Maggie (Tales Behind the Veils)

by Violet Howe

  “Oh, God, Maggie,” he whispered as I clung to him, both of us moaning with ragged breaths as he moved inside me.

  I wrapped my legs tightly around him, the stiletto heels digging into the backs of his thighs as I arched up to take him deeper.

  He called my name again at the end, and my eyes filled with tears of release as we rocked back and forth, holding each other in the slow subsiding aftermath.

  “Wow,” he said when our heartbeats had slowed. He rolled to lay on his side and reached his arm across my stomach to pull me snug against him. “I was worried I may have forgotten how to do that, but I guess it’s like riding a bike.”

  I laughed and looked up at him, resting my hand on his forearm as his thumb stroked my ribs. “I don’t know how long it’s been since you rode a bike—and I don’t want to know—but your bike riding skills are intact as far as I’m concerned.”

  He smiled as he kissed me and then rested his head against mine. “I feel like I just ran a marathon. I’m exhilarated and exhausted all at the same time.”

  “Well, you were already tired before.”

  He raised up his head and looked down at me with a grin. “Sweetheart, I will never be too tired to do that. At my age, I might be slow rounding second, but I’ll always be ready to step up to bat.”

  I laughed, and he laid his head back down, nestling into my hair on the pillow we shared.

  “How old are you, by the way?” I asked, a bit embarrassed that I didn’t know under the current circumstances.

  “Forty-five. And you?”

  I cringed a little. “Forty-nine.”

  Dax shrugged. “Four years. I don’t think that will earn you cougar status.”

  “Well, darn. There goes my plan. You gotta go.”

  “I can’t move,” he said.

  I bent my leg to prop my ankle on the opposite knee so I could reach the strap to take off my shoe.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m taking my shoes off.”

  “No, don’t. That was about the sexiest damned thing I’ve ever seen. I think I’m gonna have scars on the backs of my thighs. Battle wounds from taking on a cougar.”

  I slipped the stiletto from my foot, turning onto my side to reach the other one as Dax shifted his weight and propped himself up on his elbow.

  “Hey, did you say you made cheesecake?”

  “So, you’re exhilarated, exhausted, and hungry?”

  His lips brushed against mine, and an aftershock ripped through me. “I guess that’s what you do to me, Maggie Mae. You make me feel everything all at once.”

  I smiled, not even flinching at his mention of feelings. I was at peace—my heart content, my body blissful, and my head free of conflict or fear. “If I get up and go get you cheesecake, are you going to be awake when I get back?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I promise. Scout’s honor.”

  “Were you a boy scout?” I asked as I grabbed my robe from the closet.

  “No. Do you have to be a scout to say scout’s honor?”

  “I think it has more validity that way.” I wrapped the robe around me and tied it, pulling my hair from beneath the neckline and letting it fall around my shoulders.

  “All right. Then I promise with a cowboy’s honor. How’s that?”

  I shrugged as I walked toward the door. “I don’t know that cowboys are known for their honor.”

  He called out his response as I made my way down the hall toward the kitchen.

  “Yeah, well, they’re not known for their bike riding skills, either, but you said I did that pretty damned well.”

  When I returned to the bedroom with a slice of cheesecake and a glass of ice water, he was lying on his stomach across the bed. The sheet was twisted around his hips, leaving the top half of one buttock exposed in a milky white contrast to the deep tan above it.

  The contours of his back and shoulders were impressive even in the dim light, and a little flicker of desire fluttered deep within me, despite being so recently satiated. Something told me it would take quite a lot to fully quench my desire for Dax Pearson.

  “Are you asleep?” I whispered when he didn’t move.

  “No ma’am,” he responded, muffled by the pillow. “I don’t break my promises.”

  A little warning bell sounded in my head, reminding me never to trust a man who tells me he won’t break his promises.

  I sat the cheesecake on the nightstand and went to the bathroom sink, flipping on the light once I’d closed the door.

  A wild woman stared back at me in the mirror—her skin flushed, her eyes nearly glowing they were such a vivid green, and her blazing red hair wild around her like a mane.

  I leaned forward to stare more closely at my reflection. At the tiny lines and the deeper ones. I combed through my hair with my fingers and pressed my hands just in front of my ears, pulling the skin of my face back to lift it and smooth it, transforming me into a younger version of myself.

  I released it immediately, letting the skin return to its current state.

  I wasn’t that young girl anymore.

  She might have had tighter skin and a tighter body, but I had wisdom and the advantage of hindsight. I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again.

  I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply, trying to talk down the fear before it got a foothold.

  “Hey,” Dax called out. “Are we sharing this cheesecake? Because it’s almost gone, and it’s so good I may not be able to stop myself.”

  My eyes opened, and I smiled at the Maggie in the mirror. She smiled back at me.

  I opened the door and took in the sight of a naked cowboy eating cheesecake as he sat on the side of my bed, twisted up in my sheets. A renewed resolve to live in the moment came over me, and I released the breath I’d been holding.

  “It’s all yours,” I said. “And there’s more where that came from.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  I stood at the edge of the bed and watched him enjoy the last morsels of the cheesecake before taking the empty plate from him and turning to go. He reached out to grab my robe, guiding me back to stand between his knees.

  “Where are you goin’?”

  “Taking this back to the kitchen.”

  He took the plate and set it on the nightstand, and then he untied the belt of my robe, sliding his hands around my waist and pulling me to him.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, laughing as he nuzzled his face between my breasts. “I thought you were tired.”

  “I was, but then you fed me cheesecake. Now I’m ready for round two.”

  31 DETECTIVE DEACON

  I woke up with a colossal pain in my neck. Despite being enticing to touch and sexy as hell, Dax’s bicep was not a good pillow. I lifted my head off his arm and reached up to knead the back of my neck, wincing in pain.

  The clock on the bedside table said six, which didn’t surprise me since my body’s internal alarm had been set on six for years.

  My normal routine would have been to get up and brush my teeth, tidy up any strays that had escaped my hair bun in the night, and head across the hall to my dance studio for my morning warm-up. But the sleeping cowboy with his knee thrown over my thigh, one arm under my pillow, and the other arm across my stomach was not part of that normal routine.

  I tried to ease myself out from under his leg, but he stirred with a bit of a moan, so I froze, resigning myself to being pinned to the bed a while longer.

  It wasn’t like it was a bad place to be.

  I lay awake, staring at the ceiling as I listened to Dax’s steady breathing beside me. With nothing to do but think, I replayed every moment of the night before with a mixture of elation and trepidation.

  On the one hand, it had been a pretty incredible night. It was some time after one when round two ended and we finally fell asleep in a tangle of limbs and sheets. I hadn’t been a nun since my relationship with Gerry ended, but none of the lackluster encounters I’d had here and there had even come close to
the night I’d spent with Dax. Our physical chemistry was off the charts, and just the memory of his touch was arousing.

  Beyond that obvious attraction, I simply enjoyed his company. He had a laid-back manner that made him easy to be around. He was smart, funny, independent, compassionate, and downright sexy. The more I got to know him, the more I wanted to know. He was full of surprises, and I suspected I’d only begun to peel back the layers of Dax Pearson.

  On the other hand, I was terrified for all the same reasons.

  I’d never known an attraction like the one we had.

  Even though my time with Gerry was passionate, it was also reckless, and on many levels, scary. In hindsight, I realized I never really knew Gerry, and he never truly cared to know me. We were two people attracted to the idea of each other, and even that was based on lies.

  What I had with Dax was different, which should have been a good thing, but I couldn’t help being scared that there was a shoe about to drop.

  Was there some secret about him I didn’t know? Was there some shift in his personality I hadn’t seen yet? Were there things in his past he was hiding, or character flaws I hadn’t discovered?

  Besides, what if I determined I could allow myself to fall and he decided differently? I didn’t want to give my heart to someone after all these years only to be rejected or find out he didn’t feel the same.

  The chatter in my brain was too much to deal with lying down. I had to get up. To move. To lose myself in the motions of exercise and center my body and mind.

  I pushed gently against Dax’s knee, sliding my leg away from his. Then I braced my foot on the floor and used the leverage to pull myself out from under his arm and off the bed.

  A trail of discarded clothing littered my bedroom floor, and I blushed as I tiptoed past it on my way to the dresser. I pulled out a tank top and tights, pausing to make sure Dax’s breathing was still steady before heading across the hall to the studio room.

  My reflection in the mirror startled me. I hadn’t confined my unruly curls as I normally did at night, and my hair was in utter disarray as a result.

  I twisted it up and tucked it in as best I could without a hair band, and then I tugged the tights on and pulled the tank top over my head.

  By the time I’d finished warming up all the big muscle groups and doing my stretches and splits, I was already feeling better.

  I was focused on the mirror at the barre as I moved through a series of ronds de jambe en l’air when a movement in the doorway caught my eye. I looked up to see Dax lounging against the doorframe in just his jeans.

  Would there ever be a time I could look at him and not feel my heart beat faster? Would I want there to be?

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning. I’m sorry if I woke you.”

  He shook his head. “Not at all. I’m normally up early. I woke up and didn’t know where I was for a minute, and then I figured it out but you were gone. So, I came looking for you. Whatcha doing?”

  “Um, I guess you could call it my meditation. When I was a dancer, we always started each morning with a warm-up and a technique class. It was such a habit engrained in my daily life that I never abandoned it. I suppose it’s been my way of staying connected to that world. It helps me retain some of the skills and knowledge I had, but it’s beneficial in other ways, of course. It stretches my whole body, works through the joints, and gets the blood flowing.”

  He sat on the floor with his back against the wall and his legs stretched out in front of him.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I want to watch you.”

  “Watch me? Why? It’s just stretching and drills. It’s not like a dance or anything.”

  “I enjoy the way your body moves. I want to watch you.”

  A memory flashed in my mind of him watching my body move the night before, and throbbing ache pulsed in my pelvic region as I remembered what he’d been doing to make me move.

  I cleared my throat and started again at first position, explaining each move to him as I executed it.

  I went through pliés, battements, and frappés—telling him their French names and their English translations as I demonstrated each.

  Then I stepped away from the barre and performed a few combinations in the center of the room, my eyes focused on the mirror though I could feel his on me.

  “You move with such grace, Maggie.”

  “Thank you. Did you know they say only two percent of the population has a ballet body?”

  “I did not. You certainly get my vote, but I don’t know what constitutes a ballet body.”

  “Several things. A long neck,” I said, tilting my head to the side to bare my neck to him. “A relatively short torso but long legs.” I lifted my foot by my ankle, bringing my leg to my ear as I arched slightly to form a straight vertical line with my legs, my foot high above my head. “But what most people don’t realize is how crucial the hips are.” I lowered my leg and brought my ankles together with my toes turned out. “To stand with your feet at one-hundred-eighty degrees, your hip rotators must have a ninety-degree turnout.” I dipped in a demi plié and rose, dipping lower into a grand plié with my knees over my middle toes.

  “Holy hell, that looks like it hurts,” Dax said.

  “Not at all. It’s an amazing stretch.”

  I came back to first position, and then bent to place my palms on the floor stretching my back and hamstrings.

  “Mesmerizing. I would love to see you dance across a stage.”

  “Hmmm. Not likely at this point, but thank you. Speaking of dance, where’d that come from last night? I had no idea you could do that.”

  “Are you talking about out on the patio or in the bedroom?” he asked with a grin.

  I laughed and walked over to him, extending my hand to pull him up.

  “Both.”

  He wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed his lips gently to mine.

  “Please tell me that’s coffee I smell,” he whispered.

  “It’s set on a timer and should already be in the pot and ready to pour by now. C’mon. I’ll fix you a cup and make you breakfast. But first you have to tell me where you learned to dance.”

  “Oh, I’ve always loved to dance,” he said as he followed me down the hall to the kitchen. “Nothing fancy with names and positions like what you do, but I can’t sit still when there’s music playing. I feel like I hear the music with my body. I know that might sound weird.”

  I stopped and turned to face him. “To a dancer? No. It makes perfect sense to me.”

  He reached and took my hand in his, squeezing it and bringing it to his lips. “I enjoyed dancing with you last night.”

  “Out on the patio or in the bedroom?”

  He grinned and pulled me into his arms. “Both.”

  The loud peal of the doorbell startled me, and I jumped, turning to stare at the door.

  “You expecting someone?” Dax asked.

  “At seven o’clock on a Sunday morning? No.”

  I went to the peephole and cursed beneath my breath when I saw Cabe standing outside my door with Deacon.

  “Oh crap!” I whispered, scurrying over to Dax and turning him back toward the bedroom. “Go, go, go.”

  The bell rang again as I shoved him inside and closed the bedroom door. “Stay here.”

  I turned and ran back toward the foyer, reaching the end of the hallway just as I heard the key turn in the door.

  “Mom? You up?” Cabe called out as he stepped inside, led by Deacon who jumped on me and nearly knocked me down.

  “Deacon, get down. Mom, tell him no. Don’t just let him jump on you like that. Hey, whose truck is in the driveway?”

  I pushed Deacon off me, and he immediately bolted down the hallway to sniff at the bottom of my bedroom door. I ran after him and grabbed his collar just as he started scratching and clawing at the door.

  “C’mon, Deacon,” I said, pulling him along with me. “Let’s
get a treat. You want a treat, boy?”

  He fought me the entire way back down the hall, twisting around to look back at the bedroom door and barking with all he had. He broke free and ran back to the door, slamming against it as he barked and clawed at the wood.

  I was right behind him and looped my hand through his collar just as Cabe headed down the hall toward us.

  “What’s up with him?” Cabe said. “Deacon, get over here.”

  Cabe took the dog from me and knelt in front of him. “What’s wrong with you? You’re acting like there’s somebody in….“

  He looked up at me, and I could see the logical progression of his thoughts as it registered on his face.

  “Oh. Okay,” he said.

  I moved past Cabe and went to the pantry to get Deacon’s treat box, shaking it loudly as I called the dog in my most excited voice. He came running, and I made him sit before giving him the treat.

  Cabe followed me into kitchen, and I didn’t dare meet his eyes. My entire body was hot with embarrassment, and I opened the fridge as much to get cool air as to hide my face from my son.

  “Mom,” he whispered. “Psst. Mom!”

  I closed the refrigerator door and turned to face him, my cheeks burning up.

  “Who’s here?” he whispered.

  “Dax Pearson.” I looked down at my hands, feeling like a teenager who’d been caught sneaking around.

  “The ranch guy?”

  I nodded, my eyes still on my hands.

  “Well, alright.” He chuckled, and I looked at him in surprise. “Tyler was right, then. She’s going to love this.”

  “No, honey! Don’t say anything! Let’s just keep this between us. I don’t want to make a big deal out of this, please?”

  He laughed. “I can’t believe I just busted my mother.”

  “Oh, please. You didn’t bust anything. I’m fully dressed and for all you know he slept in the pool house.”

  “Did he? You know what, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know,” he said, grinning as he shook his head with his hand covering his eyes.

  I realized in that moment that Deacon had left the kitchen.

  “Where’s Deacon?”