Maddie and Wyn (18 page)

Clinging to Wyn, Maddie writhed on top of him, a tight ball of need. “Tell me you’re close.”

His hands slipping to her buttocks, Wyn gritted his teeth, his forehead pressed to hers. “I’m right on the edge, honey.” His fingers sliding down the split of her ass, he held her to him, his cock tucked into her to the base. “I’m trying to stay sane this time for you.”

Maddie’s chest banded with exquisite pain. “Don’t.” She cut herself open for him a little more. “When I feel you come inside me again, I’ll lose it too.” With that confession, she kissed him and she squeezed herself all around his buried cock.

Wyn instantly jolted all over. Against her lips, he raggedly whispered, “Jesus, Maddie.” His eyes slid closed, and he curled his hands into fists against her ass, holding them merged completely. Making a choking noise, his face twisted with pleasure, he jerked again, and for the second time flooded her with his seed.

This time, so close to the razor’s edge with him, the moment Wyn’s hot cum touched her core, Maddie cried his name and exploded too. Orgasm slammed into her harder than a tornado tearing through a home. She shattered into a thousand little slivers, pulsating inside all around his length with fast, sharp clenches, succumbing hard to release.

For long minutes, with only moans mixed with cries and heavy breathing filling the room, Maddie held onto Wyn, and he to her, while he continued to spill himself inside her. She throbbed around him, welcoming the wet mark of his heat.

Finally, a slew of soft curses slipping past his lips, Wyn opened his eyes. Chips of fiery black diamonds still owned the brown in his stare and not a trace of hardness had slid from his face. “All this time…I can’t believe…” He let go of her ass and lifted his hands to brush flyaway strands of hair off her face. For a moment a hint of a smile cracked the edge of his mouth. “Never with anyone else…” Shaking his head, the softness disappeared, and he stated, “You should have told me. I had a right to know so I could have at least tried to find some way to exhibit better control.” Another string of foul words slipped free. “What if I had hurt you? How do you think I would have felt then?”

All the warmth and softness and love that had poured through Maddie so completely only moments ago drained right out of her, leaving her cold. “You lost your right to know anything about me.” That horrible night from four years ago tried to wiggle its way out of the holding cell inside her, trying to push old pain and panic through her system, but Maddie shoved it back down, determined not to relive the hurt in front of this man.

Bastard
. Scrambling off Wyn, Maddie blinked hard as tears swam in her eyes. As she separated from him, her body silently screamed a denial, but she determinedly swiped the wetness away, kept her head down, and grabbed her shorts and underwear. She didn’t dare reach for her top, which had landed somewhere behind Wyn.

Rushing for the door, she called, “Good night.”

“Wait!” Gloriously nude, Wyn shot to his feet. She could see him from the corner of her eye. “We’re not done here. Not after what just happened.”

Internally fighting images from the past she didn’t want to see again, Maddie spun around, sparking with defensive fire. “We fucked. We finally got that monkey off our backs, but nothing has changed.”

“Bullshit,” Wyn snarled, jabbing his finger at her. “Everything has changed. You let me inside you. I came. Twice. That matters to you. It matters that you were a virgin until tonight.” The intensity in his stare didn’t waver, making Maddie feel stripped to her core. “Don’t you dare try to tell me it doesn’t.”

“But it doesn’t matter to you,” Maddie lashed back, the anger from so long ago leeching back into her system with a vengeance, much too quickly for her to stuff it back down inside. “You were clearly having a bad dream when I got home, and when you woke up you needed to fuck someone, and I was here. But I could have been anyone. You and I both know it, so don’t you dare—” she pointed her finger right back at him, “—try to deny it either. Leave me alone now. Please.” She heaved then, a terrible sob trying to break free. “After the way you’ve invaded my life and my home, I at least deserve that from you.”

Before she collapsed in front of him and became the kind of person she prayed never to be, Maddie spun and ran out of the room, pausing only at the front door long enough to grab a thin sweater she kept draped over a chair. She ran outside, down the steps, and into the gated garden, still naked, but caring only about getting away from Wyn to a place where she could breathe.

Muscle memory allowed Maddie to reach the center of the maze. Once there she doubled over, clothes clutched in her hands, and buried her face in the fabric to stifle the cry that finally ripped out of her in an ugly jag. Painful sobs tore out of her, hurting her chest and scratching her throat, wretched in their despair.

Chanting, “No, no, no, no, no,” and shaking her head, Maddie frantically shoved into her sweater, panties, and shorts, but the distraction didn’t help and the past caught up to her. That hated memory she’d worked for years to keep from ever breaking free finally exploded inside her. The shrapnel flung through to every corner of her body, cutting into flesh, organs and bone, ripping her into a million little pieces.

Maddie stumbled to the wrought iron bench to her right, denial after denial slipping past her lips, but she didn’t have the strength to fight the memories this time, and that fateful day flooded into her brain like a tsunami…

* * * *

…Out of bed with the sunrise, well before her alarm was set to wake her up, Maddie flung open the curtains and let the rays of light from the morning into her bedroom.
So close.
A grin splitting her face from ear to ear, she dived for her phone and sent Wyn a quick text.

Countdown to twenty-one is less than twenty-four hours away!

Wyn had the early shift at the station today so he would already be at his desk or out in a patrol car. Rolling her eyes, muttering, “Duh,” to herself, Maddie shot off another fast message.

And good morning too. And have a safe day at work. Talk to you soon.

Tonight was the night. After three years of dancing around each other, teasing each other, becoming the tightest of friends two people could get, growing so close, admitting aloud one time to being in love…At the stroke of midnight tonight, when the clock rolled over to a new day, it would be Maddie’s twenty-first birthday, and she and Wyn would finally be able to give in to what had been simmering between them for far too long.

Squealing, dancing around her bedroom, Maddie grabbed fresh clothes and did a little skip-hop out into the living room of the apartment, on her way to the bathroom.

From the kitchen table, her brother Devlin, who was also her roommate, scowled at her. “Why are you so damned upbeat?”

“Hello to you too, Mr. Sunshine.” Maddie gave her brother a chipper salute. “Why are you up so early?”

“I have a date with a new guy tonight,” he mumbled. “I’m psyching myself up for it.”

“If you don’t give the guy a chance,” Maddie couldn’t remember if Devlin had mentioned this particular man’s name before, but his pessimism about the whole subject was like a record stuck on a scratch, “you’ll never figure out if he’s the one.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious.” Somehow Devlin managed a combination of glaring and rolling his eyes at the same time. “I didn’t realize that until you just now said it.”

“You won’t ruin my good mood,” Maddie sing-songed, and even strolled around the table and kissed her brother on the top of his mussy-haired head. “I won’t let you.”

“Sorry.” He grabbed her hand and kissed the back. “How does it feel to be
this close
to being legal in every way?”

“Good.” Nobody knew about her and Wyn yet—other than that they’d put their bickering aside and become friends—but tomorrow everyone would. Maddie bounced where she stood, adding, “Great.”

Settling back in the rickety table chair, Devlin finally gave her a little grin. “Don’t forget we’re taking you out to dinner tomorrow night to celebrate. Aidan confirmed taking the night off from the firehouse and Ethan has someone else covering his debate club meeting at the school. And Aidan said Ethan said Wyn is even gonna tag along too.”

With that comment, Maddie’s stomach did a little somersault.
He’s already making plans and wants us together to let everyone know what is going on between us.

Somehow biting down an enormous smile that would certainly give her away, Maddie simply replied, “Sounds good. I’m going to grab a shower. Feel free to go back to being grumpy now, if you’d like.”

Devlin shot her the finger, and Maddie stuck her tongue out at him, and all was right with the world.

Tonight though, at the stroke of midnight, everything would become one hundred percent perfect.

A bounce in her step once again, Maddie traipsed down a short hall to the bathroom to take a shower.

* * * *

Her heart pounding out of control, standing at Wyn’s front door, Maddie checked her phone again, hoping for a new text from Wyn to go with the brief missive she’d gotten from him twelve hours ago, a little before noon.

Busy today.
He’d typed to her.
Not sure when I’ll get time to talk
.

Work at the police station sometimes got crazy. The last couple of months had gotten nuts, getting busier and busier, and Wyn had needed to cancel plans at the last minute more than once to pick up a shift that needed covering. Redemption was growing but was still a smallish town, and thus it didn’t have the resources to hire a large group of law enforcement officers. On top of that, if someone got sick or had a family emergency, it put even more strain on the crew. There wasn’t a festival or anything out of the norm going on in Redemption right now though, so likely something internal had put extra stress on the day. But Wyn wouldn’t still be at work at midnight. Not tonight. He’d have certainly found a way to get free, even if just for a few hours.

Maddie knocked on the door to his cottage a second time, locking her legs so she wouldn’t teeter in her high heels. She hardly ever wore heels, could barely walk in them, but they went with what she had on under her long parka, so she was trying not to think too much about unromantic things like blisters on her toes.

A long minute passed in silence, and then another, with no Wyn answering the door.
I can’t believe he wouldn’t have figured out I was coming to him tonight
.
He knows me too well.
Doesn’t he?
Maddie slumped thinking that maybe he didn’t, but then she suddenly perked up straight.
He’s in the sunroom.
From spending many a day and evening back there, even if Wyn hadn’t nodded off after a long day, Maddie knew a knock would be too muffled to be heard all the way at the back of the house.
Now he’ll understand he should really get around to fixing his doorbell.
Stepping off the porch, Maddie took careful steps on the lush grass, keeping her balance on her tiptoes so her heels didn’t sink into the earth.
Later on I’ll have to poke him about how he could have missed out on a serious night of fun.

A beautiful moon hung high in a clear sky, stars danced with a thousand sparks of tiny light to guide her way, Maddie paused at the side gate to jimmy the latch through a gap in the wood. One more glance at her phone told her it was a minute away from officially being her birthday. Excitement humming through her like the most potent alcohol, making her buzz all over under her skin, Maddie slipped her phone into the pocket of her coat and then quickly undid the buttons. A rush of frigid air washed over her bared skin, and a nervous wiggle went through her belly as she adjusted her thigh-high black stockings.
Buck up, girl.
Inexperience and nerves had never beaten her before and she wouldn’t let them now.

Letting the coat slide off her shoulders, where it came to a stop at her elbows, Maddie mentally rehearsed what she would say—
“Let the night of deflowering and debauchery begin!”
—and took the final leap away from the side of the house that would reveal her to Wyn through the glass walls. She threw her coat open wide as she landed, her focus trained into the sunroom.
Oh my God.
The sight on the other side of the glass knifed her in the heart and robbed her voice of sound, icing through her bared body faster than the frigid temperatures outside.

Oh my God. No. No. No.
Maddie clamped her hand over her mouth, stifling a horrid, croaking scream.
Oh my God. No. No. No.
She could not be seeing what she was seeing. She just couldn’t.
Please. Please. No. No. No.
Shaking her head, tears streaking down her face, she blinked and tried to make the image disappear like an etch-a-sketch picture gone wrong, but it wouldn’t evaporate.
No. Please. It can’t be.

But it was.

Before Maddie’s eyes, on the rattan couch where she’d napped and laughed and played cards and eaten and watched movies with Wyn hundreds of times, Wyn now sat with his shirt off, head thrown back against the cushions, and his pants bunched at his knees. So much worse, a curvy blonde with her skirt hiked up to her waist and her top and bra shoved up to her armpits, held onto Wyn’s shoulders and rode him like a cowgirl trying to stay on her bucking bronco.

This isn’t happening. No. God. Please no.
Choking on tears, robbed of her voice, Maddie kept shaking her head, but this woman continued to bounce on Wyn, screwing him. And he, holding her waist and looking into her eyes, fucked her back with focused thrusts, as if jabbing himself into her just right would win him a prize.

Unable to look away, Maddie watched, and her world crumbled away around her, leaving her in pieces, her nose against the glass, numb and paralyzed.

Standing in the cold in a black bra and panties with green ribbons on them—Wyn’s favorite color—Maddie didn’t think her life could get any worse. Then Wyn reached up, pulled the blonde’s face down to his and kissed her with tender passion, and the blade in Maddie’s chest ripped through her gut and spine, tearing her apart.
Why? Why? Please don’t. Don’t do this to us
. But Wyn kissed the woman again, and she touched his hair and kissed him back, and Maddie finally screamed, the sound high and tight and stripped bare, an inhuman cry cutting through the night sky.