by Tiana Cole
Madison stared deeply into his eyes. She knew she couldn't have stayed away either. She had the chance to tell him to go away when he first told her he needed to talk to her. She had the opportunity now, too. She could tell him to stay far away from her and get on with his life – fake or otherwise – with Ailsa. She could tell him to go and that she didn't ever want to see him, but she knew she couldn't.
She closed her eyes and tears escaped from them and trailed down her cheeks.
“I didn't want to make you cry,” Christopher said.
He bent to kiss her lips. The sparks of passion from last night were coming back to the fore. His arms were tight around her waist and she pulled him close with her arms wrapped round his shoulders. Her tears were subsiding, but the power of his kiss was melting her, telling her that she couldn't be without him and to imagine being away from him for two weeks, let alone two years, would be an impossibility.
Christopher took Madison's hand and led her inside the house. It was cool in there compared to the sunny patio. Out into the entrance hall, they took the wooden steps to the upper floor and Madison followed him into a bedroom.
The large bed by the window was covered by a dust sheet that Christopher threw off before he opened the windows wide. He went back to Madison, who stood just inside the door, and he took both her hands. He walked backwards, leading her to the bed, and sat, with her standing just in front of him. He put his arms around her body and rested his head against her stomach.
“Madison,” he said. “I don't want to lose you.”
She ran her hands through his hair and pulled his head up to look into her eyes. Madison held Christopher's face between her hands, running them along his neck and to his shoulders. She gently pushed him backwards so he lay on the bed and slid her body on top of his.
They began to kiss, rolling so that they were alongside each other. Soon they were fumbling with each other's clothes; Christopher pulling her sweat pants down, Madison pulling his shirt out from his pants. It was taking too long, so they stopped to rip their clothes off themselves, as the need to feel skin against skin was overwhelming.
Now lying fully naked on the bed, Christopher kissed the delicate skin on Madison's collar bone. He trailed a path of kisses towards her nipple, circling his tongue around it before sucking hard. She moaned, her arms around his neck, feeling his fingers between her legs, spreading them wide, stroking and caressing gently at first and then increasing intensity.
Christopher lay on top of Madison, looking into her eyes before sinking his tongue deep into her mouth. She felt his hard cock pressing against her stomach and rubbed her body against him, feeling the stimulation while becoming wetter. She wanted him inside her, and she couldn't wait. She arched and tipped her pelvis up, and he responded by grinding in deep and thrusting inwards with a circular movement of his hips.
Madison closed her eyes, becoming warmer with the sun streaming in through the window, so that all she could see behind the lids of her eyes was bright orange. They moved faster. The bed creaked in their rhythm. The two intensified their grinding motion, faster now; loud, breathy sighs were coming from both their lips. In an explosion of passion, they both came; a crescendo of wet pleasure drowning them both and bringing them to a state of complete satisfaction.
Christopher lay on top of Madison. Their bodies were fused with sweat. He raised his head to look at her. Madison looked deep into his eyes. She did not cry this time. The feeling between them was too right, too complete, to feel guilty. She knew they had to be together.
“Christopher, I can't wait for two years to have you.”
“But my promise...”
She put her fingers on his lips.
“You can keep your promise to Ailsa. But we can still meet. No one will have to know, and when the time is right for you to leave her, then we'll be together.”
“Madison, are you sure you can handle this? It's asking a lot of you.”
“I can do it for us. But only as long as Ailsa can live with it for all that time.”
“We did say I could see other people as long as I was discreet. That was her idea.”
“Well, then?”
“I want to, Madison, I really do, but to drag you into it... I don't know.”
“I'm already in it. You can't backtrack now, Christopher.”
“I don't want to. I just wanted it to be you who said it. I didn't want to feel like I was forcing you to do anything you didn't want to do.”
“It's okay,” she said. “I know what I'm doing.”
Chapter 8
The next four weeks went by so fast that it made Madison’s head spin. The time spent with Christopher flew past, and when she wasn’t with him, she was working…or trying to focus on work, anyway. She knew that she had been walking around with her head in the clouds, and her supervisor, Amanda, had taken notice. She remembered the conversation clearly.
Madison had been doing a routine check on the new mothers, something she had done a thousand times before, and she had started thinking about the night before. Christopher had snuck into her apartment and made her a sweet dinner. Well, tried to make. It turns out that with all the things he is incredibly talented at, cooking was not one of them.
He had burned everything, filling the small apartment with smoke and they had ended up having to order out. But she had loved every minute of it. She had fallen so hard for him that the moments they were apart seemed to last forever, and when they were together it felt as if mere minutes passed before he had to go sneaking off again.
“Madison, sweetheart. What are you doing?” Amanda’s voice behind her had jolted her back to the charts in front of her.
“What? Oh, just checking the stats for Mrs. Johnston.” Madison held up the chart for Amanda to see. The other woman glanced at the chart, then at Madison, then at the chart again.
“That’s Miss Donahue’s chart, Madison. Are you feeling alright?”
Surprised and embarrassed, Madison had glanced down to find that she was right. She had been looking at the wrong chart the whole time.
“I know you’ve been working a lot of extra shifts lately. Maybe you need to take a little break, yeah?”
Amanda had walked off shaking her head, and just a few minutes later Christopher had called saying that he wanted to make up for the botched dinner he had made and if there was any way she could take a few days off.
Madison sighed, and then grinned as she pictured them alone for two days, no sneaking around or having to watch out for prying eyes.
Right then and there she had chased after Amanda and requested some time off.
Christopher promised that he would make up for the burned meal, and it was dinner for two, but with a difference. So Madison had booked a few days off from work. Amanda was only too happy to give Madison the time off. Ever since the day she failed to show up for work and then had returned the next day after her trip to the Christopher's beach house, Amanda had thought Madison looked different. Tired. She told Madison she'd been working too hard and to enjoy her days off. Madison couldn't tell her supervisor the truth: she was off sick because she'd just had an affair, and she looked different now because she was still having the affair.
Madison had brought in a small suitcase to the hospital, telling everyone that she was going out of town to stay with an aunt and would be taking it easy. None of them noticed her jump into the sleek black car with tinted windows late that night, only to be swept off at great speed by its driver.
“How are you feeling?” Christopher said, as he headed for the outskirts of town.
“Like some kind of secret agent,” Madison said. “It's so weird lying to people about what I'm doing and where I'm going. Cassie and Rosario said I don't even look like me. They think I have a man in tow.”
“Well, you have now.”
“But they don't need to know that. Now where is it we're going, and why did I have to pack for two days?”
“It's a surprise.” Christopher smiled and
rested his hand on Madison's thigh as he drove.
“Well, I hope I brought the right clothes for this surprise,” she said.
Madison sat back and relaxed, the city lights rushing by the tinted windows in the night, and feeling the tension slipping away.
They had been seeing each other for a little over a month. Usually Christopher visited Madison's apartment after dark whenever they had a date. But their need for discretion was making them claustrophobic, so Christopher planned a secret rendezvous for dinner.
They drove through the leafy suburbs of New York. Eventually the tree-lined streets led them down a long narrow road that took them to a pair of tall iron gates. Madison thought she could make out a house in the distance. On the lower floor the lights were on. Christopher drove towards the gates and stopped beside a keypad on a short metal pole. He tapped in a series of numbers and letters and the iron gates began to creak open.
“What is this place?” Madison asked, as Christopher drove through and onto the narrow drive. Trees and greenery formed an arch over the drive which wound towards the house.
“This place belongs to a distant cousin,” Christopher said. “He travels a lot and gave me the keys to make sure it was looked after while he was away.”
He pulled up right outside the enormous building. It was dark and overbearing, like something out of a scary movie, Madison thought, but she wasn't feeling afraid – she was excited. They were out of the city and away from prying eyes.
There were steep steps leading up to the front door. Even though the upper floors were in darkness, Madison thought she could make out the tall windows, all with elegant drapes, and all of them closed.
“Coming?” Christopher said. He was holding the car door open and he extended a hand. Madison stepped out.
“I thought we were having dinner,” she said.
“We are. And it will be a lot better than last time, I promise.” He said with a grin. “I’m not cooking this time.”
As they walked up the stone steps, Madison noticed that the front door was opened by a man in a smart suit, as if on cue. He bowed as they entered the high-ceilinged hall. The hall was well lit. There was a delightful smell of incense and Madison could hear the sound of light classical music.
The music was coming from the other side of the glass double doors, straight ahead of them across the hall.
Madison walked towards the glass doors with Christopher, who opened them up so that the music grew a little louder as it filled the beautiful dining room they had just entered. It was a grand room with a string-quartet set up at the far end. Only one part of the room was lit by the ceiling lights, and the rest was in shadow. The lights were dimmed, leaving only enough for the musicians to read their sheet music.
Other than that, the only other light was provided by two tall candles which sat in the middle of a round dining table. The table was beautifully laid for dinner with two luxuriously upholstered chairs facing each other.
Madison looked at Christopher and smiled.
“Is it all right?” he asked her. “I had the chefs make all of your favorite foods.”
“It's more than all right, Christopher,” Madison said, her heart melting at the loving gesture. “It's perfect.”
They were seated and a waiter came to open a bottle of champagne.
“We can forget everything and everybody for the next two days.” Christopher smiled, and held Madison's hand across the table. That sounded like heaven to her, until the ever present doubts rose like ghosts in her mind, detracting from her happiness.
“What about Ailsa? Are you absolutely sure she's okay with this?”
“I know she is,” he said. “She's the one who suggested this place. I didn't consider it because it's so big and, if I'm honest, kinda gives me the creeps. I'm just glad you're here with me.”
Madison raised a champagne glass to Christopher with a laugh. “Don’t worry, Christopher. I’ll protect you from any boogie monsters.” He grinned back at her.
“To us.”
“To us,” she repeated as they touched glasses. They each took a sip and Christopher leaned across the table. Madison met him half way for a kiss, the simple touch making electric sparks shoot through her. Even though it had been a month, every kiss, every touch seemed to feel like their first. There were so many things they were still discovering about each other.
The couple immersed themselves in the atmosphere of the large dining room. The reflections of the candles made Madison's eyes sparkle and the outside world had disappeared. Only their own world was of any importance. It was filled with the sound of the classical music and the headiness caused by the champagne.
As course after course of delicious, perfectly cooked food was delivered to the table, they talked and laughed and ate and drank. They spoke of where they would like to travel, what they would to see or places to visit.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Venice.” Madison sighed over her fourth, or was it fifth, glass of champagne as she pushed the last morsel of the decadent dessert away. “To see the Gondolas, and the streets of water. It all just sounds so perfect, so romantic.”
Christopher grinned at her. “Egypt. I’ve never been, and I want to see the pyramids. It’s so fascinating.” His grinned slipped and for a moment he looked like a little boy who’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have. “I was a huge Indiana Jones fan as a kid, and that idea of adventure always stuck with me.”
Madison raised her glass one more time. “To adventure.”
Christopher looked at her, deeply into her eyes, his own sparkling with some deeper meaning as he repeated huskily. “To adventure.”
It wasn’t much longer before they were making their way out of the makeshift dining room, through the maze of the giant house toward the upper levels. They looked through suite after suite, all the furniture covered and with the lightest layer of dust from going unused for so long. Finally, they reached their destination.
They slept in one of the grand rooms on the floor above. There was an unused smell in the room that Madison had detected when they'd first walked into it and were searching for the light switch, but that quickly disappeared after Christopher held her in his arms and kissed her deeply.
His kisses sought the soft skin on her neck and covered her entire body once he had undressed her, layer by layer. Still in a world of their own, Madison felt more alive, more turned on than she'd ever been with Christopher; the wetness between her legs exaggerated. She arched her back and called his name out loudly when his cock was deep inside her, and she was biting on her finger to try to calm the sounds she made.
“Just go with it,” he told her hotly, roughly against her ear as his body moved inside hers in perfect rhythm, “Just completely let go.” And she did. They made love all night and in the morning, all she could smell was the heady scent of Christopher's cologne after his body had been wrapped around hers until the sun rose.
There was quiet in the house as she opened her eyes to the hazy morning light filtering through the still closed drapes that hung across each of the five large windows. Madison's lids were heavy and her head a little sore. But her stomach was churning. She didn't think she'd eaten that much, but her stomach lurched and she slapped a hand to her mouth, sure she was going to be sick.
The feeling passed as she got up. She hoped that a sip of water might help, but as she got onto the vast landing, her stomach leapt to her mouth and she looked desperately at all the closed doors on the landing, wondering which one lead to the bathroom.
Madison tried two bedroom doors before finding the bathroom. She hoped she hadn't woken Christopher when she began vomiting into the toilet.
Throwing up seemed to have helped her stomach, but her skin felt hot and clammy. Madison ran the cold tap, rinsed her mouth, and then began splashing her face with water.
“Madison, where are you?” He must have heard her and gotten up to investigate. She heard his footsteps draw closer. “Hey, what's wrong?” He stood r
ight outside the bathroom door where she was still leaning wearily against the sink. Madison looked up.
“I'm sorry, did I wake you?” she said, looking for a clean towel. There was a pink fluffy one folded over a bar. She dabbed her face with it.
“I woke up and you were gone,” he said. “I know you're used to early mornings, but you can lay in bed as long as you like.”
“I need a glass of water,” she said. She realized he hadn't heard her being sick.
“I'll get it,” he replied, turning away to do just that before pausing and looking back at her. “Are you sure you’re all right? I thought I heard–.”
“Oh, um. I’m fine.” she interrupted him. “I’m totally fine, it’s just like you said. I’m used to getting up early.”
He smiled back at her, relieved and looking impossibly handsome in just a pair of jeans, the top button still unbuttoned and the muscles of his chest flexing ever so slightly as he turned back to the huge bedroom suite. “I'll make us some breakfast.”
“Oh no,” she said. “Just water for me. I'll eat later – my stomach.” Madison patted her tummy and smiled.
“One glass of water coming up.”
Madison stopped smiling as she saw Christopher walk down the stairs to get her some water. He was whistling a happy tune, but Madison crawled back under the blankets with a worried look in her face. She had never felt that kind of nausea before.
As she lay there in the big bed, a thought struck her, her heart racing madly in her chest as she turned and looked out the window. She stared out at the beautiful forest that sheltered the entire back and both sides of the palatial house. Madison saw movement right at the edge of the tree line and stood to get a better look.
She walked over to the giant floor-to-ceiling window and watched as a deer crept cautiously out of the trees to walk toward a bush covered in bright red berries. The creature seemed to nod back behind her and two tiny fawns followed quickly behind her. They wobbled unsteadily on legs they were still getting used to.
