incredibly bad taste to offer me a whore in front of Miss Stone.” Alex barely suppressed the anger in his voice, and Santorini blinked at its intensity.

Alex had half a mind to walk out of there with Maddy right then, deal be damned. The only thing stopping him was the idea that had taken root when he’d analyzed the profit of turning around Massimo’s casino.

He’d been wanting to start up a charitable foundation for years, a philanthropic side to his empire. The clear profit he’d projected he would make could fund whatever it was he wanted to do on that end.

Plus, he thought as he looked into the other man’s eyes, given the strange undercurrents of hostility from Santorini that he didn’t appreciate, given that he was here to bail the man out, it might prove somewhat satisfying to play the bigger man.

“I do apologize, Mr. Fraser. I didn’t realize that this young lady was . . . with you.” Those cold black eyes finally looked at Maddy, though they had pointedly ignored her before. Santorini looked her up and then down, slowly, and Alex clung to the last shred of his civility.

He didn’t like the way Santorini looked at her. She was
his
, damn it.

“Watch yourself.” Alex waited, satisfied, as Santorini took a physical step back, though he didn’t look happy to do so.

As if he’d only just realized that he’d overstepped, Santorini assumed the demeanor of contrition, and he was good enough that Alex would have believed him, if it weren’t for that gut feeling.

That instinctive feeling that kept getting canceled out by his desire to build a foundation for teens and young adults who needed support when their families rejected them for their lifestyles.

“I assure you, Mr. Fraser, I meant no ill will.” Santorini held up his hands in a pleading gesture, though there was still a malicious spark in his eye. “I will treat your . . . companion . . . as if she were as precious as a child.”

For a moment Alex was taken aback, something that didn’t happen often. Why had Santorini chosen those precise words?

He decided that he didn’t care as his puzzlement was replaced with the red flare of horrible, hideous rage. Though he rarely lost his temper, preferring to channel it into the discipline of tae kwon do, he wasn’t entirely certain that he wasn’t about to strike the other man.

When he felt the soft fingers of the woman beside him curl into his arm, he knew why. It was Maddy. He wanted her so badly that his reactions were on the far side of extreme.

Knowing it didn’t help to ease the reaction. Alex tightened his grip on Maddy’s hips, his fingers kneading her flesh. “We are leaving.”

She reached hastily for her purse before he all but carried her out the door. “Thank you for sticking up for me . . .” Maddy’s voice was tentative as they stepped out the front doors, into the late-afternoon sunlight, and walked the short distance to the dilapidated hunk of junk that was her car. Alex shook his head at it.

Surely that thing wasn’t safe. That was something that needed to be taken care of right away.

There it was again, that need to protect this woman. It went far beyond what he normally felt for a submissive.

He had no idea what he was doing. He didn’t date—he couldn’t date. Lydia had made damn sure of that.

Maddy looked up at him questioningly as he exhaled with frustration. The way that she worked her lower lip between her teeth when she was uncertain drove him crazy.

He couldn’t resist anymore.

Yet he had to. His life couldn’t offer her any more than a place as a lover, and this kind of woman wasn’t cut out for that.

With one hand still on her hip, he nudged her backward until she was pressed against the driver’s door of her car. The searing heat of the metal pressed into Alex’s palms, and he worked his hands between her body and the car so that she didn’t get burned.

He fit his body against her front, delighting in her curves, the feel of his hard angles against her softer flesh, another layer of heat.

I have to have her
. He’d never wanted a woman so much, and he wasn’t in the habit of denying himself. He was going to kiss her again, was finally going to let himself sample those lips that had haunted his dreams. Beneath him, her lips parted in anticipation. Alex pressed the hard ridge of his erection into the curve of her belly, and he moaned with something near pain as she arched against him.

“You should run, Madeline.” He wasn’t an altruistic kind of man, but somehow he found that he didn’t want to hurt this perfect creature. And he would—he wouldn’t be able to help it. His lifestyle, which was a need ingrained deep within him, wouldn’t hold any appeal to an innocent like Madeline Stone.

One hand still cupping her hip possessively, Alex used the index finger of his other hand to trace Maddy’s lips slowly, first the upper and then the lower. He felt her knees quiver. He was so close that he could have kissed her without moving at all. His body was pressed in to hers, and the heat surrounding them burned away thoughts of anything beyond her. “Or maybe I am the one who should run. A woman who can make me drive this far to see her must be a witch, casting a spell over me.”

With supreme effort, Alex took his hands from her body, stepped back away from her.

Maddy was too much of an innocent to do the things he wanted to do with her, no matter how much he craved her. And his life was too much of a shit show for a woman clearly dealing with her own issues.

He hadn’t spoken to his family in years. He worked all the time, except for when Rae was with him, and she wasn’t someone he was willing to share.

No, he could see no part for Maddy Stone in all of that. It was nearly painful for him to take yet another step back, unable to take his eyes off of her as she stood openmouthed at his words.

“You drove out here to see me? But . . . the casino . . .” Maddy’s words trailed off, and Alex shook his head with wry amusement.

That she truly had no idea of her appeal was an absolute mystery to him.

“Did you really think it was a coincidence that I showed up at your diner?” Reaching out, unable to resist, he rubbed a thumb over her cheekbone, his expression fading from amusement to something darker. Then he stepped back yet again, putting space between them.

To his surprise, sweet Maddy growled, showing her anger. She narrowed her eyes and stepped toward him, her hands fisted at her sides. Though he found her spunky attitude sexy as hell, he realized with a sinking heart that, if he were a halfway decent guy, he wouldn’t have come out to Paradise in the first place.

So as she stepped away from the car, he opened the driver’s side door for her, smooth as can be, and coaxed her in with a nudge of his hand on her hip again. Leaning in, he buckled her into her seat as if she were a child, then tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

He had to end it, despite the palpable heat between them. It was what a decent man would do.

“Why?” Maddy was quick to speak, and her narrowed glance at him told him that she knew exactly what he was doing. He didn’t bother to feign ignorance.

“There are secrets in my life that would scare you, and there are other secrets that I won’t share. These secrets mean that this isn’t going to work.” Maddy’s eyes widened as he spoke, and he forced himself to look away from the innocent stare.

“I don’t date, Madeline.” Alex made sure that his voice was firm as he summed it up. Even if she asked for an explanation, he wasn’t going to give it.

Telling himself that he’d get over it in no time—he barely knew the woman, after all—Alex found that he was still bitterly disappointed.

“Goodbye, Miss Stone.” When she bit her lip, hard, before he walked away, he very nearly changed his mind.

He couldn’t. No matter that during the entire time he’d been with Maddy that day, he hadn’t felt the least bit alone.

T
he next day, when Maddy arrived home from work, there was a courier box on the ground in front of her door. Her mind immediately went to Alex . . . Well, actually, her mind had been on the man all day.

Though there was no return address, she knew, just knew that it was from him. Perversely, she set the thing on her tiny kitchen table and glared at it periodically as she made a grilled cheese sandwich and ate it standing at the counter, a folded paper towel as her plate. Though she told herself that she would just feel worse if she opened it, she finally couldn’t take it any longer and attacked it with a kitchen knife, sawing through cardboard and packing tape.

Some men sent flowers when they’d been an ass. Some sent chocolates. Alex Fraser sent a bottle of Mouton Rothschild, the 1943 vintage—the same ridiculously expensive wine that he’d bought Maddy the evening they met. Attached to the neck of the bottle was an envelope, cut from thick, cream-colored paper.

The note inside said simply, “It is better this way.” It was written by hand, on stationery monogrammed with his initials.

Of course he had monogrammed stationery. What other kind of man would send a bottle of wine like that, one that had meaning attached, no less, and a note like that to a woman he barely knew?

More money than sense
. Maddy had heard the saying once, and she was pretty sure that it had been coined with Alex Fraser in mind.

“Fuck you, Alex Fraser.” Of course, the bottle of wine didn’t respond, instead sitting where it was, mocking her with its intrusion into her life.

She was tempted to pack the thing back up, drive to Alex’s casino in Vegas, and dump the box in the middle of one of his blackjack tables. He’d made her feel things that she hadn’t even known she was capable of and then cut her off at the knees, insisting it was for her own good.

If she wanted to do something stupid, well, that was her decision, damn it.

So instead of returning the wine, she uncorked the bottle, grabbed a juice tumbler and her iPod, and headed for the bathroom.

As hot water poured into her worn porcelain bathtub, she poured her first glass of the delectable wine. It tasted just as good out of a cheap tumbler as it had out of a fancy wineglass. The first few slugs fortified her, and she wrapped herself in her bravado as she topped off her glass, added perfumed oil to her bath, and set her iPod to Adele. The singer lectured men about rumors as Maddy cranked the volume as loud as it could go and slid into the water and steam, careful to keep the device outside the water. The heat wrapped around her like a hug, and she snuggled into its embrace.

Half an hour later, she was warm, relaxed, and more than a little drunk. She also had to pee. As Maddy clambered out of the tub, she drained half the water, then topped it up again with more hot and more scented oil. She felt decadent—though it might have been the wine talking—and decided that she deserved another glass of wine.

As she stood dripping on the tile, Maddy noticed her phone sitting on the counter. She knew that she was drunk; she knew that she shouldn’t even pick up the thing, but she did anyway.

She wasn’t quite brave enough to call him, but her fingers, fueled by wine, flew nimbly enough over the keys, as she quickly wrote out a text to Alex.

U R AN ASS.

The phone rang no more than a minute later. Surprise, surprise, it was Mr. Fraser. Though her brain had been drenched with wine, she was still coherent enough to wonder why he would bother replying to her drunken, texted insult, since he’d made it so clear that there couldn’t be anything between them.

Maddy ignored the ringing and clambered back into the bath. She couldn’t achieve the same manner of peace, though, and decided that it was Alex’s fault.

Her phone rang again and then once more. Then all was silent, her iPod forgotten on the floor, nothing but the
drip, drip, drip
of water into the tub to distract her from her thoughts.

Maddy shifted uncomfortably in the bath. Alcohol removed the ability to keep her grief at bay, and she felt the sadness and pain creeping back in.
This
was why she didn’t drink often. She felt panic choking her as she remembered what she’d lost, and layered on top of that were thoughts of Alex Fraser, the man who could have made her forget but wouldn’t.

For once Maddy didn’t cry. She just sat in the tub, exhausted and fighting back emotions that she didn’t want to feel. It felt as if she sat there forever, but in reality it was probably no more than twenty minutes. The water started to cool, and Maddy began to shiver but was loath to move.

From down the hall, she heard the doorbell chime. Narrowing her eyes, she ignored it. She didn’t know who it was, and she didn’t much care. She didn’t want to see anyone.

Seconds passed. Then there was a knock, a fist rapping repeatedly against the wood. The knocking continued as, finally curious, Maddy scrambled from the tub.

“Madeline! Open the door.”

Holy shit. Alex. Hastily, Maddy wrapped her worn cotton robe around her dripping body, not bothering to dry herself off, and hustled down the hall. The looseness of her muscles from wine and the heat of the bath made walking harder than it normally was, her legs having turned to jelly.

She wrenched the door open, half in shock, and there stood Alex Fraser, ripped jeans hanging low on his hips, a black T-shirt hugging his muscles. The short sleeves revealed a tattoo that she hadn’t seen before, a ring of something black and tribal around his right biceps.

She wanted to lick it.

She wanted to lick
him
.

“What do you want?” Maddy was too drunk to manage much more than the question and a frown in his direction. His eyes swept her over from head to toe and widened. The heated look came back into them, and he clenched his hands tightly at his sides.

“Why are you opening the door for a stranger at night? Don’t you know better?” He looked angry and frustrated. Well, Maddy felt the same way and didn’t appreciate the lecture.

“You’re not a stranger.” She eyed him as well, and though he looked taken aback, she rather thought that he liked it. “You don’t send strangers seventy-year-old bottles of wine.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, but didn’t reply. Feeling like she’d won a minor battle, Maddy stepped back, giving him room to enter.

He stayed in the doorway, his fists still clenched tightly.

“Are you coming in?” At this point she no longer cared if he did or didn’t.

A strangled noise issued from his throat.

“What’s your problem?” Maddy would never have spoken to him like that if she were sober. She wasn’t.

“It’s better if I don’t.” His eyes raked her over from top to bottom, and she realized that she was all but naked, clad only in her short robe, the cotton of which had become nearly transparent from years of wear. She was still damp in places from her bath, and the thin material clung to her skin.

This was interesting. Despite the fact that he kept trying to push her away, it seemed that he still wanted her. How else could she explain him showing up at her door at night? If she’d been sober, she would never have believed it. In her inebriated state, though, she not only believed it, but wanted to do something about it.

“Suit yourself.” Maddy shrugged nonchalantly, then let her fingers stray to the ties of her robe.

“Maddy. Don’t.” His voice was tight, tense.

Her fingers froze on the ties of her robe. “Why?” If she was going to put herself out there, then he had damn well better have the decency to respond the way that she wanted him to. “I want you; you want me. Why is this wrong?”

His eyes bored into hers, and she thought that she’d never seen such a bright blue. “You’ve been drinking. And if you knew what I wanted from you, you’d never want to see me again.”

“Try me.”

•   •   •

H
eat washed over Alex’s entire body. He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d come to her apartment, other than the fact that she’d provoked him with her text message. It had warned him that she was irritated, but he’d never in a million years have anticipated that she’d channel her anger into desire.

Holding himself rigid, he stepped into the foyer as Maddy sauntered toward him and closed the door. It brought her nearly flush with his body, a scant whisper of space between them.

“Madeline.” His voice came out harsh, a last-ditch attempt to scare her away. If it had been any other woman, he was sure he would’ve had the strength to push her away for the good of both of them.

But it wasn’t another woman; it was Maddy. Inexplicably, each time he saw her, she chipped away at his resistance a little more. And now a tipsy, scantily clad Maddy was pressing herself against him, arching up to stand on her toes. Alex steeled himself to resist her clumsy seduction attempts.

But the truth was, he wanted her. More than he’d ever desired any woman. This woman touched something deep inside him. He craved her submission.

She wasn’t helping him save her.

“Alex, I want you.” She repeated the words and brushed her lips over his chin. If he dipped his head just a bit, he could taste her lips, devour them the way he had outside the casino.

He found that he wanted her kiss more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life. There wasn’t much that concerned Alex, but the depth of his desire for this woman counted.

Instead of succumbing to the kiss that she was begging for with her wide blue eyes, Alex drew on the last reserves of his inner strength and scooped her up over his shoulder. She squawked, one of the cutest sounds he’d ever heard, as he tipped her upside down, placing her eyes at a level with his ass.

His hand splayed over her inner thigh to brace her weight, and as he fought the need to slide his hand up higher, to the center of her heat, he felt her shudder at the touch.

She was so responsive to him. It was the hottest thing.

“What are you doing?” Maddy’s body went tense as Alex searched for and easily found her bedroom—there were only two doors in her apartment, and one was clearly the bathroom. The smell of her bath oil lingered in the air there, along with residual steam.

The thought of her, naked and in the bath, did nothing to help his blood pressure. Squeezing his eyes tightly shut for a moment, he tried to remember that she was drunk and didn’t have a clue what she was doing.

That was the only reason he’d come over, he reminded himself—tried to convince himself. She was drunk, alone in her apartment, and it wasn’t safe. He’d wanted to check on her.

That was all.

As he laid her gently on the bed, she squirmed and her robe fell open, treating his eyes to a slice of creamy white breast.

Alex looked away and counted to ten, but he couldn’t tamp down his arousal. His cock had risen as soon as she’d answered the door in that see-through excuse for a robe.

“Maddy, if you’re sure you want this . . . lie down.” His voice was commanding and confident, far more so than he felt in the moment, though he felt that surge of power when she obliged.

Slowly, she moved backward on the bed, then lowered herself until her head was on her pillow. He watched the fabric of her robe hitching up with her movement, bunching around her hips.

“Put your hands behind your head.”

She shivered, and her eyes cleared a bit. She might have had a lot to drink, but she knew exactly what she was doing, knew who she was with.

There was nothing better, in Alex’s mind at least, than a woman willingly giving him her submission.

Especially this woman.

Beneath him, Maddy closed her eyes and sighed, opening herself to him.

Alex felt his heart stutter a bit, painfully. He bent over her, inhaling that seductive floral scent that was so uniquely hers. He contemplated kissing her, placing his lips on her mouth, her neck, and elsewhere.

He couldn’t resist her anymore, not when she wanted it, too. The connection between them was thick, full of heat, and wouldn’t be denied.

She might have known what she was doing, but she was still not thinking clearly. So instead of sampling her lips, he lifted the cotton weave of her sheets, sliding them up over her legs. Her eyes flew open when the kiss she’d been asking him for with her body didn’t come.

Alex cursed to himself, his cock throbbing with a near-painful arousal.

He caught the narrowed, determined expression in her eyes moments before she tugged at his arms, which were gently tucking a sheet around her waist. She caught him by surprise and he fell, his full weight splaying on top of her.

“Christ, Maddy.” He should have stood right back up, but Maddy wound her arms around his shoulders, nipped at his neck, and rotated her hips slowly.

She’d been drinking. He needed to get up.

“Fuck.” He was rock solid against the softness of her belly, and she purred with satisfaction.

“Alex. Please.”

Groaning, he buried his face into her hair, savoring the scent. “You smell so fucking good.”

Maddy slid her hands over his back and down to cup his ass. She was bolder than he’d thought she would be, fueled by the wine in part, but he was beginning to see there was a core of solid steel beneath her sweet exterior. It was a wonderful combination for a submissive. And her touch did absolutely nothing to quell his desire.

Rising onto his elbows, he studied her face intently for a long moment. He had no doubt that she was sexually submissive—the way that she responded to him told him that. But had he been wrong? Was she strong enough to handle what he was dying to ask her to do?

He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, frowning as he had the day before, in the parking lot. He needed more time to think. This wasn’t a woman he could play with without consequences.

She moaned when he slid off of her, the sound leaving him warm and aching.

“Why?” She wasn’t whining—the question was matter-of-fact. He appreciated that about her, but he wasn’t in the mood to answer, not when his body was a tight tangle of need.

He crossed the room. If he inhaled her intoxicating scent any longer, he wasn’t sure he could trust himself.