One Final Step

by Stephanie Doyle

  She unlocked the front door and swung it open. “I hope you don’t mind cats. I’ve got twenty-three of them.”

  He stopped at the door.

  “Kidding.”

  “That,” he said seriously, “was not funny.”

  It was a little funny. Cautiously he stepped inside and she felt the tension suddenly leave her. Nothing cataclysmic had happened. Her heart didn’t freeze up. This was Michael—he wasn’t out to hurt her. She took his bag and left it on the stairs. Then she gave him a tour.

  He looked at everything. Every piece of art she’d hung on the walls, every knickknack she’d collected over the years. He ran his hand along the throw blankets she kept on the couch in her living room, and he studied each pillow as if it were a work of art in itself.

  He stopped in front of a long table in her living room that was covered with personal photos. He lifted one of her and the former president to study it.

  “Really?”

  “I know. Strange that I would keep it, right? But it is from the night of the election. We had just won and I was euphoric. It was a really big moment in my life. My greatest achievement. I couldn’t throw it out.”

  “You’re allowed to be proud of your accomplishments,” he agreed. “Not everything has to be defined by one single moment.”

  After showing him the great room, the kitchen and the dining room she’d converted into her home office, she felt as if every aspect of her personality was on display.

  “Well?”

  Of course it didn’t matter what his opinion meant. After all, it was her house and her taste and if he didn’t like it, he didn’t like it. It was ridiculous to feel this way, but this was her private castle. And she had finally lowered the drawbridge for him. She wanted him to like it.

  He took time to consider his answer. “I think it’s a reflection of you. And I think it’s beautiful.”

  That’s when she knew. In that one solitary moment. She was in love with him.

  But on the heels of that revelation came the sadness of wondering if love was going to be enough to fix either of them.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “ARE YOU READY for the big news?”

  Later that night they were on the couch and Madeleine was pressed up against him. The television was on and some attractive redhead was telling them what the week’s weather was going to be like.

  She turned to him with an irritated expression. “You have news and you waited all this time to tell me?”

  “You had a big day and I didn’t want to overload you. You were at the hospital with Ben all morning, then letting someone into your house for the first time, letting someone eat off your kitchen plates for the first time, sit on your couch for the first time…”

  She punched him in the stomach and he broke off his list with a whoosh of air.

  “I get it. Now, what’s the news?”

  “I have a tentative deal for a partnership with Blakely.”

  “Blakely. He was your first choice, wasn’t he?”

  Michael nodded. “I like the way he runs his company. He’s solid and his decision making is for the long-term.”

  Madeleine sat up straighter as she realized how exciting this was for him. “That’s great. That’s amazing.”

  “Turns out the automotive industry is getting pressure from the current administration to really amp up their electric-car production. Unfortunately, the demand from consumers isn’t there. Blakely thinks my car can change that, and he’s right. He has to appear before a congressional committee in a couple of weeks and he wants me to go with him. He believes that will satisfy the environmental concerns and at the same time will offer us a great forum to announce the future of the auto industry.”

  “You did it!” She beamed.

  “You did it.”

  “No, I only arranged for you to be seen at the right places and cleaned up your bad-boy image. You did the work. And the car is going to be fantastic. As soon as it rolls off the production line, I’m buying one.”

  “Awesome. That’s one. We only need to sell maybe a couple of million more to call it a success.”

  “Hey, this means you don’t have to do the interview. There’s no point now. You already have what you wanted.”

  Michael considered that, but the marketing people had been thrilled when he’d told them about Sunday Night Hour. Free publicity was the best kind, after all. And tying him to the car would give it more appeal to a younger market. Who didn’t want to own something a Formula One race-car driver built?

  “I’ve already committed to doing it. I know it doesn’t necessarily matter now, but I’m going to do it, anyway.”

  Madeleine snapped her mouth closed.

  He understood her concern, but he could handle it. “I told you not to worry about me. Your friend Peg isn’t going to learn anything that I don’t want her to know. I’ve taken care of everything.”

  It was strange, too, but the idea of the interview wasn’t nearly as intimidating now as it had been when she’d first suggested it. Maybe having dealt with Nooky so effectively made him less fearful that someone from his past was going to jump up and start telling all his secrets.

  Or maybe the fact that he had finally told his secret to someone relieved its hold on him. The truth was out there. Madeleine knew what had happened to him, knew the psychological results, and it didn’t matter to her. She was still pressed up against him on her couch, excited about what he’d been able to accomplish.

  And she was worried for him. Because she cared about him. All good things.

  “I don’t want to see you put in a bad position. I don’t want you to be taken by surprise or…”

  He tilted her face slightly and kissed her into silence. Then, because he liked kissing her, he did more of it. When he felt her hands reach around his neck, though, he stopped. This was what had gotten them into trouble the last time.

  “I think we should call it a night.”

  He didn’t want a repeat of what had happened a week ago in the hotel. Better to put a stop to it before it got out of control. Because for reasons Michael couldn’t fathom, things always got out of control with her.

  That had never happened to him before. With any of the women he’d dated, he’d always stayed in his head the whole time thinking about his next move. What would he do here? How would it make her feel if he touched her there?

  For him, sex was a play he needed to perform. He needed to make sure he knew his lines and all the blocking and he wanted to make sure his audience was always well entertained. Never before had he lost control, or lost himself in the moment.

  But with Madeleine, he could actually forget for a time that he wasn’t a whole person.

  A normal man.

  After he had left her that night at the hotel and had time to cool down and think about what had happened, he’d tried to see things from her perspective. It made some sense why she didn’t want him to take the blue pill or simply pleasure her. It wasn’t completely because she was afraid to let go sexually. After all, it would be pretty hard to let herself be that vulnerable when she knew the person she was with couldn’t let go with her. That they weren’t together on the same sexual plane.

  He wanted to tell her that he was there with her more than he’d ever been with anyone else, even back in high school when he’d been with every girl who would let him between her legs. But he was tired of talking about sex. Tired of discussing the elephant that wasn’t going to go away and was probably eventually going to tear them apart.

  How could it not?

  For now, he could go to bed and she could go to bed, and tomorrow they would see Ben together, and he would offer whatever support she needed. It would be enough.

  “I’ll show you the upstairs,” she said, moving away from him. Already he missed the warmth of her body pressed against his side.

  There were three bedrooms upstairs. Hers was the master bedroom at the end of the hall. The second room housed a treadmill and some free we
ights.

  Yeah, she would have needed a private gym during the year of the scandal. It was like she’d been imprisoned. Granted, her digs were nicer than his cell had been in prison, but the result was the same. They had both lost their freedom because they had done really stupid things.

  It didn’t seem right that they were both still paying for those mistakes. They had done their time in solitary. Shouldn’t that have been enough?

  The third room was a guest bedroom—although why she had one, he couldn’t fathom.

  “I guess you want to sleep in here,” she said, turning on the light.

  No, he didn’t. He wanted to take her hand and lead them down the hallway to her bedroom, and he wanted to lay her on the bed and strip everything off her body until she was completely bare, completely open to him. Then he wanted to come inside her and forget about all the pain he carried with him. Pain he was so damn tired of carrying.

  “Yeah, this works.”

  She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Okay. Good night, then.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Good night.”

  He watched as she made her way down the hallway. With each step she was moving away from him, and it felt like his heart broke a little more. He wanted to be with her, not alone. And given that today she’d done the unthinkable and let him inside her fortress of solitude, he was pretty sure she didn’t want to be alone, either.

  “Madeleine,” he said, following her. He didn’t think about his decision, he just acted. When he reached her, he took her hand. “We can try again if you want.”

  She nodded. “I want to. We can sleep together. That’s all.”

  Sleeping. It sounded a lot easier than it was.

  An hour after they both had settled into bed, Michael was still staring at the ceiling and had decided he probably wasn’t going to sleep at all that night. Which was fine. He’d gone without sleep before.

  The truth was, he was actually enjoying himself. Madeleine was practically lying on top of him with one leg slung over his thighs, her arm across his stomach and her head resting against his chest. For someone who hadn’t slept with a man in a very long time, she was having no trouble making herself comfortable. And if the soft sounds coming out of her mouth were any indication, she was dead-to-the-world asleep, which meant she obviously didn’t feel as odd about being with him as he did with her.

  Not that it was odd. Just different. They had mimicked their routine from the other night in the hotel. Since he’d brought a T-shirt, he wore that with his boxer briefs. She’d changed into her cotton shorts and T-shirt, as well. This time, they settled into bed with no kissing and no fondling, both on their backs and with the lights turned off.

  He imagined that if there had been a mirror above them they both would have seen themselves eyes wide-open, staring back at each other. But while he remained awake, aware the whole time that he was in a bed with a woman who he was not having sex with—something he had absolutely no experience with—she at some point had actually fallen asleep.

  Then she’d turned on her side and practically burrowed into him.

  He thought this must be what married people do. Obviously they didn’t have sex every night. So on nights when they didn’t do it they must crawl into bed, snuggle up against each other and sleep.

  Marriage. The word was foreign to him. He’d never expected to have anything to do with the institution that made a time-honored tradition out of going to bed without sex. For him that tradition seemed disingenuous. Except, in reality, it didn’t feel that way.

  It felt nice. Soft and comfortable. Like she was part of him. He knew she made little sighing noises in her sleep. She knew he preferred boxer briefs. They were lying together on a bed and touching and one of them was sleeping.

  This is what intimacy is.

  As many times as he’d had sex before, he’d never had this.

  Yes, it was definitely nice. He closed his eyes and didn’t worry about not sleeping. He didn’t worry about what they hadn’t done, or what they couldn’t do. He didn’t worry about how the relationship might turn out tragically. He thought about how nice it was to hold Madeleine.

  Minutes later, he drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  SHE WAS WARM. It was the first thought that surfaced. She felt safe and comforted in a way she couldn’t remember ever feeling. Snuggling closer to the source of her comfort she could smell the flavor of…warmth.

  No, warmth wasn’t a smell. She could smell muskiness and heat and it was delicious. She groaned in the back of her throat. She was somewhere in the time between still dreaming of Michael and waking up to face the day.

  She didn’t want to wake up.

  In her dream, they were together in bed, wrapped around each other, stroking each other. She could feel hands on her breasts and her nipples pebbling into hard, little points. Then her hand was moving on furred skin that was so different from hers. Hard, flat planes, sharp angles and edges. She let the hand roam until she felt it caught in another hand. Their fingers interlocking.

  No, don’t let it end. I want more.

  She was on the verge of letting herself be pulled out of the lethargy of her sexy dream when the hand that had captured hers moved down between their bodies. She felt the dip of his flat stomach. She traveled over the tiny indent of a belly button. Then her fingers slipped inside a cotton obstacle and her hand wrapped around something iron hot and wonderfully, amazingly hard.

  It was thick and smooth and so hot to the touch she almost felt compelled to let it go, except the hand holding hers wouldn’t let her. Instead his hand showed her how to move on the erection, how tightly he wanted her to squeeze.

  Madeleine could feel her body respond with shocking arousal and she undulated against him. Something was out of place. Something wasn’t right, but she didn’t want to let herself think about it.

  Then he rolled his head toward her and found the lobe of her ear. He sucked it between his teeth even as he continued to use her hand to feed his pleasure.

  “Yessss, please, Madeleine. Please. Yesss.”

  His teeth nibbled her ear for a time, then his mouth pressed against her neck and he sucked her there. She shivered against the strange, euphoric feeling. Blinking against the early morning light, she had to admit she was awake now. That this was real.

  Michael was hard and she was stroking him. She could feel a bit of moisture on the crown of his erection.

  You should take him into your mouth.

  The thought startled her fully alert. She’d never done that before with a man. Never thought she wanted to. What was happening?

  “Michael…did you…?”

  “No,” he said as he removed her hand. Then he stripped out of his briefs in one quick movement. He was rolling on top of her and using his hands to shove her cotton shorts down her legs.

  Then his hands were sliding back up her shirt until he was cupping her breasts. He’d cupped them before, in her dream, and it was as if they remembered his hands and responded by arching up into them.

  “Are you…? Are we…?”

  “Shh, don’t talk. Don’t say anything.”

  His legs wedged between her thighs and she willingly opened them. She could feel one hand leave her breasts and slide down her body until she felt fingers at the edge of where she was waiting to be touched.

  “You’re wet.”

  “I was dreaming of you.”

  In that moment he shifted himself and in one of the most surreal moments of her life she felt him slide deep inside her body. It wasn’t so much of a thrust as it was a fitting together of two pieces. They pushed against each other and she could feel the swelling of his penis deep inside in a way she’d never felt it before.

  Because you never let yourself really feel this before.

  It was true. Sex for her had been an act to be accomplished. Madeleine didn’t know what this was. But it was okay because it was Michael and she was safe with him.

  And he was safe with her.

&n
bsp; He lifted himself onto his arms and twisted his hips to push himself even deeper, then she waited as the slow withdrawal had her holding her breath in anticipation. When he thrust back inside, she cried out.

  He pushed one hand under her ass while holding himself up with the other and steadied her as he continued pounding into her body.

  There was no finesse, she thought as her body shook and her breasts jiggled against each thrust. There was only urgency and need. She could feel her body contracting in on itself. She’d never had an orgasm this way, with just the thrust of a hard cock inside her, but she knew that was going to change. She was being pulled into a vortex. And she must have started to cry because she could feel streams of wet tears sliding down her cheeks.

  One hard slam and she went over the edge. Pleasure coursed through her, from her scalp to her toes, until it centered into that spot between her legs. The orgasm felt like it went on for an eternity, but then as it started to subside she heard his harsh groan over her and felt his body jerk and tighten.

  She looked up expecting to see his face in ecstasy but instead saw agony. Capturing his face in her palm, she thought only to ease him as his body jerked over her and he let out a low, throaty moan.

  When he collapsed, she wrapped her arms around him. It was then she realized he had been the one crying—her palms were damp from the tears he’d shed over her.

  * * *

  HE DIDN’T WANT to roll off her. If he rolled off her onto his back then she might roll toward him and look at him. He didn’t want her to look at him. He sure as hell didn’t want to talk. But he could feel her body shifting to bear his weight and he knew that wasn’t fair.

  Moving his hips, he slid out of her body and marveled that with such a small motion he was already starting to feel aroused again. Flopping onto his back he covered his eyes with his forearm.

  What the hell had happened?

  Did this mean he was cured? Did this mean it was over? Eighteen years of mental anguish suddenly gone? Somehow he didn’t think so. It would be too easy and nothing in his life had been that easy.