Crazy Thing Called Love (13 page)

The night after prom, the first time they had sex, that startled gasp in his ear when he took her virginity. “It’s okay,” she’d whispered when he tried to pull out, agonized by the thought of hurting her. “I’m glad it’s you,” she’d said. “I love you.”

That time they’d watched porn in Chris Alfano’s basement and she’d tried to give him a blow job in his car. She’d laughed and choked and finally he told her to stop, but she wouldn’t until she got it right. And she had. She really had.

Their wedding night, she’d been eighteen and he’d been twenty. Their first anniversary in the hotel room down in Atlanta, when they’d had too much champagne and nearly drowned in the heart-shaped hot tub.

After every fight that last year, when she would come apart in his arms and then sob curled up on her side of the bed and he’d stare up at the ceiling, feeling worthless and angry, wondering if this was how marriage was really supposed to be.

He pulled his finger out of her body, the electric heat slipping across his knuckles.

“What are you doing?” she gasped, clutching his wrist.

“Not like this,” he whispered, kissing her ear. “Not with you.”

“What … what do you mean?” she blinked up at him, lost in that haze. Everything about her was twitching, so close to orgasm. He’d seen her like this enough to know. The knowledge was its own kind of pain.

He scooped her up, one hand under her legs, the other under her shoulder blades. Startled, she slung an arm around his neck.

“I don’t want it like this,” she snapped.

Silent, because what could he say, really? He laid her down on the couch.

“Condoms are in the bedroom.” Her voice had hard edges that he tried to ignore.

“Shhh,” he whispered and ran a hand over her breasts, down the muscles of her belly, which twitched and jumped at his touch. His fingers slipped under the waistband of her pants again, into the curls between her legs.

One knee fell open and her arm lifted. For a moment, breathless with an agonized hope, he waited for her touch—against his neck, the side of his face, anywhere—but she only flopped her arm over her head, her palm lying open against an orange pillow.

He smiled down into her eyes, and for one breathless moment, it was just them. Like it used to be.

But then she closed her eyes.

On his knees on the floor beside the couch, he leaned down, pulled one long hard pink nipple into his mouth, and she arched up against his face. A long slow undulation of her whole body, lithe and beautiful.

Using his fingers, that callous on his thumb, his teeth against her nipple, he urged her higher. Pushed her further. Fresh sweat broke out on her body, and her small gasps turned to moans.

“Yes,” she cried.

Yes
, his body answered, throbbing in his pants.
Yes. Yes
.

But he kept his pants on. Thought about ice. Empty arenas. The look on her face years ago outside that hotel room.

For her
, he told himself.
Once in your life, just for her
.

“Billy,” she groaned, curling herself against him, her hand sliding up under his arm to his back. The skin, so sensitized, his body so full of want, he flinched from her touch.

Too much. It was too much.

“Come on, baby,” he groaned against her skin, licking the lower curve of her breast up to her nipple.

He slid in another finger, higher into her body.

She pulled herself taut against him, every muscle engaged in the act of reaching for orgasm. “Yes,” she chanted. “Yes. Oh God, yes.”

One jerk, then another. Her legs clamped hard against his hand. Her fingers raked the skin of his back. He hissed, arching away even as his dick throbbed. He let her nipple, wet and hard, fall from his mouth.

God
, he thought, looking at her.
God
.

“Billy,” she sighed, half-smiling. For just a moment, she looked exactly as he remembered and he reached his limit.

Awkward and clumsy he pulled his hand free from her body, the scent of sweat and woman—musky and so fucking erotic he couldn’t stand it—followed and he lurched to his feet. Away from the couch. From her.

She sat up, her breasts wobbling at the motion.

Stop looking
, he told himself, but he couldn’t.

“What are you doing?” she asked, slipping one foot down onto the floor. The muscles in her stomach clenched and released—and honest to God, he’d never seen anything hotter.

Though she could be wearing a clown suit and juggling and he’d still want to fuck her.

But he had some standards. And one of them was that he wouldn’t use his wife like a puck bunny and he wouldn’t let her use him like some kind of Gladiator dildo. He’d had enough of that for three lifetimes.

“Stop.” He held up his hand, warding her off like she was trying to mug him.

“But …” She gestured limply toward him. Toward the erection raging in his unbuttoned jeans. “Don’t you want—”

“Yes,” he growled, suddenly furious with her. “I want.
But not with your rules, Maddy. You want me, you take me. All of me. I can’t fuck you and pretend to be strangers. You’re my wife.”

“Ex.” She stood, stepping toward him, her eyes on fire. If she touched him, he’d take her down on the carpet, he’d push himself so far inside her, she’d scream. And she’d get her wish, there would be no tenderness. Everything that had made them special would be ground to nothing beneath their bodies.

He stepped away, his back hitting the wall of windows. Her eyes gleamed like she had him.

“No, not like that.”

“Please,” she scoffed, running a hand from her collarbone, over her breasts down to the waistband of her pants. “Like you’re really going to say no to pussy.”

Oh God, he hated how she was trying to demean what they had. How she was trying to tear apart something that had been so special, so important to him.

“Fuck you.”

“I’m trying,” she laughed.

She reached for him, her lips parted, and he could feel her, the inside of her mouth, the lick of her tongue. He imagined her on her knees in front of him, his hand cupping the back of her head, and he nearly came right then.

He grabbed her hand, holding the fingers hard, while he used his other hand to slip inside his unbuttoned jeans to cup his erection. Palm it. He was rough, but terribly, horribly ready. Looking right into her eyes, it took three strokes hard and fast and it was over. The orgasm came and went with a whimper.

The air went cold in the room. His penis soft in his messy hand. Desire turned to stone in her eyes.

Yanking her hand free, she stepped away. Every muscle and bone in her back stood out in rigid relief against
her skin when she bent to grab her shirt off the floor and pull it over her head.

“The bathroom is just down the hall,” she murmured and walked in the opposite direction, around the half wall and into the kitchen.

And what was that?
he asked himself as he walked down the shadowed hall.
You feel noble?

There was no answer, inside he was empty, cleaned out. Being with Maddy always pushed him off his skates. He felt constantly one second behind with her.

A dumb body struggling to decipher her complicated heart.

In the dark he cleaned himself up, peed, and flushed the toilet.

He didn’t look in the mirror, ask himself any questions, because there wouldn’t be any answers.

At the front door, he pulled on his shoes, listening to her throw shit around the kitchen like she was at a Greek wedding.

He leaned around the corner, watching her in her white and stainless steel kitchen. Modern and sleek, like her.

You remember our first kitchen? he wanted to ask. The stove with only one burner that worked?

But he was smart enough not to mention it.

“Maddy?” he said instead.

“Hmmm?” she hummed without turning around, as if he were the cleaning staff and of no consequence.

It had been a mistake pushing her away like that. Even as he tried to convince himself that she’d be different on Friday, he knew the set of her shoulders.

She was hurt. Offended. Righteous and stubborn in her anger.

Because he hadn’t played by her rules, she’d keep him at arm’s length forever.

And I don’t have forever
, he thought. He had one day a week for a month.

There would be another chance, he knew that. He could orchestrate it and next time he’d play by her damn rules. To a point.

But for the first time he realized that getting what he wanted was going to cost him. Self-respect was getting harder and harder to drudge up when he needed it.

“See you Friday,” she said. He waited one more second and when it was obvious she wasn’t going to face him, he turned to go, pausing for a second to spread his hand out on that pink table. As if he could still feel her heat. As if he could still, through wood and paint and years and pain, touch the heart of her.

Monday morning, Maddy
walked out of the early programming meeting feeling like she needed a shower.

Furious, she waited outside the door for Ruth.

Phil came out first and the sight of him turned her stomach. It wasn’t just the T-shirts anymore. He was stooping to new lows. This Billy makeover segment had gone to his head.

“I know they’re radical ideas,” he said when he caught sight of her, continuing to press his case despite the fact that everyone in the meeting had shot him down.

“They’re not radical, Phil,” she said. “They’re tabloid. I’m not doing a story about college girls stripping for tuition money. I’m not.”

“Huge ratings, Maddy.”

She clenched her teeth at the sound of her nickname from his mouth. Fucking Billy.

“Think about it,” Phil said as he walked away and Maddy stared after him, her blood boiling.

Finally Ruth came out, reams of paperwork held to her chest.

“Don’t,” she said, when she saw Maddy waiting for her.

“Don’t what?” she asked, following Ruth toward her office. “Don’t talk about the fact that our producer has clearly lost his mind?”

“They’re just ideas,” Ruth said, slapping her files
down on her desk. Undeterred, Madelyn followed her in and shut the door behind her.

“Not when he says them,” Maddy said. “What the hell is going on?”

Ruth collapsed back into her chair, as if blown by a big wind. “We’ll handle it. Like we always do.”

“Maybe we need to talk to Richard?”

“You want me to tell on my boss?” Ruth asked. “This isn’t kindergarten.”

“Yes it is, if he’s lost his mind. I’m not sure you’ve noticed, but he’s acting like the Billy Wilkins Project was his idea!”

“What am I supposed to do, Madelyn?”

“Man up!” she cried and Ruth started to laugh.

“You’re one to talk, Madelyn Baumgarten.” The silence boomed between them. Recriminations on both sides. Then: “I … think he might have made contact with Billy’s sisters.”

Maddy’s mouth fell open. “What do you mean?”

“He’s talking about adding a segment to the series. I’m pressing him for more information, but so far he’s been cagey.”

Phil? Cagey?

“We can’t let that happen!” Maddy said. “We can’t.”

Ruth leaned forward and checked her watch before starting to sort through her paperwork—her not-so-subtle way of dismissing her. Maddy had seen Ruth do it a thousand times to other people. But never her. Betrayed and now blown off. Awesome.

“I’m not sure how we stop it,” Ruth finally said. “He’s the executive producer.”

Madelyn opened the door to leave but turned around at the last minute.

“I get it that we’re not actually friends,” she said. “But I thought we were at least teammates. I thought we were in this together.”

Ruth didn’t look up from the papers on her desk, and Madelyn, who’d put herself out there enough, decided to take the hint.

She slammed the door behind her.

“We’re going to need you to take off your shirt,” said Tam. Behind his thick, cool-guy glasses, the small tailor’s eyes gleamed.

Friday morning’s studio audience cooed with scandalized delight.

Billy glanced over at Maddy for support but she only grinned and shrugged, as if his sudden role as a stripper was beyond her control.

“If Tam says off, I guess you take it off, big boy,” she said, her tone settling into that sweet spot of familiarity, like they were old friends.

But her eyes were dead cold.

Walking in this morning, he hadn’t expected anything less.

The audience didn’t seem to notice, because they were responding to her every cue. Every joke was hilarious. All of Tam’s innuendos were met with gasps and laughs of titillation.

Working it like a Chippendales dancer, he gripped the hem of his gray Mavericks workout T-shirt and slowly, firing up every muscle in his core and chest, eased it up, then whipped it over his head.

The crowd cheered.

“Oh. My.” Tam sighed.

The tailor was flirting with him, just as Maddy had predicted. But in a flip of expectations, Billy was flirting right back. Maddy, with her chilly control, her icy distance, was way more threatening than Tam.

He swung the shirt in a circle over his head and tossed it toward Tam, who caught it with a grin. The man was
wearing a pink shirt and a gray and black striped vest. He should look like a circus performer, but somehow he pulled it off. He looked masculine and feminine all at once.